It was as her population and her productive power increased far more quickly and far beyond that of her neighbours, that Germany began to look out into the extra-European world for markets. She had reached the point when her productivity, in manufacturing lines, had exceeded her power of consumption. Where find markets for the goods? German merchants, and not Prussian militarists, began to spread abroad in Germany the idea that there was a world equilibrium, as important to the future of the nations of Europe as was the European equilibrium. Germany, looking out over the world, saw that the prosperity of Great Britain was due to her trade, and that the security and volume of this trade were due to her colonies.
Who does not remember the remarkable stamp issued by the Dominion of Canada to celebrate the Jubilee of Queen Victoria? On the mercatorial projection of the world, the British possessions were given in red. One could not find any corner of the globe where there were not ports to which British ships in transit could go, and friendly markets for British commerce. The Germans began to compare their industries with those of Great Britain. Their population was larger than that of the great colonial power, and was increasing more rapidly. Their industries were growing apace. For their excess population, emigration to a foreign country meant annual loss of energetic and capable compatriots. Commerce had to meet unfair competition in every part of the world. Outside of the Baltic and North Seas, there was no place that a German ship could touch over which the German flag waved.
It was not militarism or chauvinism or megalomania, but the natural desire of a people who found themselves becoming prosperous to put secure and solid foundations under that prosperity, that made the Germans seek for colonies and launch forth upon the Weltpolitik.
The first instance of the awakening on the part of the German people to a sense that there was something which interested them outside of Europe, was the annexation by Great Britain in 1874 of the Fiji Islands, with which German traders had just begun, at great risk and painstaking efforts, to build up a business. This was the time when the Government was engaged in its struggles with the Church and socialism, and when the working of the Reichstag and the Bundesrath was still in an experimental stage. Nothing could be done. But there began to be a feeling among Germans that in the future Germany ought to be consulted concerning the further extension of the sovereignty of a European nation over any part of the world then unoccupied or still independent. But Germany was not in a position either to translate this sentiment into a vigorous foreign policy, or to begin to seize her share of the world by taking the portions which Great Britain and Russia and France had still left vacant.
German trade, still in its infancy, received cruel setbacks by the British occupation of Cyprus in 1878 and of Egypt in 1883, the French occupation of Tunis in 1881, and the Russian and British dealings with central Asia and Afghanistan. The sentiment of the educated and moneyed classes in Germany began to impose upon the Government the necessity of entering the colonial field. The action in Egypt and in Tunis brought about the beginning of German colonization. Bismarck had just finished successfully his critical struggle with the socialists. The decks were cleared for action. In 1882, a Bremen trader, Herr Lüdritz, by treaties with the native chiefs, gained the Bay of Angra-Pequena on the west coast of Africa. For two years no attention was paid to this treaty, which was a purely private commercial affair. In 1884, shortly after the occupation of Egypt, a dispute arose between the British authorities at Cape Town and Herr Lüdritz. Bismarck saw that he must act, or the old story of extension of British sovereignty would be repeated. He telegraphed to the German Consul at Cape Town that the Imperial Government had annexed the coast and hinterland from the Orange River to Cape Frio.
Other annexations in Africa and the Pacific followed in the years 1884-1886. In Africa, the German flag was hoisted over the east coast of the continent, north of Cape Delgado and the river Rovuma, and in Kamerun and Togo on the Gulf of Guinea. In the Pacific, Kaiser Wilhelm's Land was formed of a portion of New Guinea, with some adjacent islands, and the Bismarck Archipelago, the Solomon Islands, and the Marshall Islands were gathered in. Since those early years of feverish activity, there have been no new acquisitions in Africa, other than the portion of French Congo ceded in 1912 as "compensation" for the French protectorate of Morocco. In the Pacific, in 1899, after the American conquest of the Philippines, the Caroline, Pelew, and Marianne groups and two of the Samoan Islands were added.
In China, Germany believed that she had the right to expect to gain a position equal to that of Great Britain at Hongkong and Shanghai, of France at Tonkin, and Russia in Manchuria. She believed that it was just as necessary for her to have a fortified port to serve as a naval base for her fleet as it was for the other Powers, and that by a possession of territory which could be called her own she would be best able to get her share of the commerce of the Far East. From 1895 to 1897, Germany examined carefully all the possible places which would serve best for the establishment of a naval and commercial base. At the beginning of 1897, after naval and commercial missions had made their reports, a technical mission was sent out whose membership included the famous Franzius, the creator of Kiel. This mission reported in favour of Kiau-Chau on the peninsula of Shantung in north China.
When negotiations were opened with the Chinese, the answer of the Chinese Government was to send soldiers to guard the bay! The Kaiser, in a visit to the Czar at Peterhof in the summer of 1897, secured Russian "benevolent neutrality." The murder of two missionaries in the interior of the province, on November 1st of the same year, gave Germany her chance. Three German war vessels landed troops on the peninsula, and seized Kiau-Chau and Tsing-Tau. After five months of tortuous negotiations, a treaty was concluded between Germany and China on March 6, 1899. Kiau-Chau with adjacent territory was leased to Germany for ninety-nine years. To German capital and German commerce were given the right of preference for every industrial enterprise on the peninsula, the concession for the immediate construction of a railway, and the exclusive right to mining along the line of the railway. Thus the greater part of the province of Shantung passed under the economic influence of Germany.
The entry of Japan into the war of 1914 is due to her desire to remedy a great injustice which has been done to Japanese commerce in the province of Shantung by the German occupation, to her fear of this naval base opposite her coast (just as she feared Port Arthur), and probably to the intention of occupying the Marianne Islands, the Marshall Islands, and the Eastern and Western Carolines, in order that the Japanese navy may have important bases in a possible future conflict with the United States.
When Germany leased Kiau-Chau, she declared solemnly that the port of Tsing-Tau would be an open port, ein frei Hafen für allen Nationen. But Japanese trade competition soon caused her to go back on her word. She conceived a clever scheme in 1906, by which the Chinese customs duties were allowed to be collected within the Protectorate in return for an annual sum of twenty per cent. upon the entire customs receipts of the Tsing-Tau district. In this way, she is more than recompensed for the generosity displayed in allowing German goods to be subject to the Chinese customs. She reimburses herself at the expense of the Japanese! Berlin could not have been astonished at the ultimatum of August 15th from Tokio.
There has always been much opposition in Germany to the colonization policy of the Government, the dissatisfaction over the poor success of the attempts at African colonization led Chancellor Caprivi to state that the worst blow an enemy could give him was to force upon him more territories in Africa! The Germans never got on well with the negroes. Their colonists, for the most part too poor to finance properly agricultural schemes, lived by trading. Like all whites, they cheated the natives and bullied them into giving up their lands. In South-West Africa, a formidable uprising of the Herreros resulted in the massacre of all the Germans except the missionaries and the colonists who had established themselves there before the German occupation. The suppression of this rebellion took more than a year, and cost Germany an appalling sum in money and many lives. But it cost the natives more. Two thirds of the nation of the Herreros were massacred: while only six or seven thousand were in arms, the German official report stated that forty thousand were killed. The Germans confiscated all the lands of the natives.
In 1906, after twenty-one years of German rule, there were in South-West Africa sixteen thousand prisoners of war out of a total native population of thirty-one thousand. All the natives lived in concentration camps, and were forced to work for the Government. In commenting upon the Herrero campaign, Pastor Frenssen, one of the most brilliant writers of modern Germany, put in the mouth of the hero of his colonial novel the following words: "God has given us the victory because we were the most noble race, and the most filled with initiative. That is not saying much, when we compare ourselves with this race of negroes; but we must act in such a way as to become better and more active than all the other people of the world. It is to the most noble, to the most firm that the world belongs. Such is the justice of God."
German opposition has been bitter also against the occupation of Kiau-Chau. For traders have claimed that the political presence of Germany on the Shantung peninsula and the dealings of the German diplomats with the Pekin court had so prejudiced the Chinese against everything German that it was harder to do business with them than before the leasehold was granted. They actually advocated the withdrawal of the protectorate for the good of German commerce!
But German pride was at stake in Africa after the Herrero rebellion. And in China, Kiau-Chau was too valuable a naval base to give up. In 1907, a ministry of colonies was added to the Imperial Cabinet. Since then the colonial realm has been considered an integral part of the Empire.
At every point of this colonial development, Germany found herself confronted with open opposition and secret intrigue. The principal strategic value of south-west Africa was taken away by the British possession of Walfisch Bay, and of east Africa by the protectorate consented to by the Sultan of Zanzibar to the British Crown. Togoland and Kamerun are hemmed in by French and British possession of the hinterland. The Pacific islands are mostly "left-overs," or of minor importance. In spite of the unpromising character of these colonies, the commerce of Germany with them increased from 1908 to 1912 five hundred per cent., and the commerce with China through Kiau-Chau from 1902 to 1912 nearly a thousand per cent.
And yet, in comparison to her energies and her willingness—let us leave till later the question of ability and fitness—Germany has had little opportunity to exercise a colonial administration on a large scale. She must seek to extend her political influence over new territories. Where and how? That has been the question. Most promising of all appeared the succession to the Portuguese colonies, for the sharing of which Great Britain declared her willingness to meet Germany halfway. An accord was made in 1898, against the eventuality of Portugal selling her colonies. But since the Republic was proclaimed in Portugal, there has been little hope that her new Government would consider itself strong enough to part with the heritage of several centuries.
For the increase of her colonial empire, Germany has felt little hope. So she has tried to secure commercial privileges in various parts of the world, through which political control might eventually come. We have already spoken of her effort in China. Separate chapters treat of her efforts in the three Moslem countries, Morocco, Persia, and Turkey, and show how in each case she has found herself checkmated by the intrigues and accords of the three rich colonial Powers.
Long before the political union of the German States in Europe was accomplished, there were German aspirations in regard to the New World, when Pan-Germanists dreamed of forming states in North and South America.
These enthusiasts did not see that the Civil War had so brought together the various elements of the United States, the most prominent and most loyal of which was the German element, that any hope of a separatist movement in the United States was chimerical. As late as 1885, however, the third edition of Roscher's Kolonien, Kolonialpolitik und Auswanderung stated that "it would be a great step forward, if the German immigrants to North America would be willing to concentrate themselves in one of the states, and transform it into a German state." For different reasons Wisconsin would appear to be most particularly indicated.
As early as 1849, the Germans commenced to organize emigration to Brazil through a private society of Hamburg (Hamburger Kolonisationverein), which bought from the Prince de Joinville, brother-in-law of Dom Pedro, vast territories in the state of Santa Catharina. There the German colonization in Brazil began. It soon extended to the neighbouring states of Paraná and Rio Grande do Sul. There are now about three hundred and fifty thousand Germans, forming two per cent. of the population. In no district are they more than fifteen per cent. However, in Rio Grande, there is a territory of two hundred kilometres in which the German language is almost wholly spoken; and a chain of German colonies binds Sao Leopoldo to Santa Cruz.
Among the Pan-Germanists, the three states of southern Brazil have been regarded as a zone particularly reserved for German expansion. The colonial congress of 1902 at Berlin expressed a formal desire that hereafter German emigration be directed towards the south of Brazil. An amendment to include Argentina was rejected. The decree of Prussia, forbidding emigration to Brazil, was revoked in 1896 in so far as it was a question of the three states of Paraná, Santa Catharina, and Rio Grande do Sul.
It has not been very many years since diplomatic incidents arose between Brazil and Germany over fancied German violation of Brazilian territory by the arrest of sailors on shore. But Germany has not entertained serious hope of getting a foothold in South America. Brazil has increased greatly in strength, and there is to-day in South America a tacit alliance between Argentina, Brazil, and Chile to support the American Monroe Doctrine. Germany found, when she was trying to buy a West India island from Denmark, that she had to reckon not only with Washington, but also with Buenos Ayres, Rio, and Santiago.
Finding herself so thoroughly hemmed in on all sides, in the New World and in the Old World, by alliances and accords directed against her overseas political expansion, modern Germany has repeated the history of the Jews. Deprived of some senses, one develops extraordinarily others. Deprived of civil and social rights for centuries, the Jews developed the business sense until to-day their wealth and influence in the business world are far beyond the proportionate numbers of their race. Deprived of the opportunity to administer and develop vast overseas territories, the Germans have turned to intensive military development at home and extensive commercial development abroad, until to-day they are the foremost military Power in Europe, and are threatening British commercial supremacy in every part of the globe.
The German counterpart of the British and French and Russian elements that are directing the destinies of vast colonies and protectorates is investing its energy in business. During the past generation, the German campaign for the markets of the world has been carried on by the brightest and best minds in Germany. There have been three phases to this campaign: manufacturing the goods, selling the goods, and carrying the goods. German manufactures have increased so greatly in volume and scope since the accession of the present Emperor that there is hardly a line of merchandise which is not offered in the markets of the world by German firms.
Articles "made in Germany" may not be as well made as those of other countries. But their price is more attractive, and they have driven other goods from many fields. One sees this right in Europe in the markets of Germany's competitors and enemies. Since the present war began, French and British patriots are hard put to it sometimes when they find that article after article which they have been accustomed to buy is German. In my home in Paris, the elevator is German, electrical fixtures are German, the range in my kitchen is German, the best lamps for lighting are German. I have discovered these things in the past month through endeavouring to have them repaired. Interest led me to investigate other articles in daily use. My cutlery is German, my silverware is German, the chairs in my dining-room are German, the mirror in my bathroom is German, some of my food products are German, and practically all the patented drugs and some of the toilet preparations are German.
All these things have been purchased in the Paris markets, without the slightest leaning towards, or preference for, articles coming from the Fatherland. I was not aware of the fact that I was buying German things. They sold themselves,—the old combination of appearance, convenience, and price, which will sell anything.
That I am unconsciously using German manufactured articles is largely due to the genius of the salesman. It is a great mistake to believe that salesmanship is primarily the art of selling the goods of the house you represent. That has been the British idea. It is today exploded. Is it because the same type as the Britisher who is devoting his brains and energy to solving the problems of inferior people in different parts of the world is among the Germans devoting his energies to German commerce in those same places, that the Germans have found the fine art of salesmanship to be quite a different thing? It is studying the desires of the people to whom you intend to sell, finding out what they want to buy, and persuading your house at home to make and export those articles. From the Parisian and the Londoner, and the New Yorker down to the naked savage, the Germans know what is wanted, and they supply it. If the British university man is enjoying a position of authority and of fascinating perplexity in some colony, and feels that he has a share in shaping the destinies of the world, the German university man is not without his revenge. Deprived of one sense, has he not developed another—and a more practical one?
The young German, brought up in an overpopulated country, unable to enter a civil service which will keep him under his own flag—and remember how intensely patriotic he is, this young German, just as patriotic as the young Frenchman or the young Britisher,—must leave home. He is not of the class from which come the voluntary emigrants. His ties are all in Germany: his love—and his move—all for Germany. So he becomes a German resident abroad, in close connection with the Fatherland, and always working for the interests of the Fatherland. He goes to England or to France, where he studies carefully and methodically, as if he were to write a thesis on it (and he often does), the business methods of and the business opportunities among the people where he is dwelling. He is giving his life to put Deutschland über alles in business right in the heart of the rival nation, and he is succeeding. During October, 1914, when they tried to arrest in the larger cities of England the German and Austrian subjects they had to stop—there was not room in the jails for all of them! And in many places business was paralyzed.
In carrying the products of steadily increasing volume to steadily growing markets, Germany has been sensible enough to make those markets pay for the cost of transport. Up to the very selling price, all the money goes to Germany. The process is simple: from German factories, by German ships, through German salesmen, to German firms, in every part of the world—beginning with London and Paris.
Germany's merchant marine has kept pace with the development of her industry. Essen may be the expression of one side of modern Germany, which is said to have caused the European war. But one is more logical in believing that Hamburg and Bremen and the Kiel Canal have done more to bring on this war than the products of Krupp. During the last twenty-five years the tonnage of Germany's merchant marine has increased two hundred and fifty per cent., a quarter of which has been in the last five years, from 1908-1913. There are six times as many steamships flying the German flag as when Wilhelm II mounted the throne. In merchant ships, Germany stands today second only to Great Britain. The larger portion of her merchant marine is directed by great corporations. The struggle against Great Britain and France for the freight carrying of outside nations has been most bitter—and most successful. Before the present war, there was no part of the world in which the German flag was not carried by ships less than ten years old.
With the exception of Kiau-Chau, the colonies of Germany have never been of much practical value, except as possible coaling and wireless stations for the German fleet. But here also the opposition of her rivals has minimized their value. Walfisch Bay and Zanzibar have, as we have already said, lessened the strategical value of the two large colonies on either side of the African continent. In the division of the Portuguese colonies agreed to by Great Britain, it was "the mistress of the seas" who was to have the strategic places—not part of them, but all of them, the Cape Verde Islands, Madeira, and the Azores.
As Germany's commerce and shipping have so rapidly developed, the seeking for opportunities to extend her political sovereignty outside of Europe has not been so much an outlook for industrial enterprise as the imperative necessity of finding naval bases and coaling stations in different parts of the world for the adequate protection of commerce. The development of the German navy has been the logical complement of the development of the German merchant marine. Germany's astonishing naval program has kept pace with the astonishing growth of the great Hamburg and Bremen lines. Germany has had exactly the same argument for the increase of her navy as has had Great Britain. Justification for the money expended on the British navy is that Great Britain needs the navy to protect her commerce, upon which the life of the nation is dependent, and to guarantee her food-supplies. The industrial evolution of Germany has brought about for her practically the same economic conditions as in Great Britain. In addition to the dependence of her prosperity upon the power of her navy to protect her commerce, Germany has felt that she must keep the sea open for the sake of guaranteeing uninterrupted food-supplies for her industrial population. It must not be forgotten that Germany is flanked on east and west by hereditary enemies, and has come to look to the sea as the direction from which her food supplies would come in case of war.
This last factor of the Weltpolitik, the creation of a strong navy, must not be looked upon either as a provocation to Great Britain or as a menace to the equilibrium of the world. If it has brought Germany inevitably into conflict with Great Britain, it is because the navy is the safeguard of commerce. The Weltpolitik is essentially a Handelspolitik. The present tremendous conflict between Great Britain and Germany is the result of commercial rivalry. It is more a question of the pocket-book than of the sacredness of treaties, if we are looking for the cause rather than the occasion of the war. It has come in spite of honest efforts to bring Great Britain and Germany together.
Lord Haldane, in February, 1912, made a trip to Berlin to bring about a general understanding between the two nations. But while there was much discussion of the question of the Bagdad Railway, Persian and Chinese affairs, Walfisch Bay, and the division of Africa, nothing came of it. On March 18th, Mr. Churchill said to the House of Commons: "If Germany adds two ships in the next six years, we shall have to add four; if Germany adds three, we shall have to add six. Whatever reduction is made in the German naval program will probably be followed here by a corresponding naval reduction. The Germans will not get ahead of us, no matter what increase they make; they will not lose, no matter what decrease they make." This was as far as Great Britain could go.
In the spring of 1912, the British fleet was concentrated in the North Sea, and an accord was made with France for common defensive action in the North Sea and the Mediterranean Sea. At the same time, during M. Poincaré's trip to Petrograd, an accord was signed between France and Russia for common naval action in time of war.
The Pan-Germanic movement in recent years has not been a tool of the Government, but rather a party, including other parties, banded together more than once to oppose the German Government in an honourable attempt to preserve peace with the neighbours in the west.
It is a tremendous mistake—and a mistake which has been continuously made in the French, British, and American press since the beginning of the war—to consider the Weltpolitik as an expression of the sentiments of the German Emperor and his officials. Since it was forced upon Bismarck against his will, Pan-Germanism has been a power against which the Emperor William II has had to strive frequently throughout his reign. For it has never hesitated to force him into paths and into positions which were perilous to the theory of monarchical authority. The Kaiser has resented the pressure of public opinion in directing the affairs of the Empire. Pan-Germanism has been a striking example of democracy, endeavouring to have a say in governmental policies. The Naval and Army Leagues, the German Colonial Society, and the Pan-Germanic Society are private groups, irresponsible from the standpoint of the Government. They have declared the governmental programs for an increase in armaments insufficient, and have bitterly denounced and attacked them from the point of view exactly opposite to that of the Socialists. The Pan-Germanic Society refused to recognize the treaty concluded between Germany and France after the Agadir incident. Said Herr Klaas at the Hanover Conference on April 15, 1912: "We persist in considering Morocco as the country which will become in the future, let us hope the near future, the colony for German emigration." The same intractable spirit was shown in Dr. Pohl's address at the Erfurt Congress in September, 1912.
We hear much about the Kaiser and the military party precipitating war. A review of the German newspapers during the past few years will convince any fair-minded reader that German public opinion, standing constantly behind the Pan-Germanists, has frequently made the German Foreign Office act with a much higher hand in international questions than it would have acted if left to itself, and that German public opinion, from highest classes to lowest, is for this war to the bitter finish. It is the war of the people, intelligently and deliberately willed by them. The statement that a revolution in Germany, led by the democracy to dethrone the Kaiser or to get him out of the clutches of the military party, would put an end to the war, is foolish and pernicious. For it leads us to false hopes. It would be much nearer the truth to say that if the Kaiser had not consented to this war, he would have endangered his throne.
The principle of the Weltpolitik, imposed upon European diplomacy by the German nation in the assembling of the Conference of Algeciras, was that no State should be allowed to disturb the existing political and territorial status quo of any country still free, in any part of the world, without the consent of the other Powers. This Weltpolitik would have the natural effect, according to Karl Lamprecht, in his Zur Jüngsten Deutschen Vergangenheit, of endangering a universal and pitiless competition among the seven Great Powers in which the weakest would eventually be eliminated.
CHAPTER III
THE "BAGDADBAHN"
In the development of her Weltpolitik, the most formidable, the most feasible, and the most successful conception of modern Germany has been the economic penetration of Asiatic Turkey. She may have failed in Africa and in China. But there can be no doubt about the successful beginning, and the rich promise for the future, of German enterprises in the Ottoman Empire.
The countries of sunshine have always exercised a peculiar fascination over the German. His literature is filled with the Mediterranean and with Islam. From his northern climate he has looked southward and eastward back towards the cradle of his race, and in imagination has lived over again the Crusades. As long as Italy was under Teutonic political influence, the path to the Mediterranean was easy. United Italy and United Germany were born at the same time. But while the birth of Italy threatened to close eventually the trade route to the Mediterranean to Germany, the necessity of a trade route to the south became more vital than ever to the new German Confederation from the sequences of the union.
When her political consolidation was completed and her industrial era commenced, Germany began to look around the world for a place to expand. There were still three independent Mohammedan nations—Morocco, Persia, and Turkey. In Morocco she found another cause for conflict with France than Alsace-Lorraine. In Persia and Turkey, she faced the bitter rivalry of Russia and Great Britain.
The rapid decline of the Ottoman Empire, and the fact that its sovereign was Khalif of the Moslem world, led German statesmen to believe that Constantinople was the best place in the world to centre the efforts of their diplomacy in the development of the Weltpolitik. Through allying herself with the Khalif, Germany would find herself able to strike eventually at the British occupation of India and Egypt, and the French occupation of Algeria and Tunis, not only by joining the interests of Pan-Islamism and Pan-Germanism, but also by winning a place in Morocco opposite Gibraltar, a place in Asia Minor opposite Egypt, and a place in Mesopotamia opposite India.
The certainty of economic success helped to make the political effort worth while, even if it came to nothing. For Asia Minor and Mesopotamia are countries that have been among the most fertile and prosperous in the whole world. They could be so again. The present backward condition of Asia Minor and Mesopotamia is due to the fact that these countries have had no chance to live since they came under Ottoman control, much less to develop their resources proportionately to other nations. The natives have been exploited by the Turkish officials and by foreign holders of concessions. Frequently concessions have been sought to stop, not to further, development. If there have been climatic changes to account for lack of fertility in Asia Minor, this is largely due to deforestation. Ibn Batutah, the famous Moorish traveller of the first half of the fourteenth century, and Shehabeddin of Damascus, his contemporary, have left glowing accounts of the fertility and prosperity of regions of Asia Minor, now hopelessly arid, as they existed on the eve of the foundation of the Ottoman Empire. Not only have all the trees been cut down, but the roots have been torn up for fuel! One frequently sees in the markets of Anatolian towns the roots of trees for sale. The treatment of trees is typical of everything else. The country has had no chance. In Mesopotamia, the new irrigation schemes are not innovations of the twentieth century, but the revival of methods of culture in vogue thousands of years before Christ.
The Romans and Byzantines improved their inheritance. The Osmanlis ruined it.
In addition to sunshine and romance, political advantages, and prospects of making money, another influence has attracted the Germans to the Ottoman Empire. There is a certain affinity between German and Osmanli. The Germans have sympathy with the spirit of Islam, as they conceive it to be interpreted in the Turk. They admire the yassak of the Turk, which is the counterpart of their verboten. The von Moltke who later led Prussia to her great victories had at the beginning of his career an intimate knowledge of the Turkish army. He admired intensely the blind and passive obedience of the Turk to authority, his imperturbability under misfortune and his fortitude in facing hardship and danger. "Theirs not to reason why: theirs but to do and die" is a spirit which German and Turk understand, and show, far better than Briton, with all due respect to Tennyson. A Briton may obey, but he questions all the same, and after the crisis is over he demands a reckoning. Authority, to the Anglo-Saxon, rests in the body politic, of which each individual is an integral—and ineffaceable—part.
The Turkish military and official cast is like that of the Germans in three things: authority rests in superiors unaccountable to those whom they command; the origin of authority is force upholding tradition; and the sparing of human life and human suffering is a consideration that must not be entertained when it is a question of advancing a political or military end. I have seen both at work, and have seen the work of both; so I have the right to make this statement. For all that, I have German and Turkish friends, and deep affection for them, and deep admiration for many traits of character of both nations. The trouble is that the people of Germany and the people of Turkey allow their official and military castes to do what their own instincts would not permit them to do. The passivity of the Turk is natural: it is his religion, his background, and his climate. The passivity of the German is inexcusable. He will not exorcise the devil out of his own race. It must be done for him.
In 1888, a group of German financiers, backed by the Deutsche Bank, which was to have so powerful a future in Turkey, asked for the concession of a railway line from Ismidt to Angora. The construction of this line was followed by concessions for extension from Angora to Cæsarea and for a branch from the Ismidt-Angora line going south-west from Eski Sheir to Konia. The extension to Cæsarea was never made. That was not the direction in which the Germans wanted to go. The Eski Sheir-Konia spur became the main line. The Berlin-Bagdad-Bassorah "all rail route" was born. The Germans began to dream of connecting the Baltic with the Persian Gulf. The Balkan Peninsula was to revert to Austria-Hungary, and Asia Minor and Mesopotamia to Germany. The south Slavs and the populations of the Ottoman Empire would be dispossessed (the philosopher Haeckel actually prophesied this in a speech in 1905 before the Geographical Society of Jena). Russia would be cut off from the Mediterranean. This was the Pan-Germanist conception of the Bagdadbahn.
From the moment the first railway concession was granted to Germans in Asia Minor, which coincided with the year of his accession, Wilhelm II has been heart and soul with the development of German interests in the Ottoman Empire. His first move in foreign politics was to visit Sultan Abdul Hamid in 1889, when he was throwing off the yoke of Bismarck. This visit was the beginning of an intimate connection between Wilhelmstrasse and the Sublime Porte which has never been interrupted—excepting for a very brief period at the beginning of the First Balkan War. The friendship between the Sultan and the Kaiser was not in the least disturbed by the Armenian massacres. The hecatombs of Asia Minor passed without a protest. In fact, five days after the great massacre of August, 1896, in Constantinople, where Turkish soldiers shot down their fellow-citizens under the eyes of the Sultan and of the foreign ambassadors, Wilhelm II sent to Abdul Hamid for his birthday a family photograph of himself with the Empress and his children.
In 1898, the Kaiser made his second voyage to Constantinople. This voyage was followed by the concession extending the railway from Konia to the Persian Gulf. It was the beginning of the Bagdadbahn in the official and narrower sense. After this visit of the Kaiser to Abdul Hamid, the pilgrimage was continued to the Holy Land. At Baalbek, there is a stone of typically German taste, set in the wall of the great temple, to commemorate the visit of the man who dreamed he would one day be master of the modern world. If this inscription seems a sacrilege, what name have we for the large gap in the walls of Jerusalem made for his triumphal entry to the Holy City? The great Protestant German Church, whose corner-stone was laid by his father in 1869, was solemnly inaugurated by the Kaiser. As solemnly, he handed over to Catholic Germans the title to land for a hospital and religious establishment on the road to Bethlehem. Still solemnly, at a banquet in his honour in Damascus, he turned to the Turkish Vali, and declared: "Say to the three hundred million Moslems of the world that I am their friend." To prove his sincerity he went out to put a wreath upon the tomb of Saladin.
Wilhelm II at Damascus is reminiscent of Napoleon at Cairo. Egypt and Syria and Mesopotamia have always cast a spell over men who have dreamed of world empires; and Islam, as a unifying force for conquest, has appealed to the imagination of others before the present German Kaiser. I have used the word "imagination" intentionally. There never has been any solidarity in the religion of Mohammed; there is none now; there never will be. The idea of community of aims and community of interests is totally lacking in the Mohammedan mind. Solidarity is built upon the foundation of sacrifice of self for others. It is a virtue not taught in the Koran, nor ever developed by any Mohammedan civilizations. The failure of all political organisms of Mohammedan origin to endure and to become strong has been due to the fact that Mohammedans have never felt the necessity of giving themselves for the common weal. The virility of a nation is in the virile service of those who love it. If there is no willingness to serve, no incentive to love, how can a nation live and be strong?
The revelation of Germany's ambition by the granting of the concession from Konia to the Persian Gulf, and the application of the German financiers for a firman constituting the Bagdad Railway Company, led to international intrigues and negotiations for a share in the construction of the line through Mesopotamia. It would be wearisome and profitless to follow the various phases of the Bagdad question. Germany did not oppose international participation in the concession. The expense of crossing the Taurus and the dubious financial returns from the desert sections influenced the Germans to welcome the financial support of others in an undertaking that they would have found great difficulty in financing entirely by their own capital. The Bagdadbahn concession was granted in 1899: the firman constituting the company followed in 1903.
Russia did not realize the danger of German influence at Constantinople, and of the eventualities of the German "pacific penetration" in Asia Minor. She adjusted the Macedonian question with Emperor Franz Josef in order to have a free hand in Manchuria, and she made no opposition to the German ambitions. She needed the friendly neutrality of Germany in her approaching struggle with Japan. Once the struggle was begun, Russia found herself actually dependent upon the goodwill of Germany. It was not the time for Petrograd to fish in the troubled waters of the Golden Horn.
The situation was different with Great Britain. The menace of the German approach to the Persian Gulf was brought to the British Foreign Office just long enough before the Boer crisis became acute for a decision to be made. Germany had sent engineers along the proposed route of her railway. She had neglected to send diplomatic agents!
The proposed—in fact the only feasible—terminus on the Persian Gulf was at Koweit. Like the Sultan of Muscat, the Sheik of Koweit was practically independent of Turkey. While showing deference to the Sultan as Khalif, Sheik Mobarek resisted every effort of the Vali of Bassorah to exercise even the semblance of authority over his small domain. In 1899, Colonel Meade, the British resident of the Persian Gulf, signed with Mobarek a secret convention which assured to him "special protection," if he would make no cession of territory without the knowledge and consent of the British Government. The following year, a German mission, headed by the Kaiser's Consul General at Constantinople, arrived in Koweit to arrange the concession for the terminus of the Bagdadbahn. They were too late. The door to the Persian Gulf was shut in the face of Germany.
Wilhelm II set into motion the Sultan. The Sublime Porte suddenly remembered that Koweit was Ottoman territory, and began to display great interest in forcing the Sheik to recognize the fact. A Turkish vessel appeared at Koweit in 1901. But British warships and British bluejackets upheld the independence of Koweit! Since the Constitution of 1908, all the efforts of the Young Turks at Koweit have been fruitless. Germany remains blocked.
British opposition to the German schemes was not limited to the prevention of an outlet of the Bagdadbahn at Koweit. In 1798, the East India Company established a resident at Bagdad to spy upon and endeavour to frustrate the influence of the French, just beginning to penetrate towards India through the ambition of Napoleon to inherit the empire of Alexander. Since that time, British interests have not failed to be well looked after in Lower Mesopotamia. After the Lynch Brothers, in 1860, obtained the right of navigating on the Euphrates, the development of their steamship lines gradually gave Great Britain the bulk of the commerce of the whole region, in the Persian as well as the Ottoman hinterland of the Gulf. In 1895, German commerce in the port of Bushir was non-existent, while British commerce surpassed twelve million francs yearly. In 1905, the market was shared about equally between Great Britain and Germany. In 1906, the Hamburg-American Line established a service to Bassorah. British merchants began to raise the cry that if the Bagdadbahn appeared the Germans would soon have not only the markets of Mesopotamia but also that of Kermanshah. The Lynch Company declared that the Bagdadbahn would ruin their river service, and their representations were listened to at London, despite the absurdity of their contention. The Lynches were negotiating with Berlin also. This mixture of politics and commerce in Mesopotamia is a sordid story, which does not improve in the telling.
The revolution of 1908 did not injure the German influence at Constantinople as much as has been popularly supposed. The Germans succeeded during the first troubled year in keeping in with both sides through the genius of Baron Marschall von Bieberstein, in spite of the Bosnia-Herzegovina affair. Germany was fortunately out of the Cretan and Macedonian muddles, in which her rivals were hopelessly entangled. Mahmud Shevket pasha was always under German influence, and the Germans had Enver bey, "hero of liberty," in training at Berlin. German influence at Constantinople succeeded also in withstanding the strain of the Tripolitan War, although it grew increasingly embarrassing as the months passed to be Turkey's best friend and at the same time the ally of Italy! During the first disastrous period of the war of the Balkan Allies against Turkey, it seemed for the time that the enemies of Germany controlled the Sublime Porte. But the revolver of Enver bey in the coup d'état of January, 1913, brought once more the control of Turkish affairs into hands friendly to Germany. They have remained there ever since.
Germany strengthened her railway scheme, and her hold on the territories through which it was to pass, by the accord with Russia at Potsdam in 1910.
The last clever attack of British diplomacy on the Bagdadbahn was successfully met. In tracing the extension of the railway beyond Adana, it was suggested to the Department of Public Works that the cost of construction would be greatly reduced and the usefulness of the line increased, if it passed by the Mediterranean littoral around the head of the Gulf of Alexandretta. Then the control of the railway would have been at the mercy of the British fleet. When the "revised" plans went from the Ministry of Public Works to the Ministry of War, it was not hard for the German agents to persuade the General Staff to restore the original route inland across the Amanus, following the old plan agreed upon in the time of Abdul Hamid. More than that, the Germans secured concessions for a branch line from Aleppo to the Mediterranean at Alexandretta, and for the construction of a port at Alexandretta. The Bagdadbahn was to have a Mediterranean terminus at a fortified port, and Germany was to have her naval base in the north-east corner of the Mediterranean, eight hours from Cyprus and thirty-six hours from the Suez Canal! This was the revenge for Koweit.
A month before the Servian ultimatum, Germany had contracted to grant a loan to Bulgaria, one of the conditions of which was that Germany be allowed to build a railway to the Ægean across the Rhodope Mountains to Porto Laghos, and to construct a port there, six hours from the mouth of the Dardanelles. There was a panic in Petrograd.
The events in Turkey since the opening of the war are too recent history and as yet too little understood to dwell upon. But the reception accorded to the Goeben and Breslau at the Dardanelles, their present[1] anomalous position in "closed waters" in defiance of all treaties, the abolition of the foreign post-offices, the unilateral decision to abrogate the capitulations—all these straws show in which direction the wind is blowing on the Bosphorus. A successful termination of the German campaign in France, which at this writing seems most improbable (in spite of the fact that the Germans are at Compiègne and their aëroplanes pay us daily visits), would certainly draw Turkey into the war—and to her ruin.[2]
[1] October, 1914.
[2] This chapter was written before the sudden and astonishing acts of war by Turkey in sinking a Russian ship and bombarding Russian Black Sea ports on October 29, 1914.
On the other hand, the German reliance upon embarrassing the French and British in their Moslem colonies through posing as the defenders of Islam and Islam's Khalif has not been well-founded. On the battlefield of France, thousands of followers of Mohammed from Africa and Asia are fighting loyally under the flags of the Allies. The Kaiser, for all his dreams and hopes, has not succeeded in getting a single Mohammedan to draw his sword for the combined causes of Pan-Germanism and Pan-Islamism. Have the three hundred million Moslems forgotten the declaration of Damascus?
In seeking for the causes of the present conflict, it is impossible to neglect Germany in the Ottoman Empire. As one looks up at Pera from the Bosphorus, the most imposing building on the hill is the German Embassy. It dominates Constantinople. There has been woven the web that has resulted in putting Germany in the place of Great Britain to prevent the Russian advance to the Dardanelles, in putting Germany in the place of Russia to threaten the British occupation of India and the trade route to India, and in putting Germany in the place of Great Britain as the stubborn opponent of the completion of the African Empire of France. The most conspicuous thread of the web is the Bagdadbahn. In the intrigues of Constantinople, we see develop the political evolution of the past generation, and the series of events that made inevitable the European war of 1914.
CHAPTER IV
ALGECIRAS AND AGADIR
In 1904, an accord was made between Great Britain and France in regard to colonial policy in northern Africa. Great Britain recognized the "special" interests of France in Morocco in exchange for French recognition of Great Britain's "special" interests in Egypt. There was a promise to defend each other in the protection of these interests, but no actual agreement to carry this defence beyond the exercise of diplomatic pressure. The accord was a secret one. Its exact terms were not known until the incident of Agadir made necessary its publication in November, 1911.
But that there was an accord was known to all the world. Germany, who had long been looking with alarm upon the extension of French influence in Morocco, found in 1905 a favourable moment for protest. Russia had suffered humiliation and defeat in her war with Japan. Neither in a military nor a financial way was she at that moment a factor to be reckoned with in support of France. Great Britain had not recovered from the disasters to her military organization of the South African campaign. Her domestic politics were in a chaotic state. The Conservative Ministry was losing ground daily in bye elections; the Irish question was coming to the front again.
German intervention in Morocco was sudden and theatrical. On March 31, 1905, a date of far-reaching importance in history, Emperor William entered the harbour of Tangier upon his yacht, the Hohenzollern. When he disembarked, he gave the cue to German policy by saluting the representative of the Sultan, with peculiar emphasis, as the representative of an independent sovereign. Then, turning to the German residents in Morocco who had gathered to meet him, he said: "I am happy to greet in you the devoted pioneers of German industry and commerce, who are aiding in the task of keeping always in a high position, in a free land, the interests of the mother country."
The repercussion of this visit to Tangier in France and in Great Britain was electrical. It seemed to be, and was, a direct challenge on the part of Germany for a share in shaping the destinies of Morocco. It was an answer to the Anglo-French accord, in which Germany had been ignored. Great Britain was in no position to go beyond mere words in the standing behind France. France knew this. So did Germany. After several months of fruitless negotiations between Berlin and Paris, on June 6th, it was made plain to France that there must be a conference on the Moroccan question.
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.
A relief column of native troops under Major Bremond arrived in Fez on April 26th. The very next day, an urgent message for relief having been received from Colonel Mangin in Fez, Colonel Brulard started for the capital with another column. Without waiting for further word, a French army which had been carefully prepared for the purpose, entered Morocco under General Moinier. On May 21st, Fez was occupied by the French. They found that all was well there with the Europeans and with the natives. But, fortunately for the French plans, Muley Hafid's brother had set himself up at Mequinez as pretender to the throne. The Sultan could now retain his sovereignty only by putting himself under the protection of the French army. Morocco had lost her independence!
Germany made no objection to the French expeditionary corps in April. She certainly did not expect the quick succession of events in May which brought her face to face with the fait accompli of a strong French army in Fez. As soon as it was realized at Berlin that the fiction of Moroccan independence had been so skilfully terminated, France was asked "what compensation she would give to Germany in return for a free hand in Morocco." The pourparlers dragged on through several weeks in June. France refused to acknowledge any ground for compensation to Germany. She maintained that the recent action in Morocco had been at the request of the Sultan, and that it was a matter entirely between him and France.
Germany saw that a bold stroke was necessary. On July 1st, the gunboat Panther went to Agadir, a port on the Atlantic coast of Morocco. To Great Britain and to France, the dispatch of the Panther was represented as due to the necessity of protecting German interests, seeing that there was anarchy in that part of Morocco. But the German newspapers, even those which were supposed to have official relations with Wilhelmstrasse, spoke as if a demand for the cession of Mogador or some other portion of Morocco was contemplated. The Chancellor explained to the Reichstag that the sending of the Panther was "to show the world that Germany was firmly resolved not to be pushed to one side."
But in the negotiations through the German Ambassador in Paris, it was clear that Germany was playing a game of political blackmail. The German Foreign Office shifted its claims from Morocco to concessions in Central Africa. On July 15th, Germany asked for the whole of the French Congo from the sea to the River Sanga, and a renunciation in her favour of France's contingent claims to the succession of the Belgian Congo. The reason given to this demand was, that if Morocco were to pass under a French protectorate, it was only just that compensation should be given to Germany elsewhere. France, for the moment, hesitated. She definitely refused to entertain the idea of compensation as soon as she had received the assurance of the aid of Great Britain in supporting her against the German claims.
On July 1st, the German Ambassador had notified Sir Edward Grey of the dispatch of the Panther to Agadir "in response to the demand for protection from German firms there," and explained that Germany considered the question of Morocco reopened by the French occupation of Fez, and thought that it would be possible to make an agreement with Spain and France for the partition of Morocco. On July 4th, Sir Edward Grey, after a consultation with the Cabinet, answered that Great Britain could recognize no change in Morocco without consulting France, to whom she was bound by treaty. The Ambassador then explained that his Government would not consider the reopening of the question in a European conference, that it was a matter directly between Germany and France, and that his overture to Sir Edward Grey had been merely in the nature of a friendly explanation.
Germany believed that the constitutional crisis in Great Britain was so serious that the hands of the Liberal Cabinet would be tied, and that they would not be so foolhardy as to back up France at the moment when they themselves were being so bitterly assailed by the most influential elements of the British electorate on the question of limiting the veto power of the House of Lords. It was in this belief that Germany on July 15th asked for territorial cessions from France in Central Africa. Wilhelmstrasse thought the moment well chosen, and that there was every hope of success.
But the German mentality has never seemed to appreciate the frequent lesson of history, that the British people are able to distinguish clearly between matters of internal and external policy. Bitterly assailed as a traitor to his country because he advocates certain changes of laws, a British Cabinet Minister can still be conscious of the fact that his bitterest opponents will rally around him when he takes a stand on a matter of foreign policy. This knowledge of admirable national solidarity enabled Mr. Lloyd George on July 21st, the very day on which the King gave his consent to the creation of new peers to bring the House of Lords to reason, at a Mansion House banquet, to warn Germany against the danger of pressing her demands upon France. The effect, both in London and Paris, was to unify and strengthen resistance. It seemed as if the Panther's visit to Agadir had put Germany in the unenviable position of having made a threat which she could not enforce.
But the ways of diplomacy are tortuous. Throughout August and September, Germany blustered and threatened. In September, several events happened which seemed to embarrass Russia and tie her hands, as in the first Moroccan imbroglio of 1905. For Premier Stolypin was assassinated at Kiev on September 14th; the United States denounced its commercial treaty with Russia on account of the question of Jewish passports; and the Shuster affair in Persia occupied the serious attention of Russian diplomacy. Had it not been for the splendidly loyal and scrupulous attitude of the British Foreign Office towards Russia in the Persian question, Germany might have been tempted to force the issue with France.
German demands grew more moderate, but were not abandoned. For members of the House of Commons, of the extreme Radical wing in the Liberal party, began to put the British Government in an uncomfortable position. Militarism, entangling alliances with a continental Power, the necessity for agreement with Germany,—these were the subjects which found their way from the floor of the House of Commons to the public press. A portion of the Liberal party which had to be reckoned with believed that Germany ought not to have been left out of the Anglo-French agreement. So serious was the dissatisfaction, that the Government deemed it necessary to make an explanation to the House. Sir Edward Grey explained and defended the action of the Cabinet in supporting the resistance of France to Germany's claims. The whole history of the negotiation was revealed. The Anglo-French agreement of 1904 was published for the first time, and it was seen that this agreement did not commit Great Britain to backing France by force of arms.
Uncertainty of British support had the influence of bringing France to consent to treat with Germany on the Moroccan question. Two agreements were signed. By the first, Germany recognized the French protectorate in Morocco, subject to the adhesion of the signers of the Convention of Algeciras, and waived her right to take part in the negotiations concerning Moroccan spheres of influence between Spain and France. On her side, France agreed to maintain the open door in Morocco, and to refrain from any measures which would hinder the legitimate extension of German commercial and mining interests. By the second agreement, France ceded to Germany, in return for German cessions, certain territories in southern and eastern Kamerun.
There was a stormy Parliamentary and newspaper discussion, both in France and Germany, over these two treaties. No one was satisfied. The treaties were finally ratified, but under protest.
In France, the Ministry was subject to severe criticism. There was also some feeling of bitterness—perhaps a reaction from the satisfaction over Mr. Lloyd George's Mansion House speech—in the uncertainty of Great Britain's support, as revealed by the November discussions in the House of Commons. This uncertainty remained, as far as French public opinion went, until Great Britain actually declared war upon Germany in August, 1914.
In Germany, the Reichstag debates revealed the belief that the Agadir expedition had, on final analysis, resulted in a fiasco. An astonishing amount of enmity against Great Britain was displayed. It was when Herr Heydebrand made a bitter speech against Great Britain, and denounced the pacific attitude of the German Government, in the Reichstag session of November 10th, that the Crown Prince made public his position in German foreign policy by applauding loudly.
The aftermath of Agadir, as far as it affected Morocco, resulted in the establishment of the French Protectorate, on March 30, 1912. The Sultan signed away his independence by the Treaty of Fez. Foreign legations at Fez ceased to exist, although diplomatic officials were retained at Tangier. France voted the maintenance of forty thousand troops in Morocco "for the purposes of pacification." The last complications disappeared when, on November 27th, a Franco-Spanish Treaty was signed at Madrid, in which the Spanish zones in Morocco were defined, and both states promised not to erect fortifications or strategic works on the Moroccan coast.
But the aftermath of Agadir in France and Germany has been an increase in naval and military armaments, and the creation of a spirit of tension which needed only the three years of war in the Ottoman Empire to bring about the inevitable clash between Teuton and Gaul. Taken in connection with the recent events in Alsace and Lorraine, and the voting of the law increasing military service in France to three years, the logical sequence of events is clear.