I have had no hesitation in availing myself of your kind consent—though you seemed to doubt whether on reflection I should do so. Of course I fully understand that you do not feel equal to the amount of exertion which you would take in a more favourable condition of health. But this circumstance will not detract from the great value of your counsel and judgment, nor from the authority which by so many years of experience you have acquired.
I quite understand that towards the close of the session of Parliament you will require the holiday you have been accustomed to take in recent years. I hope also to get to a bath at that time—whether I am in office or not.
Why Lord Salisbury should have spoken so doubtfully is not clear, unless instinct warned him of Miss Cass, who was the first to strike a blow at the Unionist administration. At the end of March there reappeared the mysterious emissary who has been already mentioned. There are no means of actually establishing his identity, but there can be little doubt that it was M. de Chaudordy, who represented the French Foreign Office at Tours and Bordeaux during the war. M. de Chaudordy had made friends with Lord Salisbury at the time of the Constantinople Conference in 1876, and he was, therefore, a suitable person to utilize for the purpose of making advances towards a better understanding between the two Governments.
Lord Lyons to Lord Salisbury.
Paris, March 29, 1887.
In a private letter which I wrote to you on the 25th of last month, I mentioned that I had received a visit from a person wholly unconnected officially with the French Government, who appeared to have come to ascertain what were the particular points with regard to which the relations between the English and French Governments might be improved. The same person has been to me again to-day, and has only just left me. This time he did not conceal that it was after being in communication with Flourens that he came. He enlarged on the embarrassing and indeed dangerous position in which France was placed by the adherence of Italy to the Austro-German Alliance, and said that M. Flourens was ready to make almost any sacrifice to secure the good will of England. I said that there could be no great difficulty in this, if only France would abstain from irritating opposition to us, and would settle promptly and satisfactorily outstanding questions. My visitor answered that Flourens conceived that he had sent conciliatory instructions to Waddington which would settle these questions, and that both Waddington and Florian[46] (who had come on leave) reported that there was decidedly a détente in the strain which had existed in the Anglo-French relations. I said that I was delighted to hear it, and that it showed how ready you were to welcome all conciliatory overtures. My friend seemed on this occasion, as on the last, to wish me to tell him some special thing which Flourens might do to please you. I said that I should at any rate mention a thing which he might do to avoid displeasing you. He might prevent the French setting up an opposition to financial proposals in Egypt in cases in which all the other Powers were ready to agree. My friend spoke of Flourens's readiness to give to Russia on the Bulgarian question advice which you might suggest, and he mentioned various things which he thought M. Flourens might be ready to do to please England. These things appeared to me to be rather too grand and too vague in character to be very practical. I said, however, that I would always bear in mind what he had told me of M. Flourens's good dispositions, and would speak frankly and unreservedly to the Minister whenever I could make a suggestion as to the means of acting upon those dispositions in a manner to be satisfactory to England.
The conclusions I drew from the conversation of Flourens's friend were that the French are horribly afraid of our being led to join the Italo-Austro-German Alliance, and that they have been urged by Russia to exert themselves to prevent this. I do not conceive that the French expect to induce us to join them against the Germans and the German Alliance. What they want is to feel sure that we shall not join the others against France and Russia.
It is somewhat curious that M. Flourens, who was evidently desirous of establishing better relations with England, should have selected an unofficial person for communication, rather than approach the Ambassador himself; but perhaps, being quite ignorant of diplomatic usage, he considered it necessary to shroud his action in mystery. The Triple Alliance dated in reality from 1882, Italy having joined the Austro-German Alliance in that year; but a new Treaty had been signed in the month of February, 1887, and caused the French to feel a well-justified alarm. In fact, their position was anything but a happy one, for it was generally believed that the Emperor Alexander III. had resolved, since the abortive attempt on his life, that he would never ally himself with Revolutionists, and that he considered the French to be arch-Revolutionists. Perhaps this belief may have accounted in some measure for Flourens's amiable professions towards England.
In the month of April there occurred one of those incidents which are the despair of peaceably minded politicians and the delight of sensational journalism and of adventurers of the Boulanger type. A certain M. Schnaebelé, a French Commissaire de Police, was induced to cross the German frontier, and thereupon was arrested and imprisoned. The act had the appearance of provocation and naturally caused a prodigious uproar in France; Flourens endeavouring to settle the matter diplomatically and Boulanger seizing the opportunity to display patriotic truculence.