Since 1898 I have endeavoured to draw the attention of the public to the immense danger which that plan was laying up for the world, as my former works testify, particularly L’Europe et la Question d’Autriche au seuil du XXe Siècle, which appeared in 1901, therefore fifteen years ago, and contained an exposition, as precise as it was then possible to make it, of the Pangerman plan of 1895, summed up in the formula “Hamburg to the Persian Gulf”; also Le Chemin de fer de Bagdad, published in 1903, wherein I set forth the danger of that co-operation between Germany and Turkey, which was then only nascent, but which we see full-fledged to-day.
I attempted also by numerous lectures to diffuse among the public some notion of the Pangerman peril. I did not content myself with warning my countrymen. I am proud to have been one of the first Frenchmen to preach a cordial understanding between France and England at a time when there was perhaps some merit in doing so. I deemed it, therefore, a duty to inform the British public, so far as it lay in my power, that the Pangerman peril concerned Great Britain quite as much as France. In 1909 the Franco-Scottish Society kindly invited me to lecture to its members at Edinburgh, Glasgow and Aberdeen. I seized the opportunity, and took for the subject of my lectures, “The problem of Central Europe and universal politics.”
The Aberdeen Free Press, of May 8th, 1909, summed up very exactly as follows the substance of what I said, seven years ago, to my British hearers:
“ ... The lecturer attached enormous importance to the Pan-German movement, which he regarded as the decisive factor in the situation, and he pointed out that the propaganda which had gone on in Germany and in Austria was part of a great policy to extend the boundaries of the German State and dominate middle and south-eastern Europe. The rapport personnel established in recent years between Berlin and Vienna pointed, he said, to the conclusion that Germany and Austria were working hand in hand. In the recent Balkan crisis he described Aehrenthal as playing a partie de poker, in which his bluff had been crowned with success. The off-set to the Pan-German movement was to be found in the Triple Entente between England, France and Russia, and it followed from a consideration of European politics that the questions confronting England with regard to the supremacy of the sea were intimately bound up with the question which concerned the land powers of Europe. In particular, the speaker thought that the Pan-German aspirations would be effectually combatted by the growing social and political development of the various minor Slav peoples in the south-east of Europe. The development of these peoples was a thing which it was with the interests of England, France and Russia to encourage to the utmost.”
My Scottish hearers gave me a very kind reception, of which I have preserved a lively recollection. But truth compels me to declare that I had the impression that the great majority of them did not believe me. I strongly suspect that they then saw in me simply a Frenchman, who, moved by the spirit of revenge, tried above all to stir up the British public against Germany. The impression did not discourage me any more than many similar instances of want of success. In 1911 the Central Asian Society did me the honour of inviting me to express my views in London (22nd March) on the Bagdad railway. I used this fresh opportunity to expound a method of Franco-English co-operation which seemed to me necessary to parry the dangers of the near future.
“Such is,” I then said, “broadly speaking, the affair of Bagdad. The most moderate conclusion which, in my judgment, inevitably follows is that from beginning to end the logical and methodical spirit of Germany has got the better of the French, English, and Russian interests, which have been compromised by our slowness to grasp the importance of the problem confronting us, and by the lamentable want of cohesion between the diplomacies of the three countries.
“The lesson apparently to be drawn from these considerations is, that for the future we ought no longer to be satisfied with a hand-to-mouth policy and with seeking solutions only when the difficulties take an acute form.
“If we wish to serve and defend our interests effectually, we must, as Talleyrand said, keep the future in mind, and learn something of that German method of which the good results are incontestable.