This was the famous "Agadir incident," of which we have all heard. Did
it mean that the worm had turned, that Germany had changed her attitude
and was determined to go to war? It has been so represented; but there
are many difficult inconsistencies involved in that explanation of the
German Government's act, and there is also an alternative explanation
which fits the facts far better. In the first place the "Panther" was
hardly more than an ocean-going tug. She was of 1000 tons burden,
mounting two small naval guns, six machine-guns, and she carried a
complement of only 125 men. Second, she never landed a man upon the
coast of Morocco. She chose for her anchorage a point where the coast is
practically inaccessible; Agadir has no harbour, and there is nothing
near it that offers any possible temptation to the predatory instinct.
No more ostentatiously unimpressive and unmenacing demonstration could
have been devised. Germany, too, was quite well aware that Morocco was
not worth a European war; and as Baron Guillaume said in his report of
29 April, "possibly she [Germany] is congratulating herself on the
difficulties that weigh upon the shoulders of the French Government, and
asks nothing better than to keep out of the whole affair as long as she
is not forced into it by economic considerations." But the most
significant indication that Germany had not changed her attitude is in
the fact that if she were determined upon war, then, rather than two
years later, was her time to go about it. This aspect of Germany's
behaviour has been dealt with in a previous chapter. It can not be too
often reiterated that if Germany really wanted war and was determined
upon war, her failure to strike in 1908, when Russia was prostrate and
France unready, and again in 1912, a few months after the Agadir
incident, when the Balkan war was on, is inexplicable.[8]
The dispatch of the "Panther" gave the three Belgian observers a great
surprise, and they were much puzzled to account for it. Baron
Guillaume's thoughts at once turned to England. He writes 2 July:
It was long regarded as an axiom that England would never allow the
Germans to establish themselves at any point of Moroccan territory.
Has this policy been abandoned; and if so, at what price were they
bought off?
During the month of July, while waiting for a statement from the British
Foreign Office, the Belgian observers canvassed the possibility that
Germany's action was a hint that she would like some territorial
compensation for having been bilked out of her share in the Moroccan
market. But the interesting fact, and for the purpose of this book the
important fact, is that none of these diplomats shows the slightest
suspicion that Germany was bent on war or that she had any thought of
going to war. Baron Guillaume says, 28 July, "undoubtedly the present
situation wears a serious aspect.... Nobody, however, wants war, and
they will try to avoid it." He proceeds:
The French Government knows that a war would be the death-knell of
the Republic.... I have very great confidence in the Emperor
William's love of peace, notwithstanding the not infrequent air of
melodrama about what he says and does.... Germany can not go to war
for the sake of Morocco, nor yet to exact payment of those
compensations that she very reasonably demands for the French
occupation of Fez, which has become more or less permanent. On the
whole I feel less faith in Great Britain's desire for peace. She
would not be sorry to see the others destroying one another; only,
under those circumstances, it would be difficult for her to avoid
armed intervention.... As I thought from the very first, the crux
of the situation is in London.
By the end of July, a different conception of Germany's action seemed to
prevail. It began to be seen that the episode of the "Panther" had been
staged by way of calling for a show-down on the actual intentions and
purposes of the Triple Entente; and it got one. Mr. Lloyd George, "the
impulsive Chancellor of the Exchequer," as Count de Lalaing calls him,
made a typical jingo speech at the Mansion House; a speech which the
Prime Minister, Mr. Asquith, and Sir Edward Grey, the Foreign Minister,
had helped him to compose. The air was cleared at once--England stood by
France--and what better plan could have been devised for clearing the
air than the dispatch of the "Panther"? Germany stood for the policy of
economic equality, the policy of the open door to which all the Powers
interested had agreed in the case of Morocco. France, at the end of a
course of continuous aggression, had put 30,000 troops in occupation of
the capital of Morocco on an infamously unscrupulous pretext, and put
them there to stay, and the British Government "could not see why any
objection should be taken to it." Germany, on the other hand, anchored
an insignificant gunboat off an inaccessible coast, and without landing
a man or firing a shot, left her there as a silent reminder of the
Algeciras Act and the principle of the open door--carefully and even
ostentatiously going no further--and the British Government promptly,
through the mouth of Mr. Lloyd George, laid down a challenge and a
threat. Thereupon Germany and France understood their relative
positions; they understood, even without Sir E. Grey's explicit
reaffirmation of 27 November of the policy of the Triple Entente, that
England would stand by her arrangements with France. Baron Greindl
writes from Berlin 6 December, and puts the case explicitly:
Was it not assuming the right of veto on German enterprise for
England to start a hue and cry because a German cruiser cast anchor
in the roads of Agadir, seeing that she had looked on without a
murmur whilst France and Spain had proceeded step by step to
conquer Morocco and to destroy the independence of its Sultan?
England could not have acted otherwise. She was tied by her secret
treaty with France. The explanation was extremely simple, but it
was not of a sort to allay German irritation.