courage in taking an untried man to direct the handling of the delicate questions which were arising in Africa. A week after his accession to office, in answer to an "interpellation" on African affairs, he delivered a speech against the Anglo-Congolese agreement of May 12, 1894, which left no doubt as to the French attitude on the subject.

This lease by Great Britain, as such, he pointed out, implied a "prise de possession" of territory which was still a part of Ottoman dominions, of the integrity of which she and France were guarantors. France could not acquiesce in such a violation of international law; nor could he agree to England and the Congo State settling any question of the boundaries of the territory of the Congo State without reference to France, who had a right of preemption over it. His colleague, M. Delcassé, had at once taken measures to send a mission to the territory in question, to ensure the maintenance and defence of French rights. This vigorous attitude marked the new feeling of self-confidence, already referred to, which was maturing with the development of the Russian entente. M. Hanotaux' speech produced a great sensation in London, and the following day, M. Hanotaux relates, Lord Dufferin expostulated with him about its comminatory character and intimated that he had an ultimatum in his pocket, which, however, adds M. Hanotaux, he did not deliver! In fact England gave way. The Foreign Office, evidently, did not consider it advisable to publish the correspondence and arguments at the time (1894), and it was not till 1898, when they were printed as an appendix to a White Paper about the Fashoda affair, that

the public knew about the gaffe we committed in 1894.

I cannot help thinking that if the public had been taken into the confidence of the Foreign Office and been at once informed of what took place in 1894 a frank discussion might have ensued, which would have cleared up the situation and prevented much of the misunderstanding which afterwards resulted from imperfect knowledge of the circumstances.

I have no hesitation in saying that, subject to explanatory justifications which seem never to have been given, the agreement of May 12, 1894, was one of the wildest pieces of diplomatic jugglery on record. Under it Great Britain, as a party in her own right, granted, as she had no locus standi to do, "a lease to His Majesty King Leopold II., sovereign of the independent Congo State, of the territories hereinafter defined, to be by him occupied and administered on the conditions and for the period of time hereafter laid down "-territories which Great Britain had neither occupied nor acquired. Even if she had bartered them in the name of Egypt, whose rights. she merely reserved, there still remained the question of the abandonment and the extent to which Egyptian sovereignty over the Sudan had been lost. In his 1894 speech M. Hanotaux did not mention this point, and it was only later that the "terra nullius " theory was relied upon as a justification for the hoisting of the French flag at Fashoda. Till 1898, that is for sixteen years, from the Mahdist outbreak to the battle of Omdurman, the Sudan had been under neither British nor Egyptian rule.1

The Egyptian garrisons and civil population had been "withdrawn." Sir Reginald Wingate estimated that the total garrisons in the Sudan,

M. Marchand's mission was sent out at a time when the Sudan had already been thirteen years in a state of abandonment, and it reached Fashoda two months before the battle of Omdurman had restored it to Egyptian dominion. This fact and the episodes of 1894, which show British policy at that time to have been as weak as it was "incorrect," are extenuating circumstances on the French side in a matter in which neither party can boast of having played a "beau rôle." By dint of trying to circumvent each other the two Foreign Offices brought their respective nations to the brink of the most foolish war any two civilised States ever seriously contemplated.

including General Hicks' army and the force sent under General Baker to Suakim, amounted to about 55,000 men; of these about 12,000 were killed. The rest seem to have melted away, and only some 11,000 returned to Egypt. See Lord Cromer, "Egypt," p. 485.

CHAPTER XIV

NATIONAL WRATH

WHILE the public agitation over the Fashoda incident was becoming less acute in France, in England the autumn political speeches kept it up. A letter to the Temps by an excellent, but in this matter indiscreet patriot, M. Deloncle (now one of the warmest champions of the entente), proposing the establishment of French educational centres at Khartoum and Fashoda, was pounced upon as reflecting French feeling and gave rise to very serious observations by Sir Edmund Monson, our Ambassador, at the annual banquet of the British Chamber of Commerce a few days later (December 6, 1898). He referred specifically to this proposal as an instance of a policy of pin-pricks" which must inevitably perpetuate irritation across the Channel. The responsible French Press scouted the idea that M. Deloncle's proposal had any official countenance and nothing more was heard of it. The passage in Sir Edmund Monson's speech, however, went far beyond the scope of M. Deloncle's proposal. It ran :

"I would earnestly ask those who directly or indirectly, either as officials in power, or as unofficial exponents of public opinion, are responsible for the direction of the national policy, to discountenance and to abstain from the continuance of that policy of pin-pricks which, while it can only procure ephemeral gratification to a short-lived ministry,

must inevitably perpetuate across the Channel an irritation. which a high-spirited nation must eventually feel to be intolerable. I would entreat them to resist the temptation to try to thwart British enterprise by petty manoeuvres; such as I grieve to see suggested by the proposal to set up educational establishments as rivals to our own in the newly-conquered provinces of the Sudan. Such ill-considered provocation, to which I confidently trust no official countenance will be given, might well have the effect of converting that policy of forbearance from taking the full advantage of our recent victories and our present position, which has been enunciated by our highest authority, into the adoption of measures which, though they evidently find favour with no inconsiderable party in England, are not, I presume, the object at which French sentiment is aiming."

This passage was obviously inserted under instructions from London. It was a discordant note in the harmony of the speech, and in the French rendering it was toned down with a compliment to M. Delcassé, whose conciliatory attitude the Ambassador commended with gratitude. It was the only passage which could be called " intempestif," the term applied to it in France.

In 1897 I had been elected to the vice-presidency of the Chamber of Commerce, and, on expiry of my two years' tenure of the office, the chances were that I should occupy the presidency for the two following years. The British Chamber of Commerce in Paris has always been the most responsible British body in France, and its chairman has always been treated by both the British and French Governments as voicing the commercial and industrial interests of Great Britain in France. Hence there has, of course, been a more or less intimate connection between the Chamber of Commerce and the Embassy. As vice