formerly, and we, have to keep an anxious eye not only on the Mediterranean and Atlantic, but on the North Sea as well." He also added that "his speech had been misrepresented in an extraordinary manner. His statement embodied no threat, and was one to which no foreign power could possibly object."
3 The respective Anglo-German naval position two years later was thus stated by Lord Fisher in a letter to King Edward VII.:
" It is an absolute fact that Germany has not laid down a single Dreadnought, nor has she commenced building a single battleship or big cruiser for eighteen months. … England has seven Dreadnoughts and three Dreadnought battle-cruisers: total, ten Dreadnoughts built and building, while Germany in March last had not even begun one Dreadnought … we have 123 Destroyers and 40 Submarines. The Germans have 48 Destroyers and one Submarine." (Fisher's "Memoirs.") See, too. Fisher's opinion of comparative power of the two Fleets in 1905, under Chronology (December).
4This was certainly untrue of King Edward VII., the bulk of the available evidence going to show that his influence in shaping, or at least influencing, foreign policy was considerable.
5The published Anglo-French Convention and Declarations of April 8, 1904.
6See Note II.
7id.
8To President Kruger congratulating him on defeating the Jameson raid upon the Transvaal.
9March, 1905.
10The German Emperor's visit to Tangier was an act of German State policy in which the Emperor followed the advice of his Ministers (see von Bülow's "Imperial Germany" Cassell). It was, in effect, a challenge to the Secret Agreements between Britain, France, and Spain for the territorial and economic partition of Morocco. The existence of these Secret Agreements, which were concluded in April and October, 1904, were hinted at by the French Press in the autumn of that year. Their general character was then either surmised or actually known in Berlin. Their text was only revealed to the world in November, 1911. For all Notes on the Morocco affair, the reader is further referred to "Ten Years' Secret Diplomacy" (National Labour Press).
11The Franco-Russian military Convention was signed in August, 1892.
12German Ambassador.
13This would naturally be the view which official circles in Paris desired to impress upon the diplomatic representatives of neutral Powers. The published Conventions of 1904 did not involve a departure from the Madrid Convention (1880), which made of Morocco an international concern. But the Secret Agreements did, for they treated Morocco as a country whose future could be determined according to the ole interests of three Powers: in other words, they converted an international problem into a national one, and sought to solve it in accordance with the nationalistic interests of the three contracting Powers without any reference to the other signatory Powers of the Madrid Convention.
