GERMAN DIPLOMACY.

Hawera & Normanby Star, Volume LXIX, Issue LXIX, 3 September 1915, Page 3

GERMAN DIPLOMACY.

. THE TOLL SINCE BISMARCK.

\ [How Berlin diplomacy, divorced from Bismarckian principles, forped Europe into an anti-German League is well told by Mr G. H. Ferris. The history of the Triple Alliance, he say, exhibits with tragic clearness the decay of' statesmanship in Berlin- during the reign of .the present Emperor. There was no more moral scruple under the Iron Chancellor, but there w%s infinitely more intelligence; and the present calamity is the result of lack of brains even more than lack of moral scruple. After the defeat of Austria in 1866, Bismarck insisted that no territory must be taken from her. So France ! looked in vain to Ausjtria-, for help' four years , later.. Then he 6et himself to insure and re-in«ure Germany's future. In 1872, the three Emperors were drawn together into a friendly compact; and in the following year Italy was brought into the union. France was thus completely isolated. Some coolness with Russia followed the Tsar's intervention in 1875, together with Queen Victoria, to prevent an attack upon the Republic: and at the Berlin Congress in 1878 Bismarck helped to rob Russia of the fruit of her victories over Turkey, and started a rivalry of Russia and Austria in the Balkans, which was to give Germany constant opportunities of profitable interference. But it remained an essential part of his policy not to quarrel with St. Petersburg; arid whea the alliance with Austria was made (October. 1879), he expressed regret that he had been compelled to "choose between two friends." Within five years, indeed, he had got Germany, Austria, and Russia secretly united in an, agreement by which;each promised benevolent ,fte'uf'x>ality in;case the other was attacked. Meanwhile, France had been placated by an invitation to occupy Tunis, and England by advice to hold on to Egypt. These were the sort of strokes in which Bismarck excelled and delighted. England in Egypt meant England a,nd France" at loggerheads; France in Tunis meant FrancoItalian bickering. "Will you come into my parlour? said the spider to the fly." Italy entered the German parlour on 20th May, 1882. Bismarck played with incomparable skill upon the ancient instruments of diplomacy; but he knew little of some of the strongest, especially the economic, forces of the modern world. In 1888 the first Russian loan was placed on the French market. The FrancoRussian Alliance duly followed. It was the first serious blow to the elaborate structure whose citadel was Berlin. The second blow fell in 1890, when'the present Kaiser dismissed the founder of the new German Empire, and started out upon a. personal policy of naval and colomalr expansion, in which the essential idea was the joint mobilisation of military and financial power. How, one by one, Italy was reconciled with France, England with France and iihen with Russia, and Russia and France with Japan, we all remember.