We refused this stipulation, not because we were after those colonies,
but because a so-called neutral power tried to impose conditions upon us
she would never have dreamed of asking from France.
If we were hankering after conquest we would have made war long ago. We
would have done so during the Morocco crisis, when Russia had not yet
recovered from the Japanese war; when Turkey was still a mighty empire,
ready to take our side, overawing the Balkan States and threatening
Russia; when Rumania was our ally and when France, trying to swallow up
the independent States of Morocco, but put herself morally in the wrong.
We refrained from war not because England supported France. The
developments of the last week have shown that we are ready to face
England, too, when needs must be. We decided for peace because we were
convinced that no amount of colonial aggrandizement could compensate us
for the dangers and horrors of a big European war.
Our diplomatic methods during those days may have been brusque and
annoying, but our aim was peace. Though we are held up continually as
the disturber of European peace, driven on by a mad desire for
territorial aggrandizement, we are the only big European nation which
has not increased her territory during the last twenty-five years.
Russia tried to steal the Far East and is now going half shares with
England in Persia.
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