M. Delcassé, at that time directing with consummate skill and courage the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, urged upon the Cabinet the necessity for accepting Germany's challenge. But the Cabinet, after hearing the sorrowful confessions of the Ministers of War and Navy, and learning that France was not ready to fight, refused to accept the advice of the Minister of Foreign Affairs. M. Delcassé resigned. A blow had been struck at French prestige.
For six months the crisis continued in an acute stage. The chauvinistic—or shall we say, patriotic?—elements were determined to withstand what they called the Kaiser's interference in the domestic affairs of France. But France seemed isolated at that moment, and prudence was the part of wisdom. M. Rouvier declared to the Chamber of Deputies on December 16th: "France cannot be without a Moroccan policy, for the form and direction which the evolution of Morocco will take in the future will influence in a decisive manner the destinies of our North African possessions." France agreed to a conference, but won from Germany the concession that France's special interests and rights in Morocco would be admitted as the basis of the work of the conference.
On January 17, 1906, a conference of European States, to which the United States of America was admitted, met to decide the international status of Morocco. For some time the attitude of the German delegates was uncompromising. They maintained the Kaiser's thesis as set forth at Algiers: the complete independence of Morocco, and sovereignty of her Sultan. But they finally yielded, and acknowledged the right of France and Spain to organize in Morocco an international police.
The Convention was signed on April 7th. It provided for: (1) police under the sovereign authority of the Sultan, recruited from Moorish Moslems, and distributed in the eight open ports; (2) Spanish and French officers, placed at his disposal by their governments, to assist the Sultan; (3) limitation of the total effective of this police force from two thousand to two thousand five hundred, of French and Spanish officers, commissioned sixteen to twenty, and non-commissioned thirty to forty, appointed for five years; (4) an Inspector General, a high officer of the Swiss army, chosen subject to the approval of the Sultan, with residence at Tangier; (5) a State Bank of Morocco, in which each of the signatory Powers had the right to subscribe capital; (6) the right of foreigners to acquire property, and to build upon it, in any part of Morocco; (7) France's exclusive right to enforce regulations in the frontier region of Algeria and a similar right to Spain in the frontier region of Spain; (8) the preservation of the public services of the Empire from alienation for private interests.
Chancellor von Bülow's speech in the Reichstag on April 5, 1906, was a justification of Germany's attitude. It showed that the policy of Wilhelmstrasse had been far from bellicose, and that Germany's demands were altogether reasonable. The time had come, declared the Chancellor, when German interests in the remaining independent portions of Africa and Asia must be considered by Europe. In going to Tangier and in forcing the conference of Algeciras, Germany had laid down the principle that there must be equal opportunities for Germans in independent countries, and had demonstrated that she was prepared to enforce this principle.
When one considers the remarkable growth in population, and the industrial and maritime evolution of Germany, this attitude cannot be wondered at, much less condemned. Germany, deprived by her late entrance among nations of fruitful colonies, was finding it necessary to adopt and uphold the policy of trying to prevent the pre-emption, for the benefit of her rivals, of those portions of the world which were still free.
Neither France nor Spain had any feeling of loyalty toward the Convention of Algeciras. However much may have been written to prove this loyalty, the facts of the few years following Algeciras are convincing. After 1908, Spain provoked and led on by the tremendous expenditures entailed upon her by the Riff campaigns began to consider the region of Morocco in which she was installed as exclusively Spanish territory. French writers have expended much energy and ingenuity in proving the disinterestedness of French efforts to enforce loyally the decisions of Algeciras. But they have explained, they have protested, too much. There has never been a moment that France has not dreamt of the completion of the vast colonial empire in North Africa by the inclusion of Morocco. It has been the goal for which all her military and civil administrations in Algeria and the Sahara have been working. To bring about the downfall of the Sultan's authority, not only press campaigns were undertaken, but anarchy on the Algerian frontier was allowed to go on unchecked, until military measures seemed justifiable.
In a similar way, the German colonists of Morocco did their best to bring about another intervention by Germany. Their methods were so despicable and outrageous that they had frequently to be disavowed officially. In 1910, the German Foreign Office found the claims of Mannesmann Brothers to certain mining privileges invalid, because they did not fulfil the requirements of the Act of Algeciras. But the Mannesmann mining group, as well as other German enterprises in Morocco, were secretly encouraged to make all the trouble they could for the French, while defending the authority of the Sultan. The Casablanca incident is only one of numerous affronts which the French were asked to swallow.
Great Britain had her part, though not through official agents, in the intrigues. There is much food for thought in the motives that may, not without reason, be imputed to the publication in the Times of a series of stories of Moroccan anarchy, and of Muley Hafid's cruelties.
In the spring of 1911, it was realized everywhere in Europe that the Sultan's authority was even less than it had been in 1905. The Berber tribes were in arms on all sides. In March, accounts began to appear of danger at Fez, not only to European residents, but also to the Sultan. The reports of the French Consul, and the telegrams of correspondents of two Paris newspapers, were most alarming. On April 2d, it was announced that the Berber tribes had actually attacked the city and were besieging it. Everything was prepared for the final act of the drama.