kryzysy marokańskie (19)

Q The Fnuico-German Duel

roahftshing their respective spheres of influence in Morocco as agreed in their t ofOctober 3, 1904. In the finał voting over the crucial issue—control over the po" and finances—the Germans were supported only by Austria and Morocco i Rarety has a State not previously defeated in war suffered so complete and h ating a diplomatic defeat as Germany at Algeciras.

Germany’s opponents had played a skillful gamę, but the Germans themse were chiefly responsible for their diplomatic debacie. Their leadership was divid their policies ill-conceived, ill-executed, and inconsistent. The Holstein plan to Morocco as a wedge to break up the Anglo-French entente was based on thorou unrealistic assumptions, as were his expectations of intemational support at an temational conference on Morocco. His hope that French disillusionment with Bi ain and an amicable settlement with Germany under intemational auspices mi„ actually pave the way to a French-German rapprochement ignored the fundamen' difference between France’s attitude toward Britain and Germany. “France has o~ one enemy and that is Germany,” Baron Courcel, the former French ambassador: Berlin, told Salisbury at the time of the Kruger telegram crisis. “You can adjust yo policy accordingly.”

The kaiser’s effort to use Morocco as a steppingstone to agreements with b France and Russia doomed whatever chances the Germans might have had of get“~ colonial concessions through a bargain over Morocco, but his policy too was th oughly unrealistic. France, now so favorably aligned with Britain as well as Ru would never have agreed to abandon Britain in favor of Germany or admit Germ into its partnership with Russia. And the Russians depended far too much on Angl French financial markets to risk concluding a treaty of their own with Germa although they madę good use of German offers to ensure a benevolent attitude the part of Paris and London.

Throughout the Morocco crisis the one policy Germany could have adopt: with any real prospect of success was the threat or actual use of force: force compel Britain and France to allot them a share of Morocco or significant colon concessions elsewhere; force to browbeat Russia into an alliance, although the val of such a partnership would have been dubious at best; or, finally, force to achie^-German hegemony over Europę by going to war, which most military authoriti and certainly Germany’s military leadership at that time believed Germany coul have won. That Germany did not go to war in 1905-1906, and the actual condu: of German policy during the crisis, argues against the widely accepted belief i the war in 1914, which Germany waged under incomparably worse circumstance was deliberately provoked by the Germans as part of a carefully conceived plan t conąuer the world. Theodore Roosevelt was nearer the mark when he wrote to British ambassador in Washington in May of 1905: “If the Kaiser ever causes trouble it will be from jumpiness and not because of long-thought-out and deliberate pur pose.”

X he long-range importance of the Morocco crisis was not Germany’s defeat but the crystallization of the anti-German alignments that were to prevail in World Wa I. The British and French govemments entered into military and naval talks to con-vert their entente into an outright alliance; the first serious moves were madę toward the Anglo-Russian entente of 1907; and ltaly’s unreliability as a partner in the TripP* Alliance was clearly exposed. Left with only the dubious support of Austria, Ger-

ny from this time forward was compelled to cater to the Habsbtng empie.alicft rendered increasingly desperate by the threat of national revołutions at Marne abroad. The stage was set for the Bosnian crisis of ł908 and the cvcnts ofJUf 1914.

□ The Anglo-Russian Entente

On August 12, 1905, while the Russo-Japanese War was still in progress, the British irenewed their defensive alliance with Japan, which was now extended to indude India. This treaty was obviously intended to discourage Russian advances in East Asia aftcr the tsarist empire’s recovery from defeat, but the British also hoped this taf firmation of their ties with Japan would secure milder peace terms for Russia and thereby lessen the danger of a Russian tum to Germany. The situation was delicate in the extreme because of Japan’s sensitivity to any form of foreign pressure. The British were therefore as relieved as they were delighted to find that America’s President Roosevelt was willing to mediate between Russia and Japan, and it was in America that peace negotiations were conducted and a finał peace treaty signcd on September 5, 1905.

To further stabilize Russo-Japanese relations and the situation in East Asia, the British and French extended loans to Japan as well as Russia and encouraged negotiations between the two recent antagonists, which led to the Russo-Japanese agreement of July 30, 1907 (see pp. 327-328). Ostensibly this agreement was a mutual guarantee for the preservation of the status quo in East Asia, but secret articles provided for dividing Manchuria into spheres of influence between Russia and Japan, which were henceforth to cooperate in consolidating their positions and keeping other po wers out of that region.

The policies of Britain and France in dealing with Russia at this time were designed primarily to błock Germany’s ostentatious efforts to lure Russia into the German camp: hence their mediation on behalf of Russia in dealing with Japan, their immense loans to a bankrupt Russian govemment, and their contribution to stabi-lizing Russia’s position in East Asia. For the French, preserving the Russian alliance undiluted by Germany was critical to their national security, but for France as for Britain it was also important to discourage Russian ambitions in East Asia and fbcns Russian attention once again on the problems of the West, where Russian support would be of greatest value to them.

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It was also critical to the French to settle differences between their oki: new allies, and even while negotiating their own entente with Britain, they' promoting a comparable entente between Britain and Russia. For a time the i cles to such a settlement seemed insuperable, but Russia’s defeat in East Asia a Britain’s fears of Germany madę both govemments increasingly receptrwe to c prochement. Britain’s willingness to consider a settlement with Russia was not fected by a change of govemment in December 1905, when the Cooseratfrci ministration of Arthur Balfour gave way to a Liberał ministry under the I of Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman and Sir Edward Grey replaced Lansdowoe a eign secretary.

Grey had served as parliamentary undersecretary for foreign; bery, and like Rosebery his conception of British interests abroad >