ill-informed, preoccupied, were defenceless against its agitation. The
German Government found the Pangermans embarrassing or convenient according
as the direction of its policy and the European situation changed from
crisis to crisis. They were thus at one moment negligible, at another
powerful. For long they agitated vainly, and they might long have continued
to do so. But if the moment should come at which the Government should make
the fatal plunge, their efforts would have contributed to the result, their
warnings would seem to have been justified, and they would triumph as
the party of patriots that had foretold in vain the coming crash to an
unbelieving nation.

[Footnote 1: "L'Enigme Allemande," 1914.]

[Footnote 2: See "L'Allemagne avant la guerre," pp. 97 seq. and 170 seq.
Bruxelles, 1915.]

[Footnote 3: A Frenchman, M. Maurice Ajam, who made an inquiry among
business men in 1913 came to the same conclusion. "Peace! I write that all
the Germans without exception, when they belong to the world of business,
are fanatical partisans of the maintenance of European peace." See Yves
Guyot, "Les causes et les conséquences de la guerre," p. 226.]

[Footnote 4: See French Yellow Book, No. 5.]



10. _German Policy, from 1890-1900_.


Having thus examined the atmosphere of opinion in which the German