“Symptôme plus grave! Les oracles de la science n’étaient pas moins menaçants que les prophéties des devins. Deux fois, les pompes de son couronnement durent être décommandées, deux fois les fêtes ajournées et les lampions éteints. Les hôtes princiers, convoqués a grands frais de tous les points du globe, pour participer à ces réjouissances, attendirent, dans l’angoisse, l’annonce d’une cérémonie plus lugubre.
“La volonté d’Edouard VII triumpha de toutes ces résistances. Il déclara avec une indomptable énergie que, coûte que coûte, il était décidé a ne pas descendre dans la tombe avant d’avoir posé sur sa tête, avec tout l’éclat, avec toute la solennité traditionnels, aux yeux des représentants émerveillés de tout son vaste empire, aux yeux de l’Univers jaloux, la couronne de ses Pères, sa double couronne de Roi et d’Empereur, que les mains avides de la mort semblaient vouloir lui disputer.”
His account of Edward VII reads curiously to-day, the more so when we recall the fact that M. Emile Flourens was at one time French Minister of Foreign Affairs, and that, at the moment when the book first appeared, the King was frequently in Paris, and on good terms with Republicans of all sections.
After pointing out how scrupulously he had as Prince of Wales suppressed his political opinions, during his mother’s lifetime, even when his power, had he exerted it, might have been advantageous to his country, the French critic gives him full credit for having made the best of his life in many ways. He had travelled all over the world, had studied humanity and society in all shapes, had “warmed both hands before the fire of life” in every quarter of the globe. But, though his features as a private personage were familiar to everybody, he remained a sphinx, mysterious and unfathomable, even to his friends, in public affairs. He was well known to Parisians everywhere, and was as popular in working-class centres as in the most aristocratic salons. Paris was, in fact, the only city where he was at his ease and at home, where, in fact, he was himself. By far the most sympathetic Briton to Parisians who ever was in Paris, he exercised a real influence over all classes. They were kept carefully informed as to his tastes, his manners, his intimates, his vices and his debts, and were the more friendly to him on account of them. The warmest partisans of his accession, however, were his creditors, who were mortally afraid that his habits would not give him the opportunity for discharging his liabilities out of his mother’s accumulations.
The description of the position of the British Empire at the close of the Boer War was less flattering even than the personal sketch of its King and Emperor. “At this moment the astounded peoples had felt the Britannic colossus totter on its foundation, this colossus with feet of clay which weighs down too credulous nations by its bluff, by its arrogance, by rapine, by insatiable rapacity, which already grips the entire globe like a gigantic cuttle-fish and sucks its marrow through the numberless tentacles of its commerce, until the day when it shall subjugate the whole planet to its domination—always provided that it does not encounter on its way another still more powerful octopus of destruction which will attack and destroy it.”
Needless to say that this challenger of the British supremacy was the rising power of Germany. As an Englishman I admit the infamy of the Boer War, and recognise that our rule in India and Ireland has been anything but what it ought to have been. M. Clemenceau knew all that as well as we British anti-Imperialists do. But even in 1907-8 much had happened since 1900. Democracy was slowly making way in Great Britain likewise, and freedom for others would surely follow emancipation for herself. It was not to be expected that all Frenchmen should see or understand this. A nation which has under its flag a fourth of the population and more than a seventh of the habitable surface of the world can scarcely expect that another colonial country, whose colonies the British have largely appropriated, in the East and in the West, will admit the “manifest destiny” of the Union Jack to wave of undisputed right over still more territory. There was a good deal to be said, and a good deal was said, about British greed and British unscrupulousness: nor could the truth of many of the imputations be honestly denied.
It called, therefore, for all Edward VII’s extraordinary knowledge of Paris, his bonhomie, shrewd common sense, and uncanny power of “creating an atmosphere” to overcome the prejudice thus created against himself as a master of intrigue, and Clemenceau as his willing tool. Matters went so far that at one moment the King’s reception in his favourite capital seemed likely to be hostile, and might have been so, but for the admirable conduct of the high-minded, conservative patriot, M. Déroulède. But, luckily for France, Great Britain and the world at large, these difficulties had been overcome; and almost the only good feature in the trouble with Morocco was the vigorous diplomatic help France received from England—a good feature because it helped to wipe away the bitter memories of the past from the minds of the French people. The extremely cordial reception of President Fallières and M. Clemenceau in London, and the King’s own exceptional courtesy at all times to M. Delcassé, whom the French public regarded as the victim of German dictatorial demands, tended in the same direction. All the world could see that Clemenceau’s Administration had so far strengthened the Anglo-French Entente as to have brought it almost to the point of an alliance: nor thereafter was the Triple Entente with Russia, as opposed to the Triple Alliance, very far off.
At this same time, however, matters were going so fast in Germany towards an open breach that the only wonder is that the truth of the situation was not disclosed, and that Germany, quite ready, and determined to be more ready, for war at any moment, was allowed to continue her policy of pretended peace.
England and, to a large extent, France still believed in the pacific intentions of the Fatherland. Yet a meeting was held in Berlin of the heads of all the departments directly or indirectly connected with war, at which the Kaiser delivered a speech which could only mean one thing: that Germany and her Allies would enter upon war so soon as the opportunity presented itself, and the preparations, including the completion of the Kiel Canal (or perhaps before that great work had been accomplished), gave promise of a short and decisive campaign. Rumours of this address reached those who were kept informed as to what was being contemplated by the Kaiser, his Militarist Junker entourage and the Federal Council. Unfortunately, when the statement was challenged, a strong denial was issued, and the pacifists and pro-Germans, honest and dishonest, laughed at the whole story as a baseless scare.
How far it was baseless could be learnt from deeds that spoke much louder than words. Even thus early great accumulations of munitions of war were being made at Cologne, and the military sidings and railway equipments, which could only serve for warlike and not commercial purposes, were being completed. Six years before the war, all the work necessary for an aggressive descent on the West and for the passage through Belgium had been done.