ABSTRACT
At the end of 1911 Germany and Great Britain were as XV far away as ever from a settlement of those questions which disturbed the relations between the two countries. More than two years had gone by since Albert Ballin had tried to bring about a meeting between German and British naval experts to discuss the possibility of a reduction in naval expenditure. The Chancellor, to Ballin’s disappointment, had transferred the question to the ‘political sphere’. 1 Within the political sphere, the dispatch of the Panther to Agadir, the speeches of the Emperor, and the violent outburst of anti-English feeling in the summer and autumn of 1911, had increased British distrust of Germany and made it extremely difficult for the German Chancellor to accept a compromise either on the naval or on the political side. The naval party had used the excited state of public opinion to ask for a further increase in the German naval programme. The naval party was supported by the Emperor; the ‘civilians’ counted for little in the old Prussian scheme of things under which the Emperor had been trained, and to which he was inclined by temperament.
