Though not professing to be himself an "African," Sir Charles also asked how those who professed to come within that description, and speak as advocates of an Imperial policy in the vast and undeveloped regions of the Dark Continent, could quietly accept, as they seemed prepared to do, the break in the so-called Cape to Cairo route which had been allowed to form part of the great agreement of 1890.
"What, then," he asked in 1902, "have the Tories done with the free hand that has been given them? Above all, they have 'made up to' Germany, and this apparently for no definite object and with no definite result. They have given to Germany as far as they could give; they have certainly helped her to procure the renewal of the Triple Alliance, by inducing sanguine Italians to believe that the British fleet will protect them against France, though as a fact we all know that the House of Commons will not allow a British fleet to do anything of the kind. France has wholly given up the Temporal Power, and would not have threatened Italy had Italy held aloof from the Triple Alliance; and, in spite of a recent speech by the Minister of Austria-Hungary which was intended to 'pay out' Italy for her talks with Russia, it is not Austria that would have raised the question. Our Government have given Germany, so far as they could give, a vast tract in Africa in which British subjects had traded, but in most of which no German had ever been. They have also given Germany Heligoland, which they might have sold dear, and which, if Mr. Gladstone had given, they would have destroyed him for giving…. All this for what? What have we gained by it?" [Footnote: Fortnightly Review, January, 1902.]
The policy of Lord Rosebery and Lord Kimberley from 1892 to 1895 resembled that of Lord Salisbury in so far as it aimed at the settlement of outstanding questions with Germany and France. The apprehensions of trouble with France were still serious, because a constant succession of short Ministries at Paris made any permanent agreement difficult if not impossible. The few Foreign Ministers who were occasionally able to keep their place for any length of time at the Quai d'Orsay were also generally those who as a rule were indifferent, if not actually hostile, to friendship with this country, such as the Duc Decazes in the early days of the Republic, and M. Hanotaux at a later period, who, however, was quite ready to invite Great Britain to join in reckless adventures. [Footnote: Sir Charles notes in November, 1896, that Mr. Morley reported that 'Hanotaux had told him that he could not understand why England had refused to join in a France, Russia, and England partition of China. "China is a dead man in the house who stinks."'] Towards France Lord Rosebery's Government twice took up a firm stand: first in regard to her aggressive action in Siam; and secondly by the clear warning, given through Sir Edward Grey in the House of Commons, that if the expedition of Major Marchand, which was known to be crossing Africa from west to east, reached the Nile Valley, as it eventually did at Fashoda, British interests would be held to be affected. The gravity of this warning was at the moment very inadequately comprehended by the House and by the country, notwithstanding the repeated attempts of Sir Charles to reinforce it before rather unconvinced audiences.
A firm attitude towards France was greatly facilitated through the friendly position adopted towards Great Britain by Count Caprivi (the successor in 1890 of Prince Bismarck in the Chancellorship of the German Empire) and his Minister of Foreign Affairs, Baron Marschall. This period indicates the high-water mark of friendly relations between Germany and Great Britain; and though Count Caprivi retired in 1894, when he was succeeded by Prince Hohenlohe, who had special ties with Russia, these friendly relations may be said to have been prolonged, so far as the official relations of the two Governments were concerned, though with ever-diminishing vitality, up to the retirement of Baron Marschall from the Foreign Office in 1897. [Footnote: See the observations of Reventlow, 115-118, and Büllow, Imperial Germany, 31, 34.] In this period German commercial policy took a strong turn towards freer trade, to the great wrath of the feudal and military parties in Prussia, who were the centre of the forces hostile to a good understanding with Great Britain. The secret treaty also which Bismarck had negotiated with Russia, behind the back of his allies, was allowed to lapse, and a more conciliatory attitude was adopted towards the Poles, which gratified Liberal opinion, especially in this country. But even in the time of Baron Marschall there were evidences of the existence in Germany of currents of opinion of a less friendly character, which were able from time to time to assert themselves in African affairs. As Sir Charles Dilke pointed out, Germany had joined with France in 1894 in objecting to, and thereby nullifying, the Congo Treaty of that year with Belgium; and some of the territories which had been handed over to Germany in the neighbourhood of the Cameroons in 1893, with the express object, apparently, of barring a French advance in that region, had been handed over by Germany to France by another treaty in 1895. [Footnote: Reventlow, pp. 52, 53, admits this. For the treaties themselves, see Hertslet, The Map of Africa by Treaty, ii. 658, in. 999, 1008.]
Throughout the period from 1892 to 1895 a Liberal Ministry was in office, but hardly in power. For the next ten years a strong Tory Administration possessing unfettered freedom of action was in real power, with an Opposition weakened by internal dissension. It was not unnatural that, under such discouraging conditions as to home affairs, Sir Charles should have again devoted most of his time to foreign questions and army reform.
"I recognize," Mr. Balfour wrote to him, in regard to some arrangements as to the business of the House, "that no man in the House speaks with greater authority or knowledge on foreign affairs than yourself, and that no man has a better right to ask for opportunities for criticizing the course in respect of foreign affairs adopted by this or any other Government." [Footnote: March 31st, 1897.]
This recognition was general, so much so that what he spoke or wrote on foreign affairs was constantly translated, reproduced verbatim and commented upon in foreign newspapers—a distinction enjoyed as a rule only by official speakers, and not always by them; while original contributions from his pen were eagerly sought for not only at home, but abroad, especially in France and in the colonies, "Il a pesé constamment sur l'opinion française," the Figaro wrote at the time of his death; and his known friendship for France and everything French made plain- speaking at times possible without exciting resentment. Even those—and there were many in England—who disagreed with his criticisms of the details of Lord Salisbury's policy, felt the comprehensive grasp of his facts, and the vast store of knowledge on which he drew; and the members of his own party, many of whom did not altogether go with him, or sometimes, perhaps, quite grasp his standpoint, nevertheless enjoyed, especially while their own oracles were dumb, the sound of the heavy guns which, after his return to Parliament, from time to time poured political shot and shell into the ranks of the self-complacent representatives of the party opposite. In those ranks, too, there were men who at heart agreed very largely with the speaker, while compelled by party discipline to maintain silence. On the other hand, there nearly always came a moment when Conservative approval passed into the opposite, for Sir Charles had no sympathy with the vast if rather confused ideas of general annexation which prevailed in Conservative circles: the policy of mere earth-hunger which Mr. Gladstone had denounced in 1893.
[Footnote: See above, p. 256.]
When Lord Salisbury returned to the Foreign Office in 1895, the policy of "graceful concessions" to France seemed to Sir Charles to have begun again—concessions in Tunis, concessions in Siam, concessions all round—and he returned to the attack. Tunis, he again pointed out, dated back to 1878, when M. Waddington received, in his own words as given in his own statement, a spontaneous offer of that country in the words "Take Tunis. England will offer no opposition." But at least certain commercial rights and privileges were then reserved. Now they were gone. Even the nominal independence of Madagascar had finally disappeared.
Sir Charles also drew attention to the one subject of foreign affairs upon which, during the last Parliament, Mr. Curzon never tired of attacking, first Mr. Gladstone's and then Lord Rosebery's Government: this was the advance of the French in Siam. Lord Rosebery had gone to the verge of war with France in checking the French proceedings, and when he left office France was under a promise to evacuate Chantaboon and the provinces of Batambong and Siamrep, and to set up a buffer State on the Mekong. We were then in military occupation of British Trans- Mekong Keng-Cheng. Lord Salisbury came to an arrangement which left France in Chantaboon and these provinces, thus giving away, against our interests, what was not ours to give—as he had done in Tunis—and he evacuated and left to France British Trans-Mekong Keng-Cheng, in which a 50 per cent, ad valorem duty had just been put on British goods (from Burmah), a duty from which French goods were free. Not only did Lord Salisbury himself make this arrangement, but he had to submit when France, in alliance with Russia, forced the Government of China to yield territory to France, in direct derogation of China's treaty engagements. Lord Salisbury had since made what was known as the Kiang-Hung Convention with China; and it commenced by setting forth the cession by China to France of territory which had been ceded to China on the express condition that it should not be so ceded to France. This action on the part of China was brought about by the violent pressure of France and Russia at Pekin, which Lord Salisbury passed over. "The defence of his Siam arrangements in the House of Commons consisted in Mr. Curzon, who had become the representative of the Foreign Office, informing the House that the provinces (which he had formerly declared most valuable) were unimportant to British trade, and in pacifying assurances that the Upper Mekong was not navigable, although a French steamer was actually working on it where Mr. Curzon said no ship could go." [Footnote: Letter to the Liverpool Daily Post, December 2nd and 5th, 1898.]