His personal influence, says
the dispatch, "had been exerted on many critical occasions in support of
peace." The fact of a change of mind in the Kaiser is accepted also by
Baron Beyens.
Whatever may be the truth in this matter, neither the German nor the French
nor our own Government can then have abandoned the effort at peaceable
settlement. For, in fact, by the summer of 1914, agreements had been made
between the Great Powers which settled for the time being the questions
immediately outstanding. It is understood that a new partition of African
territory had been arranged to meet the claims and interests of Germany,
France, and England alike. The question of the Bagdad railway had been
settled, and everything seemed to favour the maintenance of peace, when,
suddenly, the murder of the Archduke sprang upon a dismayed Europe the
crisis that was at last to prove fatal. The events that followed, so far
as they can be ascertained from published documents, have been so fully
discussed that it would be superfluous for me to go over the ground again
in all its detail. But I will indicate briefly what appear to me to be the
main points of importance in fixing the responsibility for what occurred.
First, the German view, that England is responsible for the war because she
did not prevent Russia from entering upon it, I regard as childish, if it
is not simply sophistical.
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