Germany before the war

by baron Beyens

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.