course
told in favour of the French connection. Further, now that Russia was
retiring more and more from her Balkan and Central Asian projects in
order to concentrate on the Far East, she ceased to threaten India and
the Levant. Moreover, the personality of the Tsar, Nicholas II., was
reassuring, while that of Kaiser Wilhelm II. aroused distrust and alarm.

In truth, the inordinate vanity, restless energy, and flamboyant
Chauvinism of the Kaiser placed great difficulties in the way of an
Anglo-German Entente. An article believed to have been inspired by
Bismarck contained the following reference to the Kaiser's megalomania:
"It causes the deepest anxiety in Germany, because it is feared that it
may lead to some irreparable piece of want of tact, and thence to war.
For it is argued that, vanity being at the bottom of it all, and the
Emperor finding he is unable to gain the premature immortality he
thirsts for by peaceful prodigies, his restless nervous irritability may
degenerate into recklessness, and then his megalomania may blind him to
the dangers he and, above all, poor blood-soaken Germany may encounter
on the war-path[501]." Kaiser William possesses more power of
self-restraint than this passage indicates; for, though he has spread a
warlike enthusiasm through his people, he has also restrained it until
there arrived a fit opportunity for its exercise. It arrived when
Germany and her Allies were far better prepared, both by land and sea,
than the Powers whom she expected to meet in arms.

[Footnote 501: _Contemporary Review_, April 1892.]

His attitude towards Great Britain has varied surprisingly. During
several years he figured as her friend. But it is difficult to believe
that a man of his keen intellect did not discern ahead the collision
which his policy must involve. His many claims to acquire maritime
supremacy and a World-Empire were either mere bluff or a portentous
challenge. Only the good-natured, easy-going British race could so long
have clung to the former explanation, thereby leaving the most diffuse,
vulnerable, and ill-armed Empire that has ever existed face to face with
an Empire that is compact, well-fortified, and armed to the teeth. In
this contrast lies one of the main causes of the present war.

Moreover, the internal difficulties of France and the preoccupation of
Russia in the Far East gave to Kaiser William a disquietingly easy
victory in the affairs of the Near East. His visit to Cons