A few months later, at the beginning of the following year (1912), the _fifth_ warning of the series was delivered.
It differed from its predecessors inasmuch as it was addressed to the ears of the British Government alone. Neither the Opposition nor the country heard anything of it until more than two years later--until the battles of Alsace, of Charleroi, and of Mons had been lost--until the battle of the Marne had been won--until the British Army was moving north to take up a position in Flanders. Then we learned that, when Lord Haldane had visited Berlin in the month of February 1912, he had done so at the special request of the Kaiser, in order to consider how Anglo-German misunderstandings might be removed.
Lord Haldane would have acted more wisely had he stopped his journey _en route_, and never entered Berlin at all. For, two days before the date appointed for his visit, proposals for large increases of the German Army and Navy were laid before the Reichstag. His mission was to abate competition in armaments, and here was an encouraging beginning! Was it contempt, or insolence, or a design to overawe the supposed timidity of the emissary; or was it merely a blundering effort to steal a march in the negotiations by facing the ambassador on his arrival with a _fait accompli_? Possibly it was a combination of all these; but at any rate it was { 288} exceedingly clumsy, and no less significant than clumsy.
As to the mission--Germany was willing in a vague way to 'retard'--whatever that may mean--though not to abandon, or reduce, her naval programme, providing the British Government would agree to remain neutral in any war which Germany might choose to wage. France might be crushed and Belgium annexed; but in either event England must stand aside and wait her turn. On no other terms would the Kaiser consent to a _rapprochement_ with this country, or allow the blessed words 'retardation of the naval programme' to be uttered by official lips.
An undertaking of this tenor went beyond those assurances of non-aggressive intent which Lord Haldane, on behalf of his own Government, was fully prepared to give. We would not be a party to any unprovoked attack on Germany--was not that sufficient? It was plainly insufficient. It was made clear that Germany desired a free hand to establish herself in a position of supremacy astride of Europe. So Lord Haldane returned profitless from his wayfaring, and the British Government was at its wits' end how to placate the implacable.