It is quite possible that such were the motives of the Emperor’s action, but if so he was building better than he knew.  The vicissitudes of the Moroccan episode are described briefly below, yet some remarks of a general nature as to the whole episode considered in its historical perspective may be permitted in advance.  But first, what is historical perspective?  It may perhaps be defined as that view of history which shows in its true proportions the relative importance of an event to other events which strongly and permanently leave their mark on the character and development of the period or generation in which they occur.  Regarded from this standpoint the Morocco incident can claim an exceptional position, for it was the first occasion in modern diplomatic history on which a Great Power officially proclaimed urbi et orbi the doctrine of the “open door,” the doctrine of equal economic treatment for all nations for the benefit of all nations, and was willing to go to war in support of it.

It was not, of course, the first time the demand for the open door had been made; loudly and bloodily, too; since most wars from those of Greece and Rome to the war between Russia and Japan of recent years were waged with the intention, or in the hope, of opening, by conquest or contract, territory of the enemy to the mercantile enterprise of the victors.  But this was the open door in a very selfish and restricted sense, and though many isolated events had occurred of late years, the international agreements regarding China among them, proving that the idea of the open door was gaining strength as a right common to all nations, it was not until the Emperor went to Tangier that a Great Power risked a great war in order to exemplify and enforce it.

The Emperor and his advisers were probably not moved by any altruistic sentiments in the matter, and their sole reason for action may have been to see that German subjects should not be excluded from Moroccan markets.  It may also be that Germany was resolved that if there was to be a seizure of Morocco she should get her share of the territory to be distributed, notwithstanding her refusal, revealed by the late Foreign Secretary, Kiderlen-Waechter, in the Reichstag’s confidential committee, to accede to Mr. Chamberlain’s proposal, made some time before the incident, for a partition of the Shereefian Empire.  But the acquisition of territory does not seem to have been the mainspring of her policy, while from the beginning to the end of the incident, however theatrical and questionable her diplomatic conduct may have been at moments during the negotiations, she was throughout consistent and successful in her demand for economic equality all round.  This is a great gain for the future, for, with the world nearly all parcelled out, economic considerations, which are almost in all cases adjustable, are now the most weighty factors in international relations.