seen that cooperation was impossible, the idea of a
partition or compensation took its place. The Pan-
Germans had long been demanding an Atlantic port,
and the idea finally developed into the desire for a
stretch of the coast with the hinterland included. ⁴ The
march to Fez had given the Wilhelmstrasse the ex-
cuse to protest against a violation of the Act, and the
weakened internal situation of France, which put the
inexperienced Caillaux ministry in power, gave it the
opportunity to make the protest effective. Herr von
Kiderlen-Waechter gave a very frank outline of the
situation to Baron Beyens, the Belgian ambassador:

"When I first came to the Wilhelmstrasse I wit-
nessed, without being able to raise any protests, the
successive encroachments of France in Morocco, which
assuredly were breaches of the Algeciras Act. . . . If
the Republican Government had continued to show
prudence and to advance at a leisurely pace, we should
have been compelled to put up with its pretensions
and to champ our bit in silence. . . . The invasion
would have crept on slowly like a sheet of oil. I
thanked Heaven when I learnt of the march on Fez,
a flagrant violation of the Algeciras Act. This drastic
proceeding which the position of Europeans in the Mo-
roccan capital did not justify, restored to us our free-
dom of action. . . . We admitted that it was out of
the question to make France draw back and conform
to the Algeciras treaty. We consented to give up
Morocco to her, but we demanded in return a cession

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