ssian Entente, see H.W. Steed, _The Hamburg
Monarchy_, p. 230.]

[Footnote 520: Rachfahl (p. 307) admits this, but accuses England of
covert opposition everywhere, even at the Hague Conference.]

[Footnote 521: On December 24, 1908, the Russian Foreign Minister,
Izvolsky, assured the Duma that "no open or secret agreements directed
against German interests existed between Russia and England."]

One question remains. When was it that the friction between Great
Britain and Germany first became acute? Some have dated it from the
Morocco Affair of 1905-6. The assertion is inconsistent with the facts
of the case. Long before that crisis the policy of the Kaiser tended
increasingly towards a collision. His patronage of the Boers early in
1896 was a threatening sign; still more so was his World-Policy,
proclaimed repeatedly in the following years, when the appointments of
Tirpitz and Buelow showed that the threats of capturing the trident, and
so forth, were not mere bravado. The outbreak of the Boer War in 1899,
followed quickly by the Kaiser's speech at Hamburg, and the adoption of
accelerated naval construction in 1900, brought about serious tension,
which was not relaxed by British complaisance respecting Samoa. The
coquetting with the Sultan, the definite initiation of the Bagdad scheme
(1902-3), and the completion of the first part of Germany's new naval
programme in 1904 account for the Anglo-French Entente of that year. The
chief significance of the Morocco Affair of 1905-6 lay in the Kaiser's
design of severing that Entente. His failure, which was still further
emphasised during the Algeciras Conference, proved that a policy which
relies on menace and ever-increasing armaments arouses increasing
distrust and leads the menaced States to form defensive arrangements.
That is also the outstanding lesson of the career of Napoleon I.
Nevertheless, the Kaiser, like the Corsican, persisted in forceful
procedure, until Army Bills, Navy Bills, and the rejection of pacific
proposals at the Hague, led to their natural result, the Anglo-Russian
agreement of 1907. This event should have made him question the wisdom
of relying on armed force and threatening procedure. The Entente between
the Tsar and the Campbell-Bannerman Administration formed a tacit but
decisive censure of the policy of Potsdam; for it realised the fears
which had haunted Bismarck like a nightmare[522]. Its effect on William
II. was to induce him to increase hi