When Lord Salisbury departed the Foreign Office in 1900, he was succeeded by a man whom an admiring fellow peer described as “possibly the greatest gentleman1 of his day.” What set the Marquess of Lansdowne apart was not his ancient title, his enormous estates, or his great wealth, but his elegance, his air of serenity, and his unwillingness to cause other gentlemen distress. A small man with a narrow head and a bushy mustache, Lord Lansdowne was always immaculately tailored, whether wearing a gray frock coat and top hat in the House of Lords, or a tweed suit and panama hat when fishing for salmon. Membership in the aristocracy, Lansdowne believed, entailed un-shirkable obligations. He himself served England, not from ambition or for pleasure, but as an obvious duty. Equally, the nation had an obligation to permit him to serve. “The longer I live,”2 he wrote to his sister, “the more firmly do I believe in blood and breeding.” Lord Lansdowne’s most bitter battle, fought after he left the Foreign Office, was his attempt to prevent a Liberal government from nullifying the ancient privileges of the House of Lords.
On his father’s side, Henry Charles Keith Petty-Fitzmaurice, Fifth Marquess of Lansdowne, was descended from the Normans. The First Marquess had been Prime Minister under George III; the Third Marquess turned down the Premiership and a dukedom under George IV. In County Kerry, Ireland, the family owned 120,000 acres. Lansdowne House in Berkeley Square, London, was a majestic private palace in whose galleries hung two hundred paintings including Rembrandts, Reynoldses, Gainsboroughs, Hogarths, and Romneys. From his mother, Lansdowne acquired a more exotic strain: his mother’s father was General Count de Flahaut de la Billarderie, an illegitimate son of Talleyrand and an aide to the Emperor Napoleon at the Battle of Borodino.
As a boy, Lansdowne, then Viscount Clanwilliam (the nickname “Clan” stuck all his life), served as Arthur Balfour’s fag at Eton. At Balliol, he became an intimate friend of young Lord Rosebery. He was twenty-one in 1866 when his father died and he succeeded to both the title and the estate. The family was Liberal and, almost by hereditary right, the young Marquess entered Gladstone’s government in 1872. In 1883, Lansdowne, thirty-eight, was sent as Governor General to Canada, where he spent five years. His tenure was marked by a record as a salmon fisherman: in four summers, he and his friends, casting with flies, managed to pull 1,245 fish from Canadian rivers. The average salmon weighed twenty-four pounds.
In 1885, while Lansdowne was in Canada, Lord Salisbury replaced Gladstone in office. Gladstone’s position on Home Rule and Lansdowne’s situation as a great Irish landowner had already brought the Marquess around to thinking of himself as a Conservative. Salisbury was willing to use whatever bait was required to reel in this catch; he offered the War Office, the Colonial Office, and the Viceroyalty of India. Lansdowne accepted India. Lansdowne’s service in New Delhi was as unremarkable as had been his service in Ottawa. (In India, he made himself unpopular by raising the age of consent for girls from ten to twelve.) Nevertheless, when he returned from New Delhi, the Queen offered him the Garter and a dukedom. Lansdowne accepted the first and declined the second. The government offered the embassy in St. Petersburg; Lansdowne, having spent ten years on the Imperial frontiers, preferred to remain in England. He accepted the War Office, never imagining that he would be called upon to deal with a war. When the Boer War began, Lansdowne’s work was impeded by his inability to put aside his gentlemanliness. Forced to remove Sir Redvers Buller from command in South Africa, he wrote to Buller, “[Lord] Roberts’ appointment3 must, I fear, have been very distasteful to you.... It gave me pain to do what I knew would be very disagreeable to you.” To the Queen, of his own performance as Secretary of State for War, Lansdowne wrote “he must often have seemed4 to your Majesty to fall short of expectations.”
Despite Lansdowne’s perception of himself as a failure, Lord Salisbury thought highly of him and judged that a man with foreign blood and overseas experience would do well at the Foreign Office. Lansdowne was to justify Lord Salisbury’s confidence although his diplomacy overturned the basic policy which Salisbury had practiced. Lansdowne’s first significant achievement was to bring a formal end to Splendid Isolation.
A military alliance between England and Japan, two island nations separated by eight thousand miles, seemed an unusual diplomatic arrangement. But Britain needed an ally in the Far East to thwart Russian expansionism; when Bülow and Holstein turned Chamberlain down, Britain looked elsewhere. And Japan, alarmed by Russia’s occupation of Manchuria and advance to the Yellow Sea, was unwilling to tolerate Russian penetration of the Korean peninsula, “a dagger”5 pointed at the Japanese home islands. In April 1901, Baron Tadasu Hayashi, the Japanese Ambassador in London, told Lord Lansdowne that his country “would certainly fight6 to prevent” Russian absorption of Korea. A basis for negotiations existed.
Talks between Lord Lansdowne and Baron Hayashi began in London in the spring of 1901 and continued through the summer and autumn. Salisbury, still Prime Minister, had little enthusiasm for any alliance; Chamberlain, gratified that Lansdowne recognized the need for an alliance and himself busy with South Africa, supported the Foreign Secretary but stayed out of his way. As the talks progressed, Lansdowne became aware that Japanese diplomacy was being conducted on two tracks. While he was negotiating an anti-Russian treaty in London with Baron Hayashi, Marquis Hirobumi Ito, a more senior Japanese diplomat, was in St. Petersburg negotiating an alternative treaty with the Russians. The Japanese explained that if nothing came of the talks with England, Japan would have to deal with Russia. One way or another, Russia must be kept out of Korea.
The London talks were successful. On January 30, 1902, Great Britain and Japan signed a military alliance for protection of their mutual interests in the Far East. The integrity of Korea was guaranteed. The treaty was to run for five years. If either power was attacked by only one power, the ally would maintain a benevolent neutrality. But if one of the allies was attacked by two countries, the other ally would go to war in support. On the surface, the treaty seemed to favor Japan: it isolated Russia in the Far East (France had no significant interests or military forces in northeast Asia; Germany would not side with Russia against England in an Asian war). Japanese military and naval officers began to plan the blow which fell on Port Arthur in 1904. But there were advantages for England. Should she find herself at war with France and Russia in Europe, Japan could be counted upon to distract the Tsar by attacking him from the rear. Most important, Britain now had powerful support in her effort to check Russian expansionism in Asia. The assistance which Chamberlain had sought from the Kaiser to protect British interests and markets in China had now been promised to Lansdowne by the Mikado.
German reaction to the new alliance was favorable. As the arrangement clearly was aimed at Russia, the Wilhelmstrasse understood that Russia now would encounter more resistance to her advance into the Far East; this, in turn, would relieve Russian pressure on Germany’s eastern frontier. The Germans also were cheered by the anti-Russian character of the agreement, noting that it would widen the gulf between Great Britain and the Dual Alliance, making an understanding between Britain and France less likely. “I congratulate you7 on the conclusion of the new alliance, which we all look upon as a guarantee of peace in the East,” the Kaiser wrote to King Edward on February 26, 1902. When he saw Sir Frank Lascelles at a garden party in Berlin, William said of the new treaty, “At last the noodles8 seem to have had a lucid interval.”
French reaction to the Anglo-Japanese Treaty was mixed. Foreign Minister Théophile Delcassé understood that the alliance was aimed at France’s Russian ally and therefore, indirectly, also at France. There was danger that if war broke out between the principals—Japan and Russia—the seconds—Britain and France—might have to fight each other. But there was an element in the new treaty which gave Delcassé hope. Joseph Chamberlain’s policy had at last borne fruit; Great Britain was abandoning Splendid Isolation. Although Great Britain’s liability was limited and the possibility of European implication seemed small, and although Lord Salisbury was still Prime Minister, the island nation had formally bound itself to a military alliance with a foreign power. In defending the new treaty in the House of Lords, Lord Lansdowne vigorously argued against the longstanding policy of his own Prime Minister:
“I do not think9 that anyone can have watched the recent course of events... without realizing that many of the arguments which a generation ago might have been adduced in support of a policy of isolation have ceased to be entitled to the same consideration now. What do we see on all sides? We observe a tendency to ever-increasing naval and military armaments involving ever-increasing burdens upon the people.... There is this also—that in these days, war breaks out with a suddenness which was unknown in former days when nations were not, as they are now, armed to the teeth. When we consider these features of the international situation, we must surely feel that a country would indeed be endowed with an extraordinary amount of self-sufficiency... to say... that all foreign alliance were to be avoided.... Therefore, I would entreat you... to look at the matter strictly on its merits and not to allow your judgement to be swayed by musty formulae and old-fashioned superstitions as to the desireability of pursuing a policy of isolation for this country.... Prima facie, if there be no countervailing objections, the country which has the good fortune to possess allies is more to be envied than the country which is without them.”
While an Anglo-German alliance was being discussed and an Anglo-Japanese alliance concluded, German diplomacy consistently failed to understand the basis and direction of British policy. Holstein and Bülow believed that Germany held the power of decision—that Germany had only to wait and, in time, England would come on German terms. In Holstein’s view, the possibility of a diplomatic understanding between England and France was too remote to warrant serious concern at the Wilhelmstrasse. When Eckardstein warned that Chamberlain had threatened to look elsewhere if Germany refused an alliance with England, Holstein dismissed Eckardstein as “naive.”10
Holstein’s opinion had firm historical backing. Antagonism between England and France went back to the Middle Ages; England’s longest wars had been fought against the French. Through the century just ended, the Royal Navy had prepared to fight the fleet of a single enemy: France. In 1898, even as Chamberlain’s plan for a German alliance was being launched, England and France had almost gone to war over Fashoda. Now, as the two nations competed for colonies, there were a dozen places around the globe where imperialist ambitions rubbed dangerously against each other.
The France of the Third Republic was querulous. Defeated by Germany, then—deftly encouraged by Bismarck—seeking to recover her lost pride by distant colonial adventures, France was restless, excitable, and unstable. No French government during these years enjoyed authority or longevity. Between 1873 and 1898 the British Foreign Office had negotiated with twenty-four French foreign ministers and twelve French ambassadors in London. During one five-year span, 1881–1886, ten French governments rose and fell. Although the years 1898–1905 saw six more French governments come and go, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs remained in the hands of a single man, Théophile Delcassé. Delcassé a clever young provincial lawyer, had come to Paris, where he quickly had abandoned law for journalism and become a fixture in the lobby of the Chambre des Députés. At thirty-five, he had married a wealthy widow and, freed from financial worry, had run for office. He was elected to the Chambre in 1889 and, in 1894, became Minister of Colonies. Four years later, at forty-six, he was Foreign Minister. France needed allies to redress the balance with Germany and, one day, perhaps, regain the lost provinces of Alsace-Lorraine. He had strongly supported the French alliance with Russia, signed in 1894. When he entered the Quai d’Orsay four years later, he had a personal goal. “I do not wish to leave this desk,”11 he told a friend, “without having established an entente with England.”
At the moment Delcassé said this, Kitchener had just confronted Marchand at Fashoda and Delcassé’s first weeks in office were spent negotiating France’s humiliating withdrawal from the Upper Nile. The French public did not easily forget. For several years, French opinion was so violently anti-British that even the memory of Alsace-Lorraine seemed to have been obliterated. During the Boer War, not even German newspapers were as harsh in their criticism of England as the Parisian press. “The feeling of all classes12 in this country towards us is one of bitter and unmitigated dislike,” reported the British Ambassador. Ignoring these feelings, Delcassé steered with consistent purpose. Removing the hostility in France’s relationship with England by easing colonial frictions was the solution. Immediately after signing the Fashoda evacuation agreement, Delcassé launched his revolutionary policy. He dispatched to London as French Ambassador a prudent, far-sighted professional diplomat, Paul Cambon, who was instructed to do everything he could to effect a rapprochement. On December 9, 1898, before Marchand had even departed Fashoda, Cambon was seated at dinner next to Queen Victoria at Windsor Castle. The Queen, who throughout the crisis had bombarded Lord Salisbury with pleas that war be averted and France spared humiliation, found M. Cambon “very agreeable and well-informed.13 He told me a great deal about Constantinople [Cambon’s previous post].” During the winter and spring of 1899, Cambon met often with Lord Salisbury to define the frontiers of the two empires in the center of Africa. Once agreement was reached, Cambon—following instructions from Delcassé—suggested that other matters might be solved in an equally friendly spirit. Lord Salisbury smiled and shook his head. “I have the greatest confidence14 in M. Delcassé and also in your present government,” he said. “But in a few months they will probably be overturned and their successors will make a point of doing exactly the contrary to what they have done. No, we must wait a bit.”
Delcassé and Cambon waited. In October 1899, on the eve of the Boer War, Cambon reported to Paris: “Everything is difficult for us here. The rage of imperialism turns all heads and I am not without disquiet about the future.” In 1900, when Lord Salisbury retired from the Foreign Office, Delcassé hoped that because the new Foreign Secretary, Lord Lansdowne, had had a French mother, the chances for rapprochement had improved. But Joseph Chamberlain, not Lansdowne, was then the dominant figure in the British Cabinet, and Chamberlain still sought an alliance with Germany. Patiently, the French waited. In the spring of 1901, when the last Anglo-German alliance negotiations were ended by Salisbury’s memorandum, Delcassé and Cambon saw an opportunity. The luster of Splendid Isolation was fading; Britain was already negotiating a military alliance with Japan, but still had no formal ally in Europe. Cambon quietly suggested to Lansdowne that the causes of friction in the colonial sphere should be examined and, if possible, eliminated. Lansdowne immediately passed this suggestion to Chamberlain, whose department would be affected by any talk involving colonies. The Colonial Secretary delayed, still hoping to reopen the door to Berlin. Then, in December 1901, Bülow made his famous “biting on granite” speech to the Reichstag, and Chamberlain was convinced that a German alliance was impossible. After the signing of the Anglo-Japanese alliance in January 1902, Delcassé and Cambon pursued more vigorously. In July 1902, Lord Salisbury stepped down as Prime Minister and was replaced by Arthur Balfour, but it was Chamberlain, Eckardstein wrote to Bülow, who still “exercises relentlessly15 the dominant influence in British policy.” And now Chamberlain was interested in reconciliation with France. Passing through Egypt in November 1902, on his way to South Africa, the Colonial Secretary asked Lord Cromer to transmit, through the French Chargé d’Affaires in Cairo, his hope for an understanding with France. “Delcassé... seems to me16 to have done much to make possible an Entente Cordiale with France which is what I should now like. I wonder whether Lansdowne has ever considered the possibility of the King asking the President to England this year.”
By the spring of 1903, the Boer War was over and the bitter French attacks on England had dwindled. King Edward VII planned a Mediterranean cruise with stops in Lisbon and Rome. On his own initiative, he decided also to visit Paris. Sir Edmund Monson, British Ambassador to France, was instructed to tell French President Emile Loubet that, on his return from his Mediterranean cruise, it would give the King great pleasure to visit the President of the Republic on French soil. President Loubet, who shared the hopes of Delcassé and Cambon, replied with enthusiasm that “a visit from the King17 would... do an amount of good which is probably not realized in England.... In this capital, His Majesty, while Prince of Wales, had acquired an exceptional personal popularity.”
King Edward’s zeal for the visit took his own government aback. Lansdowne worried that, with French antagonism still not completely abated, the King might be insulted or endangered. In addition, he and Balfour were affronted that the monarch had taken so much of the making of arrangements out of their hands; constitutionally, foreign policy was the government’s, not the sovereign’s, to make. Lansdowne therefore mentioned to Cambon that the visit should be “quite an informal affair.”18 The King overruled him and told Monson and Cambon that he wished to be received “as officially as possible,19 and that the more honors were paid to him, the better.” Cambon, taking his cue from the King rather than the Foreign Secretary, hurried to Paris to make arrangements.
On the first of May, King Edward, wearing the scarlet uniform and plumed hat of a British Field Marshal, descended from his private railway car at the Bois de Boulogne station and took his seat in a carriage next to President Loubet. As the carriage, surrounded by a screen of cuirassiers in silver breastplates, rolled up to the Arc de Triomphe and then down the Champs-Elysées, the crowd remained silent except for a few shouts of “Vivent les Boers!”20 “Vive Marchand!” and even “Vive Jeanne d’Arc!” The King behaved as if he were on the Mall, turning from side to side, gesturing with his Field Marshal’s baton in reply to the salutes of French officers, smiling broadly whenever he heard a faint cheer. The rest of the English party, following in other carriages, was booed. “The French don’t like us,”21 a worried aide whispered to the King as the carriage came to a halt. “Why should they?” the King replied, and continued smiling and bowing from side to side.
King Edward’s first speech was diplomatic: “A Divine Providence22 has arranged that France should be our near neighbor and, I hope, always a dear friend....” The first evening, he went to the theater with President and Madame Loubet. The house was crowded, all eyes were on him, and the air was filled with tension. At intermission, the King left his box and plunged into the crowd. By chance, in the lobby he spied Mlle Jeanne Granier, a French actress whom he had seen on the stage in England. Extending his hand, he walked up and said, “Oh, Mademoiselle,23 I remember how I applauded you in London. You personified there all the grace and spirit of France.” His words spread quickly. The next morning, on his way to a military review in Vincennes, the King continued to smile and scrupulously saluted every French flag and French officer in sight. Returning to the Hôtel de Ville, he told the Mayor of his pleasure at again being in Paris, “where I am treated24 exactly as if I were at home.” His words rippled across the city. He went to the races at Longchamps, a ball at the Opéra, and a state dinner at the Elysée Palace. When he departed on May 4, enthusiastic crowds lined the streets and “Vivent les Boers!” had been replaced by “Vive le Roi!”25 and “Vive le bon Eduard!”
German reaction to the King’s success was complacent. “The visit of King Edward26 to Paris has been a most odd affair, and, as I know for certain, was the result of his own initiative,” Metternich reported to Bülow. “I am far from assuming that King Edward meant to aim a blow at Germany by his visit.” Holstein characteristically dismissed any political significance, arguing that England’s antagonism towards Russia was so strong that serious links would always be impossible with Russia’s ally, France. Further, he did not believe in the role of personality: “So, although the Paris visit27 cannot be considered a very friendly action with regard to Germany, it is not likely to change the grouping of the Powers which is dictated by force of circumstances and not by the contribution of statesmen.” The German press agreed. “A real Anglo-French Entente is in the long run impossible because in the colonial sphere differences will inevitably arise,” the Berlin Post assured its readers. “Indeed, they will arise again very soon and these artificially spun threads will be severed with a jerk.” Once again, on May 10, Eckardstein warned that a Triple Entente of Russia, France, and England was a possibility. Bülow asked for comment from leading German diplomats; all poured scorn on Eckardstein. “Zukunftsmusik”28 (music of the future), Holstein said.
The King was determined that his success be only a beginning, and in early July President Loubet, accompanied by M. Delcassé, paid a return state visit to Great Britain. King Edward’s welcome was lavish, organized mainly by the monarch himself. After a visit to Windsor Castle, the French President reviewed troops at Aldershot. There, on specific instructions from the King, the British Army band played the entire “Marseillaise” for the first time rather than stopping after the first four bars as had been customary. The ground broken by the heads of state, the diplomats set to work. On July 7, M. Delcassé called on Lord Lansdowne at the Foreign Office. When Delcassé returned to Paris, Cambon was assigned to pursue discussions with Lansdowne.
The talks continued for nine months. Their subjects were extra-European: Egypt, Morocco, fishing rights in Newfoundland, modification of the borders of Gambia and Nigeria, and problems having to do with Siam, Madagascar, and the New Hebrides. There was nothing of the sweeping, panoramic scope and language which Chamberlain had invoked in proposing an Anglo-German alliance. Some of the disputes were trivial, for example the Newfoundland fisheries disagreement. Under the Treaty of Utrecht, signed in 1713, French codfishermen had the right to land and dry their catch on the British shore. Recently, the French had begun catching lobsters, which had to be tinned as soon as they were caught. To house these operations, they had built primitive structures of timber and corrugated iron along the coastline. The Newfoundlanders protested that the right of drying codfish did not include that of building structures for lobster tinning. To which the French had replied that the Treaty of Utrecht said nothing of “codfish” but only of “fish” and that lobsters were “fish.” The dispute had mounted the ladder at Whitehall until it reached the top, where it elicited a groan from the Prime Minister. “I am in despair29 over this grotesque lobster difficulty,” complained Lord Salisbury.
Egypt and Morocco, on the other hand, were serious matters. France wanted a free hand to reorganize the affairs of the crumbling Moroccan sultanate, while England was equally anxious to end French opposition to her twenty-year occupation of Egypt. Agreement required concessions on both sides. France’s desire to control Morocco was urgent, and Delcassé made this urgency plain in his first meeting with Lord Lansdowne on July 7: “Throughout our conversation,”30 Lansdowne noted, “M. Delcassé spoke apparently with the utmost sincerity and he did not attempt to disguise from me the immense importance which the French government attached to obtaining from us a recognition of the predominance which they desired to obtain in Morocco.” France had no wish to depose the Sultan or annex his country, Delcassé insisted, but the country was disintegrating and the Sultan was incapable of maintaining order. France would restore the Sultan’s authority for the benefit of the Moroccan people and of all foreign powers having commercial interests in the country. Delcassé said that France could not “admit that it was the business31 of any other Power but France to undertake the task of regenerating the country”; she hoped that Great Britain would support rather than obstruct her effort.
Lansdowne knew that French policy was inspired by the strategic dream of linking her North African with her West African territories; Morocco lay in the middle. He was aware that Britain’s trade with Morocco was double that of France. On the other hand, he had before him the recommendation of one of Britain’s most talented diplomats, Sir Arthur Nicolson, British minister in Morocco for nine years (1891–1900), that Moroccan affairs were so chaotic that, if France intervened and suppressed the country’s disorder, it would save Britain the effort. Accordingly, Lansdowne told Delcassé that it was unlikely that Great Britain would oppose French intervention in Morocco, but that the situation in Egypt must also be discussed.
France’s historical aspirations on the Nile stretched back to Napoleon and encompassed De Lesseps and the building of the Suez Canal; to renounce this heritage seemed a sure way to topple a shaky French government. Yet, if he could acquire Morocco, Delcassé reasoned, surrendering Egypt would be worthwhile, especially since what would be abandoned was a claim, not a presence. In these negotiations, Lansdowne’s strongest supporter was Lord Cromer, the British Agent (in effect, Viceroy) in Egypt. Cromer’s time in office and his experience gave him great influence with the British Cabinet. For Cromer, the Lansdowne-Cambon negotiations were a splendid opportunity to get the French off his back in Egypt, and he did not much care about the price. “The question comes down32 to have we any objection to Morocco becoming a French province? Personally, I see none,” he wrote to Lansdowne on July 17. In general, Lansdowne accepted this approach, although his interests in the talks with France had a wider purpose than the establishment of an uncontested British claim to Egypt. From the beginning, the Foreign Secretary was as firm on Egypt as Delcassé and Cambon were on Morocco: “The Government of the French Republic33 should recognize that the British occupation of Egypt, which was originally intended to be temporary, has under the force of circumstances, acquired a character of permanency. It would therefore, as between Great Britain and France, be understood that the period of its duration should be left entirely to the discretion of His Majesty’s Government.”
On both sides, the bargaining required cessions of pride as well as of territories. Lansdowne had to consider Dominion concerns. And Delcassé was never free of the pressure of French imperialists, who bristled at the suggestion of sacrificing France’s traditional claims in Egypt. Cambon explained this consideration to Lansdowne. “You expect us to recognize34 your occupation [of Egypt],” he said. “I knew of nothing which France would find it more difficult to accept. I know that M. Delcassé sincerely desires to liquidate all our affairs, even Egypt, if it is possible. I believe him to be courageous enough to ignore it. But, if I may use a familiar expression, he would need a lot of d’estomac to assume responsibility for a settlement of the Egyptian question.” “Do you think we do not need d’estomac to give you Morocco?” retorted Lansdowne.
On January 8, 1904, Lansdowne discovered that Delcassé had been acting entirely on his own authority and had not informed his Cabinet colleagues. Cambon was asked whether, in view of this, he and Delcassé were acting in good faith; if there was any doubt, the British government would immediately suspend the discussions. Mortified, Delcassé reacted quickly. As Lansdowne wrote to Cromer on March 14, 1904: “The French negotiations,35 after sticking in all sorts of ignoble ruts, suddenly began to travel with the speed of an express train. I attribute Delcassé’s desire to get on quickly partly to doubts as to the stability of his own government and partly to similar suspicions as to the stability of ours.” On April 7, 1904, the Anglo-French agreement was signed.
When the Anglo-French Convention was introduced in Parliament, it was presented as a purely colonial agreement, a sensible and modest elimination of sources of friction between neighbors. In England, both parties welcomed Lord Lansdowne’s announcement. Most Liberals felt strongly that, if Splendid Isolation in Europe were abandoned, they preferred friendship with the French Republic to the alliance with Imperial Germany which Joseph Chamberlain had been advocating since 1899. The government made it clear that it was not proposing a military alliance. Lansdowne announced no revolutionary stroke of policy and claimed no great triumph of diplomacy. Throughout the debate, there was no reference to an alliance, to military or naval conventions; indeed, no third Power was even mentioned. Speakers in the Commons stressed that, by making this agreement, Britain did not exclude friendship with any nation. No one seems to have weighed the implications of the last article of the convention, which stated that the two governments “agreed to afford one another36 their diplomatic support to obtain execution of the clauses of the present declaration regarding Egypt and Morocco.”
At the time the Convention was signed and presented to Parliament, no one in England considered asking German approval; it was assumed that no other power would object, or had the right to object, to two colonial powers securing peace between themselves by eliminating colonial frictions. The German government, although advised from the beginning that the negotiations were proceeding, had not complained. On March 24, 1904, two weeks before the signing, Delcassé had called in Prince Radolin, the German Ambassador in Paris, and given him the general terms of the agreement. Radolin responded that the arrangement seemed natural and justified. Two days later, the Norddeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung, a paper which generally reflected the views of the Wilhelmstrasse, declared that the agreement did nothing to prejudice German commercial interests in Morocco; on the contrary, the paper said, German as well as French traders would benefit from France imposing order and stability. Bülow quickly assured the British Ambassador that he was glad to see England and France liquidating their colonial differences. On April 12, the Chancellor informed the Reichstag that Germany had no objection to the agreement and felt no uneasiness about German interests in Morocco.
Holstein disagreed with Bülow. He believed that Morocco was one of the few countries where German commerce could compete equally with British and French and that the new agreement undermined these chances. In addition, he objected to the bilateral nature of the agreement. If France wished a special arrangement in Morocco, let her negotiate with all the Powers concerned, including Germany. “If we let ourselves be trampled37 in Morocco,” he warned, “we invite similar treatment elsewhere. Not for material reasons alone, but even more for the sake of prestige must Germany protest against the intended appropriation of Morocco by France.”
Parliament’s enactment of the Anglo-French Convention was the crown of Lord Lansdowne’s career. Splendid Isolation in Europe had come to an end and a vast upheaval in the Continental balance of power had begun. When Lansdowne was negotiating, first with Delcassé, then with Cambon, it never occurred to him that anything more than French and British colonies were involved. He did not see himself as preparing the ground for a military relationship with France and Russia, transforming the Dual Alliance into the Triple Entente. Delcassé saw further. Negotiation of the Convention and the appearance of the Anglo-French Entente were his creations. This was his patiently awaited reward for surrender at Fashoda six years before and for his firm refusal to permit France to take advantage of British difficulties during the Boer War. In dealing with England, Delcassé understood and accepted the nature of the British Constitution and the supremacy of the House of Commons. German insistence on a rigidly drafted treaty with clauses binding Britain to specific responses in every conceivable situation showed a lack of insight into how Great Britain was governed. The French were willing to begin with something small and unalarming, and proceed step by step.
Delcassé, the Foreign Minister of a nation isolated for a quarter of a century, had dreams of what the future might hold. Early in 1904, he had said: “If I conclude my agreements38 with England, Italy and Spain, you will see Morocco fall into our garden like ripe fruit.” Later that spring, his vision expanded. Negotiations with England would wipe away all past quarrels. “This liquidation should lead us, and I desire that it shall lead us, to a political alliance with England. Ah, my dear friends, what beautiful horizons would open before us. Just think! If we could lean both on Russia and on England, how strong we should be in relation to Germany. A Franco-British alliance has always been my dream even during the Fashoda crisis. Now I can believe I am near my goal.” The Foreign Minister paused at this point. After a moment, he went on: “It would be difficult to combine with the Russian alliance. But each day has its task.”