Edward VII. and President Emile Loubet made the treaty which has now saved the world. That is true. They were the high-contracting chiefs of state. But Sir Wilfrid Laurier was credited by them both with a certain share in that wise, far-seeing and world-saving work.
President Emile Loubet, in January, 1906, was speaking at Le Madeleine, at the funeral of the Canadian Minister of Marine, who had died suddenly in Paris.
“I shall be happy,” he said, “for having left in my career the one work, the great work of the entente cordiale, I had been convinced that the mutual interest of France and of England was that we should be united—first of all for our own protection, against the rest of the world; and then, after that, to protect the world as a whole.
“But do you know who it was that confirmed me in these ideas? Who implanted in my mind, irrevocably, that sense of duty to which I have responded with alacrity? It was that eminent statesman who directs the destinies of Canada to-day—Sir Wilfrid Laurier. For he was in a better position than I to appreciate the loyal and conciliatory character of Great Britain.
“He gave me proofs and views of it which, as he developed them, I could easily understand. So that, imbued with those ideas, on the day that I met my friend, Edward VII., and found him moved by the same sentiments, we arrived at that entente and agreement which I shall never cease to admire.”
The phraseology of that frank admission proves beyond all doubt that the President was carried away by the suggestion, which was one, as he says, “Monsieur Laurier had put into his head, and that he never ceased to admire.”
Probably Edward VII. would have said as much; for before making his campaign of education in France Sir Wilfrid had made it in England. And the picture he drew of the entente cordiale between the English and the French in Canada, at his first banquet in London, where the Prince of Wales—later Edward VII.—presided in 1897, in the Royal Palace of Buckingham, must have had the same effect on that able and sympathetic statesman, which Edward was, as it produced upon Monsieur Loubet in France. Sir Wilfrid expressed in Paris in the same year, before a great assembly of notabilities, the harmony that existed between the two races in Canada; and in the following terms he regretted that the same cordiality did not yet exist between the two shores of the English channel:
“Our English compatriots of Canada are frankly proud of the brilliant Montcalm and we, of our race, bow with respect before the memory and monument of General Wolfe. It may be that here in France the souvenirs of old feuds have not lost all their bitterness. But for us in Canada, of whatever race, those were glorious days when the colours of France and England—the tricolour and the Cross of St. George—floated in triumph on the heights of Alma, of Inkerman, and of Sebastapol.
“Now events have changed. Other alliances are imminent. But may it be permitted to a son of France, who is at the same time a British subject, to salute those glorious days with a regret that may find an echo in every generous soul on both sides of the channel.”
And again Sir Wilfrid proposed the joint toast of Edward VII. and President Loubet at a notable gathering in Paris after the coronation.