England must... have the mask of Christian peaceableness torn publicly off her face... Our consuls in Turkey and India, agents, etc., must inflame the whole Mohammedan world to wild revolt against this hateful, lying, conscienceless people of hagglers; for if we are to be bled to death, at least England shall lose India.

Marginal note in a telegram from the German ambassador in St Petersburg, Count Friedrich von Pourtalès (30 July 1914), quoted in Fritz Fischer, Germany's Aims in the First World War (New York: W. W. Norton & Co, 1967), p. 121.