n African affairs, and early in 1900 acquired sole control
of Samoa instead of the joint Anglo-American-German protectorate, which
had produced friction. Finally, in the summer of 1900, the Boxer Rising
in China opened up grave problems which demanded the co-operation of
Germany and the United Kingdom.

[Footnote 497: Delcasse was Foreign Minister in five Administrations
until 1905.]

It has often been stated that the Kaiser desired to form a Coalition
against Great Britain during the Boer War; and it is fairly certain that
he sounded Russia and France with a view to joint diplomatic efforts to
stop the war on the plea of humanity, and that, after the failure of
this device, he secretly informed the British Government of the danger
which he claimed to have averted[498]. His actions reflected the
impulsiveness and impetuosity which have often puzzled his subjects and
alarmed his neighbours; but it seems likely that his aims were limited
either to squeezing the British at the time of their difficulties, or to
finding means of breaking up the Franco-Russian alliance. His energetic
fishing in troubled waters caused much alarm; but it is improbable that
he desired war with Great Britain until his new navy was ready for sea.
The German Chancellor, Prince von Buelow, has since written as follows:
"We gave England no cause to thwart us in the building of our fleet: . . .
we never came into actual conflict with the Dual Alliance, which would
have hindered us in the gradual acquisition of a navy[499]." This,
doubtless, was the governing motive in German policy, to refrain from
any action that would involve war, to seize every opportunity for
pushing forward German claims, and, above all, to utilise the prevalent
irritation at the helplessness of Germany at sea as a means of
overcoming the still formidable opposition of German Liberals to the
ever-increasing naval expenditure.

[Footnote 498: Sir V. Chirol, _Quarterly Review_, Oct. 1914.]

[Footnote 499: Buelow, _Imperial Germany_, pp. 98-9 (Eng. transl.);
Rachfahl, _Kaiser und Reich_ (p. 163), states that, as in 1900-1, the
German fleet, even along with those of France and Russia, was no match
for the British fleet, Germany necessarily remained neutral. See, too,
Hurd and Castle, _German Sea Power_, chap. v.]

In order to discourage the futile anti-British diatribes in the German
Press, Buelow declared in the Reichstag that in no quarter was there an
intention to intervene a