In October 1893 a detachment of the Russian fleet entered Toulon harbour on a return visit. Mme. Adam, we may be sure, took care to be in the South of France during that visit. In the festivities with which the Russian soldiers were entertained at Toulon, and later in Paris, she played a prominent part. On behalf of the women of France she presented the Russian sailors with numerous gifts, and each married officer received from her hand a gold bracelet for his wife. On another occasion, a distinguished Russian, visiting Paris, was proud to find that Mme. Adam had been deputed to bestow upon him his brevet de commandeur de la légion d’honneur.[377]
Mme. Adam’s sympathies as an ardent Slavophile were by no means confined to Russia. No Slavonic people is without a place in her heart. Their struggles against Teutonism have always appealed to her. With Gambetta she believed that one of the surest ways of pulling down the Germanic Tower of Babel is to hold out a helping hand to the Slavs of the Lower Danube.[378] She has ever been the friend of Roumania. In La Nouvelle Revue she wrote on the 1st of September, 1881: “Roumania’s attitude will never be aggressive.” Again, in the same publication, on the 15th of the month, she continued to preach confidence in Roumania: “I believe,” she wrote, “that Roumania, by reason of her smallness, constitutes the best safeguard of international interests and the surest guarantee of the liberty of a river (the Danube) which she has no intention of exploiting for her own personal ends.”
Throughout the eighties and nineties, whenever she could escape from her editorial duties in Paris, Mme. Adam would start off on some journey to Central Europe—to Vienna, Hungary, North Italy or Montenegro.[379] Thus she has been able to study on the spot the Near Eastern question. And for twenty years she conducted in Austria and the Balkans a veritable crusade on behalf of nationalism, anti-Teutonism and Slavism. Everywhere her charm of manner and her acquaintance with Ambassadors in Paris obtained for her an entry into diplomatic circles; and it may well be imagined that the insight she thus gained into the most complex of European problems was invaluable to her in writing her articles on foreign politics for La Nouvelle Revue.
In 1884, during her visit to Hungary, which she has described in her book, La Patrie Hongroise, she found herself up against a difficulty, the stubbornness of which she had not suspected. She was dismayed by the Magyar indignation at her Slavist propaganda. For the Magyars Russia was as much “the enemy” as was Germany for French Revanchards. Socially, the Nationalist party was charmed to receive her; on that field, as always, she proved irresistible; but her Slavist gospel they rejected with scorn. After her return to Paris the leader of the Hungarian nationalists, Count Apponyi, wrote her a letter expressing irreconcilable antagonism to Russia. He declared that in case of a conflict between Russia and Germany, Hungary’s instinct of self-preservation would lead her to place her army of 600,000 men[380] at Germany’s disposal. Again, in June 1888, Count Apponyi wrote: “Even under the charm of your pen, madame, the most ingenuous of readers cannot help smiling to see the name of Russia coupled with any ideal whatsoever.... We for centuries have been the safeguard of civilisation. We arrested that wave of barbarism, the inflow of the Turks, which broke against our frontier. The same fate will attend the Russian wave.”
In no country did Mme. Adam more passionately espouse the national cause than in Egypt. Here her motto was, “Egypt for the Egyptians.” She had great faith in the Egyptian people, and she strongly approved of the French refusal to join the British in their bombardment of Alexandria.
Mr. Gladstone’s action in this matter was a sad blow to her admiration of this illustrious statesman. She had regarded him as the apostle of the oppressed, as “the initiator of democracy.” She had admired his championship of Armenia and Bulgaria and of Home Rule in Ireland. Of the Irish problem, she had written: “Mr. Gladstone is the only man, not in Great Britain alone, but in Europe, capable of dealing with such a desperate situation.”[381] Contrasting the British Prime Minister with the German Chancellor, she writes:[382] “While Europeans are accustomed to await in agonising suspense the acts and speeches of M. de Bismarck, they await in hope and in confidence the utterances of Mr. Gladstone.”
When she saw Mr. Gladstone taking what seemed to her the anti-nationalist side in Egypt, she could only believe that he had been forced into this concession fatale by “British mercantile Chauvinists” and Palmerstonians.[383] Mr. Gladstone’s good-will towards France she never doubted; but she deplored that it had been unable to permeate the British Foreign Office.[384]
The influence of mercantile Chauvinism Mme. Adam discerned in the Fashoda Affair. It was then giving birth to that British Imperialism, which whether advocated by Mr. Chamberlain or Lord Rosebery[385] seemed to her equally dangerous. In the South African War she saw what she had described as l’insatiable ambition des agents britanniques in Egypt, developing into la voracité scandaleuse de l’Angleterre en Transvaal.[386]