The negotiations between Britain and Germany on the island of Helgoland and the Triple Railway, and the eventual agreement on the issue of the 3B railway, were seen as a great step forward in Anglo-German relations.

"Today, the Liberal Party is using African affairs to block His Excellency the Prime Minister, right? Coming and going, it's always the same set of rhetoric, can't they change some new tricks? "British Colonial Secretary Joseph? Chamberlain complained helplessly.

"It's all clichés, but it's a huge hassle for His Excellency the Marquis, isn't it? And it's true that the people are full of resentment with the government because of their rhetoric, aren't they? After all, we have been fighting this war for 3 years. The Marquis of Lansdowne, the Foreign Secretary, said equally helplessly.

The British Empire had paid too much to occupy the gold and diamonds of the Transvaal Republic and the Orange Free State, with 1,072 ships transporting 380,000 troops, 45 horses and mules, 1.34 million tons of military supplies to South Africa, costing more than £200 million, and killing more than 20,000 people, including more than 1,000 officers.

Financially stretched and unrecoverable human resources depleted the heyday of the British Empire with the death of Queen Victoria.

Moreover, the brutality and unruliness shown by Britain, as the leader of "civilization", in this war were deeply hated by the peoples and royal families of almost all European countries.

This has led the British government, led by the aging British Prime Minister Marquess Salisbury, to be severely criticized, and the opposition has continued to attack it.

"We have victory in our hands, and the war will soon be over, and I am sure that the empire will have access to the world's largest gold producer after the Boers are settled. Every qiē we have paid is worth it, and what the empire has lost will be compensated. Chamberlain said confidently.

"But the anger of the people needs to be unleashed with a goal, otherwise the Hannibal victory of the empire in Africa will not be able to appease their dissatisfaction with the government, we need a decent target, and we need to beat this target to lift the spirits of the people and divert the accumulated discontent and resentment at home." The Earl of Selborn, Britain's newly appointed First Admiralty.

The British Empire needed to find an opponent to show that it was still strong. A Boer War should not be made for everyone to think that the British Empire is no longer what it used to be.

For the glory of the Empire, the British Empire needed to show its strength, and it was not enough to shoot at the African natives with machine guns, and the British Empire needed to find a decent industrial country to vent and not provoke disputes, how could it stop the increasingly impenetrable attack on Britain in the competition between these rapidly industrializing powers to sell excess industrial goods to other countries and seize commercial privileges?

"I agree." Chamberlain chimed in: "It doesn't matter which enemy we strike back, it matters that we strike back at once against one of them." "Naked. Naked hegemonism is preached.

Of course, having said that, it is obviously impossible to really pick a random opponent and hit the door, and the British "gentlemen" have not gone crazy to this point.

What kind of opponent would be a good opponent for the UK? First of all, it has to be an industrial country that can take the table. Bullying a country that is too weak will not have the effect of inspiring its citizens and demonstrating its national strength.

But an opponent who is too difficult to deal with could then be self-defeating, and the British Empire will once again be bogged down in a quagmire like the Boer War.

Clearly, policymakers across Europe are now thinking about the consequences of an all-out war with an industrialized country.

There may be various political considerations in choosing an enemy, but if you choose the best one from the military point of view, it is obviously not too difficult to choose.

Moreover, Britain's national policy has always been to adopt a certain degree of appeasement and compromise with the powerful countries, not to directly confront the potential enemy who poses the greatest threat to the United Kingdom, and if it can, then even at the expense of the interests of other countries. In this way, it is only necessary to single out those countries that are less threatening to be the best targets for Britain.

"We cannot afford to be in the same predicament as the Boer War, although it seems that the conduct of the Russians in the Far East is what the Reich needs to be most wary of for the time being. But in the Far East, we only need to support the Japanese against the Russians, and the empire must not be plunged into a direct war with the Russians again. The Marquis of Landsdownne said.

"The war potential of the Russians is great. With a large population and a huge land area, and a harsh environment, if there is a direct conflict with the Russians, if the scale is uncontrollable, it is likely to become the situation that Napoleon faced at that time. Chamberlain agreed.

"And enmity with the Russians means an all-out confrontation from Persia to Afghanistan, from India to Tibet and then to the northeast of the Qing country. This kind of confrontation will exhaust the empire, so supporting Japan is already the limit of what the empire can do. Selburn agrees.

"If it is an enemy of France, then it means a full-scale confrontation from the English Channel to the Mediterranean, from Africa to the Far East, which should also be avoided." The Marquis of Lansdorne interfaced. As one of the best diplomats in history who concluded the Triple Entente between Britain, France, and Russia, he saw how much trouble the French and Russians could bring to the British Empire.

"Neither France nor Russia can do it, should we go to trouble those hillbillies on the other side of the ocean?" Chamberlain joked.

"The Americans have gained control of the Panama Canal, occupied Cuba, Hawaii and Samoa, the U.S. Navy is now the fifth largest in the world, and they have a huge advantage on the west coast of the Atlantic, and it is not wise to cross the ocean and make enemies of a country with a huge land area." Selborn retorted.

"This doesn't work, that doesn't work, can't anyone in the British Empire afford to mess with it now?" Chamberlain said with a smile.

But as soon as the words fell, the four people immediately fell silent, and they all thought of a somewhat terrible answer, but they didn't dare to say it for a while.

The answer to this question was Germany, and the threat that Germany could pose to Britain mainly came from the direction of the North Sea, and if it wanted to threaten Britain from the direction of the strait, it would have to occupy part of France to Belgium and the Netherlands, which was obviously impossible in the eyes of the British.

Germany lacked colonies, the three colonies in Africa were not connected to each other and were not large in size, and the Philippines in the Far East, although strategically located, was not a big threat in the Strait of Malacca under British control.

However, Germany itself lacks strategic depth, so from the perspective of confrontation, it is not "dangerous" and "difficult" enough for Britain, and Germany has a huge contradiction with France, so such a country that is not so "important" can be sacrificed at the expense of Germany's interests, so as to avoid direct confrontation with a potential enemy with the greatest threat, and even gain the friendship of a powerful opponent, which is beneficial to Britain.

What's more, Britain and Germany are not so harmonious, Germany's rapid development has caused a huge impact on Britain, which has been slow to respond to technological innovation, and the profits of Britain's traditional superior products have rapidly decreased.

Taking the steel industry as an example, in 1896 Germany replaced Britain as the largest exporter of steel products in Europe, with more than 30% of British steel production, and even better, Krupp armor even became the standard armor steel for British Royal Navy warships.

A large number of traditional British enterprises that were not large-scale collapsed, and Britain could not provide enough markets for the railway industry, machine manufacturing, and electrical industry, so Britain had to rely on foreign investment and export of industrial products, but in turn, this made it squeezed out by Germany in the open market.

Heavy industry was squeezed out by the Germans, and the British industrial structure began to undergo subtle changes, and the prominent position of large-scale manufacturing in the economy began to decline due to the meager profits and rising wage prices, while the proportion of light industry, shipping, and finance rose rapidly because of the vast colonial market.

The hollowing out of industry was already hovering over Britain under the cover of its ever-increasing profit margins, and the direct result of this was the unease and anger of the British at the "seizure" of the traditional British market by German industry.

So in fact, Britain has always liked to use Germany as a gun in all economic crises after 1870, and the party club in the British Parliament has either accused the British Foreign Office of using Bavarian pencils, or accused the import of cheap brushes made by German criminals.

In short, rightly or wrongly, it was Germany that took jobs away from Britain's toiling masses that led to Britain's economic woes. This accusation is quite similar to the accusation made by a superpower against another Asian power in later generations, so it is not difficult to stir up anti-German sentiment at home.

The question is whether Britain and Germany have just reached a series of agreements, and now is the right time to point the finger at Germany? And Queen Victoria's son-in-law, Emperor Frederick III of Germany, and the German crown prince who came to attend the queen's funeral before have a good image in the eyes of the British public, but what is the attitude of His Majesty King Edward VII?

These are the reasons why the four people did not dare to directly open their mouths to make Germany the new target of the British Empire, as for others accusing Britain of treachery and sabotaging the relationship between the two countries? There are no likes and dislikes between countries, only interests. Are the Britons doing less to sell their teammates? This is not a problem at all.

Although the topic did not continue in the end, as the heart of the British cabinet, this conversation led them to think that it would be a source of their next influence on British national policy. (To be continued......) R1292