AN UNDERSTANDING WITH FRANCE.
IS it tradition, or race dislike, or inability to endure the peculiar • brutality of Parisian caricaturists which makes so many of our contemporaries exhibit a Lind of spite when commenting on French politics ? The tradition, broken as it was by the reign of Napoleon III., ought to be dead by this time ; there is no special reason for detesting the French temperament, which is the Irish temperament Modified by a capacity to hear reason ; and as for the cari- caturists, they are like the caricaturists of Germany, a I iU le below the resentment of a non-duelling nation. The France which governs does not draw or buy those carica- tures, but understands perfectly well that she is dealing with a nation which is at least as incapable of cruelty or brutality as she is herself. Whatever the cause of the emotion, the emotion itself is one of political unwisdom.
France is our nearest neighbour, she has a powerful Army, and her history as well as her instincts make of her an inevitable counterpoise to the great Power which looks upon England as the one grand obstacle to the realisation (if the objects that lie beneath her new "world-policy." So long as we have a good understanding with France it is impossible for Germany to attack us openly, or to succeed easily in her permanent policy of keeping up an irritation between us and Russia fatal to the bright dream of an arrangement with the Czars which might lap Asia in peace, and therefore in a prosperity essential to the development of India, for a hundred years. There is positively no obstacle to such an understanding except the suspiciousness of the two peoples, for, with the exception of French claims to the foreshore of Newfound- land, there is no point at which the interests of the two nations really clash. Those claims are no doubt irritating, but they would surely be surrendered for fair compen- sation, and it must be remembered that no ambition can be based on them, or on the nationality of the French- Canadians, because if it were the United States would be as much challenged as the British Government. Nobody, however strong in soldiers or alliances, is going to defy the Anglo-Saxon race to a combat outrance. That would be a, little too mad even for a French Nationalist with the Vatican to please. With the abandonment of Fashoda French statesmen gave up their traditional aspirations about Egypt, recognising clearly that the seizure of a half- way house between Europe and Asia, protected not only by Great Britain and superior naval power, but by the strong military Monarchy of India, is an enterprise involving a senseless amount of risk. We do not want Indo- China, though we had. rather Siam were left in- dependent, and to play the part of dog in the manger in Southern China is simple folly. We cannot reign over any large section of China without a conscrip- tion, and even if our people would bear one, the gain would not, with the enormous possessions we already hold, be worth the burden. It is said that Australia is fretful about the New Hebrides ; but Australia can wait, and knows perfectly well that Germany, not France, is looking with covetous eyes at the grand reversionary inheritance of Australia, the Eastern Archipelago. That will go, or begin to go, if Holland ever enters the German Empire ; and the Germanising party in Holland, which exists, though while the house of Orange reigns it will be kept down by patriotism, has been strengthened by the dis- appearance of its hope of a Dutch Empire in South Africa. There is no solid ground of quarrel between France and Great Britain in the South Pacific, nor is there any in Morocco. We want nothing whatever in Morocco, and are perfectly willing that France should reign from Tunis to Mogador provided that Tangier is not held by a great maritime Power which might on occasion close the gates of the Mediterranean. That means in plain English that Spain or we must have Tangier; and as Spain desires Tangier, and France can enter Morocco both from Algeria and by Mogador, the basis of a compromise is perfectly easy. And finally, as to West Africa, France will be able to develop with our perfect goodwill the magnificent Empire secured to her by the Agreement of 1898. She will, however, build up no great power on the coast, for she cannot make colonies pay, nor can she pour conscripts in dangerous numbers into a region which they, and the voters, their fathers, regard as a sort of hell. There is, in short, no point on the globe where, if only matters are managed in as friendly a spirit as two hot-tempered English squires would manage them when defining their boundaries, the two nations need collide.
But their temperament ? The French temperament is by no means so difficult a one as is often alleged. They are often compared with the Celtic Irish, and no doubt there are points of resemblance, derived probably from similarity of ultimate origin. But something has happened to the French since Caesar's time which has not happened to the Irish. Like the Irish, they are apt to take fire when on- lookers have difficulty in perceiving where the match is. Like the Irish, they have social aspirations which are utterly inconsistent with the British, the American, or the German social ideal. Like the Irish, they are greatly affected by humour, by a kind of poetry, and by any appreciation which, if we may for once use the words without any depreciatory meaning, flatters their amour propre. But the Gauls were twice conquered, once by the Romans and once by the Franks, and either from the admixture of their blood, or from some other cause, there entered into them a spirit of hard, logical reasoning, of what we British call "sense," which has profoundly modified their political, as it has their economic, action. They always seem to be going to do ruinous things, but they never do them. They stop at the fatal moment, pull themselves together, bargain like Jews, and keep their bargains. It is always possible to deal with them in business, whether the business refers to the purchase of tuns of wine or the distribution of a continent. They are always assumed to be plotting, but just look at that forgotten fact, their possession of Pondi- cherry. (Chandernagore is inaccessible to ships.) If Germany or Russia owned Pondicherry we should be in a, perpetual fidget, always suspecting, usually with justice, some plot to expand the Hinterland. The French have held it for a hundred and fifty years, and have not once landed a regiment or intrigued with a native Prince. In 1858, when Great Britain was compelled to strip herself of her soldiers and France might have given us a deadly wound, not a French soldier moved. France had accepted the ride of an ally, and adhered to it under what must have been a fierce temptation, for we took Southern India from the French. Under very painful circumstances French statesmen refused to fight for Fashoda, the prize not being worth the risk, and only asked that the honour of France and their own honour should be preserved by the absence of anything like a diplomatic ultimatum. It is the same with our commercial relations. The French do not, like the Germans, want to engross our commerce. They are not colonists in the real sense, and are not looking about for provinces in which to deposit their overspill. They would not take South Africa from us as a gift. We keep on saying that they shut us out from Madagascar; but we never made an effort to acquire that grand island, and in Indo-China, which is theirs, the major part of all trade was till quite lately in British hands. It is quite possible with such a people to arrive at an understanding, and it seems to us foolish, while they almost alone in Europe are writing kindly of King Edward, to keep up by verbal pin-pricks a senseless and most injurious irritation. Let them regret the loss of French Canada, and pay honour to Sir Wilfrid Laurier as a kinsman. Why not? We used to regret the loss of America, and even now rejoice that till the day of President Roosevelt every great President of the United States has been of British descent.
Previous page
