Page:Dictionary of National Biography, Second Supplement, volume 1.djvu/615

 with the aspiration. M. Delcasse's policy soon bore practical fruit ; on 14 Oct. 1903 an arbitration treaty was signed by the two governments. Its provisions did not go far, but it indicated a new spirit in the international relation. The Anglo-French The entente agreement, which was concluded cordial e, on 8 April 1904 between M. 8 April loo-i. Delcasse and Lord Lansdowne, the English foreign secretary, was an instrument of genuine consequence. It formally terminated the long series of difficulties which had divided England and France in many parts of the world, and was a guarantee against their recurrence. The king's grace of manner both as guest and host of President Loubet helped to create a temper favourable to the ' entente cordiale.' But no direct responsibility for its initiation or conclusion belonged to him. Some French journalists who were oblivi- ous of his aloofness from the detail of state business placed the understanding to his credit, and bestowed pa'SEteur.- *>*. th *J {. '. le roi pacificateur. The title is sym- bolically just but is misleading if it be taken to imply any personal control of diplomacy.

It was not the king's wish to withhold from Germany and the German emperor, whatever the difficulties between the two governments, those attentions which it had been his habit to exchange with his nephew from the opening of the emperor's reign. On 29 June 1904 the king sailed for Kiel in his yacht Victoria and Albert, attended by an escort of naval vessels. He was received by the emperor with much cor- diality, visited under his nephew's guidance the German dockyards, attended a regatta off Kiel, and lunched at Hamburg with the burgomaster. In his intercourse with the German emperor it flattered the king's pride to give to their meetings every show of dignity, and contrary to his usual practice a cabinet minister now joined his suite. The presence of Lord Selborne, first lord of the admiralty, gave the expedi- tion something of the formal character of a friendly naval demonstration, but no political significance attached to the inter- change of civilities. An arbitration treaty with Germany of the same tenour as that with France was signed on 12 July 1904, but such a negotiation was outside the king's sphere of action. The failure of the Kiel visit to excite any ill-feeling in France indicated the purely external part which his charm of manner and speech was known to play in international affairs.

The king's habitual appetite for foreign tours was whetted by his experience in Hanue of the the spring of 1903. While king's foreign constant movement character- travel, i^ his life at home, and a business-like distribution of his time enabled him to engage in an unending round of work and pleasure through the greater part of his reign, he spent on an average some three months of each year out of his dominions. His comprehensive travels did not embrace the colonies or depen- dencies outside Europe, but his son and heir, who had visited the colonies in 1901, made a tour through India (Nov. 1905-May 1906), and the king thus kept vicariously in touch with his Indian as well as with his colonial subjects. His travelling energy was freely lavished on countries nearer at hand. Five or six weeks each spring were spent at Biarritz, and a similar period each autumn at Marienbad. These sojourns were mainly designed in the interests of health. But with them were combined four cruises in the Mediterranean (1905, 6, 7, and 1909) and one cruise in the North Sea (1908), all of which afforded opportunities of pleasurable recreation, and of meetings with foreign rulers. In addition, he paid in the winter of 1907 a visit to Prussia and in the summer of 1908 one to Russia. Such frequent wanderings from home greatly increased the king's foreign reputa- tion. It was only occasionally that he paid visits to foreign courts in the panoply of state. He travelled for the most part incognito. Few episodes, how- ever, of his migrations escaped the notice of the journalists, who sought persistently to confirm the erroneous impression that he was invariably engaged on a diplomatic mission.

In Paris he resumed his old career. Each year, on his way to or from the south, HI* social ke revisited the city, seeing old circle in friends and indulging in old Paris. amusements. In meetings with the president of the French republic and his ministers he repeated his former assurances of amity. When M. Loubet retired in January 1906, he showed equal warmth of feeling for his successor, M. Failures, to whom he paid the courtesy of a state visit (3 May). In the summer of 1908 he had the satisfaction of entertaining the new president in London with the same ceremony as was accorded to his predecessor in 1904. He was loyal to all his French acquaintances new and old. On M. Delcasse's