The War That Ended Peace: The Road to 1914 (64 page)

From the point of view of the Germans, the spring of 1905 was as good a time as any to seize the initiative internationally. The Entente between Britain and France was very new – it had only been signed the previous April – and had not yet been tested. Russia had been embroiled in the war with Japan since the start of 1904 and was in no position to come to the aid of its ally France. Moreover, the Dogger Bank incident of the previous October had shown how easily Russia and Britain might find themselves at war. The United States might be friendly and surely would support the same sort of Open Door policy in Morocco as it had proposed in China. The Kaiser had temporarily forgotten about the Yellow Peril and was now envisaging a future German–Japanese– American alliance straddling the world. Roosevelt, however, made it amply clear that China was one thing, Morocco another; he was not prepared to explain to his citizens why an Open Door policy in Morocco, which most of them had never heard of, was an American interest.
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Shortly after the Kaiser’s visit to Tangier he told the German ambassador in Washington: ‘I dislike taking a position on any matter like this unless I fully intend to back it up; and our interests in Morocco are not sufficiently great to make me feel justified in entangling our Government in this matter.’
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This was not the only instance of the German leadership getting things wrong during the first Morocco crisis.

Holstein, who took a harder line than either Bülow or the Kaiser, was convinced that he could use the crisis to put relations between France and Germany on a footing satisfactory to his country. The British had obligingly demonstrated at Fashoda that the French would respond to firmness; France had backed down and later come looking to its old enemy for friendship. He hoped to show the French, however, that they could not count on the British. ‘The French will only come closer to the idea of rapprochement with Germany’, he wrote during the later stages of the Morocco crisis, ‘when they have seen that English friendship … is not enough to gain Germany’s agreement to the French seizure of Morocco, but rather that Germany wishes to be loved on its own account.’
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France could be then made to renounce publicly all hopes of regaining Alsace and Lorraine and recognise that the Treaty of Frankfurt, which had ended the Franco-Prussian War, was permanent. Bringing France to heel would have a salutary effect on Italy as well; it had been showing disturbing signs of friendship with France.
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A test of strength with Britain was also overdue. The year before Germany had given Britain notice that it wanted to negotiate on all outstanding colonial issues but the British would only agree to discuss Egypt where Germany had some rights as one of Egypt’s many international lenders. If the Entente between Britain and France were broken, Holstein believed that an isolated Britain would be more amenable. Moreover, Holstein noted in the summer of 1904, Germany could not afford to appear weak: ‘If we submit to this brusque rejection of our
legitimate
demands on the part of England, then we can be certain that every demand made by Germany, or at least by the present German government, no matter where or to whom, will be rejected with similar nonchalance in the foreseeable future. The significance of the German–English negotiations goes far beyond the present case.’ He made the same argument over Morocco: ‘Not only for material reasons, but even more to preserve her prestige, Germany must oppose the intended annexation of Morocco.’
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In his more optimistic moments, Holstein dreamed of a complete reshuffling of the key players on the international scene. Those in both France and Britain who thought the Entente Cordiale a mistake would attack it at the first sign of trouble. France, Holstein confidently hoped, would cave in and leave Britain and become Germany’s ally. Russia
would then have little alternative but to follow suit; Germany had offered it a treaty, unsuccessfully, in 1904, but the time would come again. In the meantime the Kaiser appeared to have a good relationship with his cousin, the tsar, to whom he was sending helpful letters on how to conduct the war with Japan. In the long run, Europe might see a Triple Alliance of Germany, France and Russia which would isolate Britain much as France had been isolated after the Franco-Prussian War.

The situation in Morocco itself cried out for international involvement. The young sultan still did not have control of large parts of the country and foreign nationals, including Germans, repeatedly called out for reforms to bring law and order. In May 1904 El Raisuli had brazenly kidnapped a rich American businessman, Ion Perdicaris, and his stepson from their luxurious villa just outside Tangier and carried them off on horseback into the interior. Roosevelt promptly dispatched a part of the American navy which happened to be cruising in the South Atlantic to Morocco’s Atlantic coast and demanded the release of the two men, a position he kept to even as evidence emerged that Perdicaris might no longer be an American citizen. The Republican Party convention in Chicago that summer gave Roosevelt a rousing cheer for his message to the sultan: ‘We want either Perdicaris alive or Raisuli dead.’
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A thinner and sunburned Perdicaris appeared, along with his stepson, after a large ransom had been paid. In December that year the sultan, concerned that international interest was putting his country’s independence in jeopardy, suddenly ordered all foreign military missions to leave. Although the French forced him to cancel the order and agree to receive a French mission in his capital, Fez, the state and future of Morocco were now a matter of international discussion. In any case, as people now recalled, under an agreement signed at Madrid in 1880 by all the major European countries as well as the United States, the powers had equal rights in such areas as trade in Morocco.

The French had not helped their own case by ignoring this in a high-handed manner, especially where Germany was concerned. In June 1904, for example, they had made a loan to Morocco and arranged special preference for themselves on future ones. That autumn France signed an agreement with Spain to divide Morocco into spheres of influence without informing or consulting Germany. Delcassé, the
powerful French Foreign Minister, who was worried that part of the motive behind the German naval build-up was to challenge France for power in the Mediterranean and North Africa, was adamant about not negotiating with Germany over Morocco. One adviser, who had urged him in vain to talk to the Germans, complained that Delcassé simply called the Germans ‘swindlers’: ‘But, in heaven’s name, I’m not asking him for an exchange of romantic words or lovers’ rings but for a business discussion!’
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The French ambassador in Berlin sent repeated warnings back to Paris that France was playing with fire in Morocco and that Germany was becoming seriously annoyed. When the French mission arrived in Fez in January 1905 to press the sultan for concessions that would give France much greater power in his country, the Germans encouraged him to resist.
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In order to further what he saw as Germany’s interests, Holstein was prepared to risk war although his preference was to avoid it. (Apart from anything else, at the outbreak of hostilities Wilhelm would assume military command which, said Holstein, ‘since he is entirely incapable militarily, must lead to horrible catastrophes’.
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) Again the timing was good from Germany’s point of view: the French army was still badly demoralised after the Dreyfus affair; Russia was at war in the east; and the British army was recovering from the Boer War and in any case small. As for the British navy, as the German joke went, it had no wheels and so could not help in a quick land war.

Neither the Kaiser nor Bülow was as sanguine. The Kaiser, perhaps realising that his instincts were correct that the visit to Tangier would be trouble, was firm that he did not want a war. He blamed Bülow for forcing him to go, writing angrily that summer: ‘I landed because you wanted me to, in the interests of the Fatherland, mounted a strange horse in spite of the impediment that my crippled left arm caused to my riding, and the horse was within an inch of costing me my life, which was your stake in the game! I had to ride between Spanish anarchists because you wished it, and your policy was to profit by it!’
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The Chancellor himself had no regrets about trying to force France and Britain apart but he tended to think that a softer approach to France, offering to recognise its position in Morocco in exchange for compensation for Germany elsewhere, perhaps, might work as well as a bludgeon to break the Entente. And, as he pointed out to Holstein as
the crisis was reaching its culmination in February 1905: ‘Neither public opinion, Parliament, Princes, or even the army will have anything to do with a war over Morocco.’
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In a speech to his generals in January on the occasion of Schlieffen’s retirement, the Kaiser had made a similar point: ‘I tell you here, however, that I will never fight a war for the sake of Morocco. In saying this I am relying on your discretion, and it must not leave this room.’
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For the outside world, the divisions within the top German leadership were not apparent and the disagreements over tactics among them which led to Germany veering between bullying and reasonableness only deepened foreign mistrust of Germany’s intentions.

The British did not behave as Holstein had hoped. ‘The Tangier incident’, said Edward VII, ‘was the most mischievous and uncalled-for event which the German Emperor has ever been engaged in since he came to the Throne. It was also a political theatrical fiasco, and if he thinks he has done himself good in the eyes of the world he is very much mistaken.’
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The Times
called the visit ‘a great political demonstration’ and its correspondent in Vienna suggested that Bülow had seriously underestimated British determination to stand by France.
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The strong anti-German faction in the Foreign Office had no doubt that the sudden German interest in Morocco was an attempt by Germany to destroy the Entente and urged that Britain must stand firm. From the Admiralty, Fisher warned that Germany was probably after a port on Morocco’s Atlantic coast, something that would be ‘vitally detrimental’ to Britain. ‘This seems’, Fisher told Lansdowne, the Foreign Secretary, ‘a golden opportunity for fighting the Germans in alliance with the French …’
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He was not going to be the only one over the next few months to talk about the possibility of war.

Lansdowne was more restrained: he would contemplate war, but only if vital British interests were threatened.
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He shared, however, the general suspicion in London of Germany’s motives. Even before the crisis started he had been concerned by reports that Germany was looking for closer relations with both Britain’s ally Japan and the United States and he saw German diplomacy as generally motivated by a desire to obstruct Britain wherever possible. ‘We shall, I have little doubt’, he wrote to the British ambassador in Berlin that April, ‘find that the Emperor avails himself of every opportunity which he can make in
order to put spokes in our wheels.’
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Lansdowne’s policy as the crisis deepened was simultaneously to back the French but keep them from reckless moves. On 23 April he and his Prime Minister, Balfour, sent a strong message to Delcassé offering ‘all the support we can’.
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In May, Lansdowne agreed with Paul Cambon, the French ambassador in London, that the governments of Britain and France should be prepared to work together if the situation got worse, adding later that there should be ‘full and confidential discussion’.
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In spite of French pressure for a clearer commitment, even a defensive alliance, the Conservative government never went further than that.

Others did, however. From Paris, the strongly anti-German and headstrong British ambassador, Bertie, told a colleague in the Foreign Office, ‘Let Morocco be an open sore between France and Germany as Egypt was between France and ourselves,’ and went on to assure Delcassé that Britain would give France all the support in its power. There is evidence too that Fisher shared his views on the time being ripe to have a go at Germany with Delcassé.
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That April, Edward VII cruised the Mediterranean on his yacht, making a point of visiting only French ports and extended his stay at the North African port of Algiers by several days. On his way back to Britain, he spent a week in Paris, where he met Delcassé twice.
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Later that summer, when Edward visited the Continent to go to one of his favourite spas in Austria-Hungary, he pointedly avoided calling on the Kaiser. A Berlin paper had the British king saying: ‘How can I get to Marienbad without meeting my dear nephew? Flushing, Antwerp, Calais, Rouen, Madrid, Lisbon, Nice, Monaco – all extremely unsafe! Ha! I simply go via Berlin: then I am sure not to meet him!’
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In retaliation, the Kaiser refused to let his son the crown prince accept an invitation to visit Windsor in the autumn.
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After the Tangier visit the Germans kept the pressure up. They sent a mission to Fez to discuss a German loan and to encourage the sultan to resist French demands for reforms or greater control of his country; they put pressure on Spain to repudiate its earlier agreement with France to divide Morocco into spheres of influence; and they told the other powers including the United States that they wanted an international conference on the future of Morocco.
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Through secret contacts with the French Prime Minister, Maurice Rouvier, the Germans also let it be known that they wanted Delcassé dismissed.