friction.

Meanwhile there was the chance that the course of this policy might be
interrupted by some event which we could not control. A conversation
with the then Chief of the German General Staff, General von Moltke, the
nephew of the great man of that name, satisfied me that he did not
really look with any pleasurable military expectation to the results of
a war with the United Kingdom alone. It would, he observed to me, be in
his opinion a long and possibly indecisive war, and must result in much
of the overseas trade of both countries passing to a _tertius gaudens_,
by which he meant the United States.

I had little doubt that what he said to me on this occasion represented
his real opinion. But I had in my mind the apprehension of an emergency
of a different nature. Germany was more likely to attack France than
ourselves. The German Emperor had told me that, altho he was trying to
develop good relations with France, he was finding it difficult. This
seemed to me ominous. The paradox presented itself that a war with
Germany in which we were alone would be easier to meet than a war in
which France was attacked along with us; for if Germany succeeded in
over-running France she might establish naval bases on the northern
Channel ports of that country, quite close to our shores, and so, with
the possible aid of the submarines, long-range guns and air-machines of
the future, interfere materially with our naval position in the Channel
and our fleet defenses against invasion.

I knew, too, that the French Government was apprehensive. In the
historical speech which Sir Edward Grey made on August 3, 1914, the day
before the British Government directed Sir Edward Goschen, our
Ambassador in Berlin, to ask for his passports, he informed the House of