Page:The Myth of a Guilty Nation.djvu/100

 French Government was responsive to this sentiment. It knew, as Baron Guillaume remarked at the time of the Agadir incident, that "a war would be the death-knell of the Republic." M. Caillaux seems to have measured the feelings of his countrymen quite well. Baron Guillaume says that after the dispatch of the "Panther," the British Cabinet's first proposal was that the British and French Governments should each immediately send two men-of-war to Agadir; and that the French Cabinet strongly objected. Again, he says in his report of 8 July, 1911, "I am persuaded that Messrs. Caillaux and de Selves regret the turn given to the Moroccan affair by their predecessors in office. They were quite ready to give way, provided they could do so without humiliation."

The speech of Mr. Lloyd George at the Mansion House, however, which was taken by the French (and how correctly they took it became apparent on 3 August, 1914) as a definite assurance of British support against Germany, gave the militarist-nationalist party the encouragement to go ahead and dominate the domestic politics of France. It put the Poincaré-Millerand-Delcassé element on its feet and stiffened its resolution, besides clearing the way in large measure

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