CHAPTER VII.
The Story of Morocco.
Condemnation of European political action in Africa is often attributed to the prevalence in the critics of two erroneous conceptions which are held to vitiate their judgment. One of them is the belief, which the critics are supposed to entertain, that native government is without serious blemish, and that the general condition of the population under native government is one of beatitude. The other is the alleged incapacity of the critics to appreciate the automatic and irresistible driving force of modern political and commercial progression, which, it is argued, makes the extension of European political control over these countries simply unavoidable. Now, people are, no doubt, to be met with who do think that it is possible in these days to build a Chinese wall round a certain area of the earth's surface. But those who stress the fallacies of uninformed commentators know perfectly well that they are avoiding the real issue. This is not European political action in itself, but the hypocrisy and injustice which so often distinguish it, the murderous cruelty which so often stains its methods, and the abominable selfishness which usually characterises its objects.
It is sheer cant to apologise for these things on the ground of the expansive commercialism of modern Europe, and it is worse than cant to do so on the ground of native misgovernment. The misgovernment of modern European statesmen has brought Europe to a state of misery and wretchedness unequalled in the history of the world. The social system of Europe is responsible for more permanent unhappiness, affecting a larger aggregate of humanity, than that which any native tyrant has ever succeeded in inflicting.
The story of the French absorption of Morocco has given rise to much of this cant-talk. A disturbed Morocco on the frontiers of French Algeria was an undoubted inconvenience to the French. As with all loosely governed States in a condition much resembling the Europe of feudal times, the central authority at Fez exercised very little power over the nomadic tribesmen of the borders, to whom frontier lines existing on paper meant nothing, as they drove their flocks and herds to fresh pasturages. This state of affairs led to frontier "incidents." in the vague and indeterminate region separating the Morocco and Algerian frontiers. These "incidents" were quite unimportant in themselves, but they gave the military wing of the Frencn Algerian administration the necessary excuses for military action, which professional soldiers will ever, and necessarily, take. These frontier skirmishes were never more than a pretext put forward in Paris and Algiers to cover political designs. If the interminable public professions of amity and friendship towards the Moroccan Government which were the stock-in-trade of French politicians for many years had contained the least germ of sincerity, the fate of Morocco would have been very different—and so, probably, would have been the fate of Europe. France had many opportunities of proving herself a true friend of the Moroccan people. She could have strengthened and purified their Government, developed every legitimate French interest in the country without violence, and gradually established an effective direction over that country's internal affairs. The French Government could have done this while safeguarding the independence of the people and of their institutions. In so doing it might well have succeeded in recreating under the stimulus of French imagination and French genius the latent qualities of a race once great and powerful; revived the glories of an art whose achievements, still exquisite in their partial decay, are among the noblest monuments in the world; given a renewed impetus to that intensive cultivation which in Moorish hands once made of southern Spain the fairest and most fertile spot in Europe. The French Government chose a different path, a treacherous, selfish, and a bloody one, which it concealed as far as possible from its own people and pursued in defiance of repeated protests from the French Chamber. In treading that path the French Government was from 1904 onwards consistently supported by the British Foreign Office. I have told the story at length 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, the British Government subsequently found the means of reconciling that major interest with the desertion of Morocco.
This determination on the part of the British Government to prevent the absorption of Morocco ran counter to French colonial ambitions. The project of a great North African Empire which should ultimately equal in importance the lost French Empire of the Indies had long haunted the imagination of the French Imperialist school. Algeria and Tunis had already been acquired. Egypt was henceforth and finally excluded from the picture. Morocco remained—the richest portion of the Northern Continent, a great and beautiful country which, with its favourable climatic conditions, its magnificent spinal column in the Atlas mountain chains, with their numerous rivers, varied elevations and fertile soil, can grow anything from ground nuts to tea, from wheat to Indian corn, contains valuable mineral deposits, produces the finest horses in the world, and could sustain innumerable flocks and herds.
To "jump the claim" while the British were fully occupied in suppressing the Boer Republics was the French Government's plan. But Spain, with her long historical connection and her settlements on the Coast, could not be set aside. Italy, still sore over Tunis (see next chapter) must have her pound of African flesh before France could feel free to move. Then there was Germany. German interests in Morocco were purely commercial. Like Britain she stood for the "open door," and had strongly supported the diplomatic mission Lord Salisbury sent to Fez in 1892. Her explorers had made notable contributions to our knowledge of Morocco. Her Government had maintained direct diplomatic representations with the Moorish Court since 1873, and had concluded a commercial Treaty with the Sultan. This Treaty the German Government had submitted before ratifying it to the signatory Powers of the Madrid Convention of 1880. In short, Morocco was an international question, and had been since the first International Conference on its affairs met at Madrid in 1880, the Convention drawn up on that occasion assuring to all the Powers represented "the most favoured nation treatment."
M. Delcassé set himself the task of removing, so far as possible, the obstacles to his schemes arising out of this situation. If he could "square" Spain, Italy, and Germany he would risk the consequences of confronting Britain, whose unpopularity at that moment was universal, with an accomplished fact. Italy, he disposed of by giving her carte blanche in Tripoli in return for a free hand in Morocco (see next chapter). To Spain he proposed (1901) that Morocco should be partitioned between them. There is some warrant, but no available documentary proof, for assuming that formal assurances were simultaneously given to Germany, guaranteeing the maintenance of the "open door," which was all Germany cared about. Spain's hesitation and British diplomacy combined in frustrating M. Delcassé's first attempt to secure a French Protectorate over the greater part of Morocco. Hie second attempt was more successful.
The Boer War had left Britain without a friend in Europe. French criticism had been more offensive, if possible, than German. But irritation at the Kaiser's telegram to Kruger on the occasion of the Jameson raid had gone deep. The German Naval Law had further undermined the centuries' old friendship between the two Powers, and had introduced a new element of friction. The temperament and outlook of King Edward and the Kaiser were mutually incompatible. The strenuous, restless, vain nephew alternately annoyed and bored the Uncle—bon viveur, affable, frivolous, and shrewd. To Edward VII., as Prince of Wales, Paris had offered attractions in which she specialises. The King preferred the French to his own stock across the Rhine. British diplomacy came to the conclusion that the "Balance of Power" was tilting too much on the side of the Teuton, and resolved to win over France. In the Spring of 1903 King Edward visited Paris and laid the foundations of the Entente. Thenceforth the fate of Morocco was sealed.
•••••••
While these intrigues for the dismemberment of their country were going on in Europe, the Moors were being alternately cajoled and bullied by the French Government. Alleging the plea of military necessity owing to roving bands on the coterminous frontier, the French Algerian authorities occupied several oases in the South of Morocco over which the Sultan laid claim but exercised no visible authority. The murder of a French subject at Tangier led to the dispatch of a Moorish mission to Paris. This mission resulted in the drawing up of a Protocol, in which arrangements were mutually arrived at with regard to policing the frontier. The Protocol was based upon "respect for the integrity of the Shereefian Empire."[1]
An agreement of the same kind was signed in April, 1902. While the French Government was thus assuring the Moorish Government of its disinterestedness, it was pressing Spain to hasten the partition negotiations. At this stage "high finance" appears on the scene. Abdul Aziz, the young, well-meaning, but extravagant Moorish ruler, contracted a loan of £380,000 with some French banking establishments (October, 1902). It was apparently just about this time that British diplomacy realised what had been going on at Paris and Madrid, Pressure was put upon Spain to break off the partition negotiations with France, and a British financial house was found willing to oblige (April, 1903) the Sultan with a sum equal to that which he had secured from the French bankers in the preceding October. Meantime the Moors were becoming, uneasy in their dull, ineffective way. The attitude of the French military authorities in Algeria was not calculated to reassure them. The Sultan felt the need of a more explicit recognition of Moorish independence. Learning that the President of the French Republic was to visit Algiers, he sent a special envoy to greet him, hoping to receive from the lips of the head of the French State a formal declaration in that respect. But in response to a speech from the Moorish envoy, framed with that intention, M. Loubet contented himself with a few polite generalisations. Thenceforth the suspicions of the Moors deepened until the events of 1904 converted suspicions into certainties. Those events may now be epitomised.
•••••••
The Anglo-French Convention of April, 1904, and the Franco-Spanish Convention of October, 1904, completed the diplomatic machinery for the disposal of North Africa, and "slammed the door in the face of the peace-makers in Europe." Diplomacy on this occasion succeeded in coupling treachery towards an African people with treachery towards Europe, and especially towards the European peoples whom it professedly represented. Outwardly, by its published claims, the Anglo-French Convention of 1904 was a Peace instrument which disposed of Anglo-French differences. Inwardly, by its Secret Articles, it prefigured a French Protectorate over Morocco while imposing upon that potential French Protectorate, in the British strategic interest, a permanent Spanish mortgage over the Mediterranean and North Atlantic coasts of Morocco. As such it was a war instrument, because it infallibly involved a rupture with Germany. Outwardly, the Franco-Spanish arrangement consisted in the formal declaration that both Powers "remain firmly attached to the integrity of the Moorish Empire, under the sway of the Sultan." Inwardly, by its secret Convention—to which the British Government was not merely a consenting, but a compelling party—it postulated the French absorption of Morocco when the French purpose could be conveniently executed subject to a Spanish occupation of the Coasts as stipulated in the Secret Articles of the Anglo-French Convention; and it provided for a Franco-Spanish economic monopoly over the whole country.
Thus, to suit their own nationalistic and imperial designs, the French and British Governments—for Spain was used throughout merely as Britain's broker—not only signed away the independence of an African State while publicly professing tender attachment to its preservation. They secretly converted an international issue—so recognised by International Agreement—into an issue affecting their interests alone. And, so far as the economic side of the bargain was concerned, they deliberately violated Article XVII. of that International Agreement—the Madrid Convention—which provided, as has already been pointed out, for the "most favoured nation treatment" to all the Powers represented thereat. The diplomatic leakage ensuing, determined the first German intervention, which, in turn, led to the secret Anglo-French "military and naval conversation," so-called.
The same ethical, national and international offence was repeated when, as the result of the German intervention, another Conference of the Powers solemnly reaffirmed the international character of the Morocco problem in the Act of Algeciras in 1906.
Now, there is no doubt—as Mr. L. S. Woolf remarks—that the principle insisted upon by Germany in the events which led up to the Conference of Algeciras was that the regulation of the question of Morocco belonged not to any one Power, but to the Powers collectively. The danger of the Morocco question for the peace of Europe was that Foreign Governments would act as isolated Sovereign Powers towards Morocco. The essence of the French case was that France could, and would, so act; the essence of the German case was that the Powers should act collectively. That was why Germany, in 1905, was demanding, and France resisting, an International Conference.
With these secret arrangements for the dismemberment of Morocco in their pockets, the British and French Governments went to the Algeciras Conference and affixed their signatures to the Act, there drawn up "in the name of Almighty God," and "based upon the threefold principle of the sovereignty and independence of His Majesty the Sultan, the integrity of his Dominions, and economic liberty without any inequality." They departed from the Conference and began immediately to give effect to their secret compact. The second German intervention was the result.
Throughout the whole of this nefarious transaction the peoples of Britain and France were absolutely deceived as to the cause of German action. It is essential to remember this. For seven years—until the secret arrangements were revealed in 1911—the British people were led to believe that in resisting French encroachments upon Morocco, Germany was trying to upset the Anglo-French Entente. For seven years the French people were led to believe that in supporting their Government against German intervention in Morocco affairs, they were opposing an unwarrantable assault upon their dignity. Neither people had the least idea until the mischief was done and had become irreparable, that their Governments had all along been acting in virtue of a secret and internationally illegal pact; that the German case was intrinsically just, and that Germany had been treated as though her signature at the foot of international treaties could be regarded as a negligible quantity. To do the French justice they tardily recognised the fact:
Could we affect to ignore—said M. Deschanel, President of the French Parliamentary Committee on Foreign Affairs, when defending the ratification of the Franco-German Convention of November, 1911—the efforts of Germany in Morocco for half a century, the travels of her explorers, the activity of her colonists, her agricultural and mineral enterprises, her steamship lines, her post-offices, and especially that movement of ideas which gravitated towards the Shereefian Empire. …
But no such admission was ever made by a leading British authority. To this day, owing to deliberate misrepresentation and suppression of the facts, nine Englishmen out of ten are utterly ignorant of the part played by the Morocco affair in international politics, and deem Germany's action throughout to have been totally unjustifiable.
Another distinguished Frenchman, Baron d'Estournelles de Constant, speaking in the French Senate on February 6, 1912, uttered an outspoken denunciation of the whole wretched intrigue:
The French Parliament by an abuse morally, if not constitutionally, unpardonable, was kept in ignorance of this policy… Far from ensuring general Peace, the arrangements of 1904 tended to compromise it… Why was the French Parliament told only half the truth when it was asked to give its opinion upon our arrangement with England? Why was it not allowed to suspect that this arrangement had as its complement and corrective some secret clauses and other secret Treaties? It is this—it is this double game towards Parliament and the world which becomes morally an abuse-of trust… Now the whole effect of the arrangement of 1904 appears to-day in its truth and in its vanity. It was a Treaty of friendship with England recognising the freedom of our political action in N, Morocco, and also proclaiming our will to respect the integrity of that country; that was what the public knew and approved. But the public was ignorant that at the same time, by other Treaties, and by contradictory clauses hidden from it, the partition of Morocco between Spain and France was prepared, of that Morocco whose integrity we had guaranteed. There existed two irreconcilable French policies in Morocco, that of public arrangements, i.e., a policy of integrity which was not the true one; and that of secret arrangements postulating a Protectorate and the partition of Morocco.
When the European anarchy had become uncontrollable, largely as the result of this "double game" played over Morocco, a few days only before the final outbreak, and before his own foul murder, one of the few outstanding figures in Europe, Jean Jaurés, laid an unerring finger upon its origins:
In so grave an hour—said Jaurés, speaking at Vaise a fortnight before the Great War—so full of peril for all of us, for all our countries, I shall not indulge in an elaborate search after responsibilities. We have ours; and I claim before history that we (Socialists) had foreseen and announced them. When we declared that to penetrate into Morocco by violence, by force of arms, was to inaugurate in Europe an era of ambitions, covetousness, and conflicts, we were denounced as bad Frenchmen, but it was we who were concerned for France. There, alas! is our share of responsibility.
•••••
Given carte blanche by British diplomacy, the French Government thenceforth advanced by rapid steps to the goal of its desires. It knew, although the British and French people did not, that French generals were bending, in community of association with their British colleagues, over war maps and strategic combinations, while British and French naval commanders were working out in concert the disposition of their respective fleets. Trampling upon public obligations, Moorish rights, and German susceptibilities alike, the French politicians of the "forward school," dragging a reluctant Chamber behind them, marched to the conquest of Morocco. Within five years of the signing of the Act of Algeciras, the independence and integrity of Morocco had gone by the board, tens of thousands of Moors had been killed, Morocco was a French Protectorate, and official Germany, baffled and -enraged, feeling herself diplomatically humiliated, nursed her sores, while her Emperor, "whose personal influence had been exercised in many critical circumstances in favour of the maintenance of peace,"[2] had been "brought to think that war with France was inevitable."[3]
In March, 1907, the French occupied the first Moorish town, Udja, on the pretext of the murder of a French subject by Moors. They promised to withdraw, but remained. M. Pichon, the Foreign Minister, denied that this action was a "step towards Fez." In September a Franco-Spanish syndicate, in constructing a railway at Casablanca, deliberately desecrated a Moorish burial ground of great antiquity. A collision between the employees of the French railway contractors and the populace ensued, in the course of which several of the former lost their lives. A French fleet thereupon bombarded Casablanca, the helpless Moors being slaughtered in thousands amid the indignant protest of British and other European residents. Following the bombardment, the French landed a large body of troops, permanently occupied Casablanca and Rabat, and gradually overran the whole of the Shawiya district where, for three year incessant military expeditions, dispatched in every direction, prosecuted the task of "pacifying" the country, causing "much blood to flow."[4] With supreme irony the French Government called upon the already impoverished Moorish exchequer to meet the expenses involved in these acts of "peaceful penetration," and forced an "indemnity" of £2,400,000 upon the Moorish Government. Taxed beyond endurance to meet these demands, and infuriated "by the inability of their ruler to protect them against French encroachments, the Moors deposed Abdulaziz, and proclaimed his brother, Mulai Hafid, Sultan, but not before a civil war had intensified the internal chaos into which the country was rapidly drifting. Instantly international finance, used by the French Government as a convenient lever, dug its talons afresh into the dying Moorish State. Mulai Hafid was compelled to contract a loan. He was not even consulted about it. All liabilities incurred by Abdulaziz since the consolidated French loan of 1904, were merged into a new £4,040,000 loan—secured upon various sources of Moorish revenue, including the remaining 40 per cent, of the Customs—by an international banking syndicate, in which France held the lion's share. On being requested to sign the document embodying the transaction, Mulai Hafid refused. France thereupon presented him with an ultimatum and he had perforce to give way. It was not really a loan at all. The Sultan could not touch the capital because it had already been earmarked by the bondholders to pay off Morocco's previous debts. Nor could he meet the interest upon it except by imposing more direct taxes upon his subjects, seeing that he had been deprived under its terms of the remaining sources of indirect taxation. The "loan" was, in fact, an enforced tribute for the benefit of cosmopolitan finance, which was cosmopolitan and not merely French only because some other countries were interested, either politically or financially or for both reasons, in preventing the French from securing complete financial control of Morocco's resources. Thus, while the French share in the "loan" was 40 per cent., the German was 20 per cent., the British 15 per cent., and the Spanish 15 per cent. The same kind of consideration had, doubtless, inspired the divers international groups which had been formed to exploit the mineral and other natural products of Morocco, such as the Union des Mines, which included several of the big French and German armament firms, Mr. A. E. Harris, of Harris Dixon, Ltd., London, Mr. W. B. Harris, correspondent of the Times at Tangiers, and Mr. Bonar Law. It is instructive to note that the plundering of the Moors went hand in hand with the plundering of the home public. Thus the participating French banks were allowed to take up the bonds of the new "loan" at 435 francs, while in the afternoon of the day of issue the bonds were driven up to 507 francs.
This tribute levied upon the Sultan, the Sultan could only meet by levying tribute upon his tribesmen. The latter, driven to desperation by exactions and cruelties incidental to the process, flung off the last vestiges of his authority, rose in revolt and besieged him in his capital, Fez. This result had, of course, been foreseen. Instantly there arose a bogus clamour, scientifically arranged beforehand, and subsequently denounced in the most scathing terms by the most distinguished of French journalists then living, M. Francis de Pressenssé, that the Europeans in Fez were in danger. A French force of 30,000 men was found in convenient readiness, set off to Fez, occupied it after a skirmish and… remained there. And that was the end of Morocco in one sense. But not in another.
••••••
The narrow, irregular streets of a Moorish town, into which shells from warships riding on the sparkling blue waters of the western Atlantic are falling in an incessant and murderous hail, smashing the white-walled, flat-roofed houses and splashing them all over with the blood of the white-clad inhabitants who sprawl in mangled heaps at the doors of their homes—between such a scene as this and the pitted, scarred battlefields of Europe to-day with the blasted stumps which once were trees, and the piles of masonry and timber which once were towns and villages, there appears at first thought no connecting link of circumstance.
Yet it was the violence done to Casablanca which furnished the first direct incentive to that "era of ambitions, covetousness and conflicts in Europe," whose fruits the people of Europe have been reaping for the past five years.
Africa has always repaid her exploiters.
BIBLIOGRAPHY.
"International Treaties and Conventions and Agreements from 1880 to 1911."
"Ten Years of Secret Diplomacy." E. D, Morel. (National Labour Press).
"White Books and Yellow Books."
"French Parliamentary Debates."
"L'affaire Morocaine." V. Berard.
"Morocco and Armageddon." E. D. Morel. (National Labour Press).
"The Policy of the Entente, 1904-1914." Bertrand Russell. (Idem).
"The Belgian Diplomatic Despatches, 1911-1913."
"The European Anarchy." Lowes Dickinson. (Allen and Unwin).
"Our Ultimate Aim in the War." Armstrong. (Idem.)
CHAPTER VIII.
The Story of Tripoli.
From 1835, until the events narrated in this chapter, Turkey held an internationally recognised suzerain power over that portion of the North African Coast line and interior roughly designated as Tripoli which at various periods in the world's history has been claimed by the Phoenicians, Carthaginians, Romans, Spaniards, Arabs, and the Knights of St. John. It was wrested from the latter by the Turks in the middle of the 16th century.
Tripoli is inhabited by a population of agriculturists and herdsmen, mostly nomadic in character owing to the scarcity of water. The bulk of it is Berber, Arabs coming second in number. There is, too, a large sprinkling of Negroes from West Central Africa, whose presence is due, in part to the old trans-desert Slave trade, and in part to the still existing but now much reduced trans-desert trade, with Northern Nigeria particularly, in ostrich feathers, gold and skins. Many thousands of Berbers and Arabs from Algeria fled into Tripoli to escape French rule. The phenomenon was repeated when the French occupied Tunis in 1881. Amongst these immigrants was the Algerian Sheikh, Senussi-el-Mejahiri, who founded the famous religious fraternity which bears his name, and which gradually spread all over the country, uniting Berber and Arab in a common spiritual bond. The Senussi were most numerous and influential in the province of Barca (Cyrenaica), the eastern promontory of the Tripolitan territory, whose seaport is Benghasi, near the supposed site of the Garden of the Hesperides. Although the founder himself successively moved his headquarters into regions more and more remote from contact with Europeans, the influence of the Order was paramount in Cyrenaica. The Turkish Governors of the Province recognised it themselves, and at Benghasi the dispensation of civic justice, which in all Mohammedan communities is based upon the Koran, was entrusted not to the official of the Sultan, but to the representative of the Order. The policy of the Senussi has been described as anti-European. It is so in the sense that they have done their best to get out of the European's way, and that they have preached to their adopts a voluntary exile from territory ruled by the European. But in no other. They had never pursued an aggressive policy. When the Mahdi raised the Eastern Sudan against us and invited el Majahiri to join him, the latter refused. Senussiism has been primarily an intellectual, moral and spiritual force which has spread through its numerous schools, and by the spiritual purity of its teachers, a religious, not a political movement, aiming at the centralisation of the orthodox Islamic sects in a theocracy free from secular interference. It has covered the province with monastical centres of learning and made waste places fruitful. In recent years, Mr. Hogarth, who has studied its work in Cyrenaica generally, and Mr. Vischer, in his famous journey across the desert from Tripoli to Nigeria, have testified hi its favour. The latter says:
I have seen the hungry fed and the stranger entertained, and have myself enjoyed the hospitality and assistance enjoined by the laws of the Koran. My own experiences among the Senussi lead me to respect them as men, and to like them as true friends, whose good faith helped me more than anything else to accomplish my journey. …"
These particulars were necessary to make it clear that in invading Tripoli, Italy was not only wresting from Turkey the last of her African Dependencies: she was committing an unprovoked attack upon native peoples and was additionally assaulting Islam in Africa. This serves to explain at once the fierce and prolonged resistance which Italy experienced from communities who had no particular love for the Turk; the appeals to a "Holy War," issued by certain Italian bishops, whose utterances the Vatican felt called upon to repudiate, and the anger aroused among Mohammedans all over the world, notably in India, against "this war of aggression unparalleled in the history of modern times " to quote the manifesto of the London All-India Moslem League.
The predatory imperialism of modern Europe has never been revealed with such revolting cynicism as when Italy, profiting by the acute tension between France and Germany over Morocco in the autumn of 1911, issued. like a bolt from the blue, her ultimatum to Turkey. In this document the Italian Foreign Minister, after recapitulating in the vaguest terms a list of grievances, which even if they had been well founded, were of the most trivial, indeed, puerile character, calmly announced the Italian Government's intention of occuping Tripoli and Cyrenaica by military force, and summoned Turkey within twenty-four hours to express acquiescence in this burglarious proceeding. It shocked even the most blasé of our imperialist leader writers.
The consummation of Italian unity which had awakened such generous sentiments and such high hopes, opened up avenues of the highest endeavour for the exploration of Italian statesmen. The poorest, the most heavily taxed, and, in the South, one of the most uneducated and half-fed populations in Europe constituted a paramount claim upon its rulers. But a number of Italians thought otherwise.
Italy, as soon as she is independent … will have in turn to think of that need of expansion eastwards and southwards which all Christian people feel… Whether it be to Tunis or to Tripoli, or to an Island, or to any part of the European Continent matters not.
Thus the author of Delle speranze d'Italia. In fact Italian unity had hardly been attained when the fever of imperialism seized hold of Italy's governing classes, and the country in Europe which, perhaps, could least afford it, plunged headlong into oversea adventures
The seed of the Tripoli "raid" was sown at the Berlin Congress which met in June, 1878, ostensibly to revise the Treaty of San Stefano concluded between Russia and Turkey at the close of the Russo-Turkish War. The Congress arose through the British Government's threat of war upon Russia if the Treaty were ratified, on the ground that it affected certain provisions of the general European Settlement at Paris in 1856 and must, therefore, be first submitted to a European Conference. The real reason was the fear of British diplomacy, that if the provisions of the Treaty stood, Russia, using Bulgaria as a cat's-paw, would be in a stronger position to attain the goal of her Tsars' secular ambitions—Constantinople. Everything about the Congress and its preliminaries was fraudulent. The very day after it met, indiscreet disclosures revealed that the diplomatists concerned had already made secret arrangements with one another on the issues at stake. The rôle of the Congress consisted in pronouncing a benediction upon decisions which had been reached before it met. Every Government was pursuing in characteristic fashion its own nationalistic and imperialistic designs and bluffing its home public. Every plenipotentiary was intriguing behind the backs of his associates. As Count Corti, the Italian ambassador at Constantinople, sarcastically observed: "Everybody was telling everybody else to take something which belonged to somebody else." Disraeli was the master-mummer of them all. While spending millions of national money on loudly-advertised preparations for war, he was negotiating with Russia under cover of them. He got Cyprus out of Turkey before the Congress met, in exchange for a promise to guarantee the Sultan's possessions in Asia, which promise he never had the slightest intention of carrying out. He proposed at the Congress that Austria-Hungary should occupy the Turkish provinces of Bosnia and Herzgovina, having secretly agreed to the step beforehand. After the Congress he secretly urged France to seize Tunis, Bismarck taking the same line, and her ultimate action in doing so inaugurated the rape of North Africa.
Meantime Italian imperialism knocked vainly at the door of the Congress and retired empty and chagrined. It had largely itself to thank. In the preceding March, the British Cabinet had proposed to the Italian ambassador "an exchange of views," directed to the formation of a Mediterranean League to maintain the status quo. Italy had declined the overture, and Disraeli had no plums for her when the Congress met, although Lord Salisbury is reported by the Italian delegate to have casually remarked, in course of conversation with him at the Congress, that Italy might eventually console herself in the direction of Tripoli for the British acquisition of Cyprus, and for the Austrian occupation of Bosnia. Three years later the French Government took steps to apply the "free hand" in Tunis, which Disraeli had graciously undertaken to secure for it. On the flimsiest of pretexts the French picked a quarrel with the Bey—who was a nominal vassal of the Sultan of Turkey—invaded the country, forced a Protectorate upon it, and after a year's fighting reduced the Tunisians to submission. The ground had been well prepared, in much the same manner as it was even then being in Egypt, and was to be in Morocco twenty years later. An extravagant native ruler, encouraged in his extravagancies by European financial sharks; bondholders, whose exigencies had to be met and interests safeguarded; finally, control of the native Government's finances by European Powers. In the case of Tunis, the financial Commission of Control, which had been formed in 1869, was composed of Britain, France, and Italy; and Italian imperialism had gradually come to regard Tunis as the promised land. Italian emigration was encouraged and Italian commercial undertakings were financed. Before the Berlin Congress, the independence of Tunis was a British diplomatic interest. After the Berlin Congress it ceased to be. Thenceforth the British Government wiped Tunis off its diplomatic horizon, and when France pounced and Franco-Italian relations became strained to breaking-point, it gave Italy a pretty strong hint to keep quiet. So, "Mancini begged and entreated at Vienna and Berlin, and finally succeeded in persuading the two Empires to recognise Italy as an ally."[5] Italy joined the Teutonic group of Powers in May, 1882.
Shortly afterwards there came the turn in Egyptian affairs which ultimately brought about the British occupation. The reluctance of France to join us, led to the British Cabinet suggesting to Italy, first a triple intervention, and, in the ultimate resort, if France persisted in her refusal, direct Anglo-Italian co-operation. The French Government refused the first suggestion and getting wind of the latter, told the Italians (according to Baron Blanc, afterwards Italian Foreign Minister) that "France would look upon it as an act of hostility on the part of Italy if that Power should take in Egypt the position which belonged to France, and occupy, without France, any portion of Egyptian territory." The French Government also threatened to extend its occupation of Tunis to Tripoli. The upshot was that the Italian Government declined the British proposal, a rejection which seems to have irritated the British Cabinet, for the ensuing year it promptly vetoed Italian aspirations in New Guinea towards which, among other regions of the earth's surface, Italian imperialism had momentarily cast its gaze.
This restless hunt for overseas territory on the part of a Government whose subjects left its shores by tens and hundreds of thousands, was next directed to the independent African State of Abyssinia. Reviving a questionable claim to Assab Bay on the Somali Coast, the Italian Government successively extended its occupation to a long stretch of littoral which formed the seaboard outlet for Abyssinia. This brought it into immediate and disastrous conflict with the Abyssinians. Later, the internal affairs of Abyssinia becoming complicated, the Italian Government made a Treaty with the new ruler Menelik. Subsequently on the strength of a vaguely-worded clause about "mutual protection," it declared Abyssinia to be an Italian Protectorate. The final clash with the Abyssinians came in 1895 when an army, partly composed of Italian regulars, partly of native levies, was sanguinarily defeated by Menelik 's warriors, and Italy was compelled by Treaty to recognise Abyssinian independence. The Abyssinian adventure was to have constituted in the view of the then Italian Premier: "An indemnification, a reparation as it were, for the disappointments Italy had suffered in the Mediterranean." If from the hecatombs of dead in the Great War there should arise a new International Order and the practice of slaughtering masses of innocent men, women and children to serve the nationalistic and imperial ambitions entertained by statesmen and by a relatively minute section of the community, should become obsolete; one can imagine the kind of judgment which will be passed by a generation from whom the threat of war is removed, upon the proceedings of their forbears who sought "reparation" for wounded vanity by assaulting communities who were absolute strangers to the cause of the wound!
Abandoning its attempt upon the independence of the sturdy Abyssinians, Italian imperialism thenceforth concentrated upon Tripoli, for whose absorption it had long prepared. Very instructive and typical of the immoralities of secret diplomacy is the history of the diplomatic steps taken by Italy to effect her objects. The first accessible document which illustrates them is an Italian memorandum to Lord Salisbury dated February 12, 1887, which preceded by a few days the first renewal of the Triple Alliance. This document, together with most of the others hereinafter mentioned, form part of the fœtid secret diplomatic history of Europe which investigation of the archives of the Russian, Austrian and German Foreign Offices by the Revolutionary Governments is now bringing to light. It will be salutary for the moral purification of the world if Labour Governments in Britain and France complete the process later on, and examine their own national cesspools "high-piled with the droppings of two hundred years," and clean out "the dead pedantries, unveracities, indolent, somnolent impotencies and accumulated dung mountains there," which Carlyle truly declared seventy years ago to be "the beginning of all practical good whatsoever."
Italy's object in joining the Triple Alliance was primarily to protect herself against France. She subsequently endeavoured to use it for her own ends as a lever to pursue her general imperialistic designs. Disappointed with the results, she gradually went over to the Anglo-Franco-Russian camp, while continuing down to the very moment of the outbreak of war to remain officially a member of the "Triplice." Then, after a frantic bargaining bout with both sides, she elected not only to abandon her old Allies, but to make war upon them. This by the way.
The writer of the Italian memorandum to Lord Salisbury, Count Corti (then Italian ambassador in London), proposed an understanding based upon the preservation of the status quo in the Mediterranean, Adriatic, Euxine and Agean. But he also tried to pin Lord Salisbury down to recognise a potential Italian protectorate over Tripoli. "Great Britain," runs Corti's memorandum, "on her side is prepared to support, in the case of invasions by a third Power, the action of Italy on any other part of the North African Coast line, notably in Tripoli and Cyrenaica." But while Lord Salisbury was willing to come to terms with Italy in order to check French designs on Morocco, he was not at all disposed to lend himself to Italian adventures. His policy really was the status quo. So he declined, at least in writing, to be drawn. While expressing satisfaction at the prospect of Anglo-Italian co-operation for the
- ↑ "You should make the Sultan understand"—wrote M. Delcassé to the French Minister in Tangier—"that it will depend upon himself to find in us friends the surest, the most anxious for the integrity of his person, the most capable of preserving him in case of need from certain dangers. Our loyalty, as also our interests, are guarantees to him that we shall not encroach upon it."
- ↑ French Yellow Book. French Ambassador in Berlin to French Minister for Foreign Affairs. (No. 6).
- ↑ Idem.
- ↑ Augustin Bernard.
- ↑ Crispi's Memoirs.