The Sleepwalkers (53 page)

Poincaré's change of course elicited a mixed response among the most senior policy-makers and functionaries. His distrust of Germany and his views on the
casus foederis
resonated positively with an influential
Sciences-po
trained subculture at the foreign ministry, for whom sympathy with the Slavic nations and hostility to Germany were axiomatic. And there was also wide support in the senior echelons of the military. In his memorandum of 2 September 1912 (the one Poincaré cited in his conversations with the Russian ambassador), Colonel Vignal of the 2nd Bureau of the French General Staff instructed the prime minister that
a war begun in the Balkans
would ensure the best conditions for an Entente victory. Since the Austrians would be tied down in a struggle with the South Slavs, Germany would be obliged to decant substantial forces from its westward offensive to defend the east against Russia. Under these circumstances, ‘the Triple Entente would have the greatest chances of success and could achieve a victory that would permit it to redraw the map of Europe, despite Austria's local Balkan successes'.
²⁰⁶

Others were more critical of the new orientation. The ambassador to London, Paul Cambon, was appalled at the confrontational stance Poincaré adopted towards Austria-Hungary during the opening weeks of the First Balkan War. On 5 November 1912, during a visit to Paris, Paul wrote to his brother Jules complaining of an article in
Le Temps
, patently inspired by Poincaré, that challenged Austria directly, upbraiding Vienna in a manner ‘without nuance, without patience, without caution'. Paul went on to report a conversation with Poincaré on the evening of Saturday, 2 November. Cambon had ventured to suggest that France might consider allowing Austria to take a part of the Sanjak of Novi Pazar, a mere ‘pile of rocks', in return for an assurance of her disinterest in any other Balkan territory. The prime minister's reply surprised him: ‘it would be impossible to let [Austria], a power that had not waged war, that had no right etc., to acquire an advantage; that would stir up opinion in France and would constitute a setback for the Triple Entente!' France, Poincaré went on, ‘which had done so much since the beginning of this war' – here Cambon inserted an exclamation mark in brackets – ‘would be obliged also to demand advantages, an island in the Aegean Sea, for example . . .' On the following morning (Sunday, 3 November) Cambon, who had clearly spent the night worrying about this conversation, went to see Poincaré in order to set out his objections. The Sanjak was not worth a conflict, he told the prime minister; an Aegean island would cause more trouble than it was worth. Cambon was also sceptical of Poincaré's claim to be acting under the pressure of ‘opinion'. Contrary to Poincaré's assertion, French public opinion was ‘indifferent' to such questions – it was important, Cambon warned, that the government not itself stir up ‘a current of opinion that would render a solution impossible'. Poincaré was having none of this and shut the discussion down:

‘I have submitted my views to the Government in the Council [of Ministers]' Poincaré replied drily. ‘It has approved them, there is a decision by the Cabinet, we cannot go back on it.'

‘How do you mean we cannot go back on it?' I replied. ‘Except for 2 or 3 ministers, the members of Cabinet know nothing of external policy and the conversation can always remain open on questions of this kind.'

‘There is a decision by the government,' he replied very drily, ‘it is useless to press the matter.'
²⁰⁷

What is interesting about this exchange is not the subject matter as such, because far from taking or demanding a piece of the Sanjak, Austria withdrew its troops from the area and left it to the neighbouring states, Serbia and Montenegro. The issue passed and was forgotten. Far more significant is the sense conveyed by Poincaré's remarks of France's deep and direct involvement in the Balkan troubles, most strikingly conveyed in the prime minister's bizarre notion that leaving a piece of the Sanjak to Austria would oblige Paris to seek compensation in the form of ‘an island on the Aegean'. And even more ominous was the sense, conveyed not only by Cambon's letter but also in the note by Ribot, that French Balkan policy was no longer being improvised in response to new situations, but rather laid down in hard-and-fast commitments, in ‘decisions' on which there could be ‘no going back'.

In a letter of 19 December 1912, Colonel Ignatiev, the Russian military attaché in Paris, reported a long and revealing conversation with Alexandre Millerand, the French minister of war. Millerand raised the question of the Austrian troop reinforcements on the Serbian and Galician frontiers:

MILLERAND:
What do you think is the objective of the Austrian mobilisation?

ME
[i.e. Ignatiev]: Predictions are difficult on this question, but undoubtedly the Austrian preparations vis-à-vis Russia thus far have been defensive in character.

MILLERAND:
Fine, but don't you think the occupation of Serbia
*
was a direct summons [
vyzov
] to you to wage war?

ME:
I cannot answer this question, but I know that we have no desire for a European war, or to take any steps that could provoke a European conflagration.

MILLERAND:
So, you'll have to leave Serbia on her own? That of course is your business. But it should be understood that this is not on account of our fault. We are ready [
My gotovy
].
²⁰⁸

Ignatiev reported that Millerand seemed ‘perturbed' and even ‘annoyed' by his noncommittal responses to the minister's questions. It was not, the French minister insisted, merely a question of Albania, or the Serbs or Durazzo, but of ‘Austrian hegemony on the entire Balkan peninsula' – a matter about which the Russian government could surely ill afford to remain complacent.
²⁰⁹

There is something remarkable in these utterances by the French minister of war, a respected socialist politician and a stranger to foreign affairs, whose career had been focused on old-age pensions, education and the conditions of labour rather than on geopolitical questions. Yet by 1912 Millerand, a close friend of Poincaré, whom he had known at school, had become one of the leaders of the French national revival. Widely admired for his tenacity, industry and intense patriotism, he sought not only to build military morale and reinforce the autonomy of the army command, but also to instil the French public with martial spirit.
²¹⁰
His words to Ignatiev reflected an attitude that was widespread within the French leadership during the Balkan winter crisis of 1912–13. ‘General Castelnau,' Ignatiev reported, ‘twice told me that he personally is ready for war and even that he would like a war.' Indeed, the French government as a whole was ‘in full readiness to support us against Austria and Germany, not only by diplomatic means but, if needed, by force of arms'. The reason for this readiness lay, Ignatiev believed, in French confidence that a Balkan war would produce the most advantageous starting point for a broader conflict, since it would oblige Germany to focus its military measures on Russia, ‘leaving the French in the rear'.
²¹¹
Indeed, so enthusiastic were the messages coming from Paris in November and December 1912 that Sazonov himself informally urged the French to calm down.
²¹²

The coordinating will behind this policy was Poincaré. There had been many foreign ministers and many premiers who had come and gone without leaving much impression on French foreign policy. But Poincaré was an exception. He used the combination of the premiership and the ministerial post in foreign affairs to ward off unwelcome influences. He turned up often and early at work, an unequivocal signal of serious intentions in the leisurely French foreign ministry of those days. He insisted on reading and annotating dossiers and on opening his own mail; it was rumoured that he sometimes wrote his own dispatches. He had little patience with the self-importance of the ambassadors, who tended, he grumpily observed in January 1914, to adopt too easily the point of view of the government to which they were accredited.
²¹³
In order to ensure that the Quai d'Orsay did not get out of hand, Poincaré created an inner cabinet of trusted and loyal advisers, just as Delcassé had done at the turn of the century.

In January 1913, Poincaré was elected president of the Republic, becoming the first man ever to jump straight from the office of premier to that of the head of state. Oddly enough, this implied, in theory, a diminution in his capacity to shape the formulation of foreign policy, for by custom and precedent the presidential office tended, despite its formidable prerogatives, not to be an important seat of power. Elected by the two houses of parliament, he was expected to act as the ‘pinboy in the bowling alley', picking up fallen cabinets as the chamber knocked them down.
²¹⁴
But the former premier had no intention of letting the reins slip from his hands; even before his election, Poincaré had made it clear that he intended to exploit to the full the constitutional instruments with which the presidency was furnished – his knowledge and deep understanding of constitutional law ensured that he would do this with a certain bravura. In 1912, he had even published a textbook on political science, in which he argued that the powers of the president – the right to dissolve the chambers of parliament, for example – were a crucial stabilizing factor in the constitution and that the president should properly play a pre-eminent role in international affairs.
²¹⁵

Once elected to the presidency of the Republic, Poincaré deployed his indirect influence on the choice of candidates to ensure that his successors in the foreign ministry were either weak and inexperienced or shared Poincaré's strategic and diplomatic vision, or, best of all, a combination of all three. Charles Jonnart, who succeeded Poincaré until March 1913, was a case in point: he was a former governor-general of Algeria who knew next to nothing of external relations and depended upon Poincaré's protégé Maurice Paléologue, chief of the political department, for the day-to-day running of affairs.
²¹⁶
‘I still command Jonnart,' Poincaré confided to his diary on 26 January 1913. ‘I go to the Quai d'Orsay every morning.'
²¹⁷

While the French leadership extended the remit of the alliance to cover Russia in the event of possible Balkan incidents, important changes also took place in the provisions associated with the Franco-Russian military convention. The French military command had been alarmed by Sukhomlinov's deployment plan of 1910, which shifted the Russian areas of concentration back out of the Polish salient hundreds of miles to the east, thereby lengthening the projected mobilization times for a westward attack and undermining the presumption of simultaneity that was enshrined in the text of the convention.
²¹⁸
At the annual Franco-Russian General Staff talks of 1911, the French delegates pressed their Russian colleagues on this question. The reply from the Russian staff chief Yakov Zhilinsky was not especially confidence-inspiring. He promised that the Russian armed forces would make every effort to commence their attack as soon as possible after day 15 of mobilization. But he also conceded that it would take until 1913 and 1914 to finish stocking the army with field artillery and machine guns.
²¹⁹

The question of how fast and how many men Russia would mobilize in the event of the
casus foederis
, and in what direction it would deploy them, dominated the Franco-Russian inter-staff discussions in the summers of 1912 and 1913. In the conversations of July 1912, the French CGS, Joseph Joffre, requested that the Russians double-track all their railway lines to the East Prussian and Galician frontiers. Some strategically important lines were even to be quadrupled to allow faster transit of large troop numbers. The Franco-Russian Naval Convention of July 1912, which provided for closer cooperation and coordination of the two navies, was another fruit of these efforts. And there was a gradual improvement in the Russian assurances – whereas Zhilinsky promised in 1912 to attack Germany with 800,000 men by day 15, in the following year he felt able, once the improvements were put in place, to shave a further two days off the schedule.
²²⁰
The direction of mobilization was another area of concern. The protocols of the inter-staff discussions record the tireless efforts of the French staff officers to keep the Russians focused on Germany rather than Austria as the principal opponent. For while the French were willing to acknowledge the legitimacy of a Balkan
casus belli
, the entire military purpose of the alliance (from France's perspective) would be defeated if the Russians deployed the bulk of their military might against the Habsburg Empire and left the French to deal on their own with a massive German attack in the west. When this issue was raised at the 1912 meeting, Zhilinsky objected that the Russians also had other threats to think about: the Austrians, too, had been improving their strategic railways and it was out of the question, given the sensitivity of the region for national morale, that the Russians should risk a defeat in the Balkans. Sweden was another potential threat, and then there was Turkey. But Joffre insisted that the ‘destruction of Germany's forces' –
l'anéantissement des forces de l'Allemagne
– would in effect resolve all the other problems facing the alliance; it was essential to concentrate on this objective ‘at any price'.
²²¹
A note prepared afterwards by the General Staff summarizing the result of the discussions duly recorded that ‘the Russian command recognises Germany as the principal adversary'.
²²²

Poincaré did what he could to expedite this powering up of the Russian end of the alliance. When, before leaving for St Petersburg in August 1912, he asked Joffre what issues he should be raising with his hosts – the French staff chief ‘pointed to the railways improvement and mentioned nothing else'.
²²³
Once in the Russian capital, the French premier conscientiously importuned all his interlocutors on the railways question: ‘I make him [Tsar Nicholas II] aware of our interest in the improvements requested by our General Staff'; ‘I explain to him [Sazonov] the necessity of doubling and quadrupling the routes', and so on.
²²⁴
Poincaré's notes even offer a glimpse of the power struggle unfolding within the Russian administration between Kokovtsov and the military command. The Russian premier was sceptical of plans for a forward policy in the Balkans and, as a man of finance, he was unenthusiastic about the prospect of spending huge amounts of borrowed money on railways of dubious commercial value. When he responded to Poincaré's promptings with the observation that the Russians were currently ‘studying' the question of railway improvements, Poincaré insisted that ‘this study is very urgent, because it is probable that it will be on the German frontier [of Russia] that the outcome of the war will be decided'. What Kokovtsov thought of this bland presumption of an imminent war can readily be imagined. Poincaré recorded only that his colleague seemed ‘irritated' by the notion that the Russian army command had enlisted the support of the French government in order to secure military allocations without having to consult the minister of finance (i.e. Kokovtsov himself) directly.
²²⁵
At every opportunity, Poincaré helped to step up the pressure on the Russians to re-arm.
²²⁶