Note 230 — Chapter V

Eckardstein gives the following story:

Early in July, soon after the arrival of the Moroccan embassy in London, Sir Arthur Nicolson, British minister in Morocco, told him that France was intriguing in that land for the establishment of a protectorate. At Lansdowne’s request he suggested the co-operation of Great Britain and Germany for the maintenance of the status quo in Morocco. Then he touched upon the subject of a common Anglo-German peaceful penetration of that country, which should be inaugurated by a commercial treaty with the Sultan. Between the two European states an agreement should be made to determine which concessions each should receive. He proposed that Germany be given, among others, the right of supplying all railway and electrical materials and of installing them, and that all further political, financial, or economic measures should be carried through by the two Powers together. Eckardstein states that he sent a long telegram to Berlin in regard to this conversation, but received no reply (Eckardstein, II, 357 f.). The editors of G.P., however, found no such telegram (G.P., XVII, 333 n.), nor is there any mention of the proposal in any of the documents published by them or by the British. Still the offer may have been made, as will be evident later. Hammann, director of the press department in the German foreign office at that time, has also written that on the dismissal of el-Menebhi, the British government proposed common action to the German government, but that it was refused (Otto Hammann, Zur Vorgeschichte des Weltkrieges. Erinnerungen aus den Jahren 1897-1906 [Berlin, 1918], pp. 139 f.).