Note 139 — Chapter IV

Count Witte writes in his Memoirs (New York, 1921), p. 178, that when Delcassé came to St. Petersburg in August, 1899, he sought means of accomplishing this end, and urged the Russian government to push the construction of the Orenburg-Tashkent Railway so that in emergency Russia could threaten India. Leon y Castillo, Spanish ambassador at Paris and an intimate friend of the Minister, likewise stated in round terms to Radowitz, German ambassador at Madrid, in May, 1899, that Delcassé belonged to the party desirous of a closer understanding with Germany (Radowitz to Hohenlohe, May 28, 1899, G.P., XV, 125 ff., No. 4210. On the other hand, Sir Thomas Barclay records that upon Delcassé’s departure for St. Petersburg in August, 1899, the latter said to him that “there was nothing he [Delcassé] personally would welcome more warmly than a state of feeling which would permit the two Governments [French and British] to negotiate a solution of their outstanding difficulties in a friendly give-and-take spirit” (Barclay, p. 170).