E. Grey, the Foreign Minister, was so unpopular with his own party that quite probably he would have had to get out of office if he had not been sustained by Tory influence. Mr. W. T. Stead expressed a quite general sentiment in the Review of Reviews for December, 1911:
The fact remains that in order to put France in possession of Morocco, we all but went to war with Germany. We have escaped war, but we have not escaped the national and abiding enmity of the German people. Is it possible to frame a heavier indictment of the foreign policy of any British Ministry? The secret, the open secret, of this almost incredible crime against treaty-faith, British interests and the peace of the world, is the unfortunate fact that Sir Edward Grey has been dominated by men in the Foreign Office who believe all considerations must be subordinated to the one supreme duty of thwarting Germany at every turn, even if in doing so British interests, treaty-faith and the peace of the world are trampled underfoot. I speak that of which I know.
This was strong language and it went without challenge, for too many Englishmen felt that way. In France, the Poincaré-Millerand-Delcassé combination was getting well into the saddle; but with English public opinion in this notably undependable condition, English support of France, in spite of the secret agreement binding
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