forgiven the admission, even by German jurists, who argued that
treaties were only binding rebus sic stantibus, while the conditions
in which they were signed remained substantially the same; and Germans
had long cast covetous eyes on the Congo State, the possession of
which, they contended, was inconsistent with Belgium's legal immunity
from attack in Europe.

The opposition of Bethmann-Hollweg and the German foreign office was
accordingly brushed aside, and the army made all preparations for an
invasion of France through Belgium. The diplomatists would have made a
stouter resistance had they anticipated the attitude England was to
adopt. But the German ambassador in London, Prince Lichnowsky, failed
to convince his Government that there was anything to fear from the
British Empire. Mr. Lloyd George has claimed it as one of the
advantages we derive from the British press that it misleads public
opinion abroad, and a study of "The Times," the only British newspaper
that carries much weight in foreign countries, may well have persuaded
the German Government in 1914 that eight years of Liberal
administration were not likely to have provided England with the
means, or left it the spirit, to challenge the might of Germany. She
was known to have entered into no binding alliance with France or
Russia; the peace had never in all their history been broken between
the two great Protestant Powers; and, while there had been serious
naval and colonial rivalry and some diplomatic friction, relations in
1913-14 seemed to have entered calmer waters. Germany had been well
satisfied with the efforts and sacrifices England had made to prevent
the Balkan crisis from developing into a European war; and Lichnowsky
was successfully negotiating treaties which gave Germany unexpected
advantages with regard to the Baghdad railway and African
colonization. On the eve of war the English were hailed as cousins in