THE MOROCCAN QUESTION.
I.
The German Government had not taken advantage of the Boer War, which
broke out only a year after the Fashoda incident, to draw closer
to France. The bitter animosity towards England which found noisy
expression at that time in Germany enabled it to obtain from the
Reichstag the credits required for building a powerful navy. Suddenly,
however, it awoke to the necessity of discouraging these tirades by
itself adopting towards the British Government a more correct attitude
than the Imperial telegram sent to President Kruger had seemed to
promise. As all the world knows, it wished to have a free hand for
launching its warships, that main object of William II. during the
early years of his reign, without the risk of a naval conflict.
After the South African question had been settled, there occurred from
year to year a series of events which had no small share in bringing on
the present conflagration, and certainly made it come all the sooner.
These events are connected by an unbroken, though scarcely visible,
thread. They developed in two widely different theatres—Morocco and the
Near East.
The English and the French are at one to-day in applauding Edward
VII.’s generous and far-sighted notion of holding out his hand to
France, so soon as peace was restored in South Africa. This noble
action, so consonant with the feelings he had entertained towards
France since early youth, and with the respectful but sympathetic
welcome he had always received in French society, paved the way for the
Entente Cordiale. The first visit that he paid to Paris as King, after
an interval that must have seemed unduly long to this old Parisian,
took place in the spring of 1903, after his return from a cruise in
the Mediterranean. A high-placed member of the Foreign Office in His
Majesty’s retinue had written to me from Malta some weeks earlier: “I
don’t quite know what sort of reception the people of Paris intend
to give our King.” The reception, as it turned out, was in the right
key, both deferential and friendly. One year later, on April 8, 1904,
were signed those agreements which laid the foundations of the Entente
Cordiale, and at the same time ushered in the Moroccan question.
I do not pretend to give here a complete history of this question: to
study it under its successive aspects, French, Spanish, Mediterranean,
European; to unfold it in all its different phases, from the
Convention of Madrid to that of Berlin. A volume at least would be
needed for that; the Morocco affair is a sea in which I should drown
both my reader and myself. All that I propose doing is to show its
effects upon Franco-German relations, since I was able, from personal
observation, to gauge the width of the irreparable breach that it made
between the two countries.
The treaties or agreements of April 8, 1904, are a general settlement
of all the matters that caused friction between England and France in
various parts of the globe. These compacts put an end to their long
and barren African antagonism, and thus removed the chief bar to an
understanding between the two great Western Powers—an understanding
that had become vital, now that the balance of Europe was endangered
by the preponderant might of Germany. The _de facto_ authority held
by England in Egypt since the suppression of Arabi Pasha’s revolt
was formally recognized; and, as an offset, the rights of France in
Morocco, as regards political influence and financial and commercial
development, were acknowledged. In signing these diplomatic contracts,
M. Delcassé signed the charter for the future French protectorate in
the richest section of North-West Africa, and rounded off, with a
stroke of the pen, that magnificent colonial domain of which Algeria
had formed the nucleus. An _entente_, which required more delicate
handling, assigned to Spain her time-honoured rights and claims in
the portion of Morocco opposite her shores. A convention had already
settled that Italy should forgo her interests in this region; in
return, she had obtained recognition for her sphere of influence on
another strip of the Mediterranean littoral. In this way, the adhesion
of the Western Mediterranean Powers was assured. The other great Powers
were apprised of the covenants between England and France, and of the
arrangements made by the latter with the Makhzen, in keeping with these
covenants.
II.
Germany was not satisfied with being informed of the Moroccan
agreements by diplomatic channels. She “considered that her interests
had entitled her to be consulted in a more direct manner.”[11] The
signatories to the treaty of 8th April might well have sent a simple
notification beforehand, to prevent the Imperial Government from
throwing any obstacles in the way of their proceedings. This was the
view held in Berlin, where on several occasions I heard it expanded,
not without bitterness, in such terms as these:—
“Germany is not a Mediterranean Power; but she was a party to the
Madrid Convention of 1880, which regulated the status of protected
Europeans in the Shereefian Empire, and in 1890 she concluded by
herself a commercial treaty with the Makhzen. Her trade in this region,
it is true, is still much less in bulk than that of England and France,
but in the movement for the extension of German commerce—a movement
that has been developing on a grand scale for the past twenty-five
years—Morocco is not regarded by manufacturers and traders as a
negligible quantity. On the contrary, they not only aim at enlarging
their business transactions with that country, but they have their eye
upon its mineral wealth. It is accordingly to their advantage that
Morocco should remain an entirely unrestricted field for European
competition. That the country is in a state of anarchy is a matter of
indifference to them; this, after all, is its normal condition, its
endemic disease, and must inevitably last for a long time to come.
From a political point of view, the Imperial Government cannot help
regarding the negotiations carried on with other States, for the
purpose of inducing them to recognize the validity of the Anglo-French
treaties, as a slur on its prestige. The Emperor clearly stated, in a
speech delivered on July 3, 1900, that he would not allow the German
nation to be ignored when any important step was to be taken in the
realm of international affairs. The decision as to the future of
Morocco certainly comes under this head. Most questions can be settled
by a compromise or a bargain. Germany’s consent would have been
obtained if a reasonable price had been offered—_e.g._, territorial
compensations in some other part of Africa, since she is burning with
an irrepressible desire to colonize, a desire that, through Bismarck’s
lack of foresight, she was unable to gratify while there was still
time.”
Would the war of 1914 have been averted if, ten years earlier, the
Moroccan question had been settled, almost as soon as it was raised, by
an agreement with the Imperial Government? There is no reason to think
so. Quite apart from the secret designs of the Imperial Government,
which have since come to light, several of the factors contributing
towards the 1914 crisis were non-existent in 1904 and had nothing to
do with Morocco. The Balkan conflicts, the Austro-Serbian disputes,
were in themselves quite enough to ignite the powder-magazine. But we
may fairly assume that, but for Morocco, the dangerous tensions of
1905 and 1911 would not have arisen; that Europe would have enjoyed a
more restful life than during those two years; and that the hostile
feeling reawakened on both sides of the Vosges would not have reached
the same degree of acuteness. The Moroccan imbroglios led many Germans,
peacefully minded till then, to look upon a new war as a necessary evil.
Only those who fail to realize the pride and malice of the German
temperament, and who are utterly ignorant as to the sinister aspects
of William II.’s pacifism, can imagine that this Sovereign and his
people were ever capable of pardoning the intentional slight that had
been put upon them. France and England would therefore have been wise
in augmenting their military forces from this time onward, in order not
to fall a prey, later on, to the resentment of a greedy rival whom they
had deliberately excluded from the Shereefian Empire.
As regards territorial compensations in Africa, it was forgotten at
Berlin that Germany, through her own fault, was scarcely entitled
to ask for them or even decently to accept an offer. During his
tour in Syria in the autumn of 1898, William II. had been guilty of
an indiscretion. He had invited the three hundred million Moslems
scattered all over the world to count at all times upon the friendship
of the German Emperor. It was quite unnecessary for him to declare
himself the protector of Islam, with the risk of causing anxiety to
States with Mohammedan subjects. Instead of assuming this pose of
guardian angel, William II. need only have proclaimed himself the
friend of the Turks and Syrians, since the main object of his journey
was to pave the way for the invasion of Turkey by German industry and
finance. As it was, the Emperor, after this solemn promise, would have
laid himself open to the indignation or the ridicule of all Islam, if
he had suggested to France that he should cede to her Germany’s claims
on Morocco and the suzerainty over the Moroccans (those peculiarly
bigoted Moslems) in exchange for an African mess of pottage.
III.
For nearly a year after the Anglo-French agreement, the Imperial
Government refused to show its hand. It gave itself time for thinking
matters over, before taking a definite stand against France in Morocco.
French publicists have not omitted to point out that this period of
reflection ended with the Battle of Mukden. From that moment, Germany’s
mind was set at rest as to the support that Russia could give, in the
event of a conflict, to her Western ally.
Prince von Bülow plumes himself on having suggested to his master, in
the spring of 1905, the dramatic coup of Tangier. William II., despite
his love for spectacular effects, hesitated up to the last moment
before taking so hazardous a step. In the end, he landed on 31st March,
with a large retinue, at the old Maghrib city, where he made a promise
to the Sultan’s envoys that he would defend the latter’s sovereignty
and the independence of his States. He was not destined to keep this
promise, and its only result was to prolong the illusions of the
sheikhs and their resistance to France. It was a repetition, in a more
clumsy form, of the blunder he had committed in sending his telegram
to Kruger; for in the eyes of the Christian and Mohammedan world it
compromised the Emperor personally far more than any telegraphic
message could have done.
The die was cast. The attitude of the Imperial Government towards
French activities became menacing; it took up a determined attitude as
champion of Morocco’s integrity and of the Sultan’s rights, while the
whole German Press, waxing indignant to order, raised an outcry against
the attempt to make another Tunis of the Maghrib Empire. The stubborn
policy of the Emperor and the Chancellor at first met with success,
forcing M. Delcassé to resign and the Paris and London Cabinets to call
a conference at Algeciras. For his share in this triumph, Herr von
Bülow was rewarded with the title of Prince. But the Conference itself
frustrated German hopes.
The Berlin Cabinet, in commenting before the Reichstag and through the
medium of its official editors on the results obtained at Algeciras,
claimed the merit of having upheld the sovereignty of the Sultan and
freedom of trade with its natural concomitant, the principle that all
concessions should be put up to public tender without distinction of
nationality. This was merely breaking through a door which was already
open, and which the Conference would not have consented to shut at any
one’s bidding. Germany did, indeed, succeed in getting the police and
the State Bank put under international control. France, for her part,
managed to secure an undisputed title to her rights in the frontier
region and a predominant share in the organization of the State Bank.
Her most signal success lay in the arrangement that no third Power
should be allowed to occupy, in any part of Morocco, a position similar
to that which she and Spain held by virtue of their geographical
situation and their political interests. The Shereefian police in the
ports remained under the direction of French and Spanish officers.
Did Prince von Bülow seriously believe at the time that Edward VII.
and M. Delcassé had devised the Machiavellian scheme of isolating
Germany and encircling her with a network of alliances, in order to
crush her one day under the weight of a European coalition? At all
events, he succeeded in making the German public adopt this theory,
and it still prevails to-day in Berlin. A very different impression
is conveyed to those who have carefully followed the tortuous path of
Imperial statesmanship. William II. was furious at the Anglo-French
understanding, which he must have previously regarded as a hopeless
prospect so far as Africa, the field of their old rivalries, was
concerned; and at Algeciras he tried to shatter it in brutal
fashion, by proving to the two Western Powers the futility of their
diplomatic work—a mere house of cards that would fall to the ground
at the slightest breath from Germany. He wished to see them leave
the Conference at daggers drawn, dissatisfied with each other and
convinced that their efforts were vain, at the very moment when the
Franco-Russian alliance was showing itself incapable of bearing fruit.
The visit to Tangier was the first outward sign of that moral
transformation in the Emperor of which I have already spoken. The
weight assigned in Europe to Germanism, with its growing resources,
its constant increase in wealth and population, did not seem to him
commensurate with its power. And now, just when his ambitious dreams
were beginning to take shape, he saw Germany cleverly thrust aside from
Morocco, instead of acquiring the foremost place in that refuge of
Moslem barbarism which civilization was trying to invade. The Emperor,
together with his people, had hoped by means of the Conference to gain
a foothold in Morocco. The disappointment left behind it in his soul an
unhappy leaven of spite and anger.
It is not surprising, therefore, that before the meeting of the
Conference, on which he set such great store, and in order to carry
the day against the two Western Powers, William II. for the first
time openly behaved in a high-handed manner towards his neighbours.
His threats were still in a rather subdued key, but in the language
of his envoys, at the informal diplomatic discussions, there loomed
up the vision of a Germany clad in all her panoply of war, helmet on
head and sword in hand, ready for use at any moment. Later on, we had
other opportunities of seeing this vision, before it became a pitiless
reality.
The Conference produced upon the European stage the striking scene that
was destined to be repeated in 1914—the German Empire isolated, save
for its “brilliant second,” Austria-Hungary; and France, Russia, and
England grouped together, as if with a presage of the coming danger, to
form a barrier against the rising tide of Germanism. Such was the first
rough outline of the Triple Entente, though not yet invested with that
name. Finally, the Conference revealed to us, then as now, a deserter
who went over from the Triplice into the opposite camp. Prince von
Bülow alluded to this startling defection on Italy’s part as a “waltz
turn,”[12] but it did not deserve to be so airily dismissed. After her
first breach of the Triple Alliance contract, Italy did not scruple to
resume her freedom of action, whenever her personal interest appeared
to warrant such a course.
IV.
Yet the infant brought into the world by the Conference with such
painful effort seemed to have little chance of surviving. To instil a
respect for law and order into the Moorish and Kabyle tribes, savage
from time immemorial, to repress anarchy, to establish a security
hitherto unknown, to build harbours, roads, and railways—all these
tasks called for a European Power that possessed the requisite military
strength, and had received a mandate to act entirely as it pleased in
the zone set apart for its operations. Above all, it was essential
that the Power in question should not encounter the ever-wakeful
hostility of the German consuls, nor be thwarted at every turn by
the intrigues of German subjects and protégés, of whom the brothers
Mannesmann were the most consummate type. For nearly two years after
Algeciras, eighteen months of countless difficulties and explanations
with the Berlin Cabinet, which would fain have adhered strictly to the
letter of the Conference treaty, France, having been driven to set up
military stations at various points of the Maghrib Empire, was forced
to disperse with her guns the attacks of the rebellious tribes. But
for Germany’s policy of pin-pricks and the instigations of her agents,
would there have been an occupation of Chaouia after the Casablanca
ambuscade, and would the incident of the German desertions from the
Foreign Legion, which nearly led to a conflict, have taken place? The
Republic, having put its hand to the plough in Morocco, was evidently
obliged to go on until the end, whatever might be the cost in men and
money, on pain of losing her prestige and jeopardizing her authority
among the Mussulmans of French Africa.
Towards the end of 1908, a more sober and rational policy began to
prevail at the Wilhelmstrasse. The idea of French paramountcy in
Morocco, which had seemed intolerable three years before, had gained
some ground among the authorities at the Imperial Foreign Office. They
were coming round to the view that it was an unavoidable sacrifice.
In an exchange of communications between Herr von Kiderlen-Wächter,
interim chief of the department, and M. Jules Cambon, the French
ambassador, on February 9, 1909, the Imperial Government declared that
the only aims it pursued in Morocco were economic, and recognized that
the special political interests of France in Morocco were closely
bound up with the establishment of law and order. Determined not to
hamper these interests, it undertook to join hands with the Republican
Government in an attempt to associate their respective subjects in
enterprises of which the French might obtain the management.
In this way Berlin, seeing that there was no hope of exercising a
political influence in the Shereefian Empire, fell back upon the
scheme of an economic exploitation, to be carried out in company
with France. After the incidents of the preceding years, complicated
by the unsettled state of Europe, no improvement was to be noted in
Franco-German relations. Opinion in Paris, among the public no less
than in Parliament, was largely adverse to any system of co-operation
that would have looked like giving way to Germany. Moreover, the German
Press had not retired from the fray; it continued to denounce, as
violations of the Algeciras Act, every forward step taken by the French
troops in Morocco. Under these circumstances, the French ministers did
not consider it wise or opportune, at the moment, to encourage the
proposals for associating the subjects of the two countries in the
joint handling of economic enterprises.
V.
The second Moroccan crisis came in 1911, towards the close of spring,
after the march of General Brulard’s column on Fez and its entry into
that city. The German Government always denied that this expedition
was necessary: it claimed that the safety of foreigners settled in the
Shereefian capital was in no way threatened. The version put forward by
the French authorities was totally different: they affirmed—and we must
perforce believe them—that the lives of the Europeans were seriously
in danger. Notwithstanding the frantic excitement of public opinion
in Germany and the violent language of the newspapers, the diplomatic
conversations opened in Paris and Berlin on the morrow of this military
episode took a fairly reassuring turn. It is difficult, therefore, to
grasp why Herr von Kiderlen-Wächter should have struck his sudden
blow at the unsuspecting French Government—the dispatch of the
_Panther_ to Agadir. A little patience on his part would have enabled
him to reach a satisfactory result. He knew that the time had come
for a final settlement of the Moroccan question. The redoubtable word
“protectorate,” as a term for France’s political action in Morocco, was
no longer one that he could not bring himself to pronounce. In return,
however, he demanded territorial compensations for Germany. “If one
wants to eat peaches in January,” he remarked, “one must pay for them.”
And it was at the moment when the Foreign Secretary had thrown down his
cards and shown his hand, and after he had said to M. Cambon, in taking
leave of him at Kissingen, “Bring us back something from Paris!” that
he issued a brutal challenge, which might well have proved fatal to the
peace of Europe.
For more than eight years I had been a colleague of Herr von
Kiderlen-Wächter at Bucharest, before meeting him again in Berlin.
Our cordial relations of those days gave me the right to ply him with
questions that I should not have put to any other Foreign Secretary so
soon after entering upon a diplomatic post. I asked why he had ventured
on the Agadir coup. On leaving him, I was careful to make a written
report of his explanation. It ran as follows:—
“When I first came to the Wilhelmstrasse I witnessed, without being
able to raise any protests, the successive encroachments of France in
Morocco, which assuredly were breaches of the Algeciras Act, a basic
covenant for the relations of the great Powers with the Shereefian
Empire. If the Republican Government had continued to show prudence and
to advance at a leisurely pace, we should have been compelled to put up
with its pretensions and to champ our bit in silence. At one time it
would have pleaded the hostility of a village which formed an important
strategical point as an excuse for a military occupation; at another
time it would have alleged the vagueness of the geographical boundaries
marked out on the map as a pretext for going beyond them. The invasion
would have crept on slowly, like a sheet of oil. I thanked Heaven”
(here he gave his malicious little smile) “when I learnt of the march
on Fez, a flagrant violation of the Algeciras Act.
“This drastic proceeding, which the position of Europeans in the
Moroccan capital did not justify, restored to us our freedom of action.
Still, we were unwilling to move without making a last effort to arrive
at an understanding. To the dispatch notifying the Imperial Government
I replied with a simple acknowledgment of receipt. A little later on,
however, at Kissingen, where M. Cambon had come to pay me a visit,
I spoke for the first time of Germany’s claim to a compensation. We
admitted that it was out of the question to make France draw back and
conform to the Algeciras treaty. We consented to give up Morocco to
her, on certain conditions, but we demanded in return a cession of
territory in Africa.
“Since this friendly conversation led to no result, just as our
proposals, in accordance with the 1909 agreement, for a joint working
of economic enterprises in Morocco by our respective nationals met with
no direct answer from Paris, we decided to send the _Panther_ to Agadir.
“By this action we made it clear to France that we regarded the
Algeciras compact—which she had been the first to evade—as no longer
binding. Germany, having protégés in the south of Morocco, wished
henceforth to assume the right of protecting them. Still, she was
perfectly willing, in the meantime, to converse with France and to
settle, once for all, the terms on which the French suzerainty over the
Shereefian Empire should be recognized.
“All this was fully realized by M. Cambon,” Herr von Kiderlen-Wächter
went on, adding a high tribute of praise to the Republican envoy.
“Unfortunately, the various projects for an agreement, after being
drawn up in Berlin, were always recast at the Quai d’Orsay. That is why
the diplomatic conversations, instead of lasting a fortnight, dragged
on for four months—a delay that unsettled the public mind and gave rise
to a dangerous Press campaign in both countries.”
Herr von Kiderlen-Wächter did not know the French, otherwise he
would have foreseen the inevitable sequel of such an outrage to the
national sentiment—a truce to the feuds of political parties, a single
wave of patriotism sweeping from one end of France to the other,
and a determination, which the most moderate would share with the
most hot-headed, to face a war, no matter how terrible it might be,
rather than continue to be goaded beyond endurance by German insults.
Personally, he was not inclined for war. The Emperor, who at that time
also seemed anxious to keep the peace, had markedly been held aloof
from the negotiations. The German army, although greatly strengthened
by the 1911 bill, had not yet reached its highest pitch of readiness
for fighting. The French army had no little advantage over its rival
in the development of machine-guns and of aviation. Moreover, Germany
would once more have found England, as at Algeciras, ranged on the
side of France; the speeches of English ministers, Mr. Asquith and Mr.
Lloyd-George, which caused no less surprise than irritation in Berlin,
left no room for doubt on that score. To the German commercial world
the prospect of a naval war was more distasteful than ever. For all
these reasons, it was necessary to come to an agreement, and in the end
peace was signed, in the shape of the Convention of 4th November.
VI.
The guarantees obtained by Germany for her subjects and protégés
consisted mainly in freedom of trade and economic liberty, and
consequently in being on an equal footing with the French in the matter
of concessions. She was assured, furthermore, that her manufacturers
could draw on Morocco for iron ore (in which the subsoil there is very
abundant), since no export duty would be imposed on this product. On
her side, she promised not to fetter the action of France as regards
aiding the Sultan to introduce administrative, judicial, economic,
financial, and military reforms. The expository letters interchanged
on the same day between the ambassador and the Secretary of State
were still more definite. “Should the French Government,” wrote Herr
von Kiderlen-Wächter, “think it advisable to assume the protectorate
of Morocco, the Imperial Government would do nothing to impede such
action.” An inevitable result of this promise was the disappearance of
consular jurisdiction. “The German Government,” said Kiderlen-Wächter’s
dispatch, “from the day that the new judicial system comes into force,
after due arrangement with the Powers, will consent at the same time as
the other Powers to the abolition of its consular courts.”
The territorial concessions in Africa demanded by Germany seemed at
first sight rather trifling: a stretch of country with two projecting
arms, which shot out from the Atlantic coast, the one reaching to the
right bank of the Lower Congo, up to the mouth of the Sanga, with a
breadth (to be fixed later) of some four to eight miles; the other,
with a corresponding breadth, to Lobay, where the Congo is met by its
great tributary, the Oubanghi. Yet these antennæ or “tentacles,” as
they were called later, were strong enough to rivet the Germans on to
the Congo basin, whence they had till then been excluded. This is what
made the acquisition an important one, with the prospect of serious
consequences in the future. In the course of the negotiations, Herr von
Kiderlen-Wächter had declared that his Government regarded access to
the Congo as a condition _sine qua non_ of the agreement.
At the last moment, he even demanded the cession to Germany of the
preferential or pre-emptive right possessed by France over the
territories of the old Congo Free State. This right she had retained
when the territories passed into the hands of Belgium. The latter
could not acquiesce in the ceding of such a privilege to a third Power
without her assent, without her being even consulted. A preferential
right is not a bill of exchange or a mortgage, transferable at pleasure
to a third party. The prerogative had been granted to France alone by
King Leopold, under special circumstances, with a view to ultimate
advantages and as a return for waiving the right of first settlement
in certain districts of the Lower Congo valley, over which Stanley
and Brazza had had a dispute as to priority of occupation. Still less
would Belgium have understood why the renunciation of so personal a
privilege, and one connected with a Belgian colony, should be among the
clauses of a treaty relating to Morocco. The Republican Government,
foreseeing Belgium’s opposition and appreciating the reasons for
it, would not allow this preferential right to be mentioned in the
expository letters. At M. Cambon’s advice, the following Article XVI.,
which, in his opinion, should prove a guarantee to Belgium against any
expropriation, was inserted in the text of the Convention: “Should
the territorial statute for the Congo Basin as defined by the Berlin
treaty of 26th February 1884 come to be modified by one or other of
the high contracting parties, the latter must confer on the subject
among themselves, as well as with the other Powers that have signed the
instrument.” In point of fact, on the strength of this article, the
exercise of preferential right was subjected to German control.
The Belgian public learnt with painful surprise of the German designs
on the Congo State, and the Press gave free utterance to its anger
and its dismay. Herr von Kiderlen-Wächter was exceedingly vexed,
not only at Belgian comment on his demands, but at the fact that
they had been made known to us at all. He did not hide his annoyance
from my predecessor, but vented it with a good deal of bluster, and
consciously exaggerated his fears, after our display of feeling, for
the future good relations between the two countries.
It was thus that Belgium, while quietly pursuing her work of colonial
development, became involved in the dispute arising out of the Agadir
affair. The effect of the German claims on Morocco was felt, like the
shock from some distant explosion, in the Congo basin, where we were to
be faced at two points with a neighbour whose cupidity and daring gave
us good cause to be uneasy. That our apprehensions were well grounded
is, I think, fairly clear from my account, in another chapter, of the
African policy approved by official circles in Berlin.
VII.
“You are the masters in Morocco,” the Chancellor had said to the French
ambassador, after the signing of the Convention.[13] Was this really
true? Would the German public endorse the statement? It had expected
something very different from a recognition of French suzerainty. It
had anticipated a partition of Morocco between France and Germany;
the latter would have obtained the fertile southern regions washed by
the Atlantic. The more the discussions were drawn out, breeding an
excitement which the most trivial episode might have changed into
war-fever, the stronger grew the hope of a partition. To dream of a
colony, rich in natural resources of every kind, and to wake up amid
the swamps of the Sanga and the Oubanghi—what a disillusion! And
Germany, on her side, was ceding some territories in the region of
Lake Tchad! Public opinion, now that its eyes were opened, turned its
wrath against the unwilling author of this “sell.” No one was more
unpopular in Germany, during the autumn of 1911, than the ill-starred
Kiderlen-Wächter. After the Agadir coup, which had a faint Bismarckian
touch about it, too much reliance had been placed on his shrewdness
and energy; and now came the reaction. Not only was German diplomacy
pilloried by the whole bourgeois Press and scornfully compared with
that of France, but even in the Reichstag the galling Convention
of November 4th was spoken of in terms that suggested a national
humiliation.
It is quite certain that, apart from the Chancellor and the Foreign
Secretary, no German who took an interest in politics considered this
diplomatic instrument as a final treaty. As a provisional armistice,
allowing for a breathing-space before Germany plunged into Africa,
it might pass; but no more than that. When it came to putting the
Convention into practice, nothing was done beyond a few initial
measures. The Wilhelmstrasse proclaimed its sincere wish to carry out
the compact, but refused to specify when, if ever, the minister at
Tangier would be superseded by a consul-general, and when (a point that
was taken for granted) the consular jurisdiction would be abolished.
Morocco was far from being pacified; in the interests even of the
Republican Government, it was asserted, no hasty conclusions must be
drawn as to the achievement of progress or reform.
In Germany the peaceful settlement of the 1911 crisis gave a mighty
impetus to the war party, to the propaganda of the Union of Defence
and the Navy League, and added considerable weight to their demands.
Their visions of supremacy and domination were now blended with a
fierce desire for revenge on France. A diplomatic success, won in a
clandestine struggle, meant nothing. In the eyes of this rancorous
tribe, only a war, a fight in the open, could solve the Moroccan
problem for good and all, by incorporating Morocco and all French
Africa in that colonial empire which they hoped to build up on the
shores of the Mediterranean and in the heart of the Dark Continent.