There were two important developments in foreign affairs going on during this year, 1908, of which the difficulties in Morocco, serious as they were, constituted only a side issue. The one was open and above-board: the other was known only to those who kept very closely in touch with German politics.
The first was the rapid improvement in the relations between France and Great Britain, for which Clemenceau himself and King Edward VII were chiefly responsible. We are now so accustomed to regard the Entente as part and parcel of English foreign policy that it is not easy to understand how bitter the feeling was against Great Britain which led important Frenchmen to take the view of an agreement with Germany spoken of above. English domination in Egypt, to the practical exclusion of French influence and control even over the Suez Canal; English conventions with Japan, checking, as was thought, that legitimate French expansion in Asia by which M. Jules Ferry had hoped to counterbalance the defeats of 1870-71; English settlement of the irritating Newfoundland Fisheries question; English truculence and unfairness in the infamous Boer War; English antagonism to Russia, France’s trusted ally and heavy debtor—all these things stood in the way of any cordial understanding. It may well be that only Clemenceau’s strong personal influence, supported by his nominee President Fallières, prevented steps being taken which would have been fatal to the revival of genuine good feeling between the Western Powers. The following passage in the Encyclopædia Britannica does no more than justice to Clemenceau’s services in this direction:
“M. Clemenceau, who only late in life came into office and attained it when a better understanding with England was progressing, had been throughout his long career, of all public men in all political groups, the most consistent friend of England. His presence at the head of affairs was a guarantee of amicable Anglo-French relations, so far as they could be protected by statesmanship.” This tribute in a permanent work of reference is thoroughly well deserved.
Happily, too, his efforts had been earnestly supported long before, and even quietly during, the Boer War, by Edward VII, as Prince of Wales and as King. But this very connection between the French Radical statesman and the English monarch was the subject of most virulent attacks. It was, in fact, made the groundwork of an elaborate accusation of treachery against Clemenceau, who was represented as the mere tool of Edward VII in promoting the permanent effacement of France. The King was an English Machiavelli, constantly plotting to recover for the British Empire, at the expense of France, that world-wide prestige which the miserable Boer War and the rise of German power on land and sea, in trade and in finance, had seriously jeopardised. A book by the well-known M. Flourens, written at this time to uphold that thesis, went through no fewer than five editions. Here is the pleasing picture of the late King presented for the contemplation of the Parisian populace by this virulent penman:
“Edouard VII montait sur le trône à l’age où, si l’on consulte les statistiques, 75% des rois sont déjà descendus dans la tombe. Il sortait d’une longue oisiveté pour entrer dans la vie active a l’époque où, dans toutes les carrières et fonctions publiques, les hommes font valoir leurs droits à la retraite.
“S’il y avait un conseil de revision pour les rois, comme il y en a un pour les conscrits, il eût été déclaré impropre au service.
“L’obésité déformait son corps, alourdissait sa marche, semblait, sous le développement des tissus adipeux, paralyser toute activité physique, toute force intellectuelle. Sa figure, contractée par la douleur, trahissait, par moment, les souffrances qu’une volonté de fer s’efforcait de maîtriser, pour dissimuler aux yeux de ses sujets la maladie qui, à cet instant même, menaçait sa vie.
“A voir sa corpulence maladive, on ne pouvait s’empêcher de se rappeler les paroles que Shakespeare met dans la bouche d’un de ses ancêtres, à l’adresse du fameux Falstaff, le compagnon dissolu des égarements de sa jeunesse: ’songe à travailler, a diminuer ton ventre et a grossir ton mérite—quitte ta vie dissolue! Regarde la tombe, elle ouvre, pour toi, une bouche trois fois plus large que pour les autres hommes!’
“De tous côtés, les lanceurs de prédictions, depuis le fameux archange Gabriel jusqu’à la non moins fameuse Mme. de Thèbes, s’accordaient pour entourer son avènement des plus sinistres prévisions, pour annoncer sa fin prochaine et l’imminence d’une nouvelle vacance du trône d’Angleterre.