and she will not fail."[16]

Thus the plot thickened; the entanglement increased. The Boer War roused
ill-feeling between England and Germany. The German Navy Bill followed
in 1900, and the Kaiser announced his intention of creating a sea-power
the equal of any in the world. Britain of course replied with her Navy
Bills; and the two countries were committed to a mad race of armaments.
The whole of Europe stood by anxious. Fear and Greed, the two meanest of
human passions, ruled everywhere. Fear of a militarist Germany began to
loom large upon the more pacific States of Europe. On the other hand,
the fatality of Alsace-Lorraine loomed in Germany, full of forebodings
of revenge. France had found a friend in Russia--a sinister alliance.
Britain, convinced that trouble was at hand, came to an understanding
with France in 1904 and with Russia in 1907. The Triple Entente was born
as a set-off against the Triple Alliance. The Agadir incident in 1911
betrayed the purely commercial nature of the designs of the four Powers
concerned--France, Spain, England, and Germany--and a war over the
corpse of Morocco was only narrowly avoided. Germany felt quite
naturally that she was the victim of a plot, and thenceforth was
alternately convulsed by mad Ambition and haunted by a lurking Terror.

And now we come to the last act of the great drama. So far the
relations of Germany with Russia had not been strained. If there was any
fear of Russia, it was quite in the background. The Junkers--themselves
half Slavs--had supplied a large number of the Russian officials, men
like Plehve and Klingenberg; the Russian bureaucracy was founded on and
followed the methods of the German. The Japanese War called Russia's
attention away to another part of the world, and at the same time
exposed her weakness. But if Germany was not troubled about Russia, a
different sentiment was growing up in Russia itself. The people there