In his anxiety, while there was still the fear that Russia might hold her hand, he telegraphed to the British Ambassador in St. Petersburg on 27th of July, requiring him to assure the Russian Foreign Minister, that the British Fleet, "which is concentrated, _as it happens_" would not disperse from Portland.
That "as it happens" is quite the most illuminating slip in the British White Paper, and is best comprehended by those who know what have been the secret orders of the British fleet since 1909, and what was the end in view when King George reviewed it earlier in the month, and when His Majesty so hurriedly summoned the unconstitutional "Home Rule" conference at Buckingham Palace on 18th of July. Nothing remained for the "friends" but to so manoeuvre that Germany should be driven to declare war, or see her frontiers crossed. If she did the first, she became the "aggressor"; if she waited to be attacked she incurred the peril of destruction.
Such, in outline, are the causes and steps that led to the outbreak of war. The writer has seen those steps well and carefully laid, tested and tried beforehand. Every rung of the scaling ladder being raised for the storming of the German defences on land and sea was planed and polished in the British Foreign Office.
As Sir Edward Grey confessed three years ago, he was "but the fly on the wheel." That wheel was the ever faster driven purpose of Great Britain to destroy the growing sea-power and commerce of Germany. The strain had reached the breaking point.
During the first six months of 1914, German export trade almost equalled that of Great Britain. Another year of peace, and it would certainly have exceeded it, and for the first time in the history of world trade Great Britain would have been put in the second place. German exports from January to June had swelled to the enormous total of $1,045,000,000 as against the $1,075,000,000 of Great Britain. A war against such figures could not be maintained in the markets, it must be transferred to the seas.
Day by day as the war proceeds, although it is now only six weeks old, the pretences under which it was begun are being discarded. England fights not to defend the neutrality of Belgium, not to destroy German militarism, but to retain, if need be by involving the whole world in war, her supreme and undisputed ownership of the seas.