threatened the general peace, it should immediately discuss with the
other whether both Governments should act together to prevent aggression
and to preserve peace, and, if so, what measures they would be prepared
to take in common. If these measures involved action, the plans of the
General Staffs would at once be taken into consideration, and the
Governments would then decide what effect should be given to them.'

M. Cambon replied on the following day that he was authorized to accept
the arrangement which Sir E. Grey had offered.[20]

The agreement, it will be seen, was of an elastic nature. Neither party
was bound to co-operate, even diplomatically, with the other. The
undertaking was to discuss any threatening situation, and to take common
measures if both agreed to the necessity; there was an admission that
the agreement might result in the conduct of a joint defensive war upon
a common plan. Such an understanding between two sovereign states could
be resented only by a Power which designed to attack one of them without
clear provocation.

The date at which these notes were interchanged is certainly
significant. In November, 1912, the Balkan Allies were advancing on
Constantinople, and already the spoils of the Balkan War were in
dispute. Servia incurred the hostility of Austria-Hungary by demanding
Albania and Adriatic ports; and the Dual Monarchy announced that it
could never accept this arrangement. Behind Servia Austrian statesmen
suspected the influence of Russia; it was, they said, a scheme for
bringing Russia down to a sea which Austria regarded as her own
preserve. Austria mobilized her army, and a war could hardly have been
avoided but for the mediation of Germany and England. If England had
entertained the malignant designs with which she is credited in some