In almost every newspaper article which I have read on the Caillaux drama one sentence has invariably amused me. “The question of Agadir,” we read, in French and English papers both, “is too fresh in the reader’s mind for any exhaustive reference to it here to be necessary.” But memories are short in these fast-living days, and though the history of Agadir is recent history, no story of the Caillaux drama can be complete without recalling it at length. For one of the accusations against Monsieur Caillaux as a politician which the Figaro made constantly is that Monsieur Caillaux made mistake on mistake, and was misled by his hatred of the Ministers who had been instrumental in the original and comparative settlement of the Moroccan difficulties, to do grave wrong to France over the Agadir matter. [Pg 151]
His hatred of his parliamentary opponents, it was said at the time, was very nearly instrumental in creating serious international complications. Further imprudence was shown by his endeavour to palliate the effect of his first ill-considered act, and he was finally forced to consent to concessions on behalf of France which France need not have made at all if Monsieur Caillaux had been more prudent from the beginning.
This, stripped of all vituperation, is the accusation which Monsieur Caillaux has to answer before the tribunal of history. Let us look into it. In order to do so we must go back to the Act of Algeciras. It will be remembered that the Act of Algeciras gave France the right of policing Morocco because of its neighbourhood to Algiers. Three years after the Act of Algeciras French troops were in occupation of certain portions of Moroccan territory, and the jingo party, the Pan-Germanists, in Germany were protesting with heat against this military occupation.
The peace party in Germany, however, had other views. There was a feeling that an understanding on the basis of the act of Algeciras [Pg 152] between France and Germany might lead to a weakening of the Entente between France and Great Britain, and be useful economically to German enterprise.
On February 8, 1909, when Monsieur Clemenceau was at the head of the French Government with Monsieur Stephen Pichon as his Foreign Minister, Germany recognized, more freely than it had recognized before, the interests of France in Morocco for the maintenance of order, and promised collaboration economically. A secret letter changed hands, confirming this agreement, and admitting that Germany should remain disinterested in the politics of Morocco. In this same letter it was admitted also that the economic interests of France in Morocco were more important than the economic interests of Germany. The importance of this letter rested of course on the fact that it practically entailed the suppression of immediate friction between the two countries.
The Clemenceau Cabinet worked hard to carry the good work further still, so that the spirit of this Franco-German understanding should be [Pg 153] extended to the Congo. The French representative of the bondholders of the Moroccan debt, Monsieur Guiot, who had been in the French Foreign Office, paid a visit to Berlin, and the result of his negotiations with the German Foreign Office in the Wilhelmstrasse was a memorandum dated June 2, 1909, by which it was decided to create a Franco-German Company for the purpose of exploiting certain concessions. On June 5 the French Minister for Foreign Affairs, Monsieur Pichon, took counsel with the French Colonial Minister, Monsieur Milliés-Lacroix, on the advantages and disadvantages of this Franco-German collaboration.
At the end of July 1909, the Clemenceau Cabinet fell. Monsieur Briand became Prime Minister and retained Monsieur Pichon at the Quai d’Orsay, but Monsieur Clemenceau dropped out of the Cabinet and Monsieur Caillaux was no longer Minister of Finance.
It is not too much to say that the Clemenceau-Caillaux alliance dates from this little upheaval in French internal politics, and it was at this point that Monsieur Caillaux’s enmity to Monsieur Briand and Monsieur Pichon first led him astray. [Pg 154]
On August 2, 1909, the N’Goko Sanga Company, in reply to a letter from the Minister for Foreign Affairs offered to give up, against a substantial indemnity, a portion of the territory for which it held concessions. A commission was formed to discuss terms, but it was not till April 29, 1910, that the amount of the indemnity was definitely stated. The indemnity was to be F2,393,000 or ￡95,720.
On February 17, 1910, after the French and German Governments had signified in October of the year before their approval of the provisional agreement between Monsieur Guiot and the Wilhelmstrasse, the Moroccan Company of Public Works was formed. It had a capital of F2,000,000, fifty per cent. of which was in French hands, twenty-six per cent. in German hands, and the remaining twenty-four per cent. in the hands of the other Powers who had signed the Act of Algeciras. Then parliamentary politics in France had their say in the matter, and the Radicals, Socialists and Radical-Socialists in France, with Monsieur Caillaux in the foreground of debate, made use of the question of the N’Goko Sanga indemnity as a weapon in Parliament against Monsieur Briand. [Pg 155]
In consequence of this, the summer of 1910 did not bring with it any definite advance in the Franco-German understanding which had appeared to be so full of promise. In November 1910, after the strike of railway men had weakened the authority of the French Government somewhat, the N’Goko Sanga question came up in Parliament once more, and the Franco-German understanding on Moroccan affairs and the affairs of the Congo became enveloped in an immense haze of words. By February 1911 the German negotiators began to show impatience, although on or about the 15th of the month the Imperial Government had, to all practical intent, agreed to allow, to a Franco-German company, concessions in the German Cameroons. A fortnight after that, on February 28, 1911, Monsieur Briand and his Cabinet were forced to resign. On March 3, Monsieur Monis became Prime Minister of France, and Monsieur Caillaux was his Minister of Finance. The Monis Cabinet found itself weighted [Pg 156] with immense responsibility. The situation in Morocco was extremely difficult, and the French Government found itself on the horns of a dilemma. On the one side were the promises made and the engagements formed by the Governments in France which had preceded Monsieur Monis, owing to which the Monis Cabinet was obliged, if it wished to remain true to the policy on which it had gained power, to break with the line of conduct followed by former French Cabinets in relation to Germany for two years. On the other side was the very real danger of breaking, without any other reason than that of internal politics, with the pacific policy of the last twenty-four months.
The internal troubles in Morocco, making French military action a necessity, put the French Government in the awkward position of giving Germany the appearance of a real grievance by the military steps which had to be taken, and the Pan-Germanists of course jumped at the pretext for accusing France of laying forcible hands, or attempting to lay forcible hands on Morocco in spite of all past treaties and agreements and without ensuring to Germany the share which had been promised her in 1909. [Pg 157]
I would ask the reader of this book who has had the strength of will to struggle with the tortuous paths of Franco-German difficulties which led to the Agadir climax, to memorize this situation for the sake of a clearer comprehension of what follows. On the one side two years of Anglo-French negotiations which promised comparative peace for the future; on the other, the sudden breaking off of all negotiations and apparent disregard on the part of France for everything which had smoothed over the situation before. The fact that the change of policy had become a necessity owing to Cabinet changes in France and the promises made by members of the new Cabinet to their constituents could not be offered as a reason. At the best they could be offered as an excuse, and it was this necessity of making excuses which enabled the German Government to voice the claim for compensation which was to result in a territorial loss which France will never forgive the Ministers who were responsible, and which will make it difficult for either of them to take leading parts in France’s government again for many years to come. [Pg 158]
The first thing which the Monis Cabinet did was to bulldose (it seems the only word to use) the question of the Franco-German understandings in Congo and Cameroon. This measure was taken in spite of warnings in high quarters in France. President Fallières is known to have been against the measure and to have expressed his views as forcibly as the French Constitution allowed him to express them, and Monsieur Conty, the director of political affairs in the French Foreign Office, was distinctly adverse to the measure as well. Monsieur Conty knew that for twenty years past, one of the principal pre-occupations of the German Government was the African question, and he knew that the German colonial party was very warmly supported by the Pan-Germanists, and had considerable influence with the Kaiser himself.
On these grounds in a note which he handed to Monsieur Cruppi, Monsieur Conty (who is now in 1914 the French Minister at Pekin) pointed out the wire-pulling powers of the German interests in the Cameroon and Congo companies, and warned the French Government that there was grave danger to peace in ignoring their claims. He pointed out that while the [Pg 159] Kaiser was known to be pacific and conciliatory at the time, he might be forced by the Pan-German and colonial interests to demonstrate again as he had demonstrated once before at Tangier, and that the result was almost bound to be France’s abandonment to Germany of advantages which she might, by a show of generosity now, keep secure.
How right Monsieur Conty was Monsieur Caillaux himself was obliged to admit nearly a year later when in the Senate he said: “I do not deny that the rupture of the Franco-German partnership in Cameroon and the Congo had diplomatic consequences.” Unfortunately at this time (March 1911) the principal pre-occupation of the Monis Cabinet was its desire to break away from the policy of the Cabinet of Monsieur Briand to which, logically, it should have adhered.
Monsieur Caillaux was credited at the time with one of those famous epigrammatic outbursts of his which have done him harm on various occasions, when, as this one must be, they are quoted against him. “We really can’t have Briand’s policy mounted in diamonds and wear it as a [Pg 160] scarfpin,” Monsieur Caillaux is reported to have said. The epigram, whether he made it or not—and I believe that he did make it—expresses very neatly—far too neatly—the chief motive which underlay the policy of the Monis Cabinet at that time, and which was the main cause of that Cabinet’s stubborn opposition to the advice of Monsieur Conty and the advice of the President of the Republic himself.
On March 29, in spite of an eloquent and perfectly constitutional warning from Monsieur Fallières at a Cabinet Council, the Colonial Minister in the Monis Cabinet, Monsieur Messimy, was instructed to declare the consortium in Cameroon and the Congo arrangement impossible. He made this declaration before the Budget committee at the end of March and to the Chamber of Deputies on April 4. On April 3, the French Government learned of serious trouble in Morocco. Several tribes were rising, and military intervention became inevitable. German irritation was growing. The German object, or at all events one of Germany’s main objects, in the discussions and negotiations which began [Pg 161] in 1909 and broke off so suddenly and so dangerously in 1911 had been to ensure a German share in the public works which were becoming needful in Morocco. Germany had received as the price of a concession to France an assurance that this share would be granted. In the secret letter, which I have mentioned already, Germany admitted the pre-eminence of French interests in Morocco, and approved the constitution of a society of public works in which the German share of capital was to be much smaller than the French share.
When the Monis-Caillaux-Cruppi Cabinet took the reins in France, the German Government asked the French Government to intervene semi-officially so that the promised interests of the German shareholders should be properly protected. The French Government refused. Such intervention would be equivalent, it was explained, to admitting privilege or monopoly, and such an admission was against all Radical principles.
The German Government, with great patience, pointed out that what was really required was some sort of a guarantee that a French tender should not be accepted to the prejudice of the German share of the [Pg 162] concessions. The question was one which lent itself to much discussion, many words, long correspondence and wearisome delays, and presently the question of the railways complicated it still further. In the secret letter of 1909 it had been stipulated that the directors of the Moroccan railways should be French. The German Government now claimed that this clause should be taken to mean that only the directors of the railway lines should be Frenchmen and that a large proportion of the subordinate railway servants should be German. Here again Monsieur Caillaux’s unfortunate propensity for epigram did not forsake him. “We can’t have German stationmasters in spiked helmets in the railway stations of Morocco,” he said.
The French Government made no counter-proposal with regard to the management of the Moroccan railways, and the Berlin Government remained silent on the question. This silence gave all thinking men considerable grounds for uneasiness. It was felt that a very thinly veiled antagonism on all questions of detail was making itself very apparent at the Wilhelmstrasse. There was no definite decision made with regard to Moroccan mining rights either, and it was just about this time that the claims and concessions of the Mannesmann Brothers began to be spoken of. [Pg 163]
The situation became quite critical, and there is no doubt that the critical trend of the situation was due very largely to the determination of the Monis Government not to “have Monsieur Briand’s policy mounted as a scarfpin.” If Monsieur Cruppi and his colleagues had been able to approve the convention with Germany for N’Goko Sanga and the Congo which Monsieur Pichon had prepared, there would have been no excuse for the remark which was made soon afterwards to the French Ambassador in Berlin by Herr von Kiderlen Waechter. “When the railway question fell through I saw that you had made your minds up not to work in concert with us in any matter whatsoever.”
Things were going from bad to worse in Morocco itself, and French troops had to be sent on the road to Fez. On April 3, 1911, the French Government ordered French troops to co-operate with the Sultan in the chastisement of rebel bands. On April 17 (President Fallières had left [Pg 164] for Tunis on the 15th), the French Government placed 2400 men at the disposal of General Moinier. On April 23, a column was sent to the suburbs of Fez and on May 21 the French tricolour floated beneath the walls of the Moroccan capital.
The German Government said nothing, but a rumble of popular displeasure was heard all over Germany. Herr von Kiderlen Waechter and the German Chancellor received in stony silence the communication made by the French Amb............