Note 717 — Chapter XII

The report spread in 1905 that at the French cabinet meeting on June 6 Delcassé had stated that the British government had offered an alliance to France. Lansdowne and Sanderson denied to the German government that Great Britain had ever done so. See Metternich to F. O., June 16, 1905, G.P., XX, 630 ff., No. 6858; Metternich to F. O., June 28, 1905, ibid., 635 ff., No. 6860; see also B.D., III, 87, No. 105; Metternich to F. O., Oct. 9, 1905, G.P., XX, 663 f., No. 6873. According to Mévil, the official apologist for Delcassé, just before the arrival of the King of Spain in Paris on May 30, the British government assured Delcassé that “the British military forces were ready to march with us [France] against Germany if that Power attacked us. Moreover, the principle of defensive co-operation once admitted, the English Government declared itself ready to sign in the shortest time an accord which would definitely fix that co-operation” (Mévil, p. 268). In a letter of March 20, 1922, Delcassé wrote as follows: “From the Entente it was possible for us in 1905 to proceed to a formal alliance with England. . . . . On June 6th the British offer of assistance had been only forty-eight hours in my possession” (quoted in the London Times, March 27, 1922). In connection with the Grey-Cambon correspondence of 1912, Poincaré has written: “Thus to make a joint study of the situation was the sole engagement which was made [in that correspondence]. In communicating to me the result obtained, M. Paul Cambon wrote me that at the time of Lord Lansdowne an entente of that kind would have been only a beginning. Now, however, it was the last word for the Liberal cabinet. The forced resignation of M. Delcassé had perhaps made us lose in 1905, stated M. Cambon, the opportunity for a real alliance with England. All that we were able to obtain today was this engagement to confer in the presence of danger and this hypothetical approval of the programs drawn up by the general staff.” See also J. A. Farrer, England under Edward VII (London, 1922), pp. 127 f.; Mévil, pp. 269 f.; G.P., XX, 632 n., 664 n.; Raymond Poincaré, Au service de la France. Neuf années de souvenirs: I. Le lendemain d’Agadir, 1912 (Paris, 1926), p. 221. Later Lansdowne wrote on his dispatch to Bertie of May 17, 1905, as follows: “I suppose this was the origin of the offensive and defensive alliance” (B.D., III, 76, No. 94). His inference is probably correct only in part. The exchange of notes between Cambon and Lansdowne was sent to Bertie on May 31, 1905, and received by him on June 3. It is not apparent whether he communicated that exchange to the French government, although the “offer of assistance” which Delcassé has written of as having received only forty-eight hours before the cabinet meeting on June 6 may have been the notice of this exchange from Bertie. Word to Delcassé through the Governor-General of Algeria from King Edward, who was then cruising in the Mediterranean, urging the Foreign Minister not to resign also strengthened the latter’s hand. The King took that step on his own initiative (Newton, p. 342).