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The Failure of the 1898-1901 Anglo-German Alliance Attempt

其他書名	A Failure of Diplomacy Or a Failure Effected by Adverse Publicity?
出版	Oberlin College, 1966
URL	http://books.google.com.hk/books?id=FeAROAAACAAJ&hl=&source=gbs_api

註釋The decision of Great Britain to renounce her nearly century-old policy of splendid isolation at the turn of the nineteenth century meant the beginning of a new era in world history. The character of this era would be molded by Britain's choice of an alliance power. Few men of the day would have thought that the partner could be any but Germany. France and Russia were Britain's determined colonial enemies; the United States was an arrogant, young Great Power, as disdainful of alliances as Britain had been a decade earlier. Germany seemed to be the perfect prospective ally. Colonial friction between her and Britain was minimal. Trade between the two prosperous countries was extensive and mutually profitable. An alliance between two ethnically related nations was looked upon favorably by influential racist opinion in both countries. An alliance between two such powerful nations with so much in common could have meant a Pax Teutonica for the next fifty years. Both sides acknowledged such a vision time and time again; the three-year duration of the alliance attempt testifies to the strength of that vision. Thus, historians have lamented the failure of the 1898-1901 Anglo-German alliance negotiations as being the first and most decisive step towards that holocaust that marked the beginning of the destruction of Europe as the center of the world, the Great War. Although no statesman at the end of the negotiations in 1901 would have dared predict the consequences of such a failure, one can, with the benefit of hindsight, assert that Europe's fate was sealed when the British Government of Lord Salisbury came to the conclusion that an alliance with Germany was impossible. From that moment on it was only a matter of time until Britain made agreements with France and then with Russia, hence forging the Triple Entente, a Triple Entente which rightly appeared to German to be "Einkreisung". The obsessive fear generated by such encirclement would propel Germany towards ever more serious collisions with those who encircled her and create a situation of such explosiveness that an assassination in an obscure corner of Europe would be sufficient to begin the Great War.