East India Company had, indeed, made repeated attempts to open up trade with China, though with very indifferent success. The lapse of the Company's charter in 1833 encouraged the enterprise of individual traders, but their efforts gave rise to many regrettable incidents, and these in turn led to a series of "opium " wars, as a result of which a number of "treaty ports were opened to foreign trade in China. Japan, on the contrary, was able to maintain a policy of complete diplomatic segregation down to the middle of the nineteenth century. The United States and Great Britain both obtained trading facilities with Japan in 1854; but only after the victory of Japan over China (1894-5) did the nations of the West realize that a new Power, organized on Western models, had arisen in the Far East. During the short space of twenty-five years the island Empire had transformed itself, with astounding completeness and rapidity. Down to 1868 Japan had remained entirely medieval and Asiatic; in 1895 it stood revealed as an up-to-date Europeanized Power, with its bi-cameral parliament, its Anglicized navy and its Germanized army.

The revelation came as a great shock to some of the European Powers, notably to Russia, and in less degree to France. These Powers insisted, in conjunction with Germany, that Japan must not be permitted to retain the territories on the mainland of China ceded to her by the Treaty of Shimonoseki, and accordingly she sullenly surrendered Port Arthur and the Liao-Tong peninsula. The sequel affords a striking illustration of the purity of the motives which prompted the European intervention on behalf of China.

In 1898 Germany demanded and obtained a ninety-nine years' lease of the harbour of Kiao Chau, with the surrounding territory, and large commercial and financial privileges in the province of Shantung. Hardly was the German lease of Kiao Chau signed when Russia concluded an arrangement with China by which Port Arthur and Talienwan were leased to her.

It is at this point that the documents under review take up the tale. The series opens with a Memorandum (dated January 14, 1905) by Mr. J. A. C. Tilley, containing a useful summary of Anglo-Russian relations 1892-1904. On December 1, 1894, Sir Ernest Satow writes from Tokyo to Lord Salisbury concerning the excitement caused in Japan by the German seizure of Kiao Chau, and his letter introduces a series of documents dealing with

the overture made by England to Russia, proposing co-operation in China (January-March, 1898). The Salisbury Government, though aware that China was contemplating an offer of WeiHai-Wei to Great Britain (February 25, 1898), discouraged any alienation of Chinese territory, in particular Port Arthur, and on 18th March the idea of an alliance between Great Britain, Japan and China first comes into view. The surrender of Kiao Chau and Port Arthur, however, compelled us to accept the Chinese offer of Wei-Hai-Wei, when the latter was evacuated by Japan. The situation was eminently unsatisfactory, and on March 28, 1898, Sir Ernest Satow writes privately to Sir Edward Seymour, the British Admiral on the China station, as follows:

I am afraid the efforts of H.M. Government to prevent China being taken by the throat are not destined to command either sympathy or success. We gave the whole position away two years ago when Mr. Balfour declared, in a speech at Bristol (February 5, 1896), that there was no objection to Russia obtaining an outlet to the Pacific. We have tried to insist on her being contented with a commercial port, but that is not what she wants, which is a naval base.

Such were the circumstances under which a determined effort was made to establish a good understanding, if not to conclude a definite alliance, between Germany and England. The editors print a number of documents in reference to the Portuguese Colonies in Africa, to the Samoa question, and to the South African War; but in regard to the larger question of an AngloGerman Treaty there is a disappointing hiatus for which the editors are in no way responsible. This hiatus is the more deplorable in view of the fact that the German archives, as published in volume XIV of "Die Grosse Politik der Europäischen Kabinette," contain full details of the negotiations with Great Britain during the critical year 1898. But the explanation is that the negotiations were left mainly in the hands of Mr. Chamberlain, the Secretary of State for the Colonies, and were treated, therefore, as a private matter. We may, however, look for enlightenment from the official biography of Mr. Chamberlain now in preparation by Mr. J. L. Garvin, and from the further volumes of Lady Gwendoline Cecil's "Life of Lord Salisbury." The large gap in the Foreign Office documents will certainly add zest to the impatience with which these biographies are awaited.

Meanwhile, the story has been told from the German point of view by Herr Brandenburg in the work already referred to, and told, it would seem, with accuracy and lucidity.

VOL. 247. NO. 503.

I

According to this version, Germany had for years been angling for an alliance with England, but the latter declined her advances. In 1898, however, the position was reversed; the wooed became the wooer, and Chamberlain, alarmed by the position of Russia in the Far East, apprehensive of conflict with France in the Sudan, and keenly aware of the tension in South Africa, approached Count Hatzfelt with concrete proposals for an alliance. Now it was Germany's turn to hang back. She feared lest an AngloGerman alliance might lead to a still closer understanding between France and Russia, and might even precipitate an attack by those Powers upon Germany. The Kaiser bluntly told Sir Frank Lascelles that he was not going to pull the chestnuts out of the fire to save John Bull's fingers, and Bülow and Holstein warmly applauded the declaration. Chamberlain hinted that, if his advances were spurned, England might turn towards France and Russia; but Germany always regarded this danger as negligible, and the negotiations proved abortive.

Nevertheless, conversations were resumed in 1900, and on October 16th an agreement was reached in reference to Far Eastern affairs between Great Britain and Germany. Relations between the two countries were further improved by the cordial reception accorded to the Kaiser when he came to England for the funeral of Queen Victoria, but the improvement was only temporary.

What hindered a better understanding between the two countries? That question cannot easily be answered by reference to the official documents. On the contrary, despite the friction that arose in connection with the South African War, the official negotiations seemed to be tending towards an accommodation of mutual antagonisms. Thus we have one long series of documents leading up to the Anglo-German Agreement of 1900. There is another series concerned with the Anglo-German negotiations of 1901. Friendly relations were not disturbed by the Anglo-Japanese Treaty in 1902, and were confirmed by the co-operation of the two countries in the Venezuelan business of 1902-3. Even the conclusion of the Anglo-French Entente in 1904 evoked no official protest from Germany. On the contrary, Prince von Radolin, the German Ambassador in Paris, on being informed of the arrangement by M. Delcassé, observed that he

found it" very natural and perfectly justified." Prince von Bülow spoke to similar effect in the Reichstag :

We have no reason to apprehend that this agreement is levelled against any individual Power. It seems to be an attempt to eliminate the points of difference between France and Great Britain by means of an amicable understanding. From the point of view of German interests we have no objection to make to it.

The development of an anti-English temper in Germany must therefore be sought elsewhere. One or two dates will speak more eloquently than many sentences. In 1897, Admiral von Tirpitz was placed in control of German naval policy. Lord Haldane was of opinion that Tirpitz did not actually want war : "but he did want power to enforce submission to the expansion of Germany at her will " (" Before the War," p. 88). Precisely! In 1898, the first German Navy Law was passed; a second, on far more ambitious lines, in 1900. In the same year, Prince Bernhard von Bülow succeeded Prince Hohenlohe as Chancellor, and from the first he made no secret of his view that German progress-colonial, commercial and naval-was "bound to inconvenience England; and, though the consequences of this development might be mitigated by diplomacy, they could not be prevented." With the development of Germany we had neither the will nor the power to interfere, but, as Lord Haldane puts it: "she chose a means to her end which was becoming progressively more and more inadmissible " (Op. cit., p. 85).

Professor Brandenburg's closely reasoned and impartial narrative proves up to the hilt Lord Haldane's contention. Nor is it easy to avoid the conclusion that the three men directly responsible for the progressively inadmissible character of German methods were Tirpitz, Holstein and Bülow.

To dwell exclusively on Anglo-German relations would be, however, to give a disproportioned idea of the contents of the British documents. Considerable space is allotted to documents dealing with the Hague Peace Conference of 1899, with the South African War, with the Anglo-Japanese Treaty of 1902, and with the relations between Great Britain and France. The lastmentioned begin with the difficulties arising from the respective claims of the two Powers in West Africa, they deal with the Fashoda crisis, and end happily with the conclusion of the AngloFrench treaties of April 8, 1904.

By these documents it is made clear, beyond the possibility of dispute, that if there was an "encirclement" of Germany (and the fact cannot be denied) the completion of the ring, by the adhesion of England, was due not to any sinister design on our part, but to the astounding clumsiness of German diplomacy and her profound though characteristic misapprehension of English psychology. Both these points are conclusively established by the plain tale told by Herr Brandenburg. That England would ever enter into cordial relations with Russia, or even with France, appeared to the leaders of German policy to be impossible. Should the impossible happen, Tirpitz had only to promote a more ambitious naval programme and England would shrink into her shell. On the other hand, Germany had only to coquette with England to put terror into the hearts of France and Russia. Partly (writes Herr Brandenburg) from inward uncertainty and partly from subtle calculation [Germany] pursued for nearly a decade this policy of tacking, of putting two irons in the fire" balance and counterbalance," a zig-zag course "-without ever clearly envisaging the dangers inseparable from it, though a suspicion may occasionally have flashed across their consciousness. . . . The consummation of the Entente between England and France in 1904 destroyed even the semblance of our position as arbiter. We suddenly began to realize our plight.

The defeat inflicted upon Russia by Japan (1904-5), and the conclusion two years later of a convention between England and Russia completed the disillusionment: Germany was without a friend in Europe except Austria. Austria had only to pipe in the Balkans or elsewhere, and the Hohenzollern must needs dance to any tune the Hapsburgs might call.

That is the impression which we derive from a careful study of Herr Brandenburg's pages; and the official documents, so far as they go, do not contradict it. But what is the net result of the revision of judgment, if revision there must be? Simply this that if we reduce the measure of German criminality, we can do so only by increasing the measure of her stupidity. The Kaiser himself was more than half-conscious, it would seem, of the folly in which he was involved, and in 1908 he referred to Aerenthal's "frightful stupidity" in annexing Bosnia: "It was piracy against Turkey; it was simply giving England a cause for suspecting the Central Powers." If Germany, as Brandenburg argues, did not want war, she constantly, as he frankly admits, adopted a line of policy which threatened to precipitate a war.