The political fortunes of France between 1887 and 1895 were at a low ebb. The financial scandals which led to the resignation of President Grevy in 1887, the serio-comic political career of General Boulanger, dangerous and constant labour disturbances in the great centres of industry, the Panama financial scandals of 1893, the assassination of President Carnot in 1894, and the impossibility of forming stable Ministries, caused a general lack of confidence in the future of the Republic both at home and abroad, which the facile glories of the Paris Exhibition of 1889 could not conceal. The foreign policy of the country seemed to consist in a system of "pin-pricks" directed against Great Britain, and in hostility to Italy, which culminated in anti-Italian riots in the South of France, a tariff war, and the entry of Italy into the alliance of the Central Powers. The letters of Sir Charles during this period are full of expressions of despair at the condition of French politics and at the general lack of statesmanship. The suspicion which he entertained of Russian intentions caused him also to look askance at the newly formed friendship of France with Russia, which, commencing with the visit of a French naval squadron under Admiral Gervais to Cronstadt in August, 1891, was finally sealed by a treaty of alliance signed in March, 1895, though the precise terms were not known. [Footnote: In a letter to M. Joseph Reinach written after the appearance of The Present Position of European Politics, Sir Charles says: "I did not say Gambetta had been a great friend to the Poles. I said he hated the Russians. He told me so over and over again. He held the same view as Napoleon I. as to Russia, and said, 'J'irais chercher mes alliances n'importe oui—meme a Berlin,' and, 'La Russie me tire le pan de l'habit, mais jamais je n'ecouterais ce qu'on me fait dire.' But, in searching for my own reasons for this in the first article, I said that as a law student he had been brought up with a generation which had had Polish sympathies, and that perhaps this had caused (unconsciously, I meant) his anti-Russian views. I know he did not believe in setting up a Poland.">[
In Germany the position was different. The Dual Alliance devised by Prince Bismarck between Germany and Austria-Hungary had become the Triple Alliance by the accession of Italy, and had been further strengthened by an assurance of naval support given to Italy by Lord Salisbury in the event of the status quo in the Mediterranean being disturbed. The presumable disturber aimed at was evidently France. [Footnote: "In 1903 Lord Lansdowne explained that in February, 1887, there had been that exchange of notes between Italy and ourselves of which I had written in that year. In The Present Position of European Politics I made allusion to Disraeli's proposal, before his defeat in 1880, of a league of the Powers for the defence of the status quo in the Mediterranean. The notes of February, 1887, nominally dealt only with the Mediterranean status quo desired in common, it was said, by Italy and Great Britain. Cynics might be tempted to ask whether all Italian Ministers desired the maintenance of a status quo in a 'Mediterranean' which included the coast of Tunis, the coast of Tripoli, and even, Lord Lansdowne added, the Adriatic." (Sir Charles Dilke in the English Review, October, 1909: "On the Relations of the Powers.") On this subject see Crispi Memoirs, vol. ii., chap. v.] The meddlesome intrigues of Russian partisans, and a long series of political outrages culminating in the murder of M. Stambouloff, were gradually forming an Austro-German party in Bulgaria; while the wise and progressive administration of Bosnia and the Herzegovina by Herr von Kallay had encouraged a belief that some good thing might even yet come out of Austria, notwithstanding the famous expression of a belief to the contrary by Mr. Gladstone.
In the circumstances Lord Salisbury determined to base his policy on a good understanding with Germany, and he had his reward. The African settlement of 1890 was a comprehensive scheme which undoubtedly made great concessions to German wishes, but, taken in connection with subsequent enlargements and additions, it was hoped that it had at least removed any real danger of collision between the two Powers principally concerned. A treaty with France, recognizing a French protectorate over Madagascar, was defended by its authors as the complement of the arrangements of 1890, as to Zanzibar, with Germany. Subsequent treaties with Portugal and Italy made the period decisive as to the future division of the African continent. Both in Great Britain and Germany the arrangements of 1890 were attacked as having yielded too much to the other side. But looking at the treaty from an English point of view, Sir Charles said there had been too many graceful "concessions" all round, and of these he made himself the critic. He did not, however, identify himself with the extreme school of so-called "Imperial" thought, which seemed to consider that in some unexplained manner Great Britain had acquired a prior lien on the whole unoccupied portion of the vast African continent.
But in the treaty of 1890 there was one clause—the last—which stood out by itself in conspicuous isolation, and this Sir Charles never ceased to attack and denounce. It decreed the transfer of Heligoland to Germany. The importance of the acquisition was not fully appreciated at the time even in Germany. What the surrender might some day mean was not understood in Great Britain. On both sides the tendency was to belittle the transaction. [Footnote: Reventlow, 38-51. Hohenlohe Memoirs, ii. 470-471.] Apart from some minor interests possessed by British fishermen, Lord Salisbury described the value of the island as mainly "sentimental," in the speech in which on July 10th he defended the transaction in the House of Lords.
He supported the proposal by arguing that the island was unfortified, that it was within a few hours' steam of the greatest arsenal of Germany, that if the island remained in our possession an expedition would be despatched to capture it on "the day of the declaration of war, and would arrive considerably before any relieving force could arrive from our side." "It would expose us to a blow which would be a considerable humiliation." "If we were at war with any other Power it would be necessary for us to lock up a naval force for the purpose of defending this island, unless we intended to expose ourselves to the humiliation of having it taken." This argument, Sir Charles Dilke showed by a powerful criticism of the whole treaty in the columns of the Melbourne Argus, went a great deal too far. It could be used for the purpose of defending the cession of the Channel Islands to France. "The Channel Islands lie close to a French stronghold, Cherbourg, and not very far from the greatest of French arsenals, at Brest. They are fortified and garrisoned, but they are feebly garrisoned, and they have not been refortified in recent times, and could not be held without naval assistance, and the argument about locking up our fleet applies in the case of the Channel Islands, and in the case of many other of our stations abroad, as it was said to apply in the case of Heligoland." [Footnote: Melbourne Argus, September 10th, 1890. As to Heligoland, see Life of Granville, ii, 362, 363, 425; Holland Rose, Origins of the War, p. 18.]
Lord Salisbury went on to point out that we had obtained a consideration for the transfer of Heligoland to Germany "on the east coast of Africa," a consideration which consisted mainly in an undertaking from Germany that she would not oppose our assumption of the protectorate of Zanzibar. But, said Sir Charles, the protectorate, when it included not only the island of Zanzibar, but the strip of coast now forming the maritime fringe both of British and of German East Africa, had been over and over again refused by us. "I was one of those," Sir Charles continued, referring to a still earlier chapter of Lord Salisbury's policy during the short-lived Government of 1885-86, "who thought that the policy of 1885 with regard to Zanzibar was a mistaken policy, and that we should have insisted on supporting our East Indian subjects, who had and have the trade on that coast and island in their hands. We had joined with France in arrangements with regard to the whole Zanzibar coast, and when we concluded an agreement with Germany about that coast it became necessary for us to force that agreement upon the French on behalf of Germany. A most mistaken policy, in my opinion, as we should otherwise have had the support of France in resisting a German occupation of any portion of the coast, an occupation which it is safe to say would not have been attempted in face of a distinct statement on our part."
Lord Salisbury expressed his inability to understand on what ground those interested in South Africa objected to our recognizing an imaginary German right over a strip of territory giving the Germans access to the upper waters of the Zambesi. He said that our chief difficulty about this territory was that we knew nothing about it; but this consideration, Sir Charles said, "told against the agreement, inasmuch as we had given up a territory which seemed naturally to go with those which have been assigned to the South Africa Company, and which might, for anything we knew to the contrary, be of high value in the future." It was amazing to note how obediently the great majority of the Conservative party followed Lord Salisbury's lead in accepting the cession of Heligoland for no consideration at all, as Sir Charles thought—in any case, for a consideration which must seem inadequate. Contrast, he said, the grounds upon which the cession of Heligoland was defended with those, welcomed by shouts of triumph from the Conservatives, upon which the occupation of Cyprus was justified. It was inconceivable that any man possessed of reasoning powers could support holding Cyprus (which must be a weakness in time of war), and yet argue that Heligoland must be a weakness of a similar kind, and therefore had better be ceded. In the case of Heligoland the vast majority of the islanders were opposed to union with Germany. In the case of Cyprus the vast majority of the islanders were hostile to our rule, while the majority of Heligolanders were favourable to our rule. To cede it against the wish of the population was a step which should not be taken, except for overwhelming national advantage, and that advantage most certainly could not be shown.
"I am one of those," Dilke wrote, summarizing the argument of his speeches, "who are sometimes thought by my own party to be somewhat unduly friendly to the foreign policy of our opponents, a fact which I mention only to show that I do not come to the present matter with strong prejudice. I had heard during the negotiations in Berlin, and some weeks before the publication of the agreement, the whole of its contents with the exception of the cession of Heligoland, and I had formed a strong opinion upon the facts then known to me—that it was a thoroughly bad agreement, most unfavourable to British interests. The only change since that time has been that Heligoland has been thrown in, so that to my mind we are ceding that British possession, for which a very high value might have been obtained, against the wish of the inhabitants, and ceding it for less than no consideration. Lord Salisbury seems to be subject to strange dimness of vision when Africa is concerned. He positively claimed it as a merit, in the course of his speech to the South African deputation, that while the Germans demanded an enormous slice of our Bechuanaland sphere of influence, he had induced them to put back their frontier; but I need hardly point out that no German traveller had ever entered the country in dispute, that we had for years acted on the assumption that it was within our sphere, and that the Germans might as reasonably have set up a claim to the whole sphere of influence and to all the territories previously assigned by us to the British South Africa Company…."
In South-East Africa, too, it was to be remembered that we were dealing
with a country which is far less populated by natives and more open to
European settlement than was the case with Central Africa. [Footnote:
See supra, p. 84, as to the differences which had arisen in Mr.
Gladstone's Cabinet on this subject in 1884-85.]
"There has been in the whole matter," he declared, "a deplorable absence of decision. If, when Lord Salisbury came into power in 1885, immediately after the occupation by Germany of a slice of South Africa and of the Cameroons, and at the moment of German activity at Zanzibar, he had let it be clearly understood that we should support the policy of Sir John Kirk, our Consul, and the Zanzibar Sultan's rule, and had at the same time abstained from taking steps to facilitate the operations of the Germans in Damaraland, we certainly should have occupied at the present moment a stronger position than we do. But, instead of this, Lord Salisbury allowed our Indian subjects established along the coast to be ruined by German bombardments to which the British fleet was sent to give some sort of moral support. Our explorers have carried the British flag throughout what is now German East Africa and the Congo State. They had made treaties by which the leading native sovereigns of these countries had submitted to our rule, and the Germans are too anxious for our countenance in Europe to have been willing to have risked the loss of Lord Salisbury's friendship had he taken a very different line." [Footnote: Melbourne Argus, September 6th, 1890.]