incorporating Morocco and all French Africa in the colonial empire they
hoped to create on the shores of the Mediterranean and in the heart of
the Black Continent.[5]

This we may take to be a correct description of the attitude of the
Pangermans. But there is no evidence that it was that of the nation.
We have seen also that Baron Beyens' impression of the attitude of the
German people, even after the Moroccan affair, was of a general desire
for peace.[6] The crisis had been severe, but it had been tided over, and
the Governments seem to have made renewed efforts to come into friendly
relations. In this connection the following dispatch of Baron Beyens (June
1912) is worth quoting:--

After the death of Edward VII, the Kaiser, as well as the Crown Prince,
when they returned from England, where they had been courteously
received, were persuaded that the coldness in the relations of the
preceding years was going to yield to a cordial intimacy between the
two Courts and that the causes of the misunderstanding between the two
peoples would vanish with the past. His disillusionment, therefore, was
cruel when he saw the Cabinet of London range itself last year on the
side of France. But the Kaiser is obstinate, and has not abandoned the
hope of reconquering the confidence of the English.[7]

This dispatch is so far borne out by the facts that in the year succeeding
the Moroccan crisis a serious attempt was made to improve Anglo-German
relations, and there is no reason to doubt that on both sides there was
a genuine desire for an understanding. How that understanding failed has
already been indicated.[8] But even that failure did not ruin the relations
between the two Powers. In the Balkan crisis, as we have seen and as is
admitted on both sides, England and Germany worked together for peace. And