When the Russo-Japanese war for which Wihelm had longed began in February 1904 with the Japanese attack on Port Arthur, the Kaiser found himself confronted with a crucial question: should he seize the moment to make a lightning attack on France? The temptation to risk striking out to the west while Imperial Russia was tied down in the Far East became more alluring still when the Russian forces suffered unexpected defeats on land and at sea and revolution broke out in 1905. Wilhelm had always had nothing but contempt for the ‘Gauls’, as he called the French; they were a ‘feminine’ race, a race of regicides and atheists. In comparison with a population of 38 million the other side of the Rhine, he pointed out to the tsar, Germany already had 56 million inhabitants and could therefore field 3 million more soldiers than France. He told an American guest (no doubt as a joke) that Germany had such a population surplus that one day he might well have to ask the French to move aside to make room for Germans to resettle in northern and eastern France.

In January 1904 Wilhelm – again without the knowledge of the ‘responsible’ Chancellor – gave away his General Staff’s intention of attacking France through neutral Belgium in the event of a conflict in the west. During a banquet for King Leopold II of the Belgians he claimed boastfully that he was of the school of Frederick the Great and Napoleon I, and, just as Frederick had invaded Saxony without warning in 1740 at the beginning of the First Silesian War, so he would strike like lightning against France. He was not to be trifled with, he told the astonished king: ‘Whoever is not on my side in a European war is against me.’