The War That Ended Peace: The Road to 1914 (29 page)

After Fashoda, Delcassé started to work quietly towards acquiring Morocco. With the flimsy excuse that they needed to protect a geological expedition, French forces moved in from the Algerian border and occupied key oases in the south of Morocco. In 1900 Delcassé worked out a deal with the Italians where Italy would have a free hand in Libya while France would have one in Morocco. He also negotiated with Spain in, said Cambon, ‘a state of nervous over-excitement such as I have never seen him in, and that is saying a good deal’.
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That attempt failed because of changes of government in Spain but the failure may have helped to persuade Delcassé that the time had come to consider seriously some form of arrangement with Britain. He was also under considerable pressure from his old friends in the colonial lobby who had come to the conclusion that the way forward for France was to give up
its claims in Egypt in return for British recognition of French dominance in Morocco.

French public opinion, always a factor to be taken into account, was also starting to shift. The end of the Boer War, and the British treaty with the Boers in May 1902, removed one source of animosity to Britain. Shortly afterwards a sudden crisis in Latin America brought home to the French the welcome realisation of how much the British public hated and feared Germany. Venezuela, which owed money to British and German interests, was refusing to pay up and Germany suggested the two countries mount a joint naval expedition, to which Britain, with some reluctance, agreed. The British were right to be cautious; the United States, seeing a violation of the sacred Monroe Doctrine and always inclined to be suspicious of Britain, was infuriated. In Britain there was a public outcry and consternation in the Cabinet about risking relations with the United States, which had only recently improved and, more vehemently still, about working with Germany. Kipling published a poem in
The Times
just before the Christmas of 1902 which asked ‘Was there no other fleet to find/ That you strike bands with these?’ and went on to a rousing last verse:

In sight of peace – from the Narrow Seas

O’er half the world to run –

With a cheated crew, to league anew

With the Goth and the shameless Hun!

Prince Metternich, the German ambassador in London, who was a strong supporter of better Anglo-German relations, said he had never seen such hostility in Britain towards another nation.
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Early in 1903, Delcassé took the decision that France should attempt to settle its differences with Britain and he instructed Paul Cambon, his trusted ambassador in London, to open discussions with the new British Foreign Secretary, Lord Lansdowne.
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Cambon was well ahead of his Foreign Minister on this. He had floated several proposals to Lansdowne over the previous two years: that France give up its old treaty rights in the British colony of Newfoundland or possibly accept British control of Egypt in return for a free hand in Morocco or that France and Britain divide Morocco up. The British had listened with
interest but not committed themselves. They suspected, rightly, that Cambon was acting on his own authority, as he so often did.

Small, dignified, impeccably dressed, and walking with a slight limp, Paul Cambon had a strong sense of his own importance. His career had been distinguished: France’s representative in Tunisia, then ambassador to Spain and the Ottoman Empire, he had gained a reputation for being highly effective and honest, as well as stubborn and resistant to orders from those he felt were incompetent, which included most of his superiors. He believed, as he told his son, ‘Diplomatic history is only a long recital of attempts by agents to achieve something and of resistance from Paris.’
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While he agreed with Delcassé’s policies and shared his ambitions to make France a great power again, he saw diplomats as active partners in the making of foreign policy. His time in Constantinople as ambassador had given him a dislike for Russia and a profound mistrust of its ambitions at the eastern end of the Mediterranean but he was a realist who saw the advantages for France in having Russia as a friend. He did not, however, think Russia – ‘moins utile qu’embarrassante’ – could be relied upon. One of his great fears was that Russia and Germany would recreate their old friendship which would leave France isolated in Europe again.
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Early on in his career, Cambon had come to the conclusion that France should look to Britain. As the Moroccan issue heated up, he also worried that Britain was getting too involved there and that France would lose Morocco unless it did a deal over Egypt while it still could.

Although he spent much of his career in Britain, from 1898 to 1920, Cambon had no particular enthusiasm for the British or British culture. He went to London only out of a sense of duty. When he was invited to dine with Queen Victoria at Windsor Castle shortly after his arrival he found the old queen lively but the meal appalling. ‘I would not tolerate such a dinner in my home.’
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Nothing ever changed his mind about British food. He opposed the opening of British schools in France and felt French raised in Britain were mentally deficient.
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When Oxford gave him an honorary degree in 1904 to celebrate the new friendship between Britain and France, Cambon wrote a funny and highly critical account to his brother Jules of the heat and the interminable ceremonies. ‘The Latin and Greek verses pronounced with an English accent were simply frightful.’ Of the final oration praising the university, he
said, ‘I did not make the least effort to pay attention; I was exhausted.’
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Although he was in London for over two decades, he never learned to speak English properly. At his meetings with the monolingual Grey, the Foreign Secretary from 1905, he spoke slowly and distinctly in French while Grey did the same in English.
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He did, though, develop a grudging admiration for the British. Queen Victoria’s funeral was chaotic: ‘But the superiority of the British is that it is a matter of complete indifference to them if they appear to be stupid.’
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Cambon’s task in London was complicated by the fact that the British did not yet have a clear policy towards an entente with France. They were also, and the French had some inkling of this, playing their own game in Morocco. Although Britain did not have a fixed policy on Morocco, there were certainly those in the government, like Chamberlain, who seriously considered the idea of turning it into a protectorate or, until relations worsened at the start of the century, perhaps dividing it with Germany.
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In the Admiralty there was talk of establishing naval bases or ports along Morocco’s Atlantic and Mediterranean coasts, or at the very least, preventing other nations such as Germany, Spain or France from doing so.

Where today the international community sees failed or failing states as a problem, in the age of imperialism the powers saw them as an opportunity. China, the Ottoman Empire, Persia, all were weak, divided, and apparently ready to be carved up. So was Morocco, which was becoming increasingly anarchic by 1900. The death of the strong and capable Sultan Hassan I in 1894 had left it in the hands of a teenager, Abdelaziz. ‘He is not bad looking, but podgy and puffy; good features and good clear eyes,’ said Arthur Nicolson, stationed there as a British diplomat. ‘He didn’t look unhealthy, but like a boy who ate too much.’
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Abdelaziz proved unable to keep control of his subjects. While his administration grew increasingly corrupt, powerful regional leaders asserted their independence, pirates attacked merchants along the coasts and bandits raided caravans in the interior and kidnapped the rich for ransom. Late in 1902 a rebellion threatened to topple the whole rickety regime.

The young sultan played in his palaces and, as the French noticed, surrounded himself with British servants from grooms to the man who fixed his bicycles. (He did, to be fair, also have a Frenchman to make his
soda water.) Abdelaziz’s most trusted adviser and commander-in-chief of the Moroccan army, and this particularly alarmed the French, was Kaid Maclean, a former British soldier. ‘He was small and round, with a clean white beard, and the gayest eyes that ever shone above a bagpipe,’ said Nicolson, who thought him a kindly, honest man. ‘Arrayed in a turban and a white bernous he would stride along the garden paths blowing into the bagpipes. “The Banks of Loch Lomond” would squeal out into the African sunshine.’
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When Maclean visited Britain in 1902 and was invited to stay at Balmoral and given a knighthood by Edward VII, most French diplomats concluded that their suspicions of the British were well founded. Delcassé’s representative in Morocco reported gloomily that the British would use every means from persuasion to bribery in Morocco and when those failed the wives of British diplomats knew what they had to do to further Britain’s interests.
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Cambon nevertheless continued to press Lansdowne. The two men had held several talks in the course of 1902 in which the various colonial issues, from Siam to Newfoundland, which still divided their two countries were explored. Lansdowne was interested but cautious since he still hoped for a better understanding with Germany and it is possible that, if Germany had not started the naval race and if German diplomacy had been better, he might have got what he wanted. As it was, he came to share the exasperation of much of the Foreign Office with German methods and rhetoric. ‘I have been struck’, he wrote to a colleague at the end of 1901, ‘by the comparative friendliness of the French. At this moment if I am to have a tiresome minor affair with one of the Embassies, I would sooner have it with the French Embassy than with any other. Their manners are better and in substance they are easier to deal with than the rest.’
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Like his mentor Salisbury, Lansdowne was an aristocrat from an ancient family who entered public service out of a sense of duty. A thin, neat man, he had started out a Liberal, like all his family, and served in Gladstone’s Cabinet and then as governor-general of Canada, which he loved, not least for its salmon fishing. He had parted ways with his fellow Liberals over Home Rule for Ireland and joined the Conservatives who opposed it. In 1900, when an ailing Salisbury was persuaded to give up the Foreign Office, he appointed Lansdowne, to some surprise, as his successor. If Lansdowne was not a great or a flamboyant
Foreign Minister, he was a solid and sensible one. Like Salisbury he would have preferred Britain to remain free of all entanglements but he had come round reluctantly to the idea that Britain needed friends and so supported the alliance with Japan and made overtures to both Russia and Germany, neither of which had so far produced results.

By 1902 newspapers in both France and Britain as well as chambers of commerce were advocating a greater understanding between their two countries, and in Egypt the effective ruler of the country, the forceful British representative Lord Cromer, was also coming to the view that a settlement that allowed France Morocco would improve the situation in Egypt for the British administration. (As members of the Caisse de la Dette which protected foreign holders of Egypt’s debt, the French had been able to block any reforms in Egypt’s finances.)
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In the early part of 1903, Lansdowne took a small step in the direction of a larger agreement when he and Cambon agreed that British, French and Spanish banks could make a joint loan to Morocco. Then in March 1903 King Edward decided, with the approval of his ministers, to pay a visit to Paris.

Although the French, as good republicans, had a greatly exaggerated sense of the powers of the British monarchy and tended to see the subsequent Entente Cordiale as Edward’s personal policy, his visit was important as a gesture of goodwill and in warming up French public opinion towards the possibility of an entente with Britain. And it signalled a new attitude and a new beginning, much as President Nixon’s trip to Beijing did in 1972. Most importantly of all, it was a success. When Edward arrived in Paris his reception by the crowds was cool, even hostile, at times and the occasional shout could be heard of ‘
Vivent les Boers!
’ and ‘
Vive Fashoda!
’ Delcassé, who was accompanying the guests, kept saying loudly, ‘
Quel enthousiasme!
’ The French government went all out to entertain the king (and French merchants joined the festivities with special souvenirs from postcards to walking sticks with the king’s head, even a new coat called ‘Le King Edward’). There was a grand banquet at the Elysée Palace with
crème Windsor, oeufs à la Richmond, selle de mouton à l’anglaise
and
pudding à la Windsor
while the Quai d’Orsay served
jambon d’York truffée champenoise
at its lunch. Edward behaved impeccably throughout and replied to the toasts in excellent French. At the Elysée banquet, he talked of his many happy memories
of Paris, a city where one meets ‘all that is intelligent and beautiful’. At the theatre one evening he saw a famous French actress in the lobby and said, ‘Mademoiselle, I remember applauding you in London where you represented all the grace and spirit of France.’ Word spread through the audience and he was cheered as he entered his box. Even the horse races he attended provided a good omen when a horse named John Bull won. When he left Paris, the crowds were shouting
Vive Edouard! Vive notre bon Teddy!
and, understandably,
Vive la République!
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