Page:Morel-The Black Mans Burden.djvu/92

 elsewhere. Here I can but summarise it, and the world-events linked up with it.

In 1898 the last attempt on the part of France to dispute the British position in the valley of the Nile ended with Colonel Marchand's withdrawal, under threat of war, from Fashoda. The direction of France's foreign affairs passed henceforth into the restless and ambitious hands of M. Delcassé. The next year—the year of the Hague Peace Conference—marked the opening rounds of the Boer War, and the year after witnessed the accession of Edward VII. In the state of international anarchy to which the game of high politics and high finance had reduced Europe since the Berlin Congress of 1878, the entanglements of one nation were the opportunity of another. Smarting under the Fashoda rebuff, the French Government felt the need of doing something disagreeable to Britain, which was still the "traditional foe" in the eyes of an active and powerful school of French politicians. It hoped to restore French "prestige" by the same stroke. Successive British Cabinets had strenuously resisted every attempt on the part of France and Spain to acquire an exclusive political footing in Morocco. In defending stubbornly the independence of Morocco from interested encroachments, British official policy was no more altruistic than German, when Germany for her own ends pursued a like one. But in both cases it was a policy which corresponded to the interests of the Moroccan people, whereas the opposing policy took no account whatever of those interests. So long as Britain maintained that policy she was protecting the natives. When she abandoned it in the circumstances presently to be recalled, she sacrificed the interests of the natives to her own purposes. The utilitarian object of the British Government in defending Morocco diplomatically against French aggression was a double one: that of preserving the "open door" for trade; but, above all, that of preventing the Mediterranean coast line of Morocco from falling into the hands of a first-class naval Power. Such an event would, according to accepted strategy, have weakened British naval influence in the Mediterranean by impairing the strategic value of Gibraltar, thereby threatening the route to India. By one of the most subtle exhibitions of diplomatic finesse which modern diplomatic annals record,