Paris, April 26, 1887.
So far as one can judge at present the French are irritated beyond measure by the arrest at Pagny, but generally they still shrink from war. It will not, I conceive, be difficult for Bismarck to keep at peace with them, if he really wishes to do so. The danger is that they are persuaded that he is only looking out for a pretext, and that however much they may now give way, he will be bent upon humiliating them till they must resent and resist. I don't see that so far the German Government have treated the Pagny affair as if they wished to make a quarrel of it. The German Chargé d'Affaires has taken many messages from Berlin to Flourens in the sense that if Schnaebelé shall prove to have been arrested on German soil, all satisfaction shall be given. But, then, in the Press of the two countries a controversy is raging as to which side of the frontier he was arrested on, and as to whether or no he was inveigled over the frontier.
The French undoubtedly shrink from war, but they do not shrink from it as much as they did ten years ago; and if the press should get up a loud popular cry, there is no Government strength to resist it. I conceive that at this moment the Government is pacific, and that it does not believe the army to be yet ready. But if, as is no doubt the case, the Germans also believe that the French army is not as ready now as it will be two or three years hence, they may be impatient to begin. In the mean time, so far as I can make out, the Pagny affair is being treated by the two Governments with each other, in correct form diplomatically, and without any apparent willingness to embitter matters. I cannot say as much for the press on either side, though there are symptoms of prudence and caution in the moderate French papers.
The Schnaebelé incident was disposed of by his release from prison and transfer to another post at Lyons; but the agitation did not subside readily, and a bill brought in by Boulanger to mobilize an army corps caused much disquietude at the German Embassy. It was now generally known that Bismarck considered Boulanger a danger and desired his removal from the War Office; but the very knowledge of this feeling and the support accorded to him by the League of Patriots and other noisy organizations rendered this step all the more difficult.
Lord Lyons to Lord Salisbury.
Paris, May 13, 1887.
I have not heard of any new incident between France and Germany, but the suspicion and susceptibility with which the two nations, and indeed the two Governments, regard each other, are certainly not diminishing.
In France home politics are in so peculiar a state as to be positively disquieting. The Budget Committee and the Ministry have come to an open breach, and the Committee intend to propose to the Chamber a resolution which apparently must, if carried, turn out the Goblet Cabinet. This the Chamber would be willing enough to do, if it could see its way to forming another Government. The plan would be to form a Ministry with Freycinet as Prime Minister, but not as Minister for Foreign Affairs, and without Boulanger. But then they are afraid to try and upset Boulanger, while they feel that to form a new Government and put Boulanger in it would be, or might be, taken in Germany as a plain indication that they are warlike at heart. It is an emergency in which the Chief of the State should exert himself; but Grévy's caution has become something very like lethargy. In the mean time they are letting Boulanger grow up into a personage whose position may be a danger to the Republic at home, even if it does not embroil the country in a foreign war. The redeeming point in all this is that the Government does seem to feel that it would not do to be upon bad terms with England, and that it would be wise to be conciliatory toward us.
The Goblet Ministry soon found itself in hopeless difficulty over the Budget, and it was plain that another aimless change of men was inevitable. Goblet's Government had lasted for five months (inclusive of a prolonged recess), and the real question of interest was whether Boulanger was to be a member of the new Government or not. If he was included in it, it was apprehended that the suspicions of Germany would be aggravated; and on the other hand, it was doubtful whether any Government could be formed without him. An ultra-patriotic demonstration in Paris against German music, in the shape of Wagner's operas, was eloquent of the state of feeling between the two nations at the time, and the Government found that the only course open to them was to close the theatre where the obnoxious productions were to have appeared.