the summer of 1911 immediately after the coronation of King George
there came one of those storms of international suspicion that ever and
again threaten Europe with war. It seems to have been brewed by some
German adepts at Welt-Politik, those privileged makers of giant bombs
who sit at the ears of foreign ministers suggesting idiotic wickedness,
and it was brewed with a sublime ignorance of nearly every reality in
the case. A German warship without a word of notice seized Agadir on the
Atlantic coast of Morocco, within the regions reserved to French
influence; an English demand for explanations was uncivilly disregarded
and England and France and presently Germany began vigorous preparations
for war. All over the world it was supposed that Germany had at last
flung down the gauntlet. In England the war party was only too eager to
grasp what it considered to be a magnificent opportunity. Heaven knows
what the Germans had hoped or intended by their remarkable coup; the
amazing thing to note is that they were not prepared to fight, they had
not even the necessary money ready and they could not get it; they had
perhaps never intended to fight, and the autumn saw the danger disperse
again into diplomatic bickerings and insincerely pacific professions.
But in the high summer the danger had not dispersed, and in common with
every reasonable man I found myself under the shadow of an impending
catastrophe that would have been none the less gigantic and tragic
because it was an imbecility. It was an occasion when everyone needs
must act, however trivially disproportionate his action may be to the
danger. I cabled Gidding who was in America to get together whatever
influences were available there upon the side of pacific intervention,
and I set such British organs as I could control or approach in the same
direction. It seemed probable that Italy would be drawn into any
conflict that might ensue; it happened that there was to be a Conference
of Peace Societies in Milan early in September, and thither I decided to
go in the not very certain hope that out of that assemblage some form of
European protest might be evolved.

That August I was very much run down. I had been staying in London
through almost intolerably hot weather to attend a Races Congress that
had greatly disappointed me. I don't know particularly now why I had
been disappointed nor how far the feeling was due to my being generally
run down by the pressure of detailed