Anglo-French Relations in the Twentieth Century: rivalry and cooperation

Anglo-French Relations in the Twentieth Century

For centuries Britain and France were rivals in international and imperial relations, often expending blood and treasure against each other. Since the end of the Napoleonic wars in 1815 this rivalry has been concentrated in the economic and diplomatic sphere rather than in clash of arms—the exception was the period 1940–2 when British forces fought Vichy France in west and north Africa and Madagascar and the Royal Navy attacked part of the French fleet. Anglo-French rivalry has been no less intense in the twentieth century despite the virtual absence of military conflict between them. Yet, the degree of co-operation has also been remarkable, extending at crucial moments into the military as well as political and economic spheres. Indeed, Britain and France have been partners for most of the century, joined, sometimes against their instincts, by a mixture of fear of powerful opponents, shared beliefs, mutual admiration and mutual resentment, perceptions and misperceptions. The period reviewed by this book begins with the estrangement of the two Great Powers at the time of Europe’s final ascendancy in world politics and terminates with each relegated to the second ranks, and with each striving to maintain and extend its respective influence within the developing European Union. The essays are not intended to provide a definitive history of the Anglo-French relationship in the twentieth century, rather they focus on key aspects and pay particular attention to the themes of rivalry and cooperation which are certainly not mutually exclusive. At the same time, important ground is covered sufficient to confirm the complexities of a bilateral relationship between two declining powers based for the most part on common ideological and political affinities. This is the first significant collection on the subject of twentieth century Anglo-French relations to appear in more than twenty-five years and provides a fresh examination of this important area of

International History which will be welcomed by students of contemporary international relations, history and politics. Alan Sharp is Professor of International Studies and head of the School of History, Philosophy and Politics at the University of Ulster and Glyn Stone is Associate Dean of the Faculty of Humanities at the University of the West of England, Bristol.

Anglo-French Relations in the Twentieth Century Rivalry and cooperation

Edited by Alan Sharp and Glyn Stone

London and New York

First published 2000 by Routledge 11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2002. © 2000 in selection and editorial matter, Alan Sharp and Glyn Stone; in individual contributions, individual contributors. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication Data Anglo-French relations in the twentieth century/edited by Alan Sharp and Glyn Stone. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Great Britain—Foreign relations—France. 2. Great Britain —Foreign relations—20th century. 3. France—Foreign relations—Great Britain. 4. France—Foreign relations—20th century. I. Sharp, Alan. II. Stone, Glyn. DA47.1.A7 2000 327.41044—dc21 99–36162 CIP ISBN 0-415-17292-6 (Print Edition) ISBN 0-203-00304-7 Master e-book ISBN ISBN 0-203-20048-9 (Glassbook Format)

Contents

List of contributors Introduction

viii 1

ALAN SHARP AND GLYN STONE

1 The elusive balance: British foreign policy and the French entente before the First World War

11

THOMAS OTTE

2 The Conservative party and the Anglo-French entente, 1905–1914

36

FRANK MCDONOUGH

3 The poor relation: Spain in Anglo-French relations, 1898–1914

50

KEITH HAMILTON

4 Britain and France at war, 1914–1918

71

DAVID DUTTON

5 Britain, France and the Russian Civil War, 1918–1920

89

DAVID WATSON

6 Lloyd George, Clemenceau and the elusive AngloFrench guarantee treaty, 1919: ‘A disastrous episode’? ANTHONY LENTIN

104

vi

7 Anglo-French relations from Versailles to Locarno, 1919–1925: The quest for security

120

ALAN SHARP

8 Britain, France and the League of Nations in the 1920s

139

RUTH HENIG

9 The search for disarmament: Anglo-French relations, 1929–1934

158

CAROLYN KITCHING

10 From entente to alliance: Anglo-French relations, 1935–1939

180

GLYN STONE

11 France’s economic and financial crisis: The view from the Foreign Office, the Treasury and the Bank of England, 1936–1939

205

MICHAEL DOCKRILL

12 Entente broken and renewed: Britain and France, 1940–1945

223

PHILIP BELL

13 The most important of the Western nations: France’s place in Britain’s post-war foreign policy, 1945–1949

244

SEAN GREENWOOD

14 The failure of the new entente cordiale, 1947–1950

264

JOHN YOUNG

15 Anthony Eden, the Foreign Office and Anglo-French relations, 1951–1954 KEVIN RUANE

280

vii

16 From Dien Bien Phu to Evian: Anglo-French imperial relations, 1954–1962

301

MARTIN THOMAS

17 The Cold War, European Community and AngloFrench relations, 1958–1998

324

JOANNE WRIGHT

Index

345

Contributors

Philip Bell previous to his retirement was Reader in History in the School of History at Liverpool University. His many publications include A Certain Eventuality: Britain and the Fall of France (1974), The Origins of the Second World War in Europe (1986), John Bull and the Bear: British Public Opinion and Foreign Policy 1941–1945 (1990), France and Britain 1900–1940: Entente and Estrangement (1996) and France and Britain 1940–1994: The Long Separation (1997). Michael Dockrill is Professor of International History in the War Studies Department of King’s College London. He is the author of numerous publications including with C.J. Lowe, The Mirage of Power: British Foreign Policy 1902–1922, 3 vols. (1972), with J.D. Goold, Peace Without Promise: Britain and the Peace Conferences 1919– 1923 (1981), The Cold War 1945–1963 (1988), British Defence since 1945 (1989) and British Establishment Perspectives on France 1936– 1940 (1999). He is also Chairman of the British International History Group. David Dutton is Senior Lecturer in Modern History in the School of History at the University of Liverpool. He is the author of many publications including Austen Chamberlain: Gentleman in Politics (1985), Simon: A Political Biography (1992), Anthony Eden: A Life and Reputation (1997), The Politics of Diplomacy: Britain and France in the Balkans 1914–1918 (1998), and editor of Statecraft and Diplomacy in the Twentieth Century: Essays presented to P.M. H. Bell (1995). Sean Greenwood is Professor of Modern History in the Department of History at Canterbury Christ Church University College. He is the author of Britain and European Cooperation since 1945 (1992) and The Alternative Alliance: Anglo-French Relations Before the Coming of NATO 1944–1948 (1996). He has published several articles and essays on Anglo-French relations during the early post-war years.

List of contributors

ix

Keith Hamilton is Senior Editor of Documents on British Policy Overseas and Historian in the Library and Records Department of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. He has published widely on British and French foreign policy and more generally on diplomacy, including Bertie of Thame: Edwardian Ambassador (1990) and with R.T.B.Langhorne, The Practice of Diplomacy (1995). Ruth Henig is Dean of the Faculty of Arts at the University of Lancaster. Her publications include, The League of Nations (1973), Versailles and After 1919–1933 (1984), The Origins of the Second World War 1933–1939 (1985) and The Origins of the First World War (1993). She has also published several articles and essays on Anglo-French relations during the 1920s. Carolyn Kitching is Associate Lecturer in History at Teesside University. She is the author of Britain and the Problem of International Disarmament 1919–1934 (1999) and she has published a number of essays and articles on the history of disarmament in the inter-war years. Anthony Lentin is Reader in History in the Department of History at the Open University. His publications include Guilt at Versailles: Lloyd George and the Pre-History of Appeasement (1985) and The Versailles Peace Settlement: Peacemaking with Germany (1991). He has also published many essays and articles around the Peace Settlement of 1919. Frank McDonough is Senior Lecturer in Modern Political History in the School of Social Science at Liverpool John Moores University. He is the author of The Origins of the First and Second World Wars (1997) and Neville Chamberlain, Appeasement and the British Road to War (1998). He is currently writing a book on the Conservative party and Anglo-German relations, 1905– 1914. Thomas Otte is Lecturer in International History in the School of History at the University of the West of England, Bristol. His publications include two co-edited volumes with A.M.Dorman, Military Intervention: From Gunboat Diplomacy to Humanitarian Intervention (1995) and with C.A.Pagedas, Personalities, War and Diplomacy: Essays in International History (1997). He has also published several articles and essays on British foreign policy before the First World War.

x

List of contributors

Kevin Ruane is Lecturer in History in the Department of History at Canterbury Christ Church University College. He is the author of War and Revolution in Vietnam 1930–1975 (1998) and has published several articles and essays on British foreign policy and the Cold War in South East Asia in the 1950s. Alan Sharp is Professor of International Studies and Head of the School of History, Philosophy and Politics at the University of Ulster. He is the author of The Versailles Settlement: Peacemaking in Paris (1991) which he is currently revising for a second edition. He has published numerous essays and articles on British foreign policy and Anglo-French relations during the period following the First World War, with a particular interest in the career of Lord Curzon as Foreign Secretary. Glyn Stone is Associate Dean of the Faculty of Humanities at the University of the West of England, Bristol. He is the author of The Oldest Ally: Britain and the Portuguese Connection 1936–1941 (1994), is co-editor with D.Richardson of Decisions and Diplomacy: Essays in Twentieth Century International History (1995) and has written a number of articles and essays on Anglo-French and AngloPortuguese relations before, during and after the Second World War. He is also Secretary of the British International History Group. Martin Thomas is Reader in History in the School of History at the University of the West of England, Bristol. He is the author of Britain, France and Appeasement: Anglo-French Relations in the Popular Front Era (1997) and The French Empire at War 1940–1945 (1998). He has published many articles on French foreign and imperial policy and on AngloFrench relations before, during and after the Second World War. David Watson previous to his retirement was Senior Lecturer in History in the Department of History at the University of Dundee. He has published widely throughout his academic career including Georges Clemenceau: A Political Biography (1974) and numerous articles and essays on French history including Anglo-French and Franco-Russian relations. Joanne Wright is Senior Lecturer and Director of European Studies at Royal Holloway, University of London. Her research interests lie principally in issues of European security and security institutions. She has published several articles on post-Cold War European security and is the co-author of a forthcoming book on police reform.

List of contributors

xi

John Young is Professor and Head of Politics at the University of Leicester. His many publications include Britain, France and the Unity of Europe 1945–1951 (1984), France, the Cold War and the Western Alliance 1944–1949 (1990), Cold War Europe 1945–1991: A Political History (1991), Winston Churchill’s Last Campaign: Britain and the Cold War 1951–1955 (1996) and Britain and the World in the Twentieth Century (1997). He is also Vice-Chairman of the British International History Group.

Introduction Alan Sharp and Glyn Stone

This collection of essays investigates the multifaceted diplomatic relationship between France and Britain in the twentieth century. Rivals and allies—and the two definitions were not exclusive because they were often simultaneous—these were neighbours who shared many experiences and whose political and cultural values had much in common, not least because shaped in part by historic enmity. Unlikely though it would have seemed to an observer in 1900, Britain and France have been partners for most of the century, joined, sometimes against their instincts, by a mixture of fear of powerful opponents, shared beliefs, mutual admiration and mutual resentment, perceptions and misperceptions. Their relationship was seldom smooth, often discordant and sometimes tempestuous, eased at some points and made more difficult at others by some remarkable personalities—Théophile Delcassé, Edward Grey, Raymond Poincaré, George Curzon, Georges Clemenceau, David Lloyd George, Aristide Briand, Austen Chamberlain, Edouard Daladier, Neville Chamberlain, Anthony Eden, Léon Blum, Charles de Gaulle, Winston Churchill, Ernest Bevin, Pierre Mendès France, François Mitterand and Margaret Thatcher. The parameters of the partnership were established by a mixture of historical memory—several of the writers here refer to the celebrated exchange between Lloyd George and Clemenceau in 1921 when Clemenceau accused Britain of reverting to being France’s enemy as soon as the war with Germany had ended. ‘Well’, countered the Welshman, ‘was it not always our traditional policy?’1 —and the ambitions consequent upon their status as imperial and great powers—‘Do you know’, Eden once asked de Gaulle, ‘that you have caused us more difficulties than all our other European allies put together?’ ‘I don’t doubt it’, replied the General, ‘France is a great power’. 2 Acute observers like Salvador de

2

Alan Sharp and Glyn Stone

Madariaga, a member of the League of Nations Secretariat in the 1920s, were aware of both the problems and the potential. ‘It is not altogether impossible to bring the French and the British to see eye to eye’, he remarked, ‘only their eyes are so different’. 3 The two key themes running through the book, which are two sides of the same coin, are rivalry and suspicion on the one hand, and cooperation and convergence on the other. With regard to the first, on an imperial, world and European stage these two traditional great powers competed for influence and control whilst closer to home there was mutual distrust—on one side ‘perfidious Albion’ with ‘the golden cavalry of St George’, on the other luxury and un-derhand advantage coupled to Napoleonic ambition. As Sir Robert Vansittart, that bastion of the inter-war Foreign Office, pointed out, ‘the Victorian England in which I was brought up was almost entirely anti-French…Victorian England was vaguely convinced…that France laughed too much and cooked too well for this vale of tears…More serious still, Victorian England suspected that the French somehow put more into, and got more out of, sex than the English.’4 Late Victorian Britain was engaged in an intense and enduring rivalry with France which was only brought to a close in April 1904 with the signing of the Entente Cordiale. In his opening contribution Thomas Otte emphasises the limited nature of this agreement, that for the Conservative Prime Minister, Arthur James Balfour, and his Foreign Secretary, Lord Lansdowne, it was essentially an agreement to safeguard vital British imperial interests on the periphery of European politics without incurring major European obligations. At the same time, the French Government saw colonial rapprochement with Britain as merely the beginning of a process to achieve an AngloFrench alliance to complement their alliance with Russia. In the years before July 1914, Otte stresses, the Liberal Government, most notably its Foreign Secretary, Grey, succeeded in avoiding a formal and binding commitment to France yet worried constantly—a worry shared by senior Foreign Office officials—that France, disappointed at British prevarication, might reach a modus vivendi with the Kaiser’s Germany which would, in the words of the Permanent Under-Secretary of the Foreign Office, Arthur Nicolson, result in a ‘triumphant Germany and an unfriendly France and Russia’ and the destruction of the British policy since 1904 of ‘preserving the equilibrium and consequently the peace of Europe’.5 Keith Hamilton’s essay on Anglo-French-Spanish relations before the First World War throws interesting light on the effect on AngloFrench attitudes of the Entente Cordiale. For the influential Cambon

Introduction

3

brothers, Paul and Jules, as for British diplomats, there was no guarantee that this was more than a transitory episode in a more traditionally confrontational relationship—as Frank McDonough reminds us, before the signing of the entente Balfour saw Russia, then France, as Britain’s most likely opponents in a future war. Hence, both partners dealt with Spain with one eye firmly on the other, despite the encroaching menace of Germany. Indeed, before the entente was concluded with the French the British Admiralty believed that Britain might derive more advantage from an Anglo-Spanish agreement ‘in the case of a war with France than in the case of a war with Germany’.6 While suspicion, uncertainty, disenchantment and potential rivalry clouded the Anglo-French relationship in the years before the outbreak of the First World War, there was an alternative vision. The AngloFrench union may have been a marriage of convenience, but neither thought of divorcing the other for longer than it took for the realities of the situation to dawn. In his contribution McDonough charts the growing support, partly as a result of Conservative pressure, for the entente within Britain in its early years, and Keith Hamilton shows how appreciation for the advantages of the new relationship permeated through the diplomatic hierarchies of both nations before the First World War. Even Otte, who plays down Anglo-French cooperation, acknowledges the positive aspects of the relationship in the last resort. In particular, he argues that by the early summer of 1914 rather than containing Germany Grey was concerned ‘to prevent France and Russia from embroiling Britain in conflicts fought primarily for French and Russian interests’ but that ‘blundering German diplomacy’ and the threat it posed transformed a troubled entente into a formidable alliance. David Dutton’s view is that Britain entered the First World War not because of the entente, nor even because of the guarantee to Belgium but because of its own self-interest, partly indeed motivated by a desire to control France, fearing that a Franco-Russian combination which proved victorious without British support might be very difficult to manage in a post-war world with no German power to act as a counter-weight. His essay illustrates some of the problems of fighting the war as allies whilst under pressure to maintain a balance against each other as well as the Germans. Despite the rivalries, there was also an underlying thread of cooperation, sometimes reluctant but recognised as inevitable. To make the point Dutton reminds us that the Anglo-French alliance did maintain its purpose throughout the First World War and ultimately succeeded in defeating Germany in spite of the problems and difficulties, some of them self-inflicted.

4

Alan Sharp and Glyn Stone

Dutton concludes where David Watson, Ruth Henig, Alan Sharp and Tony Lentin commence—with George Curzon’s December 1918 apprehension that ‘the great Power from whom we may have most to fear in the future is France’. 7 Watson’s contribution on AngloFrench relations and the Russian Civil War, whilst countering more extreme views, does show that there was considerable friction between allies no longer constrained by the need to cooperate against Germany. Whilst both deplored the excesses of Bolshevism each had its own economic, political and strategic agenda to pursue and did so with some vigour. The failure of the anti-Bolshevik forces in Russia prevented this split developing but the rivalry had potential even if it was unfulfilled. Ruth Henig shows how, in de Madriaga’s phrase, it appeared that ‘for the lack of any common adversary, France and Britain had chosen the League as the arena in which to fight each other’.8 Their rival conceptions and approaches to the League helped to undermine its effectiveness and credibility whilst the very existence of the League itself undermined their own attempts to deal with post-war problems by more traditional methods. Clemenceau would have preferred such conventional territorial and diplomatic assurances, according to Anthony Lentin, whose essay examines the consequences of the French premier’s carelessness in allowing Lloyd George’s sly redrafting of the Anglo-French treaty of guarantee to hoodwink him at the last gasp of the Paris peace conference. Once again the theme of potential rivalry resurfaces— ‘You cannot trust the French altogether’, said Lloyd George, ‘who knows but some day they may be opposed to us.’9 His duplicity, exacerbated by later British refusals to accept the moral, if not the literal extent of their obligations, would cast a shadow on AngloFrench relations in the 1920s. This is the theme of Alan Sharp’s investigation of the disinte-gration of the entente cordiale into the rupture cordiale of the Ruhr occupation in 1923 and the partial restoration of better relations under the Locarno agreements of 1925. Poincaré was under no illusions, for him, despite recognising that the entente was essential, ‘Great Britain…is as she has always been: a great rival.’10 Equally, Curzon was prepared to offer nothing without substantial French concessions on imperial matters and a reconsideration of its position vis-à-vis Germany. On the positive side, Watson writes of ‘lovers’ quarrels’, though this idea was treated with some contempt by Curzon when he rejected Sir Eyre Crowe’s advice to treat the aftermath of the Kapp putsch of March 1920 and the ensuing Anglo-French difficulties as such and ‘to build golden bridges for the retirement of the French from their

Introduction

5

present false position’. ‘After so flagrant a case as this’, Curzon minuted, ‘I am not very enthusiastic about “kissing again with tears”.’ 11 Lentin argues none the less that it was to the spirit of cooperation engendered by the entente and the shared experiences of the war, reinforced by the hope that Britain would recognise political realities, that Clemenceau trusted in 1919. He may have taken his eye off the ball in June, but this was perhaps because he was looking to the longer term. Poincaré came to similar conclusions despite his castigation of Clemenceau—in the end, guarantee treaty or not, British self-interest rested with the survival of France as a major power on the continent and, as Churchill reminded Lloyd George, ‘It would be an enormous shock to the British public, who have 600,000 graves in France, if the statesmen were to tell them that we backed the wrong horse.’12 The problem was that they could neither agree to agree nor agree to disagree. Ruth Henig and Alan Sharp show the ways in which the competing demands of Anglo-French rivalry and co-operation succeeded only in frustrating each other’s initiatives. It is just possible that, working together in the rather unusual power balance of the 1920s, Britain and France might have been able to hold the new system together, though it would certainly have taxed their resources and ingenuity to the limits. As it was their differing approaches to both balance of power politics and the new diplomacy of Wilson’s collective security created a gap in the post-war structures that Germany proved adept at exploiting. Despite the wartime experiences of a shared struggle, with growing economic and military cooperation, leading eventually, if belatedly, to a unified military command it was still possible for Charles Hardinge, the Permanent Under-Secretary of State at the Foreign Office to declare in 1920, ‘our relations with France never have been, are not, and probably never will be, sufficiently stable and friendly to justify the construction of a Channel tunnel’.13 Despite the closer cooperation of Briand and Chamberlain during the Locarno years of 1925–9, touched upon by Henig, when prospects for a successful appeasement of Weimar Germany appeared high, mutual suspicion and disenchantment was revived in the depression years that followed. As Carolyn Kitching emphasises, the AngloFrench relationship in the years 1929–34 was played out at Geneva, in the world disarmament negotiations. According to Kitching, French leaders, notably André Tardieu, Edouard Herriot and Joseph Paul-Boncour, but not Louis Barthou, saw a firm commitment from Britain as the answer to France’s chronic insecurity but Britain

6

Alan Sharp and Glyn Stone

consistently refused to recognise her legitimate fear of the threat posed by Germany before and after Adolf Hitler’s advent to power in January 1933: ‘Her [Britain’s] distrust of the French and her proGerman bias ensured her sympathies consistently lay in the wrong quarter’. Glyn Stone acknowledges that suspicion and sometimes recrimination existed in Anglo-French relations during the period preceding the Second World War. Unlike the post-First World War period, it was French weakness rather than strength which concerned British decision-makers in the late 1930s, including Neville Chamberlain, Eden and Lord Halifax, who were scathing and sometimes despairing of France’s economic weakness and her social and political instability—aspects which Michael Dockrill examines at length from the British perspective in this volume. His examination reveals little in the way of effective cooperation in Anglo-French financial relations—and the slow pace of her rearmament especially in the air which became manifest during the Czechoslovak crisis of 1938. On their side, French statesmen, including Léon Blum and Edouard Daladier, believed the British ‘to be unreliable and insensitive to the political and strategic realities which faced them in Europe’. Even when the French finally achieved their primary goal of a British alliance in February-March 1939, they despaired that an effective British Expeditionary Force, including a number of armoured divisions, would eventually materialise to fill the gaps in French defences or that the Royal Air Force would provide effective cover over France. Notwithstanding the suspicion and recrimination, Stone argues that there was a great deal of cooperation and a high degree of convergence in Anglo-French relations before September 1939. In late 1935 both countries reluctantly imposed sanctions against Fascist Italy and both sought a way out of their Abyssinian dilemma through the abortive Hoare-Laval pact. Neither was prepared to take action to counter Adolf Hitler’s remilitarisation of the Rhineland in 1936 and for almost identical reasons both maintained a policy of nonintervention in the Spanish Civil War. Both were attracted to the idea of using colonial concessions to appease Germany and while there was a greater degree of French scepticism as to the prospects of successfully appeasing Hitler through the concession of the Sudetenland in September 1938 neither was prepared to go to war again to ensure the independence of Czechoslovakia for very similar reasons. Both governments failed to secure a Soviet alliance in 1939 partly at least as a result of their lack of sincerity and seriousness with regard to the Soviet Union.

Introduction

7

The Anglo-French wartime alliance from September 1939 until June 1940 was not only shortlived but was also, as Philip Bell reminds us, ultimately characterised as many times before by mutual suspicion, recrimination and despair. The French withdrawal from the war in June 1940 and the British attack on the French fleet at Mers-el-Kébir in July created a profound breach between Britain and France from which ‘much followed, and their relations were never the same again’. Although war was never declared between Britain and Vichy France their conflicts in West and North Africa, Madagascar and the Middle East were ‘sharp and casualties numerous’. At the same time, during 1940–2 the British sought to maintain contacts with the Vichy régime which made their relations more ambiguous. After 1942 such contacts ceased but relations with the Free French movement of General Charles de Gaulle, despite its unremit-ting hostility to Nazi Germany, remained, according to Bell, equally ambiguous throughout 1940–5. If forced to choose it was clear that Prime Minister Churchill would opt for the American President, Franklin Roosevelt, in preference to de Gaulle; and the latter was fully aware of this and allowed it to colour his judgement of the British both during and after the Second World War. Clearly, the war had not extinguished Anglo-French suspicion and rivalry. Yet, as Sean Greenwood and John Young both acknowledge, the post-war years witnessed a degree of close cooperation between Britain and France in a number of significant areas: signing the Treaty of Dunkirk in April 1947, leading West European countries in the summer of 1947 in the acceptance of Marshall Aid, forging the Brussels pact in March 1948 for West European security, agreeing with the United States in June 1948 to create a West German state, and being founder members in April 1949 of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO). Greenwood in his contribution focuses at length on the efforts of Bevin to create a third force to rival the United States and the Soviet Union, in which France was envisaged as Britain’s main, if not equal, partner. The Foreign Secretary’s efforts proved abortive as Anglo-American cooperation was deemed eventually to be more significant in the context of the United States’ considerable support and commitment to western security following the formation of NATO. Indeed, Young stresses that the limits of British willingness to pursue European cooperation became clear to the French in 1948–9. Moreover, there were real differences between London and Paris in dealing with the German problem, military planning for continental defence and the possibilities both of economic integration and political cooperation

8

Alan Sharp and Glyn Stone

in Europe. According to Young, ‘the Schuman Plan, launched in May-June 1950, exactly ten years after the fall of France and the Dunkirk evacuation, exposed the differences between the two countries and set them on separate European policies for years to come’. While Britain and France clearly differed over European integration, there was ambivalence in other areas of Anglo-French relations in the 1950s including the challenges posed by decolonisation and European defence. Kevin Ruane demonstrates in detail the ‘high degree of congruity’ which existed during the period 1951–4 between the separate problems of Indo-China and the European Defence Community (EDC), with France the ‘common denominator’. French inertia with respect to both problems created considerable frustration in Britain which led some in the Foreign Office to question France’s value as an ally while others retained some sympathy for the French predicament. According to Ruane, Anthony Eden as Foreign Secretary emerged as a champion of France, helping to resolve the French withdrawal from Indo-China through the Geneva Conference of 1954 and conceding higher British force levels in Europe to calm French fears concerning West Germany’s increased rôle in European defence; this against the more reserved judgement of Prime Minister Churchill. Such was the significance that the French Ambassador at London, René Massigli, on learning of the troop pledge, and apparently with tears in his eyes, was moved to declare that ‘his country had just obtained the concession for which he had been asking Britain in vain for the last twenty-five years’.14 European defence co-operation was one thing, cooperation in face of the challenge of decolonisation of the British and French empires quite another. Martin Thomas focuses on Anglo-French imperial relations during the period 1954–62 and argues that in the early 1950s containment of nationalist demands featured more prominently than any ‘management’ of decolonisation in both countries. However, divergences in Anglo-French imperial policy became more apparent as the British, especially after the Suez débâcle, came to attach less importance to formal mechanisms of imperial control in Africa and the Middle East and to criticise French policies in North Africa, particularly in Algeria. Thomas concludes by emphasising that while Britain and France shared a common interest in portraying often reluctant decolonisations in the best possible light, the improvisation of much Anglo-French imperial withdrawal and the sometimes desperate steps taken to slow the erosion of British and French global influence prevented any joint approach to their retreat from empire.

Introduction

9

The themes of rivalry and cooperation are explored systematically in Joanne Wright’s long overview of Anglo-French relations since 1958. She warns that the importance of rhetorical differences between Britain and France in relation both to the Cold War and the developing European Community can often be over-stated. The reality is that the two countries shared fundamental views: they both wanted the United States to remain fully engaged in the security of Europe, a European Community with limited supranational powers and a Germany fully anchored in the western community. Consequently, despite periods marked by tension, distrust and frustration, such as, those concerned with Britain’s first two abortive attempts to join the European Economic Community in 1961–3 and 1966–7 when President de Gaulle applied his veto, they stayed ‘colleagues if not always friends’. In the post-Cold War period these shared fundamental views lingered, and remain true. Although successive French and British governments are still in disagreement over many aspects of European Union development, it is Wright’s contention that both also remain fundamentally committed to a successful and dynamic European Union which also promotes their own national interests. Was it ever thus? The essays contained in this volume, by focusing on important developments within specific periods, have endeavoured to provide in-sight and perspective to the Anglo-French relationship in the twentieth century, highlighting both rivalry and cooperation. Collectively, they do not provide a definitive account covering every and all aspects of Anglo-French relations in the period under review and, inevitably, there will be omissions. At the same time, sufficient important ground has been covered to confirm the complexities of a bilateral relationship between two declining powers based for the most part on common ideological and political affinities. In 1991 Charles Hardinge was confounded. A Channel tunnel linking Britain and France was finally opened. Cooperation had, perhaps, taken the upper hand. Notes 1 2

G. Clemenceau, Grandeur and Misery of Victory, London, Harrap, 1930, p. 113; J.B.Duroselle, Clemenceau, Paris, Fayard, 1988, p. 879. C. Giuliani, ‘Eden, de Gaulle and the Free French: un bienfait inscrit dans la mémoire’ in D.Dutton (ed.), Statecraft and Diplomacy in the Twentieth Century: Essays Presented to P.M.H.Bell, Liverpool, Liverpool University Press, 1995, p. 127.

10

3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14

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S. de Madariaga, Disarmament, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1929, p. 20. M.Cornick, ‘The myth of “perfidious Albion” and French national identity’ in Dutton (ed.), Statecraft, pp. 7–33; R.Vansittart, Lessons of My Life, London, Hutchinson, n.d., p. 21. British Documents on the Origins of the War 1898–1914, vol. VII, no. 409. Public Record Office (PRO) CAB 38/13/11, Admiralty Note, 25 February 1903. P.M.Kennedy, The Realities behind Diplomacy: Background Influences on British External Policy 1865–1980, London, Fontana, 1981, p. 211. S. de Madariaga, Morning without Noon, London, Saxon House, D.C. Heath, 1973, p. 33. J.M.McEwen (ed.), The Riddell Diaries 1908–1923, London, Athlone Press, 1986, diary entry 26 June 1920, p. 315. S.Jeannesson, Poincaré, la France et le Ruhr (1922–1924): Histoire d’une Occupation, Strasbourg, Presses Universitaires de Strasbourg, 1998, pp. 117–18. Documents on British Foreign Policy 1919–1939, 1st series, vol. IX, pp. 327–8 and n. 1. Churchill to Lloyd George, 28 November 1921. Lloyd George Papers, F/10/1/48, House of Lords Library. PRO FO 371/3765 187042/183192/17, Memorandum, c. 1 May 1920. See also A.Sharp, ‘Britain and the Channel Tunnel’, Australian Journal of Politics and History, 1979, vol. 25, pp. 210–15. P.H.Spaak, The Continuing Battle: Memoirs of a European, 1936–1966, London, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1971, p. 185.

1

The elusive balance British foreign policy and the French entente before the First World War Thomas Otte

Reviewing the recent course of British foreign policy, the head of the Foreign Office’s Western Department noted of the Anglo-French entente in 1907 that it ‘was the outcome of the honest and ardent desire…to compose, as far as possible, the many differences which had been a source of perpetual friction between them’.1 His French counterpart described the conclusion of the agreement in his eponymous memoirs as ‘un grand tournant de la politique mondiale’.2 Such contemporary testaments are, perhaps, not the most reliable guides for efforts to assess the historical significance of the AngloFrench entente. Historical interpretations range from inspired and far-sighted statesmanship to an act of weak-kneed ‘Edwardian appeasement’. 3 What they have in common with Eyre Crowe’s and Maurice Paléologue’s eulogies is the assumption of the novelty of Anglo-French cooperation. The entente agreement of 1904 was no diplomatic revolution. All too often, commentators seem to have succumbed to the romantic vision conjured up by Winston Churchill of ‘the historic antagonism to France, the memories of Blenheim, of Minden and of Waterloo’.4 Despite the prolonged periods of conflict especially in the eigh-teenth century, there was no continuous line of Anglo-French antagonism from Agincourt, Malplaquet and Trafalgar to Fashoda. In the aftermath of the Napoleonic wars ‘liberal’ France was often found to be a more concurrent partner in European affairs than the three eastern monarchies. Under Lord Aberdeen’s premiership both governments strove to establish and maintain ‘a cordial, good understanding’, or in Jarnac’s magic rendering ‘une entente cordiale’.5 Despite such instances of close cross-Channel cooperation, the nature of Anglo-French relations in the nineteenth century was more complex. France was as much a troublesome competitor overseas as

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she was an important factor in European politics, without which no viable continental equilibrium was thought feasible.6 It was with France that Britain concluded the first free-trade treaty in 1860, thereby laying the foundations for her network of late-nineteenthcentury free-trading arrangements with various continental countries. 7 Occasional trade disputes notwithstanding, Britain’s commercial ties with France were on the whole close.8 Similar elements of continuity can also be detected in the ambivalent attitude of Britain’s foreign policy-making élite towards France. Common (Anglo-Saxon, Protestant) suspicion of France and her political and cultural traditions of monarchic absolutism, Catholic ob-scurantism and revolutionary and Bonapartist demagoguery did not preclude willingness to cooperate. Warm sympathy towards things French, on the other hand, though perhaps confined to only a few, did not imply the absence of suspicion and mistrust.9 The most obvious example was perhaps John Morley, whose numerous insightful literary and historical essays bear witness to his affinity with French culture; 10 yet who, as a Cabinet minister, was critical of the French entente and who ultimately resigned from the Government in 1914 in protest against the decision to enter the war against Germany.11 Public attitudes in both countries, though less sophisticated, were equally ambivalent. In Britain, images of General Kitchener’s ‘triumph’ at Fashoda in 1898 were far from dormant when the entente with France was concluded. Not so long ago, ‘vive les Boers’ was frequently heard on the boulevards of Paris and the French public had revelled in anti-British caricatures of dubious taste.12 Successive British ambassadors at Paris had complained of ‘the scoundrelly press of Paris’,13 whose doings had left the French public ‘educated in hostility of England’.14 The great sea-change, insofar as public opinion was concerned, came under King Edward VII. Although ‘very pleased’ about its conclusion,15 he was not, contrary to persistent popular mythology, the architect of the entente. He was, however, instrumental in winning over the public of both countries. 16 I It is not without irony that the entente with France was the unintended outcome of the retirement of British diplomacy after 1900. With Lord Salisbury eased out of the Foreign Office in that year and Lord Lansdowne firmly installed as his successor, anti-isolationist

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sentiments had gained the ascendancy in the Cabinet.17 Although a majority of ministers were convinced of the need for a continental alignment of some kind, an arrangement with France was not what the new Foreign Secretary had in mind. His one ‘preconceived idea’ on taking office was to ‘use every effort to maintain, and if we can to strengthen the good relations which at present exist [with Germany]’.18 In view of the chequered record of Anglo-French relations over the past two decades and of the parlous state of relations with Russia, it was not a surprising conclusion to arrive at. Ever since the collapse of the dual management of Egyptian affairs in the wake of the 1881– 2 crisis, the question of the future of the country on the Nile had been a festering sore in the relations between Britain and France. Prime Minister Jules Ferry’s colonial flirtation with Chancellor Otto von Bismarck in the early 1880s had done little to encourage British belief in French reliability;19 and had, in fact, left behind a legacy of suspicion which was still well alive after the conclusion of the entente.20 The efforts undertaken in the 1890s to arrive at an African settlement with France seemed only to have served to delay the stand-off at the headwaters of the Nile rather than to avoid it altogether.21 In the ‘Eastern Question’ and its various sub-issues French policy appeared to British diplomats at best capri-cious, and therefore unreliable; at worst, exceedingly subservient to Russian wishes, and thus suspicious.22 The near clash with France over Siam in July 1894, though no doubt largely brought about by Lord Rosebery’s miscalculation, and Edward Grey’s sabre-rattling over Uganda in the following year, only served to underline the faultlines in Anglo-French relations.23 French competition for political and commercial influence over southern and central China merely completed this impressive catalogue of global clashes of interest and rivalries.24 Certainly, circumstances were not propitious for Gabriel Hanotaux’s desire to ‘arriver a une bonne entente avec 1’Angleterre’.25 A military conflict with France and her ally Russia was therefore thought of as a distinct possibility.26 At the same time, there were few manifest clashes of interest with Germany; and if there were lingering ‘memories of Blenheim, of Minden and of Waterloo’,27 then those very same battles stood also for Anglo- German comradeship-in-arms. Imperial Germany therefore seemed to be a natural choice as partner in a continental alignment. Still, whatever the precise nature of Lansdowne’s ‘preconceived idea’, he was warned by the Ambassador at Berlin against ‘making any concessions [to Germany] for which we do not

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receive a completely adequate consideration’. 28 Frank Lascelles‘ warning was pertinent. Ultimately Lansdowne’s plans never came to fruition because of German diplomatic manoeuvres.29 Moreover, the Wilhelmstrasse’s persistent efforts to foster conflict between Britain and the Franco-Russian alliance, and to exploit existing difficulties made Germany the linchpin of the European system.30 Reflecting in later years on his efforts to arrive at an understanding with the German Government, Lansdowne had to concede that he found he ‘couldn’t trust them’.31 The alliance with Japan of January 1902 solved Lansdowne’s most pressing far-eastern problems which had made an arrangement with Germany seem so desirable.32 The Japanese alliance safeguarded Britain’s regional interests around the China seas without incurring any European obligations. Indeed, it highlighted Britain’s aloofness from continental affairs rather than marking the end of ‘splendid isolation’. With the German navy still in its chrysalis stage the Admiralty was confident of being able to deal with any emerging threat. The Japanese alliance was to contain Russia in China. Indeed, the fareastern problem now appeared to be quiescent. But this seemed to leave India even more vulnerable to a Russian land invasion.33 To many, Lansdowne included, an understanding with Russia on Persia and Afghanistan was now highly desirable. 34 An improvement in Anglo-French relations was seen largely in terms of its utility in bringing about the desired accommodation with France’s ally Russia. 35 A proposal by Paul Cambon, the French Ambassador at London, in March 1901, and then again in July of the same year, for a bargain involving the relinquishing of some of France’s special and ill-defined fishing rights off Newfoundland under the Treaty of Utrecht of 1713 in return for some territory in the Gambia was therefore broadly welcomed. On closer examination, however, and on Colonial Secretary Joseph Chamberlain’s advice, the idea was rejected as the removal of a minor, albeit perpetual, source of irritation in Anglo-French relations seemed hardly worth the sacrifice of African territory. 36 Indeed, for the time being, Cambon’s negotiating position was rendered more difficult by the attempts of the French Foreign Minister, Théophile Delcassé, to partition the ramshackle empire of the Sultan of Morocco in conjunction with Spain and Italy.37 Still, the seeds of the idea of an Anglo-French rapprochement based on the settlement of outstanding imperial problems had been planted. Their germination, however, depended on outside circumstances.

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Although by no means inclined to discourage some form of Anglo-French rapprochement, 38 Lansdowne was still anxious to improve relations with Germany. All his efforts to that end, however, produced the opposite effect: the joint Anglo-German military intervention in Venezuela in 1903 threatened prospects of a rapprochement with the United States; 39 and his patient negotiations in the matter of the Baghdad Railway ran into the buffers of parliamentary and public opposition. 40 With his German policy derailed, a settlement with France now became more attractive for Lansdowne, though it held no attraction for him as an anti-German combination. 41 More important, however, was Chamberlain’s conversion from advocate of a German alliance to supporter of a colonial arrangement with France based on a Morocco-Egypt barter. 42 With the British Government becoming more receptive, Delcassé’s failure in late 1902 to entice Spain to agree to a Moroccan partition treaty prior to negotiations with Britain, at last opened a window of opportunity for the anxious Cambon. 43 Indeed, with the collapse of Delcassé’s Moorish partition, there also ceased French collusion with German intrigues against Britain in the Far East—a development often later overlooked by historians. 44 French willingness to accept the linkage of Egypt and Morocco as the basis of a settlement recommended such a deal to British foreign policy-makers. In fact, there was a precedent for it. In 1894, the idea of a ‘negative’ bargain had been mooted, centred on a British withdrawal from Egypt in return for French guarantees for Moroccan in-dependence.45 However, the situation in North Africa had changed considerably since then. Fashoda and the 1899 Anglo-French agreement had established Britain’s predominance in the Nile Valley; and, in the judgement of British diplomats, French acceptance of this change in the regional status quo was a long over-due act of pragmatism. 46 But the same was true of Britain. The policy of maintaining Moorish independence by promoting domestic reforms was destroyed by the collapse of the Sultan’s rule in 1902. Sir Arthur Nicolson, Britain’s minister at Tangier, fought a losing battle against France’s further expansion westward from Algiers. 47 A colonial settlement with France was also strongly backed by the influential Earl of Cromer, the de facto ruler of Egypt, who had spent the past two decades tightening British rule there, on the grounds that improved relations could provide ‘a stepping stone with Russia’ which would facilitate ‘some reduction in our enormous military and naval expen-diture’.48

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It was this prospect of extending the rapprochement with France to relations with Russia without a poise against Germany which recommended the former to Lansdowne and Arthur Balfour. The Prime Minister, in particular, had consistently worked for an alignment with Germany, and remained wary of a possible anti-German poise of the French agreement.49 Balfour’s objections to an anti-German deal therefore had to be taken into account and Lansdowne himself was anxious to avoid a further deterioration of Anglo-German relations.50 Lansdowne’s negotiations with Cambon progressed throughout the second half of 1903. The imminent prospect of war between their two respective allies in the Far East lent greater urgency to the rapid conclusion of an understanding, especially since the stipulations of the Franco-Russian alliance were not known in London. 51 The Japanese alliance, far from keeping Britain aloof from Europe, thus ultimately involved her in continental affairs. In this respect, the French agreement would also go far beyond what Lansdowne seems to have envisaged. When Japan finally attacked Port Arthur in February 1904, Lansdowne and Cambon resolved speedily to settle the remaining few quibbles, although Lansdowne in particular was determined, throughout the talks, to make the agreement stand on its own merits.52 The Anglo-French agreements of 8 April 1904 settled a series of outstanding colonial disputes between the two countries. The core of the understanding, however, was undoubtedly the declaration on Egypt and Morocco. French recognition of Britain’s predominance in Egypt at last removed what had been a major barrier to a better understanding since 1882. In return, the British Government promised, safely hidden away in secret articles, its recognition of and support for France’s Moroccan aspirations.53 What appealed to Lansdowne was the removal of concrete contentious issues from the diplomatic agenda of both countries, thereby reducing local colonial tensions, rather than the more far-reaching calculations of Delcassé and Cambon.54 It was a sensible policy of rational and comprehensive compromise in an effort to safeguard vital British imperial interests in the periphery of European politics without, it was thought, incurring major European obligations. II In the course of the next half decade, however, the colonial agreement with France grew to become one of the main planks of British diplomacy in Europe. This was to a large extent the work of Lansdowne’s Liberal successor, Sir Edward Grey. To no small degree

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it was also the result of the internal logic of the entente agreement. Reflecting on its nature Eyre Crowe minuted that the entente was ‘nothing more than a frame of mind, a view of general policy which is shared by the governments of two countries, but which may be, or become, so vague as to lose all content’.55 In the strictest sense, this interpretation of the entente was no doubt correct. But it was a minimalist interpretation. In reality, both Britain’s expectations of the entente and its implications for British policy were more ambivalent. Sir Francis Bertie, Britain’s Ambassador at Paris from 1905 to 1918 and a staunch supporter of the entente, summarised Britain’s position succinctly. Indeed, his views are indicative of the general trend of thinking at the Foreign Office in the period between the two Moroccan crises: The danger for us to avoid will be to make the French lose confidence in our support and drive them into some arrangement with Germany, detrimental to us while not being harmful to France. At the same time we must not encourage the French to rely on our material support to the extent of encouraging them to beard the Germans.56 Earlier in 1903 Bertie had revealed his concern when he told the Austrian Ambassador that ‘For us France is more important than Germany or Russia or any other Power. If we are certain of France, no one can have designs upon us.’57 It was a statement characteristic of the ‘Edwardians’, the younger generation which in the early year of the new century moved into positions of responsibility at the Foreign Office and in the diplomatic service. The settlement with France had removed the possibility of serious colonial tensions with that country, and by extension had lessened the strains in relations with Russia. It had thus lifted Britain out of her invidious and injurious isolation and reduced Germany’s capacity to exploit local colonial tensions to her advantage. The manoeuvrings of German diplomacy in the late 1890s had indeed left a bitter legacy of mistrust amongst British diplomatists.58 However, now it seemed that it was Britain rather than Germany which was the linchpin of European diplomacy, holding the balance, especially since Britain’s new position would have an impact on the Triple Alliance in view of Italy’s Mediterranean interests.59 The maintenance of the European balance of power, especially after Russia’s defeat by Japan in 1905,60 therefore differed from the traditional equilibrist foreign policy. It was rather a form of neo-Bismarckianism.61

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However, such a policy was not without its problems. Like its original it involved a conjuring trick, rather than a ‘policy of gesture’. 62 To maintain Britain’s new position the French entente had to be kept intact. To do so, however, required giving assurances to the French; and that meant that French needs and interests had to be accommodated. Accordingly, the entente was more farreaching and entangling than Lansdowne had anticipated, and cooperation with France now placed potentially serious strains on Anglo-German relations. After all France had lost the leadership of Europe as well as the provinces of Alsace and Lorraine to Germany; and as the entente could not be had without reassurances for France British foreign policy now ran the risk of becoming involved in a Franco-German conflict. Such risk became all the greater since the agreement of 1904 had excluded France from Egypt and Eastern Africa and had precluded any further French encroachment upon Siam. This left only Morocco as a ‘legitimate’ outlet for French colonial ambitions. The secret clauses of the entente therefore made France’s Moorish aspirations all the more urgent. Morocco was her diplomatic consolation prize, not least also because of the strong presence of colonialist lobby groups in French domestic politics. 63 British diplomacy therefore had to support France in Morocco if the entente was to be maintained. Otherwise, France might turn to Germany for a settlement, and Britain’s rôle as the balancer of European politics would come to an abrupt end, as Bertie cautioned Lansdowne.64 The situation was seen in quite similar terms in the Wilhelmstrasse, as one senior member of the German diplomatic service had incautiously let slip to the British Consul-General at Hamburg.65 Morocco itself was of little intrinsic value to Britain. In terms of British strategic interests the Moroccan question had always been reducible to keeping Tangier and with it the coastline opposite Gibraltar out of the hands of other powers.66 Promising support for French ambitions in the rest of Morocco therefore involved no major sacrifice of British interests. Still, when the German Chancellor Bernhard von Bülow dispatched a somewhat reluctant Emperor Wilhelm II to Tangier in March 1905 to demonstrate to France that Germany was by no means inclined to let her settle the Moroccan question on her own, it was seen in London as a test of the entente’s strength.67 Far from removing Morocco from Britain’s diplomatic agenda, the combination of French entente and heavy-handed German diplomacy ensured that it would remain there until Paris and Berlin settled their differences.

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Even the unflappable Lansdowne was infected by the strong sense of crisis prevailing at the Foreign Office. The survival of the entente seemed at stake unless French surrender to German pressure could be prevented.68 Thus Bülow’s policy of pressurising the French had transformed what was a purely colonial settlement into a virtual diplomatic alliance between Britain and France.69 The transformation of the entente, on the other hand, entailed risks of a different kind as French obduracy might provoke German aggression and ineluctably embroil Britain in a continental war. It was therefore vital for British diplomacy to exercise a calming influence at Paris and at Berlin. Whilst offering Cambon full diplomatic support, albeit in an almost non-committal form, 70 Lansdowne warned the German Ambassador that, in the event of a German attack on France, public opinion in Britain might force his Government to join the war on France’s side.71 The pattern was thus set for British diplomacy during future Franco-German crises until the outbreak of the War. However, Delcassé’s unexpected fall and his replacement by the timid Pierre Maurice Rouvier in June 1906 also confirmed existing doubts about French steadfastness.72 The entente, which seemed almost doomed with Delcassé’s resignation, was saved by the Kaiser’s Bjørkø blunder. Now convinced that German diplomacy aimed at breaking up the Franco-Russian alliance, Rouvier began to revert to the Delcasséan line, although he submitted to the German demand of an international conference. At the conference of Algeciras British diplomacy followed the line laid down by Lansdowne.73 Thus his succession at the Foreign Office by Grey did not alter the general trend of British foreign policy. If anything Grey was far more prepared than the cautious Marquess had been to develop the entente further into a core element of Britain’s foreign policy. Shortly before entering the Government, in October 1905, he had praised the Anglo-French understanding in glowing terms at a public meeting in the City of London. 74 However, on taking office Grey continued Lansdowne’s policy of pouring oil on troubled waters,75 while in light of Grey’s earlier public endorsement of the entente, Cambon renewed his efforts to press for firmer commitments from Britain. On 10 January 1906 the Ambassador ‘put the question…directly & formally’ to Grey: would Britain lend France her military support in case of ‘une agression brutale’? Grey refused to go further than promising ‘benevolent neutrality if such a thing existed’. Still, he ventured farther than his predecessor had by conceding that, if Germany attacked France,

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‘public opinion in England would be strongly moved in favour of France’. 76 Cambon’s enquiry did not come as a surprise to Grey. The threat of a Franco-German war seemed a very real one, and in the course of the previous week, the Foreign Secretary had discussed this eventuality with R.B.Haldane, his Cabinet colleague at the War Office. He then authorised informal and unofficial talks between the Secretary of the Committee of Imperial Defence and the French military attaché on possible Anglo-French military cooperation in the event of a continental war. 77 The secretive nature of Grey’s policy—the Prime Minister, Sir Henry Campbell Bannerman, was not informed until later in the month, and the full Cabinet was kept in the dark until 1911—laid him open to criticism by both his colleagues as well as historians later.78 In fact, the military talks with the French are easily exaggerated, although, of course, they were constitutionally not above reproach.79 Indeed, there probably was more support for Grey’s policy within the Cabinet than historians, perhaps misled by the Gladstonian posturing of some ministers at a later stage, have conceded. 80 Also, the service departments had already begun to examine the possibility of a major continental war and its implications for British strategic planning. Any plans to assist France militarily, however, required detailed information about France’s own military plans; and this could only be had by way of military conversations. The technical problems of military planning apart, the staff talks ought properly to be seen as an integral part of Grey’s diplomatic strategy. His policy of the ‘free hand’, with a view to maintaining Britain’s position as the balancing power in Europe, depended for its success on two preconditions: the preservation of peace, and the prevention of independent action by France. If war broke out, Britain would be forced to declare her hand, thus inevitably losing influence over one of the two parties involved; and if France either bought German acquiescence by making concessions or provoked her into an act of aggression, then Britain would again be confined to the sidelines of European diplomacy. To preserve British influence required of Grey a precarious balancing act. The temptation for France to yield to German pressure had to be counteracted by offering her assurances of British support. If Britain failed in this respect, the Foreign Office anticipated the much feared continental league between Germany and Russia to materialise with France in the rôle of their junior partner.81 At the same time, any assurances given to the French had to be of such a provisional nature as to

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dissuade them from being too obdurate and unaccommodating to Germany. The pledge of armed assistance could only ever be conditional.82 Whilst urging caution on the French, Grey simultaneously warned the German Government that unless they desisted and war did ensue, Britain might be forced to join France. 83 He was, however, by no means averse to accommodating German ambitions for a coaling station in Morocco, provided it was not in the vicinity of Tangier.84 This precarious balancing act was the inevitable result of Grey’s policy of the ‘free hand’; with the difference, however, that whereas Bismarck and his epigoni exploited, Grey, being an honest man, applied the brakes and allowed others to force the pace of developments. Very little would change in this respect until August 1914. Well over a quarter of a century earlier, Lord Salisbury had wistfully remarked that the ‘beau ideal’ of British foreign policy was ‘to float lazily downstream, occasionally putting out a boat-hook to avoid col-lisions’.85 Grey had a more difficult task to perform. Moored to France, collisions were always likely in the rough waters of post1904 international politics; and steering Britain’s boat required more sophisticated tools than a mere boat-hook. The reasons for Grey’s reluctance to give firmer commitments to France were not always appreciated by his officials at the Foreign Office, including his Private Secretary until 1907, Louis Mallet, Bertie, Mallet’s old mentor, and Eyre Crowe.86 Ultimately, such exhortations by Foreign Office officials cut little ice with Grey.87 Yet, the experience of having withstood German pressure together during the Moroccan episode had hardened the entente. Grey came to this conclusion shortly before the termination of the Algeciras conference: ‘Cordial cooperation with France in all parts of the world remains a cardinal point of British policy and in some respects we have carried it further than the late Government here were required to do.’88 Indeed, Grey was prepared to go yet further. In the tripartite Anglo-French-Spanish agreement of May 1907 Britain’s pledge to support France was extended well beyond Morocco. 89 Grey’s diplomatic calculations revolved around one basic point: For as long as the entente remained intact, Germany could not revert to the policy at which she excelled in the decade before Algeciras, that of foster-ing and then exploiting tensions between the other powers so as ‘to make herself predominant upon the continent’.90 The success at Algeciras, where Germany was almost totally isolated, had by no means laid to rest the traditional fear of French instability and unreliability. It was generally assumed, despite

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evidence to the contrary, that the French were prone to panic under pressure.91 And if Gallic sangfroide under fire appeared questionable, then so did their practical political wisdom. Commenting on rumours of a desire amongst French ministers for a ‘working arrangement’ with Germany, Eyre Crowe warned ‘[w]e cannot therefore be blind to the fact that however innocently France may welcome a friendly understanding with Germany, the latter will not improbably be tempted to make use of such understanding for purposes hostile to [Britain]’.92 Jules Ferry’s colonial quasi-entente with Bismarck was indeed casting a long shadow! Only Bertie at Paris was more philosophical, declaring that: ‘One must take the French as they are and not as one would wish them to be.’93 Unlike his predecessors at the Faubourg St Honoré, Bertie had had little direct contact with French diplomats before his appointment to Paris, whereas his frequent negotiations with German diplomats during his time at the Foreign Office had imbued him with strong anti-German sentiments.94 Unsurprisingly, Bertie was one of the most vociferous advocates of stronger ties with France. Throughout his time at Paris he unceasingly pressed the case for firmer British commitments to France. At the same time, he sought to allay fears that firm pledges of armed assistance to France might give Paris an incentive to take a more provocative stance towards Germany, by arguing that the horror of another war with Germany was deeply imprinted on the French psyche.95 With the exception of Bertie, however, older patterns of perception persisted at the Foreign Office; and these were not designed to engender trust in French diplomacy nor in France’s political élite. Frequent changes of government, usually accompanied by ministerial crises, compared unfavourably with the comparative stability at Westminster;96 and so did the quality of the French political class. The despairing conviction that French governments were ‘tinpot Governments’ was by no means confined to the critics of the entente amongst Grey’s Cabinet colleagues but was endemic among the political élite, Foreign Office included.97 That ‘personal corruption… pervades all French government circles’ was a widely shared belief.98 Not much had indeed changed since Rosebery sneered at the ‘Great Republic’ as ‘a centre of corruption’.99 Whatever the accuracy of such observations, British fears of French infidelity were not entirely without foundation. French cooperation in financial and commercial matters was not forthcoming at Constantinople; 100 and many minor outstanding colonial disputes which had arisen since 1904, or had not been dealt with properly

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then, such as the Newfoundland fisheries, were sources of complaint.101 In a similar vein, Clemenceau’s agreement on financial and commercial cooperation with Germany in Morocco of February 1909, coming at a time of strained Anglo-German relations, was hardly conducive to harmonious relations between the two entente powers. Despite the later efforts of the Permanent Under-Secretary, Sir Charles Hardinge, to gloss over the affair, it was feared that a Franco-German commercial entente might materialise at the expense of British interests in Morocco, and that it might act as a precursor to a closer political understanding between Paris and Berlin.102 II I The grievances and uncertainties were put into perspective, however, by the often clumsy manoeuvres of German diplomacy, such as the Kaiser’s meeting with his Russian cousin, Tsar Nicholas II, and his Foreign Minister, Sergei Sazonov, at Potsdam in November 1910.103 Nicolson, who succeeded Hardinge as Permanent Under-Secretary in 1910, warned that the entente had to remain the ‘bed-rock of our policy and could on no account be broken’ and Grey entirely agreed.104 Both men were haunted by the spectre of a return to turnof-the-century isolation.105 To the Ambassador at Berlin Nicolson observed that, ‘were the Triple Entente to be broken up, we should be isolated and compelled to do the bidding of the Power which assumed the hegemony in Europe’.106 Such basic convictions were at the heart of British diplomacy during the Agadir crisis of 1911. 107 This first July crisis played a catalytic rôle in Anglo-French relations. Most importantly perhaps, it gave fresh impetus to ongoing deliberations at the Foreign Office on the present state of entente relations. It was in February of that year that Eyre Crowe made his remark about the entente as being nothing but a ‘frame of mind’, adding the warning that ‘[f]or the purposes of ultimate emergencies it may be found to have no substance at all’.108 Nicolson wrote in a similar vein to Sir Fairfax Cartwright, the Ambassador at Vienna.109 During the Agadir crisis the Nicolson-Crowe combination, extended by Bertie at Paris, continued to press for closer ties with France. Grey, wary of Liberal opinion in the country and in Cabinet, refused to go further. No doubt with the experience of the 1909 agreement in mind, it also seemed hardly desirable to do so. After all, France was in the process of changing the status quo in Morocco, and Germany had a legitimate

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claim to some compensation. Provided Germany did not acquire a foothold in the Mediterranean, Grey and the Admiralty initially took a detached view of the ensuing crisis.110 The imminent collapse of Franco-German negotiations in midJuly, however, forced Grey and Prime Minister Herbert Asquith to reconsider their position, though an indecisive and reluctant Cabinet did not allow them to adopt the hard line Grey’s officials were advocating.111 Although personally inclined to continue to pour oil on troubled waters by urging moderation on the French and even supporting German demands for compensation, Grey could no longer afford to remain aloof. The angry exchanges between Jules Cambon, France’s Ambassador at Berlin, and the German Foreign Minister, Alfred von Kiderlen-Waechter, details of which were leaked to French and British newspapers, did not make pleasant reading.112 In this feverish atmosphere war no longer seemed a remote possibility. Still, even if war could be avoided, Britain was in danger of being side-lined. ‘We should not’, warned Nicolson, give France any grounds for believing that our adhesion to the Triple Entente is in any way weakening. Were she to come to distrust us, she would probably try to make terms with Germany irrespective of us. …This would mean that we should have a triumphant Germany, and an unfriendly France and Russia and our policy since 1904 of preserving the equilibrium and consequently the peace of Europe would be wrecked.113 Such an outcome would mean the end of Britain’s rôle as the decisive factor in the European equilibrium. No settlement could therefore be tolerated without British participation, as Grey informed the German Ambassador, Count Metternich, on 21 July with the approval of the still nervous Cabinet. 114 David Lloyd George’s dramatic intervention in the crisis through his speech at the Mansion House later that same evening emphasised Grey’s statement to Metternich in the most public manner. The speech was not at all spontaneous, but was made after careful consideration with Grey and Asquith, though it did contain some last minute impromptu alterations by the Chancellor of the Exchequer; and served diplomatic as well as domestic purposes.115 The Chancellor’s public declaration had an electrifying effect. Previously, Lloyd George had been regarded as ‘pro-German’. A warning from him carried far more weight than anything Grey or Asquith could have said. 116 Ultimately, Kiderlen backed down; and Grey and Asquith were now

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anxious to reduce tensions and to facilitate Franco-German negotiations.117 The entente seemed to emerge strengthened from the Agadir crisis. The line Grey had consistently adhered to since 1905, that public opinion at home would force any British government to intervene on the side of France, appeared vindicated. The FrancoGerman agreement of 4 November 1911 allowed France to fulfil her Moroccan aspirations in return for minor concessions in the Congo. Yet the entente was by now no longer a purely colonial accord—the previous Moroccan crisis had transformed it into a virtual diplomatic alliance. The coup d’Agadir had consolidated that alliance, despite Prime Minister Joseph Caillaux’s anti-British manoeuvres, and extended Anglo-French interests well beyond Morocco. Furthermore, the July crisis of 1911 provided a fresh impetus for the staff talks which had languished since 1906. 118 Suspicion of Germany had helped the entente to survive and to grow. This also meant that any attempt by either of the two entente partners to improve their relations with Berlin had the potential for undermining the Anglo-French understanding. Yet, this did not deter Grey from essaying once more to mend fences with Germany. Indeed, the crisis in the summer of 1911, during which Grey was forced to reveal to his Cabinet colleagues for the first time the staff talks with France, had also brought into sharper focus the divergent opinions on British foreign policy within the Government—a dispute which flared up again in November 1911.119 It was partly with a view to placating his critics in Cabinet and Parliament that Grey held out the prospect of improved relations with Germany in a Commons debate at the end of November 1911. 120 Still, it was perhaps less an exercise in appeasing his critics than with a view to Lloyd George that Grey undertook to improve relations with Germany. In the wake of Agadir the Chancellor had become part of ‘a controlling directorate’ over foreign policy.121 Lloyd George, no doubt, had acted on his own political agenda rather than at the spur of an ‘anti-German conversion’. True, there is scant doc-umentary evidence of any deal that the shrewd Chancellor might have struck with Grey and Asquith. The fact remains, however, that Grey promised Lloyd George privately that, insofar as Germany was concerned, ‘after the crisis is over the whole question of [the] future development of foreign policy will have to be considered very carefully & coolly in the light of recent events’. 122 Any improvement in the relations with Germany was quite in his personal interest. As Chancellor of the Exchequer, Lloyd George was anxious

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for a reduction in naval expenditure, not least to maintain his radical credentials. A naval agreement with Germany was therefore more than welcome to him, as he explained to Bertie in February 1912, shortly before Haldane’s mission to Berlin. 123 Improving relations with Germany was by no means out of character with Grey’s previous policy, though his officials were hostile to the idea.124 It was, in fact, suggested by the logic of the policy of the ‘free hand’.125 The attempts by the German Chancellor, Theobold von Bethmann-Hollweg, and his Navy Minister, Admiral Alfred von Tirpitz, during the Haldane mission to extract some kind of assurance of British neutrality in the event of a continental war in return for the desired naval agreement confirmed that Britain was the linchpin of the European system; upon Britain rested the question of war and peace.126 Such a pledge was too high a price for any naval arms limitation agreement since it would have given Germany a free hand in Europe and simultaneously reduced Britain’s rôle. Grey’s refusal to promise more than a non-aggression commitment ultimately rendered Haldane’s mission fruitless.127 But it did not stop Anglo- German colonial talks. 128 That Grey was prepared to accommodate German colonial ambitions against French opposition brought home to the French Government ‘the nebulous nature of their entente with England’.129 It also provided a powerful stimulus for Cambon to renew his efforts to reshape the understanding with Britain and place it on a more formal basis. Although the Ambassador was dissuaded by Nicolson from pursuing this line any further, the naval staff talks which had been begun somewhat tenta-tively in the summer of 1911 brought the formal redefinition of the entente a good deal closer. The further rapid growth of the German fleet and the naval armament programmes of her Triple Alliance partners, Italy and Austria-Hungary, threatened to stretch Britain’s naval forces. Despite widespread scepticism at the Foreign Office, provisions for cooperation between British and French naval forces in the Mediterranean seemed to suggest themselves.130 Bertie, untir-ing in his efforts for ever closer cooperation between the two countries, warmly supported the idea of mutual naval assistance, ‘unless we prefer to run the risk of being stranded in splendid isolation’.131 The Franco-British naval talks of 1912 once again illustrated the difficulties of finding that elusive balance of commitments. Churchill, the beleaguered First Lord of the Admiralty, though anxious for an agreement with France, also had to assuage the fears of his Cabinet colleagues that its conclusion would commit the Government morally and thus prejudice their freedom of decision in the event of a war.132

British foreign policy and the French entente

27

Grey himself was opposed to ‘something like an alliance’, though the general entente with France had to be main-tained. 133 Even the otherwise indefatigable Bertie shared Grey’s cau-tion.134 Ultimately, Grey and Cambon arrived at a compromise. The notes exchanged in November 1912 merely confirmed that consultations between naval experts had taken place; but that these were not to be regarded as ‘an engagement that commits either government to action in a contingency that has not arisen and may never arise’. 135 Grey had achieved his aim. No binding commitment had been given to the French Government. By spring 1913 the naval staff talks had produced a series of agreements on tactical and strategic cooperation in the Mediterranean and the Straits of Dover. Although these agreements were somewhat vague,136 the resulting respective redeployment of the two navies arguably entailed a moral obligation by Britain to defend the French Channel coast in the event of a continental conflict.137 Whether Grey could have gone further is a moot point. The distribution of forces within the Asquith Cabinet would certainly not have allowed him to enter into binding engagements but it is unlikely that Grey wished to go further than he had gone in November 1912 as firm commitments to France ran contrary to the principles of the ‘free hand’. Isolation, he explained to the Colonial Secretary, Lewis Harcourt, in early 1914, was no practical option. In fact, isolation, as he had made clear in the Commons debate in November 1911, was ‘an abdication of policy’. But he did not regard closer ties with either of the two continental blocs as desirable either.138 For as long as closer ties could be avoided, Britain continued to hold the balance between the two. The ultimately insurmountable problem for Grey was that France might be involved in a war with Germany in which British interests were not concerned and which left the British public cool. On the other hand, in view of Germany’s perceived military superiority, withholding support from France ran the risk of a German triumph on the battlefield and hence her hegemony on the continent; and that was intolerable.139 How to strike the elusive balance between maintaining the entente with France and not antagonising Berlin remained the central dilemma for Grey’s diplomacy. Ironically, there was a palpable thaw in the Anglo-German ‘cold war’ in 1913–14. Both foreign offices had co-operated smoothly during the recent Balkan troubles; talks on the Portuguese colonies and the Baghdad Railway had made good progress; and a ‘naval holiday’ was once again talked about.140 Gottlieb von Jagow, the new German Foreign Minister, gave a succinct summary of the state

28

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of relations between the two countries: they ‘continued to develop on the lines of détente and a rapprochement’. 141 Moreover Germany’s international position seemed reduced by the problems which beset her Triple Alliance partners. Austria was visibly weakened by the recent redrawing of the Balkan map; and Italy’s Tripoli adventure exposed her to Anglo-French pressure in the Mediterranean thus reducing her alliance value for Germany.142 At the same time, Grey was disenchanted with the French Government for failing to curb Russian policy in the Balkans and for their recalcitrance on a series of outstanding smaller colonial disputes with Britain.143 Similarly, Russian activities in Persia and elsewhere were judged to be inimical to the 1907 agreement.144 Indeed, with the revitalisation of the French military the French seemed to become more truculent.145 In the light of recent events in Albania and the Balkans, the principal task of British diplomacy now no longer seemed to be the containment of Germany, but rather to prevent France and Russia from embroiling Britain in conflicts fought for primarily French and Russian interests. Even Nicolson, the most ardent advocate of closest ties with Russia, began to doubt her reliability.146 Quite clearly, 1914 would have been the year of major foreign policy decisions in one way or another, as Sir Edward Goschen, the Ambassador at Berlin, noted: ‘I am sure we cannot have it both ways: i.e. form a defensive alliance with France and Russia and at the same time be on cordial terms with Germany.’147 Ironically, at the other end of the Wilhelmstrasse, the German Chancellor saw matters in a similar light, albeit with customary pessimism.148 When the German leadership resolved to take the ‘calculated risk’ in July 1914, the pivotal rôle of having to decide the question of war or peace in Europe was once again thrust upon a reluctant British Government. 149 Once Bethmann had set the ‘iron dice’ rolling, all the progress in AngloGerman relations since 1912 and all the recent anxiety over Russia’s forward policy in Persia and France’s truculence palled. In July 1914, France was still too weak in Europe and too dangerous overseas. Once again blundering German diplomacy had helped to cement the entente and transformed it into a formidable alliance. Notes 1 2

British Documents on the Origins of the War, 1898–1914, vol. III, app I, p. 397. Hereafter BD. M.Paléologue, Un Grand Tournant de la Politique Mondiale, 1904–1906, Paris, Plon, 1934.

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3

4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17

18 19 20 21

22

29

See A.F.Pribram, England and the International Policy of the European Great Powers, 1871–1914, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1931, pp. 97–8. For the latter, though highly idiosyncratic and misguided view, see N. Ferguson, The Pity of War, London, Allen Lane, 1998, pp. 52–5. W.S.Churchill, The World Crisis, 1911–1918, London, Thornton Butterworth, rev edn 1931, p. 25. See also L.Colley, Britons: Forging the Nation, 1707–1837, London, Pimlico, 1994, pp. 33–5. M.Chamberlain, Lord Aberdeen: A Political Biography, London, Longman, 1983, pp. 357–8. Lyons to Russell, 7 May 1872 and 8 April 1873, and Russell to Lyons, 14 March 1873 Ampthill Mss, Public Record Office (PRO) FO 918/ 52. Crowe to Fergusson, 15 November 1889. PRO FO 800/26. Kennedy to Fergusson, 20 December 1886. PRO FO 800/28. Harcourt to Kimberley, 2 July 1894. Harcourt Mss, Ms. Harcourt dep. 51, Bodleian Library. E.g. Critical Miscellanies (2 vols.), London, Macmillan, 1908. See his Memorandum on Resignation, August 1914, London, Macmillan, 1928. V.Stuart-Wortley, Life Without Theory: An Autobiography, London, Hutchinson, s.a.[1946], p. 32; M.Baring, The Puppet Show of Memory, London, Heinemann, 1922, pp. 183–4. Dufferin to Gladstone, 17 January 1894. Gladstone Mss, Add.Mss. 44151, British Library. See also S.J.Reid (ed.), Memoirs of Sir Edward Blount, KCB, London, Longman, 1902, pp. 279–85. Monson to Salisbury, 7 September 1900. Salisbury Mss, A/118/59, Hatfield House. Hardinge to Bertie, 22 April 1904. Bertie Mss, Add.Mss. 63016, British Library. Lansdowne to Monson, 11 March 19 0 3. Monson Mss, Ms.Eng.his.c.595, Bodleian. Sir S.Lee, King Edward VII: A Biography Volume II, London, Macmillan, 1927, ch. 9. T.G.Otte, ‘“No one knows where we shall finally drift”: Lord Salisbury, the Cabinet and Isolation in 1900’, forthcoming in G.Kennnedy and K. Neilson (eds), The Butterfly’s Wings: Incidents in International Relations, 1750–1950, New York, Praeger. Lansdowne to Lascelles, 11 November 1900. PRO FO 800/17. Lord Newton, Lord Lansdowne: A Biography, London, Macmillan, 1929, pp. 196–7. Lyons to Granville, 13 July 1880 and 13 May 1881. Granville Mss PRO 30/29/171; Malet to Dilke, 20 September 1884. Dilke Mss, Add.Mss. 43913, British Library. Min. Crowe, 20 November 1906. PRO FO 371/74/38956. Salisbury to Monson, 12 February 18 97. Monson Mss, Ms.Eng.hist.c.594; Gosselin to Monson, 4 November 1897, ibid., Ms.Don.c.154; and to Hamilton, 28 June 1898, E.Hamilton Mss, Add.Mss. 48627, British Library. Kimberley to Currie, 18 June 18 9 5. Kimberley Mss, Ms.Eng.his.c.4399, Bodleian; Currie to Salisbury, 28 November 1895. Salisbury Mss, A/135/100; Gerard to O’Conor, 8 February 1896. O’Conor Mss, OCON 6/1/4, Churchill College.

30

23 24

25 26 27 28 29

30

31 32 33 34

35 36

37

38 39 40

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Ripon to Kimberley, 18 July 1894. Ripon Mss, Add.Mss. 43526, British Library. Phipps to Kimberley, 2 3 September 18 9 4, Kimberley Mss, Ms.Eng.hist.c.4401; Satow to O’Conor, 6 May 1896. O’Conor Mss, OCON 6/1/4; MacDonald to Campbell, 26 January 1898. Balfour Mss, Add.Mss. 49746, British Library. Dufferin to Kimberley, 26 June 1895. Kimberley Mss, Ms.Eng.c.4401; Chamberlain to Salisbury, 17 September 1897. Chamberlain Mss, JC 11/30/98, Birmingham University Library. Monson to Fane, 18 May 1898. Fane Mss, Trowbridge, Acc. 1976, Wiltshire Record Office. Churchill, World Crisis, p. 25. Lascelles to Lansdowne, 17 Nov. 1900. PRO FO 800/128. Lansdowne to Satow, 25 Aug. 1901. Satow Mss, PRO 30/33/7/1; J.A.S. Grenville, ‘Lord Lansdowne’s abortive alliance project of 12 March 1901 for a secret agreement with Germany’, Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research, 1954, vol. 27, pp. 201–13. Monson to Kimberley, 16 November 18 9 4. Kimberley Mss, Ms.Eng.his.c.4407; Salisbury to Monson 12 February 1897. Monson Mss, Ms.Eng.his.c.594; Lansdowne to Hamilton, l0 January 1901. Lansdowne Mss, Lans (5) 28, British Library. See also Grosse Politik der Europäischen Kabinette, vol. XIV/1, no. 3783. Hereafter GP. A.L.Kennedy, Lord Salisbury: Portrait of a Statesman, London, John Murray, 1953, p. 393. Lascelles to Lansdowne, 25 April 1902. PRO FO 800/18. PRO CAB 37/58/81. Balfour to Hamilton, 11 September 1903., Balfour Mss, Add.Mss. 49978. Godley to Curzon, 16 January 1903. Curzon Mss, Mss.Eur. F.111/ 162, India Office Library. See K.Neilson, Britain and the Last Tsar: British Policy and Russia, 1894–1917, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1995, pp. 224–37. G.W.Monger, The End of Isolation: British Foreign Policy, 1900–1907, London, Thomas Nelson, 1963, pp. 114–23. Ibid., pp. 38–45; K, Eubank, Paul Cambon: Master Diplomatist Norman, Ok., Oklahoma University Press, 1960, pp. 72–3; J.Amery, The Life of Joseph Chamberlain, Volume IV, London, Macmillan, 1951, pp. 163– 4. C.M.Andrew, Théophile Delcassé and the Making of the Entente Cordiale, London, Macmillan, 1966, pp. 180–2; P.Mantoux, ‘The début of M. Paul Cambon in England, 1899–1903’ in A. Coville and H.W.V. Temperley (eds), Studies in Anglo- French History, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1935, pp. 143–58. Lansdowne to Monson, 2 January 19 0 2. Monson Mss, Ms.Eng.his.c.595 Lansdowne to Herbert, 10 February 1903. PRO FO 800/144; and to Lascelles, 9 February 1903, PRO FO 244/624; Herbert to Hamilton, 29 March 1903. E.Hamilton Mss, Add. 48620. See R.M.Francis, ‘The British withdrawal from the Baghdad railway project in April 1903’, Historical Journal, 1973, vol. 16, pp. 168–78.

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41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61

62

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Lansdowne to Monson, 2 8 December 19 0 2. Monson Mss, Ms.Eng.his.c.595. Documents Diplomatique Français, 2nd series, vol. III, no. 480. Hereafter DDF. DDF 2nd series, vol. III, no. 37; Amery, Chamberlain, IV, pp. 181–6. See C.M.Andrew, ‘France and the making of the entente cordiale’, Historical Journal, 1967, vol. 10, pp. 102–3. DDF, 2nd series, vol. II, no. 379; Satow to Lansdowne, 20 November and 31 December 1902, PRO FO 17/1531. Memo. Ridgeway, ‘Report on Morocco’, 10 July 1894, PRO FO 99/ 304; A.J.P.Taylor, Rumours of War, London, Hamish Hamilton, 1952, pp. 134–7. Spring-Rice to De Bunsen, 22 December 1902. De Bunsen Mss, Bodleian, Ms.De Bunsen 14; Salisbury to Monson, 12 October 1898. Monson Mss, Ms.Eng.his.c.594. H.G.Nicolson, Sir Arthur Nicolson, Bart., First Lord Carnock: A Study in the Old Diplomacy, London, Constable, 1930, pp. 129–30; Sanderson to Bertie, 4 April 1905. Bertie Mss, Add.Mss. 63017. Cromer to Balfour, 15 October 1903. PRO FO 633/6; BD, vol. II, no. 379. Mallet to Bertie, 2 June 1904, Bertie Mss, Add.Mss. 63016. See also Lansdowne to Bertie, 19 January 1905, ibid., Add.Mss. 6317. See R.F.Mackay, Balfour: Intellectual Statesman, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1985, ch. 9. Edward VII to Balfour 25 December 1903, and Balfour to Edward VII, n.d. [26 December 1903]. Balfour Mss, Add.Mss. 49683. Lansdowne to Bertie, 30 March 1904. Bertie Mss, Add.Mss. 63016. The texts are reprinted in BD, vol. II, no. 417. C.M.Andrew, ‘The Entente Cordiale from its origins to 1914’ in N. Waites (ed.), Troubled Neighbours: Franco-British Relations in the Twentieth Century, London, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1971, pp. 16–18. Min. Crowe, 2 February 1911, PRO FO 371/1117/3884. See also min. Crowe, 18 August 1908, PRO FO 371/461/28785. Bertie to Mallet, 15 April 1907, PRO FO 800/164. Pribram, England and the International Policy, pp. 96–7. Bertie to Mallet, 11 June 1904. Bertie Mss. Add.Mss. 63016. Sanderson to Bertie, 17 March 1904. Bertie Mss, Add.Mss. 63016; Hardinge to Rodd, 19 December 1908. Rennell of Rodd Mss, box 13, Bodleian. See Grey to Spring-Rice, 22 December 1905 and 19 February 1906. PRO FO 800/241. Min. Crowe, 3 June 19 07, P RO F O 371/ 2 5 9/179 81. SeeJ. A.S.Grenville, ‘Foreign policy and the coming of war’ in D.Read (ed.), Edwardian England, London, Macmillan, 1982, p. 168; Z.S. Steiner, Britain and the Origins of the First World War London, Macmillan, 1977, pp. 44–5. K.M.Wilson, ‘The making and putative implementation of a British foreign policy of gesture, December 1905 to August 1914: the AngloFrench entente revisited’, Canadian Journal of History, 1996, vol. 31, pp. 227–55.

32

63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73

74 75 76 77

78

79 80 81 82 83 84 85

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Bertie to De Bunsen, 20 May 1911. De Bunsen Mss, box 14; Andrew, ‘Entente Cordiale’, pp. 11–14. Bertie to Lansdowne, 12 May 1905. Bertie Mss, Add.Mss. 63017. Min. Crowe, 29 January 1906, PRO FO 371/76/3439. See Goschen to Grey, 30 December 1912, and min. Crowe, 2 January 1913, PRO FO 371/1647/140. Green to Salisbury, 22 August 1887, PRO FO 99/236. BD, vol. III, no. 93. Monger, End of Isolation, ch. 8. Min. Lansdowne, n.d., PRO FO 99/434. DDF, 2nd series, vol. V, no. 465. BD, vol. III, no. 95. BD, vol. III, nos 90, 94. GP, vol. XX/2, no. 6860. Monger, End of Isolation, pp. 203–4. Lansdowne to Bertie, 12 June 1905. PRO FO 800/126. See K.A.Hamilton, ‘Great Britain and France, 1905–1911’ in F.S. Hinsley (ed.), British Foreign Policy under Sir Edward Grey, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1977, pp. 113–32; Nicolson, Sir Arthur Nicolson, ch. 7. G.M.Trevelyan, Grey of Fallodon, London, Longman, 1937, pp. 90–2. Grey to Campbell-Bannerman, 9 January 1906. Campbell-Bannerman Mss, Add.Mss. 41218, British Library. Grey to Bertie. Bertie Mss, Add.Mss. 63018. Memo. Grey, 10 January 1906. Campbell-Bannerman Mss, Add.Mss. 41218; BD, vol. III, no. 210; Viscount Grey of Fallodon, Twenty-Five Years, 1892–1916, Volume I, New York, Stokes, 1925, pp. 70–9. S.R.Williamson, The Politics of Grand Strategy: Britain and France Prepare for War, 1904–1914, London, Humanities Press, 1990, pp. 59–88; J. McDermott, ‘The revolution in British military thinking from the Boer War to the Moroccan Crisis’ in P.M.Kennedy (ed.), The War Plans of the Great Powers, 1880–1914, Boston, Mass., Allen and Unwin, 1979, pp. 99–117. Grey to Campbell-Bannerman, 2 2 January 19 06. CampbellBannerman Mss, Add.Mss. 52514; Fitzmaurice to Spender, 22 September 1919, ibid., Add.Mss. 41214; K.Robbins, Sir Edward Grey: A Biography of Lord Grey of Fallodon, London, Cassell, 1971, pp. 238– 44. For a critical assessment see K.M.Wilson, The Policy of the Entente: Essays on the Determinants of British Foreign Policy, 19 0 4–1914, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1985. Ripon to Fitzmaurice, 11 January 1906. Ripon Mss, Add.Mss. 43543, British Library. BD, vol. III, no. 299. Grey to Bertie, 15 January 1906. Bertie Mss, Add.Mss. 63018. BD, vol. III, no. 219. Grey to Campbell-Bannerman, 9 January 1906. Campbell-Bannerman Mss, Add.Mss. 41218. Lady G.Cecil, Life of Robert, Marquis of Salisbury, Volume II, London, Hodder and Stoughton, 1921–32, p. 130.

British foreign policy and the French entente

86

87

88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97

98 99 100 101

102

103 104

33

Memo. Mallet, 20 June 1906, PRO FO 800/92. BD, vol. III, no. 213. Min. Crowe, 18 January 1906, PRO FO 371/70/13. K.A.Hamilton, Bertie of Thame: Edwardian Ambassador, Woodbridge, Boydell and Brewer, 1990, pp. 106–8. See K.Neilson, ‘“Only a d…d marionette”? The influence of ambassadors on British foreign policy, 1904–1914’ in M.L.Dockrill and B.J. McKercher (eds), Diplomacy and World Power: Studies in British Foreign Policy, 1890–1950, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1996, pp. 56–78. BD, vol. III, no. 257. Min. Grey, n.d., on Bertie to Grey 27 October 1906, PRO FO 371/74/36423. See the contribution of Keith Hamilton to this volume. Trevelyan, Grey of Fallodon, pp. 114–15. Min. Crowe, 20 November 1906, PRO FO 371/74/38956. Hardinge to Bertie, 8 July 1908, PRO FO 800/170. Mins. Crowe, 20 November 1906 and 1 March 1907, PRO FO 371/ 74/38956, and FO 371/253/6682. Bertie to Tyrrell, 31 October 1907, Bertie Mss, Add.Mss. 63021. Bertie to Grey, 17 March 1906, PRO FO 800/164. Hamilton, Bertie, pp. 117–18. Bertie to Salisbury, 5 September 1900 and Bertie to Mallet, 11 June 1904. Bertie Mss, Add.Mss. 63014 and 63016. See also Hamilton, Bertie, ch. 2. Bertie to Grey, 15 April 1908, PRO FO 371/456. Bertie to Grey, 31 March 1907, PRO FO 800/164. J.L.Hammond, C.P.Scott of the Manchester Guardian, London, Bell, 1934, p. 152. Loreburn to Harcourt, 1 August 1914. Harcourt Mss, dep. 444; Barrington to Bertie, 4 April 1907, Bertie Mss, Add.Mss. 63020; Monson to Salisbury, 10 January 18 97. Monson Mss, Ms.Eng.hist.d.358; Lyons to Granville, 2 January and 2 February 1883. Granville Mss, PRO 30/29/173; Dufferin to Kimberley, 30 May 1894, Kimberley Mss, Ms.Eng. c.4401. Min. Crowe, 27 October 1908, PRO FO 371/456/37313. Rosebery to Cromer, 22 April 1895. Cromer Mss, PRO FO 633/7. See also Adams to Russell, 12 January 1874, Ampthill Mss, PRO FO 918/13. See Hamilton, Bertie, ch. 7. Min. Crowe, 20 January 1908, PRO FO 371/454/2185. See also memo. Crowe, 5 January 1908, and min. Larcom, 10 January 1908, PRO FO 371/453/2825. See Hamilton, ‘Britain and France, 1905–1911’, pp. 119–30. Memo. Oppenheimer, 24 February 1909, and mins. Villiers, 1 March 1909 and Langley, n.d., PRO FO 371/672. Hardinge to Bertie, 18 February 1909, FO 800/171. See E.W.Edwards, ‘The Franco-German Agreement on Morocco, 1909’, English Historical Review, 1963, vol. 79, pp. 483–513. Nicolson to Bertie, 14 November 1910. Bertie Mss, Add.Mss. 63025; O’Beirne to Grey, 15 November 1910 and min. Grey, 21 November 1910, PRO FO 371/901/42209. Hamilton, ‘Britain and France, 1905–1911’, p. 131.

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105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115

116 117 118 119

120 121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129 130 131 132 133

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BD, vol. VII, no. 269. Nicolson to Goschen, 28 February 1911. PRO FO 800/342. M.L.Dockrill, ‘British policy during the Agadir crisis of 1911’ in Hinsley (ed.), British Foreign Policy, pp. 271–87. Min. Crowe, 2 February 1911, PRO FO 371/1117/3884. Nicolson to Cartwright, 23 January 1911. PRO FO 800/341. Grey to Bertie 12 July 1911. Bertie Mss, Add.Mss. 63026. Crowe to Bertie, 20 July 1911. Bertie Mss, Add.Mss. 63026. Asquith to George V, 22 July 1911, PRO CAB 41/38/3. See H.Marchat, ‘L’affaire morocaine en 1911’, Revue d’Histoire Diplomatique, 1963, vol. 77, pp. 193–235. BD, vol. VII, no. 409. BD, vol. VII, no. 411. Lord Riddell, More Pages from My Diary, 1908–1914, London, Country Life, 1934, pp. 20–1. M.G.Fry, Lloyd George and Foreign Policy: Education of a Statesman, 1890–1916, Montreal, McGill-Queens University Press, 1977, ch. 7; T.Boyle, ‘New light on Lloyd George’s Mansion House speech’, Historical Journal, 1980, vol. 22, pp. 431–3. BD, vol. VII, no. 418. Tyrrell to Spring-Rice, 1 August 1911, PRO FO 800/241. See also K.O.Morgan, ‘Lloyd George and Germany’, Historical Journal, 1996, vol. 39, pp. 755–66. BD, vol. VII, nos 419, 426. Williamson, Politics of Grand Strategy, ch. 7. E.David (ed.), Inside Asquith’s Cabinet: From the Diaries of Charles Hobhouse, London, John Murray, 1977, pp. 107–8; K.G.Robbins, ‘The Foreign Secretary, the Cabinet and the parties’, in Hinsley (ed.), British Foreign Policy, pp. 3–21; K.M.Wilson, “The opposition and the crisis in the Liberal Cabinet over foreign policy in November 1911’, International History Review, 1981, vol. 3, pp. 399–413. Hansard Parliamentary Debates, 5th series, HC, vol. 32, cc. 60–1. Fry, Lloyd George, p. 140. Grey to Lloyd George, 5 September 1911, Lloyd George Mss, C/4/ 14/5, House of Lords Record Office. Memo. Bertie, 19 February 1912. Bertie Mss, Add.Mss. 63028. Nicolson to Bertie, 8 February 1912 and Bertie to Nicolson, 11 February 1912. Bertie Mss, Add.Mss. 63028. BD, vol. VI, no. 364. Grey to Bertie, 7 February 1912. Bertie Mss, Add.Mss. 63028. BD, vol. VI, no. 576. Grey to Churchill, 29 January 1912. Lloyd George Mss, C/4/15/14. Grey to Bertie, 2 January 1912. Bertie Mss, Add.Mss. 63026. Hamilton, ‘Britain and France’, p. 327. Nicolson to Bertie, 6 May 1912. Bertie Mss, Add.Mss. 63029. BD, vol. X/2, no. 386. BD, vol. X/2, no. 388. BD, vol. X/2, no. 399; David (ed.), Inside Asquith’s Cabinet, p 118; P.G. Halperin, The Mediterranean Situation, 1908–1914 Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press, 1971, pp. 90–2. Memo. Bertie, n.d.[25July 1912]. Bertie Mss, Add.Mss. 63029.

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134 135 136 137 138 139 140

141 142

143 144 145 146 147 148 149

35

Memos. Bertie, 8 March 1914, and 26 March 1913. Bertie Mss, Add.Mss. 63032 and 63030. BD, vol. X/2, no. 416. See Halperin, Mediterranean Situation, pp. 99–109. See Nicolson, Sir Arthur Nicolson, p. 420 and T.Wilson, ‘Britain’s “moral commitment” to France in August 1914’, History, 1979, vol. 64, pp. 380–90. Grey to Harcourt, n.d.[10 January 1914]. Harcourt Mss, Ms.Harcourt dep.444. See also Hansard Parliamentary Debates, 5th series, HC, vol. 32, c. 60. Bertie to Nicolson, 23 June 1911, Bertie Mss, Add.Mss. 63026. Grey to Lloyd George, 21 December 1912. Lloyd George Mss, C/4/ 14/8. Spring-Rice to Rumbold, 23 March 1913. Rumbold Mss, Bodleian, Ms.Rumbold dep.16. Memo. Harcourt, 14 March 1912 and Grey to Harcourt, 6 May 1912. Harcourt Mss, dep.442. Goschen to Grey, 6 February 1914, PRO FO 371/1987/5534. Goschen to Grey, 5 January 1914, PRO FO 371/1987/3608. Goschen to Grey, 16 June 1914, PRO FO 371/1991/28028. Eisendecher to Harcourt, 13 March 1914. Harcourt Mss, dep.444. Paget to Nicolson, 17 December 1912. Paget Mss, British Library, Add.Mss. 51523. Rodd to Grey, 6 January 1913. Rennell of Rodd Mss, box.15. Nicolson to De Bunsen, 30 March 1914. De Bunsen Mss, box.11. Nicolson to Rodd, 30 November 1912. Rennell of Rodd Mss, box 14. Hamilton, ‘Britain and France, 1911–1914’, pp. 340–1. Min. Crowe, 11 March 1914, PRO FO 371/2066/10725. Min. Crowe, May 1914, PRO FO 371/2073/22510. Nicolson to De Bunsen, 30 March 1914. De Bunsen Mss, box 15. D.Stevenson, Armaments and the Coming of War: Europe, 1904–1914, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1996, pp. 301–15. Nicolson to De Bunsen, 16 February 1914 and 30 March 1914. De Bunsen Mss, box 15. Goschen to Nicolson, 27 April 1914, P RO F O 8 00/374. C.H.D.Howard (ed.), The Diary of Sir Edward Goschen, 1900–1914, London, Royal Historical Society, 1980, pp. 272–3. Bayerische Dokumente zum Kriegsausbruch and zum Versailler Schuldspruch, no. 1. Rumbold to wife,? July 1914 (incomplete). Rumbold Mss, Ms.Rumbold dep.16, Bodleian.

2

The Conservative party and the Anglo-French entente, 1905–1914 Frank McDonough

Most studies of Edwardian foreign policy centre on the rôle of Sir Edward Grey, the Foreign Secretary, the Liberal Government, and leading figures in the Foreign Office towards the pre-1914 European crisis.1 The existing body of research on foreign policy generally ignores the rôle of the principal opposition party: the Conservative party. This neglect of foreign affairs pervades the historiography of the Conservative party in this period, which concentrates on domestic issues, most notably, internal divisions over tariff reform, the leadership of Arthur James Balfour, the problems of party organisation, the ‘Die Hard’ stand over the 1909 ‘People’s Budget’, and Irish home rule. The central aim of this essay is to remedy this imbalance by investigating the position and attitudes of the Conservative party toward a major aspect of British foreign policy: the Anglo-French entente from 1905 to 1914. The twentieth century began successfully for the Conservative party with an impressive victory in the 1900 general election. In 1906, however, the party suffered a calamitous election defeat, which left the Conservatives with a mere 157 MPs. In 1910 there were two more election defeats. Indeed, the period 1905 to 1915 was the most prolonged period of opposition experienced by the party in the twentieth century. The Conservative opposition in the Edwardian period has been variously described as ‘fractious’, ‘inflamed’ and ‘unconstitutional’.2 Historians have almost always agreed that the party lacked direction, suffered from internal disharmony and engaged in unrelenting squabbles with the Liberal party on every single important issue in domestic politics during the period 1905 to 1914. Indeed, the Edwardian period has been described as an era of bitter political rivalry and violence.3 A major question not fully addressed in the existing historiography is whether party disagreements between Liberals and Conservatives on domestic issues spilled over into discussions of British foreign policy.

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In this essay, it will be shown that foreign policy was entirely free of the ill temper which characterised the Conservative approach to the domestic political struggle. Balfour, opposition leader from 1905 to 1911, persistently supported the view that foreign policy should not be discussed in a party political man-ner.4 ‘I think the House will admit that during this parliament, and in the years preceding this parliament’, Balfour informed the Commons in February 1909, ‘there has been a steady resolve to withdraw foreign affairs from the arena of controversial politics.’5 Even during the political clash over the passing of the Parliament Bill in 1911, Balfour categorically assured Herbert Asquith, the Liberal Prime Minister, that: ‘The Opposition would always support the government on a question of national honour.’6 I At the core of British foreign policy in the Edwardian period was the Anglo-French entente, signed by Lord Lansdowne on 8 April 1904. It was viewed by most Conservatives as the ‘one brilliant success’ of the ill-fated Balfour Government. 7 Lansdowne, the architect of the agreement, also enjoyed the distinction of being regarded as a success as Foreign Secretary. 8 He had extensive experience of international and colonial problems,9 and believed that foreign policy should be a consistent policy ‘lifted out of party politics and placed on a different plane’.10 He believed the landed aristocracy were best qualified to safeguard the secretive world of diplomacy. This view influenced the choice of opposition speakers by Balfour, who reserved foreign and defence posts to a small inner circle of ex-ministers. Indeed, of the twelve Conservative parliamentarians who spoke on foreign and defence questions at Westminster from 1905 to 1914, nine were peers or the sons of peers, and eight were old Etonians. The idea of allocating questions on national defence to a small élite had been a common custom of the Conservatives in power from 1895 to 1905, and it survived in opposition.11 The two predominant figures in this inner circle were Balfour and Lansdowne. The latter had very close French connections. His mother was the daughter of Count de Flahaut, a son of Count de Talleyrand, the great French diplomatist of the early nineteenth century who had served both the Emperor Napoleon I and the restored Bourbon Monarchy. Lansdowne regularly visited his French relations during his youth and was fluent in the French language. In

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the 1880s he chaired a committee, composed of members of the Lords and the Commons which had thought carefully about the idea of a Channel tunnel. Yet, Lansdowne constructed the Anglo-French entente not as an openly pro-French policy, but one created to settle long-standing colonial disputes between the two countries in Morocco, West Africa, the New Hebrides and Madagascar and also to decrease spending on Britain’s overstretched defences which were under particular pressure in central Asia from France’s ally Tsarist Russia. The French Government had wanted a traditional military alliance, but Lansdowne’s mind in 1904 was fixed on imperial policy. Indeed, while he was Foreign Secretary, Lansdowne refused to discuss the European importance of the entente, which many contemporaries viewed as a diplomatic device to contain German power. In May 1905, Paul Cambon, the French Ambassador asked Lansdowne to outline the circumstances under which Britain would support France against Germany. In reply, Lansdowne was extremely evasive, only promising ‘consultation’ in the event of German aggression.12 It seems that Lansdowne viewed the entente not as a means of dividing Europe into two antagonistic alliance blocs, but with the more restricted aim of settling long-standing Anglo-French ill-will in the colonial sphere.13 Subsequently, Lansdowne’s views did alter from viewing the entente as a purely colonial agreement in 1904 to perceiving it as a vital element in the European balance of power in 1914, but this change of attitude was a cumulative process, which was greatly influenced by German actions, especially during the Agadir crisis of 1911. The views of Balfour, the Conservative leader, towards the entente underwent an even more noticeable modification. Before the signing of the entente, Balfour viewed the French, after the Russians, as the most likely opponent of Britain in a future war. In January 1899, for example, he described France as ‘an incalculable quantity’, and ‘the most obvious danger to European peace’.14 During the 1903 in-quiry into the likelihood of a naval invasion, conducted by the recently established Committee of Imperial Defence, Balfour viewed France as the hypothetical invading power.15 Even the signing of the entente made no real difference to Balfour’s negative feelings towards the French. He continued to emphasise that British security depended, not on diplomatic agreements, but on the strength of the Royal Navy. After the resignation of Théophile Delcassé, the French Foreign Minister on 6 June 1905, under pressure from Imperial Germany, Balfour thought that France ‘could not be counted on as an effective

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force in international relations’.16 It was only towards the end of 1905 that he began to consider that ‘in certain eventualities’ the entente could develop into a military alliance, but if it did, ‘he would regret it and should avoid it as long as possible’.17 It is probably worth adding that Balfour made no attempt as Prime Minister to activate close formal military talks between British and French forces. The official Conservative manifesto for the 1906 general election reflected the prevailing view of Lansdowne and Balfour that the AngloFrench entente was a colonial agreement which had no link with the European balance of power.18 Outside the charmed ‘inner circle’, and less restrained by polite diplomatic necessities, there were some Conservatives who did view the entente as an important diplomatic stratagem designed to contain German power in Europe. Leo Maxse, the ‘fiery’ editor of the National Review, saw the agreement as a ‘vital means of keeping war-mongering Germany encircled and powerless’.19 Joseph Chamberlain, always a good barometer of the party mood and increasingly anti-German following the failure of his efforts to reach a rapprochement between London and Berlin at the beginning of the century, argued that the entente should be followed by closer Anglo-French cooperation against Germany.20 On the backbenches, Leopold Amery, a rising star of the radical right wing, felt the agreement with France was signed because ‘we had failed to make ourselves sufficiently strong and united as an Empire to disregard the German threat to the European balance’.21 Sir Edward Grey, appointed Foreign Secretary in 1905 by the Liberal Prime Minister Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman, understood the European significance of the entente more quickly than his predecessor. The appointment of Grey, a Liberal Imperialist, from a prominent Whig aristocratic family, reassured the Conservative party there would be no major alteration in policy. Grey, a firm supporter of continuity in foreign policy, considered Germany the greatest threat to European peace. In opposition Grey had advocated a close understanding with France. From the very beginning, therefore, Grey saw the entente as a vital means of checking German power in Europe.22 The important point is that Grey set a clearer pro-French path for British foreign policy, and by means of staff talks and state visits constantly demonstrated that relations between the two nations were on a more than friendly basis. One important way in which Grey sensed the German danger could lead to war, was his decision to give the go-ahead for secret Anglo-French military conversations in January 1906 during the first Moroccan crisis. There is no evidence that Balfour or Lansdowne

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knew of Grey’s decision to improve Anglo-French military planning from 1906 onwards. The clear aim of these military talks was for Britain and France to co-ordinate plans and strategy in the event of war with Germany but without an agreement which was binding on Britain.23 In 1911, when details of the secret Anglo-French military conversations finally became known, Balfour admitted: ‘it came as something of a surprise, I am not saying disappointment, when I found how rapidly after I left office that the Entente had, under the German menace, developed into a defence understanding’.24 The fact that Grey linked the entente more clearly with the balance of power in Europe was approved of by the majority of the Conservative party. Landsdowne argued that the Conservative party should provide ‘unqualified support for Grey’.25 The National Review commented in February 1911 just months before the second Moroccan crisis: ‘The Opposition have consistently bolstered the foreign policy of Edward Grey in the interests of continuity.’26 The support given by the Conservative party to the Liberal Foreign Secretary left it in a peculiar position. The opposition had no responsibility for foreign affairs, but felt restrained by a self imposed ‘national duty’ from criticising him. This is not to suggest the Conservative party would have supported Grey no matter which policy he had adopted. On the contrary, Conservative support for Grey was conditional on him using the entente to uphold the balance of power in Europe. It was the principle of bipartisanship which set the tone of the Conservative party’s approach to the entente. ‘Whether in Government or whether in Opposition’ wrote Balfour, ‘the Unionist Party should still control the destinies of this great Empire’.27 Being in opposition did not prevent the Conservative leadership adopting a restrained approach to foreign policy. The Conservatives avoided calling debates on foreign affairs and refrained from putting awkward questions to the Foreign Secretary in the House of Commons. Indeed, Balfour even objected to Grey being required to answer sup-plementary questions at Question Time on the grounds that follow-up questions might ‘endanger the often difficult and delicate negotiations which accompany foreign relations’.28 There was also some liaison between Government and Opposition prior to key foreign policy debates. As Balfour pointed out to the Conservative Chief Whip: ‘I must make a schedule of the occasions upon which the Radical governments since 1906 have crawled on their bellies to us soliciting support.’29 Grey was indebted to the Conservative party for the support he received. In 1911, for example, the Foreign Secretary admitted that ‘the Opposition have given us support in foreign affairs, a support

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which contributes materially to the weight that Britain may carry in the council of Nations’.30 Throughout this period, Grey claimed in public speeches that his policy was either ‘a continuation of the policy established by Lord Lansdowne’ or that he was ‘loyally carrying out the policy of the last government’.31 The view that Grey was pursuing a ‘generally agreed’ foreign policy was widely established. Campbell Bannerman insisted that the Liberal Government ‘would follow out faithfully and zealously the lines of policy which Lord Lansdowne had established as Foreign Secretary’.32 Most Conservatives used the term ‘our foreign policy’ whenever international problems were discussed at Westminster. This cosy bipartisan consensus on foreign policy led to some dissatisfaction, not from Conservatives, but from radicals in the Liberal party, and Labour and Irish Nationalist MPs. As Ramsay MacDonald, the Labour MP told the House of Commons: I am afraid that in respect of the pious opinion in favour of continuity in foreign policy I am something of a heretic. If the foreign policy you have inherited from your predecessor is a bad foreign policy, I am bound to confess, I see no point in carrying it on. His Majesty’s Government has been too loyal in its dealings with Lord Lansdowne’s policy. I think it has carried it to extremes’.33 The large bulk of Conservatives, however, were resolute supporters of the Anglo-French entente. Most viewed it as a vital ingredient to uphold the European balance of power. Yet there remained enormous uncertainty within the party over the exact nature of Britain’s obligations towards France. 34 John Sandars, Balfour’s Private Secretary, complained to Lord Esher that the official position of the Conservative party leadership towards the agreement with France amounted to little more than the declaration of ‘public friendliness towards France’.35 These doubts about the actual obligations towards France in the event of war in Europe were widely shared. II In the early years of opposition, Balfour was unclear whether British security in Europe could depend on diplomatic agreements alone. In 1908, the Conservative leader told a Committee of Imperial Defence sub-committee inquiring into the possibility of naval invasion by Germany that the safety of the nation ‘could never

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depend on some paper instrument, however cordiale it may be’.36 Nevertheless, Conservative support for the entente was by this stage firmly established. The same could not be said about the second major pivot of Grey’s foreign policy: the Anglo-Russian Convention, signed in August 1907. Grey maintained in November 1911 that the diplomatic understanding with Russia was ‘in the spirit of Lord Landsdowne’s intention as Foreign Secretary’, in that it was designed to settle colonial differences between the two countries in Asia.37 Landsdowne who had originally viewed the Anglo-French Entente Cordiale as a means of improving Anglo-Russian relations, did welcome the understanding with Russia, but admitted: The party is inclined to view its details with a critical eye.’38 The most powerful Conservative supporter of the agreement was Austen Chamberlain, but even he acknowledged that most Conservatives viewed Tsar Nicholas II as ‘a weak autocrat at the head of the least trustworthy of all forms of government’.39 The most influential critic of détente with Russia was Lord George Curzon who, as a former Viceroy of India had been deeply concerned with the growing Russian threat in Central Asia. He believed a large number of important colonial concessions had been granted to Russia in return merely for ‘good will’. 40 The idea of Conservatives supporting a war to save Russia was not even seriously contemplated before 1914. From 1908 to 1910 debate over foreign policy retreated into the background. At this time, the attention of the Conservative party was firmly fixed on the growing problem of the Anglo-German naval race. Balfour claimed he was ‘one of those most reluctant to believe in the German scare’, but he admitted in 1908 that he could not withstand the conclusion ‘that every German thinks the enemy is England’.41 On 5 October 1908 Austria-Hungary annexed Bosnia-Herzogovinia supported by the German Kaiser, Wilhelm II. In November 1908, the Prime Minister, Herbert Asquith, informed Lansdowne that the German Government was capable of the ‘wildest adventures’ and a European war was a distinct possibility. In reply, Lansdowne pledged the full support of the opposition in the event of war with Germany.42 Balfour’s own apprehension over the state of international relations at the beginning of 1909 was viewed by Lord Balcarres, the Chief Whip, who reported that the Conservative leader was worried about the general outlook in Europe and was even more apprehensive about the prospects of maintaining peace in Europe in the future.43 It was fear of Germany, rather than a fondness for France, which intensified Conservative support for the entente, particularly after 1908 when Conservatives entered upon a clear identity of national

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interest with France to check the German threat in Europe. This mood was greatly accelerated by the fright which was engendered within the party during the Anglo-German naval race which had begun with the building of the first Dreadnought in 1905–6. The official Conservative attitude towards the entente was stated in the 1909 Campaign Guide, which claimed the agreement with France had ‘restored the balance of European power’. This marks a clear movement away from the earlier view in party literature of the entente being a purely ‘colonial agreement’.44 At the same time, Balfour’s views were also undergoing a swift change. In December 1910, he informed his party colleague, Andrew Bonar Law, of his growing certainty that Germany was ‘preparing for war’ and would endeavour to divide Russia and France, and try to entice each of them to ‘abandon their diplomatic agreements with Britain’.45 II I Above all, it was the Agadir crisis of 1911 which served to sway support for France more decisively within the Conservative party.46 The probability of Britain being pulled into war over Franco-German differences in Morocco brought the question of Britain’s obligations to France under the entente to the centre of British political debate. For most of the next twelve months, radicals in the Liberal party, deeply alarmed that the entente appeared to be a firm commitment to support France in a European war, began a relentless ‘Grey Must Go’ campaign. During Grey’s trial of strength with the Liberal radicals the Conservative party gave much needed support to the besieged Foreign Secretary. This support was especially solid throughout the Agadir crisis. In September 1911, Balfour assured the Chancellor of the Exchequer, David Lloyd George, that if the Agadir crisis developed into war ‘the Opposition would certainly not cause the Government any embarrassment’. 47 It seems clear that the Conservative party supported Grey during the Agadir crisis without requesting any privileged information in return. Indeed, Balfour told the Austro-Hungarian Ambassador, Count Albert von Mensdorff, in 1913 that ‘the foreign policy of the Government has not been and is not being influenced by the Opposition’. 48 The Agadir crisis also revealed that Bonar Law, the new Conservative leader, and very inexperienced on foreign and defence affairs, would rely heavily on the advice of Lansdowne. Indeed, Bonar Law promised always to consult him ‘before making any statement

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on foreign affairs’, and he continued Balfour’s practice of keeping foreign policy reserved to an ‘inner circle’.49 It was Lansdowne who prepared detailed briefing notes on the Anglo-French entente for Bonar Law’s major speech in the Agadir debate in November 1911. Lansdowne advised him that the entente did not ‘strictly speaking bind us to more than mere support of the French government’ and contained ‘no obligation for either power to call upon the other for military support’. Even so, Lansdowne admitted that it had been in Grey’s mind since he came to office that Britain might be compelled ‘to come to the assistance of its friend’. Lansdowne argued that this was a view which was generally shared by most Conservatives, and could be supported on ‘the ground that it would be inconsistent with British interests, and dangerous to the peace of the world and to the balance of power in the world to allow a friendly nation like France to be crushed’.50 The fact that even the usually irresolute Lansdowne saw a clear identity of interests between Britain and France shows that by the end of 1911 the ex-Foreign Secretary’s mind had clearly understood the European significance of the entente. The ‘Grey Must Go’ campaign did add some tension to the bipartisan consensus on foreign policy. There were fears within the Conservative party that Grey might bow to radical pressure, and weaken British support for the entente. Austen Chamberlain, a powerful supporter of the entente, told Sir John Brunner, a leading Liberal radical, that Grey’s decision in 1912 to take a more ‘open minded attitude towards Germany’ was causing dismay among his previously most loyal supporters in the Conservative party.51 The strain on the bipartisan consensus at this time is also illustrated by a secret memorandum, commissioned in May 1912 by Bonar Law, which attempted to gauge the prevailing parliamentary attitude of the Conservative party towards Grey’s foreign policy. The general attitude of the party was summed up thus: We have supported Grey for six years on the assumption he continues with the Anglo-French Entente which Lord Lansdowne established and the Anglo-Russian Entente which Lord Lansdowne encouraged. We have kept Grey in office. Without our help he would have retired long ago. We are entitled to ask for assurances that he adheres to our generally agreed policy.52 Many Conservatives now began to promote the idea of the entente being converted into a military alliance. At the end of May 1912, Balfour dined with Winston Churchill, the First Lord of the

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Admiralty, and told him he favoured the entente being turned into a military alliance. When Grey received this news, he instantly wrote to Balfour and invited him to prepare a memorandum, outlining his views on the current state of Anglo-French relations.53 In response, Balfour admitted that the 1904 agreement with France was a ‘diplomatic settlement of colonial problems’, which was combined with a vague promise to promote future friendship. Balfour now thought the entente was a ‘totally unsatisfactory’ means of containing the German threat. The best way to persuade the Kaiser that Britain was now serious in its commitment towards France, argued Balfour, was to create a firm Anglo-French military alliance in order to improve military planning between the two countries and to obstruct German attempts to damage the existing agreement. The only condition which Balfour thought should be inserted into an AngloFrench military alliance was for British participation in a European war to be contingent on an unprovoked military attack on French territory.54 Thus, in 1912 Balfour had genuinely come around to supporting the creation of an Anglo-French alliance. Balfour also informed Bonar Law in December 1912 of his support for an AngloFrench alliance, and he also suggested that the main task of the army was to prevent France being ‘crushed by Germany’.55 However, the idea of convert-ing the entente into an alliance was not supported by Lansdowne, unless Grey was also willing to do so.56 The decision taken by the Conservative leadership was to leave the matter to Grey. At the same time, Balfour also agreed not to make his support for an Anglo-French alliance public knowledge. In the end, Grey decided not to transform the entente into a military alliance. This position was accepted by the Conservative party leadership without further comment. The only firm undertaking which Grey was prepared to give the French Government was a promise to ‘hold immediate talks’ about how the two countries should act together in the event of an immediate attack.57 IV From 1912 to 1914, the Conservative party was obsessed with the Irish home rule issue. Indeed, when news came out about the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand at Sarajevo on 28 June 1914, Irish home rule still towered above all other issues in British political debate. Bonar Law, who relied heavily on the advice of Lansdowne and Balfour during the July crisis, was initially uncertain

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about whether the Conservative party was united about the issue of going to war over a dispute in the Balkans. There was much greater unity within the party to support France. It was Balfour who played the most crucial rôle in helping to rally the opposition leadership to support engagement in the European war in defence of France. Balfour’s view that British national interests were bound up with the desire of France to prevent German domination of Europe proved deeply influential over the party leadership. George Lloyd, a Conservative MP, recalled years later that Balfour had immediately understood the significance of the July crisis, and strongly favoured Britain going to war to save France. It was Balfour who notified Wilfred Short, his Personal Secretary, to send telegrams to Bonar Law, who was on holiday, and to Lansdowne, who was at his country house, to come to London to define the attitude of the opposition towards the crisis. On 1 August 1914, Balfour became so unsettled by reports in the British press which claimed that the Conservative party was ‘dithering’ over whether to give wholehearted support to France, he wrote to the French and Russian Ambassadors (respectively Paul Cambon and Count Aleksandr Konstantinovich Benckendorff) in London informing them that such reports were ‘completely without foundation’. 58 The same evening Bonar Law, Lansdowne, Balfour and Austen Chamberlain met to discuss the Conservative response to the growing crisis in Europe. They promptly agreed to draft a letter to Asquith which claimed it would be ‘fatal to the honour of the United Kingdom to hesitate in supporting France and Russia’ and which also offered ‘unhesitating support to the Government in any measures they might consider necessary for that object’. 59 At the vital moment, the decision to support Grey was reserved to a very exclusive inner circle of the opposition leadership. On 3 August 1914, following the German invasion of Belgium, when Grey announced the British decision for war60 in the Commons, it was Balfour who spoke for the Opposition, and in the spirit of the bipartisan consensus offered a strong defence of Grey’s foreign policy and pledged Conservative support for his decision to go to war. Balfour also asked radical Liberal MPs and their Labour supporters to curtail their attacks on the Foreign Secretary because such outbursts would be ‘misunderstood overseas’.61 Lansdowne offered similar resolute support for Grey’s policy in the House of Lords. Grey had used Conservative support negatively during the July crisis to rally Liberal ‘waverers’ in the Cabinet to support France, or else face the prospect of his own resignation, and the likelihood of a

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coalition, involving the Conservative party. Such a coalition would have backed Grey’s decision without any doubt. In this way, Grey used fear of the Conservatives as the binding element to keep the Liberal Cabinet united in support of war in August 1914. Although the German invasion of Belgium was vital in uniting the Cabinet, the Liberal party and public opinion to support British entry into the First World War, within the Conservative party it was the prevention of the destruction of France by Germany and with it the destruction of the balance of power in Europe which was the determining factor which brought about the wholehearted Conservative support for Grey during the July crisis. Yet, such was the loyalty of the Opposition towards the principles of bipartisanship that the Conservative inner circle was willing to follow the course, and the reasoning of Grey. For the Conservative party the real meaning of the entente by August 1914 was to prevent France being crushed by German power in Europe. The movement of the Conservative party towards this position was a cumulative process, encouraged above all by German actions. Notes 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13

Z.Steiner, Britain and the Origins of the First World War, London, Macmillan, 1977, p. 3. I.Gilmour, Inside Right: A Study of Conservatism, London, Hutchinson, 1977, pp. 32–3. G.Dangerfield, The Strange Death of Liberal England, London, Capricorn, A.Ponsonby, Democracy and Diplomacy, London, Methuen, 1915, pp. 122–6. Hansard Parliamentary Debates, 5th series, HC, vol. 1, c. 23. P.Williamson (ed.), The Modernisation of Conservative Politics: The Diaries and Letters of William Bridgeman 1904–1915, Manchester, Manchester University Press, 1988, p. 48. The Outlook, 5 January 1907. Conservative Party Archive (CPA), Bodleian Library, ‘Pamphlets and Leaflets 1902–1914’, leaflet no. 526. Lansdowne had served during his political career as Secretary of State for War, Viceroy of India, Governor-General of Canada and Foreign Secretary. The Times, 7 November 1905. S.Low, The Governance of England, London, Fisher and Unwin, 1904, p. 252. See the contribution of Thomas Otte to this volume. For Lansdowne’s views on the entente see Hansard Parliamentary Debates, 5th series, HL, vol. 10, cc. 388–9.

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14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23

24 25 26 27 28 29

30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44

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M.Egremont, Balfour, London, Collins, 1980, p. 163. Public Record Office (PRO) CAB 3/1/18A, ‘Draft report on the possibility of a serious invasion’, 11 January 1903. K.Young, Arthur James Balfour, London, Bell, 1963, p. 248. Ibid., p. 248. CPA ‘The Benefits of Conservative Rule, 1895–1905’, Conservative Party Election leaflet, London, 1905. ‘Episodes of the Month’, National Review, November 1905. Steiner, Origins, p. 29. J.Barnes and D.Nicholson (eds), The Leo Amery Diaries, London, Hutchinson, 1980, p. 116. See K.Robbins, Sir Edward Grey: A Biography of Lord Grey of Falloden, London, Cassell, 1971, pp. 132–3. This view is based on a close examination of the records of the Committee of Imperial Defence, the Cabinet, and the private papers of Balfour, Cawdor, Selborne, Lee, Lansdowne, Arnold Foster, Sanders, Austen Chamberlain and Bonar Law from 1905 to 1914. S.H.Zebel, Balfour: A Political Biography, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1973, p. 185. CPA, ‘Foreign Policy Under a Unionist Government’, Pamphlets and Leaflets 1902–1914, leaflet 526. ‘Episodes of the Month’, National Review, February 1911. R.F.Mackay, Balfour: Intellectual Statesman, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1985, p. 188. Hansard Parliamentary Debates, 4th series, HC, vol. 89, cc. 322–68. J. Vincent (ed.), The Crawford Papers: The Journals of David Lindsay, Twenty Seventh Earl of Crawford and Tenth Earl of Balcarres 1870–1940, during the years 1892 to 1940, Manchester, Manchester University Press, 1984, pp. 203–4. Conservative and Unionist, January 1912, p. 3. Edinburgh Review, January 1912, p. 255. Ibid., p. 4. Hansard Parliamentary Debates, 5th series, HC, vol. 32, c. 74. Barnes and Nicholson (eds), The Amery Diaries, p. 116. Sandars Papers, Bodleian Library, Sandars to Lord Esher, 24 November 1911,c. 764, fols. 215–18. Cawdor Papers, Carmarthan Record Office, ‘A.J.Balfour’s evidence to the invasion sub-committee’, 29 May 1908, Box 291. Hansard Parliamentary Debates, 5th series, HC, vol. 32, c. 58. Ibid., cc. 388–9. A. Chamberlain, Politics from the Inside Volume I, London, Cassell, 1936, p. 471. Ibid. Cawdor Papers, ‘A.J.Balfour’s evidence to the invasion subcommittee’, 29 May 1908, Box 291. Selborne Papers, Bodleian Library, St John Broderick to Selborne, 6 November 1908, 3/ fols. 86–90. Vincent (ed.), Crawford Papers, p. 122. The Campaign Guide: A Handbook of Unionist Speakers, London, Conservative Central Office, 1909, p. 21.

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Sandars Papers, Balfour to Law, 10 December 1910, c. 762, fols. 107– 28. For the Agadir crisis see the contribution of Thomas Otte to this volume. Egremont, Balfour, p. 240. Balfour Papers, Balfour to Mensdorff, 1 May 1913, 49747, fol. 218. Hansard Parliamentary Debates, 5th series, HC, vol. 32, c. 67. Bonar Law Papers, House of Lords Record Office, ‘Briefing notes for Bonar Law prepared by Lord Lansdowne for Agadir Debate’, 22 November 1911, 24/3/72. Brunner Papers, Liverpool Record Office, Austen Chamberlain to Brunner, 10 October 1912, XI, fol. 34. Bonar Law Papers, ‘Our Parliamentary Attitude to Foreign affairs’ 20 May 1912, Memorandum by Lord Balcarres, 38/D/5. Balfour Papers, Grey to Balfour, 1 June 1912, 49731, fol. 1. Bonar Law Papers, ‘Memorandum on Anglo-French Relations by Mr A.J. Balfour sent by request to Sir Edward Grey’, November 1912. 39/D/7. Bonar Law Papers, Balfour to Bonar Law, November 1912, 29/4/49. Chamberlain, Politics from the Inside I, p. 413. See the Grey-Cambon correspondence cited in E.W.R.Lumby (ed.), Policy and Operations in the Mediterranean 1912–1914, London, HMSO, 1970, pp. 106–7. B. Dugdale, Arthur James Balfour, Volume II, London, Hutchinson, 1936, pp. 82–6. P.M.Kennedy, The Rise of the Anglo-German Antagonism 1860–1914, London, Allen and Unwin, 1980, p. 460. For a detailed examination of Britain’s decision for war in 1914 see K. Wilson, ‘Britain’ in K. Wilson (ed.), Decisions for War, 1914, London, University College London Press, 1995, pp. 175–208. Hansard Parliamentary Debates, 5th series, HC, vol. 65, cc. 1881–3.

3

The poor relation Spain in Anglo-French relations, 1898–1914 Keith Hamilton

The entente cordiale was not nearly as free of discord as its name suggests. This was particularly apparent in Anglo-French reactions to Spain’s renewed quest for empire in North Africa. Defeated by the United States in 1898 and subsequently deprived of the remnants of its colonial possessions in the Americas and the Pacific, Spain, in an ‘age of imperialism’, did not even qualify as the ‘least of the great powers’. For French diplomats it was the ‘poor relation’, a country forever anxious to be treated as the equal of its wealthier kin, but without the wherewithal to share their responsibilities. Spanish politicians sought greater status for the peninsular monarchy, yet the acquisition of Morocco, once seen as a means towards achieving that end,1 remained as remote as ever. At the same time, Spain retained some solid geographical assets. Sharing land frontiers with Britain and France, it could embarrass them in times of international crisis, and its possession of the Balearics, the Canaries and the Moroccan presidios of Ceuta and Melilla, could hardly be ignored by countries with interests in maritime communications in the Atlantic and the Mediterranean. The efforts of British and French statesmen to settle their differences in Africa and elsewhere reduced Spain’s scope for diplomatic manoeuvre, but also allowed it to secure formal recognition of, and support for, Spanish aspirations in the Rif and the lands adjacent to Ifni and the Rio de Oro. The FrancoSpanish convention of 3 October 1904 complemented the AngloFrench accords of the previous April; its implementation brought their true value into question. Before and after 1904, imperial rivalry and conflicting strategic interests partly conditioned the attitudes of Britain and France towards Spain. Each, sometimes correctly, suspected the other of having designs upon Spain’s continental and insular possessions; and each sought to use Spain in order to deny the other advantage

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in the event of an Anglo-French war or diplomatic confrontation.2 The British hoped a formal understanding with Spain would make Gibraltar and its anchorage less vulnerable to bombardment from the Spanish mainland. During the Spanish-American War the Spaniards began installing gun emplacements in the hills behind the rock. Lord Salisbury, the British Prime Minister and Foreign Secretary, was in no mood to temporise. On the eve of the Fashoda crisis, when French influence was in the ascendant at Madrid, he offered assurances that British forces would defend the bay of Algeciras and the Balearic and Canary islands against hostile attack if the Spaniards discontinued their military preparations. A secret exchange of notes between the Spanish Foreign Minister and the British Ambassador at Madrid followed. The former explained that the work on the batteries would end, the latter disclaimed any British designs upon Spanish territory and promised British assistance in the defence of Spain’s coastline in the vicinity of Gibraltar.3 The Spaniards were not entirely reassured and sought guarantees from other European powers. In 1898 Jules Cambon, France’s Ambassador at Washington, proposed a Franco-Russian guarantee of Spain’s possessions in Africa and the Mediterranean partly to deter a possible British seizure of Ceuta or Port Mahon—ports from which the Royal Navy could easily threaten communications between metropolitan France and Algeria.4 In June 1903, now Ambassador at Madrid, he sent to Paris the terms of a draft convention agreed with the Spanish Foreign Minister, Francisco Silvela, by which France, Russia and Spain would agree to maintain the territorial status quo in the western Mediterranean. He reminded the French Foreign Minister, Théophile Delcassé, that whatever might be the state of Anglo-French relations, ‘partout où la Grande-Bretagne a, à notre égard, une politique traditionelle de défiance, l’attitude de ses agents restera conforme à la tradition’. 5 Delcassé was ready to negotiate with Spain over the future of Morocco, but calculated Madrid was offering too little for the ‘very heavy charge’ of guaranteeing its territorial integrity. Russia was preoccupied elsewhere and unlikely to accept fresh commitments in the Mediterranean.6 By the spring of 1903 Delcassé was already considering an AngloFrench bargain on Morocco, Egypt and other extra-European issues and negotiations were imminent. This offered, potentially, a more satisfactory route to the fulfilment of France’s territorial ambitions in north Africa than any bilateral accord with a weak and hesitant Spain. The Spaniards knew this and Raimundo Villaverde, who

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succeeded Silvela in July, told Cambon he would prefer Britain to Russia as the third party to any Mediterranean accord.7 The pursuit of an entente did not allay Anglo-French suspicions and Sir Henry Mortimer Durand, the British Ambassador at Madrid, believed his Government should pay due attention to Spain. During the summer of 1903 he pressed Lord Lansdowne, Salisbury’s successor as Foreign Secretary, to conclude a separate Anglo-Spanish agreement to prevent Spain from falling under French influence. In language mirroring that of Jules Cambon, he noted ‘whatever may be our relations with the French England and France must I suppose remain watchful of each other in the Mediterranean and in Africa, and it might be very awkward for us to find hereafter a more or less reorganized Spain committed to a French alliance’.8 An Admiralty memorandum of 7 August, asserting that ‘no more formidable coalition could be brought against us in the Mediterranean’ than that of the ‘Latin states—France, Italy and Spain’, reinforced his views.9 Lansdowne recognised that Spain’s colonial ambitions could be used to deny France a foothold on the coast opposite Gibraltar. In negotiations with the French he insisted that the strategically important northern littoral of Morocco should form part of a Spanish sphere of influ-ence.10 Meanwhile, to exclude the British from Spain’s insular possessions, Delcassé sought, albeit unsuccessfully, to persuade London to accept the maintenance of the territorial status quo within a five hundred mile radius of Gibraltar.11 I The Anglo-French accords of April 1904 moderated, but did not eliminate, friction between Spain’s two powerful neighbours. Jules Cambon’s brother, Paul, who, as French Ambassador in London was a prime-mover in the making of the entente, believed it would be dangerous to allow England to become ‘protectrice de la Peninsule’. 12 British officials still thought it necessary to take precautions against a potentially hostile France, and they were quick to spot the shortcomings of the Franco-Spanish convention of October 1904 by which Spain adhered to the terms of the AngloFrench declaration on Morocco. Its secret articles provided for two geographically separate Spanish zones of influence: a broad band of territory extending westwards from the mouth of the Moulouya river to a point on the Atlantic a few miles south of Larache, but excluding Tangier which was ‘to retain the special character given it

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by the presence of the diplomatic corps and its municipal and sanitary institutions’; and a wedge of southern Morocco embracing Ifni, Spanish claims to which were specifically endorsed. The convention forbade Spain’s alienation of any of its sphere, but placed no obstacle in the way of its ceding part of it to France or, in the event of a Franco-Spanish war, to another power. The Foreign Office considered persuading Spain to enter a secret engagement not to alienate any of its projected sphere. Before Sir Arthur Nicolson, Durand’s successor at Madrid, could open negotiations, France’s expansionist mission was temporarily checked.13 On 31 March 1905 the German Emperor, Wilhelm II, landed at Tangier, announced that he still considered Morocco an independent state, and precipitated an international crisis which appeared to transform the Anglo-French entente into a quasi-alliance.14 The German intervention at Tangier activated the obligation undertaken by Lansdowne in 1904 to give diplomatic support to France’s aspirations in Morocco and was interpreted as further evidence that Germany, in its quest to become a great naval power, would require overseas ports and coaling stations. British fears were not wholly misplaced. The architect of German Flottenpolitik, Admiral Alfred von Tirpitz’s main priority was concentrating his warships in northern waters, but he also recognised the value of freeing the German navy and mercantile marine from their dependence on British coaling facilities.15 In 1899 Germany purchased the Caroline and Mariana islands from Spain, and in 1901 Tirpitz suggested the acquisition of a coaling station on the north-west coast of Africa. The British suspected the Germans of wishing to establish themselves in Spain’s other island territories.16 So did the French who, during 1905, appreciated increasingly the benefits of working with, rather than against, the British in Spain and the Mediterranean. Jules Cambon saw Anglo-French friendship as a means of keeping Spain within France’s diplomatic embrace.17 Sir Francis Bertie, Britain’s bullish new Ambassador at Paris, regarded the Kaiser’s escapade differently, hoping that Morocco would become an ‘open sore’ in Franco-German relations, keeping Britain’s great power neighbours apart. 18 He also thought that German pressure on Spain to desist from supporting France in Morocco might make the Spaniards more amenable, and the French less resistant, to a bilateral Anglo-Spanish accord. On 12 May 1905 he suggested to Lansdowne that Britain should disclaim any territorial aspirations with regard to Spanish territory and offer to assist Spain in defending the Balearic islands, the Canaries and Fernando Po, in

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return for Spanish undertakings neither to ‘cede, sell, let or otherwise alienate in whole or part any of her islands or allow them to be used by a foreign power as coaling stations or depots’, nor to erect any gun emplacements which might affect the safety of Gibraltar.19 But while Bertie was primarily concerned with excluding the Germans from the Spanish islands, he recognised that Britain might still have to defend Spanish territory against French intruders, and that an additional guarantee of Britain’s hold upon Gibraltar might not be welcome in Paris. Hence his annoyance when he dis-covered that Nicolson had communicated the substance of the project to Jules Cambon.20 A change of government in Madrid interrupted further discussion. Meanwhile, Delcassé’s resignation on 6 June 1905 removed one major obstacle to a Franco-German understanding on Morocco, and within a month the French Government accepted German demands for an international conference. On 1 September France and Spain reached a preliminary accord on how they would share responsibility for the future policing of Morocco’s ports, the suppression of contraband, and the administration of a Moroccan state bank. Nevertheless, despite assurances offered by the Spanish premier to Jules Cambon that ‘Spain was too weak to do anything by herself’21 and would therefore remain in line with Britain and France, the Germans were able to take tactical advantage of latent FrancoSpanish differences at the Algeciras conference in January 1906. Indeed, one senior Spanish official told the British Minister at Madrid, Spain would remain loyal to its obligations only ‘so long as England and France pulled together’.22 II For France the successful outcome of the Algeciras conference confirmed the value of the entente with Britain. The general act of Algeciras of 7 April 1906 restricted early advances towards the establishment of French and Spanish protectorates in Morocco. It proclaimed the independence and territorial integrity of Morocco, and required the submission to adjudication of applications for public works concessions. But it granted to France and Spain a five-year mandate for the command and instruction of the police at the eight open Moroccan ports, and it provided for the creation of a state bank in which French capital would predominate.23 The negotiations also stimulated interest in extending the formal limits of the entente.

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Sir Edward Grey, the Foreign Secretary in the new Liberal Government in December 1905, was far more inclined than his predecessor to regard the entente as a fundamental element of British foreign policy. He was also sympathetic to Bertie’s proposals for an Anglo-Spanish agreement. However, of more immediate concern to both British and French representatives at Madrid in the aftermath of the conference was the threat posed to their commercial and strategic interests by German investment in Spain. Soon after the conclusion of the Algeciras conference the German embassy at Madrid threw its weight behind the application of the Cologne-based telegraph company, Feltern und Guilleaume, for the right to extend its Emden-Vigo cable to the Canaries. The project, which offered Spain improved domestic telegraph communications, would have allowed Germany eventually to acquire its own cable links with Latin America and southern and western Africa. 24 Simultaneously, it threatened a British bid to relay the existing inefficient and unreliable cable between Cádiz and Teneriffe. Any further extension of the German cable network would also compete with the transatlantic cables operated by the British-owned Eastern Telegraph Company and its rival, the South American Cable Company, a majority of whose shares had recently been purchased by the French Government.25 Such an expansion of the German cable network would be to Germany’s strategic advantage in the event of a naval war in the Atlantic.26 The Spanish authorities seemed anxious to mend fences with Berlin, and both Jules Cambon and his new British colleague, Sir Maurice de Bunsen thought, that in order to check the German venture, Britain and France should collaborate in promoting a single cable project whose operating company would seek monopoly landing rights in the Canaries. Grey agreed, and a rather reluctant Eastern Telegraph Company was cajoled into working with French enterprise to establish a Spanish company to press for the concession.27 The Quai d’Orsay, cautious in its handling of the matter and wishing to avoid another confrontation with Germany, stressed Britain’s superior strategic interests in the hope of thereby safeguarding France’s pecuniary stake in the affair. 28 French diplomats emphasised to the Spanish the dangers that the proposed Feltern und Guilleaume cable could pose to their mutual aspirations in Morocco should the Germans thereafter seek a connexion with North Africa.29 Ironically, Grey adopted a similar stance. When in December 1906 it became apparent that the Germans had met all the conditions set by the Spanish Government, he concluded that

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the defence of French interests in Morocco was the only good reason for Britain continuing to oppose the German cable. He could not, he maintained, ‘on ground of the Eastern Telegraph monopoly alone urge Spain to refuse the German concession and make consequent sacrifice’.30 Nor did he think that Britain could permanently object to the German desire for a transoceanic cable link simply on its merits.31 This was hardly the kind of language which some of Grey’s senior officials wished to hear. Bertie insisted that it was ‘as much a British as a French interest to keep the Germans out of the Spanish islands’, and he advised Grey against allowing the French to think that Britain was using its obligation to support France’s interests in Morocco ‘as a lever wherewith to oppose the laying of a German cable to the Canaries’.32 Stephen Pichon, Foreign Minister in Georges Clemenceau’s first Government, was less worried about the susceptibilities of his entente partners. On 29 December he informed Jules Cambon that France should simply associate its efforts with those of England—a statement which Cambon thought could easily be interpreted in London as ‘un coup droit porte à l’entente cordiale’.33 Although Grey was still prepared to assist the Spanish Government in resisting the German scheme, and de Bunsen encouraged them to reserve for Spain the right to cut the cable in the event of war, by the end of January 1907 all effective British opposition to the German project had ceased. The cable issue led both British and French diplomats to re-examine prospects for tightening their formal links with Spain. During December 1906 the Cambon brothers met in Paris, and first Paul Cambon and then Pichon raised with Bertie the subject of a tripartite agreement for the maintenance of the Mediterranean status quo. Although Bertie doubted whether such an arrangement would be acceptable to the Liberal Cabinet, he used the opportunity to raise with Grey the proposal he had put to Lansdowne in 1905 for an Anglo-Spanish agreement on the Spanish islands and Gibraltar.34 The idea was hardly new to Grey. Sir Charles Hardinge, his Permanent Under-Secretary, had just suggested a similar arrangement to remedy the ‘serious flaw’ in the accords of 1904 regarding the possible alienation of part of Spain’s northern zone.35 Grey recognised the value of such an arrangement but was reluctant to multiply Britain’s international obligations. What, he maintained, would exert a ‘determining influence’ on his decision was the ‘question of the necessity of making further provision for the security of Gibraltar and of the possibility of attaining this object by the means proposed’.36 However, by 1906 Britain’s service chiefs doubted

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whether any further assurances from Spain regarding gun emplacements in the vicinity of Gibraltar would be of real strategic advantage. Guns using indirect fire could always be hidden in the folds of ground behind Gibraltar and would be more effective than those mounted in permanent works. Given this assumption, the only effective solution to the problem of Gibraltar’s security seemed to be the maintenance of good relations with Spain.37 Bertie continued to press for a bilateral accord with Spain. ‘The safety of Gibraltar might’, he suggested to Grey, ‘be used as an ostensible reason for an agreement with Spain though the maintenance of the integrity of Spain in the interests of the balance of power is really quite sufficient justification for their guarantee by us.’38 Grey agreed. He was concerned about the growth of German influence in Spain and, in particular, the prospect of the Germans using their cable-landing rights to secure an eventual territorial occupation.39 Yet the Admiralty still believed that the advantage to be derived from an agreement with Spain ‘would be much greater in the case of a war with France than in the case of a war with Germany’.40 Jules Cambon’s promotion in January 1907 of an AngloFranco-Spanish agreement on the preservation of the territorial status quo in the Mediterranean and eastern Atlantic diminished the chances of an Anglo-Spanish bilateral accord. Such an arrangement appealed to the new Spanish premier Antonio Maura. He was averse to any explicit endorsement of Britain’s possession of Gibraltar, and found in an understanding with both Britain and France a means of preserving for Spain ‘a place in the Concert of Europe’. 41 But Hardinge feared that if such an arrangement were not kept secret it would be ‘seriously resented’ in Germany where it would ‘appear as a tightening of the net around German political activity’. Grey accepted his proposal that Britain and Spain should exchange notes agreeing to maintain their respective rights over their maritime and insular possessions in the Mediterranean and eastern Atlantic, and providing for joint consultations in the event of any threat to the status quo. Grey assumed that the notes would be published and that France might supplement its existing agreement with Spain in a similar exchange of notes. 42 This was less than the tripartite agreement envisaged by the Cambon brothers. But by April 1907 Jules had already left Madrid to take up his new appointment as French Ambassador at Berlin, and Clemenceau was as anxious as Grey to avoid offering unnecessary provocation to Germany. Neither he nor Pichon was ready to quibble over a matter of form and, on 6 April, Bertie won

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their acceptance of a parallel British and French exchange of notes with Spain.43 Hardinge, who during 8–10 April accompanied Edward VII on a semi-official visit to Cartagena, was thus in a strong position to persuade Maura to forego a tripartite treaty. 44 Jules Cambon continued to press upon the Quai d’Orsay the importance of the three powers being linked by a single instrument, and after consultations with Clemenceau and Paul Cambon, Pichon sought British acceptance for a complementary Anglo-French exchange of notes.45 There was little enthusiasm in London for such a course. Nevertheless, when on 16 May the British and French governments exchanged near-identical notes with Spain on a basis similar to that proposed by Hardinge, Grey and Paul Cambon offered each other assurances, recorded in an aide-mémoire, that their governments would also consult with each other in the circumstances foreseen in the notes.46 The prospective publication of the notes and the need to consider how best they might be communicated to other powers was also put to good use by Paul Cambon. On 6 June he reminded Grey that the Morocco crisis had turned the Anglo-French agreement of 1904 into ‘something like an alliance’, and enquired ‘whether if Germany brought pressure to bear on France or Spain in consequence of the Spanish notes, English support would be forthcoming’. Without questioning Cambon’s assertion, Grey replied that he would ‘regard the spirit of the Agreement of 1904’ as applying to the provisions of the notes: language which could easily be interpreted as meaning that he was prepared to contemplate more than just diplomatic assistance to France and Spain.47 The notes exchanged on 16 May and Grey’s subsequent assurances to Paul Cambon broadened the area within which Britain was bound to cooperate with France. They were also taken in Austria and Germany as evidence of a policy designed in London to contain and further isolate Germany.48 Indeed, the Russian Foreign Minister, Alexandre Izvolsky, was so anxious to dissociate himself from agreements he thought certain to incur German ill-will that he warned the German Ambassador at St Petersburg that the Mediterranean notes had introduced a ‘third western power into the entente cordiale’ and constituted a ‘link in a chain which England was forging around Germany’.49 This, however, was barely a half-truth. Although Germany’s presumed desire for overseas coaling stations and German involvement in the Spanish islands had reinvigorated British interest in an understanding with Spain, British diplomacy at Madrid was also driven by British fears of French intentions. The notes of 1907 sought to strengthen Spanish resolve in the face of possible German pressure, but they also provided Britain with a locus standi to

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resist any French attempt to acquire a position on the northern littoral of Morocco. The French also knew that their entente with Britain might only prove a transient feature of the international systern, and in their pursuit of a tripartite accord the Cambon brothers intended that Spain should not be drawn into too close an arrangement with the British. Germany may have been the immediate concern of those responsible for negotiating the accords of 1907, but they were also the product of longstanding mutual suspicions. The Mediterranean accords also responded to the aspirations of those Spaniards seeking to raise Spain’s international standing. Yet, in Morocco, Spain remained tied to a power which was wealthier, commercially more enterprising and militarily more able. Although the French recognised the diplomatic value of maintaining the theory of joint Franco-Spanish mandate, relations between the French and Spanish authorities in Morocco were sometimes acrimonious and often marred by local friction and personal rivalries. Maura was reluctant to commit troops to operations beyond the Rif and, after the French naval bombardment of Casablanca in July 1907, Spanish commanders grew increasingly irritated by their inferior role. Even more worrying for Madrid was the neglect by French officers and officials of both the spirit and substance of the 1904 convention. Some Spanish diplomats were tempted to look to Germany for support and, following the defeat in 1908 of the Sultan Abd’ul Aziz and the accession of his rival Mrulay Hafid, they seemed ready to work with their German counterparts in the subsequent negotiations between the Makhzen and the European powers.50 But their hopes of benefiting from continuing Franco-German differences were dashed when in February 1909 Germany agreed to accept France’s special political position in Morocco in return for a French promise not to thwart the development of its economic interests there.51 The punitive campaign which the Melilla garrison launched against local tribesmen in the summer of 1909 revealed serious shortcomings in Spain’s military organisation and highlighted deep divisions within Spanish society. Press criticism of the war and demonstrations against the mobilisation of reservists culminated, on 26 July, in insurrection in Barcelona which drew support from anarchists, anti-clerical factions, republicans and Catalan separatists.52 Grey feared that Maura’s successor, the radical-populist José Canalejas, might sanction even more vigorous military action in Morocco to distract attention from Spain’s domestic troubles.53 Like the Quai d’Orsay, the Foreign Office knew that any extension of the Melilla campaign might reopen the whole Morocco question and provoke another international

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crisis. British diplomats thought the French had acted tactlessly towards Spain, and during the summer and autumn of 1910 de Bunsen attempted to work with the French embassy in Madrid to promote an ‘equitable settlement’ between Spain and the Makhzen.54 This was easier said than done. Eugéne Regnault, the French Minister at Tangier, was determined to encourage the Sultan’s resistance to Spanish demands for a large indemnity and territorial concessions in the neighbourhood of Ceuta.55 For him and other exponents of a forward policy in Morocco Spain remained a nuisance, an over-sensitive, jealous and junior partner which geography and the English had forced upon an enlightened and reformist France. Indeed, in November 1910, soon after taking up his appointment as new French Ambassador in Madrid, Léon Geoffray warned de Bunsen that it ‘had almost been forgotten that France had recognised the existence of a Spanish sphere of influence at all’. Regnault’s policy, ‘logically pushed to its conclusion, signified’, he claimed, ‘the eventual exclusion of Spain from her possessions and influence along the northern coast of Morocco’.56 The Cambon brothers shared Geoffray’s doubts. Neither believed Spanish susceptibilities could be ignored in the present state of Europe. Spain may not have been a formidable power but, as Geoffray reminded Pichon, nor had it been such in 1870 when it had become ‘la cause première de nos désastres’.57 Pichon heeded their advice, acquiescing in a Spanish-Moroccan convention which granted Spain an indemnity of 65 million pesetas, and rejecting proposals emanating from the Makhzen which would have placed the Sultan and his successors virtually under French protection. Instead he maintained the evolutionary approach which France had adopted towards Morocco in the wake of Algeciras. This, however, was called into question when, at the end of February 1911, the collapse of Briand’s government forced Pichon from office. Moreover, the outbreak of a widespread tribal revolt against Moulay Hafid, whose authority had been weakened by his dealings with France and Spain, brought the new left-orientated Government of Ernest Monis under increasing pressure from the army and colonialist lobby for a military response. I II Monis’s Government’s decision on 26 April 1911 to send a relief column to the Sultan’s capital at Fez, ostensibly to safeguard the European community there, exacerbated Spanish fears about French intentions in Morocco.58 Irritated at France’s apparent neglect of

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their interests, the Spaniards pressed for early release from the restrictionsplaced on their military action by the accords of 1904. Jean Cruppi, Pichon’s successor at the Quai d’Orsay, was reluctant to make any concessions. Only in May did he agree to tripartite talks at Madrid amongst Geoffray, de Bunsen and Garcia Prieto, the Spanish Minister of State. Even these were suspended when on 8 June Spanish forces occupied first Larache and then El Ksar on the route between Tangier and Fez. 59 The Spaniards were suspected in Paris of playing Germany’s game, a view which appeared to be borne out when on 1 July the Germans, exasperated by France’s nonfulfilment of the 1909 agreement and failure to offer satisfactory compensation, despatched a warship, the Panther, to the hitherto closed Moroccan port of Agadir. The ensuing Franco-German confrontation, which, as William Norton Medlicott once remarked, ought properly to have been called the ‘Fez crisis’, 60 lasted almost four months. Hard bargaining between Jules Cambon and the German State-Secretary, Alfred von Kiderlen-Waechter, led eventually to an understanding by which German acquiescence in the establishment of a French protectorate over Morocco was in effect purchased with territorial concessions in the Congo basin. The settlement with Germany might not have been achieved had the new French Prime Minister, Joseph Caillaux, not intervened personally in the negotiations. Alarmed by the intransigence of senior officials of the Quai d’Orsay, he by-passed his Foreign Minister, Justin de Selves, and, through contact with the German embassy in Paris and the use of unofficial agents, assisted and encouraged Jules Cambon in his pursuit of a compromise.61 But Caillaux had little sympathy for Spain whose representatives were wholly excluded from the discussions in Berlin. He was at one with those in the Quai d’Orsay, such as Edmond Bapst, the political director, and Maurice Herbette, de Selves’s Chef de Cabinet, who wished to further limit Spain’s rôle in Morocco, and saw in this course a means of securing compensation for France’s ‘sacrifices’ in the Congo and mitigating parliamentary and public criticism of the deal done with Germany. In October he embraced proposals put forward by Regnault, which would have left the Spaniards with little more than the hinterland of their presidios, and have allowed the French to control the strategically important triangle of territory extending from the east of Tangier to Larache and El Ksar.62 French diplomats understood that such demands might push Spain into an alignment with Germany but were prepared to discount any threat posed by a potentially hostile Spain. Paris assumed that France could, if necessary, exploit Spain’s domestic troubles in

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order to foment civil unrest and revolution there, and in September the army general staff asked the navy what might be achieved by a naval bombardment of Barcelona. The ‘poor relation’ might thus be rendered even poorer.63 The French could not so easily risk antagonising Britain. Grey had questioned the wisdom of the march on Fez, and his officials considered the French less than open about their dealings with the Germans. But initially the crisis was widely perceived in London as a fresh German challenge to the entente. Grey hardly wavered in his public support of France and British service chiefs embarked on a re-examination of their military preparations for participation in a continental war.64 There was some justice in later claims in The Manchester Guardian that during the summer of 1911 the British were ‘more French than the French’.65 What the Foreign Office had not reckoned with was the extent to which the French would seek to revise the provisions of the entente as they related to Spain and Morocco. Grey accepted that ‘reasonable compensation’ from Spain to France for the latter’s concessions to Germany might be found in territory adjacent to Ifni. There was, however, no question of the British Government accepting the imposition on Spain of the ‘projet Regnault’, a copy of which was communicated to Bertie on 19 October.66 If put into effect, it would have meant France replacing Spain on Morocco’s north-western seaboard and, as was pointed out by Eyre Crowe, the head of the Foreign Office’s Western Department, it would have falsified ‘one of the most important features of the agreements of 1904’.67 On 30 October Grey made the British position clear to Paul Cambon. He said that Britain would not be able to support France in any negotiations with Spain unless they were based on the 1904 accords, and that to treat these as if they did not exist would be to ‘drag the entente in the mud, and would have the most disastrous effect on public opinion here’.68 Herbert Asquith, the Liberal Prime Minister, was equally firm. He told an emissary whom Caillaux had sent to England that Great Britain would not possibly support any ‘hectoring or bullying attitude towards Spain’.69 Bertie, who was instructed to speak ‘very strongly’ to French ministers on this matter, found de Selves amenable to argument and prepared to abandon the ‘projet Regnault’.70 But Caillaux was not in an accommodating mood. In conversations with Bertie on 3 and 4 November he both challenged the formal provisions of the AngloFrench entente and questioned its continuing diplomatic value to France. Britain’s friendship, he said, ‘would cost dear to France if her legitimate aspirations were to be opposed by England’. And, in

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response to Bertie’s assertion that the French Government must have known what France’s legitimate interests were in 1904, Caillaux protested that France had been forced to make sacrifices to Germany in the Congo because of Britain’s military weakness. ‘It was a question’, he observed, of whether France ‘could not have come to more satisfactory terms with Germany without the entente on Morocco and other questions.’ Had it not been for its understanding with England, France, he reasoned, ‘could long ago have come to terms with Germany’.71 There was some substance in this claim, and other French politicians had made similar criticisms of France’s links with England. But, since his appointment to Paris, no French minister had spoken in quite so frank a fashion to Bertie about the merits of the entente. It seemed, Crowe noted, as if Caillaux were not unwilling to contemplate a situation in which the entente ‘would no longer play a part’.72 Grey too felt compelled, albeit reluctantly, to consider this prospect. On 6 November he informed Bertie with regard to the treatment of Spain in Morocco that Britain could ‘have nothing to do with a line that…[was]…mean and dishonourable’, and had got to ‘keep France straight in this matter, or part company with her’.73 On 8 November 1911 Le Matin published the terms of the FrancoSpanish convention of 1904, weakening Caillaux’s political position. The French public learned for the first time the extent of what had been promised to Spain in Morocco, and the mood of popular elation which had accompanied the settlement with Germany turned rapidly to one of disappointment and recrimination. De Selves remained unreconciled to the way in which Caillaux had circumvented his diplomacy. Others amongst Caillaux’s critics were probably as much troubled by his Government’s commitment to fiscal and social reform as by his foreign policy.74 They seized upon reports of what Caillaux had said to Bertie and allegations that he had threatened to stir up revolution in Spain as evidence of his determination to effect a fundamental change in France’s foreign relations. It may well have suited Caillaux to seem to be taking a firm line with Britain and Spain, but Bertie may have encouraged his opponents. Although the Ambassador subsequently denied having intrigued against Caillaux, he left leading French politicians in little doubt that Caillaux’s support of the ‘projet Regnault’ was unacceptable to Britain. Indeed, on 18 November, during the interval of a gala performance at the Paris opera house, Caillaux openly charged Bertie with having meddled in French politics behind his back. In the presence of other diplomats, he addressed Bertie as ‘l’homme terrible’ and accused the Ambassador of working against him.75

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Caillaux was not, however, about to abandon the entente. An impulsive and highly excitable politician, he was easily provoked by an ambassador who was reputed to be a ‘master in the art of quar-relling’.76 During their exchange at the Paris opera house Caillaux indicated his readiness to drop the ‘projet Regnault’ if Bertie could suggest an adequate alternative. Regnault chaired an interdepartmental committee to examine possible arrangements and on 30 November an avant-projet was communicated to Bertie proposing to leave Spain with Ifni and most of its northern zone. The Sultan would appoint a high commissioner to handle relations with the Spanish authorities; Tangier would be internationalised; and the French, in cooperation with Spain, would construct a railway between Tangier and Fez, whose management company would be em-powered ‘to take measures for the security of the line’.77 This seemed likely to provide a satisfactory basis for Franco-Spanish negotiations. The British retained their doubts about French intentions. An annex to the avant-projet, which bore the mark of Regnault’s continuing influence, provided for the inclusion in the district of Tangier of a stretch of territory extending down the Atlantic coast, and proposed a constitution for the municipality which would have allowed the French to use the presidential powers accorded to the Sultan’s representative to exercise a predominant influence in its governance. It could not in British eyes be reconciled with the internationalisation of the city, and on 11 December Bertie was instructed to reject the French proposals.78 This was the opening move in what the British minister at Tangier predicted would be a ‘toughish struggle with the French’. 79 Accounts of Caillaux’s personal diplomacy had in the meantime provoked considerable disquiet within political circles in Paris, and although the chamber of deputies sanctioned the treaty with Germany, subsequent probing by nationalist and moderate republican senators into the differences between de Selves and Caillaux led to the former’s resignation and the Government’s collapse on 11 January 1912. The new premier, Raymond Poincaré, evidently wished to limit any damage done to the entente by the ‘wild talk’ of his predecessor. He assured Bertie that he was ‘sincerely anxious to avoid hurting any well-founded Spanish susceptibilities’ and that he ‘accepted in principle the internationalisation of Tangier’. 80 But Poincaré was no less committed than Caillaux to defending French interests in Morocco, and still sought adequate ‘compensation’ from Spain for France’s much-vaunted ‘sacrifices’ to Germany. He had previously urged Caillaux to exclude the Spaniards from Larache and El Ksar, and Regnault’s presence in Paris until March 1912 was

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hardly conducive to the adoption of a more conciliatory approach. Indeed, Poincaré’s decision to act as his own Foreign Minister seemed to make it all the more likely that those in the Quai d’Orsay who sympathised with Regnault would retain their influence. Grahame feared with good reason that Regnault would be all for ‘bullying’ Spain, and for leaving the door open for future harassment and encroachment on the Spanish zone. 81 IV Poincaré was wedded to the maintenance of close ties with Britain, and during the next twelve months he sought to clarify and redefine the entente in terms which had little, if anything, to do with Morocco. But the Spaniards still had to reckon with renewed French territorial demands. Admittedly, some of these were put forward simply as bargaining counters, and the Spaniards were ultimately able to retain much of what they had been promised. The settlement arrived at in November 1912 with the assistance of de Bunsen, nevertheless, deprived Spain of a large tract of land to the south of the Rif.82 Moreover, both on these territorial issues and on matters relating to the administration of the Spanish sphere the French adopted a hectoring tone in their dealings with Madrid. The British continued to complain about French conduct. Reginald Lister, who had once served under Bertie at Paris and who had since become British Minister at Tangier, was particularly critical of Robert de Billy, the French Chargé d’Affaires, whom he thought tactless and wanting in loyalty and frankness towards his Spanish colleague.83 Crowe denounced French claims in the Ouergha valley, whose denial to Spain he labelled ‘a gross breach of a solemn treaty’.84 He also took French proposals relating to the appointment of the Sultan’s representative in the Spanish zone as conclusive evidence that they meant to have a say in his selection, a course ‘contrary to the whole spirit of the division into zones’.85 When in August 1912 a quarrel over the actions of Spanish consuls at Mazagan and Mogador led the French to demand their recall and what amounted to an apology from Spain, Crowe minuted: ‘The French are behaving as badly as ever the Germans did both in the substance and manner of their action.’86 This was unfair to the Germans, whose transgressions in Morocco amounted to little more than the defence of the Sultan’s independence, and the over-zealous pursuit of recompense for the neglect of their rights and interests. It was, however, consistent with

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the dissatisfaction previously evinced by British diplomats over French negotiating methods. It may also have reflected the Foreign Office’s frustration with the prevailing stalemate over the future of Tangier. Such progress as had been made in talks between British, French and Spanish representatives at Madrid towards establishing an international administration was suddenly halted when, in late August 1912, the French introduced proposals which the British felt more appropriate to the governance of one of France’s overseas possessions. Crowe, who hoped that Britain would be able to work with Spain in resisting French pretensions, echoed earlier Spanish complaints when he protested that the French were ‘not treating us fairly or playing the game’. The Foreign Office failed to persuade Poincaré to set aside the ‘obstructive policy’ of the Quai d’Orsay.87 Poincaré was trying to secure the presidency of the Third Republic, and on 6 January 1913 Bertie informed the Foreign Office that he thought no negotiations with the Quai d’Orsay would succeed if they required French concessions.88 Only in the following November did the British and French governments reach a tentative understanding on Tangier, which still required the adherence of Spain. In consequence, the western question—that posed by the impending collapse of the Shereefian empire—remained unresolved when in 1914 the reverberations of its eastern counterpart plunged Europe into war.89 Anglo-French squabbling over the future of Morocco was, by the summer of 1914, peripheral to great power relations in Europe. The policies pursued by Britain and France towards Spain nevertheless revealed much about the nature and functions of their entente. Often perceived as a key element in the European balance of power, the Anglo-French understanding was from its inception a means by which the two powers sought, with varying degrees of success, to regulate their rivalries in the extra-European world. British officials also saw in closer Anglo-French cooperation an instrument for containing the growth of German economic and political influence abroad. The Mediterranean accords of May 1907 constituted, in all but name, a reinsurance treaty. The British judged a friendly Spain essential for the future security of Gibraltar and sought to use Spanish ambitions in order to exclude France from Morocco’s northern littoral: the French were equally anxious to ensure that the British should not have a foothold in the Spanish islands and that Spain should have no agreement with Britain to which they were not a party. However, whilst it suited both Britain and France that Spain should remain a relatively weak partner—the poor relation—in the

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western Mediterranean, in the long run neither could overlook the interplay between expansionist dreams and domestic dissension in the peninsula. In November 1911 Bertie speculated that if discord between France and Spain were to lead to revolution in Madrid, the monarchy would not be replaced by a reasonable republican form of government, but by one of the anarchist species which would not suit France. 90 A quarter of a century later, such fears were to return to haunt British and French diplomats on the eve of another European war. Notes 1 2

3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

11 12 13 14

For a detailed study of Spain’s policy towards Morocco during the last quarter of the nineteenth century see F.V.Parsons, The Origins of the Morocco Question, 1880–1900, London, Duckworth, 1976. K.A.Hamilton, ‘Great Britain, France and the origins of the Mediterranean Agreements of 16 May 1907’ in B.J.C.McKercher and D. J.Moss (eds), Shadow and Substance in British Foreign Policy 1895– 1939, Edmonton, University of Alberta Press, 1984, pp. 118–20. R.G.Neale, Britain and American Imperialism, 1898–1900, Brisbane, University of Queensland Press, 1965, pp. 58–74. Public Record Office (PRO) FO 72/2100, Drummond Wolf to Salisbury, 14 August 1898. J.F.MacDonald, ‘Jules Cambon et la menace de l’impérialisme americain (1898–1899)’, Revue d’Histoire Diplomatique, 1972, pp. 247–55. Documents Diplamatiques Français, 2nd series, vol. III, nos 144, 259. Hereafter DDF. Ministère des Affaires Étrangères (MAE), Delcassé Mss. Jules Cambon to Delcassé, 24 May 1903 and 6 June 1903. C.M.Andrew, Théophile Delcassé and the Making of the Entente Cordiale: A Reappraisal of French Foreign Policy, 1898–1905, London, Macmillan, 1968, pp. 147–51, 191–4, 217. DDF, 2nd series, vol. III, no. 162. DDF, 2nd series, vol. III, no. 364. MAE, Delcassé Mss, 2, Cambon to Delcassé, 11 August 1903, 10 December 1903 and 1 March 1904. PRO FO 800/142. PRO FO 800/126. L.A.McGeoch, ‘British foreign policy and the Spanish corollary to the Anglo-French Agreement of 1904’ in H.N.Barker and M.L.Brown (eds), Diplomacy in an Age of Nationalism, The Hague, Martinus Nijhoff, 1971, pp. 209–22. British Documents on the Origins of the War, 1898–1914 , vol. VII, nos 373, 376–8. Hereafter BD. DDF, 2nd series, vol. IV, nos 98, 117, 119, 120. DDF, 2nd series, vol. IV, no. 54. PRO FO 800/336–337. P.Guillen, L’Allemagne et le Maroc de 1870 à 1905, Paris, 1967, pp. 813– 81.

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25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44

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Ibid., pp. 553–86. P.M.Kennedy, ‘The development of German naval operations plans against England, 1896–1914’, English Historical Review, 1974, vol. 89, pp. 48–76. P RO F O 185/1004, enclosures in Lansdowne to Nicolson, 30 November 1905. MAE, NS Espagne 15, Audibert to Delcassé, 28 March 1905. DDF, 2nd series, vol. VI, no. 205; DDF, 2nd series, vol. VIII, no. 295. K.A.Hamilton, Bertie of Thame: Edwardian Ambassador, Woodbridge, Royal Historical Society, 1990, p. 72. PRO FO 800/179. Ibid. PRO FO 800/27. BD, vol. VII, no. 7. BD, vol. III, no. 172. Ibid., no. 329. E.N.Anderson, The First Moroccan Crisis, 19 0 4–19 0 6, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1930, pp. 392–6. PRO FO 368/51, Cartwright to Grey, 24 May 1906 and memorandum by G.Young, 5 November 1906. J.-C.Allain, Agadir 1911: Une Crise Impérialiste en Europe pour la Conquête de Maroc, Paris, Publications de la Sorbonne, 1976, pp. 133–5. MAE, NS Maroc 394, Berard to Quai d’Orsay, 7 July 1906; Bourgeois to Cambon, 10 July 1906. PRO FO 368/50, Admiralty to Foreign Office, 30 June 1906. Hamilton, ‘Mediterranean Agreements’, pp. 127–30. MAE, NS Maroc 394, Barthou to Pichon, 27 February 1907. PRO FO 368/51, de Bunsen to Grey, 18 and 28 December 1906. Ibid., Grey to Bertie, 22 December 1906. Grey to Campbell-Bannerman, 27 December 1906, CampbellBannerman Mss, Add Ms 52514, British Library. BD, vol. VII, no. 8. MAE, Paul Cambon Mss, 11, Jules Cambon to Paul Cambon, 2 January 1907. DDF, 2nd series, vol. X, no. 380. BD, vol. VII, nos 6, 7. DDF 2nd series, vol. X, nos 384 and 390. BD, vol. VII, no. 3. PRO CAB 38/12/58, Grey minute, 12 December 1906. BD, vol. VII, nos 4, 5. PRO CAB 38/12/59 CID minutes, 9th meeting 20 December 1906. CAB 38/12/62, Clarke note, 28 December 1906. PRO FO 371/364, Clarke note, 16 December 1906. BD, vol. VII, no. 8. PRO FO 368/127, Grey to de Bunsen, 9 January 1907. Grey to Campbell-Bannerman, 11 January 1907, Campbell-Bannerman Mss, Add Ms 52514. PRO CAB 38/13/11, Admiralty note, 25 February 1903. DDF, 2nd series, vol. X, nos 384, 423, 428. BD, vol. VII, nos 16, 18. PRO FO 371/334, de Bunsen to Grey, 26 January 1907. BD, vol. VII, nos 11, 14, 19–23. Ibid., nos 22 and 24. Ibid., nos 25 and 26. PRO FO 800/179, Hardinge to Bertie, 11 April 1907.

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45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63

64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74

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DDF, 2nd series, vol. X, no. 458. MAE, NS Espagne 41, Pichon to Daeschner, 16 April 1906; Pichon to Paul Cambon, 20 April 1907. BD, vol. VII, nos 39–41, 46. Ibid., no. 50. PRO FO 371/364, Goschen to Grey, 18 June 1907; de Salis to Grey, 21 June 1907. Die Grosse Politik des Europäische Kabinette, vol. XXV, pt. 1, no. 8544. PRO FO 371/741, de Bunsen to Grey, 24 May 1909. E.W.Edwards, ‘The Franco-German Agreement on Morocco, 1909’, English Historical Review, 1963, vol. 78, pp. 483–513. DDF, 2nd series, vol. XII, no. 10. S.Balfour, The End of the Spanish Empire, 1898–1923, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1997, pp. 123–31, 184–204. PRO FO 371/987, de Bunsen to Grey, 30 July 1910 and 8 August 1910. BD, vol. VII, no. 175. Ibid., nos 176, 181–184. MAE, Pichon Mss, Maroc 2, note by Regnault, 26 October 1910. DDF, 2nd series, vol. XII, nos 485, 486. PRO FO 800/334, de Bunsen to Nicolson, 26 November 1910. DDF, 2nd series, vol. XIII, no. 66. Allain, Agadir, pp. 268–74. Ibid., pp. 309–12. DDF, 2nd series, vol. XIII, nos 272, 353; DDF, 2nd series, vol. XIV, no. 95. BD, vol. VII, no. 224. W.N.Medlicott, ‘The Agadir Crisis’ in J.M.Roberts (ed.) Europe in the 20th Century, Volume 1, 1900–1914, London, Macdonald, 1970, p. 234. J.-C.Allain, Joseph Caillaux. Tome I: Le Défi Victorieux, 1863–1914, Paris, Imprimerie Nationale, 1978, pp. 389–96. K.A.Hamilton, ‘The “Wild Talk” of Joseph Caillaux: a sequel to the Agadir Crisis’, International History Review, 1987, vol. 9, pp. 195–226. MAE, NS Espagne 65, ‘Probable Spanish attitude in case of a FrancoGerman war’, undated departmental note, 1911. P.G.Halpern, The Mediterranean Naval Situation, 1908–1914, Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press, 1971, p. 285. M.L.Dockrill, ‘British foreign policy during the Agadir Crisis of 1911’ in F.H.Hinsley (ed.), British Foreign Policy under Sir Edward Grey, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1977, pp. 271–87. The Manchester Guardian, 12 January 1912. BD, vol. VII, no. 598. Ibid. Ibid., no. 611. PRO FO 800/351, Nicolson to de Bunsen, 1 November 1911 and Nicolson to Hardinge, 2 November 1911. PRO FO 800/179, Bertie to Grey, 2 November 1911. BD, vol. VII, nos 614, 618. PRO FO 800/179, Bertie to Grey, 3 and 4 November 1911. BD, vol. VII, no. 627. Ibid., no. 631. F.Seager, ‘Joseph Caillaux as premier, 1911–1912: the dilemma of a liberal reformer’, French Historical Studies, 1979, vol. 11, pp. 239–57.

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PRO FO 800/179, Bertie to Grey, 19 November 1911. J.Caillaux, Mes Mémoires Tome II, Paris, Plon, 1942–47, pp. 139, 192. J.Rennell Rodd, Social and Diplomatic Memories, Volume III, London, Edward Arnold, 1925, p. 41. DDF, 3rd series, vol. I, nos 271, 277, 287. BD, vol. VII, no. 716. PRO FO 800/160, Bertie to Grey, 26 November 1911. BD, vol. VII, nos 716, 725, 753. PRO FO 800/160, Bertie to Nicolson, 1 December 1911. FO 800/179, Bertie to Grey, 2 December 1911. FO 146/4229, Grahame memorandum, 28 November 1911. PRO FO 371/1403, Lister to Crowe, 21 January 1912. PRO FO 800/160, Bertie to Nicolson, 18 January 1912. FO 800/165, Bertie to Grey, 22 January 1912. FO 371/1406, Bertie to Nicolson, 1 February 1912. PRO FO 800/179, Bertie to Grey, 4 November 1911. FO 800/53, Grahame to Tyrrell, 23 January 1912. MAE, NS Maroc 100, Geoffray to Martin, 9 February 1912. MAE, NS Maroc 99, Le Cap de 1’Eau et la Moulouia, note by Lyautey, 11 December 1911. DDF, 3rd series, vol. I, nos 338, 347; DDF, 3rd series, vol. II, no. 34. PRO FO 371/1403, Lister to Crowe, 21 January 1912. FO 371/1406, Lister to Crowe, 28 January 1912 and Lister to Grey, 10 February 1912. PRO FO 371/1399, Crowe minute. De Bunsen to Grey, 23 April 1912. PRO FO 371/1400, Crowe minute. De Bunsen to Grey, 22 June 1912. PRO FO 371/1410, Crowe minute. Rennie to Grey, 17 September 1912. PRO FO 371/1404, Grey to Bertie, 18 November 1911; Crowe to Bertie, 18 November 1911. PRO FO 800/363 Bertie to Nicolson, 6 January 1913. MAE, NS Grande-Bretagne 22, note for the president of the council, 16 April 1914. G.H.Stuart, The International City of Tangier, Stanford, Stanford University Press, 1955, pp. 59–90. PRO FO 371/1168, Bertie to Grey, 20 November 1911.

4

Britain and France at war, 1914–1918 David Dutton

Much recent writing on the First World War has been designed to show, as David French has put it, that ‘at least for the policy-making elite the war did make sense’.1 In this process the growing emphasis placed upon the fact that Britain conducted her war against Germany, not alone but as part of a coalition of great powers, has occupied a major part. Within that coalition Britain’s partnership with France played a pre-eminent rôle. France was the one country without which Britain could not contemplate continuing the struggle against Germany. As General, later Field Marshal, Sir Douglas Haig put it in July 1917: ‘We could see Italy and even Russia drop out, and still continue the war with France and America. But if France drops out we not only cannot continue the war on land but our Armies in France will be in a very difficult position.’ 2 However, capturing the essence of the Anglo-French alliance of 1914–18 is no easy matter. Attention, understandably enough, has tended to focus on the divisions and strains which threatened at times to tear the alliance apart. Conflict is usually more intriguing than harmony. Yet there is always a danger that an exclusive focus on the strife and tension within the wartime alliance will obscure a fundamental truth. In marked contrast to what was to happen in 1940, the Anglo-French partnership survived unbroken for the duration of hostilities. The two countries achieved considerable feats of cooperation to emerge from the war with their alliance intact. Though coalition warfare imposed enormous stresses and strains, in the last resort it did bring the conflict to a successful conclusion. ‘Whilst the alliance creaked and groaned’, writes Douglas Johnson, ‘it remained firm until the armistice.’3 That said, it remains true that the two countries entered war in 1914 with no tradition of alliance or even friendship between them. Indeed, the generation which dominated the public life of Britain

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and France during the conflict had grown up and formed its lasting attitudes at a time when enmity rather than cooperation was the chief motif of Anglo-French relations. Lord Kitchener, for example, who now became Secretary of State for War, had spent much of his earlier career defending the frontiers of the British Empire against those countries, France and Russia, with which Britain found herself engaged in a common cause in 1914. 4 Though the Entente Cordiale had developed, almost imperceptibly, into a much closer relationship than that originally constructed by foreign ministers Lord Lansdowne and Théophile Delcassé in 1904, it had not been transformed into an alliance and did not determine Britain’s future participation in a European war at France’s side. As the diplomatic situation on the continent worsened dramatically in late July 1914, the Prime Minister, Herbert Asquith, could still comfort himself with the thought that ‘happily there seems…no reason why we should be more than spectators’ in any military conflict. 5 Even Sir Edward Grey, the British Cabinet minister most sympathetic to the notion that it would be impossible for his country to stand aside from a Franco-German conflict, conceded to his colleagues on 31 July that, without a formal alliance, Britain was ‘not bound by the same obligation of honour to France as bound France to Russia’, where an alliance did exist. 6 British ministers recognized that they had some sort of obligation to France, but precisely what it was and what it would involve remained in doubt almost until the moment of the British declaration of war. As late as 2 August 1914 the British Prime Minister set out the six principles by which he was guided. Asquith seemed not to appreciate the difficulty of reconciling the first and third of these points. ‘We have no obligation of any kind either to France or Russia to give them military or naval help…We mustn’t forget the ties created by our long-standing and intimate friendship with France.’ 7 Britain’s ultimate decision to intervene in the European conflict was based less upon a ‘moral’ commitment to France after a decade of ever-closer relations or even upon a commitment of ‘honour’ to Belgium of whose neutrality she was a guarantor, and more upon a calculated assessment of her own national self interest. 8 Indeed, in one sense Britain got involved in order to control France as well as to assist her. For if France and Russia were left to prevail in a war against Germany without British support, this might create a future situation of confrontation between Britain and the victor powers in which her old rivals of the late nineteenth century would now be un-restrained by a German counter-balance to their power.9 Arthur

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Nicolson, the Permanent Under-Secretary at the Foreign Office, championed the cause of British intervention for precisely this reason.10 I Germany’s violation of Belgian neutrality certainly helped to ensure that the British Cabinet, Parliament and people entered the war reasonably united. ‘I had thought we might and should have kept out of the war’, recorded one Liberal MP on 9 August, ‘but when Germany decided on an unprovoked attack upon Belgium…it seemed impossible for us to stand by.’11 But this issue was not at the heart of Britain’s decision, except in the sense that the original British guarantee of Belgian independence of 1839 had itself been an expression of British national self-interest. None the less, the publicity given to Belgium’s plight may have encouraged a British perception that her participation in the war was in some sense motivated by loftier ideals than was France’s own. When the 4th battalion of the Royal Berkshire Regiment arrived in France in May 1915, it was surprised to be informed by the local curé that Britain had entered the conflict for her own selfish ends. On behalf of the battalion, the future historian of the war, Cyril Cruttwell, countered that the French army had run away from the battle and that the British had come to bolster its morale.12 For all that, once the Asquith Government had taken its decision to join the conflict, it was the sine qua non of Britain’s involvement that she would fight the war in conjunction with France. Quite simply, Britain lacked the resources to do anything else. While the politicians were determined to keep the country’s army small in size, association with the one country which could remedy Britain’s military shortcomings was inevitable.13 It was, after all, Britain’s long-standing tradition to fight a European land war by proxy, making the best possible use of continental allies. Britain’s intention in 1914 -whatever strategy was forced upon her later on in the war—was to stick to this pattern. The Royal Navy would control the seas and subject the enemy to a blockade. British wealth would assist her allies to finance their war efforts. But Britain’s army would play only a minor rôle in securing victory. The British Expeditionary Force (BEF) of just six infantry divisions and one cavalry division represented little more than a token contributon to the land war. It may have been the most professional and best trained army that Britain had ever sent into battle but it

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remained true that the entire British force was less than half the size of one of France’s armies.14 To this extent there was inevitably some truth in the complaints of men such as General Huguet, the head of the French Military Mission attached to the British army, that ‘England wants to win with the minimum sacrifice in men’, leaving France to bear the main burden in terms of casualties.15 Such factors helped to determine the shape and nature of the war-time coalition which emerged from the old Triple Entente of Britain, France and Russia. Only in the naval sphere did Britain lead the alliance from the start to the finish of the war.16 But granted that naval power was likely to be a longer-term weapon and that Britain had by far the smallest army, there were some grounds for seeing Britain as the weakest partner within the coalition. Certainly, she had few claims to aspire to a position of dominance in the first half of the conflict. Repeated calls by exasperated British politicians and generals for their country to assume the political leadership of the allied war effort were largely unrealistic. Gradually, Britain was forced into the realisation that the struggle against Germany could not be won unless she made a more wholehearted commitment to the European land war. By the spring of 1916 she had achieved something like military parity with her French allies. The introduction of conscription meant that the British army would reach its maximum strength in the course of 1917. Yet Britain never really translated this mounting contribution to the common cause into a controlling voice in the Anglo-French alliance. Her failure to do so was a source of considerable disappointment. As General Sir Henry Wilson put it in January 1917: We are now the most important of the Allies, in money, in fleets, in shipping, in coal and (almost) in armies, and yet we allow our Allies to do things of which we entirely disapprove, and, although it is quite true that we cannot dictate, still we can get our own way to a great extent by bargaining.17 By 1917, however, Britain herself was beginning to look distinctly war-weary and her potential to dominate the alliance was further threatened by the entry of the United States into the conflict that April. Indeed, the weaker France became the more reluctant was the British Government to assert its will if this conflicted with French opinion. Sustaining the existing French Government became in itself a key objective of British war-time diplomacy. There was always the fear that alternative governments were waiting in the wings which

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might even seek a separate, compromise peace with the enemy. British apprehensions about the possible defection of France may have been grossly exaggerated, but the question remained an everpresent concern from first to last. For much of the war British strategy was dictated as much by susceptibility for the French political situation as it was by an assessment of what was militarily desirable. The original instructions to Sir John French, commander of the BEF, stressed that he should do all he could to avoid heavy losses. By the summer of 1915, however, Kitchener had ‘decided that we must act with all our energy, and do our utmost to help the French, even though, by so doing, we suffered very heavy casualties indeed’.18 The War Minister, who had opposed a projected offensive around Loos when representatives of Britain and France met at Calais on 6 July, had changed his opinion by mid-August. The catalyst for Kitchener’s volte-face seems to have been a growing concern that, should the French Commander-in-Chief, General Joseph Joffre, not prevail, French war-weariness might lead to that country’s sudden exit from the conflict. As early as March Lord Esher, Kitchener’s personal envoy in France, warned that ‘if this war ends in an unsatisfactory peace, it will be on account of a mishandling of the French alliance, and a misapprehension of the French character’.19 Esher, who quickly developed a pessimistic view of the state of French morale, encouraged the belief that Joseph Caillaux, leader of the Radical Socialist group in the French Chamber, was the most likely beneficiary of any political crisis in Paris and that his first priority would be peace with Germany. Kitchener should therefore foster close ties with the French War Minister, Alexandre Millerand, whose partnership with Joffre formed the solid core of the existing French administration. If Millerand fell, warned Esher, it would represent a signal victory for the French de-featists and ‘we shall end this war alone against Germany’.20 The British Ambassador in Paris, Lord Bertie of Thame, consistently played down the danger of Caillaux ever coming to power, but Esher’s warnings were echoed by senior military figures, some of whom may have used the perceived danger to the French Government as a convenient excuse to mask their own enthusiasm for making a whole-hearted British commitment to the western front. Sir John French himself noted in late July 1915 that, unless Britain gave some positive sign of her continuing commitment, France might break away from the alliance and conclude a separate peace. 21 Similarly, for Douglas Haig ‘the important point’ was ‘to prevent

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the peace party in France from gaining the upper hand, otherwise they will make peace in the autumn’.22 Henry Wilson was even more graphic. ‘It lies with us to pull the poor French soldiers and people thro’ their difficulties of Bosch in front and Caillaux behind.’23 Such thinking never entirely disappeared for the duration of the war. In May 1916 Esher reported that ‘the Caillaux and peace crowds are quietly strengthening their positions, and that the danger of France losing heart about the war and being ready to snatch at any tolerable sort of peace may be great in the autumn’.24 Haig’s diary suggests that the condition of the French army, or at least the impression he had of its condition, was one of the factors which persuaded him to launch the Somme offensive in 1916. ‘I had gone fully into the various aspects of what would happen if we did not support the French’, he wrote in May. ‘I came to the conclusion that we must march to the support of the French.’ 25 Little had changed a year later. In authorising the Passchendaele offensive of 1917 the British Cabinet’s War Policy Committee was still mindful of the possible political repercussions in France if Britain did not attack.26 The British liaison officer, Edward Spears, insisted that nothing should be done which might risk the collapse of Alexandre Ribot’s Government in Paris. If he fell, ‘the only alternative…was M.Caillaux and his advent to power would mean peace’.27 As late as June 1918 Lord Derby, the new British Ambassador in Paris, reflected on what he considered a still present threat: Lloyd George…seems to me not to realize in the very least what the great danger here is, namely that favourable terms will be offered to France and she will accept them and it will be we who will have to be called upon to pay the price. As long as Clemenceau is in power I do not think there is any fear of a separate peace but still…if Germany does make a favourable offer…I do not believe we could afterwards get the French soldiers to fight or the French nation to continue the War as they would say it would be simply and solely to fight for our interests.28 By far the best illustration of Britain’s willingness to place the continuation of the war-time alliance above all other considerations is to be found in her participation in the expedition which was sent to the Balkans in October 1915. 29 No campaign of the whole conflict better illustrates the problems of coalition warfare. The allied force which arrived at Salonika in northern Greece was too small, too ill-

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prepared and above all too late to fulfil its stated task of assisting the Serbian army. British military opinion was united in recommending that the campaign should be abandoned. ‘The original object…having disappeared’, insisted Henry Wilson, ‘we ought to disappear also.’30 Instead, Britain bowed before French pressure and remained in the Balkans for the duration of the war. The expedition succeeded in immobilising an allied army which reached 600,000 men by 1917. Its military value appeared to be negligible. The justification for all this was the British perception that the recall of the politically influential French Commander-in-Chief, General Maurice Sarrail, from Salonika would precipitate a political crisis in Paris which might lead to France’s withdrawal from the war. As Asquith once put it, ‘the damned alliance is costing us a heavy price’.31 It was not that the British held the successive governments which presided over France’s war-time destiny in particularly high esteem – quite the reverse. Asquith believed that France had ‘by far the most unstable Government among all the belligerent powers on both sides’.32 Surveying René Viviani’s sacred union administration, he found it extraordinary that a country such as France, ‘so rich in resources, human and others’, should not have been able to come up with a more impressive political leadership.33 Haig once wrote of ‘a government of political jugglers with a chamber of semilunatics’.34 In general, British observers knew little about the structure of French politics and understood less. They failed to comprehend the essential strands of continuity which kept the political machine of the Third Republic running, notwithstanding the frequent fall of ministries. For all that, each French government, from Viviani to Clemenceau, was committed to fighting the war to the end. If the survival of these governments demanded military action by Britain which she would not otherwise have taken, so be it. On balance it seemed a price worth paying. II At the outbreak of the war the Anglo-French alliance35 had no formal machinery for formulating diplomatic policy or military strategy. This was bound to hinder the amicable settlement of inter-allied disputes and differences. Diagnosing the problem was easy enough. Coming up with a solution proved more difficult. ‘The lack of any real coordination in the exertions and plans of the Allies has been evident at every stage’, noted Churchill in June 1915, ‘and this must be

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reckoned as one of the chief causes leading to the failure of the campaign of 1915.’36 It was by a slow process of trial and error that the two governments moved hesitantly towards a greater understanding of how to conduct coalition warfare. In November 1915 the prime ministers of Britain and France met in Paris and accepted the principle of a permanent committee to coordinate the activities of the allies.37 Two months later in London the two premiers approved the rules for the establishment of such a committee.38 But these schemes remained on the drawing board. The problem was compounded by the fact that neither country, anticipating a very different type of war from that which developed, had really sorted out its own domestic command structure or the working relationship between its political and military leaderships. There thus existed a fourfold division of authority between the French and British governments and high commands. 39 Nor were the alignments which emerged from this structure entirely predictable. On occasions, John French sided with the Grand Quartier General (GQG) against his superiors in London. The French Cabinet knew that it could usually rely on David Lloyd George to oppose his own Government over the Salonika campaign. And the British military leadership looked to Joffre to join them in resisting the dissipation of resources in peripheral theatres of war. In the absence of an allied coordinating machinery personal contacts became extremely important. The problems which arose in the conduct of the war were too numerous and urgent to be handled through the normal diplomatic processes. The procedure began with individual ministers crossing the Channel to consult their opposite numbers, with no guarantee, however, that agreement at this level would be endorsed by the full cabinets in London and Paris. Gradually, official diplomatic representation—Ambassador Paul Cambon in London and Bertie in Paris—was supplemented by a plethora of liaison officers and official and unofficial agents. At the same time, the information offered by such individuals was often idiosyncratic or even contradictory, doing little to foster understanding between the two countries. No amount of liaison officers, moreover, could ensure unity of thought and action. As Spears explained: They might arrange details, but they could not break down the water-tight compartment in which each staff worked, nor had they the authority to determine whether any fundamental divergence of conception, any change of heart or mind, had occurred in the commanders.40

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The first meeting of the heads of government did not take place until 6 July 1915 when Asquith, accompanied by Arthur Balfour, Kitchener and Lord Crewe travelled to Calais to meet Viviani, Millerand, Théophile Delcassé, Augagneur and Albert Thomas. This inaugurated an increasingly frequent series of inter-allied conferences. Asquith argued that these meetings were useful in ‘obviat[ing] friction and greas[ing] the sometimes rather creaking wheels of the Entente’.41 Yet they proved a poor substitute for the permanent decision-making machinery which the requirements of total war demanded. The two countries tended to treat their conferences less as a mechanism to reach agreement or consensus and more as a platform from which to champion their own particular points of view. They were gatherings of men with preconceived ideas, who desired only to find a formula which could superficially reconcile those ideas. It was striking that British and French observers tended to think that it was their opposite numbers and not themselves who gained most from these gatherings. According to Sir William Robertson, Chief of the Imperial General Staff for much of the war, British ministerial opinion at such meetings was seldom determined or unanimous. French ministers, by contrast, invariably presented a united front and came to conferences well prepared to present their own arguments and to counter British ones.42 Yet for Paul Cambon, the opposite was the case: The English have set off well briefed on all points; papers, statistics, state of their forces and transport resources. They have all that is needed for a serious discussion and will find themselves, as last time, in the presence of people without precise ideas on anything. 43 While politicians and commanders sought to hammer out a joint strategy at a succession of inter-allied conferences, the armies on the ground faced the more practical problem of trying to fight the war together. On the western front the question of a unified command was obviously critical. ‘We suffer terribly from a lack of “unity of command”’, complained John French as early as September 1914.44 Ironically, for about the first nine months of the war, the French actually believed that the BEF was under the orders of their Commander-in-Chief, General Joffre. In fact, John French’s orders, which were not communicated to the GQG, made it clear that he would in no sense come under the authority of any other general.45

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Any chance of achieving a unified command was not helped by the experience of the first months of the war. The alliance got off to a bad start. Although Britain’s decision for war came as a great relief to the French, Britain’s mobilisation was none the less three days after that of France. This delay was important. According to one well placed observer, it looked to the average Frenchman ‘as if we were turning out to be the worst kind of fair weather friends, and history…was invoked to show how false England was apt to prove’.46 What was interpreted as British indecisiveness left a legacy of misunderstanding and suspicion. Spears later recalled the atmosphere at the French Ministry of War on 2 August 1914: ‘France was mobilising for war, and I, who belonged to the Army of a country that had not declared itself, had ceased to be a comrade and had suddenly become an object of suspicion.’47 The early campaigns witnessed considerable friction, especially between John French and General Lanrezac, commander of the French Fifth Army. Lanrezac’s decision to order his forces to retire without consulting French left the British general convinced that the Frenchman was no gentleman.48 By late August 1914, Spears judged that the British ‘were persuaded that they had been treated so badly that they could place no further reliance on their Allies’.49 During 1915 the French War Minister repeatedly called for a unified command—naturally enough under Joffre. But Joffre never inspired sufficient confidence on the other side of the Channel to make this a likely development. In any case, Kitchener wanted to husband Britain’s armed strength as far as possible for later use and hoped gradually to take the entire allied war effort under British control. When Douglas Haig replaced John French his instructions did allow for closer cooperation with France and the two countries developed general plans for combined military operations before the start of the 1916 and 1917 campaigning seasons, but the British always stopped short of a unified command. According to Spears, who was well placed to judge, Anglo-French relations on the western front actually deteriorated after Joffre’s fall from power in December 1916: The French began to feel that their early efforts, when they had borne the brunt of the war, were being forgotten, and that as the claims and pretensions of their allies grew in proportion to their own diminishing strength, they would find themselves helpless and deprived of all influence when the time came for the final great settling of accounts between the nations.50

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Spears also drew attention to an important determinant of the dayto-day relations of the two countries—a certain similarity from the French point of view between the British and the Germans: ‘to many Frenchmen the sight of part of their country in enemy hands, and of allies, however well-intentioned, exercising some measure of authority over another part, was exasperating’.51 It was as early as the middle of August 1914 that Spears first heard a joking reference to Calais. ‘If the English get into Calais they will never leave it at the end of the war. They were too upset when they lost it before.’ Although meant humorously at the time, such remarks came to conceal ‘a haunting fear…in many French minds’ that the development of what seemed to be a British camp in northern France might indeed develop into a permanent state of affairs.52 Unity of command on the western front was established—albeit briefly—under Joffre’s successor, Robert Nivelle. This owed more to the mounting tension between Prime Minister Lloyd George and the military leaders, Robertson and Haig, than to any fundamental reappraisal of the mechanics of coalition warfare. Without prior discussion with his generals, Lloyd George agreed to place the British army under French command at the Calais Conference of February 1917. Unfortunately, the dismal failure of Nivelle’s spring offensive provided little incentive to repeat the experiment. As late as November 1917 General Philippe Pétain, by then French Commander-in-Chief, was still arguing against the idea of an allied generalissimo. Such an appointment ‘was possible amongst Allies only when one Army was really the dominant one as in the case of the Central Powers. Our case was different.’53 In the meantime, however, the two governments had made significant progress towards a more unified direction of the whole war effort. By late September Lloyd George and the new French premier, Paul Painlevé, were ready to admit that something more permanent than periodic conferences was now necessary to coordinate allied strategy. The Italian military disaster at Caporetto in November 1917 provided the final incentive. At Rapallo early in the same month Britain and France reached agreement on the establishment of the Supreme War Council, a permanent instrument of inter-allied command to be set up at Versailles. Though this did not surmount all the problems of allied cooperation nor supersede the existing allied commanders and their general staffs, it was a senior body, consisting of the Prime Minister and one other representative of each member nation and, through monthly meetings, was expected to ‘watch over the general conduct of the war’.54

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Finally, with the German spring offensive of 1918 threatening to split the British and French armies apart and then defeat them separately, the allies agreed to the appointment of General Ferdinand Foch as Commander-in-Chief on the western front. Haig himself played a crucial rôle in this development. Appalled by Pétain’s reluctance to commit his reserves to the battle, the British commander willingly suggested that both he and Pétain should be subordinated to Foch.55 Even now, however, there was something less than total unity and mutual trust. In the last resort the British, French and American armies placed under Foch’s control remained answerable to their own governments, and individual commanders retained the right of appeal against Foch’s orders if they believed that these endangered their own armies. I II The war inevitably brought some Britons and Frenchmen into close contact. For many it was a novel experience. At upper- and middleclass level prior to 1914, Anglo-German contacts had tended to be more common and acceptable than Anglo-French ones.56 In many given situations contact now offered an opportunity to appreciate each other’s qualities. Lloyd George worked well with Prime Minister Aristide Briand and Albert Thomas, his Minister of Munitions. For a while he was impressed by Nivelle and even by Sarrail. Painlevé, by contrast, had a high regard for Douglas Haig. John French thought well of Foch, while Haig initially approved of Pétain, not least because he was ‘brief of speech…a rare quality in Frenchmen’.57 In general, however, day-to-day association between the politicians and generals of the two countries tended to reinforce the sort of un-favourable national stereotyping which had existed before the outbreak of war. The French sensed an intolerable air of superiority on the part of the British; the British tended to regard the French as unreliable.58 Haig’s diary is littered with unflattering references to the French, most of which were deliberately omitted from his authorised biography, published in 1935–6, for fear of the damage they might do to AngloFrench relations.59 The French were ‘so unreliable. One cannot believe a word they say as a rule.’ Their leaders were ‘a queer mixture of fair ability (not more than fair) and ignorance of the practical side of war’. Overall, the British were ‘too much of gentlemen for them’.60 It was ‘a big business’, judged Robertson, ‘having to deal with Allied Commanders, and one has to keep oneself very much in check and

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exercise great tolerance’.61 John French was more blunt. Being allied to the French once in a lifetime was, he concluded, more than enough.62 Such sentiments were fully reciprocated. According to the liaison officer, General Huguet, the British were ‘grim, implacable, somewhat unscrupulous, sometimes treach-erous’.63 The importance of the barrier of language should not be underestimated. Few British ministers—Kitchener was an exception—could speak French with anything approaching fluency. Those French politicians competent in English generally declined to display their skills. Lloyd George claimed that Briand, who spoke no English, had such a ‘beautiful voice and talked so distinctly that he was able to follow what he said’, but this was not the norm.64 A meeting between John French and President Raymond Poincaré in August 1914 did not go well. ‘He speaks our tongue with great difficulty’, noted the President.65 When French met Lanrezac, the French general listened to his painful attempts to express himself in the French language and then proceeded to ridicule him.66 Perhaps a key problem was that the majority of French and British soldiers simply did not come into contact with one another. At least on the western front the armies of the two countries fought separate wars, divided not only by culture, language and history but by geographical disposition as well. It is striking how many personal records of the First World War, written by the soldiers of Britain and France, made at most only passing reference to their allied colleagues. They were not part of each other’s everyday experience. ‘It was not unusual during “15” and “16”’, recalled Spears ‘for French battalions to be totally ignorant of the fact that the British Army was fighting within a mile of them. The demarcation between the two armies was rigidly maintained, and even at the actual points of contact the men seldom mixed.’ Even something as basic as food proved a barrier between the two armies: French and British both declared they were starved. Our people could do nothing with the vegetables for which they were expected to devise sauces. They hated the coffee and threw away in disgust the inordinate quantities of bread served out. On the other hand, the gorge of the French rose at the slabs of beef provided by us.67 In this situation it was almost inevitable that an atmosphere of suspicion and recrimination should grow up—a feeling on either side that the other country was not making an appropriate or sufficiently

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vigorous contribution to the common cause. Each country needed a scapegoat for the repeated disappointments and frustrations occasioned by their lack of military success, and found it in the other. Obviously, the most important single factor holding the war-time alliance together was the shared purpose of defeating Germany. Yet, even this point must not be taken too far. The two countries were, after all, independent Great Powers with their own long-standing traditions, aims and ambitions. Age-old Anglo-French animosities and rivalries may have been obscured by the novelty of alliance against Germany, but they never completely disappeared. Germany was the common enemy for the time being, but it was not clear how long this situation would endure. Quite possibly it would eventually be replaced by the re-emergence of a more traditional pattern of international antagonisms. There is some evidence that Kitchener sought to hold back Britain’s military strength for deployment at a time when, with France severely weakened, it could enable Britain to dictate the final peace settlement.68 ‘I am seriously afraid’, noted Lord Curzon less than a month after the armistice, ‘that the great Power from whom we may have most to fear in the future is France.’69 Each party to the coalition hoped that it could use the war to profit not only in relation to its current enemy but also vis-à-vis its present ally. Britain was fighting against Germany to preserve a European balance of power, not to create an overwhelming French preponderance on the continent. Conflicting priorities led to differing perceptions about how and where the war should be fought. With German troops entrenched on French soil, France had less scope than Britain for manoeuvre, though ironically it was from France that most enthusiasm for the Balkan side-show derived, provoked in part by a French desire to carve out a sphere of post-war influence in the eastern Mediterranean.70 Neither side felt it could turn a blind eye to advantages gained by its war-time partner. The French were obliged to participate in the Dardanelles campaign for fear that otherwise Britain would be in a position to determine the postwar settlement of the Eastern Question. Confronted with the possibility of a unilateral British expedition to Syria, the French War Minister insisted that ‘the English should not land there by themselves’.71 For all that, Britain and France—with some considerable American assistance—did bring the war to a successful conclusion. They were not agreed on how they had done it, but they had done it none the less. Haig was convinced that the British had had to take the necessary steps to win the war by themselves, since France ‘lacked both the moral qualities and the means for gaining the victory’.72

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The French, by contrast, looked at statistics—1.3 million French military deaths as against 723,000 British—and drew a very different conclusion.73 Notwithstanding a general feeling of relief that victory had been achieved, the war ended in a feast of mutual recrimination. ‘I have to tell you’, remarked Georges Clemenceau to Lloyd George, ‘that from the very day after the Armistice I found you an enemy to France.’ ‘Well’, replied Lloyd George, ‘was it not always our traditional policy?’74 There was no agreement about where to go next. France perceived a continuing need for British support in the face of a Germany which still, at the moment of defeat, looked uncomfortably strong compared to herself. In Britain the feeling of ‘never again’ seemed to preclude any continuation of the war-time alliance. It did not bode well for the future. Not surprisingly, when in the early days of the Second World War, the Royal Institute of International Affairs invited General Sir Frederick Maurice to prepare a study of allied co-operation in the earlier conflict, it did so with a view to avoiding a repetition of the mistakes made between 1914 and 1918 rather than providing an example to be copied. Notes 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11

D.French, British Strategy and War Aims 1914–16, London, Allen and Unwin, 1986, p. ix. R.Blake (ed.), The Private Papers of Douglas Haig, London, Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1952, p. 247. D.Johnson, F.Bédarida and F.Crouzet (eds), Britain and France: Ten Centuries, Folkestone, Wm. Dawson, 1980, p. 269. D.French, ‘The meaning of attrition, 1914–1916’, English Historical Review, 1988, vol. 103, p. 388. M. and E.Brock (eds), H.H.Asquith: Letters to Venetia Stanley, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1982, p. 123. J.Morley, Memorandum on Resignation, August 1914, New York, Macmillan, 1928, p. 10. M.Brock, ‘Britain enters the War’ in R.J.W.Evans and H.Pogge von Strandmann (eds), The Coming of the First World War, Oxford, Clarendon, 1988, p. 145. W.J.Philpott, Anglo-French Relations and Strategy on the Western Front, 1914–18, London, Macmillan, 1996, p. 13. D.Stevenson, The First World War and International Politics, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1988, p. 37. Brock, ‘Britain enters the War’, p. 147. D.Dutton (ed.), Odyssey of an Edwardian Liberal, Gloucester, Record Society of Lancashire and Cheshire, 1989, pp. 33–4.

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H.Strachan, “The Real War” : Liddell Hart, Cruttwell and Falls’ in B. Bond (ed.), The First World War and British Military History, Oxford, Clarendon, 1991, p. 55. T.Wilson, The Myriad Faces of War, Oxford, Blackwell, 1986, p. 24. F.Maurice, Lessons of Allied Co-operation: Naval Military and Air 1914– 1918, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1942, p. 5. J.-B.Duroselle, ‘Strategic and economic relations during the First World War’ in N.Waites (ed.), Troubled Neighbours: Franco-British Relations in the Twentieth Century, London, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1971, p. 48. French, Strategy and War Aims, p. xi. For a discussion of Anglo-French economic relations see Duroselle, ‘Strategic and economic relations’; M. Horn, ‘Alexandre Ribot et la cooperation financière anglofrançaise, 1914–1917’, Guerres Mondiales et Conflits Contemporains, 1995, vol. 180, pp. 7–28. C.E.Callwell, Field Marshal Sir Henry Wilson: His Life and Diaries, Volume I, London, Cassell, 1927, p. 307. Blake (ed.), Haig Papers, p. 102. R.Williams, ‘Lord Kitchener and the Battle of Loos: French politics and British strategy in the summer of 1915’ in L.Freedman, P.Hayes and R. O’Neill (eds), War, Strategy, and International Politics, Oxford, Clarendon, 1992, p. 124. Ibid., pp. 127–8. R.Holmes, The Little Field-Marshal: Sir John French, London, Cape, 1981, p. 298. G. de Groot, Douglas Haig 1861–1928, London, Unwin Hyman, 1988, p. 199. French, ‘Meaning of attrition’, p. 394. J.Barnes and D.Nicholson (eds), The Leo Amery Diaries, Volume I, London, Hutchinson, 1980, p. 129. Blake (ed.), Haig Papers, p. 53. D.French, ‘Who knew what and when? The French army mutinies and the British decision to launch the Third Battle of Ypres’ in Freedman, Hayes and O’Neill (eds), War, Strategy, and International Politics, pp. 151–2. Ibid., p. 151. Liverpool Record Office, Derby MSS 920 DER (17) 28/1/1, Derby diary 2 June 1918. D.Dutton, The Politics of Diplomacy: Britain and France in the Balkans 1914–1918, London, I.B. Tauris, 1998, passim. House of Lords Record Office (HLRO), Bonar Law MSS 51/5/38, Wilson to Law 20 November 1915. G.H.Cassar, Asquith as War Leader, London, Hambledon, 1994, p. 143. Brock and Brock (eds), Asquith Letters, p. 422. Ibid. Blake (ed.), Haig Papers, p. 214. The alliance formally came into existence on 5 September 1914 when Britain, France and Russia signed the Pact of Paris, agreeing thereby not to conclude a separate peace with the enemy nor to define peace terms unilaterally.

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51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66

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Public Record Office, CAB 37/130/16, ‘A Further Note upon the General Military Situation’, 18 June 1915. Maurice, Lessons, p. 23. M.Hankey, Diplomacy by Conference, London, Ernest Benn, 1946, p. 16. Philpott, Anglo-French Relations, p. 91. E.L.Spears, Liaison 1914, London, Heinemann, 1930, pp. 119–20. Brock and Brock (eds), Asquith Letters, p. 391. W.Robertson, Soldiers and Statesmen Volume II, London, Cassell, 1926, p. 105. A.Adamthwaite, Grandeur and Misery: France’s Bid for Power in Europe 1914–1940, London, Arnold, 1995, p. 32. Holmes, Little Field-Marshal, p. 202. Ibid., pp. 201–2; Duroselle, ‘Strategic and economic relations’, pp. 41–2. Spears, Liaison, p. 14. Ibid., p. 3. Holmes, Little Field-Marshal, p. 217; J.French, 1914, London, Constable, 1919, passim. Spears, Liaison, p. 257. E.L.Spears, Prelude to Victory, London, Cape, 1939, p. 61. Roy Prete has argued that Joffre has received insufficient credit for the progress made towards unity of command during his period as French Commander-in-Chief. R.A.Prete, ‘Joffre and the question of allied supreme command, 1914–1916’, Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Western Society for French History, 1989, vol. 16, pp. 334–5. Spears, Prelude, p. 63. Spears, Liaison, p. 84. Blake (ed.), Haig Papers, p. 262. T.H.Bliss, ‘The evolution of the unified command’, Foreign Affairs, 1922, vol. 1, p. 6; Maurice, Lessons, pp. 101–4; D.French, The Strategy of the Lloyd George Coalition, Oxford, Clarendon, 1995, p. 164. D.R.Woodward, Lloyd George and the Generals, Newark, University of Delaware Press, 1983, p. 287. R.Cobb, ‘France and the coming of War’ in Evans and von Strandmann (eds), Coming of the First World War, p. 126. Blake (ed.), Haig Papers, p. 232. Spears, Liaison, p. 341. J.Charmley, Duff Cooper, London, Macmillan, 1986, pp. 73–4. National Library of Scotland, Haig MSS, diary 3 September 1914 and 24 April 1915; Haig to Lady Haig 23 February 1916. Blake (ed.), Haig Papers, p. 122. Holmes, Little Field-Marshal, p. 283. P.M.H.Bell, France and Britain 1900–1940: Entente and Estrangement, London, Longman, 1996, p. 105. HLRO, Lloyd George MSS E2/15/4, Lloyd George to Grey 7 Feb. 1915. R.Poincaré, The Memoirs of Raymond Poincaré, Volume III, London, Heinemann, 1929, p. 51. Spears, Liaison, p. 74.

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Ibid., pp. 68–9. French, Strategy and War Aims, p. 244. P.M.Kennedy, The Realities Behind Diplomacy: Background Influences on British External Policy 1865–1980, London, Fontana, 1981, p. 211. D.Dutton, ‘The Balkan Campaign and French war aims in the Great War’, English Historical Review, 1979, vol. 94. C.M.Andrew and A.S.Kanya-Forstner, France Overseas: The Great War and the Climax of French Imperial Expansion, London, Thames and Hudson, 1981, p. 70. Blake (ed.), Haig Papers, p. 234. Bell, France and Britain, p. 92. G.Clemenceau, Grandeur and Misery of Victory, London, Harrap, 1930, p. 113.

5

Britain, France and the Russian Civil War, 1918–1920 David Watson

The aim of this essay is not to examine all aspects of the intervention of Britain and France in Russian affairs between the Bolshevik Revolution of November 1917 and the end of the Russo-Polish War in September 1920, which would be an enormous undertaking. Rather, it is to examine Anglo-French relations insofar as they found expression in their respective policies towards Russia. There is an immediate difficulty in this task, for one is forced to admit that for much of the time neither Britain nor France had a clearly defined policy about Russia. Certainly, until the Armistice in November 1918, the overriding concern of both countries was the war against Imperial Germany but this aim did not produce clear policies at the operative level. What it did was to produce the situation in which Britain and France were deeply involved in Russian affairs, and their troops although very small in numbers, were present in Russia. Inertia, and the failure to reach clear-cut decisions meant that this situation continued until 1919: it was prolonged even after that by the interconnection of Russian and Polish affairs until the crisis of JulyAugust 1920, when divergence between Britain and France was wider than it had ever been. Throughout this time David Lloyd George was British Prime Minister. In France Georges Clemenceau came to power a few days after the Bolshevik Revolution and remained in office until January 1920 when he was succeeded by Alexandre Millerand. In normal times within the Third Republic the French political system involved weak and short-lived governments whose prime ministers had little authority or continuity in office, while Britain enjoyed single party government with considerable stability. One might say that in this period the situation was reversed. Lloyd George certainly remained Prime Minister throughout but he was the leader of a coalition which restricted his freedom of action in spite of the authority he gained as

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the leader who won the war. Clemenceau enjoyed authority which was unique in the history of the Third Republic. In the first half of 1918 his Government faced serious challenges in parliament but they were defeated; from the summer of 1918 he had complete control. Without having Clemenceau’s unique position and authority, Millerand’s Government was unusual in that it had the support of a clear majority in the Chamber of Deputies won by the Bloc National, in the elections of November 1919. Relations between prime minister and foreign minister in both countries were also exceptional at this time. While foreign ministers in France had often enjoyed considerable autonomy, Clemenceau appointed to that office his old friend Stephen Pichon who was prepared to accept a subordinate rôle. Thus, although Clemenceau was also Minister of War he did not face resistance to his authority from the Quai d’Orsay where the dominant figure among the permanent officials was Philippe Berthelot. Somewhat surprisingly, in view of his close relationship with Aristide Briand, Clemenceau worked well with Berthelot. After January 1920 Prime Minister Millerand was himself Foreign Minister. He brought back Maurice Paléologue, former Ambassador to Russia, as his chief official, temporarily eclipsing Berthelot. Both during the Clemenceau and Millerand governments there was an unusual degree of unity between Prime Minister and the Foreign Ministry. In Britain, on the other hand, Lloyd George distrusted the Foreign Office and sought to bypass it. This was already true while Arthur Balfour was Foreign Secretary and became much more true after George Curzon deputised for him in January 1919 before becoming Foreign Secretary in his own right in October. Thus, although there seemed to be parallels between the British and French situations in this respect, particularly during the negotiations of the peace settlement of 1919 in which major decisions were taken by the Council of Four, over the whole period there is a contrast between the relatively close coordination of policy in France and the confusion pertaining in Britain. As far as Russia is concerned, the other major element in Britain is the rôle played by Winston Churchill after he became Secretary of State for War in January 1919. In spite of the fact that, like Lloyd George, Churchill was a member of the Liberal wing of the coalition, the appeal of his intransigence about Russia to Conservative members of parliament made it impossible for Lloyd George to ignore him. Accordingly, throughout 1919 there was much more disagreement within the British Cabinet about Russia than there was in the French.

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An examination of Anglo-French relations in this period reveals that with regard to Russia as in other areas, war-time cooperation degenerated into mutual rivalry and suspicion, although the point of outright conflict was never reached. At the same time, it is essential to recognise the background factors which in the last resort held the war-time allies together. The spirit of Anglo-French relations in the years immediately after the end of the war was well captured by the Comte de St Aulaire, the French Ambasador at London who succeeded Paul Cambon at the end of 1920, when he likened them to lovers’ quarrels. He also pointed out that Franco-British antagonism could not go too far in reference to Germany but that it could have a freer rein about less vital matters such as Russia and Poland. It was precisely because problems posed in Russsia were more hypothetical and less urgently requiring immediate decisions that Britain and France could allow freer expression of their mutual suspicion, than with regard to Germany.1 The degree of mutual antagonism and suspicion existing between France and Britain at this time in relation to events in Russia has been exaggerated by some historians, including Richard Debo. In an article about British plans for intervention in the Baltic states Debo argues that allied unity in Russia collapsed completely, that British statesmen applauded when the Red Army drove the French from the Ukraine and that French statesmen reciprocated when British efforts in Russia ended in failure. He also asserts that ‘insofar as the territories of the former Russian Empire were concerned the entente cordiale was at an end’ and that only weeks after the defeat of Germany, ‘it had been replaced by a mésentente glaciale’. 2 In addition, Debo refers to an exchange between Clemenceau and Lloyd George in 1921 when Clemenceau told the British Prime Minister that within an hour of the Armistice he had ‘the impression that you had become once again the enemy of France’. Lloyd George did not disagree replying that that had ‘always been the traditional policy of my country’.3 While it cannot be denied that there was some conflict in Anglo-French relations there was also an overriding concern in both countries with the potential threat from Germany which meant that rivalry and suspicion were not allowed to totally undermine the entente.4 It will be the theme of this essay that in spite of bitter words on both sides the Russian policies of Britain and France did not fundamentally clash. In setting the context for an examination of British and French policies it is necessary to stress, as does Debo in his two studies of the foreign policy of the Soviet state during its first years of existence,

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that the absence of coordination among the different powers was vital for the survival of the Bolshevik revolution. Debo concluded: the aspirations of the intervening powers clashed everywhere, and served to hold each other in check. Two powers had the means to destroy the Bolsheviks—Germany and Japan. Both would have been pleased to do so, but were restrained by their primary adversaries, Germany by France, Japan by the United States. The rivalry between Britain and France was nearly as great, and both sought to prevent the other from securing an advantage anywhere. They could not cooperate in Russia and ‘allied’ policy there was a charade, a grotesque parody of the diplomatic art, in which words were carefully chosen to shroud the nakedness of Anglo-French rivalry.5 Thus the real situation was exactly the opposite of the Soviet myth of the ‘eighteen invading armies’ of the capitalist powers united in their determination to crush the spark of world revolution. In fact, the Bolshevik leader Vladimir Ilich Lenin’s analysis varied between the opposite poles of stating that imperialistic rivalries would prevent a united attack on the homeland of the proletariat and, that once the war ended, the capitalist powers would unite to crush the revolution.6 I In examining the development of British and French policies towards Russia during the period from the Bolshevik seizure of power in November 1917 to the end of the First World War in November 1918 it is clear that Anglo-French policies were much less divergent in contrast with the period after the Armistice. The overriding concern of both powers was victory over Germany. In this period there were also institutions for the coordination of policy, notably the Supreme War Council. The Bolsheviks took power on 7 November 1917 (western-style dating) and issued a decree on peace the next day. Although the Allies were much concerned about this, the future was very uncertain. The decree called for a general peace ‘without annexations’. It was far from clear what would happen when it became obvious that no such peace would be possible. The Allies were so disenchanted with the Provisional Government, led by Alexander Kerensky, that the new régime did not seem to be very

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much worse. Nevertheless, a separate peace between Russia and Germany was an obvious possibility, and seemed likely since the Allied statesmen regarded the Bolsheviks as agents in the pay of the German Government. Discussion in the Supreme War Council of 3 0 November saw the first example of what were to be characteristically different responses. The British hoped, as Balfour put it, ‘to avoid a breach with this crazy system’, while Clemenceau advocated large-scale intervention by American and Japanese troops. However, as the American President, Woodrow Wilson, was unprepared to sanction any such expedition this was hardly a practical policy.7 At a second meeting on 23 December 1917 it was agreed that the Allies would not recognise the Bolshevik Government but would seek contact with it through semi-official intermediaries.8 At the same time, they would give financial support to anti-Bolshevik forces which, it was hoped, would be anti-German. As a leading Bolshevik, Léon Trotsky, put it later they were ‘playing roulette by placing money on every number’. As a practical arrangement, aid to the anti-Bolshevik forces was to be divided on a geographical basis; France took the western-most areas—Bessarabia, Crimea and the Ukraine; the British area was further east and south—the Cossack lands, the Caucasus, Armenia, Georgia and Kurdestan. Expenses were to be shared out at a later date although, in fact, this never happened. This agreement was later represented in Soviet historiography as an imperialist division of Russia into spheres of influence of a semi-colonialist kind. This was certainly not the intention at the time, although at some times during 1919 it was almost interpreted as if that were the case. In the short run, it had little practical significance; the difficulties in transferring large sums of money were enormous, and the anti-Bolshevik forces collapsed before they could receive much of the promised aid.9 Out of the three policies envisaged: support for anti-Bolshevik forces in the south; a Japanese-American expeditionary force through Siberia; and cooperation with the Bolsheviks if they resisted Germany; only the last remained. Whatever their final intentions, the Bolsheviks were eager to remain in contact with the Allies as a counterweight to Germany. This was certainly true until the signing of the treaty at Brest-Litovsk in March 1918, at which point Russia left the First World War and destroyed the eastern front, and for two months afterwards. Contact between the Allies and the Bolshevik Government went through unofficial intermediaries, Robert Bruce Lockhart for the British, Jacques Sadoul for the French, and Raymond Robins for the Americans. Their status was quite different, as Bruce Lockhart was a

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professional diplomat while Sadoul was a left-wing lawyer who had been attached to the French war-time military mission, and Robins was the Director of the American Red Cross in Russia. Nevertheless, in practice there were similarities as Bruce Lockhart acted as Lloyd George’s personal agent rather than as part of the Foreign Office hierachy. 10 Another element in the situation was that the British Ambassador, Sir George Buchanan, left Russia at the beginning of 1918. The French Ambassador, Joseph Noulens, had tried to leave but failed; he ended up at Vologda, a railway junction on the line from Moscow to Archangel, before withdrawing to the protection of Allied forces in Archangel itself. However, his continuing presence in Russia meant that he had an influence on French policy in the summer of 1918 which was without any British equivalent.11 Discussion among the Allies about the possibility of cooperating with the Bolsheviks continued until mid-May. Even if the possibility of restoring the eastern front seemed remote, they hoped at least to prevent the transfer of military supplies, raw materials and foodstuff from Russia to Germany. Agents organised by both the British and French military missions took part in this. The British also devoted huge sums to buying shares in Russian banks hoping to prevent them falling into German hands. These shares, of course, proved worthless as the banks were already nationalised; the only effect of this scheme was to allow some Russian financiers to transfer their wealth out of Russia.12 The allies were especially concerned about the vast stocks of munitions landed in the north falling into German hands. It was to protect these stocks that a tiny force was landed at Murmansk on 6 March with the agreement of the Soviet Government. As it became more obvious that the Bolsheviks would not fight the Germans, the western allies returned to the idea of JapaneseAmerican intervention. The French pushed hard for this but the British Government still hoped to reach some agreement with the Bolsheviks. As it happened, such intervention was vetoed by President Wilson. The deadlock was broken by the revolt of the Czech legion. This force, recruited mainly from Czech prisoners of war who had defected from the Austro-Hungarian army, had been left high and dry by the Revolution. They were being transported across Siberia en route to the western front but in May 1918 a local incident brought them into conflict with the Soviet authorities. Trotsky, who was in process of rebuilding the Red Army, ordered their disarmament which produced a revolt resulting in their control of the whole Trans-Siberian railway from the Urals to Vladivostock. The British soon saw the possibilities of this situation: they wanted

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to halt the evacuation of the Czechs, to enable them to be used as a nucleus of an anti-Bolshevik force. However, the French continued to demand evacuation of the Czechs until on 6 July Wilson authorised the Japanese-American intervention in Siberia to rescue them.13 By this time thoughts of cooperation with the Bolsheviks had been abandoned and the British and French agents in Moscow adopted the rôle of conspirators, seeking to overthrow the Bolsheviks. They engaged in this with little coordination between them. At the beginning of August 1918, Allied troops landed in the north with a slightly larger force than the token force already at Murmansk. By now protection of the stores there was only a pretext. The real aim was to provide a nucleus around which it was hoped that antiBolshevik Russian forces would form; then this force could link up with similar armies based on the Czechs in Siberia. The Allies had now drifted into an undeclared war against the Moscow Government. The British were in charge in the Arctic, while the French intended to play a directing rôle in Siberia, by sending General Maurice Janin to command the Czech legion. He only arrived after the Armistice, by which time the Czechs became unwilling to fight except in selfdefence. Janin remained throughout 1919 but his command became more and fictional. Both in the Arctic and in Siberia the French felt that they had been pushed out by the British, and there was considerable resentment between their local representatives. Out of all proportion with the tiny number of British and French troops engaged was the high status of their representatives in Siberia. The British sent Major-General Alfred Knox and Sir Charles Eliot as High Commissioner. The French responded to this by sending their Ambassador at Tokyo, Eugéne Regnault to Omsk, as their own High Commissioner in addition to General Janin. Clearly, Anglo-French rivalry is the explanation for these appointments.14 II The end of the war with Germany and Turkey meant that the Arctic and Siberia became roundabout routes. Access to the Black Sea provided a much more direct route into the Russian heartland. Already on 23 September 1918, the French had prepared a vast plan for allied intervention in the south. This was in the context of the belief that Germany would not be defeated before 1919. It at once emerged that the United States would not agree and that Britain was reluctant, so the plan was scaled down. In the end a small French

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force was landed at Odessa in December with a token Greek contingent. There was no coordination between the British and French over this. December 1918 also saw some of the most sustained discussion of British policy towards Russia during the civil war period. While the French were landing troops at Odessa, the highest levels of the British Government were discussing whether it was advisable for Britain to take over from the Russian Empire in the Caucasus in order to protect the route to India. 15 When the immense cost of this was realised, among other solutions a French occupation was mooted, much to the alarm of Curzon and the military staff who noted that France was ‘an ambitious military power which although friendly to us at the moment is our historical world rival’. An air of unreality pervaded these discussions which are mainly of interest for this revelation of anti-French sentiment.16 The French occupation of Odessa and the surrounding regions was yet another small-scale and ineffective enterprise. The staff plan had begun by talking of twenty divisions: for comparison the Central Powers had needed over one hundred divisions to occupy the area during the First World War. In the event, just three French and three Greek divisions were landed. This was justified by the argument previously used in the north and in Siberia, that the allied troops would be a nucleus around which local anti-Bolshevik forces would coalesce into a powerful army. The point of the French occupation was simply to hold the fort when the German and Austro-Hungarian occupation force withdrew, so as to prevent the Bolsheviks driving a wedge between them. Thus only a token French force was needed and as the troops were assured, they would not have to fight. There was also the idea that the local forces would accept French command, thus allowing France to control an area where large French investments existed. This scheme turned into a total fiasco. The Ukrainian nationalists were much more hostile to the White General, Anton Ivanovich Denikin, than they were to the Bolsheviks. The Bolsheviks promised Ukrainian independence while Denikin made restoration of a unified Russian Empire a vital element of his programme. Accordingly, French attempts to reach agreement with the Ukrainians were seen as a betrayal of vital Russian interests by Denikin. In any case, the moderate Ukrainians who were prepared to talk to the French did not have military control in the area. This was in the hands of a parti-san chief named Nikifor Grigorev who decided to ally his forces with the Bolsheviks on a temporary basis. 17 It was not the Red Army that the French faced but disorganised bands of Ukrainians who

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ignored Lenin’s orders to follow up their victory at Odessa by advancing on capitalist Europe via Hungary. The French military leaders were lukewarm about the operation; its commander was General Henri Berthelot, brother of Philippe Berthelot, who stayed in Roumania for most of the time; he had demanded much larger forces for the task. His superior was the French Commander-in-Chief in the East, General Franchet d’Espérey who had opposed the expedition from the start. In March General Berthelot visited Odessa to take stock of the situation. When his demand for reinforcements was refused he asked to be relieved of his responsibilities which passed to the direct command of Franchet d’Espérey. The latter recommended withdrawal, a decision which was ratified by the Council of Four in Paris on 27 March 1919.18 At the same time, the question of Russian representation at the peace conference was discussed at the meeting of the Allied statesmen in London. Clemenceau, supported by Balfour and Curzon, vetoed representation of the Bolshevik Government, although Lloyd George talked vaguely of the impossibility of ignoring Russia. In spite of this supposed agreement the Imperial War Cabinet on 23 December 1918 agreed on unofficial contacts with Maxim Litvinov, the Bolshevik representative in London.19 When the French opposed this, however, it was allowed to drop. This marked the beginning of a divergence between British and French policy which continued until the end of 1920, the French refusing negotiations while Lloyd George, in spite of opposition from his colleagues, tried intermit-tently to open contact. Attempts to get the different parties fighting in Russia to meet on the Turkish island of Prinkipo were resisted by the French who encouraged the White Russians to reject them. This was followed by the bizarre episode of Churchill’s visit to Paris on 14–17 February 1919. Lloyd George was in London and, after some perfunctory discussion on 14 February, Woodrow Wilson left for the United States. Even in the absence of the two arch opponents of military intervention, Churchill was unable to win support for the grandiose plan that he had concocted with Field Marshal Ferdinand Foch. Presumably, Lloyd George sent Churchill to Paris precisely with the idea of demonstrating to him the lack of support for his ideas. This was followed by another Anglo-American attempt to establish contact with Moscow, the Bullitt Mission. Lloyd George denied any knowledge of this in the House of Commons on 16 April, probably because he did not wish to be seen plotting with the Americans against the French. With the rejection of

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the Hoover-Nansen plan for famine relief in Russia, attempts to contact the Bolshevik régime were suspended.20 The French withdrew from Odessa in April 1919 leaving a legacy of bad feeling which jeopardised their relations with the White Russians. French intelligence officers had promised support to Ukrainian nationalists which produced a bitter reaction from Denikin. Support for an independent or even autonomous Ukraine was not the policy of the authorities in Paris but it seemed so to Denikin, while for their part the French were aggrieved at the failure of the Whites in Odessa to defend themselves. The result was that between April and September 1919, France virtually abandoned activity in Russia. Support for Denikin and Admiral Alexander Kolchak was a British affair. In July Denikin produced a Livre Jaune on relations between his army and the French command in Odessa which was a virtual diatribe. The French decided to send military supplies to the Roumanian army rather than to Denikin. Between the withdrawal from Odessa and the end of 1919 there was little contact between the British and French governments about intervention in Russia. Britain provided supplies and instructors to Denikin and Kolchak, with the French playing virtually no part. It was only towards the end of the summer of 1919, when for a brief moment Denikin seemed to have victory within his grasp, that the French attempted to improve their very poor relations with him. To that end, they sent General Charles Mangin to head their mission there, replacing a much junior officer who had lacked Mangin’s authority. Not long after his arrival, however, Denikin’s army was in full retreat. By the end of 1919 it had become clear that the White forces had failed to overthrow the Bolshevik régime. The British and French governments recognised this fact at a meeting between Lloyd George and Clemenceau in London on 11–13 December. Clemenceau argued that it was necessary to accept the failure of intervention and that the best policy would be to create ‘as it were a barbed wire entanglement around Russia in order to prevent her from creating trouble outside it’. Moreover, he advised that in order to stop Germany from entering into relations with Russia, whether of a political or military character, ‘the support of Poland was the best way to check Germany’. One of Clemenceau’s last acts before leaving office was to agree with Lloyd George about opening economic talks with Russia.21 However, when Millerand succeeded Clemenceau as Prime Minister in January 1920 British and French policy diverged on both of these matters. The French withdrew from the trade talks and ‘supportof

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Poland’ turned out to mean different things in London and Paris. France replaced the economic blockade of Russia with an embargo on Soviet gold. Although this was ineffective in practice, it sent a very different signal from that coming from London. As for Poland, while it is not true to assert that France encouraged the Polish attack on Russia, once the Russo-Polish war had broken out France wanted to give much more support to Poland than Lloyd George was prepared to contemplate. The different French and British attitudes were disguised by ambiguous forms of words at various stages but the Soviet march to Warsaw produced what was nearly a major breach between Britain and France. This was on 10 August 1920 when Lloyd George advised the Polish Government to accept Soviet peace terms that would have turned Poland into something like a Soviet satellite of the post-1945 variety. Millerand was indignant not least because this was done without consultation with France. He responded by granting de facto recognition to General Petr Nikolaevich Wrangel, Denikin’s successor. This recognition was certainly a symbolic act and not a sign that Millerand thought that at this stage Wrangel had any hope of defeating the Soviets.22 However, the Poles were able to save themselves. They pushed back the Red Army without assistance from Britain, and with not much from France.23 This victory meant that what might have been a major crisis in FrancoBritish relations was avoided. II I From the Armistice onwards there is an apparent contrast between the British policy of seeking to open contacts with the Soviet régime and the adamant French refusal to negotiate. However, this is perhaps not such a fundamental divergence as it appears at first sight. In the first place, at the highest levels of the British Government it was mainly Lloyd George who wanted to talk to the Bolsheviks. He frequently ran into opposition and found it wisest not to press the case for negotiation. When, as in the summer of 1919, the antiBolshevik forces seemed to be on the road to victory, he was content to abandon his alternative policy. Even when negotiations took place they were very far from producing what Lloyd George hoped for. Even in 1920–1, the idea that large-scale commercial relations could resume between Britain and Russia proved to be a chimera.24 In spite of their public stance the French did have some contacts with Moscow and by 1921 they were toying with the idea of resuming commercial relations if Britain did the same.

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It is more than a little paradoxical that, in spite of Lloyd George’s efforts to avoid an anti-Bolshevik crusade, and Clemenceau’s advocacy of one (if it could be carried out by others), in reality Britain was by far the most active intervening power. French lack of resources, military and financial, meant that verbal intransigence was not reflected in real support for the Whites. Britain was dominant in the Allied occupation of the north where France had only a token force. Britain played a complicated, and at times large-scale rôle in the Caucasus where there was no equivalent French action. It was British war surplus material that went to supply the armies of Kolchak and Denikin. When the French estimated the costs incurred by intervention they came up with a figure of 700 million francs for themselves and nearly four times as much for the British. In fact, this latter figure was the 69 million pounds which Richard Ullman estimates for British expenditure between the Armistice and July 1919 alone.25 In any case, the French realised that it would not be in their interest to remind the British of the original agreement that expenditure should be pooled and shared equally. The matter seems to have been quietly dropped and was not taken into account in the negotiations about Anglo-French war debts. With the supposed eclipse of Germany at the end of the First World War there was nothing to compel Britain and France to continue to act as allies in international affairs. Thus it is not surprising that they followed somewhat divergent policies towards Soviet Russia. It was only one of several areas where they differed; outright conflict came nearer on questions emerging from the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, for instance. The British and French governments had to take account of different contexts in their formulation of policy about Russia. If horror at the barbarism of Bolshevik rule was common to public opinion in both countries, economic interests in Britain and France differed widely. French investment in Russian industry was far bigger as a proportion of total foreign investment than was British, while British exporters were far more interested in re-opening the Russian market than were the French. Such concerns were less significant than the political weight of huge numbers of French petits rentiers who held Russian government bonds which had been rendered worthless by the Bolshevik repudiation of Russia’s foreign debts; they had no equivalent among British small investors. This was an element in the situation which goes some way to explain the reluctance of French governments to open commercial negotiations with the Soviet régime. However, this factor was probably less important than the

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political one. It seemed important to France to overthrow the Bolshevik régime because it was seen as being subject to German influence. The image of a White victory was so tempting because it was thought that it would lead to the restoration of Russia as a great power and as a counterweight to Germany. In the long run France was concerned about the danger that Germany would recover from the limitations imposed on her at Versailles. Lloyd George at any rate, did not think in such terms. Churchill did, and this was an important element in his advocacy of an anti-Bolshevik crusade but he never came near to persuading the rest of the Cabinet. The potential Anglo-French rivalry in Russia never really developed because of the failure of the anti-Bolshevik forces. If the Bolsheviks had been defeated there are clear signs that the British and French would have tried to compete with each other for political influence and privileged economic relations with a restored Russia.26 Of course, this never happened. There might have been similar rivalry if satisfactory economic relations had been established with the Soviet régime, as Lloyd George wished. In spite of all his efforts, when he fell from power in 1922, the commercial talks between Britain and Russia had not led to trade on a scale that excited much concern in France. Notes 1 2 3 4

5

6

Comte de St Aulaire, Confessions d’un vieux diplomate, Paris, Flammarion, 1953, p. 555. R.K.Debo, ‘Mésentente glaciale. Great Britain, France and the question of intervention in the Baltic, 1918’, Canadian Journal of History, 1977, vol. 12, p. 86. G.Clemenceau, Grandeurs et misères d’une Victoire, Paris, Plon, 1928, p. 99; J.Martet, Le Tigre, Paris, Albin Michel, 1930, p. 59; D.R.Watson, Clemenceau: A Political Biography, London, Eyre Methuen, 1971, p. 388. D.R.Watson, ‘The making of the Treaty of Versailles’ in N.Waites (ed.), Troubled Neighbours: Franco-British Relations in the Twentieth Century, London, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1971, p. 67; D.R.Watson, ‘France between Germany and Great Britain’ in H.Kohler (ed.), Deutschland und der Westen, Berlin Colloquium Verlag, 1983, pp. 89–104. R.K.Debo, Revolution and Survival: The Foreign Policy of Soviet Russia, 1917–1918, Liverpool, Liverpool University Press, 1979; R.K.Debo, Survival and Consolidation: The Foreign Policy of Soviet Russia, 1918–1921, Montreal, McGill-Queens University Press, 1992, p. 401. A.G.Mazour, The Writing of History in the Soviet Union, Stanford, Hoover Institution Press, 1971, pp. 191–277; J.M. Thompson, ‘Lenin’s analysis of intervention’, American Slavic and East European Review, 1958, vol. 17, pp. 151–60; J.M.Thompson, ‘Allied and American

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10 11 12 13

14 15 16 17 18

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Intervention in Russia, 1918–1921’ in C.E.Black (ed.), Rewriting Russian History, London, Atlantic Press, 1957, pp. 353–93. For details of America’s limited intervention in the Russian Civil War see R.P.Traina, ‘Woodrow Wilson and the decision to intervene in Russia: a reconsideration”, Journal of Modern History, 1976, vol. 48. See G.Swain, The Origins of the Russian Civil War, London, Longman, 1996, p. 122. M.J.Carley, Revolution and Intervention: The French Government and the Russian Civil War 1917–1919, Montreal, McGill-Queens University Press, 1983, pp. 18–32; R.H.Ullman, Intervention and the War, Princeton, N.J., Princeton University Press, 1961, pp. 19–62; Watson, Clemenceau, pp. 316–20. See, for example, Swain, Origins of the Russian Civil War, pp. 134–44. Carley, Revolution and Intervention, pp. 33–55; Ullman, Intervention and the War, pp. 63–190. M.Kettle, The Allies and the Russian Collapse, March 1917-March 1918, London, André Deutsch, 1981, pp. 176–219. Carley, Revolution and Intervention, pp. 56–71; E.Mawdsley, The Russian Civil War, London, Allen and Unwin, 1987, pp. 46–9; V.M.Fic, The Bolsheviks and the Czechoslovak Legion: Origin of Their Armed Conflict, March 1918 to May 1918, New Delhi, Shakti Malik Abhinav Publications, 1978; Debo, Revolution and Survival, pp. 230–9. Carley, Revolution and Intervention, pp. 72–88; Ullman, Intervention and the War, pp. 230–301. For details see J.Fisher, ‘On the glacis of India: Lord Curzon and British policy in the Caucasus, 1919’, Diplomacy and Statecraft, 1997, vol. 8. R.H.Ullman, Britain and the Russian Civil War, Volume II: November 1918— February 1920, Princeton, N.J., Princeton University Press, 1968, pp. 59–98. W.B.Lincoln, Red Victory: A History of the Russian Civil War, New York, Simon and Schuster, 1989, pp. 314–16. Carley, Revolution and Intervention, pp. 10 5–2 2, 14 2–81; J.K.Mulholland, ‘The French Army and intervention in southern Russia, 1918–1919’, Cahiers du Monde Russe et Soviétique, 1981, vol. 22, pp. 43–66; G.A. Brinkley, ‘Allied policy and French intervention in the Ukraine, 1917–1920’ in T.Hunczak (ed.), The Ukraine 1917–1920: A Study in Revolution, Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press, 1977, pp. 323–51 M.Kettle, Russia and the Allies 1917–1920, Volume III: Churchill and the Archangel Fiasco, November 1918-July 1919, London, Routledge, 1992, pp. 59–62. J.M.Thompson, Russia, Bolshevism and the Versailles Peace, Princeton, N.J., Princeton University Press, p. 138; Watson, Clemenceau, pp. 374– 6. Watson, Clemenceau, pp. 377–9. A.Hogenhuis-Seliverstoff, Les Relations Franco-Soviétiques, 1917–1924, Paris, Publications de la Sorbonne, 1981, pp. 159–84; M.M.Farrar, Principled Pragmatist: The Political Career of Alexandre Millerand, Oxford, Berg, 1991, pp. 261–78.

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For the significance of the Russo-Polish War of 1920 see T.C.Fiddick, Russia’s Retreat from Poland, 1920: From Permanent Revolution to Peaceful Coexistence, London, Macmillan, 1990. For details of French policy and the Russo-Polish War see M.J.Carley, ‘The politics of antiBolshevism: the French government and the Russo-Polish War, December 1919 to May 1920’, Historical Journal, 1976, vol. 19, and for Britain see N.Davies, ‘Lloyd George and Poland 1919–1920’, Journal of Contemporary History, 1971, vol. 6. For Anglo-Soviet trade relations during the period see S.White, Britain and the Bolshevik Revolution: A Study in the Politics of Diplomacy, 1920– 1924, London, Macmillan, 1979. For details of British expenditure on the Russian Civil War see Ullman, Britain and the Russian Civil War, II, app., pp. 365–8. See, for example, A.W.F.Kolz, ‘British economic interests in Siberia during the Russian Civil War, 1918–1920’, Journal of Modern History, 1976, vol. 48.

6

Lloyd George, Clemenceau and the elusive Anglo-French guarantee treaty, 1919 ‘A disastrous episode’? Anthony Lentin

The signing of the Treaty of Versailles on 28 June 1919 remains etched in popular memory. Not so the signing earlier the same day of the Anglo-French guarantee treaty. Yet Versailles would never have come about—Georges Clemenceau, the French Prime Minister, would not have agreed to sign it—had it not been supplemented by the guarantee treaties signed that morning by David Lloyd George, the British Prime Minister, and the American President, Woodrow Wilson, promising immediate British and American assistance to France in the event of future ‘unprovoked aggression by Germany’. In return for these pledges, Clemenceau had renounced the detachment from Germany of the Rhineland and the fixing of a French strategic frontier on the Rhine, objectives which he had earlier placed foremost among his priorities and pursued with dogged vigour, and to which much of French opinion still remained unapolo-getically wedded. The Anglo-French treaty was, in Clemenceau’s words, ‘nothing less than the ultimate sanction of the Peace Treaty’ and ‘the keystone of European peace’.1 Six months later, the treaty was a dead letter, remembered in France as a bitter and lasting disappointment, in Britain as a slight but short-lived embarrassment, and by most historians as a damp squib, a minor footnote in the annals of the Paris peace conference. It is the aim of this essay to assess the consequences, the causes and the significance to AngloFrench relations of what Philip Bell calls ‘a disastrous episode’.2 I What, then, were the immediate consequences of the episode? In Britain, general relief at escaping fresh responsibilities towards France at a time when the conclusion of the entente itself was thought to

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have led to war; and a feeling that if the Versailles settlementcould not survive on its own, Britain should dissociate herself from its enforcement. Anglo-French war-time solidarity, already frayed by imperial rivalries in the Middle and Near East, was further attenuated by widening differences over Germany. At the peace conference, Lloyd George told his delegates that he ‘did not think that the British empire would allow the future peace of the world to be tied to the chariot of French fury’.3 A year later, with France in retaliatory occupation of cities in the heart of Germany, including Cologne, British irritation at perceived French intransigence was balanced by satisfaction that Britain’s hands were no longer tied. The Foreign Secretary, Lord George Curzon, held that France had replaced Germany as the dominant continental power and was as such a potential threat to Britain. Lloyd George himself agreed to the wisdom of distancing oneself from France. ‘You cannot trust the French altogether’, he mused. ‘Who knows but some day they may be opposed to us?’4 It was the French connection rather than France that British policymakers wished to repudiate; that, and responsibility for a peace strongly influenced by France, a peace about which they felt increasing unease.5 In France, by contrast, loss of the guarantee caused dismay and disillusion. Britain’s guarantee was far more significant than America’s, since only British troops could reach France in time to be immediately effective; and the treaty stipulated that in the event of German aggression ‘Great Britain agrees to come immediately to her help.’ André Tardieu told the Chamber of Deputies that a Channel tunnel would be completed in three months. 6 No less important was the deterrent and psychological value of the guarantee. Many Frenchmen believed that had British intentions been made clearer in 1914, the catastrophe could have been averted. In 1919 Lloyd George had dispelled that uncertainty with his solemn commitment to France, only to let it lapse half a year later. The shock and sense of insecurity in France were all the greater. That and the apparently gratuitous sacrifice of the Rhine frontier were among the unspoken causes of Clemenceau’s fall from power.7 The failure of the guarantee bedevilled Anglo-French relations and undermined stability in Europe in the years from Versailles to Locarno.8 Clemenceau, after a hard and protracted struggle for the Rhine frontier which brought the peace conference close to disintegration, had given up that frontier in reliance on Lloyd George’s pledge of alliance. The non-fruition of that pledge was compounded by the abandonment of what a major section of French opinion, military and political, regarded as the only real guarantee

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of peace.9 The German menace loomed potentially starker than ever for a France demographically and economically weakened by the war, with a vulnerable eastern frontier, and diplomatically isolated by the loss of support from Russia, America and now Britain. The French reaction was to attempt the rigid and punctilious enforcement of the Versailles settlement, tempered by consciousness of a waning ability to do so as Germany recovered her strength. Hence the expeditions across the Rhine to punish every infraction of the treaty. Hence the almost desperate occupation of the Ruhr in 1923 and the revival of ill-fated attempts to foster Rhineland separatism, both the cause of a gross rupture in Anglo-French relations.10 II What were the causes of this ‘disastrous episode’? The immediate collapse of the Anglo-French guarantee is easily explained. It stemmed from the failure of the United States Senate to ratify the analogous treaty of guarantee signed by President Wilson. The coming into being of the one was dependent on ratification of the other. Blame for this débâcle therefore may be laid in the first instance on Wilson for failing to secure senatorial approval.11 More especially, criticism has been levelled at Clemenceau for what a parliamentary opponent condemned as ‘une aberration inexplicable’, in seeking ratification of the Treaty of Versailles before the British and American guarantees on which it was premised had themselves been ratified.12 It is common knowledge that Lloyd George devised the notion of the guarantee in order to resolve the grave crisis at the conference which arose from French demands for the Rhineland. These demands, advanced even before the conference opened, came to a head in March 1919. The French insisted on the detachment from Germany of all territory on the left bank of the Rhine. Marshal Ferdinand Foch, as military adviser to the French Government, regarded the Rhine as an indispensable strategic frontier, the minimum guarantee of security against German aggression; and Clemenceau bluntly informed his allies that he would sign no treaty which did not include this essential provision. For their part, both Wilson and Lloyd George refused to countenance it, seeing in the severance of German territory under these circumstances a blatant violation of the promise of national self-determination on which the armistice had been concluded, and an obvious trouble-spot for the future. Deadlock between France and her allies was absolute.13

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Then came Lloyd George’s dramatic intervention.14 On 14 March he offered Clemenceau the treaty of guarantee. Wilson undertook to put a similar proposal to the Senate. On the strength of these offers Clemenceau eventually consented to drop his demand for the separation of the Rhineland. A draft agreement was approved on 22 April, when Clemenceau tacitly renounced the Rhine frontier, a decision approved by the Council of Ministers on 25 April. A protocol of alliance, signed by Lloyd George and his Foreign Secretary, Arthur Balfour, was handed to Clemenceau on 6 May 1919.15 Nothing, it seemed, could be more definite or conclusive. Lloyd George had given Clemenceau repeated assurances of immediate and effective British aid against a German attack. As Tardieu reported, he promised a Channel tunnel to expedite the transfer of British troops. But there was more to Lloyd George’s assurances than met the eye. Or rather, as it turned out, there was less. The ink was hardly dry on the protocol when qualifications and ambiguities began to emerge. The duration of the guarantee, for one thing, was unclear. Then, although the protocol stated that British intervention included the British empire, a later clause stipulated that the guarantee would bind the Dominions only if individually ratified by them. Finally, there was doubt about the precise circumstances that would give rise to a casus foederis, Lloyd George telling his own delegates that ‘we ourselves shall be the sole judge of what constitutes unprovoked aggression’.16 Nevertheless, the overall pledge was simple and clear-cut: if Germany attacked France, Britain would go to France’s aid. Nor did the protocol suggest that the British and American pledges were anything other than independent and self-standing. Although similarly drafted, there was no obvious link between them. The protocol stated that the British treaty ‘will be in similar terms to that entered into by the United States and will come into force when the latter is ratified’. An innocent provision on the face of it, signifying no more than that the two parallel though independent guarantees, one British, one American, both virtually identical, would come into effect simultaneously. Yet, Wilson dropped a curious aside to one of his delegates. Lloyd George, the President observed, ‘had slipped a paragraph into the British note about ratification by the United States and…he did not think Clemenceau had noticed it.’17 What was there that required notice by Clemenceau? The answer becomes clear if we turn to the final draft of the AngloFrench treaty, presented by Lloyd George for Clemenceau’s approval six weeks later. It was the late afternoon of 27 June. A last-minute

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amendment added one word—the word ‘only’. The operative clause now read that in relation to the American guarantee, the AngloFrench treaty would come into being ‘only when the latter is ratified’ (author’s emphasis). One word transformed the sense of Lloyd George’s undertaking, making it wholly contingent on the fate of its American counterpart. If the Senate failed to ratify, then the AngloFrench treaty would also lapse, or rather would never come into being. Such, of course, was the outcome. What could have induced Clemenceau to agree to this fatal amendment? Under what circumstances did he do so? It was included, as Clemenceau’s latest biographer points out, ‘without objections from Clemenceau at the time’.18 At the operative moment, 4.30 in the afternoon of 27 June, the three leaders, Lloyd George, Clemenceau and Wilson withdrew to a private room, with the British Cabinet Secretary, Maurice Hankey, as secretary. Lloyd George called in Cecil Hurst, legal adviser to the Foreign Office, who, he explained, ‘had prepared a text’19 of the alliance. After agreement to some minor amendments, Hurst’s amended copy of the treaty, in English, was ‘read to and approved by’20 the three leaders. No interpreter was present. Clemenceau’s English was good; what about his attention? The circumstantial evidence strongly suggests that he never wittingly assented to the crucial amendment, that he was not even aware of it. It is inconceivable that he would have approved the draft or have signed it the following day, had he had the slightest inkling of the momentous addition. However, having signed, it was too late to retract. It was politically impossible to admit that he had been hoodwinked by Lloyd George, not least because his domestic critics believed that he had. I II Lloyd George’s conduct raises obvious suspicions, soon voiced by Tardieu. While acquitting Wilson of any taint of sharp practice, he added: ‘I am not so sure of the good faith of Lloyd George. Why should he have made the assistance of Britain contingent upon the ratification of the pact by Washington?’21 Why indeed? Answers are not far to seek, and have already been partly suggested. If the Senate ratified Wilson’s pledge, then in the event of an attack on France, Germany would confront both Britain and America. Indeed, given Anglo-American solidarity, such an attack was highly unlikely. On the other hand, if war did come, then not only France but Britain

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too could count on American support. In this sense the American commitment was as much a guarantee to Britain as to France, and could be reckoned a valuable insurance. Yet again, if the Senate failed to ratify, then, thanks to Lloyd George’s last-minute interpolation, Britain would not be left to act alone. Britain would not be bound to do anything at all. She would be discharged altogether from the guarantee—paradoxically, by the terms of the guarantee itself. Lloyd George would be absolved from his solemn pledge, while the blame could be laid at the door of the United States. As Lloyd George confirmed in the House of Commons: ‘If there should be such a possibility as the United States not ratifying that compact, undoubtedly we are free to reconsider our decision.’22 Either way, Britain’s liability to France was limited. Meanwhile, Lloyd George’s promise had served its immediate purpose of resolving the Rhineland crisis, thus enabling the conference to continue. Whether deception was his intention from the start or an ingenious after-thought, a piece of inspired opportunism,23 the consequences for France were the same. The promise was worthless. The historian who has studied Lloyd George’s political agility at close quarters and at its height in the years immediately after the First World War, may be shocked, but should not be surprised, at this particular episode. Concealed by his rumbustious geniality and overwhelming persuasiveness, a pattern of duplicity emerges as part of his negotiating stock-in-trade.24 What shocks on this occasion is not the depth of the deceit, but its shallowness. More problematical is the ease and rapidity with which British opinion allowed itself to acquiesce in this convenient escape from the alliance, against the dictates both of honour and of interest. 25 IV What of Clemenceau? Although no French historian has probed as such the question of his deception at Lloyd George’s hands, JeanBaptiste Duroselle is one of many to underline its outcome in the collapse of the ‘keystone’ of Clemenceau’s peace policy. Duroselle follows a critical tradition dating back to 1919 itself, which included Foch, Raymond Poincaré, Jules and Paul Cambon among the soldiers, statesmen and diplomats, and Jacques Bainville and Maurice Barrès among the historians and political journalists; and which numbers among recent scholars Anthony Adamthwaite and Philip Bell.26 How well founded are the familiar complaints of Clemenceau’s

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naïvete and negligence, his responsibility for what Robert McCrum calls ‘a strategic blunder of incalculable consequences’? 27 How do we explain his abandonment, as was complained, of ‘substance for shadow’,28 of ‘a physical guarantee’29 for ‘a scrap of paper’30 a bare promise of alliance, widely regarded even at the time with scepticism and misgiving—unless in terms of a strategy fundamentally misguided—‘une procedure incoherente’, in Poincaré’s phrase?31 Responsibility, for good or ill, lies with Clemenceau. He formulated his own policy, made up his own mind, and acted on his own authority. In the matter of the guarantee he dealt directly with Lloyd George. Of his immediate entourage, his main confidant and go-between in the negotiations was Tardieu. Clemenceau sought no advice from the Quai d’Orsay. He consulted neither its SecretaryGeneral, Philippe Berthelot, nor Berthelot’s distinguished predecessor, Jules Cambon—a member of his own delegation—nor Jules’ brother, Paul, the veteran Ambassador to London. He did not canvass opinion in his Cabinet. He seldom convened the Council of Ministers, and when he did, he treated it as a rubber-stamp. On 25 April 1919 he secured its unanimous approval both of the Treaty of Versailles and of the guarantee treaties. The most determined and influential opponents of Clemenceau’s policy were Foch and Poincaré. From first to last, from the Armistice until the signing of the Treaty of Versailles, it was Foch who repeatedly and vehemently insisted on the absolute indispensability of the Rhine frontier, denounced its abandonment as ‘une capitulation, une trahison’32 and dismissed the guarantee as ‘la monnaie de singe’.33 His objection, simple and clear, was that the guarantee was an illusion: without the Rhine frontier the Treaty of Versailles would be a mere twenty-year armistice, to be followed by a repetition of 1914 and a fresh German assault, with this difference: that without Russia as her ally, France would be defeated. Even if the guarantee materialised, Foch predicted that Britain’s intervention would come too late to prevent the fall of France, and the expeditionary force would be swept back to the Channel.34 Foch, however, despite his enormous public prestige as Commander-in-Chief of the Allied forces, had no official standing at the peace conference. Clemenceau refused to co-opt him to his delegation; and while, with Clemenceau’s consent, he several times addressed Wilson and Lloyd George on the Rhineland issue, his pleas, like Clemenceau’s, were unavailing. Poincaré was at one with Foch in his frustration and despair at Clemenceau’s sacrifice of the Rhine frontier. Furthermore, he warned Foreign Minister Stephen Pichon of the ‘terrible danger’35

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that would arise if the policy of the Rhine frontier were abandoned before the guarantee treaties were ratified. At the ministerial meeting on 25 April, which he attended ex officio, he was widely expected to support Foch and even to force the issue. In the event Poincaré did neither. As President of the Republic, he was conscious of his constitutional limitations. Given the Prime Minister’s unassailable hold on political power, Poincaré did not venture to provoke a crisis likely to force Clemenceau’s resignation without enhancing French security.36 By virtue of his parliamentary majority, consolidated by votes of confidence, and his authority as ‘Père la Victoire’, Clemenceau could ignore or override parliamentary opposition and present his peace settlement to the deputies as a fait accompli. In any case, once the Anglo-French treaty was agreed between himself and Lloyd George and approved by the Council of Ministers, discussion by the Chamber of Deputies was academic. Speaker after speaker during the ratification debates in the autumn protested vainly at his failure to secure the Rhine frontier in the Treaty of Versailles. ‘Nous sommes en presence d’un traité immuable’, as Louis Barthou complained, ‘nous n’y pouvons rien changer.’37 Clemenceau’s policy throughout the conference was based on a clear and unsentimental acceptance of France’s continuing dependence on Britain. An eyewitness of France’s diplomatic isolation after 1870, he fully appreciated the value of the prewar alliance-system. He accepted without question that only alliance with Russia, Britain and America had prevented defeat in the First World War. Convinced that a policy of ‘splendid isolation’ could not even be considered, he openly grounded his peace strategy on the maintenance of an understanding with Britain and America. Nor was it the case, as his critics complained, that he had given away something for nothing. In renouncing the Rhine frontier, he stood firm across six weeks, negotiating, in Tardieu’s words, with ‘indomitable persever-ence’,38 for a set of irreducible guarantees short of permanent tenure by France. First, allied occupation for a mimimum fifteen years, evacuation to be by stages and contingent on German good behaviour. Second, an option of remaining in the zone or of reoccu-pying it if Germany defaulted on reparations. Finally, agreement that the Rhineland would remain a demilitarised zone, out of bounds to German troops in perpetuity, and that violation of the zone would constitute an act of aggression, automatically triggering allied military intervention. 39 All these stipulations were independent of the Anglo-French treaty, being part

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and parcel of the Treaty of Versailles and thus of the peace of Europe. They were no mean achievement and they were secured in the teeth of British and American opposition. If the case advanced in this essay is correct, there is little doubt that Clemenceau was tricked out of the British guarantee;40 and whatever the explanation, there is no denying the consequences. But if Clemenceau was blind to the subterfuge practised under his nose, it was in part because his eyes were fixed on the far horizon. He knew that it was not in the period immediately after Versailles that Germany would again become a serious threat, but in the years to come. Once that danger re-emerged, national self-interest would of itself bring about Anglo-French rapprochement, and in a future German invasion, Britain was almost certain to align herself with France, with one crucial proviso—that France did not alienate her meanwhile by futile intransigence over the Rhine frontier. Of course, Clemenceau’s critics objected that if Britain would support France anyway against German aggression, why sacrifice the Rhine frontier? This was to miss the crucial point that hostilities provoked (or apparently provoked) by a unilateral French occupation of the Rhineland were likely to prove a fatal bar to British assistance. Discussion in the British empire delegation at the Paris conference made it clear that even interallied occupation of the Rhineland aroused strenuous opposition as liable to drag Britain into war. A fortiori, British opposition to a unilateral French occupation was absolute; a point made forcefully by Tardieu in the Chamber of Deputies on 2 September 1919. 41 This broader view also helps to explain and to mitigate Clemenceau’s lack of concern, much blamed by his critics, with the practicalities of the British guarantee. In his initial response to Lloyd George’s offer of alliance in mid-March, stress had been laid on the need to clarify its terms, notably ‘the military help which it will involve on the part of Great Britain.’ 42 By the end of April, however, having won agreement to his stringent demands for a demilitarised Rhineland, Clemenceau felt both that he had laid the basis for a satisfactory peace and that he could ask no more from Britain. To demand a military convention over and above these very signal gains was to invite a rebuff. In the face of Lloyd George’s repeated pledge to place Britain’s forces at France’s disposal, was Clemenceau really to press for details? If he did, was Britain likely to agree to enter again and immediately into military conversations, so alien to her instincts and traditions? In an age of total war, with the involvement of whole populations, what counted was Britain’s overall

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commitment to France ‘to come immediately to her assistance’. That pledge was the crux of the guarantee, and it was more important than the details of military dispositions for an eventuality not anticipated for many years to come. Throughout the conference, France’s essential dilemma, as Clemenceau was acutely aware, was the spectre of German resurgence and the reality of French vulnerability. Despite victory in 1918 and the multiple constraints on Germany imposed at Versailles, the constant determinant of his policy was France’s chronic inferiority to her neighbour—demographic, strategic and economic. The war had not ended this inferiority, it exacerbated it. Clemenceau’s objective was some form of long-term counterbalance to Germany’s enduring preponderance. Two options only were available: the first, which he originally favoured, was the Rhine frontier; the second—alliance with Britain. Clemenceau coveted both solutions and tried to present them as complementary. He sought to internationalise the Rhine issue, by presenting the Rhine frontier as a common necessity of allied peacemaking rather than as a requirement peculiar to France; and while he failed to convince the allies of France’s right to permanent possession, he did secure agreement to its permanent demilitarisation by Germany. His first, constant and overriding priority was to maintain a good understanding with Britain. ‘A cette entente’, he told the Chamber of Deputies in December 1918, ‘je ferai tous les sacrifices.’43 This policy was mistrusted and misunderstood. It was taken for weakness, betrayal even, especially when the price of entente came to include abandoning the Rhine frontier. Nevertheless, ‘Gouverner, c’est choisir’ was Clemenceau’s avowed maxim. As soon as he received Lloyd George’s offer, he accepted the basic dilemma: ‘ll faut done choisir.’44 It was either France alone on the Rhine, or the promise of solidarity with Britain. His critics complained that he made the wrong choice and came away empty-handed; that in staking all on alliance with Britain, he lost all: the American guarantee, the British guarantee and the Rhine frontier. In the short term this was undoubtedly true. However, as has been argued, Clemenceau looked to the long term. In reconsidering the implications of his original non-negotiable demand, Clemenceau came to question its wisdom. Was France really capable of maintaining, on her own, indefinite control of the Rhineland? Leaving aside the drain on her productive capacity in deploying the manpower necessary to police this immense, heavily populated area, there were the political risks, imponderable and grave, of provocations and disorders. Whatever might be claimed by the Comité de la Rive

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Gauche du Rhin about the alleged Latin and Catholic civilisation of the Rhinelanders and their desire for autonomy, Clemenceau was rightly sceptical of the strength of Rhenish separatism. The war of 1914, like that of 1870, had demonstrated the fact of German national solidarity. Could seven million Rhinelanders really be reconciled to French control? Could they be restrained indefinitely from reuniting with the Reich? Could France, consistently with the principle of national selfdetermination accepted at the armistice, consistently with her own liberal traditions, seriously contemplate holding the Rhineland in perpetuity? True, Clemenceau himself had originally maintained, with some force, Foch’s argument that self-determination in the Rhineland must yield to the overriding demands of French security.45 But he was sufficiently a nationalist himself not to be affected by Lloyd George’s objection that a severed Rhineland would become ‘an Alsace-Lorraine in reverse’,46 a permanent irritant between France and Germany, a focus of German nationalism, irredentism and revanchisme. What profit could there be in ‘a policy which weakens us morally and physically’,47 Clemenceau asked the Chamber, a policy that would blight the alternative possibility, however unlikely, of eventual Franco-German rapprochement? ‘Le mieux est l’ennemi du bien’. To some extent Clemenceau was making the best of a bad job. Yet he came to appreciate that what so many Frenchmen passionately believed to be the sine qua non of a durable peace and the key to French security—‘la fameuse barrière du Rhin’—was a mirage. While originally convinced by Foch’s arguments, Clemenceau also canvassed other military opinion, which reminded him—as did Lloyd George himself—that no river had of itself stopped a German advance in the war, and that a Rhine frontier covering Belgium and Luxembourg would require France to guard a line 400 kilometres long.48 Whatever its traditional symbolism of impregnability, did the ‘natural frontier’ of the Rhine really offer significant protection under modern conditions of warfare, including long-range artillery and attack from the air? Clemenceau perceived that what Maurice Barrès called the idée fixe of French history was a dangerous distraction. It was not, however, as some have suggested, that Clemenceau used the Rhineland ‘only as a bargaining counter’49 in order to exact the guarantee treaty. This is both to misinterpret Clemenceau’s character and to ignore the compelling reasons for his change of policy. Clemenceau was as fully committed to ‘une politique rhénane’ as any of his critics, and from December 1918 to March 1919 he fought ‘jusqu’a l’extremité de mon effort’ 50 and ‘sans arrière pensée’51 for the Rhine frontier. Rather, under the force of circumstances, he came

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to a truer understanding of its value set against that of the entente; and from mid-March to late April he fought with unabated vigour for a modified version of a Rhine policy that would secure its advantages without incurring its hazards. Given Britain’s implacable opposition, his original policy was self-defeating; France would be far more vulnerable with a Rhine frontier than without it, and the Rhine frontier might well provoke the very catastrophe which it was designed to avert. If France insisted on holding the Rhineland alone and Germany began a war of liberation for it, France risked fighting in single combat, with incalculable consequences.52 Tacitly, Tardieu more or less admitted that Clemenceau had fallen victim to Lloyd George’s sleight-of-hand. It was a betrayal which gave ample cause to complain of Albion perfide.53 Yet the episode, disastrous’ as it was, was not the whole story. In the long term, Clemenceau could claim success. To all intents and purposes France held the Rhineland, and on the only terms on which she could hold it: that is, with the consent and participation of Britain and America, hitherto categorically refused. There was also France’s contingent entitlement to hold it indefinitely, an eventuality which Clemenceau believed would come about.54 At any rate, he had secured provision for it in the Treaty of Versailles, and the treaty would be what his successors chose to make of it.55 ‘What more does anyone want?’56 he asked. V In weighing the alternatives, in balancing the admitted uncertainties inherent in attempting to hold an extended, perhaps an untenable and indefensible frontier in diplomatic isolation, against the virtual certainty of British support in a future war of defence, Clemenceau chose wisely. It may be be said that in reaching his choice he implicitly accepted the accuracy of Balfour’s analysis of France’s predicament, of 18 March 1919, that ‘no manipulation of the Rhine frontier is going to make France anything more than a second-rate Power, trembling at the nod of its great neighbours on the east’. 57 Leaving aside the Englishman’s supercilious and insular dismissal, it may be that Clemenceau simply accepted the logic of facts, of France’s geopolitical situation since 1870 as an inherently vulnerable land-power, a predicament from which Britain, as a victorious seapower protected by the channel, was for the time being fortuitously im-mune. The same logic of facts, he foresaw, the pressure of events,

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the historic and ineluctable dictates of the balance of power, would in their own time and of their own accord once more reveal the interdependence of Anglo-French interests and bring about an alliance more solid than any paper guarantee.58 Notes 1 2

3

4 5

6 7

8 9

G.Clemenceau, Grandeurs et Misères d’une Victoire, Paris, Plon, 1930, pp. 208, 210. P.M.H.Bell, France and Britain 1900–1940: Entente and Estrangement, London, Longman, 1996, p. 122. See also A.Lentin, ‘The treaty that never was: Lloyd George and the abortive Anglo-French alliance of 1919’ in J.Loades (ed.), The Life and Times of David Lloyd George, Bangor, Headstart, 1991, pp. 115–28 and ‘“Une aberration inexplicable”? Clemenceau and the abortive Anglo-French guarantee treaty of 1919’, Diplomacy and Statecraft, 1997, vol. 8, pp. 31–49. M.L.Dockrill (ed.), British Documents on Foreign Affairs. Reports and Papers from the Foreign Office Confidential Print, Part II, Series 1, The Paris Peace Conference of 1919, Maryland, University Publications of America, 1989, p. 113. J.M.McEwen (ed.), The Riddell Diaries 1908–1923, London, Athlone Press, 1986, diary entry 26 June 1920, p. 315. See E.Maisel, The Foreign Office and Foreign Policy 1919–1926, Brighton, Sussex Academic Press, 1994, pp. 90–6; A. Sharp, ‘Lloyd George and foreign policy, 1918–1922: the “and yet” factor’ in Loades (ed.), Life and Times of Lloyd George, pp. 133–5 and ‘Standard-bearers in a tangle: British perceptions of France after the First World War’ in D.Dutton (ed.), Statecraft and Diplomacy in the Twentieth Century: Essays Presented to P.M.H. Bell, Liverpool, Liverpool University Press, 1995, pp. 55– 60. E.Beau de Loménie, Le Débat de Ratification du Traité de Versailles a la Chambre des Députés et dans la Presse en 1919, Paris, Denoël, 1945, p. 60. The British guarantee was, in Clemenceau’s words, ‘silencieusement abandonnée par l’Angleterre’. Clemenceau, Grandeurs et Misères, p. 162. See also M L.Dockrill, ‘Britain, the United States and France and the German settlement 1918–1920’ in B.J.C.McKercher and D.J.Moss (eds), Shadow and Substance in British Foreign Policy: Memorial Essays Honouring C.J.Lowe, Edmonton, University of Alberta Press, 1984, p. 216. Foreign Office memorandum by J.C.Sterndale Bennett, 10 January 1926. Documents on British Foreign Policy 1919–1939, series 1A, vol. I, pp. 5–6. Hereafter DBFP. See Service Historique de l’Armée de Terre (SHAT), Vincennes, Paris. Paul Cambon, French Ambassador at London, to Foreign Minister Stephen Pichon, 2 April 1919. Fonds Clemenceau, 6N.73. See also François Aragon (on behalf of la Groupe de l’Entente Républicaine) to Clemenceau, 19 April 1919. Fonds Clemenceau 6N.79.

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11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24

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Reactions in Britain and France to German breaches of Versailles were well contrasted by Jules Jusserand, French Ambassador at Washington, in despatches to the Quai d’Orsay, 5 April 1920. Ministère des Affaires Étrangères (MAE), Série Z, vol. 44/252. W.R.Keylor, ‘The rise and demise of the Franco-American guarantee pact, 1919–1921’, Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Western Society for French History, 1988, vol. 15, pp. 367–77. Marquis de Baudry d’Asson in Journal Officiel de la République Français. Chambre des Députés, 1919, p. 4161. Hereafter Journal Officiel. Lentin, ‘Treaty that never was’, pp. 116–17. ‘Un coup de theatre’ was Raymond Poincaré’s expression. Le Temps, 12 September 1921. Lentin, ‘Une aberration inexplicable’, pp. 42–3. Lentin, ‘Treaty that never was’, p. 121. D.H.Miller, My Diary at the Conference of Paris, Volume I, New York, private publication, 1924, diary entry 5 May 1919, p. 294. D.Newhall, Clemenceau: A Life at War, Lampeter, Edwin Mellen Press, 1991, p. 483. Papers relating to the Foreign Relations of the United States. The Paris Peace Conference Volume VI, Washington, State Department, 1946, p. 735. Ibid., p. 736. S.Bonsall, Suitors and Suppliants: the Little Nations at Versailles, New York, Kennikat Press, 1969, p. 217, Hansard Parliamentary Debates, 5th series, HC, vol. 123, c. 762. The alternatives are considered in Lentin, ‘Treaty that never was’, pp. 126–8. For other examples of Lloyd George’s ingenuity at the Paris Peace Conference see A.Lentin, Guilt at Versailles. Lloyd George and the PreHistory of Appeasement, London, Methuen, 1985, pp. 107–8, 111–22; A. Lentin, ‘Several types of ambiguity: Lloyd George at the Paris Peace Conference’ in C.J.Nolan (ed.), Ethics and Statescraft: The Moral Dimension of International Affairs, Westport, Conn., Greenwood Press, 1995, pp. 109–27; Sharp, ‘Lloyd George and foreign policy’, pp. 129– 42. See report of French military attaché in London, 20 December 1919. SHAT 7N.1225. J.B.Duroselle, Clemenceau et la Justice, Paris, Publications de la Sorbonne, 1983; F.Foch memorandum of 30 April 1919 in R.Recouly, Le Memorial deFoch. Mes Entretiens avec le Maréchal, Paris, Les Editions de France, 1929; R.Poincaré, Au Service de la France. Neuf Années de Souvenirs, Tome XI. A la Recherche de la, Paix, Paris, Plon, 1974, pp. 337, 350, 362–3; Le Temps, 12 and 13 September 1921; P.Cambon, Correspondance 1870–1924, Tome III, Paris, B.Grasset, 1946, pp. 323– 4, 332, 366; J.Bainville, Les Conséquences Politiques de la Paix (1919), Paris, Editions de l’Arsenal, 1995, pp. 30–1, 154–6; M.Barrès, La Politique Rhénane, Paris, Bloud and Gey, 19 2 2, pp. 11–14; A.Adamthwaite, Grandeur and Misery: France’s Bid for Power in Europe 1914–1940, London, Arnold, 1995, pp. 61–2; Bell, France and Britain, pp. 120–2.

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R.McCrum, ‘French Rhineland policy at the Paris Peace Conference, 1919’, Historical Journal, 1978, vol. 21, p. 637. L.Loucheur, Carnets Secrets 1908–1932, Brussels, Brepola, 1962, p. 72. MAE, Papiers Tardieu, 45, Tardieu memorandum, 25 January 1919. R.Poincaré, Le Temps, 12 September 1921. Poincaré, Au Service de la France, p. 188. Ibid., p. 290. Recouly, Memorial deFoch, p. 243. SHAT 6N.74, Foch memoranda 10 January-31 March 1919. MAE, Papiers d’agents. Pichon, vol. 7/63–5. Poincaré, Au Service de la France, pp. 390–1. Journal Officiel 1919, p. 4100. André Tardieu, La Paix, Paris, Payot, 1921, p. 205. See article 44 Treaty of Versailles: ‘a hostile act against the Powers signatory of the recent Treaty and...calculated to disturb the peace of the world’. Certainly, the Foreign Office perceived that, as far as the safety of France on her eastern flank was concerned, the French, consciously or otherwise, believed that Clemenceau had been led into ‘a characteristic British trap’. Foreign Office memorandum, 9 May 1922 in DBFP, 1st series, vol. XX, p. 36. Journal Officiel 1919, p. 4091. Tardieu memorandum, 17 March 1919, Scottish Record Office (SRO) Lothian Papers GD 40/17/60/4. Journal Officiel 1918, pp. 3732–3. Loucheur, Carnets Secrets, p. 71; Poincaré, Au Service de la France, p. 337; Journal Officiel 1919, p. 4579. SRO Lothian Papers, GD 40/17/1173, 7 March 1919. In secret testimony before the parliamentary foreign affairs committee. See Keylor, ‘Rise and demise’, p. 374. Beau de Loménie, Débat de Ratification, p. 188. SHAT 6N.73, Memorandum, 14 April 1919: ‘Valeur stratégiques des rivières’. D.R.Watson, Georges Clemenceau: A Political Biography, London, Eyre Methuen, 1974, p. 353. Clemenceau, Grandeurs et Misères, p. 200. Paul Cambon quoted in Jules Cambon, ‘La paix: notes inédites’, La Revue de Paris, 1 November 1937, p. 31. See Tardieu, 2 September 1919, Journal Officiel 1919, p. 4094. According to Stephen Bonsall, Clemenceau and Tardieu denied having been deceived by Lloyd George. For a discussion see Bonsall, Suitors and Suppliants, pp. 216–17. Journal Officiel 1919, p. 4552; A.Sharp, The Versailles Settlement: Peacemaking in Paris 1919, London, Macmillan, 1991, p. 112. See, however, Lentin, ‘Une aberration inexplicable’, p. 40. See Beau de Loménie, Débat de Ratification, p. 37. G.Clemenceau, Clemenceau: The Events of His Life as told by Himself to His Former Secretary, London, Longman, 1930, p. 152. Sharp, ‘Standard-bearers in a tangle’, p. 58.

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It will be clear that I dissent from Anthony Adamthwaite’s recent criticism of Clemenceau’s contention of an inescapable choice ‘between allied solidarity or isolation on the Rhine’. Adamthwaite maintains that ‘the choice was not necessarily as stark as presented. The danger of alienating the allies was exaggerated. Determined pressure might have ex-tracted more concessions’, Grandeur and Misery, p. 62. On the choices facing Clemenceau and the choice which he made, I come therefore to the same conclusion as that reached nearly forty years ago by Jere Clemens King in his Foch versus Clemenceau: France and German Dismemberment 1918–1919, Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press, 1960. Adamthwaite comments: ‘I still feel that Clemenceau can be faulted because he was too focussed on “the long view”. In short, the tactical and strategic were out of sync. Indeed, if he had shown a greater sense of the tactical manouevres open to France, he might not have been so easily duped by the Wizard!’ Letter to the author, 20 October 1997.

7

Anglo-French relations from Versailles to Locarno, 1919–1925 The quest for security Alan Sharp

The European international balance of power in the aftermath of the First World War was very different from that of 1914. Italy’s status as a great power continued to rely more on the weakness of those around it than the strength of its own resources but the AustroHungarian and Ottoman empires had disintegrated, the Russian empire had collapsed into revolution and civil war, Germany was defeated and, for the moment, prostrate and the United States had, at least in diplomatic and military terms, withdrawn, after making a decisive intervention in the affairs of Europe. It would thus be hard to fault the logic of Lord George Curzon, the British Foreign Secretary, when he declared in December 1921, As a result of the war there remain only two really great powers in Europe—France and ourselves…For a considerable period, therefore, a combination of Great Britain and France would be so strong that no other likely combination could successfully resist it. It follows that a definite and publicly announced agreement between the two countries to stand by one another in case either were attacked would offer a guarantee of peace of the strongest kind.1 This was clearly a desirable outcome yet no such Anglo-French alliance was concluded until very late in the inter-war years in very different circumstances. This essay investigates why war-time cooperation was not cemented in the post-war period into an effective alliance but instead how the entente cordiale deteriorated into a mésentente cordiale and then a rupture cordiale during the Ruhr occupation of 1923, to be only partially restored by the Locarno agreements of 1925.2

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I Britain and France had cooperated in the early twentieth century and fought together in the recent war but were traditional rivals. David Lloyd George, the British Prime Minister, was only half joking when he pointed this out in 1921 to Georges Clemenceau, the French premier from 1917 to 1920. 3 Earlier Lloyd George remarked to the French statesman, Aristide Briand, ‘Your countrymen from Brittany certainly distinguished themselves during the war’. Briand replied: ‘But naturally! They were under the impression that they were up against the English!’4 There were mutual accusations during the war that each partner was happy to fight until the last drop of the other’s blood. They were imperial competitors on a global scale. Britain perceived with great distrust France’s ambition to be, in Curzon’s words, ‘the mistress of Europe in respect of coal, iron and steel…and also…the military monarch’. 5 The maintenance of a large standing army, the encouragement of Rhineland separatism and the consistent demands of successive French governments to punish real or perceived German infractions of the Treaty of Versailles by an occupation of the Ruhr all confirmed British suspicions. The Committee of Imperial Defence was further alarmed by the size of the French airforce and submarine fleet and was exercised to identify any alternative opponent against whom these assets might be directed. 6 London believed that Prussian militarism had been decisively defeated and eradicated but that this had upset the balance of power in Europe, leaving France without a realistic continental rival. Curzon told the Cabinet’s Eastern Committee on 2 December 1918 that he was ‘seriously afraid that the great power from whom we have most to fear in the future is France.’ 7 Yet there was simultaneously an uncomfortable recognition that what the British perceived to be aggressive and ambitious French behaviour might be explained by French fears based on a comparison of the demographic and strategic resources available to themselves and Germany. In March 1919, the British Foreign Secretary, Arthur James Balfour, reviewed the current French peace conference demands for a revision of the Franco-German Rhineland frontier in their favour. He acknowledged that the French did have grounds for concern and he was aware of French perceptions: They draw a lurid picture of future Franco-German relations. They assume that the German population will always far outnumber the French; that as soon as the first shock of defeat

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has passed away, Germany will organise herself for revenge; that all our attempts to limit armaments will be unsuccessful; that the League of Nations will be impotent; and consequently that the invasion of France, which was accomplished in 1870, and partially accomplished in the recent War, will be renewed with every prospect of success. His conclusion was: ‘They may be right; but if they are, it is quite certain that no manipulation of the Rhine frontier is going to make France anything more than a second-rate Power’.8 British policy hovered uncertainly between these two evaluations of a Napoleonic, ambitious France and the alternative vision of a fearful potential victim of demographic decline and geographic circumstance. The French rejected any notion of Napoleonic adventures, indeed as Paul Cambon, the veteran French Ambassador at London remarked to his successor, ‘The misfortune is that the English are not yet aware that Napoleon is dead.’9 None the less it is not difficult to see how French policies designed to meet their need for security could be interpreted by Britain as ambition for continental hegemony because, as Anthony Adamthwaite claims, ‘for the French, security and hegemony were synonymous…Only hegemony would ensure permanent security.’ 10 The French perception, confirmed by a whole series of economic and political realities, was that France needed British friendship and support,11 yet there seems to have been little attempt to prioritise French aims and ambitions outside Europe in order to make it more likely that Britain would be prepared to provide the necessary European assistance. As an exasperated Curzon minuted on 29 April 1922: M.Poincaré is to threaten isolated action at Bar-le Duc, [in a speech of 24 April 1922] the French Govt. is to behave as it is doing, i.e. either with insolence or with treachery in respect of Tangier, Tunis, the Near East etc. etc. but we are going to run around and conclude our Treaty of Guarantee and all will be well.12 Whether one accepts Curzon’s complaints in their entirety there is a clear sense that British decision-makers did not feel a strong compulsion to assist France. Yet, there was also an awareness that almost every important issue in postwar British diplomacy had a French aspect to it and that each state had the potential to frustrate the aims and objectives of the other unless they cooperated. The question was how to identify

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the most effective way of ensuring French cooperation, particularly over the execution of the Treaty of Versailles, where each had very different perceptions of the future rôle and ambitions of Germany. One option was the renegotiation of the abortive Anglo-French guarantee of 1919.13 There was agreement that such a guarantee would increase French self-confidence but disagreement as to whether this would encourage France to become more, or less, generous and flexible in its future dealings with Germany. Sir Maurice Hankey, the Secretary to the Cabinet, was a committed opponent of any alliance, writing to Lloyd George on 25 June 1921 that: our experience of the past does not lead us to think that she would be more tractable after such a guarantee has been given. The guarantee to France was signed at the end of June, 1919. After that date the French Government was in fact no easier to deal with than it was before…In fact it is not unlikely that France would be more pugnacious than ever. We should constantly be in the dilemma of having to choose between breaking off an Alliance and associating ourselves in a policy utterly distasteful to us and liable to lead to a breach of the peace.14 The Labour party opposed any such treaty. Arthur Henderson wrote to Lloyd George on 7 January 1920 that his party held ‘most decidedly that a commitment of this kind is unnecessary, since the Covenant of the League of Nations imposes already the obligation to defend the territorial integrity and independence of all its members’. Moreover, ‘although this alliance may be in form defensive, it must have the effect of diminishing the motives which would otherwise incline French policy to courses of prudence and conciliation’. 15 The influential South African leader, Jan Smuts, wanted Britain to withdraw from Europe and to concentrate on its imperial rôle: ‘I would rather assume a position of independence, putting the British Empire entirely aside from all of them’, he told the Imperial Conference on 6 June 1921.16 This echoed earlier advice to Lloyd George from his Private Secretary, Philip Kerr, who advocated leaving ‘Europe to itself with such assistance as the League of Nations can give to it.’17 For most decision-makers the idea of imperial isolation, however attractive, was impractical, as Harold Nicolson, from the Foreign Office, reminded the Committee of Imperial Defence: ‘the events of the last twenty years have shown that we cannot be free to carry out our main objects which are Indian and Colonial, unless we are

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safe in Europe, and it will be many years yet before we can free ourselves of responsibility for Europe’.18 There were some committed protago-nists of a treaty with France. Lord Derby, British Ambassador at Paris between 1918 and 1920 and Secretary of State for War in the Conservative Government of 1922–4, was perhaps the most vociferous and devoted of them. 19 Austen Chamberlain, when Chancellor of the Exchequer in 1920, also argued that ‘if it be once admitted that we cannot afford to see Germany dominating Belgium and Holland or overwhelming France, is it not far better that this vital object of British policy should be consecrated and defended by a public treaty?’20 Although he would later change his mind, in 1920 Winston Churchill as Colonial Secretary favoured an alliance as a necessary precondition for a more generous French attitude to Germany, whilst Sir Henry Wilson, the Chief of the Imperial General Staff was even more vigorous, declaring that ‘a close offensive and defensive Alliance should be entered into between the British, French and Belgian Governments’. 21 Even Charles Hardinge, Derby’s successor in Paris, and no automatic friend of France, concluded that he felt that ‘until France obtains some guarantee of assistance by us against possible aggression by Germany, she will continue to be unreason-able and tiresome over all questions affecting her relations with Germany’.22 Most members of the British establishment were uncommitted, recognising the force of both sides of the argument, anxious, if possible, to retain the traditional ‘free hand’ in foreign policy but prepared to be persuaded that it might be necessary to make a gesture towards France though only in return for French concessions in key political and diplomatic disputes. The French believed they had already paid the price of such a guarantee during the Paris Peace Conference in 1919 when they had dropped their immediate demands for a frontier on, or beyond, the Rhine, and that they had been duped by Lloyd George. This was recognised by some Foreign Office officials though not by Curzon.23 Responding to the British Prime Minister’s duplicity the French pursued the very policies that Curzon perceived to be a bid for continental domination—a rather confused attempt to detach the Rhineland from the control of Berlin as part of a greater ambition to create a federalised Germany, a determined effort (centred on the future of the Ruhr) to remedy the deficit in coal and coke that France perceived could only worsen after the special arrangements of the Versailles treaty lapsed (assuming they were honoured at all), alliance arrangements with

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all and sundry in Eastern Europe and the retention of large armed forces. 24 II The early years of peace were not marked by a great spirit of cooperation. The German treaty was a source of constant friction between the two main enforcers, normally, though not invariably, with Britain seeking to restrain France from taking firmer action against the Germans. In December 1919, even before the treaty entered into force, there had been a brief moment when it appeared hostilities might be renewed. 25 In March 1920 the French acted independently in extending the occupation of Germany following the attempted Kapp putsch in Berlin and subsequent disorders in the Ruhr and this provoked much resentment in London as well as confusion about the direction of Allied policy. Further disputes over German disarmament, reparations and war debts were exacerbated by problems in conducting the plebiscite in Upper Silesia and then interpreting its results. The French, aware that the debts contracted by the Tsarist Government were unlikely to be honoured by the Bolshevik leader, Vladimir Ilich Lenin, were unenthusiastic about Britain’s attempts to regularise relations with the new communist régime in Russia.26 There were further exacerbations in the Middle East, where the Versailles settlement amounted to little more than a thinly disguised imperial carve-up in which the French perceived they had done badly, and the Near East where the British were increasingly suspicious of French negotiations with the Turkish nationalists led by Kemal Attaturk. Their suspicions were fulfilled on 21 October 1921 when the French Senator, Henri FranklinBouillon (‘Boiling Frankie’ to the disgruntled British), signed a separate peace with Kemal, thus completing an insalubrious collection of mutual betrayals in the area, which had begun with Lloyd George’s failure to honour the deals he had struck with Clemenceau over Syria and Mosul.27 The military and air power concerns also contributed to a very uneasy relationship and the Washington naval conference in November 1921 created further tension. In an often-quoted opinion Charles Hardinge, when Permanent Under-Secretary at the Foreign Office for the second time, summarised both the British isolationist tradition and the deep-rooted suspicion of France in his verdict on the desirability of building a Channel tunnel in 1920: ‘our relations

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with France never have been, are not, and probably never will be, sufficiently stable and friendly to justify the construction of a Channel tunnel’.28 On the other hand, it would be very difficult for a postwar British government to turn away from France—as Churchill reminded Lloyd George: ‘It would be an enormous shock to the British public, who have 600,000 graves in France, if the statesmen were to tell them that we backed the wrong horse’.29 For their part the French perceived the British to be selfish, short-sighted and misguided. They were irritated by what appeared to be growing British aloofness and a return to a balance of power mentality in which France was perceived as the new threat to the European order. It was also annoying that the British saw any cooperation with France as generous and altruistic and appeared to have no comprehension of how far their own interests were bound up with those of France. It is worth reflecting upon what each, ideally, would have wished from the other. In one sense the answer is simple, each expected the other to provide it with security in Europe but whereas for France this meant that Britain should recognise itself as a European power, what Britain wanted was to turn its back on Europe. The French wanted a continental commitment from Britain, support for the territorial settlement in eastern Europe to prevent the whole Versailles settlement from unravelling, and a united front in dealing firmly with Germany. They believed that Germany would renew its attempt at European hegemony in eastern Europe before moving west and hence that any British guarantee to France which was confined simply to western Europe and the territory of metropolitan France would be inadequate because it would not recognise the concept of indirect aggression. At the same time, France did not wish to be seen as a suitor but as an equal partner. What it believed it could offer Britain was security in Europe and imperial assistance particularly in India. What Britain expected of France was an end to imperial and military competition and a more generous attitude to Germany, which Britain perceived to be the potential dynamo of European recovery and a major market for British goods. Britain feared that France’s grudging manner would foster a recalcitrant and revanchiste Germany and destroy any hope of European stability. In Balfour’s memorable phrase the French ‘were so dreadfully afraid of being swallowed up by the tiger, but would spend their time poking it’.30 It was partly a question of geography, the English Channel gave a different perspective to the German threat which the French found difficult to share. It was partly a question of priorities, the British saw themselves as an imperial and world power with only

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secondary interests in Europe whereas the French thought this was a dangerously limited approach. Perhaps most important, however, was the mutuallyheld belief that the policies adopted by the other would produce exactly the result that was not wanted, the French thought the British criminally naïve in not recognising the continuity in German ambitions, the British believed that undue restrictions and unnecessary humiliations would destroy German restraint and discourage German democracy and responsible government. The French revived the alliance debates at the end of 1921 and the talks lasted into 1922.31 The key elements that emerged highlight the mutual misunderstandings between France and Britain. Each perceived the alliance to be of great benefit to the other and hence believed that it should extract the maximum advantage. The French were aware of Lloyd George’s need for their cooperation in his latest project for a conference involving Russia and Germany which would attempt to reconstruct the European economy. They believed that Lloyd George needed this as an electoral boost and hence would pay a significant price. They thought that a French offer to defend the British empire, especially India, would be well received both in Britain and Australia, New Zealand and South Africa, offering a safeguard of white supremacy against a potential Japanese threat. In return they expected British cooperation in Europe, particularly in the Rhineland and against a renewed threat in eastern Europe from Germany, and the coordination of defence arrangements between their respective Chiefs of Staff.32 For their part the British were unimpressed by French offers of imperial assistance—Curzon wrote scathingly of ‘the tenuous consolation of abundant swarms of black troops let loose from the sands or swamps of Africa’. Although prepared to acknowledge the eastern frontier of France as ‘also the external frontier of Britain’, he believed that a general alliance with France might be detrimental to Britain’s relations with the United States, Italy and Belgium and undermine the role and responsibilities of the League of Nations. It might commit Britain to fight on matters which were not perceived to be of vital importance to British interests and it would be very hard to convince Parliament of the necessity and desirability of such an agreement. What Curzon would contemplate was a renewal of the 1919 offer of a guarantee against an unprovoked attack by Germany, couched now in the form of an alliance if that satisfied French sensitivities about being treated as an equal, but in return Curzon expected the settlement of a wide range of Anglo-French disputes, naturally in Britain’s favour. ‘I

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earnestly hope,’ he wrote, ‘it will not be proposed to give the guarantee for nothing’.33 There was little prospect of this—on either side. Lloyd George set out his terms on 4 January 1922: in return for French cooperation over Turkey, Tangiers, the planned economic conference at Genoa and an end to naval competition, particularly the curtailment of the French submarine programme, Britain offered a ten-year guarantee of full British military assistance in the event of an unprovoked direct German attack on French soil. This did not automatically include German infractions of the Rhineland demilitarised zone.34 Briand wanted a full alliance, a British guarantee of the general peace of Europe, a widening of the definition of direct aggression to include the Rhineland and proper coordination of Anglo-French military planning.35 The fall of Briand during the ill-fated Cannes conference in January 1922 brought Raymond Poincaré to power. His policy on the alliance was not greatly at variance with that of Briand but his manner was more abrasive: ‘the Treaty was useless without a military convention because the guarantee contained in it was illusory’. He made plain also his distrust of the Genoa plan.36 His style of negotiating was to start with a list of demands, knowing many to be unacceptable, to reiterate the list on numerous occasions, and then to abandon some of the impossible demands expecting that this concession would lead to the others being granted. Both Curzon and Hardinge were convinced that the pact was of greater importance to Poincaré than it was to Britain and thus, whilst Curzon was prepared to concede reciprocity and an extension of the treaty for fifteen or twenty years (Poincaré wanted thirty), on the wider issues of military talks and European security he was unwilling to move. On the French side there is little evidence in the diplomatic exchanges between Paris and its London embassy that Britain’s imperial demands were even being considered. In that sense the negotiations seem to have been a dialogue between the hard of hearing. Hardinge asserted that ‘there should be no concession on our part of any kind without an entire change of attitude on the part of the French’.37 The French believed rather that Britain should change. The price was too high on both sides. The negotiations spluttered on for some months but petered out in the summer of 1922, doing nothing to improve the deteriorating relationship. 38 The failure of the Genoa conference, for which in part Lloyd George blamed Poincaré,39 meant that reparations became an increasing problem as the Germans failed to keep abreast of the payments schedule imposed by the Reparations Commission at the London

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conference in May 1921. The Balfour Note of 1 August 1922, issued after long Cabinet negotiations did not ease Anglo-French differences. Balfour, acting as Foreign Secretary during Curzon’s illness, made the apparent concession that Britain would seek to recover from her European debtors only what the United States required in repayment of its war debts from Britain.40 This made it all the more important to France that Germany should pay its debts and hence Poincaré’s demands for German guarantees and ‘productive pledges’ grew apace. By the end of 1922 it was clear that the French were set on occupying the Ruhr to improve both their security and economic positions. The Near East brought Anglo-French relations to their nadir when, in September 1922, the French withdrew their forces leaving Britain alone to face Turkey at Chanak. Bitter and, for Curzon, painful recriminations followed.41 Lloyd George fell from power but Curzon survived at the Foreign Office in Andrew Bonar Law’s new Conservative Government, setting off to Lausanne to try to salvage something from the wreck of the Treaty of Sèvres. His task was not eased by the crisis over reparations which conferences in London in December 1922 and Paris in January 1923 failed to resolve, leading to a Franco-Belgian occupation of the Ruhr on 11 January 1923. It was to be a crucial test of will and policies. Throughout the crisis Britain followed a cautious line, disapproving the French action but not placing impossible obstacles in its way making available, for example, the railway lines that passed through the British occupation zone, without which the French would have had only a single track line to supply their troops. Curzon’s waiting game ended in October 1923 when he helped to broker the proposals that led to the establishment of the Dawes committee. 42 Faced throughout the first nine months of the year with German passive resistance Poincaré seemed uncertain as to how to proceed, yet German capitulation in September 1923 apparently offered the opportunity to secure the industrial and political objectives of his policy. In what Stanislas Jeannesson terms ‘un incroyable retournement’, Poincaré’s world fell apart in October when he accepted the Anglo-American initiative for an expert committee to consider the problem of German reparations whilst simultaneously his Rhineland policy foundered. Jeannesson suggests that Poincaré wanted less to enforce the Treaty of Versailles than to modify and improve it from a French perspective in terms of the future of the Rhineland and of the natural resources of the Ruhr.43 The problem lay in deciding on how to get from the occupation to the desired objectives. Contemporary and historical

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verdicts share a general consensus that Poincaré’s hesitations and lack of a clear strategy proved fatal. An exasperated Jacques Seydoux from the Quai d’Orsay remarked of the occupation: ‘There is noone like Poincaré for getting up steam in the engine but he can’t stop at the platform.’ In frustration he told the Belgian Ambassador, Edmond de Gaiffier: ‘If you are asked about the French plan, you can reply: Article 1. There is no French plan. Article 2. Nobody is charged with executing the present decree.’44 Marc Trachtenberg thinks that ‘Poincaré failed…because he had no clear idea of what his aims were’ and that no coherent and consistent policy could ‘be inferred from the sources’ whilst Sally Marks writes of ‘Poincaré’s rigidity, indecision, lack of daring or any real brutality, and especially his timidity and procrastination.’45 The results of the failure of the Ruhr adventure were profound. British suspicions of French ambitions were confirmed and this reinforced the tendency to see its rôle as an arbiter between Germany and France rather than France’s partner.46 France did not again take independent action to enforce the treaty, its relations with Britain and Belgium were damaged, and it was forced to re-appraise its attitude towards Germany, taking account of its structural weaknesses. The country was short of money, short of men and short of time. Sustained pressure on the franc saw a dramatic fall in its value from 93 francs to the pound sterling in May 1924 to 243 to the pound by July 1926; the French army could not maintain its present strength because of demographic trends and the political necessity to cut conscription from three years to eighteen months in 1925 and to a year in 1927; the occupation of Germany under the treaty was for fifteen years but evacuation was staged at five yearly intervals with the first zone due for evacuation in 1925, the same year as the Dawes plan required that the Ruhr be evacuated. Furthermore, their alliances in eastern Europe looked increasingly fragile as post-war disputes between the states there robbed the strategy of coherence.47 The policy of enforcement had failed, France had now to accommodate Germany and still achieve security. Britain was a crucial element in this equation. I II The French had always linked reparations with security but the new Labour Prime Minister in Britain, Ramsay MacDonald, who took office in January 1924, insisted that reparations be settled first and this became

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the task of the expert international committee chaired by the American banker, Charles Dawes, which met from January to April 1924 in Paris. Poincaré accepted the Dawes plan but his resignation following elections in May meant that Edouard Herriot became the Prime Minister of a left-wing coalition, the Cartel des Gauches. On paper MacDonald and Herriot seemed very similar with their rather florid styles but in reality MacDonald was a much tougher proposition and he dominated their personal exchanges, imposing the British programme for the evacuation of the Ruhr and the execution of the Dawes plan without making any new security commitments to France beyond a vague promise of ‘constant collaboration’ even though the War Office did advocate a new guarantee of the French and Belgian frontiers.48 MacDonald was prepared to consider a strengthening of the League of Nations, a policy consistent with Labour party criticisms of the Anglo-French pact as unnecessary provided governments were serious in honouring their obligations under the Covenant. In his earlier draft Treaty of Mutual Assistance the British League enthusiast, Lord Robert Cecil, sought to combine a general guarantee of security and a significant reduction in armaments by obliging all members to assist victims of aggression and simplifying the process by which aggression was defined and voted upon at the League. MacDonald’s Government rejected this proposal in July 1924 (though its decision had been taken earlier) but at the League Assembly in September he called for compulsory arbitration in international disputes and linked this to the outcome of the disarmament conference which the League proposed to hold the following June. The Geneva Protocol thus combined the British belief that disarmament was necessary to achieve security with the French approach which argued that security was necessary to achieve disarmament. MacDonald’s Government fell in November 1924 and Stanley Baldwin’s new Conservative Cabinet disapproved of the commitments that the Protocol implied but, as Curzon pointed out to the Committee of Imperial Defence, ‘it is out of the question that we should reject it and do nothing more. We still have to consider the case of France.’49 It thus fell to the new Foreign Secretary, Austen Chamberlain, ostentatiously preferred to Curzon by Baldwin, possibly to please the French,50 to discover a way to reintegrate Germany into the European system by encouraging the French desire for accommodation with Germany with new security proposals. Although Chamberlain favoured a British commitment to France his colleagues in government were less convinced. The need to find an alternative to the Protocol was reinforced by the impending date for the evacuation of the first zone of occupation

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and, although both London and Paris were unwilling to remove their forces because they claimed Germany had not fulfilled its disarmament obligations, Britain was anxious not to undermine the goodwill generated by the recent Dawes plan. The proposal for a mutual security pact in western Europe advanced by the German Foreign Minister, Gustav Stresemann, in January 1925 offered an acceptable compromise, although it was not until October that Chamberlain, Stresemann and Briand, who had returned as French Foreign Minister in April, finalised the treaties at Locarno in Switzerland. Chamberlain had to fight hard to persuade the Cabinet to consider such a collection of agreements, though the most exciting debates took place in March 1925, during his absence at the League Council.51 Within the Cabinet Curzon, now Lord President of the Council, Churchill, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Lord Birkenhead, the Secretary of State for India, Sir Samuel Hoare, the Secretary of State for Air and Leo Amery at the Colonial Office all opposed the plan and they were joined from beyond the Cabinet by Balfour, the influential elder statesman who replaced Curzon after his death in March 1925. With Baldwin’s help Chamberlain secured a reasonably free hand in the negotiations with France and Germany that proceeded from April to October. The final outcome was a series of agreements between France, Belgium and Germany accepting their present frontiers and also the existence of the demilitarised zone in the Rhineland. Britain and Italy acted as external guarantors. Germany signed arbitration agreements with France, Britain, Poland and Czechoslovakia and agreed to join the League, though there was an obvious contradiction between the obligations that this entailed and Stresemann’s well-known refusal to accept the eastern frontiers of Germany as final. More important than the details, however, was what appeared to be a new spirit in international relations, summed up in Balfour’s letter to Chamberlain of 16 December 1925: ‘The Great War ended in November 1918. The Great Peace did not begin until Oct. 1925.’52 IV More than six years after Lloyd George’s original offer to guarantee French territorial integrity Britain now committed itself in a formal manner to defending the present frontiers of western Europe. Most historical assessments see this as limiting, not increasing, British obligations.53 Chamberlain’s view was that he had done enough to give France the confidence to deal with Germany but there can be

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little doubt that his horizons were west European, with ‘not disinterested’ as the prevalent British attitude to events further east.54 The commitment was also, in theory at least, one to defend the German frontier against France and its open-ended nature provided an ideal excuse for the Chiefs of Staff to make no specific military provision for its fulfilment.55 Furthermore, since Britain had the right to interpret what constituted the unprovoked aggressions and flagrant breaches of the treaty that would trigger its commitment, Locarno represented a much looser arrangement than that proposed by Lloyd George in 1919 but, in the light of the strong feelings raised within the Government and the wider considerations of Anglo-French relations, it was the limit of what could be achieved. Personalities had some part to play in those considerations. Poincaré was much disliked—‘a dirty dog, a man of very mean character’ according to Hardinge, whilst Curzon thought him ‘a treacherous creature’.56 He left a long folk memory in the Foreign Office. Writing of the Soviet dictator, Joseph Stalin, in 1944 Orme Sargent declared, he ‘would play Poincaré and want his pound of flesh—and a little more—on every occasion!’ 57 In France Lloyd George’s duplicity left a bitter taste and Curzon was also unloved. Their departure, and that of Poincaré, helped to foster the Locarno atmosphere. Briand was better liked in Britain, enjoying a good relationship with both Lloyd George and Austen Chamberlain.58 He was charming, witty and eloquent. He shared with Lloyd George a preference for oral briefings to the tedium of reading reports and a reliance on the quickness of his mind and the sensitivity of his political antennae to make policy as he went along.59 He was more flexible than Poincaré but their policies had a common feature— there were a lot more Germans than French. Despite making mincemeat of Herriot, MacDonald was credited by René Massigli of the Quai d’Orsay with creating ‘a real cordiality’ in Anglo-French relations whilst Baldwin, Churchill and Chamberlain were seen as firm friends of France.60 Even though Chamberlain may have loved France ‘as a man loves a woman’ there were deeper issues involved. In both countries it could be argued that a lack of central direction in foreign policy played a part in the problem. Adamthwaite sees lack of sustained and coordinated direction in French foreign policy. The Quai d’Orsay had a reputation for a chaotic lack of organisation. The two main ministerial figures of the early post-war period, Raymond Poincaré and Aristide Briand, both seemed unable to create a considered strategy, and this was not helped by the centrifugal nature of French decision-making. French policy veered

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between a strict enforcement of the treaty and attempts to come to commercial and industrial accommodations with Germany and these policies both had alarming considerations for Britain. Enforcement might involve it in continental adventures, Franco- German cooperation might be very bad for British commercial interests, particularly coal. 61 Within Britain the relationship between Curzon and Lloyd George (and indeed the other prime ministers he served) certainly affected morale in the Foreign Office and perhaps left British policy also unsure of its best direction. Arguing that Curzon’s ideal solution was ‘Splendid Isolation’ but that this option was no longer open, Ephraim Maisel suggests that Curzon ‘temporized by taking half-measures, which led neither to “Splendid Isolation” nor to serious involvement but created, together with Lloyd George’s proceedings, internal inconsistencies and incessant friction with France from which the principal beneficiary was Germany’.62 There was more semblance of long-term planning under MacDonald,63 and Chamberlain also saw his policy as having long-term ends and requiring several phases. His proposed peace process did not succeed but this was not inevitable. Henry Kissinger’s gloomy assessment was that ‘Locarno had not so much pacified Europe as it had defined the next battlefield’ but Philip Bell is nearer the mark when he argues that the policy might have succeeded had it not been for the disaster of 1929.64 Because it did fail historians have speculated on what might have happened if Britain and France had been able to agree on an alliance, and more importantly, upon a set of policies to deal with Europe and beyond but, in the circumstances of the time, this was not achievable. Two contemporary assessments sum up the problems and issues well. In November 1923 Poincaré told the Senate: ‘I consider that the entente is an absolute necessity…But I have no illusions as to the real feelings of Great Britain towards France. She is as she has always been: a great rival who will remain with us because she needs us, as we need her.’ It was a marriage of convenience where it should have been of conviction, and one based, according to Harold Nicolson, on very different definitions of utility. In a Foreign Office minute of 27 August 1924 he wrote: ‘Whatever the French may say, they wish, under the guise of the League, to forge iron chains which will en-circle Germany and keep her captive; whatever we may say, we wish while aiming at general pacification and disarmament, to avoid committing ourselves to military intervention in Europe.’ Perhaps Austen Chamberlain was correct to suggest that ‘No two countries have greater need to understand one another than England and France; and yet no two peoples find national understanding more difficult.’65

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Notes 1 2 3

4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11

12 13

14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21

Documents on British Foreign Policy 1919–1939, 1st series, vol. XVI, p. 862. Hereafter DBFP. Mésentente cordiale and rupture cordiale are chapter subsection headings used by the Comte de Saint-Aulaire in his memoirs, Confession d’un Vieux Diplomate, Paris, Flammarion, 1953. In June 1921 Clemenceau remarked to Lloyd George: ‘I have to tell you that from the very day of the Armistice I found you an enemy of France.’ Lloyd George replied: ‘Well was it not always our traditional policy.’ G. Clemenceau, Grandeur and Misery of Victory, London, Harrap, 1930, p. 113;J.-B.Duroselle, Clemenceau, Paris, Fayard, 1988, p. 879. G.Tabouis, Perfidious Albion-Entente Cordiale, London, Thornton Butterworth, 1939, p. 1. Public Record Office (PRO) CAB 32/2/E4, Meeting of the Imperial Conference, 22 June 1921. PRO CAB 2/3 Committee of Imperial Defence, 130th meeting. See A. Orde, Great Britain and International Security 1920–1926, London, Royal Historical Society, 1978, pp. 9–11, 169–72. PRO CAB 24/27, Eastern Committee minutes. Balfour Papers, Add Mss 49751, Balfour memorandum, 18 March 1919, British Library. Saint-Aulaire, Confession, p. 536. A.Adamthwaite, Grandeur and Misery: France’s Bid for Power in Europe 1914–1940, London, Arnold, 1995. See R.J.Young, ‘La guerre de longue durée: some reflections on French strategy and diplomacy in the 1930s’ in A.Preston (ed.), General Staffs and Diplomacy before the Second World War, London, Croom Helm, 1978, pp. 41–64. PRO FO 371/7567 C6200/6200/18. See the contribution of Anthony Lentin to this volume. See also A. Lentin, ‘The treaty that never was: Lloyd George and the abortive Anglo-French alliance of 1919’ in J.Loades (ed.), The Life and Times of David Lloyd George, Bangor, Headstart, 1991, pp. 115–28 and “Une aberration inexplicable”?: Clemenceau and the abortive Anglo-French guarantee treaty of 1919, Diplomacy and Statecraft, 1997, vol. 8, pp. 31–49. Lloyd George Papers, F/25/1/48, Hankey to Lloyd George, 25 June 1921, House of Lords Record Office. Lloyd George Papers, F/27/3/39. PRO CAB 32/2, E7. Lloyd George Papers, F/90/1/18, Memorandum, 2 September 1920. PRO CAB 4/7 CID Paper 251-B, 10 July 1920. R.S.Churchill, Lord Derby: ‘King of Lancashire’, London, Heinemann, 1959, passim. PRO CAB 4/7 CID paper 246-B, 28 June 1920. PRO CAB 23/25 CM 40(21), 24 May 1921; CAB 24/101 CP 919, 20 March 1920.

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29 30 31 32 33 34

35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42

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Lloyd George Papers, F/53/1/63, Hardinge to Lloyd George, 22 June 1921. PRO FO 371/7567, C6200/C6875/6200/18. See despatch by Saint-Aulaire, 28 December 1921. Ministère des Affaires Étrangères (MAE), Quai d’Orsay, Paris, séries Europe 1918– 1929, File Grande-Bretagne 69. See also S.Jeannesson, Poincaré, la France el le Ruhr (1922–1924): Histoire d’une Occupation, Strasbourg, Presses Universitaires de Strasbourg, 1998, pp. 23–49. See S.Crowe and E.Corp, Our Ablest Civil Servant: Sir Eyre Crowe 1864– 1925, Braunton, Merlin Books, 1993, pp. 366–73. See the contribution of David Watson to this volume. C.M.Andrew and A.S.Kanya-Forstner, France Overseas: The Great War and the Climax of French Imperial Expansion, London, Thames and Hudson, 1981, p. 223. PRO FO 371/3765 187042/183192/17, Memorandum, 1 May 1920. See also A.Sharp, ‘Britain and the channel tunnel’, Australian Journal of Politics and History, 1979, vol. 25, pp. 210–15; K.Wilson, Channel Tunnel Visions 1850–1945: Dreams and Nightmares, London, Hambledon Press, 1994. Lloyd George Papers, F/10/1/48, Churchill to Lloyd George, 28 November 1921. PRO CAB 24/172/4651, Committee of Imperial Defence meeting, 13 February 1925. See Orde, Great Britain and International Security, pp. 6–30. MAE, Grande-Bretagne 69, Saint-Aulaire to Quai d’Orsay, 28 and 31 December 1921. DBFP, 1st series, vol. XVI, pp. 860–70. Parliamentary Papers, ‘Papers respecting negotiations for an AngloFrench pact 1919–1923’, cmd. 2169, London, HMSO, 1924, pp. 116– 22. On Tangiers see G.H.Bennett, ‘Britain’s relations with France after Versailles: the problem of Tangier, 1919–1923’, European History Quarterly, 1994, vol. 24, pp. 53–84. Parliamentary Papers, cmd. 2169, pp. 125–8. PRO CAB 29/95 ICP 235A, conversation, 14 January 1922. PRO CAB 29/95 ICP 235A, Hardinge to Curzon, 3 January 1922. See PRO CAB 24/133 CP 3760; Hardinge Papers, vol. 45, Hardinge letters of 20 and 27 January 1922, Cambridge University Library. A.J.P.Taylor (ed.), Lloyd George: A Diary by Frances Stevenson, London, Hutchison, 1971, diary entry 10 October 1934, p. 283. DBFP, 1st series, vol. XX, no. 45, pp. 99–101. See H.Nicolson, Curzon: The Last Phase, London, Constable, 1934, pp. 273–4. See A.Sharp, ‘Lord Curzon and British policy towards the FrancoBelgian occupation of the Ruhr in 1923’, Diplomacy and Statecraft, 1997, vol. 8, pp. 83–96; G.H.Bennett, British Foreign Policy during the Curzon Period, 1919–1924, London, Macmillan, 1995, pp. 31–40; Orde, Great Britain and International Security, pp. 46–55. Jeannesson, Poincaré, pp. 411–14.

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45 46 47 48

49

50 51 52 53

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Adamthwaite, Grandeur and Misery, p. 83; S.Marks, ‘Poincaré-la-Peur: France and the Ruhr crisis of 1923’ in M.Alexander and K.Mouré (eds), Crisis and Renewal in Twentieth Century France, Oxford, Berghahn, 1999. I am very grateful to Professor Marks for an advanced copy of her chapter. M.Trachtenberg, Reparations in World Politics: France and European Economic Diplomacy 1916–1923, New York, Columbia University Press, 1980, pp. 376, 329; Marks, ‘Poincaré-la-Peur’. Curzon Papers, Mss. Eur F.112/312, Curzon’s speech to the Imperial Conference, 5 October 1923, India Office Library. See Jeannesson, Poincaré, pp. 413–14; Adamthwaite, Grandeur and Misery, pp. 113–15; Marks, ‘Poincaré-la-Peur’. Bell, Britain and France, pp. 142–9; Adamthwaite, Grandeur and Misery, pp. 102–6; Orde, Great Britain and International Security, pp. 55–6. For the best and most detailed account of the 1924 negotiations see S.Schuker, The End of French Predominance in Europe: The Financial Crisis of 1924 and the Adoption of the Dawes Plan, Chapel Hill, University of North Carolina Press, 1976. Adamthwaite, Grandeur and Misery, pp. 106–7; Orde, Great Britain and International Security, pp. 37–46, 68–80; R.Grayson, Austen Chamberlain and the Commitment to Europe: British Foreign Policy 1924– 1929, London, Frank Cass, 1997, p. 36. See MAE, Grande-Bretagne 57, Notes of 2 and 4 December 1924. See Orde, Great Britain and International Security, pp. 99–154; Grayson, Austen Chamberlain, pp. 51–5; Crowe and Corp, Our Ablest Civil Servant, pp. 476–84. Orde, Great Britain and International Security, pp. 9 9–15 4; Adamthwaite, Grandeur and Misery, pp. 120–1; Grayson, Austen Chamberlain, pp. 31–67. For those historians who subscribe to the limitation view see Orde, Great Britain and International Security, pp. 209–12; Bell, Britain and France, p. 151; J.Jacobson, Locarno Diplomacy: Germany and the West 1925–1929, Princeton, N.J., Princeton University Press, 1972, p. 379; H.Kissinger, Diplomacy, London, Simon and Schuster, 1995, pp. 273– 6. For those who argue for the alternative with varying degrees of commitment see F. Magee, ‘“Limited Liability”? Britain and the Treaty of Locarno’, Twentieth Century British History, 1995, vol. 6, pp. 1–22; E. Goldstein, ‘The evolution of British diplomatic strategy for the Locarno Pact, 1924–1925’ in M.L. Dockrill and B.J.C.McKercher (eds), Diplomacy and World Power: Studies in British Foreign Policy 1890– 1951, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1996, pp. 115–35; Grayson, Austen Chamberlain, pp. 32–3, 46–7, 280. ‘Not disinterested’ was a phrase used on several occasions by Chamberlain. For example, he minuted on 21 February 1925 that whereas in western Europe ‘we are a partner’ in eastern Europe ‘comparatively speaking…our role should rather be that of a disinterested amicus curiae.’ PRO FO 371/11064 W1252/9/98. Later Philippe Berthelot reported from Locarno on 6 October 1925 that Chamberlain was ‘not disinterested’ in Poland’s frontiers. MAE, Grande-Bretagne 84.

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For Chiefs of Staff views see M.Howard, The Continental Commitment: The Dilemma of British Defence Policy in the Era of Two World Wars, London, Penguin, 1972, p. 95 and notes. Hardinge Papers, vol. 45, Hardinge to Curzon, 5 May 1922 and Curzon to Hardinge, 2 May 1922. M.Folly, ‘British Government Attitudes to the USSR 1940–1949’, University of London PhD thesis, 1997. Taylor (ed.), Lloyd George, p. 214; D.Dutton, Austen Chamberlain: Gentleman in Politics, Bolton, Ross Anderson Publications, 1985, pp. 246–9; Grayson, Austen Chamberlain, pp. 57–9. Adamthwaite, Grandeur and Misery, pp. 112–13. MAE, Grande-Bretagne, 71. Note by René Massigli, 15 November 1924. Adamthwaite, Grandeur and Misery, pp. 82–8; Bell, Britain and France, pp. 132–9. A.Sharp, ‘The Foreign Office in eclipse, 1919–1922’, History, 1976, vol. 61, pp. 198–218. Bennett, British Foreign Policy, pp. 176–201 and D. Gilmour, Curzon, London, Papermac, 1995, pp. 535–7 advance an alternative view. E.Maisel, The Foreign Office and Foreign Policy 1919– 1926, Brighton, Sussex Academic Press, p. 129. Maisel, Foreign Office and Foreign Policy, p. 134. Kissinger, Diplomacy, p. 274; Bell, France and Britain, pp. 152–3. Jeanesson, Poincaré, pp. 117–8; Maisel, Foreign Office and Foreign Policy, p. 137; A.Chamberlain, Down the Years, London, Cassell, 1935, p. 227.

8

Britain, France and the League of Nations in the 1920s Ruth Henig

The fateful consequences of the inability of Britain and France to work together effectively either at the Paris peace conference or in the enforcement of the resulting peace treaties has been comprehensively covered in a number of recent studies.1 The failure of the two powers to reach agreement on the nature of the problems facing Europe after 1919 made it inevitable that their governments would pursue conflicting postwar strategies in pursuit of international peace. While France saw 66 million Germans as posing a major military threat to a declining French population of less than 40 million, Britain saw them as constituting a commercial opportunity which had to be firmly grasped if Europe was to stage a full economic recovery. While French statesmen were obsessed with the need to secure British assistance to counter future German aggression, many British leaders saw French military power, and not disarmed Germany, as the major threat to European stability. As Salvador de Madariaga, a member of the League of Nations Secretariat in the 1920s, so perceptively remarked, ‘it is not altogether impossible to bring the French and the British to see eye to eye—only their eyes are so different’.2 The consequences of these Anglo-French divisions were particularly serious for the development and effective functioning of the League of Nations. Little has been written about the constant power struggles at Geneva and at meetings in other European capitals, in the course of which the League’s two leading powers battled against each other for predominance. For the most part they succeeded only in thwarting each other’s policy initiatives and immobilising the League’s peace-keeping mechanisms. 3 As de Madariaga recalled in his memoirs, ‘everything went on as if, for lack of any common adversary, France and Britain had chosen the League as the arena in which to fight each other’.4

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The aim of this essay is therefore to examine the impact on the League of Nations of the different policies pursued by Britain and France in the early and mid 1920s, and to show the extent to which they undermined its capacity to operate effectively to prevent conflict or to promote the peaceful settlement of disputes. A second aim is to try to assess the extent to which the very existence of the League after 1919 made it more difficult for the two leading European powers to tackle the problems facing them. As F.S.Northedge reminds us, it was American President Woodrow Wilson’s insistence which pushed the European powers into a League organisation ‘entirely foreign to the diplomatic game as they had always played it’. 5 They were prepared to agree to this in return for continuing United States’ support in enforcing the peace settlement and in helping to promote economic recovery. Instead, they found themselves trying to make the new organisation work in the face of the United States’ refusal to join it, and with a host of new problems created by this situation. This widened further the divisions between the two governments in an international arena which had caught the enthusiastic attention of large sections of their electorates. Both governments were driven to express fulsome support for the League in public, whilst expressing deep cynicism and pessimism about its capacity to act in private. The result was a League which was gravely crippled by the defection of the United States and by Anglo-French disagreement, but which was presented to the public as the body which would prevent future war. I Various schemes for an international body to prevent another catastrophe like 1914 took shape during the First World War. In London, leading politicians and Foreign Office advisers shared the view of Prime Minister David Lloyd George that the most important priority was to establish on a permanent basis an international body of member states meeting regularly and to equip it with powers to force potential aggressors to the conference table.6 This projected League was to be an expanded and institutionalised version of the nineteenth century ‘Concert of Europe’ and would be powerful enough to prevent isolated terrorist acts, such as the Sarajevo murders of June 1914, from escalating into a Europe-wide conflagration. It would operate by means of agreed procedures designed to minimise and to settle international disputes. In 1918 the British Government

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established the Phillimore Commission to consider the scope and functions of a League of Nations. Its interim view in March 1918 was that the proposed organisation should operate as ‘a mediator and a conciliator’.7 It did not seek to outlaw war but it stressed the advantages of delay, the restraining effects of public opinion and the use of economic sanctions against an aggressor. Military measures were seen as a last resort, and must be left to the discretion of individual member states.8 The British Government thought the League should ensure that ‘no nation shall go to war with any other nation until every other possible means of settling the dispute shall have been fully and fairly tried’.9 The British model relied upon delay, the restraining power of public opinion and faith in cooperation amongst League members. French leaders did not share these assumptions. They believed that France had been invaded deliberately twice inside fifty years and that only an international body able to summon military force rapidly and to impose immediate economic boycotts to counter German and Habsburg military advances could have prevented war in 1914. A committee of fourteen leading French authorities on matters of international organisation envisaged not a collection of member states loosely bound by rules of procedure but an executive body which could enforce peace, if necessary by waging war. Member states would have to agree to use ‘economic, naval and military power against any nation’ as directed by the League’s executive, and the League was to build up its own military force ‘supplied by the various member states’ and serving under a permanent international general staff. It was the duty of individual League members to hold forces ‘at its disposition’ so as to ensure ‘the maintenance of peace by the substitution of Right for Force in the settlement of conflict’.10 As its chairman, Léon Bourgeois, an exPrime Minister and leader of the French delegation at the Hague peace conference in 1907, told Woodrow Wilson at Paris: ‘Without military backing in some force and always ready to act, our League and our Covenant will be filed away, not as a solemn treaty, but simply as a rather ornate piece of literature.’11 Even before the peace conference convened at Paris in January 1919 it was clear that British and French leaders had very different conceptions of the rôle and functions of a League of Nations, though for neither Lloyd George nor Georges Clemenceau, the French Prime Minister, was the establishment of the new body a high priority. The United States President, Woodrow Wilson, insisted that the drafting of a constitution for the League of Nations should take precedence over all other issues, but, although he chaired the League of Nations, Lloyd George was represented by his

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former Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs, Lord Robert Cecil and by South African Defence Minister Jan Christian Smuts. Clemenceau nominated Léon Bourgeois and Ferdinand Larnaude, neither of them leading French Government ministers in 1919. The commission met ten times in the first two weeks of February, 1919. Profound differences of Anglo-French and Anglo-American views soon arose about the principal rôles of the new body. Cecil and Smuts pressed for the League to take a lead in promoting disarmament, in preventing conflict and establishing procedures to resolve disputes by means of arbitration and conciliation. Bourgeois and Larnaude, with vigorous support from Paul Hymans, the Belgian Foreign Minister, emphasised the need for the League to be equipped with executive powers to call up members’ military forces at short notice and to order economic sanctions. Wilson shared British opposition to a League of this nature, and the most the French representatives could secure was the appointment of a permanent advisary commission to advise League members on naval and military issues. Member states retained the right to decide for themselves the extent of economic and military support they would offer to the League against an aggressor state. Wilson was concerned that the League should not become merely ‘an influential debating society’. His conception of the League was that its members should ‘covenant with each other mutually to defend their territories and their institutions against aggression’.12 Wilson believed that guarantees of political independence and territorial integrity had safeguarded the peace of South and Central America whilst European alliances were creating a devastating war. Now was the time to extend to the rest of the world, and particularly to Europe, the benefits of the American arrangement. In his view a league resting on guarantees of political independence and territorial integrity, was the opposite to the idea of ‘the balance of power’ which had always produced ‘aggression and selfishness and war’. 13 The French would probably support such guarantees but the British feared a proposal which might imply that ‘the frontiers of the signatory States, as they stood at the signing of peace, were regarded as being unalterable under all circumstances’.14 The British élite opposed rigid territorial guarantees as strongly as automatic economic or military sanctions but Cecil failed to remove the guarantee. Wilson, backed by the smaller powers insisted ‘there must be a provision that we mean business and not discussion. This idea…is the key to the whole Covenant.’15 Cecil did gain approval for an article allowingrevision and amendment but those League members with a stake in the new

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European territorial order, especially in eastern Europe, were unlikely to support any move towards territorial revision. The League Covenant adopted by a plenary session of the peace conference on 28 April 1919 incorporated a number of different approaches to contain and resolve future disputes between nations. The League’s two main bodies, the Council and the Assembly, would meet on a regular basis, enabling member states to deal with disputes or threatened disputes at a very early stage. It would promote the disarmament of its members assisted by a standing armaments commission of military experts from member states. It would guarantee the territorial integrity and political independence of members and deal with disputes according to set procedures, which might involve economic or, exceptionally, military sanctions. Members could take action to highlight potential trouble spots before they erupted into conflict, and the Assembly could ‘advise the reconsideration of treaties which have become inapplicable and the consideration of international conditions whose continuance might endanger the peace of the world’. The League would supervise the Danzig and Saar basin peace arrangements, the minorities agreements entered into by the new eastern European states and the mandates system embracing former German and Turkish colonies. Finally, it had a wide brief to coordinate and initiate a range of social, economic and cultural activities to relieve poverty and human suffering and promote international stability. To cope with these responsibilities the League had to establish priorities for action and ground rules governing interpretation, particularly relating to the extent of member involvement and the sequence of procedures. The League’s fundamental difficulty was a serious disagreement between its principal members about its main rôle. Lloyd George believed that if the new League was to succeed, it will not be because the nations enter into solemn covenants to guarantee one another’s territories or to go to war with rebellious powers on certain stated conditions, but because it constitutes the machinery by which the nations of the world can remain in continuous consultation with one another and through which they can arrive promptly at great decisions for dealing with all international problems as they arise.16 Many in the British Cabinet and amongst government officials and military advisers shared his opinion that the new League was fundamentally flawed and problematic’. A Government White Paper

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published in June 1919 stressed that article 10 ‘should be read with articles 11 and 19 which make it plain that the Covenant is not intended to stamp the new territorial settlement as sacred and unalterable for all time but, on the contrary, to provide machinery for the progressive regulation of international affairs in accordance with the needs of the future.’ While sanctions might be necessary and effective in certain, clearly defined situations, ‘the ultimate and most effective sanction must be the public opinion of the civilised world. If the nations of the future are in the main selfish, grasping and warlike, no instrument or machinery will restrain them’.17 Lloyd George hoped that in article 19 ‘we are setting up machinery capable of readjusting and correcting mistakes’18 and that should problems arise requiring ‘remedy…repair and…redress—the League of Nations will be there as a Court of Appeal to readjust crudities, irregularities, injustices’.19 In France a very different view prevailed. Many politicians and officials expressed a complete lack of confidence in the new League. Marshal Ferdinand Foch dismissed it as a ‘queer Anglo-Saxon fancy not likely to be of the slightest importance in practice’. 20 While French representatives on the League Commission were trying, and failing, to equip the League with executive powers and military force, Clemenceau was pursuing what he regarded as far more important goals, a Rhine frontier, German military disarmament and the construction of a strong Poland to the east of Germany. Fierce AngloAmerican opposition forced him to drop his insistence on the Rhine frontier and to accept instead a guarantee from the two powers that they would come to France’s aid if she was the victim of unprovoked aggression in the future. It was on this guarantee, and not on the provisions of the League of Nations, that Clemenceau rested his hopes for future French security. None the less, the League might be an additional safeguard for France and protect its potential new allies in eastern Europe such as Poland and the Czechoslovak state. The French had no enthusiasm for attempts to weaken the guarantee or sanctions provisions or to revise the peace settlement of 1919–20, and general disarmament was not their immediate or even mediumterm priority; the pressing need was to ensure that defeated Germany was thoroughly disarmed and demilitarised. France would retain sufficient military strength to enforce the treaty terms on Germany. Events in the United States reinforced Anglo-French differences. News of Wilson’s dramatic collapse at the end of September and reports of strong Republican opposition made American membership of the League doubtful. This forced the British Government to reconsider its own position regarding League membership. At a lunch

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in early November 1919 with Lord Balfour, Cabinet Secretary Maurice Hankey, the Prime Minister’s foreign affairs adviser, Philip Kerr, and the new Secretary-General of the League, Sir Eric Drummond, the view was expressed very strongly that ‘the League could not really exist if the United States was not a member…in the British view the basis of the League of Nations [would be] so changed by the abstention of the United States as to render the scheme unworkable’.21 In March 1920 the American Senate, at its second attempt, failed to ratify the Treaty of Versailles by the necessary two-thirds majority. Britain, which had agreed to undertake obligations of a far-reaching nature in return for the promise of American assistance in European reconstruction and in the enforcement of world-wide peace, would now have to assume the responsibilities accruing to the League’s leading naval and imperial power. It would face at best the benevolent neutrality of the United States and at worst its outright opposition. But as the Army Council warned, in February 1920, we cannot afford to regard America as a potential enemy, as the expenditure entailed by adequate preparations to fight her would be so vast as to be out of the question in the present state of the nation’s finances…it is imperative that our policy should be so directed as to eliminate any possibility of a rupture between the United States of America and the British Empire.22

II Britain stayed in the League, despite Lloyd George’s conviction that a League without the United States ‘would not be of the least use’ and that continued British membership of the League would handicap the Government in its attempts to counter American naval expansion.23 In the course of 1920, the new League came into being and began to operate quietly but purposefully at its Geneva headquarters. It enjoyed strong British public support—the League of Nations Union, which was established to popularise and to win support for the activities of the League, had 60,000 members by the end of 1920 and its Parliamentary Committee could boast the active support of 330 MPs.24 Lloyd George’s political position was increasingly insecure, and staying in the League was an easier political option than pulling out. At the same time, both Lloyd George and the Foreign Office wished to limit British obligations under the League and to emphasise its important rôle as a conciliator

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and mediator in the many post-war territorial and political disputes. As the Foreign Secretary, Lord Curzon, told the 1921 Imperial Conference: ‘We at the Foreign Office regard the League…as an invaluable instrument for discharging certain duties and solving certain problems with which our machinery is not adequate to deal.’ He cited as examples a recent League of Nations commission of investigation to Russia, and his own reference of the Aaland Islands dispute to the League. 25 However, obligations under articles 10 or 16 were recognised as being potentially onerous and fraught with difficulty. Smuts had considerable support not just from fellow empire representatives but from members of the British Government for his view that: ‘we shall have to drop article 10 of the Covenant…I have always been opposed to it and its so-called territorial guarantee. The methods of conciliation and arbitration, of publicity and creating a [moral?] atmosphere should be the only methods of the League—backed up by the boycott. And that will probably bring the U.S.A. in too.’26 However, the United States’ failure to ratify the peace settlement and to become a member of the League raised very different concerns in France. The treaty of mutual guarantee, under which the United States was to furnish military assistance to France in the event of unprovoked aggression, was never formally submitted to the Senate because of the hostile sentiments aroused by the Treaty of Versailles. The French Government had neither a Rhine frontier nor any prospect of American assistance in the face of future German attack. In these changed circumstances, with a declining population and heavy war debts, French efforts focused on a strict enforcement of the peace treaties and the construction of a network of east European alliances to replace the pre-war Franco-Russian alliance. The British guarantee was dependent on the American treaty and thus fell. 27 Would Britain agree to a free-standing pact of non-aggression, covering not just western Europe but eastern Europe as well? French leaders tried hard in 1921 to secure Lloyd George’s support for an Anglo-French alliance or a more general pact of non-aggression. At meetings between the French Prime Minister, Aristide Briand, and Lloyd George in December 1921 and January 1922, the former proposed an Anglo-French entente between the two powers, leading to an Entente Générate which would bind European nations to a general undertaking to refrain from aggression against each other. Lloyd George toyed with the prospect of working through such an accord generate, which might embrace both Germany and Russia, to replace the League, which contained neither of these powers.28 However, in the course of negotiations, Briand lost the

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confidence of his political colleagues, and was replaced by the former President of the Republic, Raymond Poincaré whose objective was to extract from Lloyd George very precise military guarantees of assistance which no post-war British government would conclude. The result was that under Poincaré’s inflexible leadership, the French Government sought security by other means: a rigid enforcement of the reparations and disarmament clauses of the Treaty of Versailles, the retention of a strong conscript army and powerful air force, a strengthening of France’s eastern European alliances and renewed interest in the guarantee and sanctions clauses of the Covenant. The French Government had originally viewed the League as a sop to Anglo-American idealism which would be largely irrelevant in achieving post-war European security. In the changed situation of 1921–2, the guarantees contained in article 10 and the provisions for economic and military sanctions might offer some substitute for the failure of the British and American governments to honour their 1919 agreements to France. With more precise guarantees and, in defined circumstances, more automatic sanctions the League might provide some security against future aggression. Thus French governments after 1921 sought to strengthen the very provisions of the Covenant which British governments sought to weaken. British delegates at Geneva argued for a more flexible and consultative League, their French counterparts sought to plug alarming ‘gaps’ in the guarantee scheme and sanctions clauses and to obtain from member states castiron assurances about the level of assistance they would provide in advance of hostilities breaking out. No British government would support any strengthening of the existing League machinery while the United States, Russia and Germany were all non-members. On the other hand, all French governments would try to prevent any revision of treaties or serious attempts at disarmament. As Northedge has argued, the effect of the failure of the United States to join the League was ‘to widen the gulf between British and French attitudes towards the peace, and thus to contribute to their fatal inability to act together when the great challenges to the League came in the 1930s’.29 III Between 1921 and 1925 two opposing sets of policies were pursued at Geneva. The British Government supported moves by the Canadian Government to remove Wilson’s guarantee provision, embodied in article 10, from the Covenant. Britain

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and the Dominions, each separately represented at Geneva, also supported Scandinavian moves to dilute the article 16 obligations to participate in economic and military sanctions. France and her east European allies—Poland, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia a n d Ro u m a n i a — s o u g h t t o t i g h t e n t h e L e a g u e ’ s c o e r c i v e provisions and incorporate additional measures of mutual assistance to be invoked in a crisis by executive action of the League Council. Canada always opposed Wilson’s territorial guarantee. Its premier, Sir Robert Borden, told the British empire delegation in April 1919, that he regarded article 10 as an unfair burden on countries which derived the least benefit from it, and that ‘it would be Canadian policy to seek alteration of Article 10 later’. 30 At the first League Assembly in 1920, and in 1921, Canada proposed ‘that Article 10 of the Covenant be and is hereby struck out’. A committee of jurists examined article 10 intensely and reported that the article merely contained ‘the governing principle to which all members of the League subscribe’ and that members were ‘not obliged to take part in any military action’. In the light of this interpretation, Canada in 1922 tried to amend rather than to remove article 10, asking the League Council to take into account political and geographical circumstances of member states in giving advice on how the obligations under article 10 should be fulfilled. Canada also pressed that members should not have to engage ‘in any active war without the consent of its parliament, legislature or other representative body’. By 1923, these two proposed amendments to article 10 were submitted as an ‘interpretive resolution’, and were supported by the League’s major powers, but many east European states abstained, and Persia voted against the resolution. Consequently, article 10 stayed in the Covenant, but it was clear that many League members supported Canada’s flexible interpretation of the nature of member states’ obligations under the article. As the chairman of the League of Nations Union, Gilbert Murray, commented in the Daily News in February, 1923, the obligation in article 10 is at once too widespread for any prudent nation to accept, and too vague for any prudent nation to bank upon. As the Covenant now stands, no nation would be really safe in acting on the supposition that, if it were suddenly attacked, the rest of the League would send armies to defend it.31

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The first League Assembly also considered a Scandinavian proposal to amend Article 16 to provide that, in the event of sanctions, members’ military and geographical situations should b e t a k e n i n t o c o n s i d e r a t i o n i n f r a m i n g t h e Co u n c i l ’ s recommendations, and that states who did not vote for sanctions should not be expected to apply them. Britain saw any exemptions as dangerous since this would undermine the mutual support of League members which enabled minor states to impose an economic blockade without encountering serious risk of retaliation by powerful neighbours. 32 Yet America’s defection made article 16’s objective, to prevent all commercial intercourse between a state who had broken the Covenant and any other state, whether a member of the League or not, difficult, if not impossible, to achieve. As Balfour, Britain’s first delegate to the League Council, pointed out in August 1920, ‘when the Covenant was drafted it was believed that the United States, Russia and eventually Germany would be members of the League’. How could the League compel these states to conform? 33 In response the Council set up an International Blockade Committee to examine the wording and consider the application of article 16, with representatives from Britain, France, Holland, Norway, Switzerland and Cuba. Its report to the 1921 Assembly acknowledged that a very rigid application of article 16 might place League members in very difficult situations. It proposed graduated economic sanctions increasing in severity if the offending state remained recalcitrant, and the amendment of certain parts of article 16. Accordingly, the 1921 League Assembly proposed four amendments to article 16, and outlined nineteen resolutions which should ‘constitute guidance to the Council and members of the League in connection with the application of article 16’. The rules sought to combine members’ right to decide for themselves whether or not a breach of the Covenant had occurred with the Council’s duty to draw up joint economic action once a breach had been established, and suggested that the measures to be prescribed should be ‘of increased stringency’, starting with the breaking-off of diplomatic relations. It was not possible to decide in advance and in detail what economic, commercial or financial measures could be taken in cases which might arise.34 Britain accepted the amendments to article 16. France did not. The amendments were left on the table, not formally adopted and yet furnishing a clear indication of the way in which many League members, including Britain, would interpret and carry out their

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obligations. France now sought to reduce the degree of flexibility which allowed member states to minimise their League obligations, and to try to ensure that in certain specified situations, a majority vote of the League Council could compel members to participate in economic or military sanctions. The 1923 Draft Treaty of Mutual Assistance resulted from the joint efforts of Lord Robert Cecil and a French military adviser, Colonel Réquin. Cecil sought to reduce French fears about possible ‘gaps’ in peace-keeping mechanisms to allow Britain and France to cooperate within the League and over disarmament. The mutual assistance scheme proposed a defensive agreement between all countries prepared to give assistance to an attacked state in accordance with a prearranged plan, on a regional basis to facilitate a general reduction in armaments. The British Government, Foreign Office or service departments, would never accept an increase in the likelihood of British involvement in economic or military sanctions not just in Europe but across the globe. Indignant and scathing memoranda attacking the proposals and spelling out their imperial implications fill the British archives with fears of operations of ‘unknown magnitude’ necessitating an increase in naval forces since ‘the British Navy…would certainly always be the first force to be called upon’.35 The scheme would not promote disarmament but the opposite. The British Government could reject the Draft Treaty, in the summer of 1924; it could not so easily ignore continuing French insecurity and its political consequences. In 1923 French and Belgian troops invaded the Ruhr and helped to trigger off hyper-inflation in the new Weimar Republic. American intervention, in the form of the Dawes committee, set to work to bring about German and thus European economic recovery, but France would only agree to the Dawes proposals if security issues were also addressed.36 One result of the London negotiations between the new British Labour Prime Minister, Ramsay MacDonald, and his French socialist counterpart, Edouard Herriot, was therefore the Geneva Protocol, a further attempt by the French Government to strengthen the coercive provisions of the League. MacDonald was the first British premier to attend the Assembly in 1924 but was rather vague about how League machinery could, or should, be reinforced. According to his diary: The newspapers had been announcing that I was to make a great pronouncement—and I had nothing prepared…I talked the situation over with some friends, went home to my hotel, and put down a few points. Herriot suggested a consultation

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but I thought that would be a mistake. It was a time for candid declarations and plain speaking.37 MacDonald believed that military alliances would not bring about security and that the League must be enlarged to include Germany and Russia. The main problem facing League members was ‘the problem of national security in relation to national armaments’. The solution could only be found in arbitration, and MacDonald added that ‘Articles 10, 13, 15 and 16 of the Covenant might well form themselves into a charter of peace if we would only apply them and fill them out.’38 Herriot agreed with MacDonald about the importance of arbitration. His suggestion was that a refusal to arbitrate could be regarded as a definition of aggression, and that an advance towards peace could be made by building on the three pillars of arbitration, security and disarmament. An Anglo-French resolution on 6 September 1924 called for a disarmament conference as soon as possible and the examination of the questions of security and reduction of armaments and of the provisions of the Covenant relating to the peaceful settlement of disputes by the relevant Assembly committees. With his obligation to Herriot discharged, and his words of wisdom delivered, MacDonald returned to London leaving Cabinet colleagues, Lord Parmoor and Arthur Henderson, to transform soothing generalities into precise commitments. The resulting Geneva Protocol met the same hostility and strong opposition from Foreign Office officials and military and naval experts as its predecessor. Sir Eyre Crowe, Permanent UnderSecretary at the Foreign Office, contemptuously dismissed efforts to ‘improve and render absolutely perfect and water-tight the League’s machinery for maintaining the peace of the world in moments of great crisis’ and argued that the Protocol would create ‘fresh causes of mistrust and…consequent dangers to peace’ as well as increasing the risk of conflict with America. 39 Meanwhile, the Labour Government faced defeat in the Commons over its policies towards Bolshevik Russia, and the country was soon plunged into a general election campaign in which the Geneva Protocol featured prominently. The Daily Express informed its readers rather sensationally two weeks before the election that ‘Great Britain has…parted under the Protocol with the control of her Fleet if a Socialist government is returned to power at the polls’, and two days later it declared that ‘every vote given for the Socialists is a vote for robbing Britain of her Fleet and handing it over to foreigners’.40

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MacDonald lost the election and the incoming Conservative Government, after lengthy deliberations, decided to reject the Protocol in March 1925, though even MacDonald could not have saved it. Its provisions to strengthen the Covenant by reinforcing articles 10 and 12–16 ran counter to the British objective, pursued doggedly since 1920, to make the application of League provisions more flexible and limited. Furthermore, Briand told the new Conservative Foreign Secretary, Austen Chamberlain, that the Protocol alone would not remove French feelings of insecurity. He wanted, in addition, a bilateral treaty with Britain to operate within the aegis of the Protocol.41 Once again, a new British Government was faced with a French demand for a security agreement either to supplement or to replace the Geneva Protocol. The resulting Locarno settlement of October 1925 was negotiated outside the framework of the League. The Locarno negotiations led to a set of agreements which partially met France’s minimum security objectives, whilst representing the maximum commitment to western Europe that the Conservative Government was willing to make.42 Viewed from a League perspective, what is interesting about Locarno is its compatibility, or otherwise, with existing League commitments and what it reveals about British and French attitudes to the League in 1925. In some respects, Locarno seemed to be the sort of regional pact that the French Government had wished to promote within the framework of the Geneva Protocol. The frontiers of western Europe were affirmed by France, Belgium and Germany and guaranteed by Britain and Italy. There were provisions for security against aggression, and for arbitration. However, no such guarantees were entered into in respect of Germany’s eastern frontiers. Instead of resting snugly within a well-ordered framework, the Locarno settlement stood out as a clearly defined supplement to an ambiguous Covenant. Britain was a party to arbitration treaties covering Germany’s western frontiers but not her eastern ones. What did this imply about the extent of Britain’s League obligations in eastern Europe? Britain agreed to support victims of aggression in western Europe, but the nature or extent of support was not specified and the act of aggression was not defined. Britain’s dominions had the option to support the agreements. None of them did, which raised serious questions about imperial defence commitments and the extent of dominion support for military engagements in Europe. For France eastern Europe raised the greatest uncertainties. What would be the situation if a dispute flared up on Germany’s eastern borders involving one of France’s allies, Poland or Czechoslovakia,

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and as a result fighting broke out in western Europe? France knew that Britain would be extremely reluctant to intervene in such circumstances. However, could Britain limit its continental liabilities in this way, and how did such attempts to cordon off danger zones square with Britain’s League obligations? Austen Chamberlain stressed that the Locarno settlement strengthened the League, notably by bringing in Germany. He anticipated further Locarnotype agreements covering eastern and south-eastern Europe but these never materialised. Meanwhile, the British Government had given notice that it regarded aggression in western Europe in a very different light from potential conflict in eastern Europe. As Sally Marks has observed, ‘Locarno was widely interpreted as a green light for Germany in the east.’43 Perhaps Northedge’s verdict on Locarno, that it was ‘totally at variance with the League system and went far to destroy it’ is a little harsh.44 None the less, the events of 1925 revealed very starkly the diametrically opposed views Britain and France had of the main rôles of the League. While France wanted it to coordinate collective action and to get member states to specify in advance how and in what ways they would counter different types of aggressive action, Britain wanted it to function as a flexible and consultative addition to more traditional diplomatic machinery. Leopold Amery spoke for many in Britain when he observed in February 1925 that our view of the League is definitely as a standing conference in order to smooth out international relations, not…a sort of scheme by which Powers are pledged to military action in defence of a particular status quo…the League is an International Debating Society.45 It was precisely because he did not want the League to be a debating society that Wilson had insisted on the insertion of article 10 into the Covenant. Since 1919, the French Government had been forced to acquiesce in the reinterpretation and implicit weakening of both articles 10 and 16, and to accept the rejection of two schemes linking disarmament proposals with clearly articulated additional measures of security. Now a guarantee of France’s western borders had finally been secured, but at a price which included weakening the territorial settlement in the east and allowing Germany into the League, where she could press for a general revision of the Versailles treaty and raise questions about the members’ lack of progress on measures of arms limitation. In the aftermath of Locarno, neither the British nor

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French governments could have confidence in the League’s capacity either to bring about general disarmament or to provide security for its members. IV The warm afterglow of the Locarno settlement and the speedy settlement of the Graeco-Bulgarian dispute which suddenly erupted in late 1925 served for a time to conceal the inability of the League to function effectively in the face of Anglo-French divisions. Both governments continued to stress to their war-weary electorates how committed they were to League principles and the peaceful settlement of disputes. By the end of 1927 the French League society had more than 120,000 members in 600 branches. By 1929 the British League of Nations Union approached a membership of a million. Austen Chamberlain noted already in 1927 ‘how profoundly pacific our people now are…I must bear this fact constantly in mind’. 46 Both governments paid lip-service to the importance of their League obligations and the priority they accorded to League membership. However, in private, ministers and their officials knew the limitations of the League and that, in the absence of a clear Anglo-French agreement, it offered little likelihood of collective economic or military action, effective co-ercion of a major power or the capacity to bring about disarmament. Some historians, notably A.J.P.Taylor, have dismissed the League as ‘an irrelevance’ in the inter-war period. However, no body which was able to command such a strong measure of public support across Europe can be dismissed in this way. The League came to embody the determination of the people of Britain and France not to become embroiled in another European conflict. At the same time, it also constituted the main arena in which the British and French governments battled to gain ascendancy for their particular approach to the prevention and peaceful settlement of disputes, and another forum in which to pursue their often conflicting national objectives. Having to fight such battles under the watchful gaze of the public increased the difficulties facing the two powers. And failure to reconcile their security and disarmament policies outside the League increased tensions and animosities at Geneva. The result was to undermine the capacity of the League to carry out its main rôles: guaranteeing the territorial integrity and political independence of its members, preventing conflict, settling disputes and promoting

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disarmament.When major crises arose in the 1930s, the public looked expectantly to the League to broker agreements and to impose peaceful solutions. None the less, League machinery could not operate effectively in the face of continuing Anglo-French differences about its rôles, differences which had in practice served to deadlock the operation of the League since the early 1920s. Notes 1

2 3

4 5 6 7

8 9 10 11 12

13 14 15

A.J.Sharp, The Versailles Settlement: Peacemaking in Paris in 1919, London, Macmillan, 1991; P.M.H.Bell, France and Britain 1900–1940: Entente and Estrangement, London, Longman, 1996; G H.Bennett, British Foreign Policy during the Curzon Period 1919–1924, London, Macmillan, 1995; M. Kitchen, Europe between the Wars, London, Longman, 1988; A.Orde, Great Britain and International Security 1920– 1926, London, Royal Historical Society, 1978. S. de Madariaga, Disarmament, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1929, p. 20. For general accounts of the League see F.S.Northedge, The League of Nations, Leicester, Leicester University Press, 1986; F.P.Walters, A History of the League of Nations, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1952; R. Henig (ed.), The League of Nations, Edinburgh, Oliver and Boyd, 1973. S. de Madariaga, Morning without Noon, London, Saxon House, D.C. Heath, 1973, p. 33. Northedge, League of Nations, p. 136. Public Record Office (PRO), CAB 23/42, Imperial War Cabinet, 24 December 1918. PRO FO 371/3439, Crowe to Balfour, 28 March 1918. The Phillimore Committee members were Sir Eyre Crowe, Sir William Tyrrell and Cecil Hurst from the Foreign Office, and three historians, Alfred Pollard, Julian Corbett and J.Holland Rose. PRO FO 371/3483, Phillimore Committee minutes, 1918. D.H.Miller, The Drafting of the Covenant, Volume II, New York, Putnam, 1928, p. 565. See the report of the committee appointed by the French Government to examine the basis on which a League of Nations might be considered, June 1918. PRO FO 371/3439. S.Bonsal, Unfinished Business, London, Michael Joseph, 1944, p. 49. R.S.Baker, Woodrow Wilson and World Settlement, Volume III, New York, Heinemann, 1923, p. 253. See also S.Tillman, Anglo-American Relations at the Paris Peace Conference, Princeton, N.J., Princeton University Press, 1961, p. 110. D.H.Miller, The Drafting of the Covenant, Volume I, New York, Putnam, 1928, pp. 41–4. A.Zimmern, The League of Nations and the Rule of Law, London, Macmillan, 1936, p. 198. Miller, Drafting of the Covenant, I, pp. 158–9.

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17 18 19 20 21 22 23

24 25 26 27 28 29 30

31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38

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G.Egerton, ‘Ideology, diplomacy and international organisation; Wilsonism and the League of Nations in Anglo-American relations, 1918–1920’ in B.J.McKercher (ed.), Anglo-American Relations in the 1920s: The Struggle for Supremacy, London, Macmillan, 1991, p. 35. Ibid., p. 41; Parliamentary Papers, Government White Paper of 1919, ‘The Covenant of the League of Nations with a Commentary Thereon’, and. 151. Hansard Parliamentary Debates, 5th series, HC, vol. 114, c. 2937. Hansard Parliamentary Debates, 5th series, HC, vol. 118, c. 1054. A.Adamthwaite, Grandeur and Misery: France’s Bid for Power in Europe 1914–1940, London, Arnold, 1995, p. 53. Lloyd George Papers, F 12/2/3, 5 November 1919, House of Lords Library. Documents on British Foreign Policy 1919–1939, 1st series, vol. VI, pp. 1054–5. See Lord Riddell, Intimate Diary of the Peace Conference and After, 1918– 1923, London, Gollancz, 1933, p. 255; PRO CAB 32/3, verbatim record of the Imperial Conference of 1921, Lloyd George’s speech at the opening meeting. D.Birn, The League of Nations Union 1918–1945, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1981, pp. 24, 48. By 1926 individual membership had increased tenfold to 600,000. PRO CAB 32/3. Smuts to Cecil, 14 January 1921. Cecil Mss, Add. 51076, British Library. See the contribution of Anthony Lentin to this volume. For details of negotiations and proposed agreements see file headed ‘Proposed Agreement between European Countries to refrain from Acts of Aggression: Genoa’, PRO CAB 21/239. Northedge, League of Nations, p. 88. B.Glazebrook, Canada at the Paris Peace Conference, London, 1942, pp. 67–71. For a full account of Canadian League policies see R.Veatch, Canada and the League of Nations, Toronto, Toronto University Press, 1975. For material on article 10 and how it was viewed by the Canadian Government and the British Foreign Office see PRO FO 371/9418. PRO FO 371/5484. 4th meeting League Council’s 8th Session, 30 July-5 August 1920, p. 25. See reports of the League’s Blockade Committee and 3rd Committee of the 1921 Assembly, the texts of Assembly resolutions and amendments. PRO FO 371/7054 (562) and FO 371/7055 (566). PRO FO 371/9418, Admiralty Memorandum, 15 February 1923. See also PRO FO 371/10568. See the contribution of Alan Sharp to this volume. D.Marquand, Ramsay MacDonald, London, Jonathan Cape, 1977, p. 352. 6th Plenary Meeting of 1924 Assembly, 4 September 1924. Assembly Records, pp. 41–6.

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PRO FO 371/10570, Crowe Memorandum on the Geneva Protocol, 17 November 1924. 15 October 1924. PRO FO 371/10572, Record of a Conversation between Chamberlain and Briand at Rome, 9 December 1924. For more detailed assessments of the Locarno agreements see Orde, Great Britain and International Security, J.Jacobson, Locarno Diplomacy: Germany and the West 1925–1929, Princeton, N.J., Princeton University Press, 1972; R.Grayson, Austen Chamberlain and the Commitment to Europe, London, Frank Cass, 1997. S.Marks, The Illusion of Peace: International Relations in Europe 1918– 1933, London, Macmillan, 1976, p. 71. Northedge, League of Nations, p. 97. PRO FO 371/10572, Meeting Committee of Imperial Defence, 13 February 1925. Chamberlain to Miles Lampson, 11 April 1927. Austen Chamberlain Papers, AC 54/1/316, Birmingham University Library.

9

The search for disarmament Anglo-French relations, 1929–1934 Carolyn Kitching

The years 1929–34 marked a watershed in Anglo-French relations in the inter-war period. The close cooperation of the Chamberlain-Briand years dissolved under the impact of the World Depression, the revival of ultranationalism in Germany and the fundamental issues posed by the World Disarmament Conference at Geneva between 1932 and 1934. Since the Treaty of Versailles, Britain and France, sometimes reluctantly, sought to come to terms with the German problem by integrating Germany into a system of European or international security. The British preferred a loose system, epitomised by the Treaty of Locarno, the French a tight system based on the League of Nations and their eastern alliances. The French rejection of further disarmament negotiations on 17 April 1934 marked the end of the quest to accommodate Germany and an overt return to traditional balance of power politics. Not surprisingly, it provoked a severe if temporary downturn in Anglo-French relations and encouraged a rapprochement between Britain and Germany. In essence, the Anglo-French relationship in the years 1929–1934 was acted out in public at Geneva, in the world disarmament negotiations. The conference was the finale of one of the dramas which had been played since the signing of the Treaty of Versailles; the search for a multi-lateral disarmament agreement. There were, of course, many factors which influenced the steady decline in relations between the major powers, but the failure of the Disarmament Conference focused attention on the central issue of the inter-war years; the failure to solve the apparently insoluble equation of French security and German equality. I Disarmament became a priority in the search for security following the First World War because, in the eyes of many leading politicians, the arms-race itself was seen as the chief cause of the war. The search

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for a multi-lateral disarmament agreement officially began with the signing of the Treaty of Versailles. The Preamble to Part V of the Treaty, the Disarmament Clauses, declared that ‘in order to render possible the initiation of a general limitation of the armaments of all nations, Germany undertakes to observe the military, naval and air clauses which follow’. In fact, Germany was allowed to retain an army of no more than 100,000 men, and was prohibited from possessing ‘aggressive weapons’ such as tanks, heavy guns over 105 mm, battleships over 10,000 tons, military aircraft, poison gas and submarines. The navy was restricted numerically to six battleships, six light cruisers, twelve destroyers and twelve torpedo boats, with a maximum personnel of 15,000; the general staff was abolished; the military training of civilians prohibited, and strict regulations applied to all military establishments. When presented with these terms, the Germans asked for clarification of the Preamble. On behalf of the Allies, the French leader, Georges Clemenceau, replied that the Allied requirements in regard to German armaments were not made solely ‘with the object of rendering it impossible for Germany to renew her policy of military aggression’ but also as the first step ‘towards the general reduction and limitation of armaments’ which it was ‘one of the first duties of the League of Nations to promote’.1 However, a ‘general limitation of the armaments of all nations’ was infinitely more difficult to achieve than was the enforced disarmament of Germany, for whilst many of the peacemakers paid lip-service to the argument that the arms-race was a prime cause of the First World War, in their hearts they believed otherwise, namely that, ‘men do not fight because they have arms, they have arms because they deem it necessary to fight’.2 This argument emphasises the need for security and stability as a pre-requisite for any agreement to reduce the level of armaments and helps highlight one of the major dilemmas of the inter-war period. A reduction, if not the total elimination of armaments was proclaimed to be vital to achieve security among nations, but the absence of that security made nations reluctant to agree to anything approaching major reductions. Thus Germany was disarmed, according to the victors of the First World War, in order to facilitate that reduction in armaments which would ensure that a repeat of that carnage was impossible. However, whilst one side of the armsrace argument appeared to apply to Germany—arms-races cause wars—the victors, especially France, clung to the other—only when they felt secure would they agree to reduce the level of their armaments.

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For France this search for security was to dominate her relations with the European powers. The new order promised by the Treaty of Versailles—a comprehensive system of collective security—failed to reassure her that Germany would not rise and threaten her once again. The Covenant of the League certainly appeared to offer such reassurance, but it failed to provide the means to ensure its implementation.3 There was no definite obligation for members to participate in military measures, no provision for an international force, and a unanimity rule within the Council provided a perfect excuse for those unwilling to fulfil their obligations to escape doing so. With the United States’ failure to join the new world order, including her withdrawal from the proposed Anglo-American guarantee of French security, France remained exposed to doubt and fear. Throughout the inter-war period France continued to seek some form of commitment from her strongest potential ally, Britain, in order to deter future German aggression. Britain, however, consistently refused to make any such commitment; the most she was willing to offer was the somewhat insubstantial commitment contained in the Treaties of Locarno. II The foregoing brief analysis of the disarmament debate is, of course, an over-simplification; men do not have arms solely ‘because they deem it necessary to fight’, they have arms because arms symbolise power.4 However, it illustrates one facet of the background against which international tensions ebbed and flowed during the inter-war years. The Allies’ apparent lack of commitment to the reduction of the level of their armaments was a major factor in Germany’s growing resentment; Germany was never likely to accept military inferiority, but the absence of real progress towards that general reduction promised in the Treaty of Versailles served only to increase Germany’s bitterness and desire for revision of the Treaty. With the advent of Ramsay MacDonald’s second British Labour Government in June 1929 there was reason for optimism in AngloFrench relations. It was not that the new Cabinet members were pro-French, quite the reverse. MacDonald himself saw the French as a major stumbling block in the search for disarmament, and maintained that French diplomacy was ‘crooked’ and ‘an ever-active influence for evil in Europe’,5 and Labour party policy at that time was described by one of the new Foreign Secretary’s advisers as

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‘anti-French, pro-German’.6 The hope lay rather in the Government’s belief in both the League of Nations and in the principle of disarmament. Thus, while MacDonald employed his favoured personal diplomacy to improve Anglo-American relations, his new Foreign Secretary, Arthur Henderson, set to work to improve Britain’s record of support for the League. The French, however, did nothing to improve MacDonald’s opinion of them. The improvement in Anglo-American relations, which had deteriorated so badly during the 1927 Coolidge Naval Conference, led to the calling of a conference in London in January 1930 to discuss further reductions in the naval armaments of the five major powers. The Japanese accepted the joint British and American invitation, but the French and Italians proved more difficult to convince. The French had refused to attend the Coolidge Naval Conference in 1927 on the grounds that they believed disarmament to be indivisible; there was, in their opinion, no sense in discussing naval reductions in isolation. The Italians, for their part, arrived in London with ‘no programme but just a ratio with the “strongest continental power”’,7 which, in this case, meant parity with France. The French refused to recognise the Italian claim to parity, and set their own requirements at a level which Britain judged to be unreasonably high. The French position was that ‘either they must retain their present margin over Italy or else have some guarantee of security in its place’.8 They wanted a mutual guarantee which committed the signatories to more than mere consultation in the event of aggression, a guarantee which Britain still refused to consider.9 To British eyes, France seemed determined not to reach a FivePower Agreement at the London Conference. Here was evidence of French plotting with the Japanese in order to undermine the conference, 10 and articles in the French press relating to AngloAmerican proposals to go over the Italians’ heads in order to reach agreement, were apparently designed purely to infuriate the Italian dictator, Benito Mussolini. 11 MacDonald, in fact, concluded that France had no intention of reaching an agreement to limit her naval armaments; rather she was taking steps to enable her to fight Italy. 12 When Briand informed MacDonald that France could make no further commitment to reduction until the issue of security was addressed, MacDonald declared that ‘Security has become the most brazen faced word in the language. She is a French strumpet.’13 For their part, the French maintained that the ‘Anglo-Saxons’ were ‘trying to disarm France to the advantage of Germany and Italy’.14 From a French perspective, the Americans and British were

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attempting to address their own security needs, without taking account of those of France. She, therefore, felt justified in gearing her demands to her own needs, and a Mediterranean guarantee pact would go some way to answering those needs. Anthony Adamthwaite succinctly sums up the negotiations as resembling a ‘dialogue of the deaf’.15 MacDonald repeatedly assured the French that their fears were groundless, but the French believed that he was merely manoeuvring ‘to reduce Conference difficulties to a Franco-Italian conflict so as to hide the Franco-British clash and throw on us the responsibility for a rupture’.16 Certainly, many felt that France was responsible for the impasse in Franco-Italian negotiations; the British Foreign Office, however, warned against laying all the blame at her door. Sir Robert Vansittart, the Permanent Under-Secretary, posed the question of whether France or Italy would be ‘most useful to us for furthering the idealistic policies which we have at heart and for co-operating with us in the everyday problems of post-war Europe’.17 To avoid antagonising the French, therefore, ‘Latin incompatibility’ was blamed for the failure to reach agreement. 18 Henderson’s efforts to effect a compromise between the French and Italian positions culminated in the so-called Franco-Italian Bases of Agreement of 11 March 1931, but there was no solid base to the agreements, largely because the French naval chiefs ‘prevented any Franco-Italian rapprochement’, 19 and they eventually broke down. The London Naval Conference was, however, deemed to have been successful in limiting the naval armaments of Britain, America and Japan. Unlike the Coolidge Conference of 1927 the governments of both Britain and America had overruled their respective Admiralties; political will had overruled military ambition. However, this was purely a naval agreement between three powers. The longawaited conference to try to agree to limit all classes of armaments of all the Powers was going to be a much more difficult proposition. I II The optimism which accompanied the Second British Labour Government to power in June 1929 was, however, shortlived. The Wall Street Crash of October marked the beginning of a financial crisis which was to have serious repercussions across the world. Political stability was undermined, which in turn increased perceptions of insecurity between the powers. The situation worsened

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in March 1931 when Germany announced that she proposed to institute a Customs Union between herself and Austria. This supposedly purely economic arrangement inevitably increased French fears of a possible Anschluss. In Britain, the deterioration in the worldwide financial situation led directly to the fall of MacDonald’s minority Labour Government. His decision to remain as head of a National, though actually Conservative-dominated, administration had grave repercussions for Britain’s domestic and foreign policies, including the disarmament question. Henderson, the committed disarmer and president-elect of the Disarmament Conference was not only out of office, but his already difficult relationship with MacDonald was exacerbated by the sense of betrayal felt by the majority of the Labour party. In France, the economic depression did not bite as quickly as elsewhere; it was not until the end of 1931 that its worst effects were felt. Industrial production fell by 31 per cent from its 1929 level, and although five successive Radical cabinets made major reductions in government spending, the budgetary deficit continued to grow to more than 11.5 billion francs.20 The chief victim of the policy of deflation was national defence. France was also much affected by the impact of the Depression on her neighbours; Germany and Britain were both very seriously shaken much earlier. British foreign policy became much more focused on economic interests, with a consequent weakening of political influence. Weimar Germany was ‘plunged into internal convulsions’ which only served to increase French fears.21 France’s attempts to improve relations with Germany through economic rapprochement served only to highlight the distrust which existed between the two powers, and when, in December 1932, Prime Minister Edouard Herriot was forced to yield to British and American pressure to resume payment of war debts, her sense of isolation increased. Ironically, the economic depression in Germany had begun to lift before the end of 1932, but this was too late to affect the international scene, and too late to ‘restrain Germany from turning to Hitler’.22 Even without other pressures surrounding the participants at the opening of the Disarmament Conference, the diversity of the ambitions of those taking part did not augur well for its success. Britain, for example, stuck rigidly to her position that she alone had disarmed to the limit of her national security, and, in fact, at a Cabinet meeting on 15 December 1931 it was suggested that ‘it would be inadvisable at the outset for [Britain] to take any active initiative’ and that in any conversations with the French and German governments it was important to avoid committing herself to one

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side or the other. 23 Rather than considering reductions, the Air Minister, the Marquess of Londonderry, sought an increase in his own area. ‘We are bound to claim at Geneva’, he told a Cabinet meeting on 9 December 1931, ‘full theoretical parity with the world’s strongest Air power’ which was France. 24 In fact, the French had made substantial reductions in all their armed forces; military reform legislation of 1927–8 had led to significant reductions in the French army, and between 1931 and 1934 military spending was reduced by more than 25 per cent overall. The violent objections of Generals Maurice Gamelin and Maxime Weygand, for example, had little impact on the French Government; 25 as in Britain, the reductions were a direct result of the economic situation rather than part of the structured disarmament demanded by the Treaty of Versailles. Equally, as in Britain, public opinion was firmly behind the drive towards achieving a disarmament agreement. Pacific sentiment in France was strong; the unfolding events in Germany served only to increase the public belief that confrontation must be avoided. 26 Shortly after Londonderry voiced his opinion, the Cabinet Committee charged with supervising the remaining work of preparation for the Conference posed the question as to whether Britain was ‘prepared to pay the price which may be the only means of bringing about a reduction in French armaments’. 27 The price which they were contemplating was some kind of guarantee, in addition to the Locarno guarantees—a Mediterranean Locarno, for example—and failing that, ‘a further alternative proposal of a somewhat shadowy kind, namely the creation of an international force’.28 This was, of course, exactly the kind of commitment which Britain did not want to make. MacDonald’s view was that ‘we need at Geneva a policy quietly pursued without turning off our way to right or left’29 which served only to demonstrate that the former champion of disarmament via security, was prepared to make no concessions to achieve that essential security. Public opinion, he believed, would, in fact, support a policy based on the mere recitation of the unilateral arms reductions which Britain had made since 1919.30 The prospects for the Disarmament Conference appeared bleak indeed; there was to be no offer of any additional security for France, without which she could never agree to further arms reductions, and without such reductions Germany would never agree to remain bound by the disarmament clauses of the Treaty of Versailles. The conference eventually began on 2 February 1932, and the Draft Convention, over which the League of Nations Preparatory Commission had toiled for five years, in order to produce a basis of

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agreement, was virtually ignored, each country preferring to put forwardits own disarmament plan.31 For France, the Prime Minister, André Tardieu, at least, accepted the Draft Convention as a basis for agreement and suggested that it could be complemented by the creation of an international force, the prohibition of bombing, the internationalisation of civil aviation, the protection of civilian populations, compulsory arbitration, the strengthening of the League and international control of the execution of all agreements concerning armaments. Countries owning heavy artillery, submarines over an agreed tonnage, capital ships over 10,000 tons or with guns over 8" calibre, and bombers exceeding a weight to be specified, would be permitted to use these weapons only in selfdefence or on behalf of the League. The use of poison gas and incendiary and bacteriological weapons would be forbidden.32 This was, of course, quite a substantial list to add to a discussion document, but France, naturally, did not expect all of these demands to be met. The real objectives of the ‘Tardieu plan’ were to enable the French demand for security to dominate the discussions and to postpone the question of concessions to Germany until after the French elections scheduled in May. 33 When the British Foreign Secretary, Sir John Simon, pointed out that British opinion prevented the Government from entering new continental commitments and suggested that it was rather doubtful whether the ‘French thesis’ could be usefully discussed, Tardieu did not insist that his proposals be given full consideration. 34 The proposals were useful election propaganda and a valuable bargaining counter, but little more. For Britain, Simon put forward a proposal for qualitative disarmament, under which all aggressive weapons should be abolished. His proposals received widespread support, but the difficult question of the definition of ‘aggressive’ weapons led to the formation of a sub-committee to discuss the question, which in turn led to the slowing down of all progress on the proposal. In fact, progress slowed so much that nothing had been achieved by the time the conference broke for Easter. At a British Cabinet meeting on 21 March, it was pointed out that when the conference reassembled after Easter a discussion would take place on the respective French and German proposals and it would be necessary for Britain to make a general statement of policy. Simon reminded his colleagues that Germany would press her claim for equality while France would deny that Germany had any case at all for claiming to be released from Part V of the Treaty of Versailles. More significantly, France would maintain that she was perfectly willing to disarm given the

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right terms, and that these terms were contained in such ideals as the creation of a super-state at Geneva, and Simon pointed out that ‘it seemed hardly possible that we should be able to keep aloof from this violent clash of ideals when the time came’.35 The British Cabinet consistently over-estimated France’s demands for security; the creation of a super-state was not what she was seeking, but rather a firm guarantee of her security in relation to Germany. Throughout much of the conference France was willing to accept rather less in the way of compensation than a super-state, or even an Anglo-French alliance or a military back-up to Locarno, providing the provisions for verification in the disarmament convention were tight enough.36 It was, of course, difficult for France to define her security needs; they could not be identified until Germany had made her demands clear, and the Germans followed a policy of reacting to the proposals of the other powers, rather than putting forward their own proposals. It was always more advantageous for them, both on a diplomatic and military level, to declare that the other powers’ proposals were not enough, rather than to formulate their own proposals.37 However, political events within Germany largely dictated her foreign policy; on 24 April 1932, at provincial elections in Prussia, Bavaria, Württemburg, Anhalt and Hamburg, the extreme right-wing Nazis made considerable gains and Chancellor Heinrich Brüning made a desperate attempt to strengthen his position by returning from Geneva with an agreement securing equality of rights for Germany. On 26 April, Brüning, in conversation with MacDonald and the American Secretary of State, Henry Stimson, put forward his proposals, prior to a meeting on 29 April at which Prime Minister Tardieu was to be present. At Stimson’s villa at Bessinges, Brüning demanded equality of treatment—not equality of armaments—and insisted that he would be satisfied with a reduction in the period of service of the Reichswehr from twelve years to six, and the transfer of Germany’s obligations under Part V of the Treaty of Versailles to a Disarmament Convention which might last for ten years. He proposed a reduction in the armed forces of France—though not to the German level— through the abolition or restriction of ‘particularly aggressive’ weapons, in return for which, he would consider an agreement along the lines of the Tardieu plan for an international force, with the ultimate objective of abolishing the weapons under its control.38 Brüning’s proposals were, in the circumstances, very moderate. In the short term it satisfied Germany’s claim for equality, at the same time guaranteeing France’s military superiority in Europe

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for the duration of the agreement. It closely matched the proposals which France had put forward, albeit omitting the increased security pledges from Britain included in the latter proposals. Whilst MacDonald and Stimson did not specifically accept the plan, they both agreed that the discussions had helped ‘towards immediately clearing away some of the fundamental obstacles towards ultimate agreement’. 39 Any chance of the Brüning Plan being successful depended on its acceptability to France. Unfortunately, Tardieu was unable to attend the meeting planned for 29 April, due to a severe attack of laryngitis (real or diplomatic, depending on the source), and two days later his Government was defeated in the first round of the French general elections. Whether Brüning’s plan would have been accepted by Tardieu is, of course, open to speculation. It is difficult to see how he could have agreed to the proposals as they stood. Although he had come to realise that continued French domination of Europe was impracticable and that a prostrate Germany was as dangerous to France as a militaristic one,40 he felt it necessary to gain security compensations from Britain, and perhaps America, if he was to agree to a settlement on the basis of Brüning’s proposals. Tardieu was worried that concessions on the German claim to equality of rights might cause his defeat in the French elections, and appears to have been hoping for a consultative pact with Britain, plus an assurance from the Americans that they would not interfere with a course of action determined by the League. 41 It is, perhaps, just conceivably possible that if Britain had been willing to give Tardieu the guarantees he required, or give similar guarantees to both France and Germany, an agreed solution to the disarmament problem might well have been possible at this point. However, this appears highly unlikely; there was insufficient time for Tardieu to have presented such a solution to the French people prior to his defeat, even if such a hardliner could have brought himself to accept a compromise in the middle of an election campaign. The possibility of Britain making such a commitment was equally remote. For their part, the British apparently attached so little importance to Brüning’s proposals that there was no mention of them whatsoever in any official documents. While MacDonald may have perceived the proposals as clearing away some of the obstacles, the major obstacle, some kind of British guarantee to France, still remained. It is possible that he preferred to let the chance die with Tardieu’s defeat rather than be forced to address the problem. Both he and Tardieu must have been well aware that Brüning’s failure to

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secure an agreement would ensure his dismissal, and that his replacement would be much less likely to compromise over Germany’s demands. MacDonald, however, appeared to adopt a much more sanguine view of Germany’s increasingly hard-line stance than France42 where German re-armament and violations of the Treaty of Versailles were followed ‘obsessively’ by French intelligence. 43 Despite the more conservative nature of the new Cabinet, following Brüning’s dismissal as Chancellor and his replacement by Franz von Papen, German disarmament policy remained fundamentally unchanged. Apart from von Papen’s insistence that the negotiations at Geneva be speeded up and that Germany pursue a more active policy there, the main difference between his approach and Brüning’s was his vigorous espousal of a Franco-German rapprochement.44 The new Minister of Defence, General Kurt von Schleicher, hoped that an arrangement could be reached with the French which would allow some of the restrictions on German disarmament to be lifted.45 In France, Tardieu had been replaced as President du Conseil by Herriot, but the change in personnel did not lead to any great change in policy, although Herriot did desire a Franco- German reconciliation, and was under pressure from the Socialists for a 25 per cent cut in the military budget as part of their price for cooperation with the Government. However, these changes in government personnel did nothing to give impetus to negotiations at Geneva. Any progress towards greater rapprochement between France and Germany required some indication that Britain was willing to take on a security commitment to equate French security with German equality, and this was not forthcoming. The conference became bogged down during the summer of 1932, resulting in von Papen’s decision to withdraw from the Conference on 23 July on the grounds that no effective progress had been made towards an agreement securing equality of rights. Both Britain and France recognised that an agreement without German participation was not possible, and were gradually forced to accept that this participation was dependent on going some way to meet their demands, in particular, equality of rights which were conceded on 11 December.46 Once the other major powers had officially acknowledged Germany’s claim to equality of rights, she agreed to return to the conference. Her motives for so doing are, of course, open to question but not to have done so would have pointed the finger of blame for its failure firmly in her direction, and one thread which ran

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throughout the policies of all the powers taking part in the conference was that its failure should not be attributable to them. Before the Conference re-convened a number of political changes occurred within Europe, the most significant being the appointment of the Nazi leader, Adolf Hitler, as German Chancellor on 30 January 1933. Yet there was no indication that German foreign policy would change, for the Conservative Baron Constantin von Neurath had been reappointed Foreign Minister to ensure continuity. Another change in government had also taken place in France. Herriot had been defeated in the Chamber on 14 December 1932 and, after a short ministry headed by Joseph Paul-Boncour, Edouard Daladier became President du Conseil with Paul-Boncour at the Quai d’Orsay. The new Premier was the leader of the left wing of Herriot’s party, and his approach to the German problem was similar to, though more flexible than, that of his predecessor. He was sympathetic to the idea of an understanding with Germany—even a Germany under Hitler—and rejected a policy of uncompromising nationalism, no concessions to Germany and total reliance on the French alliance system. He placed more emphasis on the conciliatory aspect of Radical-Socialist foreign policy than did Herriot, though he was aware of the possible dangers to France of a Nazi government in Berlin and wanted to move closer to Britain, Russia and Italy.47 IV The conference re-opened on 2 February 1933, but procedural wrangling ensured that no immediate progress was made. PaulBoncour still hoped that a disarmament convention might be negotiated on the basis of his own plan of 14 November, which had relied heavily on the security aspect.48 The other powers were, as usual, divided in their views, but, as had been apparent for some time, any agreement on the basis of the French plan was dependent on British support. If Britain had been willing to increase her continental commitments, possibly through adhesion to a mutual assistance pact favoured by the Italians, an agreement might have been reached. Britain was the one power acceptable to both France and Germany as mediator; she could assure France of additional guarantees of support and she could assure Germany that she would use her influence to make French policy more conciliatory. It had always been clear that France wanted Britain to engage herself more actively in European politics, while the Germans had maintained

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for some time that they preferred to enter into a European pact if it had a British signature.49 Moreover, if Britain was successful in her mediation, she would automatically strengthen her own security. However, in a speech to the General Commission on 3 February, Anthony Eden, Under-Secretary of State and acting British delegate at Geneva, declared that Britain could undertake no fresh commitments in Europe. He made no allusion to a general consultative pact and suggested that existing guarantees of security were sufficient to justify a ‘real and immediate’ reduction in armaments. Thus his speech amounted to a rejection of the French proposals—though he denied this to Paul-Boncour.50 At the beginning of March, Eden warned Simon that the conference was on the verge of collapse. He, along with Sir Alexander Cadogan of the Foreign Office, and Britain’s military adviser, General A.C.Temperley, drew up a draft plan which MacDonald presented to the conference on 16 March 1933. The plan was in two parts, the first of which dealt with security and included a consultative pact which laid down procedures to be followed in the event of a breach of the Kellogg Pact of 1928. Part II dealt with disarmament and included, for the first time, tables of actual figures of effectives, guns, tanks, ships and planes, although, significantly, no figures were given for the level allowed to Britain herself. Armies on the continent of Europe would be standardised along the lines of the Paul-Boncour plan on the basis of short-term service of eight months. Mobile land guns would be restricted to a maximum calibre of 105mm; coastal guns would be restricted to the size of the largest naval gun, 406mm. Tanks with an unladen weight of over 16 tons would be prohibited, and all prohibited matériel would be destroyed within three years of the convention coming into force. Naval armaments would be kept at the levels of the Washington and London naval treaties until the projected naval conference of 1935, though in the meantime France and Italy were to adhere to the London Naval Treaty. Aerial bombardment would be prohibited ‘except for police purposes in outlying districts’ and military aircraft restricted in number while the possibility of abolishing all military aviation and internationalising civil aviation was investigated. Chemical, incendiary and bacteriological warfare were to be prohibited and a Permanent Disarmament Commission established to supervise the execution of the convention as a whole. The convention would replace the disarmament articles of the peace treaties and would last for five years, after which time it would be replaced by a new one.51

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On the security side, unlike previous British disarmament projects, the MacDonald Plan contained a provision for an international consultativepact. In the event of a breach or threatened breach of the Kellogg Pact, a conference could be called at the request of any five of the parties to the convention provided that one was a major power. The object of the conference would be to agree upon steps to be taken in the event of a threatened breach of the pact or, if a breach had occurred, to define the aggressor. To be valid the decisions of the conference had to be accepted by all the major powers and by a majority of the other participating governments. There was, however, no provision for sanctions. The MacDonald Plan went a long way towards meeting the German demands for equality of rights except in the air. However, having apparently addressed one side of the problem, the Plan ignored the other—the French demand for security. There were no effective provisions for compliance; the consultative pact proposed under part I of the convention, was much weaker than that suggested by Paul-Boncour in November 1932. In particular, there was no provision for regular, periodic and automatic on-the-spot investigation, and without such measures the French would not accept the military clauses which gave advantages to Germany. The Plan was generally well received by the Conference delegates, the consensus being that it formed, at least, the basis for discussion.52 However, one of the major flaws in the MacDonald Plan was that the British Government had no commitment to its success. It made demands on Britain which she could not bring herself to accept; she would have to make concessions both to the Germans on arms equality and to the French on security. MacDonald himself admitted, in a letter to King George V three days before presenting the plan at Geneva, that it was ‘a stop-gap designed not to achieve disarmament, but to prop up a conference which everyone knew to be disintegrating’.53 In his in-depth study of French policy during the period, Maurice Vaïsse comments that ‘for the first time in the history of the conference, Great Britain had something else to propose than her good offices’,54 which demonstrates the tragedy of the MacDonald Plan. The other nations, especially France, appeared inclined to take it at face value—a genuine attempt by the British to deal with ‘the impasse in which the conference found itself’,55 when in fact it was no more than a smoke-screen for Britain’s desire to avoid any possible blame for the failure of the conference. MacDonald and Simon were so sure that the British plan had no chance of success, that they departed for Rome the following day, for talks with Mussolini on his proposal for a Four-Power Pact. There was, of course, no possibility of the plan being accepted as it stood; discussion

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on part I, the consultative agreement, was soon adjourned ‘for the reason that the Americans were not ready to consider it’,56 and little progress was made initially on part II because the Germans rejected the proposals for the standardisation of continental armies, to which the French attached the utmost importance. However, the general feeling was that the plan could at least, form the basis of discussions, and amendments were invited to be submitted by 20 April. In reality, however, any amendments were unlikely to address the basic problem; Britain’s unwillingness to undertake further continental commitments. As the conference progressed, the question of security compensation for France was raised on a number of occasions, but on each occasion Britain’s response was negative. Even in the light of the drastic deterioration in international relations during the summer and autumn of 1933, and in spite of a significant rise in antiGerman sentiment in Britain, she was reluctant to broach the question of security.57 As early as 2 May, the French drew up their amendments to the MacDonald Plan, though they were not made public until late September. 58 In the light of increasing German violations of the Treaty of Versailles and the radical internal revolution pursued by Hitler, they believed that the time had come to force the Germans into an agreement on better terms than currently on offer. They felt that a united front of Britain, Italy, the United States and France could put pressure on Germany to abandon her opposition to the standardisation of European armies envisaged in the MacDonald Plan. Their new scheme called for the implementation of a convention in two stages. In the first stage, France herself would agree to end the construction of artillery over 155mm calibre and the manufacture of tanks up to a global tonnage of 3000 metric tons, with a minimum individual limit of 20 tons (as against the 16 tons proposed by Britain). These limits, however, would be conditional on acceptance by the conference of budgetary control, the standardisation of continental armies in Europe, the prohibition or strict supervision of the private manufacture of armaments and an agreed verification régime. In the latter respect, ‘guarantees of execution’ would be required, so that violation of the convention would automatically entail sanctions. This first stage of the convention would constitute a four-year ‘trial period’ during which the verification procedures would be tested for effectiveness. It was only after the control régime had been declared acceptable that France would agree, during a second stage of four years, to ‘lay all her reserves at the disposal of the League of Nations for the destruction of excess matériel and the effecting of equality of rights’.59

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The British Cabinet discussed the French amendments at a meeting on 20 September, and Simon declared that there appeared to be only two options: no convention at all, with the resulting German rearmament, or to enter into this convention ‘in two parts’ which the Germans ‘might be brought to accept’ although part of their price would be permission to have specimens of weapons forbidden to them under the Treaty of Versailles.60 Once again, however, Britain’s lack of commitment to any form of security guarantee was expressed. If Germany violated a convention, the Foreign Secretary said, the French would wish to know what action Britain would take and Britain ‘of course did not intend to take any action’.61 During separate discussions with the French during September 1933, the Americans and Italians accepted the French amendments, and in turn put pressure on Britain to do the same. The idea was to present a united front to Germany; either accept the agreed plan or assume responsibility for breaking up the Disarmament Conference. However, Britain did not openly accept the amendments; at a Cabinet meeting on 3 October, Simon produced a ‘compromise’ and expressed the hope that the majority of states at Geneva would recognise that Britain was once again ‘making a final effort to save the conference from shipwreck’—in other words, again taking the initiative.62 The ‘compromise’ accepted two periods of four years each, so that Simon had effectively accepted the French amendments. On 9 October, the Cabinet gave Simon’s compromise its tacit approval, registering no decision other than that in consultation with MacDonald, the Foreign Secretary should ‘use his judgement’ as to the action to be taken.63 On 14 October Simon thus put forward at Geneva, on behalf of Britain, France, Italy and the United States, a revised scheme, based on the French amendments, which would effectively have put the Germans on probation, with no control over whether or not they had fulfilled their requirements at the end of four years.64 Germany’s stated goal of achieving equality of rights was thus moved even further out of reach. The German delegation’s reaction to this apparent betrayal was to walk out not only from the Disarmament Conference, but from the League of Nations itself. For this they could scarcely be criticised. In July 1932, Hitler’s conservative predecessors had withdrawn from the conference because little or no progress had been made since the conference began on 2 February. In October 1933, Hitler could justifiably complain that the western powers, Britain in particular, had gone back on their word regarding equality of rights though, of course, he had no intention of limiting German rearmament. 65

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Germany’s withdrawal did not, however, mark the end of the conference. Whilst laying the blame for failure categorically at Britain’s door, Hitler put forward proposals of his own, acceptance of which would have involved either acquiescence to a substantial measure of German rearmament, or a commitment to guarantee French security. Rejection of Hitler’s proposals would ensure German rearmament continued without any international control. Both British and French public opinion were steadfastly against any measure of international rearmament, and to further complicate matters, the French Government had adopted a policy of ‘no rearmament by Germany’. Britain hesitated. While re-assuring France that there was no intention of accepting Hitler’s proposals,66 the Ambassador at Berlin, Sir Eric Phipps, was instructed to obtain assurances on certain points which troubled the British authorities. Simon stressed to Charles Corbin, the French Ambassador at London, that Britain’s idea was ‘to keep Chancellor Hitler in play while avoiding any language which could be misconstrued as either accepting his proposals or seeking to develop any special AngloGerman bargain’. 67 Corbin expressed French fears that Britain might be construed as ‘surrendering the position that rearmament was to be resisted at all costs’. He pointed out that there was, in any case, no possibility that a joint Anglo-French declaration that Germany should not rearm would have the ‘necessary compulsory effect’. 68 Hitler had effectively widened the Anglo-French breach which had been temporarily papered over by Britain’s acceptance of the French amendments. On 29 January 1934 the British Government came up with a scheme which, it maintained, was a compromise between French and German demands, but which actually satisfied neither. Although it offered Germany more favourable land proposals than Hitler had suggested, she was unlikely to accept the envisaged restriction on aerial armaments, and, again, the security offered to France was unlikely to be considered adequate. France’s reply came in an official note dated 19 March 1934—an emphatic rejection. She refused to disarm whilst Germany was rearming without much stronger guarantees of security. She desired the full implementation of the League Covenant and Germany’s return to the League, rather than a mere restatement of the Locarno guarantees and the consultative scheme proposed by Britain.69 In effect, France would not accept any agreement which permitted German rearmament without compensatory security guarantees, and these guarantees were now pitched at a much higher level than in the summer of 1933.

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Even before the French démarche of 19 March, Simon was suggesting to his Cabinet that it might be necessary to meet ‘more fully than we had yet done, French demands for security’,70 and in Cabinet on 19 March Baldwin pointed out that it ‘might even be a choice between a guarantee and losing the friendship of France’.71 On 22 March, the Cabinet eventually spelled out the implications of a guarantee to France. France would not be satisfied with mere economic sanctions; in any event these would be impractical without the highly unlikely cooperation of the United States. France would only be satisfied if Britain was prepared to offer a guarantee of armed intervention in a war, and ‘given the conditions in France today, to ally ourselves to France was a terrible responsibility’.72 The Cabinet concluded that to offer such a commitment to France would involve configurations of armaments which were not in line with her own perceived requirements. France would no doubt maintain, for example, that her own airforce was adequate to meet air defence requirements, and would prefer Britain to have a larger army, whereas Britain’s main concern was an air attack on London, for ‘which many people would probably prefer to provide by our own forces’. 73 This demonstrated the main problem; if Britain was compelled to rearm she obviously wanted to do it in areas which she felt to be important to her own security, and not specifically to that of France. There was also the fear that to keep Germany hanging on for a reply would lead to an increase in her demands, but to accept German proposals too soon would lead to the French becoming embittered and becoming a ‘formidable and immediate risk’. It was imperative to maintain good relations with France. In a Ministerial Committee meeting on 9 April, the view was expressed that it was clear that Germany intended to rearm, with or without an agreement, and that therefore there was ‘no point in bothering about security’.74 It was agreed that Lord Tyrrell, the British Ambassador at Paris, should ask Louis Barthou, the Foreign Minister in the new, hardline, French National Government whether France would accept a convention based on the British proposals of 29 January if Britain gave France guarantees regarding the execution of the convention.75 On 17 April the British Government received the French reply, which avoided the specific question posed, but declared that France would not be justified in proceeding with a conference which effectively legalised German rearmament. The note pointed out that the same day on which Tyrrell had asked Barthou for the French Government’s decision, the German Government had published budget figures

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which allocated an increase of 352 million marks to her army, navy and air force. 76 On 30 May at Geneva, Simon again attempted to persuade the conference to use Britain’s compromise of 29 January as a basis for discussion. Barthou, however, dispelled any remaining hopes that a convention might be attained, condemning German policy and making it clear that France would from now on, look after her own security.77 To all intents and purposes, the Disarmament Conference was over; on 11 June it adjourned sine die. V The failure of the Disarmament Conference was a defining point in relations among the European states, especially Germany, France, and Britain. Germany cast off the remaining restraints of the Versailles Treaty; there was no effective opposition. With her open rearmament, international disarmament was removed from the international agenda. French foreign policy throughout the period had been in disarray; the drive for disarmament was based on political, social and economic pressures, but the fear of German revisionism was deeply rooted in her history, and was played upon, even over-emphasised, by her military leaders.78 French leaders consistently looked to Britain; Tardieu, Herriot, Paul-Boncour all saw a firm commitment from Britain as the answer to France’s chronic insecurity, only Barthou ‘did not seek approval for his policy’.79 Rather than looking to Britain, Vaïsse suggests that questions of disarmament ought to have been placed ‘within a more modest and primarily Franco-German framework’.80 Daladier ought to have had the courage to carry his policy of dialogue with Germany through to the bitter end; ‘if it had been brought to light in time, Hitler’s pacifism would have burst like a balloon’.81 It was not brought to light in time, and Britain consistently refused to recognise France’s legitimate fears of the threat posed by Germany. Britain also was under social and economic pressure to disarm, though it was less to the Conservative politicians’ taste than to that of their French Socialist counterparts. Her distrust of the French and her pro-German bias ensured that her sympathies consistently lay in the wrong quarter. What mattered most to Britain was her own security and that of her Empire which dictated her defence perceptions, and any commitment to France would have altered these requirements in an unacceptable direction. The result of the hesitancy on both sides of the Channel was an increase in German confidence. She carried on, with greater certainty, the policy adopted by each of her chancellors since 1919,

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of dividing Britain and France to her own benefit. It can, of course, be argued that by the time the Disarmament Conference began in February 1932 it was already too late; any guarantee which would have satisfied the increasingly nervous French would have been totally unacceptable to a British public firmly committed to the belief that arms cause wars, and continental alliances, especially with France, must be avoided at all costs. The failure of the conference meant that Germany was able to occupy the high moral ground— after all, the powers had agreed her right to equality and then betrayed her—and Hitler’s relentless march became unstoppable. Notes 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21

The Foreign Relations of the United States, 1919, vol. VI, p. 954. Hereafter FRUS. H.J. Morgenthau, Politics among Nations, New York, Alfred Knopf, 1984, p. 398. See the contribution of Ruth Henig to this volume. For a full discussion of the disarmament problem during the interwar years see C.Kitching, Britain and the Problem of International Disarmament, 1919–1934, London, Routledge, 1999. Public Record Office (PRO) 30/69/1553/1 MacDonald Papers: Diary entry, 12 February 1930. B.Pimlott, Hugh Dalton, London, Macmillan, p. 184. PRO 30/69/1753/1 MacDonald Papers: Diary entry 22 January 1930. Ibid., 27January 1930. See PRO CAB 29/128. PRO 30/69/1753/1 MacDonald Papers: Diary entry 17 March 1930. Tyrrell to Henderson, 28 March 1930. PRO FO 800/280. PRO 30/69/1753/1 MacDonald Papers: Diary entry 20 March 1930. Ibid., 25 March 1930. A.Adamthwaite, Grandeur and Misery: France’s Bid for Power in Europe 1914–1940, London, Arnold, 1995, p. 133. Ibid. Ibid. Foreign Office minute, 18 March 1930. PRO FO 371/14261 A2283/ 1/45. Ibid. M.Vaïsse, Sécurité d’Abord: La Politique Française en Matière de Désarmement 9 Décembre 1930–17 Avril 1934, Paris, Pedone, 1981, p. 602. P.Jackson, ‘French intelligence and Hitler’s rise to power’, Historical Journal, 1998, vol. 41, p. 818. J.Néré, The Foreign Policy of France from 1914 to 19 45, London, Routledge and Kegan Paul, p. 101.

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R.Boyce, ‘Business as usual: the limits of French economic diplomacy, 1926–1933’ in R.Boyce (ed.), French Foreign and Defence Policy 1918– 1940: The Decline and Fall of a Great Power, London, Routledge, 1998, p. 124 PRO CAB 23/69 CM 90(31), 15 December 1931. PRO CAB 23/69 CM 86(31), 9 December 1931. Vaïsse, Sécurité d’Abord, p. 369; Jackson, ‘French intelligence’, p. 813. See Jackson, ‘French intelligence’, pp. 817–20. PRO CAB 23/69 CM 90(31), 15 December 1931. Ibid. Lord Londonderry, Wings of Destiny, London, Macmillan, 1943, p. 56. PRO CAB 23/70 CM 3(32), 14 January 1932. For recent analyses of the conference see Z.Steiner, ‘The League of Nations and the quest for security’ and M.Vaïsse, ‘Security and disarmament: problems in the development of the disarmament debates 1919–1934’ in R.Ahmann, A.M.Birke and M.Howard (eds), The Quest for Stability: Problems of West European Security 1918–1957, London, Oxford University Press, 1993; D.Richardson, ‘The Geneva disarmament conference 1932–1934’ in D.Richardson and G.Stone (eds), Decisions and Diplomacy: Essays in Twentieth Century International History, London, Routledge, 1995; Kitching, Britain and the Problem of International Disarmament, ch. 8. Records of the Conference for the Reduction and Limitation of Armaments. Verbatim Records of Plenary Meetings (RRDC VRPM), pp. 60–4. D.Richardson, ‘The Problem of Disarmament in British Diplomacy 1932–1934’, MA dissertation, University of British Columbia, 1970, p. 41. Documents on British Foreign Policy 1919–1939, 2nd series, vol. III, no. 235. Hereafter DBFP. PRO CAB 27/505 DC(M)(32), 1st meeting of Ministerial Committee, 21 March 1932. For a full analysis of the French position see Vaïsse, Sécurité d’Abord. See Richardson, ‘Geneva disarmament conference’. FRUS, 1932, vol. I, pp. 108–12. Ibid., pp. 112–14. Ibid., pp. 34–9. Ibid., pp. 54–9, 104. MacDonald to Simon, 31 May 1932. PRO FO 800/286. Jackson, ‘French intelligence’, p. 799. F.von Papen, Memoirs, New York, Dutton, 1953, pp. 2, 113, 156, 175; A. François-Poncet, Mémoires d’une Ambassade à Berlin, Paris, Flammarion, 1946, p. 43. Papen, Memoirs, p. 156; François-Poncet, Mémoires, pp. 47–8. DBFP, 2nd series, vol. IV, no. 220. Documents Diplomatiques Français, 1932–1939, 1st series, vol. II, no. 93 ann. Hereafter DDF. See Le Temps, 4 February and 15 March 1933. DBFP, 2nd series, vol. IV, no. 266. For details of the Paul-Boncour Plan see Richardson, ‘Problem of Disarmament in British Diplomacy’, pp. 93–5.

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49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59

60 61 62 63 64 65

66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81

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DBFP, 2nd series, vol. IV, no. 171. Ibid., no. 280. J.Wheeler-Bennett, The Disarmament Deadlock, London, Routledge, 1934, pp. 267–92; Richardson, ‘Problem of Disarmament in British Diplomacy’, pp. 122–3. See DDF, 1st series, vol. III, no. 10. D.Marquand, Ramsay MacDonald, London, Cape, 1977, p. 754. Vaïsse, Sécurité d’Abord, p. 390. Ibid. PRO CAB 23/72 CM 33(33), 5 May 1933. PRO CAB 27/505 DC(M) (32), 18th meeting, 25 July 1933. DDF, 1st series, vol. III, no. 229. DDF, 1st series, vol. III, no. 229. Having drawn up these proposals members of the French Cabinet discussed them privately with the other powers. DDF, 1st series, vol. IV, nos 160, 177, 213, 224, 233, 237, 241, 260, 261. PRO CAB 23/77 CM 51 (33), 20 September 1933. Ibid. PRO CAB 24/243 CP 228(33). Ibid. PRO CAB 24/243 CP 237(33). See D.Richardson and C.Kitching, ‘Britain and the World Disarmament Conference’ in P.Caterall and C.J.Morris (eds), Britain and the Threat to Stability in Europe, 1918–1945, Leicester, Leicester University Press, 1993. CAB24/245, Cabinet Memoranda, CP294(33), 8 December 1933. Ibid. Ibid. For Barthou’s memorandum see DDF, 1st series, vol. III, no. 16. PRO CAB 23/78 CM 9(34), 14 March 1934. PRO CAB 23/78 CM 10(34), 19 March 1934. PRO CAB 23/78 CM 12(34), 22 March 1934. Ibid. PRO CAB 27/506 DC(M) (32) Volume II, 36th meeting, 9 April 1934. See Richardson, ‘Problem of Disarmament in British Diplomacy’, p. 197. DDF, 1st series, vol. VI, no. 104. DDF, 1st series, vol. III, no. 254. See Jackson, ‘French intelligence’. Vaïsse, Sécurité d’Abord, p. 604. Ibid. Ibid.

10

From entente to alliance Anglo-French relations, 1935–1939 Glyn Stone

Before September 1939 Britain and France both sought to come to terms with the profound challenge presented by the rise of German fascism, having little in the way of historical precedence to guide them. For both countries the prevailing conditions constrained their options, so that one is immediately struck by the profound similarity of their predicament. Severe economic problems confronted both of them. Neither saw government intervention in the economy as a panacea but both were forced increasingly to intervene as their rearmament gathered pace and financial rectitude gave way to deficit spending. Structural problems in the armaments industries in both countries slowed down the pace of rearmament while military priorities remained essentially defensive.1 Indeed, the strategic grand design of both countries was to confront their common German enemy with une guerre de longue durée, a war of attrition lasting several years. The imperative for Britain was to avoid the knock-out blow from the air in the early stages of war while for France it was the same but, in addition, to prevent her armed forces on the ground from being overwhelmed as they so nearly were in August 1914. For France this was the raison d’être of the Maginot Line, for Britain the considerable development of the Royal Air Force with emphasis on both fighter defence and bomber deterrent.2 Yet, war in the 1930s for so long remained unthinkable; in the minds of most politicians and statesmen, not to speak of public opinion, it only became inevitable in the spring of 1939 following the German destruction of Czechoslovakia. This was hardly surprising in view of the horror and carnage of the First World War, personally witnessed by many of those in high office in the 1930s, and the increasing fear of mass civilian casualties at the hands of German bombers, not least in the capital cities, London and Paris. Both governments also feared that mass rearmament would of itself provoke an arms race with Germany

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and make war more not less inevitable as it had, or so they thought, before July 1914.3 While France’s strategic priorities lay in Europe and the Mediterranean and those of Britain centred on home defence, the Mediterranean and the Far East, the former was not neglectful of her Asian interests.4 Strategic overstretch concerned both countries and, as events in the Middle East in the late 1930s showed, notably in Palestine and Syria, possession of empire could be a liability rather than an asset. From the economic, political and strategic point of view, United States isolationism was a profound disappointment for successive governments in London and Paris up to the onset of war in September 1939. As late as the spring of 1939, for example, Congress was placing obstacles in the way of France purchasing aircraft to supplement her own relatively meagre airforces while Britain’s efforts to build a war chest for a long war were undermined by the United States Treasury Department. American reluctance to take a lead in the Far East against Japan proved almost as frustrating in Paris as in London.5 Although France was a more divided society than Britain in the 1930s with greater social and political polarisation, reflected in the events of February 1934 and the elections of May 1936 which produced a temporary victory for the French left, social issues did not fundamentally delay or retard French rearmament or change foreign policy priorities. If anything, rearmament priorities retarded social spending after 1936 when rearmament began in earnest under Léon Blum’s first Socialist-Radical Ministry.6 In both countries, however, there was considerable antipathy across the political right towards communism as an ideology which fundamentally threatened the social and economic pre-eminence of the propertied classes. In foreign affairs this antipathy was extended to relations with the Soviet Union, whose intervention in the Spanish Civil War, for example, caused considerable consternation and suspicion in right-wing circles in both countries. Indeed, there was intense suspicion in official circles in Britain and France that Soviet collective security policy was motivated not by a desire for peace but to embroil both of them in a war against Germany to Moscow’s ultimate benefit. 7 Undoubtedly, these constraints, jointly shared, influenced the foreign policies of Britain and France to a considerable degree and made the appeasement of Hitler’s Germany, accompanied by rearmament after 1935, a logical and even appealing policy to pursue; at least until the summer of 1938. The absence of viable great power allies, with Italy’s defection in 1936, drew the two democratic powers

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closer together into an increasingly special and interdependent relationship culminating in the alliance of February-March 1939. The British commitment to France in the spring of 1939 signified the failure of appeasement but it was a failure for both countries because, contrary to later claims, France did not pursue appeasement simply because Britain did and it was necessary to keep in step with her. Historians, such as Anthony Adamthwaite, have long demonstrated the degree of independence and freedom of manoeuvre in French foreign policy in the late 1930s and that French leaders were convinced appeasers. 8 This essay accepts this interpretation and will seek to demonstrate the high degree of convergence in British and French policies with regard to the most significant developments in the period under review, beginning with the Abyssinian crisis of 1935–6, and then the Rhineland reoccupation of March 1936, Franco-British efforts to appease Germany through colonial concessions during 1936–8, the Spanish Civil War of 1936– 9, the Czechoslovak crisis of 1938 and the failed negotiations for alliance with the Soviet Union in the summer of 1939. I For both London and Paris the Abyssinian crisis was disastrous because it undermined once and for all the credibility of the League of Nations and, by alienating Italy, destroyed the Stresa Front of April 1935. The latter was made because of the need to reach accommodation with Italy to counter German rearmament. At Stresa the three powers reaffirmed their Locarno obligations in Europe with no specific reference to Abyssinia. However, aware of Benito Mussolini’s ambitions concerning Abyssinia, the western powers were anxious to reach a compromise by making concessions to the Italian dictator. As early as January 1935, the French Foreign Minister, Pierre Laval, in the so-called Rome Agreements had signed over French interests in Abyssinia to Italy; he later denied that he had given Mussolini a green light to invade that unfortunate country.9 The British Government, as the Maffey Report of June 1935 revealed, had no direct interests at stake in Abyssinia and the permanent head of the Foreign Office, Sir Robert Vansittart, during the same month was prepared to offer British Somaliland to Mussolini as compensation.10 The armed services of both countries remained reluctant to confront Italy without firm reciprocal commitments. The First Sea Lord, Admiral Sir Ernle Chatfield, warned the Foreign Office in August, following a meeting

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of the Chiefs of Staff which revealed the almost total lack of preparation for war in the Mediterranean, that it was vital to obtain a definite assurance of French military support. 11 In the context of a Mediterranean war, the British military authorities needed to use French bases at Toulon and Bizerta and required an undertaking that the French airforce would attack targets in northern Italy to draw off Italian air power from the eastern Mediterranean.12 The French correctly perceived that following the Italian invasion of Abyssinia in October 1935 and the imposition of ‘soft’ economic sanctions by the League the British were less concerned about enforcing sanctions than with safeguarding their interests in the Mediterranean and the Middle East against a ‘mad dog act’ by Mussolini. Laval was not prepared to jeopardise the recent Franco-Italian military agreements of June 1935 merely to support the defence of the British Empire without further British commitments to safeguard the security of France in Europe.13 This was made patently clear when on 10 September, before the Italian invasion, the French demanded assurances that ‘His Majesty’s Government would be henceforth prepared to execute effectively its obligations under the Covenant [of the League of Nations] if it was aggressivley violated in Europe’, such as, a German attack on Austria.14 The British response was non-committal and no substitute for the French General Staff calculation that, in the event of war with Germany, Italian neutrality would release seventeen divisions from the Alps and North Africa for the Rhine theatre and prevent disruption of French imperial communications in the western Mediterranean.15 Although British and French strategic concerns differed markedly, both governments reluctantly imposed economic sanctions on Italy with the intention of seeking a negotiated, compromise settlement though the French, initially, had wanted to postpone sanctions until the process of conciliation had been exhausted. Also, having first refused, the French relented and agreed that British warships could use French bases and conceded naval staff talks.16 The compromise, found in the infamous Hoare-Laval plan of 7– 8 December 1935 to partition Abyssinia, suited both powers; Britain no less than France. In the two weeks following the Hoare-Laval meeting in Paris, Stanley Baldwin’s Cabinet discussed the plan on five occasions and swung from supporting to abandoning it and compelling Hoare’s resignation. Cabinet complicity in seeking a negotiated compromise over Abyssinia and its uneasy conscience was confirmed by the speed of Hoare’s rehabilitation as First Lord of the Admiralty six months later.17 Public opinion, above all, forced the plan’s rejection in both countries and the continuation of

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sanctions, even in France where the Radicals, occupying their pivotal position in the politics of the Third Republic, had influenced Laval to impose and maintain sanctions.18 The appointment of the proLeague Anthony Eden as Hoare’s successor was a testament to the strength of public feeling in Britain. At the same time, and despite momentary optimism, at least in Britain, that the Abyssinians might prevail in early 1936, sanctions were not strengthened by the addition of an oil embargo on Italy. The French remained adamant that they would not support an oil sanction; this resolve was reinforced by Germany’s remilitarisation of the Rhineland in March 1936. The British Government initially agreed to propose an extension of sanctions to the League, including oil, but in early spring were easily dissuaded by French intransigence and Italian military successes in Abyssinia which soon brought about the total defeat of that country.19 In June 1936 it was the British Cabinet and not the recently elected Popular Front Government, led by the Socialist Léon Blum, which proposed the ending of sanctions by the League. Henceforth, until the outbreak of the Second World War and in a reversal of the position in 1935 it was Britain rather than France who proved more willing to appease Italy.20 II In their respective foreign policy concerns, of course, it was Adolf Hitler’s Germany not Mussolini’s Italy which had prime place for Britain and France; encapsulated in Neville Chamberlain’s declaration that he would not care ‘a rap for Musso’ if Hitler could be successfully appeased. 21 From the French point of view the Stresa Front was intended to contain a revival of German power and the alienation of Italy was a grievous blow but it had already been undermined by the Anglo-German Naval Agreement of June 1935. The agreement was made by the British less as an act of appeasement and more because it was ‘compatible with the [Royal] Navy’s scheme to use armaments diplomacy to promote strategic conditions favourable to British sea power’.22 For the French, who had been kept in the dark, it was a source of great offence which had undermined their own security and revealed the weakness of the Anglo-French entente as a means of achieving security in Europe.23 However, the loss of Italy made it more imperative to strengthen the entente and extend Britain’s commitment to European security. Hence, Laval’s approach of 10 September 1935 and that of his successor as Foreign Minister, Pierre-

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Etienne Flandin, of 3 March 1936, when he demanded that Britain must be ‘ready to support France, even alone, in the maintenance of the demilitarised zone’ of the Rhineland against Germany.24 Unfortunately, the British had no intention of providing such support. At the end of January 1936, on the occasion of King George V’s funeral, Eden inadvertently told the Soviet Foreign Minister, Maxim Litvinov, that Britain was not capable of a decisive military intervention to safeguard the Rhineland and in February the Cabinet, to preempt a German seizure and as a means of drawing Hitler into talks, was prepared to barter the Rhineland ‘for what it will fetch’, possibly an air limitation agreement. 25 When the Germans remilitarised the Rhineland on 7 March 1936 the act itself hardly came as a surprise, though the timing may have, to Paris and London. Moreover, as Stephen Schuker has convincingly demonstrated, the strategic value of the Rhineland had diminished in the view of the French High Command while perceived military and financial weaknesses ruled out any prospect of a credible French defence of the zone.26 In this connection, French military intelligence tended to overestimate the combat potential of the German armed forces. 27 For his part, Hitler, mindful of the rift between France and Italy and reassured by his Foreign Minister, Baron Constantin von Neurath, who possessed reliable intelligence that France would not fight, correctly calculated French passivity.28 The British had neither the intention nor the means to support an Anglo-French counter attack in the Rhineland and lack of British (and Italian) support served as an excuse for French inaction. In addition, the British refused to consider making substantive defence commitments in Europe which for the French authorities, civilian and military, was the only worthwhile compensation for the loss of the Rhineland. As the military attaché in London reported on 11 March, the main concern of the British press was to rebuild good relations with Hitler not to upgrade the entente with France.29 This was precisely the objective of Baldwin’s Government as it sought in the aftermath of the Rhineland crisis to promote a revised Locarno Agreement by means of a five-power conference. Despite Anglo-French cooperation, this proved a futile exercise in the face of German disinterest.30 II I Equally futile was the pursuit of general European appeasement by means of colonial concessions to the Third Reich in view of Hitler’s

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priorities which lay in central and eastern Europe and not in Africa. According to Klaus Hildebrand, Hitler raised the issue of colonial revision in 1935–7 essentially as a means of making the British Government more amenable to his European ambitions by, for example, offering to guarantee the British Empire. Unfortunately, the impression was created in Britain and France that Germany was pursuing a traditional, revisionist colonial policy.31 The possibility of using colonial revision as a means of achieving appeasement in Europe was first pursued by the British Government. Following the visit of Sir John Simon, at the time Foreign Secretary, and Eden to Berlin in March 1935 the Foreign Office was charged with the task of investigating the issues surrounding colonial appeasement. Discussion within the office was delayed by the Abyssinian crisis but it took place eventually between November 1935 and February 1936 and proved inconclusive. 32 However, Hitler’s demand for colonial revision as part of a proposed German ‘peace plan’, made the same day as the occupation of the Rhineland, evoked a positive response in Whitehall. At Eden’s behest, on 9 March, an interdepartmental committee was set up to study the whole colonial question. Named after its chairman, Lord Plymouth, the committee eventually produced a report which was clearly unenthusiastic about colonial revision; it was recognised that even if all Germany’s former colonies were returned her ambitions would not be satisfied in the long run. The Cabinet agreed, with the result that on 27 July 1936 Eden publicly disclaimed any solution of the colonial question.33 Just as the British expressed their lack of interest in colonial revision, the French Government decided to pursue an initiative made by the Reich Economics Minister, Hjalmar Schacht. Conversations were held in late August in Paris between Schacht and French Ministers, including Prime Minister Léon Blum and Foreign Minister “Yvon Delbos. Schacht offered the possibility of a peace treaty ‘lasting long enough for its indefinite prolongation to be guaranteed’ and an arms limitation agreement. The price was to be the return to Germany of her former colonies, for economic and prestige reasons. Blum’s response was positive: provided the settlement was European-wide and not merely Franco-German, conversations on Germany’s colonial demands would not be impossible.34 However, confronted with British determination to pursue the five-power initiative, and disturbed by increasing German intervention in the Spanish Civil War, the French Government decided not to proceed with conversations on the Schacht proposals.35 Despite its reluctance to discuss colonial matters, the British Government was compelled in February 1937 to take the initiative and revive the Schacht

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proposals partly because of Germany’s consistent refusal to attend a five-power conference and partly to forestall a French suggestion for a Franco-British-American initiative which included colonial restitution to solve Germany’s economic difficulties.36 For the next few months the British pursued colonial appeasement without any certainty as to Nazi intentions and motives on the colonial issue; least of all whether Schacht had the complete support of Hitler himself.37 Discussion, mainly within the Cabinet Foreign Policy Committee during March and April 1937 concluded that neither Britain, the Dominions, Portugal nor Belgium should make territorial concessions in Africa which left only the French Cameroons and Togoland. The French Popular Front Government was prepared to consider the cession of French mandates as part of a final general settlement but only if the British would make as great a territorial sacrifice.38 There was no question of such a sacrifice; as the rejection of Eden’s proposal to compensate France with Gambia for the loss of Cameroons and Togoland demonstrated.39 The Schacht initiative was extinguished but disturbing reports from Berlin in the early summer of 1937, emanating from the supposedly ‘moderate’ Hermann Göring, of increasing public animosity towards Britain seriously disturbed the new Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain. 40 The recrudescence of the German colonial campaign in September and October 1937 and Hitler’s personal expression of interest in colonial revision persuaded Chamberlain to endorse the private visit of the Lord President of the Council, Lord Halifax, to Berlin in November. On the basis of his visit Halifax concluded that the only way of improving Anglo-German relations was by means of colonial revision, which should be offered to Hitler to induce him to become ‘a good European’.41 This conclusion was endorsed by Chamberlain and his Cabinet when it met on 24 November 1937 and it was agreed to consult the French Government. At the Anglo-French conference of ministers on 29–30 November, held in London to coordinate their respective policies in the light of the Halifax visit, the French Prime Minister, Camille Chautemps, and Foreign Minister Delbos, confirmed the essential link between colonial revision and a general settlement. Directly after the conference it was announced publicly for the first time that the British and French Governments were prepared to study the colonial question.42 At this point in time, neither government was in a hurry to complete the study but by the end of December Chamberlain, Eden and the Foreign Office had developed a sense of urgency; no doubt

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influenced by the conclusion of the recent defence review which had placed a heavy burden on diplomacy to provide time for rearmament. As a result, in January 1938 the Cabinet endorsed a scheme proposed by the Prime Minister for an African condominium which would be administered by the colonial powers, including Germany. It would consist of British, French, Belgian and Portuguese territories with the last two expected to make by far the greatest contribution. It was envisaged that exploratory talks would be undertaken by the Ambassador in Berlin, Nevile Henderson. 43 This unilateral approach was explained to the French on 17 February who were assured that ‘no definite scheme was being proposed and no commitments entered into or undertakings given’. In a reversal of the position in May 1937 Paris was also reassured that no proposals would be contemplated which did not involve an equivalent contribution from Britain to any made by France. 44 Unfortunately, when Henderson saw Hitler on 3 March 1938 the Führer was clearly unimpressed and revealed no interest in colonial appeasement in the short term at least.45 Although the initiative had originally been taken by Blum in the summer of 1936, in response to Schacht’s approach, the British Government had made the running thereafter but to no avail. The French were content to allow the British to take the lead but were just as serious in considering colonial concessions as a means of reaching a general settlement as their counterparts in London. IV Throughout the Spanish Civil War, which began in July 1936 and lasted until March 1939, the British and French governments adhered to a policy of non-intervention unlike Germany, Italy and the Soviet Union who intervened on a substantial scale, the first two on the side of the rebellious Spanish Nationalists, led by General Francisco Franco, the latter on the side of the democratically elected Spanish Republican Government.46 France was less neutral in the Spanish conflict than Britain, having supplied over 100 obsolete aeroplanes to the Republicans, provided facilities for the export of gold from the Bank of Madrid and also international payments for war matériel on behalf of the Spanish Republic, and at various times opened the Pyrenean frontier for the transportation of arms to Spain.47 However, in comparison with the far more substantial intervention of the Axis powers and Soviet Russia, France’s contribution to the outcome of

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the Civil War was relatively slight. Moreover, in August 1936 the French Government originated the proposal for a Non-intervention Agreement relating to Spain and also proposed the establishment of an international non-intervention committee to implement it. The British Government, committed from the outset to pursue a policy of non-intervention in the Civil War, offered full support to French endeavours to achieve a non-intervention agreement and agreed later to locate the Non-intervention Committee in London. British support enabled Blum, Delbos and the Quai d’Orsay officials to resist the demands of the more extreme elements in the Front Populaire for intervention in Spain with all its attendant risks. Put simply, non-intervention was an act of collusion by the British and French governments in pursuit of their great power interests.48 Those interests were remarkably similar. Despite his socialist background and genuine sympathy for the Spanish Republic, Blum, no less than the British Government, feared that any intervention in Spain by either Britain or France might jeopardise irretrievably the efforts to reach a general European settlement based on a new Locarno which had been proceeding since Hitler’s reoccupation of the Rhineland in March 1936. Moreover, in the late summer of 1936 French ministers, including Blum himself, Delbos, Edouard Daladier, Minister of Defence, and others, such as the Secretary General of the Quai d’Orsay, Alexis Léger, genuinely feared, as did their British counterparts, a general European war if intervention in Spain proceeded unchecked.49 Apart from these broad international considerations the French Government had other specific reasons for maintaining nonintervention. Of considerable significance was the fear of a right-wing backlash in France which could threaten further civil disorder and ideological divisions and possibly civil war, and which might also jeopardise the social programme of the Front Populaire, as enshrined in the Matignon Agreement of June 1936.50 Also significant, was the Quai d’Orsay’s view that French intervention in Spain on behalf of the Spanish Republic would alienate her east European allies, notably Yugoslavia and Roumania, both of whom had right-wing régimes.51 At the same time, the French military, while recognising the strategic dilemmas and risks of intervention and non-intervention alike, supported non-intervention, partly because the sympathies of the High Command lay with the right-wing Nationalists in Spain.52 In this connection, the Civil War in Spain heightened the military’s concern over France’s volatile internal situation in the summer of 1936.53 For all of these reasons non-intervention was adopted by the Blum

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Government as a means of isolating the Civil War in the vain hope, that starved of outside assistance, the rebellion of the Spanish generals would be short-lived. Many of the reservations held by the French were shared by the British, notably the fear of a general European war arising from the Spanish conflagration; the disruption to the appeasement process as it related to Germany, and subsequently Italy; the pro-Franco sympathies of the British Foreign Office and military authorities, in particular the Admiralty, who backed the non-intervention policy as the best means of protecting British strategic interests; and the need to avoid polarising British society any further than was necessary.54 As the most committed of the European powers to nonintervention in Spain the British agreed to chair (Lord Plymouth) the international Non-intervention Committee and, in response to French urgings, to locate it in London. The Non-intervention Committee, and more particularly the Chairman’s Sub-Committee, became the focus of Spanish Civil War diplomacy and, encouraged by the British and French governments, proposed a number of schemes in 1937 and 1938 which aimed realistically to limit rather than prevent the intervention of the powers in the form of men and materials. This limited aim was largely unfulfilled despite high levels of cooperation by Britain and France within the Committee. Unquestionably, there was a high degree of convergence between British and French policies in the Spanish Civil War until its conclusion in March 1939. Indeed, in February both countries concerted their actions in granting de jure recognition to the victorious Franco régime, agreeing that recognition as soon as it was feasible was in their best interests.55 V The containment of the Civil War in Spain enabled Britain and France to pursue the appeasement of Germany (and Italy in the British case) free from the risk of escalation into a European wide conflict during 1937 and early 1938. However, the annexation of Austria in March 1938, which confirmed Nazi Germany’s central European priorities and exposed Czechoslovakia as its next target, threatened just such a conflict. The British response to Anschluss was to deny any idea of giving guarantees to Czechoslovakia or to the French in connection with their obligations to that country arising from the Franco-Czech treaty of 1925. Certainly, Chamberlain had

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no illusions that Czechoslovakia could survive a German attack or that Britain and France could do anything to save her other than to use her fate as a pretext for going to war with Germany which was unthinkable unless ‘we had a reasonable prospect of being able to beat her to her knees in a reasonable time, and of that I see no sign’.56 In contrast, Prime Minister Blum and his Foreign Minister, Joseph Paul-Boncour, called for a reconsideration of a concerted Franco-Soviet defence of Czechoslovakia but at a meeting of the Permanent Committee of National Defence on 15 March, immediately following the Anschluss, Daladier as Minister of Defence and General Maurice Gamelin, Army Chief of Staff, echoed Chamberlain by asserting that France could not prevent an attack on Czechoslovakia and expressed considerable doubt as to effective Soviet support.57 Prior to the meeting Gamelin had assessed the wider strategic impact of Germany’s annexation of Austria and emphasised that Czechoslovakia’s defence was undermined by the prospect of a secondary German thrust launched from Austria.58 Within a few weeks both Blum and PaulBoncour had been removed from office and Daladier had become Prime Minister while retaining his defence portfolio. Paul-Boncour was succeeded by the right-wing Radical minister, Georges Bonnet, who approved of Daladier’s and Gamelin’s reservations concerning Czechoslovakia. Accordingly, from March onwards key ministers in both Paris and London, including Lord Halifax who succeeded Eden as Foreign Secretary in February, had considerable doubts as to Czechoslovakia’s viability and concerns about the threat of a European war arising from a German attack upon her. The outcome of a conference of British and French ministers, meeting on 28–9 April 1938, was pressure on the Czechs to make concessions to the Germans of the Sudeten region of Czechoslovakia.59 As the crisis over Czechoslovakia developed through the summer of 1938 following the war scare of the weekend of 21–2 May, which so incensed Hitler and persuaded him to adopt a military solution to the Sudeten problem, the British and French governments had increasingly to confront the prospect of war arising from French obligations to Czechoslovakia. In the last analysis, the British recognised that in such circumstances they would have obligations to France and on 10 September a warning was issued to Berlin that there should be no illusions that Germany could embark on a short victorious war against Czechoslovakia without running the risk of intervention by France followed by Britain.60 Despite this warning, the French and British governments were clearly prepared to go the

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extra mile for peace; in the case of Daladier and others to avert the threat of war but for Chamberlain and Bonnet, at least, also as a long-sought opportunity to create the conditions for lasting security in Europe. For the British Prime Minister the Anglo-German Declaration of 30 September was immeasurably more significant than the Czech sacrifice of territory. Following Hitler’s Nuremberg speech on 12 September, in which he deliberately chose to escalate the crisis by violently abusing the Czech leader, Edvard Beneš, and demanding self-determination for the Sudeten Germans, the French wanted to proceed on the basis of a four-power meeting involving France, Britain, Germany and Czechoslovakia whereas Chamberlain preferred an early bilateral meeting with the Führer; not least because British intelligence, misjudging the timing of Hitler’s plans, believed that the crisis was about to come to a head when in fact it was two to three weeks away, as correctly gauged by French intelligence.61 This accounts for Chamberlain’s dramatic offer to fly to Berchtesgaden on 15 September with the effect that the orchestration and control of events was removed from Hitler’s hands while the British Prime Minister took primary responsibility for what followed rather than Daladier or Bonnet. At the same time, after Chamberlain’s return from Berchtesgaden there was a large measure of agreement on the Czech issue between Britain and France despite mutual suspicion and a great deal of posturing in the several meetings of ministers which took place between 18 and 28 September. Certainly, the French Government did not act passively and succeeded in wresting additional commitments from Britain: on 18 September a British agreement to participate in a guarantee for Czechoslovakia following the transfer of territory to Germany and on 26 September a British pledge of support for France in the event of war with Germany.62 In addition, the ultimate solution to the transfer of Sudeten territory to Germany at Munich was first proposed by Daladier on 25 September when he proposed a commission which would ensure the transfer of territory over a ten-day period while allowing the immediate occupation by German troops of those districts ‘where the Germanic majority’ was particularly important.63 British and French willingness to force the Czechs to sacrifice part of their territory was to a large degree influenced by the threat of conflict and the lack of preparation consistent with their long war strategy. Throughout the Czech crisis the British Chiefs of Staff argued that in the event of war, Britain and France would be inferior in

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strength to Germany both on land and in the air and that Czechoslovakia’s inclusion would only just provide a balance; they even questioned the worth of denying Czech territory to Germany.64 At the height of the crisis on 27 September the Director of Military Operations and Intelligence, Lieutenant-General Sir Henry Pownall, argued that from the military point of view the balance of advantage was definitely in favour of postponement. Similar views were expressed by the Chief of the Imperial General Staff, Lord Gort, his successor, General Edmund Ironside, and by General Hastings Ismay, Secretary to the Committee of Imperial Defence.65 The French generals were no less anxious to postpone war partly because the French intelligence services had mistakenly concluded that Germany had achieved a clear superiority over France; the army Deuxième Bureau estimated that the Wehrmacht would mobilise 116 divisions when the actual size of the German field army was only 72 divisions. Gamelin exploited these exaggerated estimates to argue against French military action.66 The advice of the service chiefs on both sides of the Channel, readily believed by their respective civilian masters, was even more pessimistic about the air situation, particularly the vulnerability of both capital cities to aerial attack. In Britain the Air Staff predicted a German strategic air offensive largely against London where there were insufficient anti-aircraft defences; estimates in September 1938 put the first line strength of the German airforce at 927 long-range bombers while estimates of casualities predicted about 50,000 in a twenty-four hour period.67 In France the air Deuxième Bureau calculated the firstline strength of the Luftwaffe at almost 2,800 aircraft, more than 2,000 of which were of modern design, whereas the Germans possessed less than 1,700 first-line aircraft and less than half of these were modern. The French Air Minister, General Joseph Vuillemin, unnerved by his visit to Germany in August 1938, believed the Luftwaffe enjoyed a superiority in first-line aircraft of at least four to one against France and predicted the destruction of two-thirds of his airforce within eight weeks. In this context, the French authorities concluded that their airforce could do nothing to save Czechoslovakia and very little to retaliate against German air attacks on French cities, notably Paris, which, like the cities in the United Kingdom, were largely unprotected owing to the lack of anti-aircraft weaponry. It was accepted in official circles in both countries that the Munich Agreement had averted an aerial massacre of defenceless civilians.68 For some, though not all of the decision-makers in 1938, it was essential to avoid war in order to provide time to remedy the considerable deficiencies in defence, and particularly air power. In

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Britain the expansion of the navy and airforce continued after Munich to have priority as the rearmament programme, first set in train in 1935 ahead of France, began to accelerate faster with the lifting of Treasury constraints. 69 In France the rearmament programme, begun by Blum’s Popular Front Government in 1936– 7, had yet to reach acceleration point by the summer of 1938 when, for example, the French aircraft industry produced less than 100 machines per month compared to the estimated 600 machines per month produced by Germany.70 According to Robert Frank, Daladier was extremely concerned that France not only lacked military preparedness but ‘did not even meet the conditions which would enable the country to make the industrial preparation for war’.71 The aftermath of Munich witnessed a remarkable turnaround in the scope and pace of French rearmament, twenty-five billion francs were earmarked for rearmament in 1939 to add to the 16 billion already allotted in the budget for 1938.72 In addition, Daladier and his Finance Minister, Paul Reynaud, succeeded in winning the cooperation of French manufacturers on national defence by reducing wage costs through tough legislation following the failed general strike of 30 November 1938. As a result the Front Populaire was finally buried and the flight of the franc and French capital reversed with beneficial effects on armaments production. 73 For the reasons discussed here there was little divergence in British and French policy during the Czech crisis and the absence of reliable allies reinforced this. Neither Paris nor London trusted the Soviets to intervene effectively on behalf of Czechoslovakia despite the Soviet-Czech treaty of 1935. There was virtually no prospect of either Poland or Roumania consenting to the passage of Soviet troops and the former, indeed, benefited from the Munich settlement with the acquisition of Teschen at Prague’s expense; having previously warned the French on 20 September that it intended to press its claims to this territory. 74 The United States was resolutely neutral and supported an appeasement solution with Roosevelt urging all parties, at the height of the crisis on 26 September, to continue negotiations.75 Above all, France could not rely upon Britain for effective support because she had yet to secure an alliance and the detailed planning and coordination which would accompany it. The French had no illusions about the limited extent of British military capability in 1938. In this connection, the general secretariat of the Supreme Council of National Defence had emphasised in April 1938 that until Britain enacted conscription and developed a fully mechanisedField Force, the basic military equation in western Europe remained a

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France of forty million confronted by seventy-five million Germans and forty million Italians.76 In September 1938 Bonnet made a virtue of this weakness while it further constrained Daladier’s room for manoeuvre. While, at the time of Munich, Britain had little to offer the French in the way of military support, the position was radically altered at the end of January 1939 when the British Government proposed detailed Anglo-French staff conversations and joint military planning aimed against the Axis powers. This revolution in British policy was a response to the combination of disinformation provided by opponents of Hitler’s régime within the German Abwehr and bogus information provided by the French authorities via the Paris Embassy, both of which pointed to the danger of an imminent German attack in the west through Belgium and Holland or through Switzerland. The effect was to concentrate the minds of the British Cabinet, encouraged by Halifax in particular, and the result was the continental commitment sought by France since 1919.77 For both countries this decision undermined the appeasement policy pursued by Chamberlain and Bonnet since Munich, exemplified by the Franco-German Declaration of December 1938, and the German destruction of Czechoslovakia in March completed the process.78 VI The demise of Czechoslovakia compelled the British Government to adopt a strategy of active engagement in eastern Europe through the construction of an eastern front which, in alignment with French strategy since 1919, sought to contain and deter further German aggression. This change necessarily involved a serious re-evaluation of relations with the Soviet Union, whose dictatorial leader, Joseph Stalin, five days before the Prague coup of 15 March 1939 had warned Paris and London not to take the Soviets for granted.79 Before March 1939 France and Britain had consistently rebuffed Soviet attempts to achieve collective security against the challenge of German fascism and both had sought to avoid close political and military ties despite the conclusion of the Franco-Soviet Pact of May 1935. The British response to the pact had been unenthusiastic, not least because they feared its consequences, but since it did not conflict with the Locarno Treaty of 1925 they reluctantly accepted it.80 Any misgivings they may have had, however, were dispelled by French determination to limit the application of the pact despite its

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ratification by the French Senate, after a long delay, in March 1936.81 There was no question of the French engaging in close military cooperation with the Soviet Union not only because of ideological hostility—and the French generals genuinely feared that too close contact with the Soviets could encourage subversion in the army and the spread of communism in France—but also because of reservations about the quality of the Soviet armed forces which were shared to some extent by the British military authorities.82 During the first half of 1937 both the Quai d’Orsay and the British Foreign Office remained resolutely opposed to a Franco-Soviet military agreement and to the efforts of Blum and his Air Minister, Pierre Cot, to advance staff talks. Daladier and Gamelin were equally opposed and Blum’s position was eventually undermined by the commencement of Stalin’s purge of the Red Army at the end of May 1937 which provided a pretext to end negotiations.83 At the same time, Soviet intervention in Spain disturbed the Foreign Office and the Quai d’Orsay. Léger went so far as to advise Moscow in October 1936 that relations would suffer if the Soviet Union did not pursue a less aggressive policy in Spain. In London, Eden and Vansittart remained wedded to non-intervention and deplored Soviet intervention. 84 The commitment to non-intervention in both countries undermined Soviet attempts to use the Spanish conflict as a means of achieving collective security against German and Italian fascism and instead enhanced their suspicion of Soviet motives. The Czechoslovakian crisis of 1938 underlined the degree of estrangement. Doubts about the military capability of the Soviet Union, made stronger by the purge of the Soviet officer corp, and the probability of lack of cooperation by Poland and Roumania to allow the passage of Soviet troops through their territory persuaded the authorities in London and Paris to discount effective Soviet support for Czechoslovakia.85 Suspicion as to Soviet motives also played its part with both powers suspecting Moscow’s intentions in the crisis. According to Martin Thomas, the uncertainty as to Soviet intentions in the Czech crisis reinforced the French military practice of denegrating Soviet military capacity and political reliability and enabled Bonnet to discount the Soviets in the advice he tendered to Daladier in the week prior to the Munich conference; and the French premier himself, according to Robert Young, feared a new war would prepare Europe for a devastating communist epidemic.86 Suspicion of Soviet intentions, aroused by an enduring ideological hostility and by Soviet action in Spain and inaction over Czechoslovakia, and doubts about the Soviet Union’s military

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capability,persuaded the British Government to guarantee Poland at the end of March 1939 as the key to the eastern front strategy. In making this decision, Chamberlain’s Cabinet ignored Stalin’s warning and assumed that the Soviets would at worst be benevolently neutral and provide material assistance to their new Polish allies.87 The French also assumed that Soviet assistance would be made available to the Poles in the form of raw materials, munitions and foodstuffs. 88 It proved a fatal assumption and constrained FrancoBritish efforts to reach an accommodation in negotiations with the Soviet Union between April and August 1939. Having made the commitment to Poland, and later Romania, Greece and Turkey, there was no alternative policy open to Britain other than to build up the eastern front. France was similarly committed.89 In contrast the Soviet Union had at least two options other than cooperation with the western powers, namely, a policy of isolation or a policy of accommodation with Germany.90 The latter had not been discounted by either Britain or France since at least 1935 and in the early summer of 1939 the prospect convinced many of the necessity of an alliance with Moscow, including the British Chiefs of Staff. The British Prime Minister, however, remained unconvinced and opposed to a Soviet alliance until the end.91 Halifax was not completely convinced either but with public support strongly in favour of a Soviet alliance he realised that it was essential not to provoke a breakdown in negotiations, and Bonnet took a similar position. Daladier was the most convinced but he and Bonnet failed to inject any real urgency into the negotiations much to the chagrin of the French Ambassador in Moscow, Paul-Emile Naggiar, nor did they prepare the ground with Poland and Roumania to accept the passage of Soviet troops despite their awareness that this issue was central to any effective military cooperation.92 The lack of real urgency carried over to the Anglo-French military mission which was sent to Moscow during the first half of August; all the more surprising in view of western military intelligence of German dispositions and troop movements which indicated ‘a defensive programme in the West and a plan for offensive action in the East’.93 Neither the British nor the French military delegations had instructions to conclude a military agreement or to advise the Soviets of their willingness to intercede with Poland and Romania concerning the passage of Soviet troops. According to General Joseph Doumenc, head of the French military mission, Daladier had given him specific instructions ‘not to agree to any military accord stipulating Red Army passage across Poland’. 94 Field Marshal

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Kliment Voroshilov, Soviet Defence Minister, was deeply unimpressed, as no doubt was Stalin.95 By the time that the French authorities began seriously to pressure the Poles96 and to instruct Doumenc to make the best agreement he could get—the British did not send similar instructions to Admiral Reginald Drax, the head of the British military mission—it was too late as Hitler and his Foreign Minister, Joachim von Ribbentrop, seized their opportunity to conclude a non-aggression pact with the Soviets on 23 August 1939. The British, when they learned of the pact, accused the Soviets of bad faith while inviting the retort that they had demonstrated lack of seriousness and sincerity.97 Undoubtedly, in August 1939 Hitler was able to provide Stalin with far more immediate economic and strategic benefits than ever Britain and France could offer but their tardiness and lack of sincerity played into the hands of both dictators, giving Stalin a half credible excuse for his actions. The same mistrust and suspicion of the Soviet Union pervaded British and French policy between 1935 and 1939 and was driven to a certain degree by anti-communist prejudice. Certainly, Chamberlain had considerable reservations about close relations with Moscow and Halifax was not far behind in his hatred of communism; an outlook influenced by his own deep religious commitment. Daladier and Bonnet were scarcely less anti-communist even though by 1939 the popular front was extinguished and the French communists marginalised. 98 In the summer of 1939 there was a considerable convergence of British and French policy with regard to Soviet relations as both sought to have ‘the USSR as an obliging auxiliary, out of the German camp, but not fully in the Anglo-French’.99 VI I This essay has demonstrated that a high degree of convergence existed in Franco-British relations during the period before the Second World War which is not altogether surprising in view of the similar economic, social and political circumstances confronting them. At the same time, a degree of scepticism existed in both countries as to what could be expected of the other. In private many of the decision-makers in Britain in the late 1930s were scathing and sometimes despairing of France, of her economic weakness including her limited industrial recovery before 1939, her social and political instability and the slow pace of her rearmament especially

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in the air. 100 French decision-makers believed the British to be unreliable and insensitive to the political and strategic realities which faced them in Europe. They despaired, even after March 1939, that an effective British Expeditionary Force containing, they hoped, a number of armoured divisions, would eventually materialise to fill in the gaps in French defences or that the Royal Air Force would provide effective cover over France. 101 Despite these negative perceptions, both countries went to war together on 3 September 1939 after which date the French ‘assumed the leading role in the direction of allied strategy in the west and in shaping the British part within it’. 102 Of course, the allies lost the Battle of France in May-June 1940 to add much acrimony—which to this day has not been entirely dissipated—to an already strained relationship.103 It is, however, time to admit that whatever the shortcomings in the FrancoBritish relationship, and there were several, the decisive factor in the early summer of 1940 was the sheer brilliance of the Wehrmacht’s offensive in the context of a one-front war. Notes 1

2

3

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See the contribution of Michael Dockrill to this volume. See also G.Peden, British Rearmament and the Treasury 1932–1939, Edinburgh, Edinburgh University Press, 1979; R. Frank[enstein], Le Prix du Réarmement Français, 1935–1939, Paris, Publications de la Sorbonne, 1982; N.H.Gibbs, Grand Strategy, Volume I: Rearmament Policy, London, H M S O, 1976; R.A.C.Parker, ‘British rearmament 1936–1939: treasury, trade unions and skilled labour’, English Historical Review, 1981, vol. 96; R.Girault, ‘The impact of the economic situation on the foreign policy of France 1936–1939’ in W.J.Mommsen and L.Kettenacker (eds), The Fascist Challenge and the Policy of Appeasement, London, Allen and Unwin, 1983. See Gibbs, Grand Strategy; M.S.Alexander, The Republic in Danger: General Maurice Gamelin and the Politics of French Defence, 1933–1940, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1992; D. Dilks, ‘The unnecessary war? Military advice and foreign policy in Great Britain, 1931–1939’ and R.J. Young, ‘La guerre de longue durée: some reflections on French strategy and diplomacy in the 1930s’ in A.Preston (ed.), General Staffs and Diplomacy before the Second World War, London, Croom Helm, 1978. See U.Bialer, The Shadow of the Bomber: The Fear of Air Attack and British Politics 1932–1939, London, Royal Historical Society, 1980; R.J.Young, France and the Origins of the Second World War, London, Macmillan, 1996; M.Vaïsse, ‘Le pacifisme français dans les années trente’, Relations Internationales, 1988, no. 43. See J.E.Dreifort, Myopic Grandeur: The Ambivalence of French Foreign Policy toward the Far East 1919–1945, Kent, Ohio, Kent State University Press, 1991.

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Ibid., pp. 154–8; W.R.Keylor, ‘France and the illusion of American support, 1919–1940’ in J.Blatt (ed.), The French Defeat of 1940: Reassessments, Oxford, Berghahn Press, 1998, pp. 233–9; R.A.C.Parker, ‘The pound sterling, the American treasury and British preparations for war, 1938– 1939’, English Historical Review, 1983, vol. 98, pp. 261–79. Frank, Prix de Réarmement, pp. 129 passim; M.Thomas, Britain, France and Appeasement: Anglo-French Relations in the Popular Front Era, Oxford, Berg, 1996, pp. 145–68. F.S.Northedge and A.Wells, Britain and Soviet Communism: The Impact of a Revolution, London, Macmillan, 1982, pp. 65–6; G.Niedhart, ‘British attitudes and policies towards the Soviet Union and international communism 1933–1939’ in Mommsen and Kettenacker (eds), Fascist Challenge, pp. 286–93. A.Adamthwaite, ‘France and the coming of war’ in Mommsen and Kettenacker (eds), Fascist Challenge, pp. 246–55; A.Adamthwaite, Grandeur and Misery: France’s Bid for Power in Europe, 1914–1940, London, Arnold, 1995, pp. 208–11. A.Adamthwaite (ed.), The Making of the Second World War, London, Allen and Unwin, 1977, pp. 149–50. Documents on British Foreign Policy 1919–1939, 2nd series, vol. XIV, no. 301, pp. 308–9. Hereafter DBFP. For the Maffey Report of 18 June 1935 see ibid., app. II, pp. 743–77. Ibid., no. 431, pp. 470–1. S.Morewood, ‘The Chiefs of Staff, the “men on the spot” and the Italo-Abyssinian emergency, 1935–1936’ in D.Richardson and G.Stone (eds), Decisions and Diplomacy: Essays in Twentieth Century International History, London, Routledge, 1995, p. 88. W.I.Shorrock, From Ally to Enemy: The Enigma of Fascist Italy in French Diplomacy, 1920–1940, Kent, Ohio, Kent State University Press, 1988, pp. 145–57. DBFP, 2nd series, vol. XIV, no. 547, pp. 588–9. Adamthwaite, Grandeur and Misery, p. 198; P.Renouvin, ‘Les relations franco-anglaises (1935–1939)’ in Les RelationsFranco-Britanniques de 1935 a 1939, Paris, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), 1975, p. 23. DBFP, 2nd series, vol. XV, no. 338, pp.432–6. P M H.Bell, France and Britain 1900–1940: Entente and Estrangement, London, Longman, 1996, p. 195. R.A.C.Parker, Chamberlain and Appeasement: British Policy and the Coming of the Second World War, London, Macmillan, 1993, pp. 53–5. P.Guillen, ‘Franco-Italian relations in flux, 1918–1940’ in R.Boyce (ed.), French Foreign and Defence Policy 1918–1940: The Decline and Fall of a Great Power, London, Routledge, 1998, p. 157. Parker, Chamberlain and Appeasement, pp. 56–7; R. Davies, ‘Mésentente Cordiale: the failure of the Anglo-French alliance. Anglo-French relations during the Ethiopian and Rhineland crises, 1934–6’, European History Quarterly, 1993, vol. 23, pp. 522–3. Shorrock, Ally to Enemy, pp. 196 ff. K.Feiling, The Life of Neville Chamberlain, London, Macmillan, 1946, pp. 329.

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J.Maiolo, The Royal Navy and Nazi Germany, 1933–1939: A Study in Appeasement and the Origins of the Second World War, London, Macmillan, 1998, p. 22. R.M.Salerno, ‘Multilateral strategy and diplomacy: the Anglo-German Naval Agreement and the Mediterranean crisis, 1935–1936’, Journal of Strategic Studies, 1994, vol. 17, pp. 54–5; Bell, France and Britain, pp. 188–9. DBFP, 2nd series, vol. XVI, ann. to no. 20, p. 32. Thomas, Britain, France and Appeasement, pp. 27–8. S. Schuker, ‘France and the remilitarisation of the Rhineland, 1936’, French Historical Studies, 1986, vol. 14, pp. 304, 316–23, 330–4. See also Alexander, Republic in Danger, pp. 257–9. See, for example, C. Christienne and P.Buffotot, ‘L’armée de l’air française et la crise du 7 Mars 1936’ in La France et l’Allemagne 1932– 1936, Paris, CNRS, 1980, pp. 326–7. J.T.Emmerson, The Rhineland Crisis. 7 March 1936: A Study in Multilateral Diplomacy, London, 1977, p. 77; Z. Shore, ‘Hitler, intelligence and the decision to remilitarise the Rhineland’, Journal of Contemporary History, 1999, vol. 34, pp. 5–9. Alexander, Republic in Danger, pp. 259–63. W.N.Medlicott, Britain and Germany: The Search for Agreeement, 1930– 1937, London, Athlone, 1969, pp. 25–30. K.Hildebrand, The Foreign Policy of the Third Reich, London, Batsford, 1973, pp. 36–7. DBFP, 2nd series, vol. XV, apps I and IV, pp. 713–36, 762–91. DBFP, 2nd series, vol. XVI, app. III, pp. 758–97. Public Record Office (PRO) CAB 23/85 CM 53(36). Hansard Parliamentary Debates, 5th series, HC,vol. 315, cc. 1131–2. Documents Diplomatiques François 1932–1939, 2nd series, vol. III, no. 213, pp. 307–11. Hereafter DDF. DBFP, 2nd series, vol. XVII, nos 210, 214, 223, 228, 229, pp. 286– 90, 294–5, 306–7, 312–13. J.E.Dreifort, Yvon Delbos and the Quai d’Orsay: French Foreign Policy during the Popular Front, 1936–1938, Lawrence, Ka., University of Kansas Press, 1973, pp. 168–9. DBFP, 2nd series, vol. XVIII, no. 86, pp. 112–14. DBFP, 2nd series, vol. XVIII, nos 147, 167, pp. 187, 221–5. DBFP, 2nd series, vol. XVIII, nos 462, 477, pp. 701–3, 723–4. PRO CAB 27/622 FP(36) meetings of the Cabinet Foreign Policy Committee, 10 and 19 May 1937. DBFP, 2nd series, vol. XVIII, nos 396, 480, 538, pp. 609–11, 727– 31, 803–4. DBFP, 2nd series, vol. XIX, nos 41, 52, pp. 67–72, 93–7. Halifax Papers, A4 410 3.2 and A4 410 3.3, Churchill College. Neville Chamberlain Papers, NC 7/11/30/1–3, University of Birmingham. DBFP, 2nd series, vol. XIX, no. 336, pp. 540–55. PRO CAB 23/90 CM 43(37). CAB 27/626 FP(36)40. DDF, 2nd series, vol. VII, nos 287, 291, pp. 518–45, 553–4. PRO CAB 23/92 CM 4(38), 9 February 1938. DBFP, 2nd series, vol. XIX, nos 465, 488, 512, pp. 777–91, 836–50, 890–2. See also Parker, Chamberlain and Appeasement, pp. 129–30. DBFP, 2nd series, vol. XIX, nos 514, 541 pp. 894, 914–15.

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DBFP, 2nd series, vol. XIX, nos 609, 610, pp. 985–8. See also A. Crozier, Appeasement and Germany’s Last Bid for Colonies, London, Macmillan, 1988, p. 239. For the extent of German, Italian and Soviet intervention see G.Stone, ‘The European great powers and the Spanish Civil War, 1936–1939’ in R.Boyce and E.M.Robertson (eds) Paths to War: New Essays on the Origins of the Second World War, London, Macmillan, 1989, pp. 200, 208. H.Thomas, The Spanish Civil War, London, Penguin, 3rd edition 1977, pp. 943, 981–3; A.Viñas, ‘The financing of the Spanish Civil War’ in P. Preston (ed.), Revolution and War in Spain 1931–1939, London, 1984, pp. 268–70. G.Stone, ‘Britain, France and the Spanish problem, 1936–1939’ in Richardson and Stone (eds), Decisions and Diplomacy, pp. 130–2. Dreifort, Yvon Delbos, pp. 52–3; D.A.L.Levy, ‘The French Popular Front 1936–7’ in H.Graham and P.Preston (eds), The Popular Front in Europe, London, Macmillan, 1987, p. 73. R.J.Young, In Command of France: French Foreign Policy and Military Planning 1933–1940, Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press, 1978, pp. 139–41; Dreifort, Yvon Delbos, pp. 38–43. J.Néré, The Foreign Policy of France from 1914 to 19 45, London, Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1975, p. 215; N.Jordan, The Popular Front and Central Europe: The Dilemmas of French Impotence, 1918–1940, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1992, pp. 203–4. Young, In Command of France, pp. 136–9; Alexander, Republic in Danger, p. 101. Jordan, Popular Front and Central Europe, pp. 208–9. Stone, ‘The European great powers’, pp. 213–16. PRO CAB 24/283 CP46(39). DDF, 2nd series, vol. XIV, nos 92, 97, 174, 175, pp. 166, 177–8, 298–300. Feiling, Life of Neville Chamberlain, pp. 347–8. Adamthwaite (ed.), Making of the Second World War, pp. 181–2. See also J. Doise et M.Vaïsse, Politique Étrangère de la France: Diplomatic et Outil Militaire, Paris, Editions du Seuil, 1992, pp. 393–4. M.Thomas, ‘France and the Czechoslovakian Crisis’, in Diplomacy and Statecraft, 1999, vol. 10, p. 125. A.Adamthwaite, France and the Coming of the Second World War, London, Frank Cass, 1977, p. 180; J.B.Duroselle, La Décadence, 1932–1939, Paris, Imprimerie Nationale, 1979, pp. 335–7. Y.Lacaze, ‘Daladier, Bonnet and the decision-making process during the Munich crisis’ in Boyce (ed.), French Foreign and Defence Policy, p. 218. See also Duroselle, La Décadence, p. 344. In fact, Henderson passed on the warning to Ulrich von Hassel, former German Ambassador at Rome, on 14 September, who then passed it on to General Wilhelm Keitel, Chief of Staff of the German Army, who presumably informed Hitler. See P.Neville, Appeasing Hitler: The Diplomacy of Sir Nevile Henderson, 1937–1939 (London, 1999), pp. 101–5. D.C.Watt, ‘British intelligence and the coming of the Second World War in Europe’ and R.J.Young, ‘French military intelligence and Nazi Germany, 1938–1939’ in E.R.May (ed.), Knowing One’s Enemies: Intelligence Assessment before the Two World Wars, Princeton, N.J., Princeton University Press, 1986, pp. 247, 282.

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J.E.Dreifort, ‘The French role in the least unpleasant solution’ in M. Latynski (ed.), Reappraising the Munich Pact: Continental Perspectives, Baltimore, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992, pp. 27–33; Adamthwaite, ‘France and the coming of war’, pp. 250–1. DDF, 2nd series, vol. XI, no. 356, pp. 544–5. Gibbs, Grand Strategy, pp. 646–7. B.Bond (ed.), Chief of Staff: The Diaries of Lieutenant General Sir Henry Pownall Volume I, London, 1972, app. II, p. 83; W.K.Wark, ‘British military and economic intelligence: assessments of Nazi Germany before the Second World War’ in C.Andrew and D.Dilks (eds), The Missing Dimension: Governments and Intelligence Communities in the Twentieth Century, London, Macmillan, 1984, p. 86. P.Jackson, ‘Intelligence and the end of appeasement’ in Boyce (ed.), French Foreign and Defence Policy, pp. 236–7; J.Delmas, ‘La perception de la puissance militaire française’ in R.Girault and R.Frank (eds), La Puissance en Europe 1938–1940, Paris, Publications de la Sorbonne, 1988, pp. 128– 9; Y.Lacaze, ‘Reflexions sur la supériorité militaire allemand à l’heure de Munich’, Revue d’Histoire Diplomatique, 1992, vol. 106, pp. 78–80. Wark, ‘British military and economic intelligence’, pp. 81–2. Jackson, ‘Intelligence and the end of appeasement’, p. 237; R.J.Young, ‘The use and abuse of fear: France and the air menace in the 1930s’, Intelligence and National Security, 1987, vol. 2, pp. 90–3; P.Facon, ‘Le haul commandement aèrien français et la crise de Munich’, Revue Historique des Armées, 3, 1983, pp. 11–16; M.S.Alexander, ‘Fighting to the last Frenchman? Reflections on the BEF deployment to France and the strains in the Franco-British alliance, 1939–1940’ in Blatt (ed.) French Defeat, pp. 298–9. Dilks, ‘The unnecessary war?’, pp. 124–5. Young, French military intelligence’, p. 290; Frank, Prix de Réarmement, pp. 187–93. R.Frank[enstein], ‘The decline of France and French appeasement policies, 1936–1939’ in Mommsen and Kettenacker (eds), Fascist Challenge, p. 242. Jackson, ‘Intelligence and the end of appeasement’, p. 247. Frank, ‘Decline of France’, pp. 242–3; E. du Réau, Edouard Daladier, 1884–1970, Paris, Fayard, 1993, pp. 292–9; T.Imlay, ‘France and the Phoney War. 1939–1940’ in Boyce (ed.), French Foreign and Defence Policy, pp. 274–6. DDF, 2nd series, vol. XI, no. 242, p. 373. Keylor, ‘France and the illusion of American support’, p. 228. Thomas, ‘France and the Czechoslovakian Crisis’, p. 149. Young, In Command of France, pp. 222–3; Du Réau, Edouard Daladier, pp. 340–1; D.C.Watt, How War Came: The Immediate Origins of the Second World War 1938–1939, London, Heinemann, 1989, pp. 99–107; Jackson, ‘Intelligence and the end of appeasement’, pp. 248–9. R.Girault, ‘La politique extérieure française de l’après-Munich (Septembre 1938-Avril 1939)’ in K.Hildebrand and K.F.Werner (eds), Deutschland und Frankreich 1936–1939, München, Artemis Verlag, 1981, pp. 507–22. Adamthwaite (ed.), Making of the Second World War, pp. 209–11. N.Rostow, Anglo-French Relations 1934–1936, London, Macmillan, 1984, pp. 154–5.

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M.J.Carley, ‘Prelude to defeat: Franco-Soviet relations, 1919–1939’ in Blatt (ed.), French Defeat, pp. 189–92. P.Buffotot, ‘The French High Command and the Franco-Soviet Alliance 1935–1939’, Journal of Strategic Studies, 1982, vol. 4, pp. 549– 51; Carley, ‘Franco-Soviet relations’, p.193; J S.Herndon, ‘British perceptions of Soviet military capability, 1935–1939’ in Mommsen and Kettenacker (eds), Fascist Challenge, p. 302; Alexander, Republic in Danger, pp. 292–3. M.J.Carley, ‘End of the “low, dishonest decade”: failure of the AngloFranco-Soviet Alliance in 1939’, Europe Asia Studies, 1993, vol. 45, pp. 308–9; Alexander, Republic in Danger, pp. 292–301. Carley, ‘Franco-Soviet relations’, p. 195; G.Stone, ‘Sir Robert Vansittart and Spain, 1931–1939’ in T.Otte and C.Pagedas (eds), Personalities, War and Diplomacy: Essays in International History, London, Frank Cass, 1997, pp. 137–8. P.Jackson, ‘French military intelligence and Czechoslovakia, 1938’, Diplomacy and Statecraft, 1994, vol. 5, pp. 88–9; M.Vaïsse, ‘La perception de la puissance sovietique par les militaires français en 1938’, Revue Historiques des Armées, 1983–84, pp. 20–4. Young, In Command of France, p. 211; Thomas, ‘France and the Czechoslovakian crisis’ p. 145; Northedge and Wells, Britain and Soviet Communism, pp. 65–6. R.Manne, ‘The British decision for alliance with Russia, May 1939’, Journal of Contemporary History, 1974, vol. 9, pp. 3–16. Imlay, ‘France and the Phoney War’, p. 264. J.-L.Crémieux-Brilhac, ‘La France devant l’Allemagne et la guerre au début de septembre 1939’ in Hildebrand and Werner (eds), Deutschland und Franhreich, p. 580. DBFP, 3rd series, vol. VI, pp. 422–3. Chamberlain Papers, NC 18/1/1101, 1102, 1107. Carley, ‘End of the low, dishonest decade’, pp. 322–7; J.Laloy, ‘Remarques sur les negociations Anglo-Franco-Soviétiques de 1939’ in Relations Franco-Britanniques, pp. 404–10. R.J.Overy, ‘Strategic intelligence and the outbreak of the Second World War’, War in History, 1998, vol. 5, p. 468. DBFP, 3rd series, vol. VI, app. pp. 762–4; Carley, ‘End of the low dishonest decade’, pp. 326–7. Adamthwaite (ed.), Making of the Second World War, pp. 218–19. Crémieux-Brilhac, ‘France devant l’Allemagne’, pp. 591–2. Carley, ‘End of the low, dishonest decade’, pp. 330–1; Young, In Command of France, pp. 238–40. Carley, ‘End of the low, dishonest decade’, pp. 332–3; Neidhart, ‘British attitudes and policies’, pp. 287–91; A.Roberts, The Holy Fox: A Biography of Lord Halifax, London, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1991, pp. 156–7. Carley, ‘End of the low, dishonest decade’, p. 332. See M.L.Dockrill, British Establishment Perspectives on France, 1936– 1940, London, Macmillan, 1999. Alexander, ‘Fighting to the last Frenchman?’, pp. 298–308. Ibid., pp. 297–8. See the contribution of Philip Bell to this volume.

11 France’s economic and financial crisis The view from the Foreign Office, the Treasury and the Bank of England, 1936–1939 Michael Dockrill By 1929 France had recovered from the economic and financial turmoil from which it had suffered in the immediate aftermath of the First World War and its relative prosperity enabled it to survive the worst effects of the world depression in 1930 and 1931. The gold reserves at the Bank of France rose to 40 billion francs in May 1931, while coal, iron ore and textile production achieved record levels in 1930. French exports were at their highest level since the end of the First World War. However, as Philippe Bernard and Henri Dubief point out, this economic success was built on insecure foundations. France was desperately short of minerals, the bulk of which had to be imported. Its birth-rate continued to fall between 1920 and 1939. Its industrial sector was small scale and under capitalized, with inadequate investment in new plant and machinery in all but a few of the larger firms. These underlying economic and financial weaknesses were brutally exposed when the slump finally hit France during and after 1932. Budget deficits had already appeared in 1930 and 1931 and rose inexorably until 1938. By 1935 France’s overseas trade had fallen to a half of its 1928 level, causing mounting balance of payments deficits. Increasing unemployment reduced the purchasing power of the masses. There was a wave of bank failures, a flight of capital overseas, while French industrial investment collapsed. The index of industrial production fell drastically after 1932, while agricultural prices slumped.1 Successive French governments reacted slowly to the mounting crisis. After 1932 various austerity measures were imposed on the economy, tariffs were increased and quotas imposed on a wide range of agricultural and manufactured imports. When Pierre Laval formed a right-wing government in July 1935, he was given powers to defend the franc by decree, and introduced a severe deflationary programme,

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which included reductions in state sector salaries, in domestic and agricultural rents and in pensions. These deflationary measures, which were intended to reduce the gap between French prices and world prices, only served to worsen France’s domestic economic situation.2 The crumbling economy and accusations of parliamentary corruption caused increasing social unrest and political extremism, which culminated in riots in Paris by right-wing leagues on 6 February 1934 which for a time threatened to de-stabilise the Third Republic. After 1934 working-class discontent led to frequent strikes and factory occupations which reached nation-wide proportions in 1936. Successive governments ruled out the devaluation of the franc, which might, if they had acted in time, have had a favourable impact on the financial situation. French politicians feared that devaluation would fracture an already brittle society. In April 1935 Belgium’s decision to leave the gold bloc and to devalue the Belgian franc led to doubts about the solidity of the gold bloc and a serious outbreak of speculation against the franc, resulting in the subsequent repatriation of 6.3 milliards of francs overseas, with 11 milliards being exported up to June 1936.3 I The Foreign Office, the Treasury and Bank of England looked on helplessly in the face of France’s seemingly inexorable economic decline. It distracted the attention of French ministers from the worsening international situation after 1934, while encouraging the many French politicians who had little stomach for confrontation with the dictators to pursue a weak and vacillating foreign policy. The reduction in armament expenditures, part of the effort to reduce public spending, weakened France’s defence posture and led to increasing doubts in London about France’s reliability as an ally. In August 1935 the Bank of England’s Overseas and Foreign Department painted a gloomy picture of France’s financial situation, one which it was to repeat with monotonous regularity up to early 1939: The political constitution and the national temperament being essentially demagogic, the French are disposed to extravagance in public finance. If the present crisis is removed another will take its place in ten years. The money is never safe in France because the nation abuses it.

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The Department complained that French people were not prepared to accept the sacrifices necessary to restore the economy to normal conditions while, given that the public debt had risen by 24 per cent since 1928 and that debt charges, including pensions, absorbed 43 per cent of the general budget, a devaluation to correct such a deficit would have to be in the region of 40 per cent. It concluded that this was ‘too big a price for the French to pay’.4 A young economist, Thomas Balogh, doubted in November 1935 that the existing French political régime was able or willing to do anything to restore financial and economic equilibrium. The French people are haunted by fears, the dread of war, inflation, insecurity, physical and financial, and a change of financial policy means an acute crisis whereas following the old tack threatens a breakdown only later.’5 In January 1936 the Treasury was equally frustrated by the impasse in France. ‘Recovery…is not even in sight.’ Capital was not returning to France, industrial production had remained stagnant throughout 1935, agricultural prices had fallen by 4 per cent, unemployment was 28 per cent higher than in 1934, and the public debt had increased by 18 to 20 milliards of francs in the same period. French business circles were growing increasingly pessimistic about the future. ‘The most sober judgment must admit that 1936 looks critical for France.’6 An equally gloomy report on the state of French finances by Ernest Rowe-Dutton, the financial adviser to the British Embassy in Paris, prompted the Foreign Office to complain about ‘the extraordinary disequilibrium into which the French economic system has fallen and which will take years to cure’.7 At the end of January 1936, the French Foreign Minister, PierreEtienne Flandin, during a visit to London, told the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Neville Chamberlain, that France wanted to raise a loan from City of London banks to help it tide over its immediate financial difficulties. A loan, repayable at the end of November, was subsequently negotiated, but by March this credit was nearly exhausted by the continued drain of gold as the Bank of France intervened in a desperate effort to maintain the franc’s value on the international markets.8 This effort met with only temporary success: the pressure on the French currency resumed in April. In May RoweDutton concluded that devaluation was inevitable, given that the Bank had lost 9,500 million francs (the equivalent of about £127 million) since January in its efforts to shore up the franc. He complained that, while every political party in France had, before the election, pronounced against devaluation, no politician was willing to advocate alternative and unpopular measures which were

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essential if the franc was to be maintained at its existing value. Meanwhile, French capital continued to flow out of the country while the French people were hoarding money which might otherwise have been invested in French enterprises.9 A Popular Front Government of radicals and socialists led by Léon Blum was formed on 4 June 1936 after winning, with their communist allies, an overall majority in the Chamber of Deputies in the May general election. The severe economic problems inherited by this Ministry were exacerbated by a wave of strikes and factory occupations, which spread from the metallurgical industries in Paris at the end of May to all branches of trade and industry in France by early June. These actions were designed to force the new Government (as well as the employers) to fulfil its somewhat vague pre-election promises of social reform, of whose necessity the radicals were certainly doubtful. Blum proceeded to broker the Matignon Agreement between the main trade union, the Confedération Générale du Travail (CGT), and the employers’ confederation on 7 June, which established compulsory collective bargaining, increased wages by an average 12 per cent, reduced the working week from forty eight to forty hours, and instituted a fortnight’s holiday with pay for all workers.10 When employers tried to delay the application of the Matignon Agreement, the CGT appealed to all strikers to return to work but strikes persisted until the end of 1936. Sir George Clerk, the British Ambassador to France soon to retire, feared that the wave of strikes ‘seems to be assuming unmanageable proportions and the situation…appears to contain the seeds of unpleasantness and even danger’.11 Cameron Fromanteel Cobbold, an adviser on external financial affairs to the Governors of the Bank of England, forecast that, in this volatile situation, Blum’s continued refusal to devalue the franc would exacerbate inflationary pressures, which might in turn lead to internal disorder in France and the subsequent establishment of an authoritarian régime modelled on that of Berlin or Moscow.12 On 23 June 1936, Rowe-Dutton wrote a long memorandum outlining ‘the financial programme of the French Government’. Whereas previous governments had attempted to maintain an overvalued franc and to reduce successive budget deficits by a policy of deflation, Blum’s administration had reversed this policy and sought to achieve budgetary equilibrium by increasing purchasing power.13 Rowe-Dutton was doubtful that this policy would be any more successful than the previous one: indeed, it was certain to lead to rising costs and rising prices, and he shared Cobbold’s fear that the

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ensuinginflation would provoke serious disorder in the country. He listed the annual budgetary deficits since 1934:8,800 million francs in 1934, increasing to 10 to 11 milliards in 1935 and, from 1 January until 1 June 1936, to 6 to 7 milliards. As a result a ‘gradual throttling’ of French economic activity had occurred, which ‘had played havoc’ with the revenue, distorted the budget and resulted in a massive increase in the public debt. The consequences had been increasing public distrust of the Government’s management of the public finances, grave doubts about the future stability of the franc, which had led to the hoarding of bank notes and the flight of French capital abroad, which in turn had reduced the gold reserve of the Bank of France by 30 milliards of francs (about £400 million) since January 1935.14 The wave of strikes and factory occupations gradually subsided by the end of 1936, but the problems of the French economy and the pressure on the franc did not. The forty-hour week, which was introduced on an industry-by-industry basis between November 1936 and April 1937, effectively reduced productivity per worker by 17 per cent, which destroyed any potential benefits conferred on the working population by the wage increases, since the cost of living rose by 46 per cent between May 1936 and May 1938. 15 Despite the frequent denials by the French Government that it intended to devalue the franc, the Minister of Finance, Vincent Auriol, was forced, on 26 September, after a massive exodus of French capital, and a fall in the gold reserves at the Bank of France to the danger level of 50 million francs, to devalue. There had been negotiations since June between the French, British and American governments, spearheaded by Emmanuel Monick, the French financial attaché in London, and an exponent of devaluation, for a tripartite monetary agreement, but these had foundered when Auriol had called for the restoration of the gold standard by the three powers. However, in an effort to help the French in their plight, the British and American governments finally relented, and in three separate statements it was agreed that the franc was to float on the exchanges at a rate not less than 25.19 per cent and not more than 34.35 per cent, that is, a rate of between 100 and 115 francs to the pound.16 The three countries’ exchange equalisation funds were to work together to limit exchange fluctuations to these levels, with 10 billion francs transferred by the French Government to the French exchange stabilisation fund. The three countries also agreed to increase international trade by progressively relaxing the existing system of quotas and exchange controls with a view to their eventual abolition by international

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agreement.17 This was a pious hope: Britain did not want to sacrifice its agricultural quotas or its Ottawa duties, Germany, bent on autarchy, would not discuss the devaluation of the mark or the abolition of its exchange controls with the three western governments, while the French Government was inhibited by strong internal opposition from relaxing its quotas. In any case the failure of the French to restore confidence in the franc, even after devaluation, made the removal of their trade barriers impossible. The Belgian Prime Minister, Paul van Zeeland, led a mission to the major European capitals to take soundings about the possible abolition of industrial quotas, but it was a fruitless effort. 18 II The September devaluation had only a short-term positive effect on the French economy since costs of production continued to accelerate.19 Harry Siepmann, an adviser to the Governors of the Bank of England on external finance, complained in December 1936 that France’s financial situation was ‘about as bad as it could be’. Cobbold was slightly more optimistic. After visiting Paris twice in January 1937, he was ‘struck by a distinct improvement in business and in general economic improvement’ and was now ‘convinced that the elements of a real recovery are there’. He noted, however, that both government finances and the exchange value of the franc remained in disarray. Cobbold was correct in his assumption: there was a slight economic recovery after September 1936, but this ground to a halt in March 1937.20 Hugh Lloyd Thomas, the British Minister in Paris, underlined Cobbold’s fears for the franc when he reported to the Foreign Office in February 1937 that the financial situation remained ‘very grave’. He complained that Blum and Auriol were incapable of liquidating the onerous financial burdens they had inherited from their predecessors or of paying for the Popular Front’s expensive social reform programme. They had gambled on a revival of international trade, and though this had occurred, France had failed to benefit from it, while confidence in the franc had not returned. Moreover, the shorter hours and higher wages decreed in the summer of 1936 had resulted in hefty increases in labour costs resulting in inflation, which, in turn, had ignited new wage demands.21 Neville Chamberlain telegraphed the United States Treasury Secretary, Henry Morganthau, on 10 February 1937 that he had urged the French Government to take vigorous action to prevent a further

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flight from the franc and to obviate exchange controls, since the latter would put the tripartite agreement in jeopardy—‘which we should regard as a serious disaster.’ But by the end of January the French exchange stabilisation fund had lost its 10 billion franc gold reserve in its efforts to uphold the franc’s value. In the face of this current crisis, Chamberlain arranged with Montagu Norman, the Governor of the Bank of England, to encourage the City to take up a £40 million (4.2 milliards of francs) short-term credit to French railways to ease the strain on French financial resources. This loan merely further publicised the weakness of the franc to investors and speculators and the drain of French capital abroad accelerated at the end of February. Rowe-Dutton now believed that a complete financial collapse was imminent.22 France’s financial difficulties were largely the result of the burdens imposed on its economy by the Popular Front’s social programme, French financial aid to east European allies and the large rearmament programme announced by Blum in September 1936. 23 On 13 February 1937 Blum announced a ‘pause’ in the social reform programme, and schemes for pensions and national insurance were abandoned. Blum was determined that the rearmament programme should be continued even at the expense of social expenditure and he was equally anxious not to introduce exchange controls, which would alienate Britain and the United States. 24 Early in March 1937, in an attempt to ease the desperate financial situation, the French Council of Ministers reinforced the effects of the ‘pause’ by instituting various emergency measures, including the slowing down of public works programmes and the raising of a national defence loan of 10.5 milliard francs. Chamberlain and the Treasury were delighted by these measures, since they had long been convinced that the heavy domestic expenditure of the Blum Government had been responsible for France’s financial problems.25 The successful launch of the defence loan, the bulk of which came from repatriated French capital, temporarily eased pressure on the franc, but there was a fresh panic in April 1937 and the exodus of capital abroad was resumed.26 The domestic atmosphere had been unsettled by a riot by left wingers demonstrating against right-wing extremists at Clichy on 16 March, during the course of which the police opened fire, killing seven of the demonstrators. This was followed by a half-day general strike in Paris on 18 March. These events convinced Rowe-Dutton that Blum would be unable to overcome the resistance of his party to his new policy of financial moderation. He noted that unemployment had fallen slightly since

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January, but this decrease had not been matched by increased productivity, while shortages of skilled labour were reported in many sectors of the economy. Meanwhile, the deficit in the balance of trade continued to rise and wage demands were spiralling.27 In a memorandum compiled for a meeting of central bankers of the British Empire in London in May and June by the Bank of England Overseas and Foreign Department, France’s financial situation was depicted as one of ‘almost unrelieved gloom’, at least in the short term though the long term was more optimistic: France remains a rich and strong country and has very large assets abroad: on a long view there is no reason to suppose that France will not recover confidence and equilibrium. But with a dangerous position in the national finances, continued pressure on the exchange, marked hesitation of economic recovery and political and industrial uncertainty, the immediate outlook is not reassuring.28 Cobbold thought this study was too pessimistic, pointing out the improvements in the social and political climate that had taken place in France since the dark years of 1934 and 1935, the decline of political extremism and the fact that the French had enjoyed a stable government for almost a year.29 However, the Bank of England study was correct in its pessimism about the parlous state of French finances.The Bank of France was still losing gold at a heavy rate in June, while tax yields had fallen and the budget deficit had increased.30 This led to renewed and heavy pressure on the franc and a new exchange crisis. To deal with this, Blum requested financial decree powers, but when these were rejected by the Senate, he resigned on 13 June. The Senate believed that Blum intended to impose state control over the French banking system which he suspected, probably correctly, of deliberately not lending the Government sufficient funds during the crisis.31 Blum was replaced as Prime Minister on 22 June 1937 by the conservative Radical, Camille Chautemps. Blum replaced Chautemps as vice-premier. Georges Bonnet, also a conservative Radical, was recalled by Chautemps from the Washington embassy to be Finance Minister. The Senate on 30 June granted Bonnet the decree powers which it had denied Blum. Bonnet issued a series of decrees designed to control prices and to increase government revenue by 7.4 billion francs, by increasing direct and indirect taxation and certain customs duties, and introducing measures to

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prevent fraud and tax evasion. Rearmament expenditure was also frozen at existing levels (this was reversed after the Munich crisis). But heavy speculation on the franc led Bonnet on 30 June to allow it to float freely on the exchanges, an effective devaluation to 140– 150 francs to the pound (Bonnet had initially hoped to hold it at 130 francs to the pound).32 He believed that this devaluation would encourage the revival of industrial production and lead to the return of capital to France. 33 Cobbold visited Paris on 23 July 1937 and complained to the Governor of the Bank of France, Robert Fournier, about the continued depreciation of the ‘Bonnet’ franc, and warned him that the British Government would send a stiff protest to Paris if the franc was allowed to depreciate further. Fournier replied that Bonnet opposed further depreciation but the French Government were not prepared to lose gold indefinitely and could give no undertaking that there would be no further depreciation. Cobbold noted that ‘at all events there is at present no favourable turn in the tide and the market remains in the condition where any rumour suffices to bring new pressure on the franc’.34 Another Bank of England official, M.McGrath, complained on 23 August that, while ‘France is a wealthy country—security for any loan is good’, it had consistently bungled ‘every favourable situation— but France has now the best chance for over 2 years to put her house in order’.35 Four days later, however, McGrath concluded that the present French Government was incapable of dealing with the deteriorating financial situation: ‘apart from the general lack of confidence, the recent frequent changes in the exchange rate, far from being an inducement to repatriate funds held abroad, encouraged Frenchmen to hold on for the maximum profit’. He feared a continued rise in prices as the effects of the second devaluation were digested, leading to fresh demands for higher wages, thus increasing costs of production and diminishing further the competitiveness of the export trades, resulting in demands for further alleviation through manipulating the exchange rate. McGrath feared that if the political, financial and labour troubles continued there would be a general loss of confidence which would result in another flight from the franc and an increasing adverse balance of trade, with severe pressure on the Bank of France’s gold reserve. France really needed a large long-term loan of 200 million pounds based on the security of the Bank of France’s gold. ‘In regarding the available amount of such security, it should be stressed that in spite of criminal mismanagement of its affairs, France remains an

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extremely wealthy country, which has never defaulted on a Government obligation.’ He now advocated that Britain should provide this financial assistance, but only after France had demonstrated that it was doing everything in its power to achieve genuine financial recovery: ‘For obvious reasons a strong France is a necessity for us and such considerations should outweigh the economic objectives.’36 The Foreign Office was also concerned not only about the adverse effects of the recent further decline in the value of the franc on Britain’s trade with France but, like McGrath, on its serious consequences for France’s international standing at a time of increasing tension in Europe. Nor could there be any hope, in the Foreign Office’s opinion, of a return to confidence while Blum and his socialist colleagues remained in the French Cabinet, continuing to advocate far-reaching public works programmes and old-age pensions. Nevertheless, the Foreign Office was prepared to recommend financial assistance to France even if this risked further extravagance. It suggested the renewal of the January loan when it became due for repayment at the end of November 1937. 37 Conversely, the Bank and the Treasury opposed further financial aid to France. The Chancellor of the Exchequer, Sir John Simon, doubted that the British banks would agree to a renewal of the January loan since they wanted their money back as ‘they are rapidly expanding their advances to industry as a result of our rearmament programme. We are bound to facilitate this as we do not want that programme slowed down.’ Earlier, in September, Norman saw Sir Richard Hopkins of the Treasury who was troubled by the recent fall in the value of the franc. The Governor of the Bank confessed that he could ‘see no remedy and he could only wait and see’. RoweDutton wrote that ‘it seemed to me that if the Frenchman had no confidence in his own currency it was difficult to expect the foreigner to have more confidence’, sentiments with which the Bank of England was in complete agreement. Cobbold, during a visit to the Bank of France in late September, told its Governor that the City of London was alarmed by the depreciation of 10 per cent in the franc’s value over the course of the last few days.38 In September 1937 Chautemps informed Neville Chamberlain, now British Prime Minister, that the pressure on French gold reserves was so severe that he despaired of holding the value of the franc even at 140 francs to the pound. He hoped that London would do everything it could to help restore confidence in the exchanges. Simon included a few phrases in his annual speech at the Mansion

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House on 7 October praising Bonnet for his financial reforms. France was able to repay the January loan when it expired in November.39 II I During November and December 1937 Cobbold noted a distinct improvement in the confidence of the financial markets in the future stability of the franc, which the French financial authorities now believed could be maintained at the present value of about 140 to 150 francs to the pound. Nevertheless, he pointed out that French industry remained stagnant and was overloaded with stocks.40 In January 1938 both the Foreign Office and the Treasury concluded that only the formation of a national government in France, from which the socialists were excluded, could save the situation. Certainly, the British Ambassador in Paris, Sir Eric Phipps, did all he could, with the connivance of the Foreign Office, to undermine the Popular Front Government, in which Léon Blum resumed the premiership on 13 March. The British feared, with some justification, that Blum, after the failure of previous efforts to stabilise the franc, had been converted to exchange controls. On 10 April 1938 the British were greatly relieved when the Radical leader, Edouard Daladier, who had served as Defence Minister in Popular Front governments since 1936, formed a ministry composed entirely of Radicals.41 Daladier issued decrees on 3 May which increased direct and indirect taxation by 8 per cent as a means of reducing government borrowing, attempted to encourage tourism by means of subsidies, modified the forty-hour week, and expanded credit facilities to enable firms to secure working capital. Neither Rowe-Dutton nor the Overseas and Foreign Department of the Bank of England were impressed by these measures. They forecast that Daladier’s decrees would merely increase inflation, and that they signified the abandonment of any attempt to work towards a balanced budget. Nor would the measures help to increase industrial production. Cobbold dismissed them as ‘hardly scratching the surface.’42 Despite the pessimism of the British financial authorities, in May the British and American governments tried to assist Daladier’s efforts to stabilise the economy by declaring that a fall in the value of the franc to a lower rate ‘would be regarded as not inconsistent with the Tripartite Agreement’. Encouraged by this declaration, the French Finance Minister, Paul Marchandeau, announced a third devaluation on 5 May which fixed the value of the franc at 179 francs

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to the pound, which amounted to a further 12 per cent fall in its value. He pledged that this value would be strictly adhered to. This new rate resulted in a large influx of capital into France in the amount of 18 billion francs.43 Rowe-Dutton, however, remained pessimistic about the outlook in mid-June, after Daladier issued a second round of decrees, in which he could discern no coherent policy. These included a programme of public works, further changes in the fortyhour week, which was now suspended completely in the rearmament industries, additional taxation, and to sweeten the pill, agricultural and railway subsidies. Rowe-Dutton concluded that ‘if the crisis is overcome, it will be difficult to ascribe the result to the policy—if any —to which these decrees have given expression’.44 In August the Bank of France and the Bank of England reported heavy losses of gold—the French stabilisation fund lost three million pounds and the British fund lost eight million pounds in their efforts to shore up their respective currencies. Daladier wrote to Chamberlain on 12 August emphasising the seriousness of the situation, with all the consequences of reductions in French and British national incomes at a time when both countries were bearing heavy rearmament burdens. He called for conversations between the two leaders to try to resolve the situation. He wanted the British, American and French governments to declare that they neither intended to modify the Tripartite Agreement nor to alter the present levels of their currency on the exchanges. Simon rejected conversations since he could not see that they would yield any useful result. He suspected that Daladier’s letter was intended to warn Britain that another depreciation of the franc was imminent, Simon thought to 200 francs to the pound, ‘which is deplorable.’ Finally, Chamberlain replied to Daladier urging him to introduce financial reforms and to do everything he could to maintain the franc at its present level.45 IV In November 1938 Paul Reynaud, who had replaced Marchandeau as Finance Minister in October, a move itself signalling the end of popular-front reforms, introduced a three-year plan which Monick described as ‘drastic and radical’ when he called at the Treasury with the details on 14 November. This made major modifications to the forty-hour week, adopted a three-year fiscal plan to increase national income and cut public works, promised that there would be no further devaluation and that France would work towards the abolition of

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quotas. Certainly, ‘drastic and radical’ action appeared essential in view of the Paris Embassy’s economic report on France for 1938 which pointed out that the ‘already deplorable economic situation’ in France had worsened during the year with public finances in a mess, rising prices, increasing unemployment, scarcity of factory orders and general insecurity. All sectors of manufacturing industry, except aviation, reported a decline in activity. For the past eight years, the report concluded, France had been in a state of ever worsening crisis. Its industrial production was the lowest of any developed country, its exports had been reduced by a half and its reserves nearly exhausted.46 The relaxations in the forty-hour week prompted a wave of strikes at the end of November. However, the French Government reacted vigorously against the strikes which fizzled out. On a visit to Paris on 20 and 21 December Cobbold was struck by the degree of cheerfulness about the national and international situation, especially by comparison with London. There was little opposition in Paris to Bonnet’s appeasement policy and no similar outcry to that in London about the western powers truckling to the dictators at Munich while, unlike in Britain and the United States, Kristallnacht (9–10 November 1938) had not stirred up anti-German feelings. The social atmosphere had improved following the failure of the strike wave, exports were picking up, and £20 million worth of capital had returned to France in December alone.47 This improvement in the economy continued in 1939. Rowe-Dutton reported in January that Reynaud’s measures, and the 1939 budget which passed both houses of Parliament in that month, and which enabled the Government to effect economies by decree until 30 September 1939, represented, in his view, the first serious attempt to end the financial deficits and disorder of the past eight years. The financial outlook had begun to improve while an economic revival was now possible. The main problem of the expense of the rearmament programme, for which heavy borrowing would be required, remained, and Rowe-Dutton questioned how long France could sustain this burden. He hoped for ‘a period of tranquillity, social peace and hard work’ which would enable the economy to begin an ascending spiral. The improvements which had flown from Reynaud’s three-year plan ‘must be a source of encouragement to France and the friends of France’. The Foreign Office was also delighted by this turn of events and Frank Ashton-Gwatkin, head of its Economic Section, believed that ‘M.Paul Reynaud’s advent seems to have given the country a fair chance of recovery.’48 On 21 April 1939 Reynaud issued thirty-nine financial decrees, which included an additional 15-milliard franc defence credit, strict measures against tax evasion, an armaments profits tax, further reductions in

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public works and the road programme, further increases in working hours and a reduction in overtime payments. Rowe-Dutton stated that Reynaud had taken advantage of the increased sprit of national unity in the face of the Axis menace to introduce these unpopular measures.49 Thereafter the French economy continued on an upward progress. On 6 July 1939 Cobbold returned from a visit to Paris to report that, ‘Most of the people I met…seemed surprisingly calm and confident.’ They believed that, unlike in September 1938, ‘France is now prepared for any eventuality.’ He elaborated on the massive improvement in France’s defensive preparedness since 1938. Labour troubles were now practically non-existent. Workers had accepted the new conditions ‘with good grace’, with workers in the armaments industry working a sixtyhour week. As a result of the economic upturn France was now faced with a shortage of labour, with practically no able-bodied unemployed. This, together with the continued rise in the cost of living, was the only ‘possible menace to the government’ since, as a result, ‘certain classes, of considerable political influence, are suffering a steady reduction in their standard of life’. Nevertheless, general industrial production had risen by 26 per cent up to June 1939, and this expansion was not confined to the armaments industries, but also included other industries engaged in the export trade and in building and motor-car production, while agriculture was booming. The adverse balance of trade had been reduced to a level which ensured that the balance of payments was in equilibrium. Capital was flowing back into France and the exchange equalisation fund was adding to its reserves. The franc was now stable and ‘the general situation in France has improved tremendously during the past seven or eight months and at present gives little ground for anxiety’. Cobbold feared, however, that France was ‘in a cleft stick, with the spectre of war on one side and on the other the practical certainty that any sudden removal of international tension would soon give rise not only to fresh social difficulties but to a serious state of general economic disorganisation’. There was much truth in this statement, given that Reynaud’s boom, which did not achieve a restoration of pre-1932 levels of output, was largely founded on heavy armaments expenditure.50 V In Paul Kennedy’s words, ‘the mid–1930s economic depression… hollowed out France’s by no means extensive manufacturing base, reduced the value of the franc, and exacerbated internal and class antagonisms’.51 While France’s financial and economic weakness

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encouraged its politicians to follow Britain’s lead in pursuing ‘appeasement’ in 1938, this very weakness reduced France’s value as an effective British ally should war with Germany break out. Apart from two relatively small loans raised in the City and reluctant support for France’s three devaluations in the period, the Treasury did little to assist France, arguing that Britain’s finances were not robust enough to take the risk of lending large sums to a country already saddled with a sizeable indebtedness. Inevitably, France’s recovery in 1939 was greeted with much relief in the British Foreign Office, coming as it did at a time when war seemed increasingly to many of its officials (but not to the British Prime Minister) to be inevitable. Moreover, it strengthened the position of those French politicians, like Reynaud, who pressed for a more vigorous French response to the Axis challenge than hitherto. The Franco-British alliance might now be able to enter a long conflict with more confidence in achieving a successful outcome. There was much wishful thinking, of course, in this conclusion. René Girault has questioned whether the improvement in France’s financial situation, and hence the resources for effective rearmament, was ‘not too late to make up for lost time’. He doubts whether French industrial and commercial structures were adequate ‘to enable France to be more than a medium power’.52 British economic experts at the time were equally concerned about the underlying strength of the French economy: in January 1939 the Industrial Intelligence Centre observed that France’s inadequate resources and its feeble industrial capacity would seriously impair its ability to withstand a long war.53 In the end, of course, it was not financial or economic incapacity which caused France’s sudden exit from the war in June 1940, but the incompetence of its military leaders and its faulty strategy.54 Notes 1

2 3

P.Bernard and H.Dubief, The Decline of the French Republic, 1936–1938, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1983, pp. 173–86; M.Larkin, France since the Popular Front: Government and People, 1936–1996, Oxford, Clarendon, 1997, pp. 9–11; R.Girault, ‘The impact of the economic situation on the foreign policy of France, 1936–39’ in W.J.Mommsen and L. Kettenacker (eds), The Fascist Challenge and the Policy of Appeasement, London, Allen and Unwin, 1983, pp. 211–14. Girault, ‘Impact of the economic situation’, p. 214. Bernard and Dubief, Decline of the French Republic, pp. 202–89. The gold bloc consisted of France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, Italy (until 1934), Poland and Czechoslovakia, who had all refused to

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follow Britain in abandoning the gold standard in 1931. See Girault, ‘Impact of the economic situation’, pp. 214–16. Memorandum by Overseas and Foreign Department, 13 August 1935. Bank of England Archive (BEA), OV 45/9. Memorandum by Thomas Balogh, ‘Security Markets and the Threat to the Franc’, 28 November 1935. BEA, OV 45/9. Memorandum: ‘The French Situation’, Overseas and Foreign Department, 13 January 1936. BEA, OV 45/9. Parkin Minute, 15 January 1936, Public Record Office (PRO) FO 371/19861. Clerk to Foreign Office, 26 January 1936. Ronald Fergusson, Treasury, to Clive Wigram, Foreign Office, 30 January 1936. PRO FO 371/ 19861. Rowe-Dutton to S.D.Waley, Treasury, 31 March 1936. BEA, OV 45/85. Rowe-Dutton to Waley, 7 and 8 May 1936. BEA, OV 45/10. Larkin, France since the Popular Front, pp. 54–5. Clerk to Eden, 11 June 1936. PRO FO 371/19857. Cobbold memorandum: ‘France’, 8 June 1936. BEA, OV 45/10. J.Jackson The Popular Front in France: Defending Democracy, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1988, pp. 162–3. Rowe-Dutton memorandum: ‘The Financial Programme of the French Government’, 23 June 1936. BEA, OV 45/10. Larkin, France since the Popular Front, p. 55. See Jackson, Popular Front in France, p. 171. ‘Monetary Agreements reached between the French, the United Kingdom and the United States Governments’ (Tripartite Agreement), 25 September 1936. BEA, OV 45/10. M.Thomas, Britain, France and Appeasement: Anglo-French Relations and the Popular Front, Oxford, Berg, 1996, pp. 70–1. Gladwyn Jebb Memorandum, 15 October 1936. PRO FO 371/19882. Board of Trade Memorandum, 23 October 1936. PRO FO 371/19861. Sir Frederick Leith-Ross, Treasury to Orme Sargent, Foreign Office, 26 January 1937. PRO FO 371/20699. Larkin, France since the Popular Front, pp. 57, 59. Siepmann Minute, 4 December 1936. BEA, OV 45/10. Cobbold Memorandum for Deputy Governor, 21 January 1937. BEA, OV 45/ 11 and OV 45/86. See Jackson, PopularFront in France, pp. 169–70. Lloyd Thomas, Paris, to Sargent, Foreign Office, 5 February 1937. PRO FO 371/20689. Thomas, Britain, France and Appeasement, p. 160. Lindsay, Washington to Foreign Office, 10 February 1937 and Rowe-Dutton Minute, 20 February 1937. PRO FO 371/20689. Girault, ‘Impact of the economic situation’, p. 218. Girault, ‘Impact of the economic situation’, p. 219. Jackson, PopularFront in France, p. 180. Thomas, Britain, France and Appeasement, pp. 160–1. Ibid., pp. 180–1. Clerk to Foreign Office, 5 March 1937; Eden to Lindsay, Washington, 11 March 1937; Rowe-Dutton to Waley, 19 March 1937; Rowe-Dutton Memorandum, 6 April 1937. PRO FO 371/20689.

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‘Memorandum by the Overseas and Foreign Department on “France,” compiled for meeting of Empire Central Bankers’, 27 May 1937. BEA, OV 45/12. Ibid., Cobbold Note, 28 May 1937. Phipps to Foreign Office, 3 June 1937. PRO FO 371/20689. Jackson, Popular Front in France, pp. 181–2. Ibid., p. 184; Thomas, Britain, France and Appeasement, p. 207. Rowe-Dutton Memorandum: ‘The French Government’s Financial Programme July 1937’. BEA, OV 45/12. Jackson, Popular Front in France, p. 184. ‘Conversation with Fournier at the Bank of France’: memorandum by Cobbold, 23 July 1937. BEA, OV 45/13. Memorandum by M.McGrath, 23 August 1937. BEA, OV 42/12. ‘Note written to answer question by H.A.S[iepmann]’, M.McGrath, 25 August 1937., BEA, OV 45/12. F O Memorandum: ‘The French Financial Situation and the desirability of giving assistance to the French Government’, 27 September 1937; S.D.Waley to William Strang, Foreign Office, 5 October 1937; Strang Minute, 7 October 1937; Simon to Vansittart, 11 November 1937. PRO FO 371/20691. Montagu Norman Diaries, entry 9 September 1937. BEA, ADM 24/ 26. Rowe-Dutton to S.D.Waley, Treasury, 15 September 1937 and Note by Cobbold of ‘Conversations at the Bank of France, 20, 21 and 22 September 1937’, 23 September 1937. BEA, OV 45/12. Simon to Vansittart, 11 November 1936. PRO FO 371/20691. Barclay Minute, 15 November 1937. PRO FO 371/20691. Cobbold Note, 1 November 1937 and ‘Note on visit to Paris, 2 and 3 December 1937’. BEA, OV 45/13. On Phipps’s intervention in internal French politics in this period see, J. Herman, ‘The Paris Embassy of Sir Eric Phipps, 1937–1939’, University of London PhD thesis, 1996, pp. 150 passim. Rowe-Dutton to S.D.Waley, Treasury, 16 March 1938 and 19 April 1938; ‘First Daladier Decrees’: note by Overseas and Foreign Department, 4 May 1938; pencilled note probably by Cobbold (undated). BEA, OV 45/14. Jackson, Popular Front in France, p. 187; Girault, ‘Impact of the economic situation’, pp. 220–1. Rowe-Dutton Memorandum on ‘Decrees by Daladier on 17 June 1938’. BEA, OV 45/14. Daladier to Chamberlain, 12 August 1938; Horace Wilson Minute, 15 August 1938; Chamberlain to Daladier, 17 August 1938. PRO PREM 1/267. ‘M. Paul Reynaud’s Plans’, communicated by Waley 14 November 1938. BEA, OV 45/15. Phipps to Lord Halifax, 26 November 1938. PRO FO 371/21589. Cobbold Memorandum, Paris 20–1 December 1938. BEA, OV 45/ 15.

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Phipps to Foreign Office, 2 January 1939; Phipps to Halifax, 13 January 1939, enclosing memorandum by Rowe-Dutton, 10 January 1939; minute by Ashton-Gwatkin, 23 January 1939. PRO FO 371/ 22905. Phipps to Foreign Office, 22 April 1939; Phipps to Halifax, 28 April 1939, enclosing memorandum by Rowe-Dutton. PRO FO 371/22906. Cobbold Memorandum on ‘France: General Situation’, Overseas and Foreign Department, 6 July 1939. BEA, OV 45/16. Jackson, Popular Front in France, pp. 187–9. P.M.Kennedy, ‘Grand strategies and less than grand strategies: a twentieth century critique’ in L.Freedman, P.Hayes and R.O’Neill (eds), War, Strategy and International Politics: Essays in Honour of Sir Michael Howard, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1992, p. 232. Girault, ‘Impact of the economic situation’, p. 223. Desmond Morton, Industrial Intelligence Centre, to J.W.Nicholls, Foreign Office, 6 March 1939, enclosing memorandum on France of 16 January 1939. PRO FO 371/22916. For recent discussion see J.Blatt (ed.), The French Defeat of 1940: Reassessments, Oxford, Berghahn, 1997 and R.Boyce (ed.), French Foreign and Defence Policy 1918–1940: TheDecUne and Fall of a Great Power, London, Routledge, 1998. See also Philip Bell’s contribution to this volume.

12 Entente broken and renewed Britain and France, 1940–1945 Philip Bell

On September 1939 Britain and France declared war on Germany. The two countries settled rapidly into the pattern which their alliance had taken over three years to achieve during the war of 1914–18, setting up a Supreme War Council and resuming their economic and financial cooperation. On 28 March 1940 the two governments published a joint declaration, undertaking not to negotiate an armistice or a peace treaty except by mutual agreement, and to maintain their community of action after peace was concluded. They thus looked forward to victory, and sought to avoid the divisions which had plagued them after their earlier triumph in 1918. There was much talk of going further than simple cooperation, and in the early months of 1940 the two governments encouraged public discussion of schemes for union between Britain and France. Much of this talk was airy and high-flown, but there were solid foundations beneath the rhetoric. The two countries were determined to resist the growth of Germany as a power, and the advance of Nazism as a new barbarism. Their peoples went to war reluctantly but with determination. The omens for Franco-British relations at the beginning of 1940 seemed favourable. Events swiftly destroyed such hopeful prospects. Instead, the period from 1940 to mid–1945 saw relations between the two countries veer from one extreme to another. French and British soldiers and sailors fought and killed one another for the first time since 1815. Yet, at the same time, some Frenchmen established a France whose capital was (for a time) in London, a city which they came to regard with pride and affection.1 Emotions touched heights of affection and depths of hostility which were remarkable even in the long history of the lovehate relationship between the two peoples. It was an extraordinary few years. This chapter begins with the abrupt separation between the two countries in May-June 1940 and proceeds to examine the relations

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between a divided France and Great Britain (1940–2), and then between Britain and General Charles de Gaulle (1943–4). I On 10 May 1940 the Germans opened their offensive in the west. Their armoured columns drove through the Ardennes, and on 21 May their vanguard reached the Channel coast at the mouth of the Somme. To the north of this narrow corridor, a large French force, about nine-tenths of the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) and the Belgian Army were all cut off from the main body of the French armies to the south. General Maxim Weygand, who took over command of the French Army from General Maurice Gamelin on 19 May, gave orders on the 22nd for a combined offensive from north and south to cut through the German corridor and restore contact between the two Allied forces. This offensive failed to materialise, and on 25 May Field Marshal Lord Gort, commanding the BEF, decided that he had no alternative but to order his troops to fall back on Dunkirk and attempt evacuation by sea. Weygand, on the other hand, tried to pursue his plan, and issued no orders for withdrawal until 29 May. In consequence, for a few days, the British and French armies in Flanders were at cross-purposes, with the British heading for the sea while the French struggled to move south or at least to hold their ground. By midnight on 30–1 May, nearly 135,000 British, but no French, troops had been taken off. The British Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, then went to Paris for a meeting of the Anglo-French Supreme War Council, and declared that thenceforward the evacuation must be on equal terms—‘bras dessus, bras dessous’. By a remarkable feat, this was accomplished, so that during the last six days of the Dunkirk evacuation almost exactly equal numbers of British and French escaped. During the last day of the operation, when all the British had been taken off, the overwhelmingly British rescue ships continued their efforts and brought off 41,000 French troops. Even so, somewhere between 30,000 and 40,000 Frenchmen covered the last retreat and were left behind to surrender.2 These events left very different impressions in the two countries. For the British, Dunkirk was a deliverance, a miracle, and almost a victory; and after the war, successive British governments were to invoke ‘the spirit of Dunkirk’ as a rallying-cry for the nation. For the French, on the contrary, Dunkirk was an almost unrelieved disaster. Many saw it as a betrayal by the British, who were accused of saving

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themselves at the expense of the French; while even accounts which were sympathetic to the British still emphasised the inequality of sacrifice between the two armies. On 5 June, as soon as the evacuation from Dunkirk ended, the Germans resumed their offensive against the remaining French (and a few British) forces, thinly stretched along the rivers Somme and Aisne. The French resistance was better organised than before, but it was too late and the odds were too heavy. By 10 June the Germans were across both the Somme and the Aisne, and in the next few days co-ordinated French resistance came to an end. The Germans had knocked out the French Army and driven the BEF back across the Channel in less than six weeks. This crushing military defeat was inexorably accompanied by a political crisis between Britain and France. As early as 16 May, Churchill made his first visit to Paris as Prime Minister, and returned so dismayed by the signs of defeat and panic that he at once set in train preparations for Britain to continue the war alone—‘British strategy in a Certain Eventuality’, in the guarded phrase of the time.3 Of course, the British wanted the French to keep fighting; and so they embarked on a dual policy of trying to keep France in the war and preparing to fight on alone in the event of a French collapse. These two lines of policy were virtually impossible to reconcile with one another. For Britain to try to stave off French defeat by sending all possible help (especially fighter squadrons to challenge German command of the air) would throw away forces which would soon be needed to defend the British homeland; and yet to deny help to the French, and prepare openly to fight on alone, would wreck French morale and endanger the alliance. The British struggled with this dilemma until the middle of June. They sent more fighters to France than the Commander-in-Chief of Fighter Command, Sir Hugh Dowding, thought safe from the point of view of home defence, but far less than the French appealed for. They took great risks: the Royal Air Force (RAF) lost 477 fighters and many pilots in the Battle of France—a figure which reveals its full significance against the fact that on 3 June there were only 505 Spitfires and Hurricanes available in the whole United Kingdom. 4 On land, Churchill insisted on the forming of a ‘new BEF’, with two fresh divisions being despatched to join the forces remaining in France after Dunkirk. In the event, this small force could achieve nothing, and it was ordered home on 14 June. On the French side, it was as early as 25 May that the Comité de Guerre (consisting of leading ministers and the heads of the three armed services with the President of the Republic, Albert Lebrun,

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in the chair) acknowledged the likelihood of defeat and discussed how they might deal with a German peace offer. On 10 June the French Government left Paris (in itself an acknowledgement of defeat) and moved first to the Loire valley and then to Bordeaux. During this migration, administration broke down, and civil servants were sent off into the blue with two or three months’ pay. On 12 June Weygand told the French Cabinet, meeting at the Château de Cangé near Tours, that the military situation was so desperate that the Government should ask for an armistice. For the next four days, the Cabinet was divided as to whether to follow this grim advice and seek an armistice, or to continue the war from outside France, probably from Algeria. The British watched the French agony almost helplessly. Churchill, it is true, threw the full weight of his powerful personality and brilliant oratory into the scale to exhort the French to fight on. On one of his visits to France, to the Supreme War Council at Briare on 11–12 June, Churchill urged the French to defend Paris, and to fight a war of columns and isolated forces if coordinated resistance broke down. He invoked memories of Spring 1918, when General Erich von Ludendorff’s great offensive had finally slowed down and been held. Unfortunately, he struck no spark in response. Marshal Philippe Pétain (the hero of Verdun, now an influential member of Paul Reynaud’s Government) pointed out that in 1918 he had been able to send 40 divisions to help the British. Where now were Britain’s 40 divisions to help the French? There were in fact only two, and it is not surprising that Churchill’s efforts failed. On 13 June, Churchill went to France for what proved to be the last meeting of the Supreme War Council. The French Prime Minister, Paul Revnaud, carefully explaining that he was speaking hypothetically, asked whether Britain would give its consent if a French government felt compelled to come to terms with Germany. Churchill gave no such undertaking, and sought to put off any decision until an appeal had been made for American help—an attempt which proved fruitless. On 15 June the French Cabinet sought a way out of its divisions by adopting a proposal (put forward by Camille Chautemps) to ask Britain for permission to seek terms, ostensibly on the ground that these would be obviously unacceptable and the Government could then go to North Africa with a clear conscience and the certainty of public support. That evening, therefore, Reynaud telegraphed to London to ask for British permission to seek armistice terms.

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The British Government was thus brought face to face with the question of a French surrender. This crisis had been long foreseen, yet the War Cabinet failed to produce a firm response. In the course of 16 June the British returned two completely different answers to the French request. In the morning they agreed that France might seek armistice terms but only on condition that the French fleet— which was assumed to be absolutely crucial to British security—sailed at once to British ports. Then in the afternoon they adopted an astonishing proposal for a union between the two countries—‘that France and Great Britain shall no longer be two nations, but one Franco-British Union’. The key to this document lay in its last defiant sentence: ‘And thus we shall conquer.’ In essence, it was an attempt to keep France in the war, by giving moral encouragement to Reynaud and others who wanted to fight on. In retrospect, it has assumed a different appearance, being invoked from time to time (as it was by Guy Mollet at the time of the Suez crisis in 1956) to inspire closer unity between the two countries, or treated as being a forerunner of the post-war movement for European integration; but at the time it was nothing of the sort.5 Immediately, its effect was to sow confusion. In order to give the offer of union a chance, the British Government suspended its earlier reply, including the condition about sending the French fleet to British waters; a message which the Ambassador in Bordeaux, Sir Ronald Campbell, unfortunately changed to ‘cancelling’ the earlier telegrams. The French Cabinet discussed the proposal for union only briefly, dismissing it as either unwelcome (in that France might become a mere British Dominion) or irrelevant (because the only urgent question was that of an armistice with Germany). During the evening of 16 June Reynaud resigned as Premier, and was replaced by Pétain. The new Foreign Minister, Paul Baudouin, at once (in the early hours of the 17th) transmitted a request for terms for both an armistice and peace. The German Führer, Adolf Hitler, presented his terms on 21 June. They were severe. Nearly two-thirds of France, including Paris and the Channel and Atlantic coasts, were to be occupied; the French Army was to be reduced to 100,000 men; the fleet was to be demobilised and disarmed under German or Italian supervision at the peacetime stations of the various warships; all the costs of the occupation (left unspecified) were to be met by France; all French prisoners of war were to remain in German hands until the conclusion of peace. The Germans thus imposed a military, economic and human grip upon France. Yet the terms were not fatal. They left the

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French Government free to operate in the unoccupied zone, and made no demands upon the empire. Pétain and his Government found them acceptable, and the armistice with Germany was signed on 22 June. An armistice with Italy, broadly similar in its terms (but with only a very small occupation zone) was signed on the 24th. Both came into force at 12.35 a.m. on 25 June 1940.6 These armistices marked a crucial and profound breach between France and Britain. France withdrew from the war; Britain fought on. From this breach, much followed, and their relations were never the same again. There arose at once the question of the French fleet, crucial for both countries. For France, the fleet was the only one of her armed forces which remained intact, and was thus a focus for national pride and a potential bargaining counter for the future. For Britain, the French fleet in German hands would tip the balance of sea power and open the way for invasion. The French assured the British that they would keep control of their warships, and not let them fall into German hands; an assurance which they intended to fulfil, making preparations to scuttle their ships if need be. The British for their part knew the German capacity for swift and ruthless action, amply demonstrated over recent years in many countries. They dared not take the risk. Moreover, Churchill was determined to show the world (and especially the Americans) that his Government was determined to fight on, and would go to any lengths to do so. The British decided to keep the French fleet out of German hands, by force if necessary. On 3 July they seized French warships (some 200 in number, large and small), which had taken refuge in British ports, with almost no bloodshed. At Alexandria, the admirals in command reached an agreement for the demilitarisation of the French squadron in harbour there. However, at Mers-el-Kébir, on the Algerian coast, after a day of fruitless negotiations, a British squadron bombarded a strong French force, causing severe damage and heavy casualties—a grim total of 1,297 dead and 351 wounded.7 The action at Mers-el-Kébir evoked completely different reactions in Britain and France. In Britain, the House of Commons at once gave full and demonstrative support to the Government’s action; the press, right across the political spectrum, was unanimous in its approval; and the Ministry of Information’s reports showed that public opinion was ardently favourable. Afterwards, the British largely forgot about the whole affair, fully preoccupied as they were with the threat of invasion, the Battle of Britain, and the ‘blitz’. The attack on the French fleet became only one half remembered episode in a crowded year. Similarly, when British historians came to write

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about 1940, they gave Mers-el-Kébir only minor attention. In France the position has been very different. The initial shock ran through a nation already shaken by defeat. The news of Mers-el-Kébir fed the anti-British sentiments which were already strong after Dunkirk, and proved a lasting gift for Anglophobe propagandists. The memory ran deep and long, especially in the French Navy. French historians have devoted much attention to the affair. At the time, neither government had much choice in the matter. Each acted, according to its lights, in the best interests of its country. The result was a tragic conflict, which left deep and lasting scars in France, and little more than a scratch in Britain. The reactions of public sentiment to the defeat of France and the armistice were of profound importance, in each country separately and for their relations with one another. In Britain, Churchill set the tone in a broadcast on 17 June, in which he declared that nothing would alter British feelings for ‘the gallant French people’, and that Britain would in any case fight on. This sympathetic lead was widely followed in the press. Even criticism of the terms of the armistice tended to be directed against the Pétain Government, rather than against the French people or ‘the real France’. A small but significant élite of Francophile intellectuals went even further in their sympathy, feeling a sense of personal loss that amounted to a sort of bereavement. 8 Popular feeling was less deeply moved, but still showed surprisingly little resentment against France. There was more an air of detachment from the French than of anger against them. The British got used to being on their own—in the final, in the sporting metaphor; and became rather proud of it.9 One question about the defeat of France which greatly exercised British minds in June-July 1940 was: how had it come about? Military explanations made much of ‘the Maginot mentality’—an obsession with defensive warfare which had left the French Army bewildered by the speed of the German attack. Political analysis concentrated on accusations of incompetence and corruption among French politicians, and the deep divisions which afflicted the country. But what became the predominant explanation was a feeling that France was in some way ‘rotten’. A leading article in the Labour Daily Herald of 24 June 1940 was typical: ‘The collapse of France was caused above all by a rot within.’ J.B.Priestley, an immensely popular broadcaster, spoke of the French tree being ‘rotted from within’. Churchill himself lent powerful endorsement to this diagnosis in a broadcast on 14 July, when he said that European states had been ‘rotted from within before being smitten from without. How else

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can you explain what has happened to France?’ The words ‘rot’ and ‘rotten’ were to appear frequently in British comments on France during the war years, and afterwards. They comprised many shades of meaning, from intense abhorrence to mild disapproval, and were often not intended to convey any precise meaning at all, but only a general impression. Even so, that impression proved profound and lasting, affecting British thoughts and actions long after the war was over.10 In France too there was inevitably a search for explanations of the defeat. Pétain, in his early broadcasts, condemned the moral decadence of the Third Republic, in terms not far removed from the British comments on French ‘rottenness’; and he speedily added the theme that the British had let France down, leaving the French in the lurch at Dunkirk and refusing to send their fighters to win the battle in the air. Insofar as popular opinion can be discerned, it appears that these claims struck a responsive chord; and they were powerfully reinforced by Mers-el-Kébir which turned anti-British feeling into a nation-wide current, strengthened but not created by government propaganda. For a time, the supporters of Britain and the British alliance fell silent, sharing the mood of passivity and relief at being out of the conflict which seems to have dominated the country.11 The breach between Britain and France in 1940 was thus more than a separation between governments, important though that was. The two peoples underwent utterly different experiences. The French suffered defeat, a flood of refugees, and occupation. The British experienced none of this. They suffered air-raids and all the pervasive effects of war; but they were not invaded and they emerged victorious. From these very different experiences there developed a breach between the mentalities of the two peoples which was to last for many years. II As many of the contributions in this book show, ever since 1914 Britain had regarded France as an indispensable ally in the event of war with Germany. The partnership had been difficult, and the British had often found the French unreliable or refractory; but at bottom the French alliance had remained the foundation of British policy and strategy. The defeat of France destroyed that foundation. Britain had to find a new ally, and turned inevitably towards the

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United States. Churchill had already been in correspondence with President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and he now set himself to win the support of America—political, economic and ultimately military. In the event, it was not until December 1941 that the United States was at war with Germany; and in the meantime Britain was joined by an unexpected ally in the Soviet Union, which was attacked by Germany in June 1941. Britain thus became a partner in what Churchill called ‘the Grand Alliance’. France, which had been at the centre of British policy, became of only minor importance by comparison with the United States and Soviet Union. The British alliance with the Soviet Union proved short-lived, but that with the United States endured, with lasting consequences for relations with France. Franco-British relations thus became less important for the British; but at the same time they became very complex. For some four years, from 1940 to 1944, France ceased to be a single entity. Mainland France was divided between occupied and unoccupied zones. Pétain’s Government, with its capital at Vichy, ruled the unoccupied territory. Outside France, General Charles de Gaulle launched at the end of June 1940 the movement called Free France, which continued the war against Germany and emerged by 1944 as the Provisional Government of France. The French Empire, which at first almost entirely accepted the authority of Vichy, but which progressively changed allegiance as the war went on, assumed an unprecedented importance, for the conduct of the war and in FrancoBritish relations. Britain had to deal with Vichy, de Gaulle, and the French empire; which proved a complicated and demanding task. In July 1940 the generally accepted government of France was the régime set up by Pétain at Vichy, which adopted the name of Etat Français and proclaimed the intention of embarking on a national revolution. The sentiments of the leading figures within the Vichy Government (Pétain, Pierre Laval, Admiral François Darlan) and its principal intellectual mentor, Charles Maurras, were hostile to Britain. The predominant view of Vichy ministers in July 1940 was that Britain would be defeated within a very short time. Germany had won the war, and the future of France would have to be worked out in a new Europe under German control. This was the basis of the policy of collaboration with Germany adopted by the Vichy Government. Pétain sought a meeting with Hitler, which eventually came about at Montoire on 24 October 1940; and in a broadcast on the 30th Pétain told his listeners that he had accepted the principle of collaboration with Germany. Nothing followed from this

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immediately, but in May 1941 the Paris Protocols (signed by Darlan) moved towards military cooperation, providing for German use of French airfields in Syria and the harbours at Bizerta and Dakar. In May 1942 Laval proposed the idea of ‘la relève’, by which France would send workers to German factories in exchange for the release of French prisoners of war. He announced the introduction of this plan in a broadcast on 22 June 1942, in which he used the fateful phrase ‘I desire the victory of Germany.’12 In the event, Vichy never signed a treaty with Germany or entered the war on the German side; but that was due more to German indifference and reluctance than to French caution. The fundamental trend of Vichy policy was to accept German predominance in Europe, which was fundamentally opposed to British objectives. The British for their part were bound to be hostile to Vichy, and they were fully prepared to use force when they thought it necessary. In September 1940, a combined British and Free French expedition made an abortive attack on Dakar, in West Africa. In June–July 1941, British, Australian and Free French forces invaded Syria and the Lebanon. In May 1942 a British expedition occupied Diego Suarez, in Madagascar, and later extended their control over the whole island. War was never declared between Britain and Vichy France, but their conflicts were sharp and casualties numerous. Yet, British relations with Vichy remained ambiguous. The British were anxious to keep the French empire out of German hands, and if possible to bring parts of it back into the war on the Allied side.13 To achieve these results, the British were prepared to deal with Vichy or its representatives. They developed contacts through the embassies of the two governments in Madrid, and were willing to offer some relaxation of the economic blockade of occupied France (which in any case they could not enforce strictly) in return for assurances that the Germans would be kept out of French colonies. In the winter of 1940–1 the British hoped to induce General Weygand, the Delegate-General in French North Africa, to bring his territories back into the war. In February 1941 the Foreign Office recommended that if a government (under Weygand or Darlan) were formed in North Africa to resume the war, Britain should at once accord it full recognition. Nothing came of the British approaches, but it is significant that they were made. In November 1941 Admiral Darlan made a secret approach to the British, asking whether at the end of the war they would refuse to deal with a government of which he was a member. Churchill replied obliquely that if the French fleet at Toulon were to sail to

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North Africa and resume the fight, ‘Such a service would entitle the author to an honourable place in the Allied ranks.’ Nothing followed at that time, but a year later, on the eve of the Anglo-American landings in French North Africa, British leaders (including Churchill and his Foreign Secretary, Anthony Eden) discussed the possibility of bringing Darlan over to their side, and did not reject it. When the landings actually began on 8 November 1942, Darlan was in Algiers, and the Americans and British speedily reached an agreement (the ‘Darlan deal’) which effectively accepted the former Vichy leader and collaborator as head of French North Africa in return for his changing sides.14 Both Churchill and Roosevelt claimed that this was only a temporary expedient; but it began to look very much like a fixture, and was ended only by the assassination of Darlan on Christmas Eve 1942. The British thus sometimes fought the Vichy French, and sometimes made contact with them, in one of those equivocal relationships which are necessary in wartime. In principle, relations between Britain and the Free French should have been simpler. General de Gaulle and Free France stood for the continuation of the war against Germany, and fought on alongside Britain. On 18 June 1940 de Gaulle made his first defiant broadcast on the BBC: ‘This war has not been decided by the Battle of France. This war is a worldwide war…Today we are struck down by mechanised force; in the future we can conquer by greater mechanised force…Whatever happens, the flame of French resistance must not and shall not go out.’15 Resistance—that word which was to attain such resonance in French history—was launched; with British support. De Gaulle’s broadcast on 18 June was only made on Churchill’s personal intervention. By an agreement of 7 August 1940 Britain undertook to meet all the expenses of the forces to be raised by the Free French, against a pledge of repayment by a future French government—a remarkable act of faith, which was made good on both sides. The early stages of de Gaulle’s movement were painfully uncertain and difficult. The first Anglo-Free French expedition, against Dakar in September 1940, was a humiliating failure, but Churchill maintained his support for de Gaulle in a crucial speech in Parliament on 8 October. Gradually, the Free French emerged as a significant fighting force. Their warships shared the tasks of convoy escort in the Atlantic—there were sixteen Free French corvettes engaged on this duty by May 1943. A Free French Brigade, under General Pierre Koenig, fought as part of the British Eighth Army, and gained heroic stature at the battle of Bir Hakeim in May-June 1942. De Gaulle also developed a political

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organisation. On 27 October 1940 he announced the establishment of a Council of Defence for the Empire; and in September 1941 he transformed this Council into a French National Committee, which began to assume the characteristics of a government. These were important steps, but the vital question was whether de Gaulle could establish his reputation and legitimacy within France itself. To achieve this, he had two principal means: broadcasting and clandestine communications. For broadcasting, he relied on the BBC, which transmitted both its own French programmes and the Free French ‘Les Français parlent aux Français’. The radio proved remarkably effective, but was of necessity one-way traffic. Clandestine communications were two-way, with de Gaulle sending agents to France and leaders of resistance groups in France coming to England. Again, it was the British who provided the means. RAF flights to pick up and/or set down in France numbered only one in 1940, ten in 1941, forty-four in 1942, and a remarkable 133 in 1943– always hazardous, yet becoming almost routine.16 By these means, de Gaulle emerged as a leader acknowledged within France as well as outside. He was saved from the fate of being, not just an exile, but an émigré. In all these ways, relations between de Gaulle and the British were extremely close; yet they were also extremely difficult. It was because of his very dependence on British help that de Gaulle had to behave with the most intransigent independence, defending every scrap of French sovereignty and French territory. The result was a constant friction in relations between the Free French and the British Government, even when they were working for the same ends—the Special Operations Executive, for example, ran its own French Section as well as cooperating with the Free French.17 Churchill and de Gaulle—powerful and difficult characters in their own right— passed through a series of explosive quarrels. They quarrelled over Syria and the Lebanon, over the tiny islands of St Pierre and Miquelon, over the British occupation of Madagascar. They sometimes came very near to breaking-point. In March 1942 de Gaulle prepared an explosive ‘political testament’, to be published if the British deposed him as head of the Free French; but it was never used. On 10 December 1942 Churchill told the House of Commons, in secret session, that de Gaulle was by no means ‘an unfaltering friend of Britain’, and that Britain had no duty to place the destiny of France in his hands. Yet this remained a surprisingly close secret.18 So the breaking-point never quite came. Churchill and de Gaulle were at one in their determination to fight the war to

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a successful conclusion, and through all their quarrels they shared an ultimate respect for one another. II I In 1943 and 1944, relations between Britain and France were simplified to a degree, in that the Vichy element ceased to have any importance. When the Allied forces landed in North Africa in November 1942, the Germans invaded the previously unoccupied zone. Pétain’s Government remained in existence, but was effectively powerless. Darlan’s death brought his extension of the Vichy régime in Algeria to an end. From the British point of view, one piece was removed from the chessboard. The situation which remained was difficult enough. On the French side, de Gaulle faced a new rival. While the North African landings were being prepared, the Americans had brought out of France General Henri Giraud, who was senior to de Gaulle in rank and had a good record as a fighting soldier. After Darlan’s assassination, Giraud (with American support) assumed control of the French forces and administration in North Africa. At the Casablanca Conference ( January 1943) Roosevelt and Churchill produced a plan to bring Giraud and de Gaulle together in a new French Committee, which would fuse the very different entities of Free France and French North Africa; and it was Roosevelt’s intention that Giraud should become the head of the new organisation. There ensued a prolonged struggle for power between de Gaulle and Giraud, in which de Gaulle proved by far the more skilful politician. In June 1943 a Committee of National Liberation was set up in Algiers, with the two generals as joint Presidents. But at the end of July de Gaulle established himself as sole President of the Committee, with Giraud as Commander-in-Chief of the armed forces, under the authority of the Committee. In November 1943, de Gaulle deprived Giraud of his membership of the Committee, and in April 1944 replaced him as Commander-in-Chief. While this political struggle was going on, de Gaulle also undertook the vital task of amalgamating the army of Free France, made up of men who had rejected Pétain, with the army of North Africa, which had remained loyal to him. This was painfully but successfully achieved in the course of 1943, creating a revived French Army, including General Philippe Leclerc’s famous 2nd Armoured Division, General Alphonse Juin’s Expeditionary Corps, and General

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Jean de Lattre de Tassigny’s Armée B. These forces received modern equipment from the Americans, and played an important part in the campaigns in Italy, northern France, and Provence in 1943–4. Within France, in May 1943, Jean Moulin created the National Council of the Resistance, uniting under de Gaulle’s leadership the many different Resistance movements. In February 1944 the armed sections of the Resistance were in principle combined as the Forces Françaises de l’Intérieur (FFI), under the command of General Koenig in London. Free France thus secured a new political form in the Committee of National Liberation; a powerful army; and a well-established organisation in France itself. De Gaulle also prepared for what he had long intended to be the final step: for Free France to become the acknowledged government of France. In November 1943 he set up in Algiers a Consultative Assembly, to fulfil some of the functions of a parliament. In January 1944 he nominated Commissaires de la République, to take over from the prefects when France was liberated. On 27 March 1944, in a public speech, de Gaulle described the Committee of National Liberation as the provisional government of France. The acceptance of this crucial claim by others, however, lay in the hands of the British, and above all of the Americans. British relations with the developing Free French organisation remained difficult and ambiguous. Disputes between Churchill and de Gaulle continued, exacerbated by constant hostility towards de Gaulle on the part of President Roosevelt; and yet an underlying similarity of interests between Britain and France increasingly emerged as the war drew to a close. Among the disputes, the conflict in the Levant states which had begun in 1941 continued unabated. The quarrel began when the British disregarded the Free French in reaching an armistice with the Vichy authorities in Syria and the Lebanon, but it developed into a dispute over the whole political future of the territories. The fundamental point at issue was that the British Government, seeking to win Arab support for both wartime and post-war purposes, insisted on promoting the independence of Syria and the Lebanon. To this de Gaulle was totally opposed, because he was determined to maintain every part of the French empire in its entirety. The conflict dragged on throughout 1943 and 1944. The British insisted on elections, the Free French delayed them. When the elections produced nationalist majorities, the British promoted new nationalist governments; the French opposed them. Finally, in May 1945 French forces bombarded Damascus and prepared to impose their control of Syria by force; but the British, on orders

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from Churchill, intervened in even stronger force, and effectively put an end to the French mandate in Syria.19 This bitter conflict had a corrosive effect on Franco-British relations for years to come, not least through the impression which it left on the mind and emotions of General de Gaulle. The same was true, and to an even greater degree, of the effects of ‘the Roosevelt factor’ on relations between the two countries. For reasons which remain obscure, Roosevelt conceived, and maintained well into 1944, a fixed antipathy towards de Gaulle, and to some extent towards France itself. This put Churchill in an almost impossible position. He had taken immense pains to build up an alliance with America and a personal friendship with Roosevelt, on which he based his wartime strategy and his hopes for the post-war settlement. Relations with de Gaulle could not be allowed to obstruct the working of this alliance. Yet Churchill also held France in high affection, and (more important) believed that France must be restored as a great power when the war was over. As a result, Churchill steered an erratic course between Roosevelt and de Gaulle. In May and June 1943, Roosevelt exerted the most intense pressure on Churchill to break with de Gaulle, even to the extent of cutting off the British supply of money to the French National Committee. Twice Churchill came near to agreeing, but was held back by Eden and the War Cabinet. During this crisis, Churchill took the unusual step of issuing a ‘guidance memorandum’ to the press, in which he wrote that ‘De Gaulle owes everything to British assistance and support, but he cannot be considered as a friend of our country. Wherever he has been he has left a trail of Anglophobia behind him.’ The press showed almost no inclination to follow this powerful lead; and in this respect too Churchill’s moves against de Gaulle were checked.20 Even when Churchill came nearest to breaking with de Gaulle, British policy as a whole (including that of Churchill) continued to be favourable to the Free French, in unspectacular but vital ways. Throughout 1943, the British sought to set up a single French authority to represent all the territories engaged in the war on the Allied side, while the Americans preferred to deal separately with the various territories or groups involved. In the struggle between de Gaulle and Giraud, Eden in London and Harold Macmillan, the British Minister-Resident in North Africa, consistently supported de Gaulle, even though they sometimes had to endure Churchill’s displeasure by doing so. In August 1943, the British Government ‘recognised’ the Committee of National Liberation (then effectively

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run by de Gaulle), while the Americans would go no further than ‘accepting’ it—a fine but significant distinction. One vital issue involving the British, the Americans and de Gaulle proved impossible to resolve—that of the administration of liberated territories in France when eventually the cross-Channel invasion began. The question was whether these areas should be treated as ‘occupied’, and subjected to the system of Allied Military Government of Occupied Territories (AMGOT), as in Italy; or as ‘liberated’, with the Allied forces working with French civilian authorities. The British were divided on the issue, with the War Office preferring AMGOT, and the Foreign Office preferring civilian administrators, to be provided by de Gaulle. In December 1943 Roosevelt personally intervened to stop any move to allow de Gaulle’s Committee to provide the administration for liberated areas. De Gaulle for his part was utterly opposed to military government, as an infringement of French sovereignty and an affront to French dignity. On this matter, Churchill would not even try to persuade Roosevelt to change his mind, and the deadlock remained unresolved when the Allied armies went ashore on D-Day, 6 June 1944. 21 After the success of the Normandy landings, the issue was decided by the course of events. In Normandy, it speedily became clear that only de Gaulle’s representatives could do the sort of administrative work for which the soldiers had no time, and the representatives of the Committee of National Liberation were simply accepted de facto. More surprisingly, in America Roosevelt suddenly changed his mind. On 1 July, without consulting the British, he abruptly announced that he was ready to treat the Committee of National Liberation as the de facto authority for the administration of liberated France. Three months later, on 23 October, the Americans (with equal suddenness) announced their recognition of de Gaulle’s administration as the Provisional Government of France. Again the British were not consulted, and were given hardly any notice. In short, for most of 1943 the British Government (though not always Churchill in person) had supported de Gaulle against Giraud, and had helped to establish the Committee of National Liberation as the sole French authority in the war against Germany. Then in 1944, on the key questions of civil administration and formal recognition of a Provisional Government, Churchill had committed Britain entirely to following American policy, only to find himself abandoned without notice. From these events, it was not the steady support in Algiers but the friction of 1944 and Churchill’s futile dependence on the Americans which left the deeper impression on

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de Gaulle’s mind, and on Franco-British relations for many years to come. The whole issue came to a head during a dramatic confrontation between Churchill and de Gaulle on 4 June 1944. On the eve of the Normandy landings, Churchill urged de Gaulle to meet Roosevelt’s requirements on the administration of liberated territories. De Gaulle replied that he did not need Roosevelt’s permission to establish a government in his own country. Churchill then said that if Roosevelt was on one side and the French Committee of National Liberation on the other, ‘he, Mr Churchill, would almost certainly side with the President, and that anyhow no quarrel would ever arise between Britain and the United States on account of France’. To this de Gaulle replied that ‘he quite understood that in case of disagreement between the United States and France, Great Britain would side with the United States’.22 This version of Churchill’s words secured a permanent lodgement in de Gaulle’s mind. He recounted the episode in his memoirs; recalled the conversation almost twenty years later during a conference with Macmillan (15–16 December 1962); and reverted to it again in private conversation on 24 January 1963. 23 The two latter occasions came immediately before and after the famous press conference on 14 January 1963 at which de Gaulle rejected the British application to join the European Economic Community. The conversation of 4 June 1944 cast a long shadow over Franco-British relations. Yet, Churchill’s words on that occasion were uttered in a specific context, just before the Normandy landings, and in relation to the particular question of civil administration. They were far from representing the whole of Churchill’s thought on Britain’s position between Britain and France. That thinking was more cleariy and fully expounded in another conversation with de Gaulle, on 13 November 1944, after Churchill’s emotional pilgrimage to Paris on Armistice Day and a visit to French troops in the field. That evening, de Gaulle proposed a sort of ‘blocking combination’ between France and Britain, arguing that together they could prevent the United States and Soviet Union acting against their interests. In reply, Churchill treated de Gaulle to an exposition of the essence of his policy within the Grand Alliance. His method, he explained, was to influence Roosevelt to use America’s immense power wisely. At the same time, he was trying to restrain the Soviet dictator, Joseph Stalin, who had an enormous appetite but also much good sense. Churchill advised de Gaulle to be patient and leave matters in his hands. This was not a rejection of de Gaulle, and still less of France, but an attempt to balance between the

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United States and the Soviet Union, doing his best for British interests and not neglecting those of France. (In fact, at the Yalta Conference in February 1945, Churchill was to do much for France, securing a French occupation zone in Germany and a seat on the Security Council of the United Nations.) This remarkable exposition of Churchill’s policy was more nuanced and more accurate than his outburst on 4 June. Remarkably, we owe our knowledge of it to de Gaulle, who understood Churchill’s position and recorded it in his memoirs.24 Yet, it was the conversation of 4 June which lived on more powerfully in his memory, and influenced his policy in later years. As the war drew to a close, relations between Britain and France were not influenced solely by statesmen, however great. Public opinion, in different aspects, was also deeply moved. On the British side, those Francophiles who had felt so bereft when France was defeated in 1940 were exhilarated by the Liberation. Book pages in the weekly journals were devoted to the literature of the Resistance. Charles Morgan, Harold Nicolson, Veronica Wedgwood and others made their way to Paris to renew old friendships and revisit old haunts.25 Popular opinion was more divided, and in some ways less favourable. On the one hand, there was a powerful current of support for de Gaulle, which had begun in 1940, emerged strongly at the time of the Darlan deal (when it seemed possible that de Gaulle might be abandoned), and persisted in 1944. The gist of this sentiment was that de Gaulle ‘stood by us when things looked black’; he might be difficult, but he was a fighter and he was on the right side. On the other hand, at the time of the Liberation (from June through to November 1944) there was a strong and resentful feeling in British popular opinion that there was plenty of food in Normandy, and that French frivolity in putting on fashion shows in Paris was intolerable.26 On the French side, there were a few voices which echoed the joy of the British Francophiles in renewing old friendships. During the occupation, clandestine newspapers had often devoted a striking proportion of their precious space to the necessity of the British alliance and the virtues of the British themselves, and even résistants who disliked the English still wanted them to win. As the war drew to an end, there was a current of admiration for Britain which found expression in two remarkable books, Jacques Debû-Bridel’s Carthage n’est pas détruite and Pierre Bourdan’s Perplexités et grandeur de l’Angleterre, both published in 1945. The latter, in particular, was a profound and moving work, praising the strength of British institutions and traditions, which had proved tough and flexible enough to meet all the demands of war.27

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Such views were necessarily those of a minority. Most of the French people, in the dreadful winter of 1944–5, were hard put to it to live from day to day. To have one’s country fought over, even in a good cause, is a painful experience; and to be liberated by the British and Americans was bound to arouse resentment as well as relief—which was why de Gaulle put so much emphasis on the liberation of Paris by the French themselves. The glowing admiration expressed by Debû-Bridel and Bourdan, and the affection for Britain among those who had spent the war years there, thus stood in contrast to a more general apathy touched with resentment. For the Francophile and Anglophile élites on either side of the Channel, the war (and even the disasters of 1940) had shown how much each valued the other country, and how much the two countries had in common. Popular opinion in each country, however, nurtured a certain resentment and distrust of the other, which was to contribute to a drifting apart in subsequent years. The French felt they must fend for themselves with their neighbours in continental Europe. The British felt that they had done better on their own, and that the events of both 1940 and 1944 showed that the French were not to be relied upon. In the sphere of government policy, it was something of a marvel that the entente cordiale had survived the trials of war, and that in some respects relations between Britain and France had been tightened and invigorated by shared tribulations and a final victory. On the other hand, the British had shifted the axis of their policy decisively towards the United States, and their relations with France had changed in nature and diminished in significance. France too was compelled to look at its foreign policy in a new perspective, with consequences which were to emerge in Franco-British and Franco-German relations over the next few years. The entente had survived the shock of war, but its character was profoundly changed by the experience. Notes 1

2

3

J.-L. Crémieux-Brilhac, La France Libre: De l’Appel du 18 Juin à la Libération, Paris, Gallimard, 1996. p. 36. This massive and scholarly work, by one who is both historian and participant, is the definitive account of its subject. P.M.H.Bell, A Certain Eventuality: Britain and the Fall of France, Farnborough, Saxon House, 1974, pp. 13–18; B.Bond, Britain, France and Belgium 1939–1940, London, Brassey’s, 2nd edn, 1990, pp. 75– 117. Bell, A Certain Eventuality, pp. 31–3, 48–52.

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4 5

6 7

8

9

10 11

12

13 14

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H.A.Probert, ‘The Royal Air Force in the Battle of France’, 1940, unpublished paper, pp. 8–12. See Bell, A Certain Eventuality, pp. 72–6, 304–5; M.Beloff, ‘The AngloFrench Union project of June 1940’, in M.Beloff, The Intellectual in Politics, London, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1970, pp. 172–99; C. Williams, The Last Great Frenchman: A Life of General de Gaulle, London, Little Brown, 1993, pp. 101–4. The terms of the armistice are printed in Documents on German Foreign Policy 1918–1945, series D, vol. XI, no. 523. See A.J.Marder, From the Dardanelles to Oran, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1974, pp. 179–288; Bell, A Certain Eventuality, pp. 137–64; H. Coutau-Bégarie and C.Huan, Mers-el-Kébir 1940: La Rupture Franco-Britannique, Paris, Economica, 1994. E.g. The Economist, 22 June 1940; D.W.Brogan, ‘Il y’avait la France’ and ‘France 1940’ in D.W.Brogan, French Personalities and Problems, London, Hamish Hamilton, 1946, esp. pp. 133, 135, 155; the dedication in C. Morgan, The Voyage, London, Macmillan, 1940. Evidence on public reactions to the defeat of France in Public Record Office (PRO), INF 1/264, Home Intelligence Reports, 18–29 June 1940; Mass Observation Archive, University of Sussex, File Reports 226, 233, 244. Priestly in The Listener, 4 July 1940; Churchill broadcast, The Listener, 18 July 1940; M.Gilbert, Finest Hour: Winston S.Churchill 1939–1941, London, Heinemann, 1983, p. 664. On French public opinion in summer 1940 see J.-L.Crémieux-Brilhac, Les Français de l’An 40 Tome I: La Guerre, Oui ou Non?, Paris, Gallimard, 1990, pp. 600–9; J.-M.Flonneau, ‘L’évolution de l’opinion publique de 1940 à 1944’ in J.-P.Azéma et F.Bédarida (eds), Le Régime de Vichy el les Français, Paris, PUF, 1990, pp. 510–11. For Laval’s fatal phrase see F.Kupferman, Laval, Paris, Balland, 1987, p. 337. On Montoire see H.Lottmann, Pétain: Hero or Traitor, London, Viking, 1985, pp. 210–16. For a wide-ranging review of the whole subject of collaboration see P.Burrin, Living with Defeat: France under the German Occupation 1940–1944, London, Arnold, 1996. For a detailed discussion of the French empire during the Second World War see M.Thomas, The French Empire at War, 1940–1945, Manchester, Manchester University Press, 1998. For the whole subject of British relations with Vichy see R.T.Thomas, Britain and Vichy: The Dilemma of Anglo-French Relations 1940–1942, London, Macmillan, 1979. On the Darlan deal see A.L.Funk, ‘Negotiating the deal with Darlan’, Journal of Contemporary History, 1973, vol. 8. J.Lacouture, De Gaulle: The Rebel 1890–1944, London, Harper Collins, 1993, pp. 224–5. H.Verity, We Landed by Moonlight: Secret RAF Landings in France, 1940– 1944, London, Air Data Publications, 1995, app. B, pp. 191–210. The key book is still M.R.D.Foot, SOE in France, London, HMSO, 1966.

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19 20

21 22 23

24 25 26 27

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For the whole subject see F.Kersaudy, Churchill and De Gaulle, London, Collins, 1981. For de Gaulle’s ‘political testament’ see ibid., p. 181. For the secret session speech see M.Gilbert, Road to Victory: Winston S Churchill 1941–1945, London, Heinemann, 1986, pp. 277–8. The best account is A.B.Gaunson, The Anglo-French Clash in Lebanon and Syria, 1940–1945, London, Macmillan, 1987. The story of how near Churchill came to a breach with de Gaulle is told in E.Barker, Churchill and Eden at War, London, Macmillan, 1978, pp. 68–9. For Eden’s role see D.Dutton, Anthony Eden: A Life and Reputation, London, Arnold, 1997, pp. 154–64. For Churchill’s ‘guidance memorandum’ to the press, 21 June 1943, see PRO PREM 3/121/1. The complicated story of civil affairs and AMGOT is unravelled in H. Footitt and J.Simmonds, France 1943–1945, Leicester, Leicester University Press, 1988. PRO FO 954/9A, Record of Conversation, 4 June 1944. C.de Gaulle, Mémoires de Guerre Tome III: Le Salut 1944–1946, Paris, Plon, 1959, p. 224. For de Gaulle and Macmillan see PRO PREM 11/4230. A. Peyrefitte, C’était de Gaulle, Tome I: La France Redevient la France, Paris, Fayard, 1994, pp. 370–1. De Gaulle, Mémoires de Guerre, Tome III, pp. 52–3. Details of this remarkable flow of pro-French feeling are in P.M.H.Bell, France and Britain 1940–1994: The Long Separation, London, Longman, 1997, pp. 65–7. PRO INF 1/292, Home Intelligence Reports 193, 195–7, 200, 204– 10. For French opinion about Britain during the war see Bell, France and Britain 1940–1994, pp. 34–5, 60–2.

13 The most important of the Western nations France’s place in Britain’s post-war foreign policy, 1945–1949 Sean Greenwood Speaking to his new advisers in the Western Department of the Foreign Office shortly after becoming Foreign Secretary in the summer of 1945, Ernest Bevin outlined what he christened ‘Western Union’. ‘His long-term policy’, he revealed, was to establish close relations between this country and the countries on the Atlantic and Mediterranean fringes of Europe— more especially Greece, Italy, France, Belgium, the Netherlands and Scandinavia. He wanted to see close association between the United Kingdom and these countries—as much in commercial and economic matters as in political questions. It was necessary to make a start with France. 1 Two-and-a-half years on and with optimism bruised by the experience of developing East-West tension the vision remained intact. Nervousness over the ambitions of the Soviet Union had, by 1948, sharpened the profile of defence considerations. Yet, Bevin made it clear to his Chiefs of Staff that defence arrangements formed only one facet of the Western Union; others included close financial links between the countries concerned, and economic links with Africa and the Commonwealth. Collaboration in defence would be complementary to all these.2 Bevin’s enthusiasm for a wider European grouping with France playing a prominent part was too tightly woven into the fabric of his foreign policy during his first three years in office to be lightly dismissed as mere ‘Bevinite rhetoric’ or simply a way of avoiding spelling out the realities of the Cold War to a Cabinet which was psychologically unprepared to face up to them.3 Bevin arrived at the Foreign Office to find that a proposal which had been circulating in the Foreign Office since mid–1944 for a purely defensive ‘Western bloc’ to check any future restlessness on the part of

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defeated Germany and with an Anglo-French alliance at its hub was already undergoing some rethinking. In mid–1945 the British Ambassador in Paris, Alfred Duff Cooper, as well as officials of the Economic and Industrial Planning Staff and in the Economic Relations Department of the Foreign Office raised the possibility of a West European customs union as a way of enhancing Britain’s postwar authority. In the face of the two emerging superpowers, the United States and Soviet Union, Britain could retain considerable authority by becoming the ‘recognised and vigorous leader of a group of Western powers with large dependent territories’ and the ‘obvious starting point for such a grouping was a close association with France’.4 Similar thoughts were included in Orme Sargent’s influential memorandum ‘Stocktaking on VE Day’, while in the Western Department it was argued that a close association between Britain, France and the Low Countries opened up the possibility of acquiring a chain of strategic bases ‘unrivaled in the world’, an imposing array of material force and control over ‘an important part of the raw materials of the world’. Effective leadership of this group of powers could conceivably restore to Britain the status of ‘top dog’ over the United States and the Soviet Union.5 This slotted in well with the new Foreign Secretary’s assumption that Britain must remain an influential power and with his longheld opinion that economics were an essential factor in promoting international cooperation.6 His declared objective was to develop sound relations with France as the preliminary to the creation of a commercial and economic grouping which he envisaged would be driven by an independent and internationally controlled Ruhr. Although not much was done over the following weeks to move matters forward, there were understandable reasons for this. There was resistance from the Treasury and the Board of Trade who viewed Britain’s economic relations with the United States and the Commonwealth as more significant than with Western Europe. More seriously at this point, Bevin was reluctant to advertise his ideas should they be interpreted by the Russians as an anti-Soviet bloc. Above all, Bevin had still not thought things through over both ‘Western Union’, which remained ‘nebulous’, and on the best way to arrive at a close association with France. I So far as France was concerned, Bevin’s new office coincided with a point when relations between London and Paris were at a nadir.

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This was largely due to the deep animosity which had developed between Winston Churchill and his one-time protégé General Charles de Gaulle, now President of France. 7 Churchill believed de Gaulle’s delusions of grandeur made him a potential danger to Britain. He was not prepared to contemplate the kind of Western bloc which the Foreign Office favoured, partly because this cut across his own illusion of a ‘special relationship’ with the United States after the war but also because he was determined that there should be ‘nothing doing while de Gaulle is master’.8 At the end of the European war passions on both sides were further inflamed by tension between the two in the Levant. Even without this exacerbation, the desire in the Foreign Office for an Anglo-French alliance was faced with the studied indifference of de Gaulle and his attempts to enhance French prestige by flirting with Moscow. The animosity between the two wartime leaders could not disguise the fact that France would have an important rôle to play in the affairs of Western Europe during the peace. Bevin’s predecessor, Anthony Eden, who was less besotted than Churchill by the idea of a close partnership between Britain and the United States spoke of the likelihood of an Anglo-French relationship being of more significance than any Anglo-Saxon collaboration. Bevin had always sympathised with the Eden line and, to the delight of his new officials, almost immediately on taking office distanced himself from Churchillian anti-Gaullism. He insisted that ‘I must have a wider policy regarding France…The whole approach to France will need change.’9 He affirmed that ‘in reference to the personal antagonism of de Gaulle and Churchill that he had no amour propre and had no feelings of that kind at all, but he wished to get better relations with France…He wished particularly to build up our trade with France and to develop a kind of vested interest in good relations with the different French Ministers. He wished to strengthen them against the personal policy of de Gaulle.’10 The first meeting of the Council of Foreign Ministers (CFM) in London between 11 September and 2 October provided an avenue for this. The London CFM was a débâcle and the tension surrounding it an indication of how complex post-war international relations were likely to be. ‘Imagine’, said the French Ambassador to London referring to the Soviet delegation, ‘the most difficult and suspicious characters that you have ever known; multiply the first and treble the second—and you have some idea of what this Conference is like.’11 Bevin’s lack of deftness at international negotiation led to his own difficulties with Viacheslav Molotov, his Soviet counterpart. At the

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same time, the American Secretary of State, James Byrnes, appeared overbearing and distant. The recent predictions in the Foreign Office that Britain was likely to be marginalised in the new post-war world order seemed vindicated with Bevin complaining to the Cabinet that the British representatives at the CFM ‘were faced with increasing hostility between the United States and Soviet Delegations, each of whom sought to strengthen their own position without regard to our point of view’.12 Matters were different with France. On this occasion at least, Bevin got on reasonably well with the French Foreign Minister, Georges Bidault. He had also come to the CFM determined to put an end to the Levant troubles and in a way in which the French might save face. Approaching Bidault with a formula devised some time earlier in the Foreign Office but disregarded by Churchill, Bevin ensured that the heat of the Levant quarrel was, more or less, doused by the end of the year. 13 The dampening down of this eastern Mediterranean trouble spot was made easier by AngloFrench alarm at Soviet claims at the conference to a trusteeship over the ex-Italian colonies in North Africa which both joined forces to resist. This all fitted in with Bevin’s objective of improving Franco-British relations. So too did his recommendation at the start of the CFM that France be given a greater say in the drawing up of peace treaties with the ex-enemy states than the Potsdam Agreement allowed. It proved to be an unpropitious gesture. In mid-conference Molotov denounced the concession as ‘a mistake’ which should be overruled.14 Bevin, though admitting ‘that Molotov is strictly legally right although morally unsound’, was prepared to see the conference collapse rather than belittle the French. 15 It did not come to this, though the episode left a bad taste with the British and turned their thoughts again to a Western group. The Moscow Embassy had warned before the Council had opened that the Soviets might ‘attempt to fish in troubled waters in Western Europe, more particularly in France, in the hope of frightening us out of what seems a reasonable and logical policy of strengthening the ties uniting us with the other democratic states of the West’. 16 To Pierson Dixon, Bevin’s Principal Private Secretary, the root of the matter was the intensity of Russian jealousy of the British presence in the Mediterranean and that ‘if they wished to assail this position, the two obvious points at which to strike would be the Mediterranean, by establishing themselves there, and France, by preventing closer Anglo-French relations on which the formation of a Western group of peoples must be founded’. 17

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In the wake of this depressing turn of events and with apprehensions that circumstances ‘may lead us to be plucked by our Allies’, Bevin mused on the prospect of ‘us and France on the outer circle of Europe with our friends, such as Italy, Greece, Turkey, the Middle East, our Dominions and India, and our colonial empire in Africa’ emerging as one of ‘three great Monroes’.18 There is clearly a connection between Bevin’s ‘third Monroe’ and the ideas on cooperation with Western Europe which he had outlined on becoming Foreign Secretary four months earlier. He still did little, however, to inaugurate the policy other than to obtain Molotov’s approval for an Anglo-French alliance.19 Suggestions inside the Foreign Office that this would be a good time to make progress while Foreign Minister Georges Bidault was still smarting from his treatment at the hands of the Soviets were not taken up. Indeed, enquiries from the smaller western European states over a possible Western group were met with the response that the best way forward was to ‘work steadily towards the closest cooperation and integration economically, socially and militarily with our Western neighbours without, at this stage, creating any formal regional group’.20 Some have taken this as evidence of the inconsequential nature of Bevin’s European ideas.21 Undoubtedly, a major impediment at this point was Bevin’s own uncertainty. The dash and vigour which he had demonstrated on entering the Foreign Office noticeably subsided as the complexities of the real world of international relations impinged. His views on European cooperation remained unshaped but they did not imply an intention to stake out a British sphere of influence in any formal sense. When he spoke of a ‘third Monroe’ he did so without relish. He saw the world as ‘drifting’ in this direction and talked to his officials of preventing a development which ‘would make our position extremely difficult’.22 Despite recent difficulties, he was committed to the Big Three cooperation, hopefully through the United Nations, and put on ice a European policy which might cut across this. There were still problems with France. The relaxing of tension over the Levant States produced optimism in the Foreign Office over the possibility of an Anglo-French treaty. De Gaulle had always made it clear that he would not countenance a formal association with Britain before that issue had been settled. He also insisted on coordination of Anglo-French policy over Germany. This meant that Britain should support the French demand for separation of German territory on the left bank of the Rhine and joining with them in frustrating the Potsdam decision to set up inter-Allied administrative agencies in Germany which would, in the French view, rob them of

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the prospect of re-drawing the western frontiers of Germany. Though there was some unease in the Foreign Office over these terms, not least because of de Gaulle’s audacity in laying down conditions at all, they were not judged to be insurmountable barriers. During the London Conference Bevin had intimated to Bidault that he was not averse to the idea of a separate Ruhr and there was some sympathy with French logic that they should not be bound by the decision to implement central administrations in Germany which had been decided at the Big Three meeting at Potsdam to which they had not been a party. A shift towards a less positive perception of the French can be pinpointed to 20 January 1946 and the resignation of de Gaulle as President of the French Provisional Government. There had been times, especially during the Levant disturbances, when British officials had wished de Gaulle out of the way. There had also been for weeks past rumours of a coup by the Communists, the largest political party in the French Assembly, or the Gaullists. Nothing, however, had prepared Whitehall for the profound shock of the General’s departure. The convulsion in London, with its premonitions of civil disturbance, bloodshed, significant loss of life and a communist France the probable outcome, lasted for little more than ten days until more rational thought prevailed. But the British image of the French never quite rallied from this spasm. Until now, the recovery of France had seemed both necessary and likely and Bevin had envisaged something like a partnership between London and Paris in organising the recovery of a cooperative Europe. This desire for close association was to survive until its final collapse three years later but the panic engendered by de Gaulle’s abrupt exit left a persisting sense of an economically ravaged France teetering on the edge of communism. Even as the crisis flared, the more dispassionate view that the worst might be averted if material aid was given to France to enhance the prestige of the Socialists was rejected on the ground that the Communists would be the likely beneficiaries.23 This was a straw in the wind. By early February the experts in the Western Department accepted that an over-reaction had occurred and that the three major political parties in France were able to work in coalition without de Gaulle’s assistance. An alliance with France again seemed a possibility but less as the foundation for a long-term policy and rather as a stabilising influence and as an expression of support for ‘all our friends in France, who do not at present include the Communists’ as they approached a series of elections.24 It was to be a recurrent British objective.

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The British position in Germany soon underwent a radical change which made an Anglo-French alliance even less likely. At the beginning of 1946 Bevin continued to be attracted by the French idea of an independent Ruhr, partly to emasculate German militarism but also as the fly-wheel of an invigorated Western Europe. For a time, this was reinforced by British economic difficulties in their occupation zone where bankruptcy threatened. In this situation Britain was at odds with her occupying partners over reparation policy in pressing for a greater industrial capacity to be retained by the Germans. Amputating the Ruhr was seen as a way of persuading the others that there would be little danger in rebuilding Germany. It would also prevent the Ruhr from being economically crippled by reparation and therefore useless as the engine of western European recovery.25 In mid-March, however, a Cabinet Committee on German Industry came out against an independent Ruhr. This decision focused on Britain’s difficulties in her occupation zone but recent events in France also left a significant legacy. Bevin indicated to his colleagues on the Committee that rejection of an independent Ruhr was likely to be fatal to close Anglo-French collaboration but that whereas the French view was founded on security the British needed to put economics to the forefront of their planning. Moreover, ‘if, in determining Germany’s future, we laid the emphasis on military security we should be relying on the military support of France to an extent which is not warranted by the physical and moral condition to which she had now been reduced’.26 Notwithstanding this cheerless view of France, a brief hope survived that, with de Gaulle absent, at least the French might not take the British change of policy too tragically. It was soon recognised, however, that separation of the Ruhr remained the burning ambition of two of the three parties in the French coalition—Bidault’s Christian Democrats and the Communists. There was also a fear that, the Communists being the stronger of the two parties, the French might be tempted to look to Moscow for support in achieving this aspiration. Providing kudos for the Socialists, the third party of the French political alliance—the only one anyway which would contemplate an Anglo-French pact without linking it to the German question—and reducing the attractions of Moscow became the two principal considerations behind an alliance with France. II These were the predominant motives behind an abortive attempt to obtain an alliance in April 1946. It also characterised the decision

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to embark upon negotiations which were to lead to the Treaty of Dunkirk a year later. The parallels between the two initiatives are striking. 27 In March 1946 the Foreign Office had its eye on the forthcorning elections for a Constituent Assembly due to be held on 2 June. Rumours from Paris of Gaullist and Communist plots proliferated and the fear was that the Christian Democrats might be edged out of a coalition headed by the Socialist, Félix Gouin, with ‘the possibility of de Gaulle being called back from his plough to save the country again’, a prospect which was ‘not alluring’. 28 Also looming was a Soviet propaganda coup in the shape of an offer to sell 500,000 tons of grain to France to ease the food shortage there. This, as Duff Cooper pointed out, compared favourably with apparent British niggardliness over coal allocations to France from the Ruhr. The British felt unable to match this yet were desperately worried should they fail to do anything. ‘If, it was argued, as a result of the elections, France fell under Communist and Soviet control, a most dangerous situation might arise in this country. Belgium would probably also be Communist whilst a similar regime, probably accompanied by civil war, would be set up in Spain. Great Britain might find herself a democratic outpost facing a Western Europe under Communist and Soviet control.29 The best way of stabilising this situation seemed to be the offer of an alliance which would ‘probably be the easiest step of all because it would cost us nothing, it would be popular in France and it would bring immediate credit to M.Gouin and M.Bidault’. 30 Gouin, coincidentally, appeared ready to sign a Franco-British treaty without preconditions and in early April, Oliver Harvey, a senior official from the Western Department, was quickly packed off to Paris to see what could be done. The outcome was a fiasco. Bidault made it plain that he still wanted satisfaction over French demands in Germany. Harvey returned to London without an alliance and with further evidence of the instability and unpredictability of French politics. The only comfort seemed to be that ‘it would be easy to do business’ with the Socialists. 31 Circumstances had barely changed a year on. The acrimony which existed between the Communist and non-communist parties in France suggested in London a widening polarisation in political life and ‘a real risk of dictatorship either of the Right or of the Left’.32 The Communists had enhanced their position in the elections of

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the previous November but the reluctance of the other parties to accept a Communist Prime Minister led to the compromise of a caretaker government to conduct affairs for the few weeks before the election of a President in January under the terms of the new Constitution. Significantly, this temporary government was an allSocialist ministry. It was this occurrence—a government without the inflexible presence of Bidault or the Communists—plus the Anglophilia of the French Government’s premier, Léon Blum, which provided the main ingredients in coaxing a rather diffident Labour Government towards an alliance. Blum’s own hesitation was overcome by the unauthorised persuasion of Duff Cooper and supporters of Anglo-French cooperation in the Quai d’Orsay. But Blum, as he made clear in a letter to Prime Minister Clement Attlee inviting himself to London, was less interested in an alliance than in immediate material aid for France in the shape this time, not of grain, but coal. The British could hardly deny Blum his visit, nor could they—though they tried—find him extra coal with their own reserves and stocks in their occupation in Germany zone nearing crisis point. If Blum returned home from his visit, which took place from 13 to 16 January, empty-handed the fear was of a Franco-Soviet line-up at the next CFM due in Moscow in March. Bevin also hoped to persuade Blum to stay on as Prime Minister if only for a short time as ‘the next year or so would be decisive…for Europe—whether it was to be Socialist and free or totalitarian and enslaved’.33 One possibility held in reserve by the British ‘as gilding for the pill that no coal is available’ was an alliance.34 It was this which the veteran Socialist, faut de mieux, decided to go for. Although Blum was out of office within days of returning to Paris, Bidault, who returned as Foreign Minister in the next Government, decided unenthusiastically to accept negotiations for an alliance as a fait accompli. It is possible to exaggerate the significance of the treaty signed at Dunkirk. There is no evidence that its anti-German provisions masked some future anti-Soviet intent beyond the modest British hope of gaining diplomatic advantage over Moscow by pulling the French on their side before the next CFM.35 The French had not yet burned their bridges to eastern Europe and tended to see the Dunkirk Treaty as a complement to the Anglo-Russian Treaty and their own treaty with the Soviets in providing a grip on Germany. Nor was Dunkirk a conscious attempt by the British ‘to keep all options open’ and ‘either take the road to reliance on a Western European Union or to opt for pursuing the path of an Atlantic alliance’.36 This did not yet seem a necessary choice to the British

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and, in any case, suggests a calculation about the immediate origins of the treaty which did not exist. The treaty sprang not from thoughtful premeditation but from hasty compromise. Inevitably, it disappointed those who expected something more far-reaching. Contemporary verdicts on the treaty ranged from the bland — ‘largely academic’, ‘principally psychological’—to the desperately hopeful view that the pact would only have importance if it signified a new chapter in Anglo-French relations.37 No one at the time seems to have regarded the treaty as, what one historian calls, ‘a decisive junction’ in Britain’s affairs.38 A change in the British attitude towards France was, however, on the horizon. But the Treaty of Dunkirk was not the hinge of this. The turn which is now discernible has its roots in a broken line back to Bevin’s ideas on a ‘Western Union’. In examining Anglo-French relations during this period it is essential to focus on the British search for an alliance with France as a means of restoring French power and prestige, and the desire for a Franco-British association which would lead to wider European cooperation. These two objectives often ran in tandem though after the crisis of confidence following de Gaulle’s exit they were no longer analogous. The first had been achieved at Dunkirk. Bevin now focused on the second. II I Bevin’s ideas on Western European cooperation on which he had enthused in the summer of 1945 had, so far, languished. As the leading authority on British imperialist strategy in this period points out, the unwelcome prospect of greater economic dependence on the United States, a decreasing need to take Russian sensitivity into account as East-West relations deteriorated and indications that the Board of Trade might support a global, rather than a purely European, solution to Britain’s economic difficulties re-ignited an interest in cooperation between the Western European states and their colonial dependencies which had always been implicit in Bevin’s idea of a ‘Western Union’. 39 Africa, as a market and a source of economic and strategic raw materials, as a reservoir of manpower and as a bolster to the British position in the Middle East increasingly came to be seen by Bevin and his supporters in the Foreign Office as the solution to Britain’s dwindling power base. Collaboration with the colonial Powers of western Europe, and with France in particular, became a priority.

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Deepening economic difficulties during 1947—the fuel crisis in February-March, the convertibility crisis of the summer and the persisting problem of the ‘dollar gap’—convinced many in the Foreign Office by the end of the year that without such a development Britain and western Europe would be depressed to the status of ‘pigmies between two giants’.40 The American switch to a policy of backing European cooperation via the Marshall Plan but without offering the British any special rôle in this project only served to strengthen the view that Britain had to act radically if it was to escape existence as a satellite of the United States or live in constant fear of the Soviet Union. It was to the French that Bevin revealed his vision of the merging of colonial resources—to Bidault at the end of 1946, Blum in January 1947, President Vincent Auriol in the spring of 1947 and Prime Minister Paul Ramadier in September. Although French political and economic problems continued to give concern, in his enthusiasm, Bevin convinced himself that these weaknesses could be overcome and it was made plain in Whitehall that he ‘considered that France was the most important of the Western nations’.41 The principal antagonists were judged to be nearer home, in the economic departments and the Colonial Office and a number of working parties, feasibility studies and discussion groups blossomed in an attempt to push the idea through and marginalise these opponents.42 The weeks immediately following the breakdown of the London CFM at the end of 1947 were to provide the high-water mark of Bevin’s hopes for western European collaboration. The breakdown of the CFM and progress with plans for European recovery had banished his long-standing caution over appearing to build a bloc against the Soviets and ‘had opened the way for an attempt to secure a greater measure of cooperation among the countries of Western Europe’. At a Cabinet meeting on 8 January 1948 he laid out his views in a clutch of important papers.43 In the first of these, he developed the thoughts he had already put—first to Bidault and then to the American Secretary of State, George Marshall—that physical barriers and economic progress were not sufficient to ‘stem the further encroachment of the Soviet tide’ and that ‘spiritual’ forces must be mobilised to defend the West. The term was used on five occasions in the paper prompting his colleagues to suggest the need for more precision and a ‘positive point of focus’. Bevin himself accepted that his proposal might seem ‘a somewhat fanciful conception’. Yet, if Bevin’s papers and the discussion surrounding them failed to provide a clear guide the general thrust of his proposed policy was clear. The core of this moral alliance would be those

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western states which held common ideals on civil liberties and human rights. More pragmatically, it would be necessary to mobilise the resources of Africa in support of any Western European union; and if some such union could be created, including not only the countries of Western Europe but also their Colonial possessions in Africa and the East, this would form a bloc which, both in population and productive capacity, could stand on an equality with the western hemisphere and the Soviet blocs. The aim was to win ‘material aid’ and ‘backing’ from the United States but the western Europeans who ‘despise the spiritual values of America’ would look to the United Kingdom and not the United States for leadership. ‘It is’, Bevin asserted, for us as Europeans and as a Social Democratic Government, and not the Americans to give the lead in [the] spiritual, moral and political sphere to all the democratic elements in Western Europe which are anti-Communist and are, at the same time, genuinely progressive and reformist, believing in freedom, planning and social justice—what one might call ‘The Third Force’. The Cabinet approved Bevin’s policy of the consolidation of ‘the forces of the western European countries and their Colonial possessions’ raising the curtain on the association of Britain, France and the Benelux states in the Brussels Treaty in March—an arrangement pointedly called ‘Western Union’. It was a spluttering development. As has been described fully elsewhere, the conviction of the Treasury and the Board of Trade that the African colonies would provide the quick economic fix that the western Europeans needed proved ultimately more persuasive to the Government than Bevin’s proposals. 44 The Colonial Office was also resistant to projects which had the whiff of European exploitation of indigenous peoples. These were grievous setbacks. But it was the Chiefs of Staff (COS) who were the most resistant to a ‘Western Union’. After all, if the west Europeans were to be persuaded to enter a collaborative system, they had to be convinced that Britain was prepared to defend them against Soviet communism. Moreover, if this was to become a platform for British power, its heartland had to be secure from external threat. The attempt to achieve this was to skew the emphasis towards the security aspects of ‘Western Union’.

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The Chiefs were convinced that, if war should come, American armed support would be vital. The western European states, including France, they felt, had little to offer. On these grounds, and also on the basis that communist influence made French military and political security a dubious commodity, they were opposed to staff talks with the French even after the Treaty of Dunkirk offered them full British support against an attack by Germany. Britain’s own military weakness—military manpower had been reduced by over 4 million since the end of hostilities and further economies meant that this was not yet the end of the decline—and the worse state of the French armed forces provided additional arguments for not exposing British defence thinking to the French via staff talks. Tentative British planning with the United States envisioned that, should war break out, the occupation forces in Germany should undergo a Dunkirk-style evacuation of the Continent followed by an eventual re-run of D-Day with American support. At the start of 1948, Bevin’s Third Force ambitions necessitated Anglo-French staff talks in order to induce the French into more general cooperation. This seemed the more essential following the failure of the London CFM when Bidault expressed anxiety that the western powers’ attempts to integrate their German zones of occupation into the economy of the West might provoke the Soviet Union into a military strike in Europe. Bevin’s dilemma was how sufficiently to reassure France and the other western European states over their security that coming together in a ‘Western Union’ was a practical proposition when the British Chiefs were against a military commitment to the Continent. The solution lay in involving America as far as possible in the defence of western Europe.45 Bevin had already made overtures to Marshall at the end of December 1947. Having already spoken to Bidault of the need for ‘some sort of federation in Western Europe’, he went on to test the Secretary of State on possible Anglo-American military collaboration from which he purposely exempted the French. His motive has often been interpreted as angling principally for American support whilst simultaneously constructing the image of a western European group capable of defending itself and, therefore, deemed worthy of backing in Washington. There is some evidence for this. When he mentioned to Marshall the limited staff conversations between London and Paris which, by now he had persuaded the COS to embark upon, he cast some doubt upon the value of these as compared to military talks between Britain and the United States which were ‘like those between members of one country.’46 It was agreed that the French should not

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be asked to join the tripartite security talks with the Canadians which the latter had initiated two months earlier. It may be, that on occasions the sheer intricacy of constructing a ‘Western Union’ and a sensation that international dangers would not allow too much prevarication caused his optimism to falter and that his preference sometimes did swing towards reliance on the Americans. Certainly, the prerequisites for the construction of the west European base were exasperatingly difficult to mesh. Before the Europeans, especially the French, would countenance Bevin’s ‘spiritual union’ they wanted assurances of military support. This, the British COS were reluctant to give without American backing. As for the Americans, they could not be persuaded to become involved without indications that the Europeans were already working together. Added to this, while the French made it clear that they favoured a series of bilateral treaties based on the Dunkirk example and which would provide territorial guarantees, the Dutch and the Belgians wanted a single multilateral pact which committed the participants to detailed military discussions. The latter were quite uncongenial to the British COS. IV Exactly when Bevin finally gave up on the idea of an independent British third force is unclear. The traditional view that Bevin, driven by an anti-communism learned during his time as a trade union leader, worked consistently since 1945 to draw the United States into a defensive arrangement with western Europe no longer seems tenable. A modified version of this suggests that since coming to the Foreign Office ‘Bevin had a number of broad objectives which he sought to pursue. There was no blueprint but a series of alternative visions which he pursued simultaneously in his search for a stable international order and the re-establishment of British power and independence.’ It may be the case that Bevin’s decision to follow the Atlantic path and to abandon other ‘alternative visions’ came in between the failure of the London CFM in December 1947 and the signing of the Brussels Treaty the following March. Soviet pressure on Norway suggested the need for resistance on a disconcertingly wide European front. Western European weakness meant that this could only be achieved through a wider instrument than the Brussels Pact consisting of that grouping plus Norway, Canada, Iceland, Denmark, Portugal, Spain and, of course, the United States.47 This is a perfectly plausible explanation and fits neatly with the fact that

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the Anglo-American-Canadian discussions of a possible Atlantic arrangement—the so-called Pentagon Talks—which acted as a sort of semi-official background to the later and wider negotiations in Washington that led to the North Atlantic Treaty, began within a week of the signing of the Brussels Treaty. What such an interpretation does not sufficiently account for, however, is the persistence of Bevin’s third force ideas and the auxiliary status which he had always given to the idea of intimate Anglo-American collaboration. The two were not, in Bevin’s mind, equal ‘alternative visions’. What is more, the quest for a self-reliant base for British power, though moderated after the Brussels Treaty and stated in fainter and palpably more desperate tones than before, remains perceptible. It is quite possible to view the Pentagon and Washington security talks as still intending to provide trans-Atlantic support for, rather than a replacement of, a free-standing western European grouping. Whether Bevin clung, well into the negotiations for a North Atlantic pact, to any serious expectation that this would shelter the essential core of the ‘Western Union’ appears doubtful. After all, by that time Bevin had abandoned the idea of a European customs union and colonial cooperation had resulted in nothing of substance. It seems more likely that intermittent references to ‘Western Union’ were not much more than vestiges of a once doggedly pursued policy which logic now suggested was no longer attainable; ‘wishful thinking’, as the principal protagonist of this interpretation admits.48 What the evidence does strongly suggest is that in the first half of 1948 Bevin’s more consistent endeavours still lay in the European and not the Atlantic direction. In his talk with Bidault in December, Bevin pointed out that the Americans would have to be kept informed of moves towards a European federation but mainly to the extent that this would allow them to ‘think it was they who were acting.’49 When the Americans were told early in January of the Cabinet’s decision to build, with their assistance, a western European system Washington was deliberately not informed, though the Cabinet had been, that this was intended to eradicate western European subservience to the United States and the Soviet Union.50 American support was vital and they had to be lured into giving it, but Bevin’s intention was to use the military, as well as the economic, might of the USA to underpin a temporarily weakened half-continent, thus out-flanking the COS and reassuring the western Europeans. Bevin was at one with Washington’s desire to thwart the perceived ambitions of the Kremlin. But this was in addition to an independent

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power base for Britain. American assistance would then be discarded like so much superfluous ballast. In March, the Cabinet was urged that ‘we should use US aid to gain time, but our ultimate aim should be to attain a position in which the countries of Western Europe would be independent both of the US and the Soviet Union’. If Britain ‘only pushed on and developed Africa’, Bevin asserted in October, ‘we could have the US dependent on us and eating out of our hand in four or five years’. 51 It remained an important consideration for him not to be judged to be developing a system aimed at the Soviet Union and Bevin remained anxious to ‘leave the door open to a Russian conciliation with the West’.52 The Berlin crisis of 1948–9 was probably the specific event which dealt the coup de grace to the third force idea. With the economic and colonial aspects of Bevin’s European policy already in serious trouble, a war in which the Europeans would be completely outclassed seemed a serious possibility. The security talks in the Pentagon during March may be seen either as a probe to discover the extent to which the United States might underwrite his ‘spiritual union’ or perhaps insurance if his European policy came to nothing. Little in the way of a formal commitment from the Americans emerged from these talks nor was Bevin optimistic that Washington would feel able to break with tradition and provide one. Although an extension of the Pentagon conversations had been mooted since late April, it was the struggle over West Berlin which made this a reality. In any case, after Berlin the United States was more interested in underwriting western Europe. The centre of gravity of any proposed security arrangement shifted away from ‘the middle of the planet’ towards the Atlantic and, therefore, American predominance. For a time, Bevin seems to have held onto the hope that an Atlantic pact could be complementary to the ‘Western Union’ allowing it to retain its discrete identity buttressed at a distance by American power. Yet, as these new negotiations were taking place during the summer among the United States, Canada and the Brussels Pact states, the American Ambassador in London summed up how the British now saw their position; with help from U S (and) in conjunction with British Commonwealth and Empire, they will again become a power to be reckoned with, which associated with the US, can maintain the balance of power in the world. For geo-political and historic reasons, they feel we need them almost as much as they need

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us; that US can never again retreat into isolationism; and that in all the world there is no more stable, predictable, or reliable ally than British Commonwealth and Empire led by UK.53 Independence had become interdependence, ambitions of equal authority abandoned to the rôle of loyal acolyte to the trans-Atlantic superpower. Instead of organising the ‘middle of the planet’, Britain, in Michael Hogan’s words, might at least become the pivot in a Western system of overlapping blocs, the sovereign of a middle kingdom that included the sterling area and the Commonwealth, the leader of Western Europe through the Brussels Pact and the Organisation for European Economic Cooperation, and the ally of both Western Europe and the United States through the European Recovery Programme and the North Atlantic Treaty then being negotiated in Washington.54 The enormous consequences of all this for British policy were set out during the spring of 1949 in an important paper by a newly formed Foreign Office body, the Permanent Under Secretary’s Committee. It was founded on two assumptions which, until now, the Foreign Secretary had been loath fully and finally to admit—the ‘implacable’ hostility of the Soviet Union and Britain’s ‘economic dependence on the United States’. The paper argued that economic integration with Western Europe involves great risks which would only be worth taking if we could be confident that economic integration would create a unit economically and militarily strong enough to be capable of resisting aggression For the moment there seems little prospect of such a development and we might, if we went too far along this road, find Europe overrun and our own segment of the economy unable to function on its own. Britain’s future, it was posed, lay in the consolidation of the West in which the United States would obviously be the most powerful force but with the hope that ‘as time goes by, the elements of [British] dependence [on the USA] ought to diminish and those of interdependence to increase’. The ‘concept of Western Europe as a Third World Power’ acting independently of the United States was rejected as ‘inconsistent with the consolidation of a Western system’.55 Bevin read the paper on 27 March and expressed his agreement with the Committee’s analysis.

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To suggest that ‘without question the North Atlantic Treaty was the crowning achievement of [Bevin’s] foreign secretaryship’ is rather too assertive.56 Wherever one chooses to pinpoint the mutation of a European into an Atlantic policy, it remains the case that the latter became Bevin’s goal at quite a late stage and was a by-product of, certainly an alternative to, failed attempts to attain his objective of constructing an independent third force dominated by Britain. Triumph though it was, the North Atlantic Pact was also a kind of consolation prize earned following a reluctant acceptance that the economic and military weakness of Britain and her proposed European partners, notably France, in the face of the towering power of the Soviet Union ruled out the creation of Bevin’s desired construction in the short term and made it too dangerous to hang on for in the longer term. It is easy to criticise Bevin’s ‘Western Union’ intentions as vague, impractical and grandiose.57 However, they were, at least, an imaginative attempt to come to terms with these changed international circumstances. The more ‘realistic’ advice of Bevin’s opponents in the economic departments, which he eventually fell in with, that the best way forward was to consolidate Atlantic and Commonwealth connections turned out to be a lengthy journey down a dead-end. There is, as one French Minister put it to Bevin, ‘the need for some illusions and dreams’ to inspire the people of Europe.58 This was a reference to a French proposal in the summer of 1948 for a European Assembly which Bevin judged a premature, and maybe dangerous, diversion. The initiative was slipping from his hands and the ‘illusions and dreams’ for the future of Europe were being appropriated by the European federalists. Their vision was no more ‘practical’ than his own and, as Bevin was keen to point out, its achievement hardly to be expected. However, they persisted and Bevin did not. Instead, in a post-war turning point easily a match of British rejection of moves towards integration in the 1950s, he abdicated the leadership of Europe, finally distanced himself from France as a principal ally and manoeuvred Britain towards an American-dominated Atlantic system. Notes 1 2

Meeting, 13 August 1945. Public Record Office (PRO) FO371 Z9595/ 13/17. Statement by Bevin at Chiefs of Staff meeting, 4 February 1948. PRO FO 800/452.

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3

4 5 6

7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27

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See M.Dockrill. ‘British attitudes towards France as a military ally’, Diplomacy and Statecraft, 1990, vol. 1, p. 50; V.Rothwell, ‘Robin Hankey’ in J.Zametica (ed.), British Officials and British Foreign Policy, 1945–1950, Leicester, Leicester University Press, 1990, p. 170. PRO FO371 UE2504/813/53, C2432/22/18, UE 2504/813/53. Minute by Hebblethwaite, 10 August 1945. PRO FO371 Z9196/13/ 17. Bevin to Eden, 8 December 1942. Bevin Papers, BEVN 3/2E, Churchill College, Cambridge. See also PRO FO371 C7449/164/3, 31 May 1944. W.Millis (ed.), The Forrestal Diaries, New York, 1951, p. 80. See the contribution of Philip Bell to this volume. PRO PREM 3/180/7, Minute by Churchill, November 1944. See also D. Dutton, Anthony Eden: A Life and Reputation, London, Arnold, 1997, pp. 154–76. PROFO371E6051/8/89. Diary entry 13 August 1945. Harvey Papers, British Library. H.Nicolson (ed.), Diaries and Letters 1945–1962, London, Collins, 1968, diary entry 25 September 1945. PRO CAB 128/3 CM(45)35, 25 September 1945. Duff Cooper to Eden, 13 July 1945. PRO FO 954B, Eden Papers Fr/ 45/125. J.W.Young, France, the Cold War and the Western Alliance 1944– 1949, Leicester, Leicester University Press, 1990, pp. 92–3. PRO FO371 U7620/5559/20. The Foreign Relations of the United States, 1945, vol. II, p. 515. Hereafter FRUS. Clark-Kerr to Bevin, 6 September 1945. PRO FO371 N12165/165/ 38. P.Dixon, Double Diplomat, London, 1968, p. 193. PRO CAB 129/3 CP(45)202. PRO FO 800 478/MIS/45/14. PRO CAB 129/3 CP(45)218. S.Greenwood, The Alternative Alliance: Anglo-French Relations Before the Coming of NATO, 1944–1948, London, Minerva, 1996, pp. 81–6. PRO FO371 Z2410/120/72. Rothwell, ‘Robin Hankey’; A.Deighton, The Impossible Peace: Britain, the Division of Germany and the Origins of the Cold War, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1990, pp. 203–4. FRUS, 1945, vol. II, p. 629. PRO FO371 Z259/120/72. Minute by Hebblethwaite, 30 January 1946. Minute by Hoyer Millar, 23 January 1946. PRO FO371 Z754/21/17 and Z675/65/17. Minute by Harvey, 12 February 1946. PRO FO371 Z1406/21/17. The Settlement of Western Germany, 4 February 1946. PRO FO371 C1963/14/18. PRO CAB 130/9 GEN 121/1, 15 March 1946. See Greenwood, Alternative Alliance, chs 7, 12, 13; J.W.Young, Britain, France and the Unity of Europe 19 45–1951, Leicester, Leicester University Press, 1984, pp. 29–30, 45–51; J.Baylis, The Diplomacy of Pragmatism: Britain and the Formation of NATO, 1942–1949, London, Macmillan, 1993, ch. 4.

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37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45

46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58

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PRO FO371 Z2517/21/17. PRO FO371 Z2780/20/17. PROFO371Z3625/20/17. PRO FO371 Z3356/21/17. PROFO371Z170/58/17. PRO FO371 Z650/119/17. PRO FO371 Z269/119/17. See Deighton, Impossible Peace, p. 39. K.Larres, ‘A search for order: Britain and the origins of a western European union 1944–1945’ in B.Brivati and H.Jones (eds), From Reconstruction to Integration: Britain and Europe since 1945, Leicester, Leicester University Press, 1993, p. 83. Greenwood, Alternative Alliance, pp. 284–6. Larres, ‘Search for order’, p. 85. J.Kent, British Imperial Strategy and the Origins of the Cold War, 1944– 1949, Leicester, Leicester University Press, 1993, pp. 117–21. M.J.Hogan, The Marshall Plan: America, Britain and the Reconstruction of Europe 1947–1952, Cambridge, Cambridge Univesity Press, 1987, p. 113. PRO FO371 Z9053/G. Kent, British Imperial Strategy, p. 132. PRO CAB 128/12 CM(48)2, 8 January 1948. CAB 129/23 CP(48)6, CP(48)7 and CP(48)8. Kent, British Imperial Strategy, chs 5 and 6. See J.Kent and J.W.Young, ‘The “Western Union” concept and British defence policy, 1947–48’ in R.Aldrich (ed.), British Intelligence Strategy and the Cold War, 1945–1951, London, Routledge, 1992, pp. 173, 177– 8. Dockrill, ‘British attitudes towards France’, p. 61. Baylis, Diplomacy of Pragmatism, pp. 72, 123. Kent, British Imperial Strategy, p. 186. Baylis, Diplomacy of Pragmatism, p. 65. Kent and Young,The “Western Union”’, p. 171. Baylis, Diplomacy of Pragmatism, p. 73. Ibid., p. 70. N. Petersen, ‘Who pulled whom and how much? Britain, the United States and the making of the North Atlantic Treaty’, Millenium. Journal of International Studies, 1982, vol. 11, p. 108. Hogan, Marshall Plan, p. 180. PRO FO371 76384/45405/W3114 PUSC(22) March 1949. A.Danchev, Oliver Franks: Founding Father, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1993, p. 107. Kent, British Imperial Strategy, p. 215; Young, France, the Cold War, p. 169. PRO FO371 Z9292/G, 26 October 1948.

14 The failure of the new entente cordiale, 1947–1950 John Young

The question why Franco-British cooperation was not developed further after they signed the Treaty of Dunkirk on 4 March 1947, is clearly an important one. The two powers had entered the Second World War together in September 1939 and, though their partnership was sundered by France’s defeat the following June, the British had been desperate enough to offer a political union to Paris, to keep the French empire in the war. Despite frequent arguments between Winston Churchill and the Free French leader Charles de Gaulle, the British did much to assist France’s gradual rehabilitation as a major power, helping to secure a French rôle on the United Nations Security Council, a share in the occupation of Germany and Austria, and the full restoration of the French empire, including Vietnam. Dunkirk was chosen by the French Foreign Minister, Georges Bidault, as the venue for the 1947 treaty, because of it symbolism: the entente cordiale was to be restored where it had been so suddenly broken.1 Certainly, both countries seemed to have good reasons to cooperate closely with one another in the late 1940s. Both had substantial colonial empires at a time when formal imperialism was being widely criticised, not least by the superpowers—the United States and Soviet Union; both were western European liberal democracies, whose capitalist economic systems were currently tempered by ambitious programmes of social reform and the nationalisation of key industries; both had reasons to fear a revival of German power as well as the establishment of Soviet domination in eastern Europe. The Treaty of Dunkirk itself was a fifty-year defensive alliance against a new German threat, but it also aroused strong suspicion in Moscow, always wary of any sign of west European consolidation. Yet, whatever the apparent logic of Franco-British cooperation in 1947, by mid–1950 it was clear that neither country was ready to make their alliance the backbone of its foreign policy. Certainly,

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they had managed in some significant areas to work closely together, leading west European countries in the Summer of 1947 in the acceptance of America’s offer of economic aid (the Marshall Plan), forging a west European security pact in March 1948 (the Brussels Pact), agreeing with America in June 1948 to create a west German state and being founder members of the April 1949 North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO). For a time in 1947–8 it even seemed that Britain, with its more industrialised economy, could cooperate with France in making a viable west European customs union, helping to restrain German strength and perhaps allowing the creation of a ‘third force’ in world affairs—allied with the United States against the menace of Soviet communism but equal in economic potential to both superpowers and standing, in ideological terms, between the totalitarian socialism of Moscow and the rampant free enterprise of Washington. Such a vision seemed to permeate British thinking on the future direction of policy in January 1948. 2 In 1948–9, however, it became clear to the French that there were strict limits to how far Britain would pursue European cooperation and that there were real differences with London on how to tackle the German problem, military planning for continental defence and the possibilities both of economic integration and political cooperation in Western Europe. In January 1948 the British Foreign Secretary, Ernest Bevin, may have appeared to take a genuine interest in ideas for military, economic and colonial links with France, but by late 1949 he seemed keen to base British power on a close partnership with the United States and the British Commonwealth, and it was France which became the leading advocate of greater European integration. The launch of the Schuman Plan in May-June 1950—exactly ten years after the Fall of France and the Dunkirk evacuation—exposed the differences between the two countries and set them on separate European policies for years to come. This essay focuses on the factors which contributed to the division between Britain and France in the late 1940s, in order to explain the failure of the new entente cordiale. I In his contribution Sean Greenwood has shown that the British were far from indifferent to west European cooperation at the end of the Second World War. In 1944, the Foreign Office already had ambitious plans for a Western bloc; which would be based on a close alliance

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with France. 3 On coming into power in the summer of 1945 Bevin told his officials that he aimed at extensive military, economic and political cooperation with western Europe, with France as the cornerstone.4 However, early attempts to negotiate a formal treaty between the two leading regional powers were dogged by disagreements and uncertainty. General Charles de Gaulle was determined that, as the price of such a treaty, Britain should back French policies in the Near East and Germany, but France’s attempt to crush its opponents in Syria had already led to British armed intervention there (in order to prevent wider difficulties for London’s position in the Arab world) and, as in the wake of the First World War, French plans for a draconian peace in Germany were not to British taste. Even after de Gaulle resigned as French leader in January 1946, differences continued on the German problem because, whereas his successors, with bitter memories of the recent occupation, continued to press for the detachment of the Rhineland and the industrial Ruhr from Germany, Britain (alongside America) gradually began to reinvigorate the German economy, so as to reduce occupation costs, forestall a revival of militant nationalism and prevent the Germans turning to communism. The strength of the Communist Party in the French coalition government also caused complications for cooperation with Britain and the Treaty of Dunkirk only proved possible because a short-lived, all-Socialist government came to power in Paris in December 1947. The Socialists felt an affinity with the British Labour Party and were identified with a milder policy towards Germany.5 The Dunkirk Treaty marked a potential first step to a ‘western bloc’ under Franco-British leadership and seemed to fulfil one of Bevin’s main original aims as Foreign Secretary. However, in actual form, as an anti-German security pact, it was rather narrow and backward-looking in content, being similar to the treaties each country had made during the war with the Soviet Union. The official history of French foreign policy in this period calls it ‘the last manifestation of the immediate post-war period when one could think of founding peace on the cooperation of all the great powers— on the basis of security measures focused on the German danger.’6 Bidault, Bevin’s opposite number, was an advocate of a strong antiGerman policy and had doubts about the wisdom of signing it.7 Although it was principally a military alliance, it did not lead to staff talks between the two sides. French military chiefs would have welcomed such talks, especially over the summer of 1947 when relations with the Soviet Union became markedly worse, but the

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British feared that French security was poor (and probably penetrated by communist agents), that a realistic assessment of the military balance might make Paris too pessimistic and that it was more important to work closely with the powerful Americans—with whom a close military relationship had been created during the war— especially if the latter could help bolster Britain’s position in the Middle East. 8 Also, at this time, a final breakdown had yet to occur in Soviet-Western diplomatic contacts. Such a breakdown did occur after a failed Foreign Ministers’ conference on Germany, held in London in November-December 1947, and it was followed by a number of conversations between Bevin, Bidault and the US Secretary of State, George Marshall, about future western cooperation on defence, economics and Germany. It also led to renewed enthusiasm about west European cooperation in the Foreign Office, an enthusiasm which helped shape a major speech by Bevin in the House of Commons on 22 January 1948 in which he advocated a ‘Western Union’, with a specific proposal for a west European alliance, building on the Franco-British partnership. This proposal was fully supported by Bidault who, in December, had himself advocated an extension of the Treaty of Dunkirk to Belgium.9 Such thinking led, on 17 March, to the signature of the Brussels Pact by Britain, France, Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxemburg. It was more than a military arrangement, embracing as it did financial, social and cultural cooperation, and including a ‘Consultative Council’ of ministers to meet regularly. In contrast to the Treaty of Dunkirk, the Brussels Pact was seen as an anti-Soviet measure, being signed only weeks after a communist coup in Czechoslovakia, and it was followed by more effective military cooperation. In May the defence ministers of the five countries agreed to pool their resources and a Military Committee was launched to draw up an inventory of what forces were available; in July a joint military command structure was formed under Britain’s Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery; and the same month the five opened conversations in Washington with the Americans and Canadians on a wider Atlantic pact, which would bring desperately needed US resources to Europe’s aid.10 Yet even during early 1948, which might reasonably be seen as the high point of British cooperation with its continental neighbours in the early post-war years, the differences between London and Paris on military policy were obvious. When the French army chief, General Georges Revers, visited London in January 1948 to begin staff talks, he was disappointed to discover that the War Office was

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distinctly lukewarm about such contacts,11 echoing the earlier doubts about military links to France. Bevin and the Chief of the Imperial General Staff, Montgomery, may have been keen to make a commitment to continental defence, if only to boost morale in France and the Low Countries, an actual Soviet invasion of western Europe being deemed unlikely. The Royal Navy and Royal Air Force were, however, reluctant to commit substantial forces to continental defence for fear of another Dunkirk. They preferred to concentrate on defending Britain itself (a strategy which gave them a more important rôle than that of the Army). In May it was agreed that British forces should fight on the continent in the event of war, but plans were based on the need to evacuate them quickly in the face of an expected Soviet onslaught. Only in March 1950 was it agreed actually to reinforce the Army in western Europe.12 In March 1948 the British entered several weeks of secret talks with the United States and Canada. The French were omitted and kept in ignorance partly because of continuing fears about their lapsed security: yet, ironically, one of the British delegation was the Soviet spy, Donald Maclean.13 The result was that, when the talks on the Atlantic Pact opened, the French were unfamiliar with American thinking and for many weeks were thrown into confusion: whereas Paris hoped for a simple extension of the Brussels Pact, with a limited membership and substantial US military assistance, London backed the American preference for a looser form of alliance (preserving Congress’s right to declare war), geographically broad and with a military aid programme put off into the future. When Paris did accept that the new alliance should be widely drawn they insisted that it should cover Algeria, constitutionally part of France. However, whereas the French defence axis ran from Metropolitan France to North Africa, the British remained more interested in defending sea lanes and the Middle East.14 Meanwhile, the Brussels Pact military command rapidly became a victim of the personal rivalry between Montgomery and his equally strong-minded French deputy, General Jean de Lattre de Tassigny, one of their main points of disagreement being the direction in which Brussels Pact forces should retreat if war did break out. The British preferred a short retreat to the Channel, the French a long one to the Pyrenees.15 Franco-British differences in 1948–9 also emerged in a proposal for a European Assembly which Bidault put to the Brussels Pact’s Consultative Council, shortly before he was replaced as Foreign Minister by Robert Schuman. The idea of a European parliament had been put forward in May 1948 at the Hague Congress, a

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gathering of those who believed that, in the face of political decline, economictroubles and the advent of the Cold War, Europe must unite. There were various ideas about the form such unity should take and Bevin’s own ‘Western Union’ could be seen as one way forward. However, Bevin and the Foreign Office were aghast when Bidault decided to put a European parliament forward as a serious proposal. The French Government, few of whom had any intention of seeing such a body possess supranational powers, believed a parliament would mobilise popular support for European cooperation and, more importantly, provide a first step towards controlling German power through common institutions (a subject discussed more fully below). Bidault’s proposal, maintained and expanded by Schuman, exposed the limits of Bevin’s European vision. The Foreign Secretary advocated west European cooperation as a way to bolster British influence in the world, provide ‘defence in depth’ on the continent and allow commercial openings. He had no intention of compromising the country’s basic independence or of sharing decisions with strong European institutions. His dismissal of ‘impractical’ schemes for political federation is well known: ‘When you open that Pandora’s Box you’ll find it full of Trojan horses.’16 Although the French proposal did result in a treaty, signed in May 1949, which created the Council of Europe, the new institution represented a compromise with the British and proved a disappointment to federalists. The European Assembly which it created had only consultative powers and these were restricted in extent (excluding, for example, economics and defence).17 If Bevin had been able to prevent radical attempts at unity in western Europe on the political level, he found it much more difficult to control French attempts at economic integration. II As on the military-political level, British policy-makers were not without positive ideas on European economic cooperation after 1945. Bevin, who had taken an interest in the concept of a European customs union between the wars, put such a proposal to the Cabinet in January 1947.18 Such bold ideas aroused less enthusiasm outside the Foreign Office, however. The Treasury and Board of Trade, rather like the Chiefs of Staff, preferred to preserve British independence and work closely with the United States, the predominant military and economic force in the world, far more powerful and useful than the French. In

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the economic sphere this was to take the form of a ‘multilateral’ cooperation, a global system of freer trade, well-suited to a world trading power like Britain—though the economic ministries also intended to preserve their system of trade preferences with the Commonwealth.19 Bevin’s initial attempt to study a customs union came to nothing but, with the American offer of Marshall Aid in 1947, and signs that the United States itself would welcome a European customs union as a way to boost local economies and form a healthy barrier to communist expansion, the idea of European economic integration made more sense.20 On 22 September 1947 Bevin met the French Prime Minister, Paul Ramadier, and spoke of the possibility of a Franco-British combination matching the might of the superpowers, especially if economic and colonial policies could be dovetailed.21 Three days later the British Cabinet agreed, under pressure from Bevin, to establish another study of a European customs union.22 In early January 1948, when Bevin mapped out for the Cabinet his vision of future foreign policy, it strongly echoed what he had told Ramadier: in cooperation with western Europe and by exploiting colonial resources, Britain could ‘develop our own policy and influence to equal that of the United States of America and the USSR’.23 Yet, whatever the dramatic possibilities of late 1947 and early 1948, in economic, commercial and colonial matters, as in military and political ones, Britain and France never approached close integration. Indeed, in studying the talks between them, some historians argue that, with so many differences of outlook and interest, close Franco-British cooperation in these fields was never likely.24 True, the French also showed an interest in economic and commercial cooperation. In fact, they frequently seemed more enthusiastic than Bevin. In July 1946 the French Foreign Ministry’s economics chief, Hervé Alphand, concerned over Britain’s failure to take more French exports, suggested that the two economies should be integrated and, though such a grandiose proposal soon fell foul of Whitehall reticence, such pressure did help lead to the formation in September of a Franco-British Economic Committee. This met regularly, tried to reduce unnecessary competition between the two economies, as well as to boost trade, and for several years remained a forum in which the French pressed for more radical cooperative steps.25 French economists, notably Jean Monnet, the head of the country’s post-war reconstruction plan, were convinced of France’s need to make itself competitive in the world. The economic stagnation of the Third Republic had to end, protectionist measures must be reduced and, especially if France were to receive

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American aid, ‘multilateralism’ must be embraced.26 Britain at first seemed a naturalpartner in this field. A close neighbour, with an industrialised economy, it did provide some post-war assistance to France (helping to rebuild the transport system, for example) and, as in the military sphere, it could help to match German power. Monnet always insisted that, until 1949, he had primarily hoped to work closely with Britain on European economic integration.27 However, if Britain was reluctant to rush into a customs union, the French were prepared to find new partners in order to create a wider single market and force their producers to become more competitive. In August 1947, during talks on the Marshall Plan in Paris, Alphand proposed that customs unions should be studied as a way to boost European trade and talks began soon after on a specifically FrancoItalian customs union. In July 1948 Bidault’s proposal for a European Assembly was linked to discussion of an economic union and there were repeated French attempts to interest Belgium, Holland and Luxemburg (who themselves had formed the Benelux Customs Union) in economic cooperation.28 More significantly, in 1948–9, the French began to appreciate that, if they were to forestall a revived German menace and yet allow West Germany’s economic revival as part of the western alliance, then it might be necessary to work closely with the former enemy. As early as May 1948 the Foreign Ministry, the Quai d’Orsay, considered the long-term possibility of a FrancoGerman-Benelux customs union.29 The reasons why Franco-British economic cooperation proved impossible are numerous. There were many detailed practical problems but also basic underlying differences of direction in macroeconomic policy. The two economies were very different, France’s being more agricultural and with little heavy industry, at least until Monnet’s recovery plan took off (and it was not even drawn up until late 1946). The very fact that France drew up a comprehensive recovery plan, while Britain did not, caused problems because it was then difficult to fit British policies into French priorities. Besides, the British, despite their ‘socialist’ government, were only lukewarm about centralised state planning. In the early post-war years French exports relied too much on luxury goods like perfume and dried flowers, for which the British had little need, the franc was overvalued and Britain simply lacked the financial resources to compensate for French failings while a genuine partnership between the two was built up. Such were the arguments which Treasury and Board of Trade representatives deployed in the wake of the Bevin-Ramadier talk of September 1947. 30 Whilst a

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customs union was studied in Whitehall in 1947–8, the economic ministries soon mustered a series of arguments against it: it would damage Commonwealth trade preferences, end Britain’s economic independence and, since all west European countries (particularly France) had dollar deficits, it would do nothing to match American power. It was preferable to adhere to inter-governmental cooperation and a gradual policy of trade liberalisation.31 By January 1949 Bevin fully accepted such arguments and put a paper to ministers, jointly with the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Sir Stafford Cripps, which laid down an important principle: Britain would cooperate with western Europe economically, but not so far that she lost her ability to survive if there were an economic collapse in Europe, or if the continent were overrun by the Soviet Union. 32 In late 1949 Bevin circulated another paper to the Cabinet ruling out the idea that western Europe might somehow become a ‘third power’ in world affairs. Instead the Foreign Office favoured a more general consolidation of Europe, the Commonwealth and the United States. 33 By then the British had confirmed their priorities by consulting with the United States ahead of a massive devaluation of sterling on 18 September. The French and others, as with the military talks of March-April 1948, were left in the dark. It was at this time also that the French and American governments agreed that Britain was not ready to lead the way in European integration. The American Secretary of State, Dean Acheson, encouraged Robert Schuman: ‘Now is the time for a French initiative to integrate the German Republic…in to Western Europe.’34 Interest in Franco-British colonial cooperation, on the lines Bevin had discussed with Ramadier, proved even less productive than economic and commercial links. Here it was the Colonial Office which was quick to point out the flaws in Bevin’s ambitious schemes. At root the two countries had very different colonial philosophies, the French with a quite centralised empire, very much governed from Paris, the British with a decentralised, diverse system in which several ‘Dominions’ had already achieved self-government. In Asia, whilst the French tried to restore control over Indochina after 1946 by force, becoming involved in a long and bloody war in Vietnam, the British were driven to grant independence to India, Pakistan and Burma. The Colonial Office was set on a course of preparing other parts of the empire for independence in the long-term. The idea that this process could suddenly be reversed, in order to create some kind of Franco-British imperial combination, was anathema to the Colonial Office, whilst ideas for a European-Commonwealth

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customs union, such as Bevin suggested to the Trades Union Congress in 1947, ran up against the objection that the Dominions, having won their independence, were not likely to compromise this in a European-led economic group. As to the French, they as yet had no desire to move in Britain’s direction of conceding colonial independence, despite some cosmetic attempts to liberalise their empire, now renamed the French Union. Old suspicions died hard and British policy was often seen in Paris as trying to outbid France for influence, notably in the Arab world. There was limited FrancoBritish (and Belgian) cooperation in sub-Saharan Africa in the late 1940s, but only of a limited and practical kind. Officials discussed transport links, inter-colonial trade and how to tackle tropical diseases but there was no concerted political position. Bevin and the French both talked, at times, about a ‘Euro-African’ combination. Africa offered some natural resources and was a region where nationalist movements were slow to develop. However, any idea that African resources could somehow be developed on a large scale, at a time when Europe was struggling to reconstruct itself, were fanciful.35 II I The German problem has been touched upon already in this essay and throughout the late 1940s it impinged on many aspects of FrancoBritish relations. It was arguably the most important reason for their ultimate failure to form a close partnership. Already, by early 1947, the two countries were deeply divided about the future of Germany. France’s plans of 1944–5 to separate the Rhineland and the Ruhr from Germany looked increasingly unlikely to be realised since they were opposed, not only by Britain, but also by America and the Soviet Union. Yet France’s fear of Germany, after three invasions since 1870, was deep-seated and for a long time Paris clung onto the idea of a vindictive peace. This was one factor which helped hold the Christian Democrats and Communists together in a coalition government in Paris until May 1947. The French also hoped to use German resources, not least coal from the Ruhr, in Monnet’s reconstruction plan and had ambitions of replacing Germany as the continent’s main steel producer. Meanwhile, in 1946 the British agreed to join together with the Americans in Germany, merging their occupation zones together in the so-called Bizone. The British were desperate for American financial assistance in Germany and ready to support a policy of German political and economic revival. In 1947 a representative body,

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the Economic Council, was formed in the Bizone and steel output levels were increased, all of which provoked grave concern in Paris. For the British and Americans the priorities might be to revive Germany as a way to stimulate the European economy in general, tie Germany to the west and reduce the costs of occupation, but for the French such policies threatened to revive the German threat, compromise Monnet’s plan to utilise Ruhr coal in France and leave France subservient to Germany yet again.36 In parallel to military and economic developments, the early months of 1948, following the diplomatic breakdown with Moscow, saw an attempt at better Franco-British cooperation in Germany. Along with the Americans they met in London and decided, in June, to establish a West German government, with no detachment of the Ruhr and Rhineland, although Germany remained under occupation. It was a decision which was successfully carried through with a West German constitution being drawn up and a government formed, under Konrad Adenauer, the following year. Soviet attempts to disrupt the process, with the Berlin Blockade, simply appeared to cement western unity. Whereas the British were quite at ease with this process, in France it provoked a profound debate. The London Accords on Germany were only passed by a margin of eight votes in the National Assembly and they cost Bidault his position as Foreign Minister. It was against the background of the London conference that French officials began to see the logic, indeed the necessity, of cooperation with Germany in a wider European framework. Such a policy would create a powerful economic group, in which France might still tap Germany’s coal resources. It would allow France to embrace a policy of German revival (ending the image of retreat in the face of AngloAmerican pressure) and revive the basic idea behind the 1929 Briand Plan, when an earlier French Foreign Minister had tried to replace a vindictive German policy with the more enlightened approach of European cooperation. Germany would be tied closely to the West, as Britain and America wanted, but it would work more in line with specifically French requirements, and it would lose much of its ability to cause trouble if it were tied down in European-wide institutions. Indeed, by the end of 1948 French officials argued that ‘We have to abandon a part of our sovereignty to a democratic European organisation which would render a new Franco-German conflict economically and politically impossible.’37 The significant point for the current discussion is that there was no equivalent development in British thinking. Despite two world wars, Britain lacked the sense of terror with which the French viewed

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Germany, a terror which, paradoxically, now made it possible for them to contemplate cooperation with their enemy on a supranational basis. The British had been threatened but never occupied by Germany; as after the First World War they wanted to revive it as a trading partner; and they did not consider that any threat from Europe made it worthwhile to contemplate a loss of sovereignty. French proposals for greater European integration tended to be ascribed to weak-mindedness, born of defeat in 1940 and reinforced by the Fourth Republic’s political instability. Indeed, when one French coalition fell apart, William Strang, the Permanent Under-Secretary at the Foreign Office, was driven to ask, ‘Is this a foretaste of what a United Europe would be like?’38 By the end of 1948, French officials had not only decided to try to work with the new Germany in a European framework, they had also raised the particular possibility of ‘a European steel pool, in which Germans and French would share equally and exercise common control’.39 Steel industries were the backbone of any midtwentieth century industrialised economy and it has already been said that the French hoped to outmatch Germany as a post-war steel producer. The idea that the two might abandon competition in favour of cooperation in this area was the basic idea behind the Schuman Plan, drawn up by Monnet, and launched by Schuman at a press conference on 8 May 1950. The Plan proved to be the start of a surprisingly successful Franco-German partnership in Europe, the first step to a European Union—and a point of separation between France and Britain, a point so significant that it has recently been the subject of two full-length monographs.40 But it is clear that both the French decision to launch the Plan and the British decision not to take part in discussions upon it, were merely the culmination of policies which had long been developing on different lines. The fact that almost eighteen months elapsed between the first suggestions of a steel pool and the launch of the Schuman Plan (whose main proposal was a single authority to run western Europe’s coal and steel industries) reflected the doubts of divisions in France about such a policy. Popular opinion was hardly prepared for such a development, it took continuing signs of Germany’s revival to convince French policy-makers that a dramatic initiative was needed and there had to be some assurance that Adenauer would respond positively. However, as seen above, by late 1949 Schuman and Monnet were convinced that Britain was unwilling to act as France’s principal partner in building a European future. Instead, the British had goaded France into entering an Atlantic Pact which only partly

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answered her security concerns, emasculated the proposal for a European Assembly and turned away from talks on a customs union. Acheson had given Schuman the go-ahead to lead continental integration, specifically with the purpose of tying Germany into a wider European whole. Even then it took several months before a combination of events drove Monnet to act. Another Franco-BritishAmerican ministerial discussion on Germany was looming, which would undoubtedly lead to more measures to revive the German economy. The French recovery plan had to be safeguarded and France had to act to steer European developments in its own favour before Germany revived further.41 The surprising thing is that the British Government, far from turning down the Schuman Plan abruptly gave it some consideration. The country’s previous lack of interest in European integration and the principle, laid down in January 1949, of maintaining Britain’s economic independence of Europe, may have suggested that membership of a coal-steel pool was impossible. Britain’s own coal and steel industries were the largest in Europe and had only recently been nationalised; and Bevin was initially furious that Schuman had announced the plan without prior consultation. None the less, a number of studies were set up in Whitehall and not all were negative about the plan. The Chiefs of Staff were very keen to see France and Germany work together, for the sake of western cohesion against the Soviet Union. Eventually, the debate turned on whether Britain could accept the principle of supranationality, which Schuman had made a pre-condition for entering talks on the plan. This exposed the heart of Franco-British differences for, whereas the French Government saw a pooling of sovereignty as essential if German power was to be restrained, the British saw no reason to make such a commitment and on 2 June the Cabinet refused to enter talks on such terms.42 British hopes that those who did join in discussions (France, Germany, Italy and Benelux countries) would fail to reach agreement proved illfounded, though it took a full decade before leading British policymakers realised that the failure to participate in the Schuman Plan might have been a fundamental error and a turning point, not only in Franco-British relations, but also for British standing in the world. IV It would be wrong to exaggerate the scale of the differences which separated Britain and France even in 1950. They were the leading

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powers in forming the Organisation of European Economic Cooperation, through which Marshall Aid was channelled after April 1948, as well as the Brussels Pact and Council of Europe. Such institutions as the Franco-British Economic Committee and the Brussels Pact Military Committee showed a desire to work together, even if neither body lived up to early expectations. They also agreed, despite all the arguments, on the creation of a West German state and, of course, they stood together with other liberal democracies in the face of the Soviet threat, not least in NATO. Yet, looked at in retrospect, the years 1947–50 were ones of disappointment in FrancoBritish relations. In 1947, with the Treaty of Dunkirk, the Marshall Plan and the Bevin-Ramadier talk it was possible to believe that a close partnership was growing up between the two and Bevin’s talk of a Western Union in January 1948 seemed set to fulfil the longstanding hope that France and Britain would form the backbone of an integrated western Europe. As at other points in the twentieth century, the logic of cooperation ran up against too many differences of interest and outlook between Britain and France. There were numerous minor differences and irritants which might have been overcome had overarching demands been different: rivalry in the Arab world was of declining importance, British exasperation over France’s political instability and large communist minority did not stop Bevin contemplating far-reaching cooperation and personal differences, such as those between Montgomery and de Lattre, could always be overcome with the necessary political will. At the same time, despite their democratic and colonial credentials, and despite their geographic proximity at a time of external threat, France and Britain differed too often on fundamentals. In strategic matters, France’s understandable obsession with continental defence contrasted with British interests in the Middle East and the need of an offshore island to protect its trade routes. In economic terms, though both countries accepted the US-driven policy of multilateralism, France still had a certain protectionism in its outlook, a readiness to experiment with indicative planning and an eagerness to form customs unions with its neighbours. Despite Bevin’s interest in a customs union, the British were far more laissez-faire in their approach, with substantial commercial and financial interests beyond Europe, not least in the EmpireCommonwealth. Differences of colonial philosophy were also stark. Most of all of course, where European matters were concerned the two had an entirely different outlook on the German problem,

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where French fears led them ultimately to propose a pooling of sovereignty which the British felt no need to accept. Ironically, in 1950 it was the British, feeling themselves to be self-confident and successful after their experience in the Second World War, who decided to take a road, based on independence, the American alliance and Commonwealth cooperation, which only overstretched their resources in the 1950s and 1960s. In contrast, the French, defeated in 1940, economically weak and politically unstable, were able to frame an imaginative policy which provided the promise of security, wealth and international influence in the following decades. Notes 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12

13 14 15 16 17

Minute by Hoyer-Millar, 26 February 1947. Public Record Office (PRO) FO 371/67671/2102. See PRO CAB 129/23 CP(48)6. See the contribution of Sean Greenwood to this volume. Record of meeting, 13 August 1945. PRO FO 371/49069/9595. See Sean Greenwood’s contribution. P.Gerbet, Le Relèvement, 1944–49: Politique Etrangère de la France, Paris, Imprimerie Nationale, 1991, pp. 55–6. J.W.Young, France, the Cold War and the Western Alliance, 1944–1949, Leicester, Leicester University Press, 1990, pp. 134–5. J.W.Young, Britain, France and the Unity of Europe, 1945–1951, Leicester, Leicester University Press, 1984, pp. 74–5. Ibid., pp. 77–82. On French thinking see Young, France and the Western Alliance, pp. 173–4, 177–8. For the Brussels Pact see Young, France and the Western Alliance, pp. 177–80. V.Auriol, Journal de Septennat Tome I, Paris, 1970, pp. 57, 64–6. See C.J.Kent and J.W.Young, The “Third Force” and the origins of NATO’ in B.Heuser and R.O’Neill (eds), Securing Peace in Europe, 1945– 1952: Thoughts for the Post-Cold War Era, London, Macmillan, 1992. pp. 41–61; C.J.Kent and J.W.Young, ‘The Western Union concept and British defence policy’ in R.Aldrich (ed.), British Intelligence, Strategy and the Cold War, 1945–1951, London, Routledge, 1992, pp. 166–92. Young, Unity of Europe, pp. 91–2. Young, France and the Western Alliance, pp. 215–19. See G.Mallaby, From My Level, London, Hutchinson, 1965, pp. 174– 5; S. de Lattre, Jean de Lattre, Tome II, Paris, Presses de la Cité, 1972, pp. 145–51. Lord Strang, Home and Abroad, André Deutsch, 1956, p. 290. See Young, France and the Western Alliance, pp. 211–13; Young, Unity of Europe, ch. 12; M.-T.Bitsch, ‘La rôle de la France dans la naissance du Conseil de l’Europe’ in R.Poidevin (ed.), Histoire des Debuts de la Construction Européenne, 1948–1950, Brussels, Bruylant, 1986, pp. 165–98.

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21 22 23 24

25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34

35

36 37 38 39 40

41 42

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PRO CAB 129/16 CP(47)35, 18 January 1947. Young, Unity of Europe, pp. 38–41. On American support for integration and how this linked to Marshall Aid see M.J.Hogan, Marshall Aid: America, Britain and the Reconstruction of Western Europe 1947–1952, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1987. Record of meeting between Bevin and Ramadier, 22 September 1947. PRO FO 371/67673/8461. Auriol, Journal, Tome I, pp. 468–9. PRO CAB 128/10 CM(47)77, 25 September 1947. PRO CAB 129/23 CP(48)6, 4January 1948. See F.B.Lynch, ‘A missed opportunity to plan the reconstruction of Europe? Franco-British relations 1945–1947’ in M.Damoulin, Wartime Plans for Post-War Europe, 1940–1947, Brussels, Bruylant, 1995, pp. 459– 67; R.Frank, ‘France-Grand Bretagne: la mésentente commerciale, 1945–58’, Relations Internationales, 1988, no. 55, pp. 323–39. Young, Unity of Europe, pp. 37–8, 41, 123. See Young, France and the Western Alliance, pp. 9–11; Gerbet, Le Relèvement, pp. 121–54. J.Monnet, Memoirs, London, Collins, 1978, pp. 277–81. Young, France and the Western Alliance, pp. 162–4, 186–9, 211–12. Ministère des Affaires Étrangères (MAE), Paris, series Z (Europe 1944– 1949), Allemagne, file 82 (memorandum 7 May 1948). Record of meeting, 8 October 1947. PRO FO 371/67673/9053. PRO CAB 134/216 EPC(48). CAB 134/219 EPC(48)78. PRO CAB 134/221 EPC(49)6, 26January 1949. PRO CAB 129/37 CP(49)208, 18 October 1949. Acheson to Schuman, 30 October 1949, reproduced in H.Bayer, Robert Schuman: L’Europe par la Reconciliation Franco-Allemande, Lausanne, Fondation Jean Monnet pour l’Europe: Centre Recherches Européennes, 1986. On the problems of colonial cooperation see J.Kent, The Internationalisation of Colonialism: Britain, France and Black Africa 1939– 1956, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1992; J.Kent, British Imperial Strategy and the Origins of the Cold War, Leicester, Leicester University Press, 1993, esp. ch. 3. Young, France and the Western Alliance, pp. 157–61. MAE, series Z, Allemagne, file 83 (memorandum of 30 November 1948). Minute by Strang, 27 July 1951. PRO FO 371/96043/58. MAE, series Y (Internationale 1944–1949), file 318 (memorandum of 13 December 1948). E.Dell, The Schuman Plan and the British Abdication of Leadership in Europe, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1995; C.Lord, Absent at the Creation: Britain and the Formation of the European Community 1950– 1952, London, Macmillan, 1996. Monnet, Memoirs, pp. 283–304. See Dell, Schuman Plan, pp. 110–60; Lord, Absent at the Creation, ch. 2; Young, Unity of Europe, pp. 150–7.

15 Anthony Eden, the Foreign Office and Anglo-French Relations, 1951–1954 Kevin Ruane

In the early 1950s, two of the most urgent Cold War problems confronting the western alliance were the attainment of a West German contribution to European defence and, in South-East Asia, the preservation of a non-communist Indo-China. Linking the two issues —the bridge between the Cold War in Europe and Asia—was France. The Indo-China war began in 1946 as an attempt by France to reestablish its colonial position in the face of nationalist-communist opposition. By 1950, the conflict had been transformed into a potential catalyst for war between the major powers. Although in Vietnam, the main arena, the French and communist-led Viet-Minh still confronted each other as of old, the United States now openly supplied France with military assistance, and Communist China aided the forces of Ho Chi Minh, the Viet-Minh leader. Thus, whilst retaining its original colonial hue, the Indo-China war had also become a dangerous Cold War flash-point. In Europe, meanwhile, the outbreak of the Korean War in June 1950 had given rise to fears of a possible Soviet military thrust into West Germany, and led the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) to embark upon a major rearmament drive to narrow the alarming gap between western and Soviet conventional forces on the Continent. As part of this process, the American Government insisted on the raising and arming of twelve West German divisions as an accretion of strength to NATO. The French, concerned about a revival of German militarism, eventually succeeded in ensuring that the Bonn Republic’s defence contribution would be made within the framework of a supra-national European Defence Community (EDC). In May 1952, France, West Germany, Italy and the Benelux countries signed a treaty to this effect, although the EDC would only become operative when the treaty was ratified in the parliaments of all concerned. Over the next two years, however, successive French governments advanced

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a range of pretexts to avoid putting the EDC to a vote and thereby delay the moment when Germans would once again bear arms. From the the outset, it was apparent that the EDC and IndoChina problems possessed a high degree of congruity, with France the common-denominator. ‘It is a strange dispensation that the French, a people still suffering from their mauling in the last two great wars, should hold the keys of the fortress in both West and East at the same time’, The Economist observed in January 1953. ‘For the problem of Indo-China, like that of West European defence, is in large part the problem of France.’ 1 This irony had not gone unnoticed by Winston Churchill’s Conservative Government, returned to office in Britain in October 1951, and for whom IndoChina and the EDC were matters of some concern. In the Foreign Office in particular, the growing inter-dependence between the two issues was a source of anxiety. In December 1952, a position paper drawn up for Anthony Eden, the Foreign Secretary, and endorsed by the Chiefs of Staff, argued that France was drifting towards disaster in Indo-China. Neither willing to provide the manpower required to sustain offensive operations, nor disposed to offer the political concessions needed to win over the non-communist native population, a ‘French defeat or an ignominious withdrawal’ appeared in prospect. Either scenario would constitute ‘a major allied disaster in the cold war’, with consequences extending beyond South-East Asia. For it was ‘difficult to see how, after such a blow, France would be able to play an effective role in Europe’.2 Even if the French somehow managed to hold the line in Indo-China, the implications for European security would remain serious. By 1952 the war was exacting such a heavy toll on French manpower in Europe that it began to look as though the West German contribution to the EDC might yet exceed that of France, a situation which the French had difficulty accepting. The EDC powers originally promised to provide forty-three divisions for the general NATO pool (fourteen from France, twelve each from Italy and West Germany, and the remainder from the Benelux countries), but as a result of the drain of IndoChina, the French contribution was reduced in 1952 to ten divisions.3 Thereafter, it became almost ‘an act of national faith’ that French forces in Europe should be greater than or at least equal to those of Germany. However, Indo-China altered this equation and, in so doing, contributed to the delays surrounding the EDC. 4 For the Churchill administration, the Indo-China and EDC problems were challenging enough without the added complication provided by their convergence. In Europe particularly, British and

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even NATO-wide interests were compromised by French hesitancy over the EDC. There was a great deal more at stake than the addition of twelve German divisions to the sum of NATO’s military strength, for in the EDC, and in European integration generally, the British discerned the solution to ‘the traditional Franco-German conflict’ and to the problem of ‘successfully associating Germany in the Western democratic world’. 5 Eden looked upon the EDC as a means of ‘anchoring Germany to the West’ rather than ‘leaving her to drift in the centre of Europe with the certainty that she would be sucked into the Soviet system sooner or later, and almost certainly sooner’. The achievement of this over-arching goal was ‘infinitely more important than the question of a German military contribution, grave though that is’.6 Under the leadership of Chancellor Konrad Adenauer, West Germany was committed to full integration in the Western system. But delays to the EDC after May 1952—and to the Federal Republic’s sovereignty, which was dependant upon the EDC’s full ratification— threatened to undermine Adenauer’s domestic political standing, discredit his policy of Westintegration, and encourage West Germans to look upon cooperation with the East rather than the West as the surest route to reunification and independence. Using a tug-of-war metaphor, Eden, in 1954, admitted that one of his great fears was that French dilatoriness over the EDC might yet allow the Soviet Union to ‘pull the Germans across the line’.7 British policy-makers were thus fully aware that France occupied a pivotal position both in Europe and in South-East Asia. Yet, until mid–1954, it was inertia rather than decisiveness that characterised French policy in each area. This situation bred considerable frustration in London, and led some in the Foreign Office to question France’s value as an ally.8 Whilst there was general agreement in the Office on the internal cause of France’s external difficulties—the fragmented political system of the Fourth Republic was often cited in this connection—by no means all senior policy-makers were quite so censorious. Deputy Under-Secretary Frank Roberts observed that the French were being asked ‘to take much more unpleasant decisions than those facing us’ and that ‘understanding and sympathy’ should be the order of the day. Eden was initially ambivalent9 but over the next two years it was his ‘sympathy and understanding’ that gradually came to the fore in his dealings with France. Although, to be sure, he continued to find the French difficult to work with—castigating them on one occasion as ‘miserable’ and ‘contemptible’—he remained essentially a Francophile.10 For all Churchill’s self-professed love of France, it was Eden who proved to be the better friend, particularly

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during the climactic year of 1954 when the Indo-China and EDC issues each came to a head. Before then, however, Eden and British diplomacy were given what appeared to be an opportunity to help realise a satisfactory solution to both problems. Therefore, before focusing on Eden’s successful crisis management in 1954, it is worth pausing to examine its antecedents as revealed by the EDC/IndoChina link in 1952 and 1953. I During 1952, as the Viet-Minh extended their hold over rural Vietnam, the British Government began to consider the possible consequences of a French defeat. They did not make for happy contemplation. Malaya, Eden later recalled, was the ‘chief concern’, and his aim was to ‘ensure an effective barrier as far to the north of that country as possible’.11 A Viet-Minh victory would upset these plans, bringing Chinese-sponsored communism a step closer to one of Britain’s most economically important colonies.12 The British were also very much alive to Vietnam’s strategic importance as the key to the defence, not just of Malaya, but of South-East Asia and even Japan.13 An identical appreciation led the United States Government to provide the French with $2,763 million-worth of military aid between 1950 and 1954 in an attempt to prop-up the ‘trigger domino’. 14 However, this high level of American interest, while generally welcomed in London, was itself a cause for concern. If the French position became untenable, direct American military intervention was to be expected, possibly followed by Chinese counterintervention. In other words, the Indo-China war could escalate into a general conflagration across Asia in which the British stood to lose a great deal. Hong Kong, for example, was deemed indefensible in the face of a concerted Chinese communist assault.15 Then there was the unknown quantity of the Sino-Soviet treaty. If Moscow chose to support China in the event of general war in Asia, it might be in the form of atomic attacks on American bases in Britain. Alarmist with hindsight, this was a real worry at the time, one that was accentuated by the knowledge that in the early 1950s, Soviet atomic bombers could reach London but not Washington.16 Given this estimate of the consequences likely to accrue from a French capitulation, the Churchill administration naturally hoped for French success. But in 1952, French strategy seemed predicated on the avoidance of defeat rather than the pursuit of victory. Although

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the High Command in Vietnam continually asked for reinforcements, few were forthcoming. Like Britain, France’s military resources were over-stretched, with occupation duties in Germany and the defence of the French Union beyond Indo-China amongst the rival claimants on limited manpower. Another factor contributing to the impoverishment of the French Expeditionary Force (FEF) was mounting war-weariness in France and a popular desire to limit, not increase, French commitments. Early in 1952, the French Government set out to solve the manpower problem in Vietnam, and simultaneously dampen disquiet at home, by declaring its intention of recalling French troops to Europe pari passu with the transfer of defence responsibility to an expanded native army. The hand-over was to be completed by the end of 1954. 17 To British observers, however, the plan seemed reckless in the extreme. The embryonic Vietnamese army was considered no match for the battlehardened Viet-Minh, and in March 1952, the Chiefs of Staff predicted that if the French stuck to their timetable, they would gift power to ‘the Communist-dominated forces of Ho Chi Minh’.18 One of the most vociferous critics of French policy was the British Consul-General in Saigon, Hubert Graves, who argued that if the French were bent on withdrawal, they should first send reinforcements from the regular French Army and defeat, or at the very least disable the Viet-Minh, and so bequeath to the Vietnamese a security problem of manageable proportions.19 Over the course of 1952, the victory-via-reinforcement thesis was endorsed by, amongst others, Lord Alexander, the Minister of Defence, Anthony Head, the Minister of War, and General Templar, High Commissioner in Malaya.20 The debate climaxed at the end of the year when the Chiefs of Staff failed to convince the Foreign Office to take the lead in persuading the French Government to send three additional divisions to Indo-China.21 Although Eden agreed on the importance of helping the French, it was for reasons related to the E D C that he rejected the reinforcement thesis. Any approach to Paris seemed certain to produce requests for a quid pro quo, but for Eden, the idea of paying a price for French reinforcement was ‘politically’ out of the question.22 The most likely French demand would be for Britain to commit forces to the EDC as insurance against German domination during the absence of French units in Indo-China. Another possibility was a pledge specifying the size of Britain’s military presence in Europe— within NATO but outside of the EDC—to act as a fixed counterweight to Germany until French forces returned from South-East Asia.23

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Eden and the Foreign Office, in their determination to preserve the integrity of Britain’s E D C policy, refused even to discuss reinforcement with the French. The Churchill administration, like its Labour predecessor, supported the supra-national EDC, but only from the outside, not as a member.24 Alongside this most basic of objections, Britain’s position as a world power with extensive overseas commitments to uphold, important Commonwealth links to maintain, and a central position within the Sterling Area to protect, also militated against federal alignment with Europe.25 So did the highly valued ‘special relationship’ with the United States, which policymakers feared would be weakened if Britain came to be seen as simply another European power rather than as an essential link between the New World and the Old. 26 Lastly, although it was the Americans who emerged as the EDC’s most ardent supporter, they steadfastly refused to commit their own troops to supra-national authority, and in London it remained a ‘basic axiom’ of policymaking ‘to go no further into Europe than the Americans themselves were willing to go’.27 The French, while harbouring few illusions about British membership, hoped after May 1952 that the Churchill Government would agree to the closest possible association with the EDC. In particular, Paris sought from the British—as well as the Americans— an agreement to retain a fixed level of troops in Europe for a set number of years. Fearful that the advent of West German forces might lead to Anglo-American disengagement, the French sought reassurance in the form of a written guarantee. 28 London and Washington, however, rejected French pleas in 1952, and continued to do so throughout the E D C’s travails, the United States Government citing constitutional difficulties, and the Churchill administration arguing that its overseas obligations required flexibility in disposing of its armed forces.29 Besides which, the British believed that they had already done enough to satisfy the French by the signature, in May 1952, of an Anglo-EDC treaty (including an automatic military assistance clause), and by publicly declaring that their troops would remain in Europe as long as the need existed.30 Significantly, Eden chose to reaffirm the premises underlying this policy at the precise moment, December 1952, that the advocates of the Indo-China reinforcement thesis were at their most vocal, insisting in Cabinet on 4 December that ‘we had already gone as far as we could short of full membership’.31 Eden restated this position in a Cabinet memorandum on 10 December, and added that the Government should also ‘refrain from entering into any commitment

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to maintain any fixed number of British forces on the Continent for a specific number of years’.32 Eden found the inference that Britain could not be relied upon to stand and fight in Europe in a crisis ‘quite insulting’. He was ‘determined’ to preserve the British military commitment, he told René Massigli, the French Ambassador at London, on 22 December, even though the Treasury was pressing for cuts in defence expenditure. But there was ‘all the difference in the world between the French understanding that and our undertaking a commitment to write all this in an agreement’.33 It is against this backdrop that the Foreign Office’s dismissal of the reinforcement thesis must be viewed. For it was clear that any future French request for extra British troops in Europe to allow for reinforcement of Indo-China would already have been rejected in the context of the EDC. As for a temporary commitment of British units to the EDC itself, this was militarily feasible but politically unacceptable. Too intimate a relationship might result in British entrapment in a federal Europe, Eden feared, for he was in no doubt that the ‘long-term aim’ of the EDC was ‘to pave the way for a European federation’.34 To move beyond association, he reminded the Cabinet on 10 December 1952, meant Britain would have ‘taken the first step on a slippery slope, to which there might be no end’.35 Hence, Eden would not do for France in terms of Indo-China what he refused to do for France in terms of the EDC. The matter was finally and conclusively decided in favour of the Foreign Office when, in January 1953, Paris suddenly announced a revised timetable for withdrawal. Previously, evacuation was to have commenced in 1953, but now there would be ‘a delay in the programme of withdrawal’, with the main force remaining in place until at least the end of 1954.36 Although this effectively ended the debate in London, the implications of France’s refusal to adopt a forward strategy in IndoChina were soon evident. As Graves warned in January 1953, in the absence of substantial reinforcements, the French had no option but to adopt a defensive posture that amounted to ‘waiting to be hit’ by the Viet-Minh.37 A year on, this forecast had proved accurate, with the French hold on Vietnam threatened both by continued VietMinh success in the field, and by increasing defeatism in France. Indeed, 1954 was to be the year of decision for the French in IndoChina, as it was to be in Europe with regard to the EDC. If Eden and British diplomacy had hitherto been less than fulsome in their support of France in either sphere, come the crisis year, they would show themselves to be effective defenders of French interests.

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II By the spring of 1954, of the six signatories to the EDC treaty, only France and Italy had still to ratify, with the latter inclined to follow the lead of the former. The problem, as ever, was French reluctance to give any such lead. Large sections of French political and public opinion remained unhappy about German rearmament in any form, with the loss of sovereignty over the French army inherent in the EDC rendering an already unpalatable prospect all the more distasteful. On 13 April 1954, in a move designed to encourage the French to face up to the challenge of ratification, the British Government entered into a formal Agreement on Association with the EDC. The Agreement provided for mutual consultation and cooperation between British and EDC forces, assigned a British Minister to attend meetings of the EDC Council of Ministers, and designated a permanent representative to sit on the EDC Board of Commissioners, the executive body of the Community. On the vexed question of troops in Europe, the British agreed to the stationing of ‘such units of its armed forces as may be necessary and appropriate…so long as the threat exists to the security of Western Europe and of the European Defence Community’.38 In a further gesture to the French, Eden informed parliament the following day that a British armoured division would be placed within the EDC. This would be ‘a permanent commitment’, he said, ‘so long as the Supreme Allied Commander in Europe requires it’.39 On 16 April, the American Government reaffirmed its own intention to keep troops in Europe, although it refused to follow London’s lead in committing forces to the EDC. 40 The British undertakings to the EDC were, by any reckoning, positive and far-reaching. In the hope of getting the French to take the plunge’, wrote one Cabinet Minister, ‘we are offering almost everything but marriage’.41 On the other hand, they also bore an uncanny resemblance to those rejected by the Foreign Office during the Indo-China reinforcement debate in 1952–3. What, then, caused this apparent change in policy? The answer is found in London’s growing anxiety about Washington’s reaction should the EDC founder. This concern had reached a peak during the Western summit at Bermuda at the start of December 1953. The British had approached Bermuda believing that if the EDC came to nothing, the Republican Eisenhower Administration, though disappointed, would accept the ‘NATO solution’ as an alternative—in other words, West Germany’s direct admission to and rearmament within NATO.42

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As soon as the summit opened, however, this was quickly shown to be a mistaken assumption. ‘So far as I’m concerned’, President Dwight D. Eisenhower declared, ‘it’s EDC and we must get it done’.43 Even on those occasions when the Americans forced themselves to look to a future without the EDC, they talked, not of the NATO solution, but of peripheral or hemispheric defence. As Secretary of State John Foster Dulles observed, the United States Congress looked upon the EDC as the acid test of whether the Europeans could work together to bury past antagonisms and move forward in unity to a peaceful future. Consequently, if the EDC collapsed, ‘it would have tragic consequences on public opinion in the United States’, and might lead to pressure for military disengagement from the Continent.44 Although Churchill, like the French, dismissed these warnings as a bluff, Eden left Bermuda ‘convinced that we are moving towards a real turning point in the whole relationship of the United States to Europe and that we must have recourse to all our imagination and ingenuity to help EDC through’.45 When, on 14 December 1953, Dulles delivered his notorious public warning about an ‘agonizing reappraisal’ of United States policy towards Europe if the EDC did not materialise, it merely confirmed to Eden the rectitude of the course of action he had already decided upon.46 The outcome of Britain’s post-Bermuda policy review was the April 1954 Agreement on Association and the decision to commit a proportion of British forces in Europe to the EDC. The French Premier, Joseph Laniel, encouraged by London and Washington’s enhanced support, finally agreed to put the EDC treaty forward for ratification in the National Assembly.47 However, just as the AngloAmericans were congratulating themselves on the success of their diplomacy, the EDC issue was suddenly overtaken in importance by events in Indo-China where, after eight years, the war now entered its decisive phase. For all Laniel’s assurances, it was soon clear that there could be no ratification debate while the attention of France was distracted, first by the Viet-Minh siege of Dien Bien Phu, which began on 13 March and ended in French humiliation on 7 May, and then by the Geneva Conference, which opened on 26 April, at which the French sought an honourable settlement in negotiation with the Viet-Minh. The British, though dismayed by this latest set-back to the EDC, nevertheless applied themselves assiduously to finding a solution to the Indo-China problem. As co-chairman of the Geneva Conference, for example, Eden’s first aim was to keep the talks going long enough so that when the principals eventually decided to negotiate seriously—as he was

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convincedthey must—there would be a ready-made forum in which to reach agreement. Holding the conference together, however, was no easy task in the face of what Eden took to be American wreckingtactics. Dulles, convinced that any settlement must perforce concede territory to communism, and apparently preferring military action to diplomatic surrender, left the conference at the start of May, only to be ‘considerably surprised and disappointed’ when the negotiations carried on in his absence.48 Eden had also to contend with a confident Viet-Minh, buoyed by their success at Dien Bien Phu, and a hapless French delegation, incapable of deciding whether it wished to continue the war in the hope that American military intervention might yet save Vietnam, or a political settlement. Eden at first sympathised with the French in their difficult predicament. Increasingly, however, he saw their indecision—especially that of Foreign Minister Georges Bidault—as a major obstacle to progress. As Eden viewed the situation, a political solution at Geneva would deter the Americans from attempting a military solution in Vietnam, the consequences of which might be disastrous, even World War Three.49 Ten days later, the odds on peace had lengthened following public disclosure of secret Franco-American talks about possible military action.50 Whatever the French delegation at Geneva wanted, in France itself opinion was now overwhelmingly in favour of peace, and the Laniel administration soon fell, undone by its record of vacillation. On 18 June 1954, a new government was formed by Pierre MendèsFrance, an outspoken critic of the war, who promised to achieve peace within a month or resign. ‘This is on the whole encouraging news’, Eden decided, ‘for Bidault had really dithered long enough’.51 The British Embassy in Paris shared Eden’s satisfaction, having long since singled Mendès-France out as ‘among the few men capable of leading a government which would put France on her feet again’.52 At Geneva, meanwhile, the Viet-Minh began to exhibit flexibility on a number of important issues. Whether the Soviets and the Chinese, fearing American intervention and a wider war, forced their ally to compromise, or whether the Viet-Minh discerned in Mendès-France their best chance of a fair settlement, the result was the same: the conference began to move forward on a constructive basis. On 21 July 1954, agreement was reached on an armistice throughout Indo-China and the temporary partition of Vietnam into two zones, the Viet-Minh regrouping in the north of the country, and the French in the south. In July 1956, national elections were to be staged, after which Vietnam’s unity would be restored and its

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independence completed. ‘The result was not completely satisfactory’, Eden conceded, ‘but we had stopped an eight-year war and reduced international tension at a point of instant danger to world peace’, an achievement that was ‘well worthwhile’.53 The Geneva dénouement left Mendès-France free to turn his full attention to the other great issue of the day in France, the EDC, which he was determined to resolve, one way or the other, as quickly as possible. On 23 August, at a meeting at Chartwell, the French Premier told Churchill and Eden that although ratification prospects were now grim, he remained committed to an early debate. In taking his leave, however, Mendès-France tantalisingly remarked that France might yet accept something like the NATO solution to West German rearmament in lieu of the doomed EDC.54 All that remained was to await the verdict of the French Assembly. It was delivered on 30 August 1954. The EDC treaty was rejected by 319 votes to 264 on a technical, procedural motion. I II In throwing out the EDC, the French parliament plunged the western alliance into crisis, the severity of which was no less acute for being expected. The cohesion of NATO, the of the German Federal Republic in the western system, and the future of European unity were all jeopardised by the negative vote. So, too, was the American commitment to European security, with Dulles reverting in public to the threatening language of the ‘agonizing reappraisal’.55 On the British side, Churchill was livid with the French, denouncing them as ‘swine’, describing their behaviour as ‘execrable’, lamenting a ‘great score for the Russians’, and restating his preference for the NATO solution, even if this meant ostracising France.56 Eden, however, was more dispassionate. On the eve of the French debate, he was, like Churchill, convinced that the best alternative to the EDC was West German rearmament through NATO, although he was ‘very strongly opposed’ to a wholly independent national German Army.57 On 1 September, in the wake of the EDC’s rejection, Eden admitted that if it came to a choice between breaking with France or Germany, he would have to break with France, although he hoped to avoid so stark a dilemma. Accordingly, he sought to avoid any ‘empty chair’ at the NATO Council table, and along with the Chiefs of Staff, argued that a French ‘defection’ from the alliance, whether forced or voluntary, would have ‘disastrous consequences’.58

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Of course, the difficulty with the NATO solution was the same as it had always been: how to control German rearmament in such a way as to satisfy the French whilst simultaneously meeting the Bonn Republic’s demand for non-discrimination. Imperfect though it was, the EDC at least offered a solution to this conundrum. Unfortunately, the EDC was no more, and a substitute had to be found quickly, Eden decided, if the Western Alliance was to hold together, and if a ‘disillusioned’ West Germany was to be stopped from ‘slipping rapidly over towards a policy of neutralisation or even of a Soviet-German understanding’.59 Speed of action was also imperative if the United States was to retain its interest in Europe. In the days following the negative French vote, Eden kept returning in his mind to a warning given to him by Dulles in December 1953, just after the latter’s public reference to an ‘agonizing reappraisal’, that a ‘swing over’ to peripheral defence was a real likelihood if the EDC crashed. Although it was ‘much in our interest that the Americans should keep their NATO commitment’, Eden reflected, it was ‘reckless to regard this as a natural right, or to assume that it could never be withdrawn’.60 In apparent contrast to their counterparts in Washington, policymakers in London had long worked on the assumption that because the EDC’s success could not be guaranteed, it made sense to think in terms of alternative methods of rearming West Germany. Eden, however, had insisted that planning should remain secret, for premature disclosure might be interpreted in Europe and America as an attempt to wreck the EDC and derail the federal movement. During the first week of September 1954, with the EDC consigned to history, this constraint no longer operated, and the Foreign Office was free to refine an inter-governmental solution to the crisis based upon earlier studies of EDC alternatives.61 The centre-piece of the British plan was the adaptation of the 1948 Brussels treaty to meet present needs. Specifically, its membership—Britain, France and the Benelux countries—would be widened to include Italy and West Germany, and its collective security clauses amended to cover not German aggression, its original raison d’être, but aggression from any source. West Germany could then be admitted to both the Brussels Treaty Organisation and NATO on a basis of equality, for any restrictions on force levels and arms production would be shared by all Brussels treaty powers. Importantly, from the point of view of French opinion, because the treaty contained no supranational characteristics, Britain would not simply be associated, it would be a full member, ‘sharing from within instead of buttressing from without’, as Eden put it.62

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Having thus decided on a solution, Eden had next to sell it to the former EDC powers and the Americans. Would France agree to West Germany’s admission to NATO, the precise eventuality which the EDC had been designed to prevent? Would Washington accept the new arrangement given that it was shorn of the supranational features that had made the EDC so attractive to Eisenhower and Dulles? As a first step, Eden proposed to visit the leading west European capitals to promote in person the Brussels treaty formula and secure ‘general agreement’ on the need to bring West Germany ‘into the NATO family’. If successful, the next step would be to convene a conference in London, with the United States and Canada joining Britain and the six ex-EDC countries, at which this ‘general agreement’ would be solemnised in treaty form and the Americans hopefully persuaded that the new scheme was as deserving of their support as the EDC had been. In seeking Cabinet approval for his initiative on 8 September, Eden, mindful that the French were the critical factor in the equation, stressed that complete agreement might yet hinge on Britain’s readiness to agree to maintain the level of its military presence on the continent for a prescribed period of time. Eden had clearly travelled a long way since 1952–3, when he had reacted entirely negatively to French requests for a similar pledge, and his change of mind is testimony to the gravity with which he viewed the postEDC crisis. The Cabinet, however, had not travelled with him, and refused to offer the French any concessions so soon after their destruction of the EDC. Churchill also questioned the ‘prudence’ of a guarantee on troop levels in the absence of a corresponding commitment by the Americans. Eden thus left for Europe without the bargaining power of a troop pledge, though he warned his colleagues that he might yet be ‘compelled’ to ask them to reconsider if, as he suspected, this proved to be ‘the price of a settlement of the problems confronting us’.63 Eden’s odyssey began on 11 September and took him first to Brussels, where he consulted the Benelux Foreign Ministers, and thence to Bonn and Rome. In all three capitals, his plan was greeted with approval. Although hardly an advance for federalism, the reworking of the Brussels treaty still recommended itself as an effective solution to the immediate crisis. Moreover, as a tangible demonstration of western Europe’s capacity for self-help, there was optimism that the plan might yet persuade the Eisenhower Administration to give up thoughts of reappraisal. On 15 September, Eden arrived in Paris where he had a ‘tough and unsuccessful’

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meeting with Mendès-France. Despite hints to the contrary at Chartwell in August, the French leader now showed ‘no willingness to agree to Germany in NATO’, although he had no objection to the Federal Republic acceding to the Brussels treaty as a fully sovereign state. However, given that Adenauer was bound to reject any solution that discriminated against West Germany, Eden warned MendèsFrance that continued French obstinacy on NATO membership risked ‘driving Germany into the arms of Russia and the US into fortress America’. Yet, despite this dire forecast, no agreement emerged, although Eden believed that the French Premier fully understood that ‘everyone else wanted Germany in NATO as soon as possible and he was likely to find himself alone’. 64 The following day, however, Mendès-France, after a ‘nearly sleepless night’, finally conceded the strength of the British case and requested their support against anticipated criticism within France. Eden was doubtless relieved at the French climb-down, but in the absence of Cabinet authorisation he was unable to give Mendès-France the kind of support that would be most useful to him in the parliamentary struggle ahead, namely an assurance about the future presence of British forces in Europe.65 On 28 September, the London Nine-Power Conference opened, with Eden presiding. As a result of his European tour, he felt that the erstwhile EDC powers were at least ‘favourable’ and in most instances ‘enthusiastic’ about the British plan. 66 Even the United States Government had put aside its disappointment at the failure of the EDC letting it be known that if a comprehensive agreement emerged from the conference, it would be prepared publicly to reaffirm its commitment to the security of Europe.67 Yet, no sooner had the Americans begun to look positively upon the Brussels treaty solution, than the French evinced renewed doubts about West German membership of NATO, pressing for additional safeguards that were plainly discriminatory and threatened to destroy any hope of agreement. Eden, however, had anticipated this possibility, and quickly activated a contingency plan. In a memorandum drawn up for the Cabinet on 27 September, he had predicted that the only way France would ever agree to West Germany in NATO was for Britain to offer ‘some striking quid pro quo’. The assurance ‘most likely to strike French opinion’ was ‘the continued presence of British troops in Europe’. The Foreign Secretary’s thinking, if not the Cabinet’s, had been moving in this direction for some time, but the moment of decision was now approaching, for Eden was convinced that the success of the conference, indeed possibly the future of NATO, depended on ‘a new

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commitment by the United Kingdom to maintain our present forces on the Continent and not to withdraw them against the wishes of the majority of the enlarged Brussels Treaty Powers’. This ‘would not give France a veto’, Eden explained, but barring either a severe balance of payments crisis or an overseas emergency ‘we should no longer be able to withdraw our forces at our sole discretion’.68 At a meeting of the inner Cabinet, convened in emergency session at close to midnight on 28 September, the first day of the London Conference, Eden duly sought and received approval to offer a pledge by which Britain would maintain its ‘effective strength’ in Europe, namely four divisions and the Tactical Air Force.69 Considering the Cabinet’s previous lack of enthusiasm for such an undertaking, this outcome must have come as a relief to Eden. Throughout the post-EDC crisis, Churchill in particular had questioned whether France should be ‘rewarded for her recent actions by further promises of British support’.70 On 27 September, when made aware of Eden’s thinking on a troop pledge, the Prime Minister argued that Britain ‘surely should not give this without knowing what the United States are going to do’, while the projected escape clauses ‘practically destroyed’ the pledge by appearing to ‘take away with one hand what has been given with the other’.71 Churchill, however, missed the point. It was the fact of the pledge, not its precise composition, that was crucial. For the French and Britain’s other European ‘friends’, Eden later reflected, it meant the difference, psychologically, between a ‘conviction’ and a ‘hope’.72 On 28 September, as already seen, Churchill and other senior Cabinet figures went on to approve the controversial guarantee. Perhaps the Prime Minister was finally persuaded by Eden that nothing was being given to France that Britain was not already committed to provide, informally, for reasons of national security. This being so, there was little to be lost and much to be gained from a well-timed psychological gesture.73 On 29 September, Eden played his trump card. It was the decisive moment of the conference. The British undertaking, sought by the French for so long, virtually guaranteed a successful outcome. Mendès-France had earlier explained the defeat of the EDC in terms of ‘two basic defects’, namely the lack of British participation and ‘too much supranationality too suddenly’. Any future solution, to be acceptable to French parliamentary opinion, had not only to rectify these defects, but should be accompanied by ‘some commitment as to maintaining British troops on the continent’. Eden now met every one of these requirements.74 Four days later, on 3 October, the London Conference ended in unanimous agreement on the termination of the Occupation Statute in West Germany, and on the Bonn Republic’s simultaneous admission

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to the Brussels Treaty Organisation and NATO, the regulation of its military contribution to be overseen, like that of its partners, by a specially appointed Agency of the Brussels group. Alongside Eden’s dramatic intervention, it was Adenauer who did most to ensure this satisfactory result through a voluntary act of self-limitation under which West Germany agreed not to develop atomic, biological or chemical weapons, an assurance that was welcomed by its partners.75 At the end of October, all documentation pertaining to the London agreements were signed at a follow-up conference in Paris. Thereafter, the so-called Paris Accords underwent ratification in the parliaments of the member states of the Western European Union (WEU), as the enlarged Brussels treaty was renamed. This process was not entirely devoid of alarms and drama, especially in France. However, there was to be no repeat of the protracted EDC saga. On 5 May 1955, with ratification completed, the Federal Republic of Germany became the fifteenth member of NATO. It was ten years almost to the day since the defeat of Hitler’s Third Reich. IV France had reason to be well satisfied with the resolution of the twin crises of 1954. At Geneva, a debilitating war had been ended on terms which, considering the weakness of the French position in Vietnam, constituted the nearest thing to peace with honour. In Europe, West German rearmament had finally come about, but in a manner that preserved the integrity of the French army. This was an important consideration, for in voting down the EDC, the French Assembly had not rejected West German rearmament per se so much as the supra-national method of obtaining it. In addition, the Western European Union elicited from the Americans a reaffirmation of their support for European security, while the British, their escape clauses notwithstanding, ended up more deeply involved in the defence of the Continent, on the Continent, than ever before. The French, in sum, played a decidedly weak politico-diplomatic hand to great advantage in 1954. This said, it was Eden and British diplomacy that enabled France to maximise the value of that hand. First, during the Indo-China crisis, the British not only helped prevent a wider war by refusing to go along with American plans for military intervention but, at Geneva, it was Eden’s perseverance that was central to the success of the conference. Then, in Europe, it was Eden who took the lead

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in resolving the post-EDC crisis. Reasoning that a West German military contribution to NATO would be a small gain if that of France was lost, his decisive diplomacy was undertaken in pursuit of an allembracing solution. In the end, to ensure French compliance, Eden was even ready to pay a price at the London conference in the shape of a commitment on the size and nature of the British military presence in Europe. That this pledge should be given to the WEU rather than the EDC is not surprising. The Churchill Government believed that, short of joining, it had done everything that could be expected of it in support of the EDC, and that the scheme’s subsequent failure was due, not to British indifference, but to the doubts and fears of its progenitor, France. However, its successor, the WEU, was intergovernmental rather than supra-national in form, and London consequently had no qualms about membership. ‘The whole essence of EDC lay in its supranational character’, Eden reminded parliament in November 1954. ‘Therefore, it was not possible for Britain to make the kind of contribution towards a federal structure which we can make to this present arrangement’.76 It could be argued that the rigidity of Eden’s EDC policy in 1952– 3, particularly on the question of British troop levels in Europe, resulted in the French missing a last opportunity to turn the tide in Vietnam. Although, looking back, the lesson of the American war of the 1960s suggests that no amount of reinforcement would have secured victory over so politically popular and so militarily tenacious an enemy as the Viet-Minh, this was less than apparent to Eden and the Foreign Office at the time. On the contrary, British military experts repeatedly asserted that French reinforcement would make a difference, quite possibly a decisive one. Yet still the Foreign Office refused to approach Paris on the matter, with Eden choosing to maintain his Government’s EDC policy at the expense of assisting the French in Indo-China. However Britain’s approach to the French war before 1954 is regarded, its contribution thereafter, and to the Geneva settlement in particular, was undeniably important. The VietMinh’s willingness to compromise, and what Eden described as Mendès-France’s ‘intensive driving power’, might have made the final difference between success and failure, but as James Cable has written, without ‘persistent British efforts the Geneva Conference would never have been held, allowed to continue or permitted to end in even the limited measure of agreement actually achieved’. 77 In many ways, Cable’s comment could apply, no less accurately, to the London Conference of 1954. The driving force behind Eden’s European crisis management was an admixture of concern about

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the danger of American peripheral defence and worries about the future of Adenauer and Westintegration. At the same time, he argued consistently and strongly in favour of a solution that involved rather than excluded or punished France for the collapse of the EDC. Churchill, in contrast, clearly preferred the policy of the ‘empty chair’, and stubbornly resisted to the very last moment any notion of concessions to France, especially on British force levels. Eden, though, finally prevailed, and the French were grateful. Massigli, on learning of the troop pledge, declared (apparently with tears in his eyes) that ‘his country had just obtained the concession for which he had been asking Britain in vain for the last twenty-five years’.78 Just as during the Second World War, therefore, when Eden had fiercely championed the cause of France and its right to continued great-power status in the face of American and periodic Churchillian resistance, so he again stood up for France during his post-war foreign secretaryship against opposition from the same quarters.79 Even in the Foreign Office, there was, as already seen, a tendency to view the Anglo-French alliance as more of a liability than an asset.80 Where some officials were condescending and patronising, Eden— though capable himself of the most scathing criticism of French policy— was mostly found advocating empathy and sympathy. At one level, his attitude was rooted in pragmatism. In 1943, he had predicted that ‘in dealing with European problems of the future we are likely to have to work more closely with France even than with the United States’.81 So it proved. Ten years on, in December 1953, at a point when the Eisenhower administration was talking of agonizing reappraisals, Eden would speak of France as a ‘geographical necessity’, not with the resigned and even derogatory inflection of some in the Foreign Office, but positively.82 Yet, there was more than pragmatism at work. As the Belgian statesman, Paul-Henri Spaak, later recalled, Eden was ultimately a ‘Francophile’. Investing the ‘entente with France’ with great importance, he was invariably ‘inclined to bear in mind French susceptibilities’.83 If proof were needed of the correctness of this estimate, it is to be found in Eden’s efforts to uphold French interests in both Europe and South-East Asia in 1954. Notes 1 2 3

The Economist, 10 January 1953. Public Record Office (PRO) FO 371/101265/141G. S. Dockrill, Britain’s Policy for West German Rearmament 1950–1955, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1991, pp. 106–7.

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E.Fursdon, The European Defence Community: A History, London, Macmillan, 1980, pp. 260–1. Documents on British Policy Overseas, 2nd series, vol. I, pp. 723–4, 744. Hereafter DBPO. Hansard Parliamentary Debates, 5th series, HC, vol. 533, cc. 400–3. Dwight D.Eisenhower Library (D D E L): Ann Whitman File, International Series, Box 20, CEV-MC3, 25 June 1954. PRO FO 371/101741/1 and FO 371/112778/20. PRO FO371/101741/1. E.Shuckburgh, Descent to Suez: Diaries 1951–1956, London, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1986, pp. 156–7. A.Eden, Memoirs: Full Circle, London, Cassell, 1960, p. 87. See A.J.Rotter, Path to Vietnam: Origins of the American Commitment to Southeast Asia, New York, Cornell University Press, 1987, pp. 147–56, 206–9. E.g. PRO FO 371/92065/37; FO 371/101265/142G; FO 371/106768/ 134G. G.McT.Kahin, Intervention: How America Became Involved in Vietnam, New York, Doubleday, 1986, p. 42. Slessor note, 20 March 1952. Slessor Papers, Ministry of Defence, London, Air Historical Branch: XXVII/B67, Box 18. K.Ruane, ‘Containing America: aspects of British foreign policy and the Cold War in South-East Asia, 1951–1954’, Diplomacy and Statecraft, 1996, vol. 7, pp. 141–74; D. Carlton, Anthony Eden, London, Allen and Unwin, 1981, p. 317. See discussion in PRO FO 371/101057/42G; FO 371/101059/108G; FO 371/101060/117G. PRO CAB 131/12 D(52)5. PRO FO 371/101060/119. See also FO 371/101055/36 and FO 371/ 101059/88 and 108G. See K, Ruane, ‘Refusing to pay the price: British foreign policy and the pursuit of victory in Vietnam, 1952–54’, English Historical Review, 1995, vol. 110, pp. 78–80. PRO FO 371/101265/136G. PRO FO371/101264/106G. Ruane, ‘Refusing to pay the price’, pp. 81–2. Churchill Papers, CHU R 2/517, Churchill College. J.W.Young, ‘German rearmament and the European Defence Community’ in J.W. Young (ed.), The Foreign Policy of Churchill’s Peacetime Administration 1951–1955, Leicester, Leicester University Press, 1988, pp. 81–7. DBPO, 2nd series, vol. I, pp. 781–8. PRO FO 371/124968/2. M.Charlton, The Price of Victory, London, BBC, 1983, p. 161. Dockrill, West German Rearmament, pp. 116–17. The Foreign Relations of the United States, 1952–1954, vol. V, p. 1358. Hereafter FRUS. DBPO, 2nd series, vol. I, pp. 792. D.Folliot (ed.), Documents on International Affairs, 1952, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1955, pp. 167–70. PRO CAB 128/25 CM(52) 102nd meeting. PRO CAB 129/57 CP(52)434.

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I.McDonald, A Man of the Times: Talks and Travels in a Disrupted World, London, Hamish Hamilton, 1976, pp. 134–5. PRO FO 800/778/50. PRO CAB 129/49 CP(52)41. PRO CAB 129/57 CP(52)434. PRO FO 371/106765/7; FO 371/106751/12. PRO FO 371/106742/1. D.Folliot (ed.), Documents on International Affairs, 1954, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1957, pp. 2–3. Hansard Parliamentary Debates, 5th series, HC, vol. 526, cc. 1141–7. Foliot (ed.), Documents, 1954, p. 4. Diary entry 19 March 1954. Macmillan Papers, Ms. Macmillan, dep.c.16, Bodleian Library. PRO CAB 128/26 CM (53) 72. Record of Meetings, 26 November 1953. DDEL, Hagarty Papers, Box 11. FRUS 1952–1954, vol. V, p. 1771. PRO FO 800/778/47. FRUS 1952–1954, vol. V, pp. 463, 468–9. FRUS 1952–1954, vol. V, p. 939. PRO FO 371/112073/727G. Lord Moran, Winston Churchill: The Struggle for Survival, London, Sphere, 1968, p. 586. Ruane, ‘Containing America’, p. 141. Avon Papers, , AP 20/45/55, University of Birmingham. Avon Papers, AP 20/17/231. PRO FO 371/107436/34. PRO FO 371/112081/927. PRO CAB 129/70 CP(54)276. FRUS 1952–1954, vol. V, p. 1121. Moran, Churchill, pp. 626–7. PRO CAB 129/70 CP(54)276. FRUS 1952–1954, vol. VI, p. 1135. PRO CAB 128/27 CM(54) 58th meeting. CAB 129/70 CP(54)276. Eden, Full Circle, p. 149. PRO CAB 129/70 CP(54)280. Eden, Full Circle, pp. 57–8. S.Greenwood, Britain and European Cooperation since 1945, Oxford, Blackwell, 1992, p. 54. Dockrilll, West German Rearmament, pp. 140–6; Eden, Full Circle, p. 151. PRO CAB 128/27 CM (54) 59th meeting. Diary entries 11, 15 and 16 September 1954. Avon Papers AP 20/1/ 30. Eden, Full Circle, pp. 153–62. Avon Papers, AP 20/1/30. PRO CAB 128/27 CM (54) 60th meeting. FRUS 1952–1954, vol. V, pp. 1275–8. PRO CAB 129/70 CP(54)298. PRO CAB 129/71 CP(54)302. PRO CAB 128/27 CM (54) 59th meeting. PRO FO 371/112040/85. Hansard Parliamentary Debates, 5th series, HC, vol. 533, c. 399. See Moran, Churchill, p. 633.

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FRUS 1952–1954, vol. V, p. 1189. Dockrill, West German Rearmament, pp. 143–6. Hansard Parliamentary Debates, 5th series, HC, vol. 533, c. 400. Eden, Full Circle, p. 130; J.Cable, The Geneva Conference of 1954 on Indochina, London, Macmillan, 1986, p. 2. P.-H.Spaak, The Continuing Battle: Memoirs of a European, 1936–1966, London, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1971, p. 185. D.Dutton, Anthony Eden: A Life and Reputation, London, Arnold, 1996, pp. 147–75. See PRO FO 371/112778/20. Dutton, Eden, p. 155. Moran, Churchill, p. 529. Spaak, Continuing Battle, p. 178.

16 From Dien Bien Phu to Evian Anglo-French imperial relations, 1954–1962 Martin Thomas By 1954 major changes to the importance of empire within British and French domestic politics were well underway. In his study of the impact of decolonisation upon British and French political life, Miles Kahler suggested the following model for the 1950s. Taking his measure of achievement as ‘limiting internal disruption while disengaging from the imperial attachment’, Kahler concluded that the centrist and right-wing parties of the Fourth Republic were unsuccessful, their Conservative counterparts in Britain fared much better, while the Gaullist Fifth Republic was ‘a mixed case’.1 Between 1951 and 1957 the governments of Winston Churchill and Anthony Eden did little to accelerate the pace of decolonisation. This was partly because neither leader took a strong personal interest in Colonial Office projects, except insofar as they affected Britain’s strategic and economic interests. From Kenya to Cyprus, force was employed to suppress dissent, and political concessions were generally dependent upon a prior restoration of order. The principal anti-colonialist organisation in British politics—the Movement for Colonial Freedom, founded in 1954—was an essentially left-wing body with limited influence in Parliament.2 After 1956 the British Conservative Party gradually lessened its attachment to empire. But vocal Tory politicians still defended settler interests in East and Southern Africa whilst further insisting that strategic ‘fortress colonies’ such as Malta and Aden should remain under British protection.3 Failure at Suez in 1956 did not alter the French imperial outlook to the same degree since the pressing dilemma of the Algerian war remained unresolved. Indeed, the early 1950s confirmed the emergence of a dogged post-war imperialism across a wide political spectrum from the Socialists on the left, through the Christian Democrat Mouvement Républicain Populaire (MRP) and the anti-Mendésist wing of the Radical Party to conservative modérés, the Gaullist Social Republicans and the integral nationalists of the extreme right.4

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Although by 1954 French parliamentary politics was more precisely divided between left and right than at any point since the breakdown of tripartism in 1947, party political alignments over questions of empire were more complex. The French right remained fundamentally split over France’s two pre-eminent imperial crises in Indo-China and the Moroccan and Tunisian protectorates of French North Africa. As for the centre and left, the Radicals, the Socialists and the Communists were prepared to contemplate a negotiated withdrawal from Indo-China, even though this was likely to mean a humiliating pull-out in practice. Meanwhile, the MRP— the party most closely involved in imperial policy-making since 1945—faced an uncomfortable choice between its continued sponsorship of a costly war effort against the Viet-Minh and its endorsement of the European Defence Community (EDC) project.5 In spite of the loss of the Indo-China war, the faltering withdrawal from the North African protectorates, and the gradual steps towards self-government in sub-Saharan French Africa, a determination to maintain imperial ties persisted amongst all parties bar the Communists, only to confront its nemesis in the Algerian conflict. I In the five years preceding the French defeat at Dien Bien Phu in May 1954, South East Asia was the theatre in which conflicts of decolonisation were most directly affected by worsening Cold War tension. From June 1948 British forces clashed with communist insurgents in Malaya. Guerilla attacks were severely curtailed by 1954 after a massive resettlement programme targeted at the communists’ principal source of support—the ethnic-Chinese community in the Malayan interior. Although Mao Zedung’s China offered limited support to the Malayan Communist Party guerrillas, the Malayan emergency was always a secondary Cold War conflict next to the far larger conflagrations in Korea and Indo-China. In both of these cases, Chinese Communist support on the one hand and American intervention on the other, was central to the eventual outcome. The engagement of British and French forces against communist insurgents in South East Asia from 1948 onwards did not generate a common outlook towards the preservation of imperial power. Britain was drawn into crisis in Malaya after the failure of Colonial Office plans for constitutional reform of the Malay States immediately after the Second World War. Throughout the operations in Malaya, British

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policy was driven by the requirement for a dependable Malayan client state willing to maintain a close economic and strategic relationship with its former imperial overseer. There was cross-party consensus that political concessions should follow a restoration of law and order. The rapid acceleration of constitutional reform in Malaya from June 1954 onwards resulted from preliminary political agreement with Malaya’s non-communist parties rather than from any collapse in the British military position. 6 British attempts to foster economic cooperation with former colonies through a long-term commitment to raise living standards also informed wider British policy across southern Asia after the launch of the Colombo Plan in January 1950. Both Labour Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin and Britain’s Commissioner General for South East Asia, Malcolm MacDonald, placed the containment of insurgency in Malaya within a broader context of progressive colonial reform and a regional development strategy intended to cement Britain’s post-imperial influence across southern Asia as a whole.7 In general, between 1950 and 1954, the British were less apocalyptic than their French and American allies about the possible spread of communism across the region. Restoration of sterling convertibility rather than prosecution of colonial war dominated Commonwealth discussion of South East Asia in 1951–3.8 By contrast, the conflict in Indo-China passed through several distinct phases as French objectives shifted from the reimposition of colonial control to the establishment of an exclusive and unequal partnership with the ‘Associated States’ of Indo-China and, ultimately, the protection of a pro-western Vietnamese state largely dependent upon American material aid. While Britain had a larger economic stake in South East Asia thanks to the vital dollar earnings derived from Malaya’s raw material exports, France made the greater military commitment in defence of its imperial power. The boom in Malaya’s primary product exports fired by the Korean War was sufficient to fund both the resettlement drive and the expansion of policing that underpinned High Commissioner, General Sir Gerald Templer’s ‘hearts and minds’ campaign from 1952 onwards. Conversely, France had by that point expended more funds on the Indo-China war than it had received in Marshall Aid assistance over the preceding four years.9 However, the key difference between the western partners was psychological. For Britain, the Malayan emergency was a limited problem with brightening hope of resolution by 1954. For France, Indo-China had become a morass, threatening France’s status as a first rank power, blocking the pursuit of an integrationist defence policy in Europe and unravelling the

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fabric of civil-military relations in the Fourth Republic. As René Massigli, the French Ambassador at London, observed in January 1950, the split between Commonwealth nations over policy in South East Asia was bound to prejudice Britain’s cautious support for the French war effort against the Viet-Minh. Although Britain and the new Commonwealth states of the Indian sub-continent formally recognised the People’s Republic of China, the Dominions were reluctant to do so. On the other hand, Britain and the Dominions were pilloried by the governments of India, Pakistan and Burma for their cynical endorsement of Emperor Bao Dai’s quisling administration in Vietnam.10 Massigli was proved right. In spite of the Conservatives’ election victory in October 1951, ostensible British support for its French ally in Indo-China masked growing doubts about the viability of the Associated States idea. Although between 1952 and 1953 alone the Ministry of Defence agreed over three billion francs worth of equipment orders for French forces in Indo-China, the Chiefs of Staff increasingly questioned France’s strategy and capacity to win, particularly after the death of the supreme civil and military commander in Indo-China, General Jean de Lattre de Tassigny, on 11 January 1952. 11 Anxious to press ahead with his grand design for an east-west summit, and irritated by the indecisiveness of successive French governments, Winston Churchill was convinced that France could not play its rôle at the heart of European defence while the Indo- China war continued. 12 It was impossible for any French government to push through the EDC project whilst the Indo-China war denuded France’s capacity to take the leading part within an integrated western European army. 13 In sum, France’s commitment to South East Asia was considered a source of French weakness and a catalyst for inter-allied dispute. The spectre of French defeat, although unwelcome, did not induce the same panic in London as in Washington. Despite warnings of dire consequences in Siam and Burma if Indo- China fell, such fears did not produce a tangible British commitment to support a lost French military cause. 14 In April 1953 the Cabinet Defence Committee approved Chiefs of Staff proposals for the seizure of Siamese territory on the Kra Isthmus, confident that this would suffice to protect Malaya against any Communist incursion following a French collapse in Indo-China. Remarkably, until the end of 1953, the Foreign Office assigned only one South East Asia Department official, Reggie Burrows, to monitor Indo-China reports full time. 15

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Viet-Minh encirclement of the Dien Bien Phu garrison in January 1954 heralded the last, decisive phase of the war and injected urgency into British diplomatic efforts to secure a compromise peace based around a partition of Vietnam and the neutralisation of neighbouring Laos and Cambodia. At the five-power conference in Berlin during January-February, Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden resolved to pursue a negotiated Indo-China settlement partly in order to salvage French prestige and facilitate ratification of the EDC treaty in Paris. Perhaps as important, an agreement over Indo-China, brokered in large measure by Britain, promised to consolidate London’s influence within the Anglo-American partnership, reflecting particularly well on Eden himself. 16 In fact, the resultant Geneva conference talks on Indo-China between May and July 1954 occasioned a severe crisis in Anglo-American relations, exemplified by Eden’s bitter antagonism towards Secretary of State, John Foster Dulles.17 While the diplomatic settlement of the Indo-China war damaged AngloAmerican relations, it fostered a cordial partnership between London and the new Radical-led Ministry of Pierre Mendès France. The French negotiating position was fatally weakened by the fall of Dien Bien Phu on 7 May 1954. Nevertheless, over the next two months, the British negotiators at Geneva helped secure an agreement for the partition of Vietnam pending nation-wide elections in July 1956 which was as much as Mendès France could reasonably expect. Although Anglo-American divisions over Indo-China were soon papered over by the promulgation of the South East Asian Treaty Organisation (SEATO) in Manila on 8 September 1954, tensions over regional influence persisted.18 Having for many years disparaged French policies in Indo- China, after the conflict ended, the Conservative Government found itself in closer agreement with Paris as the Geneva accords disintegrated between 1954 and 1956. To British disquiet over American readiness to back President Ngo Dinh Diem’s South Vietnam régime, the French added their resentment at being so rapidly superseded in Saigon. Edgar Faure’s 1955 administration shared the British conviction that American support for Diem was profoundly misguided. After a fractious NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organisation) Foreign Ministers’ conference in Paris in May 1955, on both sides of the Channel there was growing derision for the American conviction that Washington could succeed where the colonial powers had failed.19 With nothing to match the qualified British success in Malaya, from the ashes of the Indo-China war France rekindled diplomatic cooperation with Britain over the broad future of Vietnam.

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II While the post-war transition from British empire to Commonwealth was a gradual process, the reinvention of France’s empire in subSaharan Africa as the French Union was subsumed within the more urgent task of constitution-making undertaken between 1944 and 1946. Launched as the imperial parallel to the Fourth Republic constitution on 27 October 1946, the French Union marked a decisive shift from the colonialism of the past towards a federal imperial system. Theoretically at least, this was built upon closer political cooperation between rulers and ruled, and the gradual democratisation of black African colonies and the ‘Associated States’ of Indo-China. Announcing the French Union project, Premier Paul Ramadier claimed that it would rest on the three pillars of democratic autonomy, closer economic collaboration between metropole and empire, and the projection of French international power. In practice, the electoral process in individual colonies was based upon twin electoral colleges designed to guarantee the primacy of settler and proFrench indigène voters. Even so, the launch of the French Union suggested that, unlike the inter-war period, colonial reforms would be more systematic and less reluctantly conceded. But among French specialist bureaucrats, comparisons with Colonial Office ideas of self-government for black African and South East Asian territories remained taboo. After all, the French Union was intended to perpetuate, and not to dissolve, the politico-economic, cultural and strategic bonds linking France to its empire. From his self-imposed political exile, from 1947 onwards, General Charles de Gaulle and the formidable new Gaullist political movement—the Rassemblement du Peupk Français (RPF)—consistently warned of ‘Anglo-Saxon’ intrigues intended to undermine French imperial power.20 Regardless of Gaullist suspicions, a solid basis for Anglo-French colonial cooperation in sub-Saharan Africa was already in place. This followed a series of conversations initiated in November 1945 between Colonial Office officials and their French counterparts of the Ministry of Overseas France. Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin and his French counterpart, Georges Bidault, also injected momentum into this process as the Cold War intensified in 1947 and Britain’s currency crisis heightened interest in African economic resources. Based upon a shared commitment to the ideal of colonial development if not to its detailed form, over the next four years, Anglo-French technical collaboration in West Africa helped overcome what Colonial Secretary Arthur Creech-Jones termed ‘the

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artificial boundariesdrawn on the map’.21 The momentum built up during the years of the Labour Government was sustained into the early 1950s as the Foreign Office and the Quai d’Orsay took a keener interest in the international ramifications of colonial reform in Africa. British and French colonial specialists remained keen to advertise the benefits of economic development in order to avert greater United Nations intrusion and American commercial penetration in African colonies. During talks between French and British Foreign Ministry representatives on 10–11 May 1951, discussions ranged from the Persian Gulf to West Africa where Ministry of Overseas France officials were eager to expand the existing framework of AngloFrench cooperation.22 Almost three years later in February 1954, the French again took the initiative, suggesting that technical dialogue over economic development in black Africa be broadened into a regular cycle of conferences arranged through the Ecole Nationale de la France d’OutreMer.23 Although Colonial Office disenchantment with the limited progress of technical collaboration with the Ministry of Overseas France and French administrations across West Africa dissipated in 1954–5, insufficient funding and fundamentally different approaches to colonial development impeded practical cooperation at a local level. For its part, the Ministry of Overseas France occasionally detected a ‘condescending attitude’ from its Colonial Office partner, made worse by British sangfroid regarding the threats of Communist and pan-Arab penetration in West Africa.24 While French plans for the long-term political future of francophone Africa remained obscure, the Colonial Office doubted the wisdom of an open identification with the machinery of French imperial rule. On the other hand, the Foreign Office African Department took a more active interest in colonial discussions with Paris as French plans to tie francophone colonies into the process of European integration developed in 1956.25 Long delayed by a combination of inter-party division in French West Africa, spasmodic public and parliamentary interest in France, and the stultifying effects of frequent changes of government in Paris, the decisive steps towards genuine democratic self-government in francophone black Africa occurred between 1955 and 1958. The enabling law (loi cadre) put before Parliament and codifed as specific items of decree legislation between May 1956 and April 1957, broke with the French Union’s dual electoral college system to establish universal suffrage within individual territories. The loi cadre named after its sponsor, the Socialist Minister for Overseas France, Gaston

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Defferre, thus gave his Ministry a one-year period of grace in which to establish the administrative basis for Councils of Government in the individual territories of French Africa and Madagascar. Taking its cue from the Colonial Office, Eden’s Government welcomed the measures as long overdue. It was noted with approval that Defferre’s framework for self-government bore a close resemblance to the system of Executive Councils that had been in place in several British African territories for a number of years. With less disparity in constitutional form between them, cooperation between British and French African territories promised to be easier.26 The first municipal and national elections under this new system were held across French West and Equatorial Africa and Madagascar in November 1956 and March 1957. These generally produced the moderate nationalist administrations with whom the precise terms of colonial self-government and continuing French economic and military privileges were negotiated over the next four years. In the 28 September 1958 constitutional referendum promulgated by General Charles de Gaulle after a month of intensive lobbying across French West and Equatorial Africa, of the thirteen black African territories, only Sekou Touré’s Guinea rejected a continued association with France within the new structure of the imperial Communauté. In the year preceding this vote, the principal disagreement among francophone African leaders was less over the desirability of sustaining ties with France than over the preservation of a federal system of government in post-colonial West and Equatorial Africa. 27 The widespread endorsement among the non-Marxist parties of francophone Africa of a post-independence bond with France appeared a remarkable triumph for French reform. But how far was it based upon the British example, and how was the Communauté of francophone Africa received by Harold Macmillan’s Government? Within days of the September 1958 referendum, Foreign Secretary Selwyn Lloyd confirmed Britain’s support for de Gaulle’s uncompromising approach to Sekou Touré’s Guinea: a state that rejected reasonable terms for cooperation with its former colonial power should be economically and diplomatically ostracised. The Communauté was welcomed as a triumph of constructive imperial withdrawal.28 Selwyn Lloyd’s effusive congratulations were not echoed within the Colonial Office where there was a mixture of scepticism and genuine uncertainty about the quasi-independent status of Communauté member states. The leaders of the Communauté administrations in West and Equatorial Africa and Madagascar were caught in a purgatory between limited self-government linked to

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France and rising popular pressure for outright independence, albeit hopefully with continued French financial aid. By 1961 they had inevitably chosen the latter path. Initial Colonial Office reservations about the project ultimately proved accurate. The British Government also quickly reversed its attitude to Guinea. On 4 November 1958 Britain and the United States jointly recognised Sekou Touré’s Government. In the following month, the Foreign Office distanced itself from vociferous French criticism of the All African Peoples’ Congress convened in Accra, Ghana, by that newly independent country’s leader, Kwame Nkrumah. French accusations that the Accra Congress was provocatively anti-western were dismissed, despite the presence of an Algerian Front de Liberation Nationale (FLN) delegation at the proceedings. Although Anglo-French differences over black Africa persisted, the Gaullist commitment to fundamental reform had wrested the initiative from the Colonial Office.29 De Gaulle’s readiness to accept the Communauté’s demise, and the National Assembly’s willingness to channel national and European Community funding into francophone states, laid the basis for a lasting French rôle in sub-Saharan Africa. By adopting Britain’s more functional approach to African decolonisation, and thus placing economic, technical and cultural links with the former metropole above precise constitutional form, the French maintained closer postimperial ties across West Africa than their British counterparts. This was further underpinned by Gaullist determination to uphold strategic commitments throughout the region, a sentiment soon reinforced by the Congo crisis. 30 In comparison with France’s energetic neocolonial relationship with former Communauté states Britain’s Commonwealth ties seemed conservative, and Whitehall had no call upon European Community assistance to underpin economic development and currency stabilisation in Anglophone African territories.31 Contrary to British wishes, France successfully extended the free-trade benefits of the European Common Market to its black African clients. Furthermore, during the Messina negotiations in 1957 the principle of EEC (European Economic Community) development aid for member-state colonies was formally accepted. By contrast, greater access to European markets for British overseas territories was frustrated by Macmillan’s promotion of an industrial free trade area at variance with the French ‘Eurafrica’ ideals incorporated into the 1957 Treaty of Rome. 32 Although there were numerous political comparisons between British and French withdrawal from West Africa in particular, economically at least, the two countries tugged in opposite directions after 1956.

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I II During the negotiation of the Dunkirk treaty of alliance in early 1947, Georges Bidault’s delegation sought to lay the foundations for periodic Anglo-French discussions of common imperial problems. These ranged from colonial development strategies in West Africa to strategic planning in the Middle East and South East Asia.33 In January 1949 Foreign Secretary Bevin and his French counterpart, Robert Schuman, agreed to concert regularly over shared interests in the Arab world. As a result of this, low level diplomatic exchanges over Palestinian refugees and economic development in the Middle East took place in London in July.34 These discussions helped conceal the fact that British and French imperial strategies had diverged. Bevin’s Foreign Office resisted French pressure to make a decisive commitment to European integration at the expense of Commonwealth interests.35 Determined to conserve a Middle Eastern sphere of influence based upon Arab dynastic respect for western interests, both the Attlee and Churchill governments were unsettled by the frustration of reform in French North Africa. The ramifications of this across the Arab world became more apparent in 1952–3 as nationalist protests in Morocco and Tunisia grew more violent in the face of evident French unwillingness to concede genuine autonomy to the two protectorates. In the four years preceding the outbreak of the Algerian war in November 1954, the British and American governments also differed in the relative strategic importance they attached to the Middle East and Pacific theatres. Hitherto, these had been the principal arenas in which Cold War conflict and decolonisation pressures had intersected. Britain’s commitments in the Korean War and the Malayan emergency did not match the greater priority accorded to its Egyptian bases and Middle Eastern garrisons. By contrast, until 1954 France appeared equally committed—and thus severely overextended—in both North Africa and South East Asia, despite increasing American support for the war effort in Indo-China after 1950.36 Whatever the political convulsions it induced within the senior echelons of France’s colonial army, at least the final defeat in Indo-China briefly simplified French strategic planning. Largely confined to Europe and French Africa, France’s military forces now seemed better attuned to the country’s overseas commitments than their British equivalents who remained thinly spread from NATO’s western European command, through the Middle East to the pockets of imperial influence east of Suez. But the French military was poorly

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reconciled to its diminished global influence. Although the British possessed a nuclear capability for many years before France and, with the entry into service in 1955 of the first V-bomber series, could conduct a long-range nuclear bombardment, in practice, both Britain and France sheltered under the American nuclear umbrella for most of the decade. Still, the British could claim a wider strategic reach thanks largely to their Middle Eastern connections. French resentment at Britain’s regional paramountcy in the Middle East continued throughout the 1950s. Technically, in May 1950, through their joint signature of the Tripartite Declaration alongside the United States, France and Britain agreed to uphold the territorial status quo between Israel and its Arab neighbours. Both powers pledged to help prevent the development of a Middle Eastern arms race. However, this did not assuage French antagonism towards Britain’s long-term policy of close strategic and economic cooperation with Arab client states. Numerous hostile editorials in Le Monde between 1950 and 1956 bore witness to French disdain for British plans.37 In place of its previous policies of indirect rule, after 1945 Britain consolidated a system of quasi-imperial influence which was by 1954 based upon a nominal partnership with the pro-western regimes of Jordan, Iraq, Pakistan and Libya. The levers of British control were concealed behind the facade of diplomatic parity and strategic cooperation. By contrast, direct French colonial rule in Algeria, the erosion of monarchical privilege and customary rights in the Moroccan and Tunisian protectorates (where monarchs and ‘national governments’ were readily overthrown if judged too closely aligned with populist nationalism), and the abiding nostalgia for exclusive control in the Syrian Levant—all seemed to confirm the reactionary tone of French imperial policy. Active Anglo-French cooperation over Suez in 1956 was the exception rather than the rule. Although annual talks on Middle Eastern subjects between the assistant under-secretaries of the Quai d’Orsay and the Foreign Office were extended in 1954 to cover discussion of colonial problems, Eden vetoed more formal discussions fearing adverse reaction across the Arab world should Britain give more explicit endorsement to French policies in North Africa. Indeed, in the eighteen months prior to Colonel Gamal Abdul Nasser’s nationalisation of the Suez Canal Company on 26 July 1956, Anglo-French imperial relations deteriorated sharply across the Middle East. One focus of this was Britain’s regional defence policy. For a full year after Eden’s assumption of the premiership in April 1955, the British dismissed French exclusion from—and criticism of—

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the newly signed Baghdad Pact as the outpourings of a nation jealous of Britain’s Middle Eastern success. The Quai d’Orsay, in turn, characterised the Baghdad Pact as compensation for America’s preeminent role in SEATO and the termination of the Australasian commitment to help defend British interests in the Middle East.38 French arguments that a British-directed ‘Northern tier’ of allied states, based around Pakistan, Iraq and Turkey, would do nothing to offset creeping Soviet influence in Egypt and Syria cut no ice in Whitehall where France’s close relationship with Israel was considered a major stimulus to regional instability.39 In 1955 Edgar Faure’s Government urged the British to transform the Baghdad Pact from an exclusive military alliance into an open-ended economic assistance scheme modelled on the Colombo Plan. Early in 1956 outgoing Foreign Minister, Antoine Pinay, and his successor, Christian Pineau, attacked Anglo-American policies in the Middle East more generally. Incensed, Eden responded to U S State Department suggestions that France might be admitted to AngloAmerican strategic discussions over Middle Eastern security with a curt rebuttal: ‘Not at all at top level. They are our enemies in [the] Middle East.’40 Bluster aside, it was always unlikely that a solid Anglo-French working partnership would develop in opposition to Nasser’s Egypt. In spite of their mutual indignation over the Suez nationalisation and their requirement for secure oil supplies, British and French motives for intervention were quite different. Next to British concern for its regional paramountcy, the apparent French obsession with Egyptian support for the Algerian rebellion might seem parochial. However, this is misleading. French intelligence reports indicated that Nasser had lied to Pineau about intervention in Algeria, and as French reinforcements poured into Algiers so the FLN increasingly depended upon external aid. If Nasser were brought down, at a stroke the Algerian nationalist identification with the pan-Arab cause would be broken and NATO’s Maghreb flank secured. This reductive analysis dominated French policy over Suez because the service chiefs and Premier Guy Mollet’s two senior defence ministers, Maurice BourgesMaunoury and Max Lejeune, spurned the more balanced suggestions of the Quai d’Orsay Africa-Levant Directorate. Contrary to his later assertions in his memoir of the crisis, Pineau also viewed the Suez problem through an Algerian prism, rejecting the advice of his senior departmental aides. As a result, when the crisis escalated in September and October 1956, the French Government grew more determined to conserve its freedom of manoeuvre whatever the

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constraints upon British action. 41 Since France’s reputation within the Middle East was already compromised by its actions in North Africa and its support for Israel, little wonder that Mollet’s senior ministerial and military advisers pushed harder than Eden’s innerCabinet for a decisive intervention in Egypt.42 Albeit briefly, Anglo-French alignment against Nasser in 1956 indicated the primacy of shared strategic interest relative to individual disagreements over empire. Pineau exploited seizures of British-made arms in Algeria and the interception of the British registered vessel Athos in October 1956 to justify action against Egypt rather than to criticise Britain for its failure to curb Nasser’s material support for the Algerian rebellion.43 Similarly, the French Chiefs of Staff ultimately accepted British primacy within the joint planning of the Suez operations in order to cement cross-channel cooperation and bolster the British commitment to Nasser’s defeat. This helps explain French military disillusionment with Britain’s subsequent cavein. French air force units stationed in Cyprus concluded that they alone had played the decisive part in destroying the Egyptian air force. Seasoned French paratroopers, on the point of victory when the cease-fire order arrived on 6 November, were furious with the British command. And the French fleet commander, Vice Admiral Barjot, emerged from Suez convinced of the conflict of interest between NATO responsibilities and French imperial priorities in the Mediterranean.44 Whereas, in Britain, Conservative hawks and, above all, Eden himself, unfairly blamed Dulles for America’s devastating opposition to the Suez expedition, the French Government was as critical of the British failure of nerve as of American policy. Neither President Dwight Eisenhower nor Dulles much respected French policies in North Africa and the Middle East, so their hostility to Franco-Israeli collusion had been expected.45 Eden’s pre-Suez annoyance at French efforts to secure themselves an expanded role in Middle Eastern affairs made little impact upon Britain’s official policy of support for the French position in North Africa. Having endorsed Mendès France’s efforts to negotiate France’s withdrawal from Morocco and Tunisia in 1954, the British Government remained sympathetic to the efforts of the Faure and Mollet Ministries to complete this process in the face of diffuse rightwing criticism.46 Having seen Deputies on the right of his own Radical Party take the lead in voting out Mendès France’s administration over colonial reform in February 1955, Faure had to tread a cautious path towards self-government in the protectorates thereafter.47 On 3 June he conceded internal autonomy in Tunisia in

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return for firm guarantees for settler rights and a continued French military presence at Bizerta. Faure’s appointment of the progressive Gaullist, Gilbert Grandval, as Resident General in Rabat three weeks later promised a similar acceleration of reform in Morocco. Progress towards independence was complicated, however, by more entrenched settler interests, a dramatic escalation in terrorist violence and the outstanding difficulties caused by the deposition of Sultan Mohammed ben Youssef in August 1953. Grandval was soon replaced by a traditionalist hardliner, General Boyer de Latour, after a spate of attacks on settlers on 20 August 1955. Still, Faure remained committed to Grandval’s plan to restore the exiled Sultan in order to sign a definitive political settlement on the broad model of Tunisia.48 Although an outline Franco-Moroccan accord was in place by mid-November 1955, it fell to Guy Mollet’s Government to confirm Moroccan independence the following March. Much as the Radicals and Gaullists in Faure’s Cabinet had remained divided over permissible reform, so, too, Mollet’s Socialists risked internal dissension and parliamentary censure over North Africa. Partly to ease the final withdrawal from Morocco and Tunisia, Mollet’s Government chose to maintain a firm stand over Algeria. In public forums from the United Nations and the NATO Council to press briefings and Commons debates, Eden’s Government maintained its outward support for France’s Tunisian and Moroccan policies between 1955 and 1956. This was guided by a simple calculation that the French would resent and ignore any British advice. Occasional backstairs comments about the virtues of pragmatism and generous reform certainly appeared hypocritical to Ambassador Jean Chauvel in London. 49 The Quai d’Orsay welcomed Britain’s publicly sanguine attitude because it helped allay United States alarm over the stuttering progress of negotiations in Tunis and, above all, Rabat.50 Not surprisingly, the greater complexity of the Algerian crisis—the direct colonial link to France, the massive army engagement and the large settler population involved—posed more serious difficulties for Britain. Across the spectrum of AngloFrench imperial problems from 1954 onwards, Algeria stood apart. British reverses in the Middle East did not bear comparison with the metropolitan political upheaval, the military humiliation and the human tragedy of the Algerian war. Even the Central African Emergency which erupted in February 1959, and the protracted confrontation with Southern Rhodesia which followed it in the 1960s, rarely featured in exchanges between London and Paris despite the obvious similarity of powerful settler communities blocking

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metropolitan projects of constitutional reform in Algiers and Salisbury.51 Not surprisingly,after the Suez crisis, Algeria dominated broader Anglo-French imperial relations from 1957 to 1962. Periodic French requests for British arms deliveries for use in the Algerian war were complicated by British sensitivity to Arab and UN criticism of such direct support for the war effort against the FLN nationalists. 52 After the pivotal meeting of Afro-Asian states at the Bandung conference in April 1955, the gradual emergence of a powerful non-aligned movement added to Britain’s caution in identifying with French policies in North Africa. This also hindered occasional schemes to pool the accumulated French and British experience of colonial counter-insurgency and imperial policing more generally. In March 1956, for example, the Foreign Office blocked suggested talks between the Chiefs of Staff, Generals Sir Gerald Templer and Paul Ely, over those British military techniques learnt in Malaya and Kenya likely to be applicable in Algeria. 53 The French anticipated that their joint military intervention over Suez would diminish British reserve and enable France to purchase additional British weaponry—helicopters above all—for the Algerian conflict. However, in 1957 the British rejected any public military support for French operations in North Africa. Strategic liaison and limited arms sales certainly took place, but these were kept out of the public eye. Even relatively high-profile visits to Algeria by a delegation of sympathetic British MPs in 1956, plus further planned exchanges in 1957, did not herald more widespread cooperation.54 From March 1956, when Mollet widened the Algerian war by, for the first time, assigning French conscripts to help suppress the rebellion, the British Government feared that this conflict escalation would further de-stabilise French North Africa as a whole.55 The firmer French commitment to winning the war precluded a ceasefire and negotiations with the nationalists in the short term. This was bound to diminish the willingness of the emergent pro-western régimes in Morocco and Tunisia to maintain an essentially cooperative attitude towards France and its allies. 56 British fears crystallised during a new phase of Franco-Tunisian tension in early 1958. Félix Gaillard’s Government was deeply hostile towards Britain’s joint sponsorship of the Anglo-American ‘Good Offices Mission’, established to resolve the crisis in Franco-Tunisian relations triggered by the French bombardment of the Tunisian village of Sakiet Sidi Youssef on 8 February 1958. In an attempt to flush out Algerian guerrillas operating against the fortified Algeria-Tunisia frontier, French airforce units mounted an attack which left at least

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seventy civilians dead. Publicised by the Red Cross, international censure of the Sakiet raid influenced the resultant US intervention. But Macmillan, Selwyn Lloyd and Britain’s ‘Good Offices’ representative, Harold Beeley, consistently worked to moderate State Department insistence upon both a French military withdrawal from its remaining bases in Tunisia and an open-ended French commitment to negotiate with the FLN in Algeria. Although Dulles sought British support to impose a North African settlement upon the French, Macmillan’s Government refused to cajole Gaillard’s Ministers into accepting a Commonwealth-style relationship between France and Algeria.57 Quite apart from escalating international criticism of French methods in North Africa, the increasing use of conscript forces in Algeria from 1956 onwards inevitably affected French capacity to maintain its NATO commitments in Europe. Unrest in Algeria was bound to harden Tunisian and, especially, Moroccan opposition to western use of base facilities in the Maghreb.58 From the early transfer of additional reinforcements to Algeria in May 1955 until de Gaulle’s pursuit of detailed negotiations with the FLN leadership in 1960, the North African drain on French forces provoked rumbling AngloAmerican criticism rather than a major strategic crisis. 59 In practice, the redirection of French forces to North Africa left other NATO countries, including Britain and, above all, West Germany, to plug the gaps. Even if manpower commitments in Algeria were curtailed, the Foreign Office and Ministry of Defence anticipated a reduction in France’s military service term prior to any French reinforcement of NATO’s European command. 60 On 9 December 1958, Sir Frank Roberts, head of the United Kingdom delegation to NATO’s Paris headquarters, summarised the problem in a paper to Selwyn Lloyd. France was effectively contributing two, rather than the required four, divisions to NATO’s central front. But the western land shield was more severely affected by deficiencies in its air defence and NATO field commanders were more concerned with the incorporation of missile units into their front line. So the principal consequences of France’s Algerian commitment were political and psychological. The proportionate increase in West German forces within the European command, and the orientation of French ground troops towards low intensity conventional warfare in North Africa, diminished France’s authority within the western alliance. This was compounded by the French army’s technical requirement to keep pace with the general re-orientation towards missile-based warfare. 61 Although Algeria fell within NATO’s

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strategic parameters, Britain and its NATO partners dismissed occasional French efforts to portray North African operations as a direct contribution to the alliance. Unlike Indo-China, French North Africa was no Cold War front-line. Ironically, while de Gaulle’s recognition of these very problems ensured a more rapid withdrawal from Algeria, his preoccupation with diminished French influence inside NATO drove him into further confrontation with its Anglo-American ‘directorate’ during 1959. The triangular cooperation between Gaullist politicians, army officers and Algerian settlers that precipitated de Gaulle’s dramatic return to power in May 1958 as leader of the nascent Fifth Republic was based on a fundamental miscalculation of the General’s personal opinions about the war. Determinedly opaque about his Algerian policies until he received incontrovertible public backing in the referenda of 1958 and 1961, de Gaulle recognised that the costs of the war, its divisive impact upon French society and its adverse effect upon French international standing were inimical to his foreign and defence policies. Following a reconsideration of overseas defence obligations after the Suez débâcle, conducted between 19 57 and 19 5 9, the Conservative Cabinet reaffirmed that Britain required the preservation of political ‘tranquillity’ across the Middle East in order to prevent Soviet incursion and assure oil supplies. Still committed to supporting the independence of Libya, Jordan and Sudan and increasingly tied to client régimes in the Persian Gulf, by 1959 Macmillan’s Government none the less sought to disengage from inter-Arab disputes as far as possible. Backing France in Algeria was clearly prejudicial to this.62 To make matters worse, between 1956 and 1961 French deliveries of the Mystère A, Super Mystère and Mirage III were pivotal to the modernisation of the Israeli airforce, fuelling a local arms race with Egypt and, from 1958, the United Arab Republic, which gathered pace after Nasser’s initial purchase of Soviet MIG 15 aircraft in late 1955.63 France’s continued rôle as a major arms supplier to Israel added to Foreign Office reluctance to identify with French policy in the Arab world.64 Awareness of Arab hostility to France shaped Britain’s support for American efforts to deny Paris a rôle in resolving the Lebanese crisis in June–July 1958.65 Similarly, after Macmillan openly conceded in 1958 that the Cyprus emergency was an international problem as opposed to an exclusively colonial issue, British readiness to support France over Algeria at the United Nations declined. Acting upon Minister of Defence Duncan Sandys’ 1957 defence review, the

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Government sought to maintain British overseas interests—in Africa, the Middle East and east of Suez—through a series of military base agreements with former subject states. Even where the deployment of nuclear-equipped forces was envisaged as, for example, in Cyprus, long-term colonial control was precluded.66 In contrast to earlier Anglo-French military talks in 1951 and 1954 over matters of common strategic interest in sub-Saharan Africa, subsequent tripartite strategic talks with the Americans on African defence in April 1959 confirmed the British preference for specific military base agreements and joint economic development projects over any wider military collaboration with French forces across the African continent. Here again Algeria was a stumbling block. Foreign Office, Colonial Office and Service Ministry advisers agreed that neither the integrationist policies still favoured by influential members of the Algiers Government-General and several military commanders in North Africa, nor de Gaulle’s ambitious ‘Constantine Plan’ of economic modernisation in Algeria, would create a stable basis for a long-term French strategic presence.67 As for political cooperation, Macmillan only considered general colonial discussions with de Gaulle in January 1961. This was in response to French enquiries over the precise terms of the Cyprus independence agreements negotiated at the Lancaster House conference in February 1959. Impressed by Archbishop Makarios’s earlier renunciation of Cypriot union with Greece in September 1958, the Quai d’Orsay sought to explore possible comparisons between any Cyprus and Algeria settlements. However, in January 1960 Foreign Secretary Lord Home and Colonial Secretary Iain Macleod ruled out discussion of Algeria for fear of Commonwealth criticism.68 By this point in early 1960 both the Moroccan and Tunisian governments and the Algerian provisional government-in-exile were adept propagandists, well versed in use of the media and exploitation of the United Nations.69 As the British Government began to reap the harvest of Macmillan’s renewed commitment to decolonisation, made plain in his ‘winds of change’ speech at Cape Town on 3 February, so the Maghreb leaders pressed London to urge greater concessions upon de Gaulle. This applied equally to negotiations for a final withdrawal from Algeria and to the curtailment of French base rights in Morocco and Tunisia.70 In fact, the protracted Franco-Algerian negotiations prior to the signature of the Evian accords on 18 March 1962 were conducted without significant British input. Having felt compelled to provide careful explanations for the 1959 Cyprus settlement to the British security forces on the island, Macmillan’s Government was naturally sympathetic to de Gaulle’s efforts to negotiate French withdrawal

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without provoking an army backlash akin to General Maurice Challe’s April 1961 coup attempt. Above all, the British Government shared de Gaulle’s eagerness for an Algerian settlement in order to concentrate on more pressing concerns such as the future of the EEC and NATO’s European defences.71 In the scale of things, imperial attachments counted for far less in 1962 than in 1954. IV Before 1956 Conservative Ministers were generally sympathetic to French efforts to make colonial reform conditional upon the prior satisfaction of France’s political, economic and strategic requirements. In both Britain and France, containment of nationalist demands featured more prominently than any ‘management’ of decolonisation.72 Where settler interests or metropolitan strategic requirements were directly engaged as, for example, in Kenya and French North Africa, the two colonial powers were prepared to wield the stick in defiance of international opinion. But as the British came to attach less importance to formal mechanisms of imperial control in much of Africa and the Middle East over the course of the early 1950s, so divergences in Anglo-French imperial policy became more apparent. Another spur to this was the widening gap in British and French international economic policy. Whilst Britain struggled more and more to balance its trading links with sterling area countries against the pull of trans-Atlantic trade and European integration, in 1957 France successfully pressed other Treaty of Rome signatories to allow its black African colonies free-trade access to the EEC. Meanwhile, the decline of imperial self-confidence and the acceleration of British decolonisation after Eden’s fall from grace over Suez made it easier for Conservative politicians to criticise French policies in North Africa. But the demise of the pro-British régimes in Libya and Iraq by 1958 revealed that the foundations of Britain’s standing in the Middle East were built on quicksand. Conversely, in spite of the acrimonious and violent history of French withdrawal from Morocco and Tunisia before 1956, the Istiqlalist régime installed in Rabat as well as Habib Bourguiba’s Tunisia ultimately recognised the material benefits of limited cooperation with France. Even de Gaulle’s final negotiation of withdrawal from Algeria was pivotal to the success of his first presidential term. By 1962 both imperial powers were well used to portraying often reluctant decolonisations in the best possible light, and they shared

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a common interest in doing so. While Britain largely avoided the appalling violence of French decolonisation, its hands were hardly clean. However, the improvisation of much Anglo-French imperial withdrawal and the sometimes desperate steps taken to slow the erosion of British and French global influence prevented any comprehensive joint approach to their retreat from empire. Notes 1 2

3 4 5 6 7

8 9

10 11 12 13

M.Kahler, Decolonization in Britain and France: The Domestic Consequences of International Relations, Princeton, N.J., Princeton University Press, 1984, p. 60. D.Goldsworthy, ‘Keeping change within bounds: aspects of colonial policy during the Churchill and Eden governments, 1951–1957’, Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, 1990, vol. 18, pp. 81–8; S.Howe, Anticolonialism in British Politics: The Left and the End of Empire, 1918–1964, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1993, chs. 6 and 7. D.Goldsworthy, Colonial Issues in British Politics, 1945–1961, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1971, pp. 295–316. Kahler, Decolonisation in Britain and France, pp. 76–9. Public Record Office (PRO) FO 371/112774, WF10/11/1. A.J.Stockwell, ‘Insurgency and decolonization during the Malayan emergency’, Journal of Commonwealth and Comparative Politics, 1987, vol. 25, pp. 76–7. A.J.Stockwell, ‘British imperial policy and decolonization in Malaya, 1942–1952’, Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, 1984, vol. 13, pp. 73–6; A N. Porter and A J. Stockwell (eds), British Imperial Policy and Decolonization 1938–1964 Volume II: 1951–1964, New York, St Martin’s Press, 1989, nos 6, 46, pp. 134–6, 328–31. Ministère des Affaires Étrangères (MAE), Paris, Série Europe 1944– 1960, Sous-série Grande-Bretagne, vol. 95 nos 5122/5132. Massigli to Quai d’Orsay, 12–13 December 1952. N.J.White, ‘Capitalism and counter-insurgency? Business and government in the Malayan emergency, 1948–1957’, Modern Asian Studies, 1998, vol. 32, p. 175. MAE, Série Asie-Océanie, 1944–1955, Sous-série Indochine, vol. 261, no. 1180. MAE, Grand-Bretagne, vol. 95, no. 25/EU. MAE, Indochine, vol. 251. Direction Générale/Asie-Océanie note no. 1 Indochine, 9 February 1953. J.W.Young, Winston Churchill’s Last Campaign: Britain and the Cold War, 1951–1955, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1996, pp. 217–20. D.Artaud, ‘France between the Indochina war and the European Defense Community’ in L.Kaplan, D.Artaud and M.Rubin (eds), Dien Bien Phu and the Crisis of Anglo-American Relations 1954–1955, Wilmington, Del., SR Books, 1990, pp. 251–68; Y.Aimaq, Far Europe or Empire? French Colonial Ambitions and the European Army Plan, Lund, Lund University Press, 1996.

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16 17 18

19

20 21

22 23 24

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K.Ruane, ‘Refusing to pay the price: British foreign policy and the pursuitof victory in Vietnam, 1952–1954’, English Historical Review, 1995, vol. 110, pp. 80–4. See also his contribution to this volume. G.Warner, ‘The settlement of the Indochina war’ in J.W.Young (ed.), The Foreign Policy of Churchill’s Peacetime Administration 1951–1955, Leicester, Leicester University Press, 1988, p. 236; J.Cable, The Geneva Conference of 1954 on Indochina, London, Macmillan, 1986, p. 39. Cable, Geneva Conference, ch. 3; K.Ruane, ‘Anthony Eden, British diplomacy and the origins of the Geneva Conference of 1954’, Historical Journal, 1994, vol. 37, pp. 160–9. Warner, ‘The settlement of the Indochina war’, pp. 243–50; Young, Winston Churchill’s Last Campaign, pp. 260–4. G.R.Hess, ‘Redefining the American position in southeast Asia: the United States and the Geneva and Manila conferences’ and G.Warner, ‘From Geneva to Manila: British policy towards Indochina and SEATO, May-September 1954’ in Kaplan et al, Dien Bien Phu, pp. 141–4, 156–64; W.D.McIntyre, Background to the ANZUS Pact: PolicyMaking, Strategy and Diplomacy, 1945–1955, New York, St Martin’s Press, 1995, ch. 15; D. Lee, ‘The great powers and Laos, 1955–1962’ in D.Lowe (ed.), Australia and the End of Empire, Geelong, Deakin University Press, 1996, pp. 174–5. A.Combs, The path not taken: the British alternative to US policy in Vietnam, 1954–1956’, Diplomatic History, 1995, vol. 19, pp. 33–57; D.P. O’C.Greene, ‘John Foster Dulles and the end of the FrancoAmerican entente in Indochina’, Diplomatic History, 1992, vol. 16, pp. 551–71. R.Bourgi, Le General de Gaulle et l’Afrique Noire 1940–1969, Paris, Librairie Générale de Droit et de Jurisprudence, 1980, pp. 139–47. PRO CAB 129/9, CP(47)191; J.Kent, The Internationalization of Colonialism: Britain, France and Black Africa, 1939–1956, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1992, ch. 7; J.Kent, British Imperial Strategy and the Origins of the Cold War, 1944–1949, Leicester, Leicester University Press, 1993, pp. 145–8; R.Hyam (ed.), British Documents on the End of Empire, Series A, Volume II, Part 2: The Labour Government and the End of Empire 1945–1951, London, HMSO, 1992, nos 177, 178. MAE, Grande-Bretagne, vol. 79, Sous-Direction du Levant, ‘Entretiens franco-anglais’, 10–11 May 19 51; Kent, Internationalization of Colonialism, pp. 286–7. MAE, Grande-Bretagne, vol. 81, ‘Conversations franco-britanniques sur l’Afrique et le Moyen-Orient’, 22–23 February 1954. Kent, Internationalization of Colonialism, pp. 279–85; M.Michel, ‘L’Afrique noire, la France et la Grand-Bretagne en 19 5 8: l’acceleration des indépendances’ in C.-R.Ageron and M.Michel (eds), L’Afrique Noire Française: L’Heure des Indépendances, Paris, CN RS Editions, 1992, pp. 500–3. Kent, Internationalization of Colonialism, pp. 306–12. PRO FO 371/119350, JF1015/20. Bourgi, Le General de Gaulle et I’Afrique Noire, pp. 326–34. MAE, Grande-Bretagne, vol. 143, no. 3179.

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Michel, ‘L’Afrique noire, la France et la Grande-Bretagne’, pp. 504– 7. J.D.Hargreaves, Decolonization in Africa, London, Longman, 1988, pp. 173–5; Service Historique de l’Armée de Terre (SHAT), Vincennes, Carton 14H4 6/ D1, Section des Affaires Militaires, FTO M, ‘Planification à long terme pour l’Outre-Mer’, 14 December 1959. MAE, Grande-Bretagne, vol. 143, no. 71/AL. C.R.Schenk, ‘Decolonization and European economic integration: the free trade area negotiations, 1956–1958’, Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, 1996, vol. 24, pp. 452–7. PRO CAB 121/400, JP(47) 14, Joint Planning Committee Report. MAE, Grande-Bretagne, vol. 67, Service d’information circular 202, 8 July 1949. MAE, Grande-Bretagne, vol. 67, no. 5959. M.J.Cohen, Fighting World War Three from the Middle East: Allied Contingency Plans, 1945–1954, London, Frank Cass, 1997, pp. 91–2. PRO FO 371/121233, V1054/4. For the spring 1954 discussions see D.Goldsworthy (ed.), British Documents on the End of Empire, Series A, Volume III, Part 1: The Conservative Government and the End of Empire 1951–1957, London, HMSO, 1994, nos 118, 122; MAE, Grande-Bretagne, vol. 95, no. 539. PRO FO 371/121244–5. P.M.H.Bell, France and Britain 1940–1994: The Long Separation, London, Longman, 1997, pp. 131–3. PRO PREM 11/1344, Sir Roger Makins to Foreign Office, 19 January 1956. M.Vaïsse, ‘France and the Suez crisis’ in W.R.Louis and R.Owen (eds), Suez 1956: The Crisis and Its Consequences, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1993, pp. 134–43. M.Battesti, ‘Les ambiguités de Suez’, Revue Historique des Armées, 1986, vol. 4, pp. 8–12. Documents Diplomatiques Français, 1954–1961, 1956, vol. II, no. 301. Hereafter DDF. SHAT, 9U4/D51, no. 281/GH1; SHAT, 9U4/D53 Vice Admiral Barjot project; SHAT, 9U4/D52, no. 1008/CCFFO. W.R.Louis, ‘Dulles, Suez and the British’ in R.H.Immermann (ed.), John Foster Dulles and the Diplomacy of the Cold War, Princeton, N.J., Princeton University Press, 1990, pp. 133–58; P.Masson, ‘Origines et bilan d’une défaite’, Revue Historique des Armées, 1986, vol. 4, pp. 57– 8. PRO FO 371/119377, JF1052/4. P. M.Williams, Crisis and Compromise: Politics in the Fourth Republic, London, Longman, 1964, pp. 46–7. J.-P.Rioux, The Fourth Republic, 1944–1958, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1987, pp. 244–5. MAE, Grande-Bretagne, vol. 81, no. 4067. PRO FO 371/119552, JN1013/1; FO 371/119350, JF1015/10. See DDF, 1959, vol. I, no. 146. PRO AIR 8/1660, COS(55) 29th meeting, 28 April 1955. PRO FO 371/119394, JF1196/2.

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58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72

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MAE, Grande-Bretagne, vol. 142, no. 1713/EU and Henri Langlais memorandum. For details of the 1956 reinforcement schedules see SHAT, 1H1374/ D1–3. PRO FO 371/119375, JF1197/1. On Sakiet see I.M.Wall, ‘The United States, Algeria and the fall of the French Fourth Republic’, Diplomatic History, 1994, vol. 18, pp. 489–511 and ‘Les États-Unis, la Grande-Bretagne et l’affaire de SakietSidi-Youssef, Revue d’Histoire Diplomatique, 1996, vol. 110, pp. 307– 27. MAE, Série Tunisie, 1944–1955, vol. 495. See DDF, 1955, vol. I, nos 293, 307, 315 and DDF, 1956, vol. I, no. 146. PRO FO 371/137865, WUN11913/2. PRO FO 371/137865, WUN11913/22. PRO DEFE 7/2200, ‘Defence in the Middle East—General Policy’, 8 December 1959. PRO DEFE 7/2200, COS (60) 240. MAE, Grande-Bretagne, vol. 142, no. 7049/EU. PRO FO 371/134125, VL1015/376. S.J.Ball, ‘Macmillan and British defence policy’ in R. Aldous and S.Lee (eds), Harold Macmillan and Britain’s World Role, London, Macmillan, 1996, pp. 82–4. See SHAT, 1H1104/D5 and 1H1106/D3. PRO PREM 11/3336, PM/61/3 and PM/61/6. SHAT, 1H1426/D2, EMI, Alger, 2e bureau; DDF, 1960, vol. I, no. 83. SHAT, 1H1756/D1, SDECE memoranda. R.Ovendale, ‘Macmillan and the wind of change in Africa, 1957–1960’, Historical Journal, 1995, vol. 38, pp. 455–6. R.Holland, ‘Dirty wars: Algeria and Cyprus compared, 1954–1962’ in C.-R.Ageron and M.Michel (eds), L’Ere des Décolonisations, Paris, Editions Karthala, 1995, p. 46. PRO CAB 129/109 CP(62)58. Goldsworthy, ‘Keeping change within bounds’, p. 84.

17 The Cold War, European Community and Anglo-French relations, 1958– 1998 Joanne Wright

No set of bilateral relations is ever only bilateral, and this is certainly true of the period under consideration here. Anglo-French relations between 1958 and 1998 have to be considered within the contexts of the Cold War and the European Community/Union. From each of these contexts emerges a theme that has consistently been at the centre of Anglo-French disagreements since 1958. From the Cold War, stems the relationship between Western Europe and the United States and especially the rôle of nuclear weapons. From the European Community comes the nature of European political and economic cooperation. Different perceptions of the ‘German problem’ and the rôle of the Federal Republic in both the Cold War and the European Community also play a special role in explaining AngloFrench relations during these years. However, the importance of the rhetorical differences in these areas can often be over-stated. The reality is that Britain and France shared fundamental views of the Cold War and of the European Community. They both wanted the United States to remain fully engaged in the security of Europe, a European Community with limited supranational powers and a Germany firmly anchored in the western community. This fundamental agreement meant that despite periods of tension, distrust, frustration and even a degree of Machiavellian competition, they remained colleagues if not always friends. It also suggests, perhaps, that the reasons for the disagreements may lie as much in the va-garies of personality as in diverging weltanschuungs. It was the Cold War and the umbrella of American nuclear protection, despite General Charles de Gaulle’s claims to the contrary, that enabled the British and French to indulge their disputes without jeopardising their joint alignment, and it is interesting that since the end of the Cold War, and especially since 1993, Britain and France have become openly closer. While some areas of dispute remain, there

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has been a notable convergence in others. Indeed, the prospects for Anglo-French cooperation are as bright as they have been since Britain joined the European Community (EC) in 1973. I When General de Gaulle officially re-entered French politics in June 1958, he brought with him a vast personal experience which shaped his attitudes and values towards politics generally and especially international relations.1 The most important of these experiences were undoubtedly those de Gaulle had during the Second World War when he was leader of the Free French Forces. It is clear that de Gaulle admired the United Kingdom, particularly Winston Churchill. He chose London for his first State visit as President of the Fifth Republic in April 1960 and, during this visit, in an address to the British parliament claimed that ‘this England, which keeps itself in order while practising respect for the liberties of all, inspires trust in France.’ 2 None the less, it was a trust that was tempered by decades, even centuries, of hostility and competition between the two countries. One comparatively recent, but extremely relevant, source of French suspicion with regard to the motives of British behaviour was the ‘special’ relationship which supposedly existed between the United Kingdom and the United States. There are two aspects of the Anglo-American relationship that concerned de Gaulle. The first was a degree of anti-Americanism on the part of the French President, no doubt accentuated by his exceptionally poor war-time relationship with President Franklin Roosevelt. A consistent theme of de Gaulle’s foreign policy was that Europe needed to be ‘free’ from American dominance. The second aspect of the ‘special’ relationship that concerned de Gaulle was that the United Kingdom was so dependent on the United States that it would do its bidding in Europe to ensure continued American dominance. The British too had their suspicions about both the personality and the politics of de Gaulle. It should also be noted that de Gaulle assumed office at a time when Anglo-French relations were still very poor in the wake of the Suez débâcle and mutual suspicions were quickly revealed during discussions surrounding the British proposal to associate the EC within a broader European Free Trade Area. The British plan was received with a degree of interest in the Federal Republic of Germany, but with open hostility by France. Part of the

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French objection was that the free-trade area did not focus on agriculture, but more significantly the French felt that the European Free Trade Area proposal was a deliberate attempt by the British to ‘strangle the EEC [European Economic Community] at birth.’3 The British, for their part, felt that the French were deliberately trying to worsen Britain’s economic problems.4 One of de Gaulle’s earliest acts in 1958 was to end these discussions, although the British did go on to create a truncated European Free Trade Area. Of far more interest to the British, however, were speeches and pronouncements made by de Gaulle during 1960, in which he outlined his plans for the future of Europe. What de Gaulle began to talk of was a Europe des Patries in which there would be no supranationalism; cooperation would be based on mutual agreement among governments and would be extended beyond the economic sphere. This was much more in line with British thinking on the nature of European cooperation, and Prime Minister Harold Macmillan informed de Gaulle that this made it much easier for Britain to consider membership.5 There was another aspect of de Gaulle’s Europe des Patries which, although it alarmed the British, also had the effect of making Britain more favourably disposed towards the EC. Britain was concerned that de Gaulle’s promotion of an ‘independent’ European political and military capacity would weaken links with the United States and NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organisation) which the British regarded as paramount. So, it was argued in influential British circles that the most effective way for Britain to prevent this was to become more involved in the EC. In 1961, the British announced their intention to apply for membership of the EEC and de Gaulle, although he always stressed the problems involved, seemed to welcome the British move especially as part of his plan to build an independent European political bloc. 6 De Gaulle was certainly correct about the difficulties involved in the UK joining the EEC and all of them, to varying extents, brought France and the UK into conflict. One of the most significant and long-lasting of these problems was agriculture. De Gaulle made it clear that the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) was of primary importance to France and a major rationale for France being a part of the EEC. If the United Kingdom was to join, it would have to accept the CAP even though this would mean considerable sacrifice on its part.7 The UK imported most of its food from the Commonwealth at prices much lower that those guaranteed under the CAP. So to join the CAP would mean not only higher food prices for the United Kingdom but also that it would have to switch its preferences away from Commonwealth producers to EEC producers.

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Despite this difficulty, negotiations seemed to be proceeding smoothly and de Gaulle and Macmillan had what appeared to be a very constructive meeting in the middle of 1962.8 However, by the end of 1962, de Gaulle’s attitude had changed completely and the, at least ostensible, reason for the change was the British ‘special’ relationship with the United States. In response to mounting costs, the British had been forced to abandon their nuclear Blue Streak rocket programme, but they had negotiated with President Dwight D. Elsenhower’s administration for the supply of the American Skybolt system in return for the use of Scottish bases by American nuclear submarines. However, in December 1962, shortly before Macmillan was due to have another meeting with de Gaulle, the Americans announced that Skybolt had failed in tests and was thus to be scrapped, leaving the British without a delivery system for their hydrogen bombs. Although there remains controversy about exactly what was said and what was implied when Macmillan did meet de Gaulle on 15–16 December at Rambouillet, it seems that de Gaulle was informed that the British intended to negotiate with the administration of President John F.Kennedy, Eisenhower’s successor, for the delivery of the Polaris nuclear submarine system. This they did later in December in what have become known as the Nassau Accords. De Gaulle immediately seized on this as evidence of Britain’s lack of commitment to Europe and in January 1963, in response to a planted question at a press conference, he delivered his famous veto on British membership of the EEC. His speech is worth quoting at some length as it reveals the themes that have been used to justify de Gaulle’s actions. Britain is insular, maritime, bound up by its trade, its markets, its food supplies, with the most varied and often the most distant countries. Her activity is essentially industrial and commercial not agricultural. She has in all her work, very special, very original habits and traditions. In short, the nature, structure, circumstances, peculiar to England are different from those of the other continentals…It has to be admitted that the entry of Britain will completely alter the whole set of arrangements, understandings, compensations, rules that have already been drawn up between the Six, because all those states, like England, have very important peculiarities. So it is another Common Market that we would have to consider building and one that would be presented with all the problems of its economic relations, together with a host of other states, above all with the United States.9

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Dorothy Pickles singles out the agricultural theme suggesting that ‘a good deal’ of the evidence pointed to a conclusion that ‘the strongest specific reason for the veto was the British objection to the agricultural policy of the Community’.10 While agriculture certainly plays a key rôle in explaining Anglo-French tensions within the EC for the succeeding twenty years or so, as a stand-alone explanation of de Gaulle’s veto, it is not compelling. By the time of its second application in 1967, the British Government had made it clear, albeit reluctantly, that it was prepared to comply with the Treaty of Rome, including CAP provisions, yet de Gaulle still applied his veto. Another theme commonly picked out by observers to explain the veto is the AngloAmerican ‘special’ relationship which had just so recently been reemphasised with the Nassau Accords. De Gaulle was certainly quick to appreciate that the Polaris submarine system left the United Kingdom even more dependent on the Americans for its ‘national’ nuclear deterrent, which did not fit in with his plans for a Europe independent of the United States. De Gaulle’s own plans for an independent French nuclear deterrent were also by this stage well underway, and there is no doubt that he would have welcomed some British collaboration. So a test of British European commitment, for de Gaulle, was certainly how far the British would come towards the French in the matter of nuclear weapons cooperation. However, there was also the second element of de Gaulle’s anti-Americanism: that the British would act as faithful promoter of American interests. There is some indication that one of the primary motives behind both the United Kingdom’s application and American support of this application was the desire to exert decisive Anglo-Saxon influence on the development and orientation of the EC. 11 There is no doubt that de Gaulle interpreted it as such, claiming in his Memoirs d’Espoir that’ [h]aving failed from without to prevent the birth of the Community they [the British] now planned to paralyse it from within.12 The belief that the British were not quite ‘European’, that they wanted to manipulate Europe and that they were puppets of the Americans did dictate de Gaulle’s behaviour and, indeed, that of French leaders who came after him. Nor was this view entirely without justification. However, it was also not quite the whole story. De Gaulle not only feared that Britain would manipulate and divide the EC, but he also believed that British membership would dilute French leadership, and protecting French leadership was how the British political establishment largely interpreted the veto. As F.S.Northedge points out, while Britain’s ‘separateness’ from Europe and its preference for the United States and Commonwealth

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were accurate conclusions, they were also long-standing characteristics well known to de Gaulle before he entered into negotiations with the British.13 Thus when they were brought up, they were merely pretexts or excuses. The real reason was de Gaulle’s growing realisation that British membership, increasingly supported by the other Five, would seriously upset the balance of power within the EC, and especially the balance of power between France and Germany. In other words, France’s leadership and its ability to impose its will on the others would be seriously compromised. 14 Although the negotiations surrounding British membership continued for a couple of weeks after de Gaulle’s veto in January 1963, they were eventually killed and Macmillan noted in his diary: ‘French domination in Europe is now a new, alarming fact.’15 De Gaulle’s veto undoubtedly contributed to the mistrust and even disdain in some British policy-making and academic circles towards both France and the EC.16 It was certainly some years before the British overcame the belief that their delay into Europe had been caused by ‘an intransigent French president with a personality problem’.17 The year 1964 saw the election of a Labour Government in Britain which was as pro-Commonwealth and pro-American as the previous Conservative administration, and was also constrained by its small parliamentary majority. The new Prime Minister, Harold Wilson, visited Paris in 1965 and confirmed many of de Gaulle’s views of Britain and British interests. He declared that the EC was of ‘no interest to me’ but did stress the need for Anglo-French cooperation around such projects as Concorde and the Channel tunnel.18 None the less, relations between the two countries remained strained. By 1966, partly in an effort to appease his pro-European Foreign Secretary and defeated opponent in the Labour leadership contest in 1963, George Brown, but mostly in response to increasing economic problems, Wilson agreed to another application attempt and he and Brown went on a tour of European capitals to promote British membership. Although received favourably by the other Five and by the Commission, de Gaulle made it clear that he had not changed his view and that he would not accept another application by the British. To circumvent this technicality, the British actually lodged their membership application with the Western European Union (WEU) in July 1967, but in November de Gaulle again delivered a veto. This time his reasons were ostensibly economic, but the underlying fears of British manipulation and American dominance as well as the ultimate objective of preserving French leadership within the EC were still there. In Britain too, feelings ran high with

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speculation that France was actually trying to exacerbate Britain’s precarious economic situation with strategic leaks about the devaluation of sterling. 19 However, the British may have made some attempt to try and improve relations the following year, 1968, with the appointment of Sir Christopher Soames as Ambassador to Paris. Soames was the son-in-law of Winston Churchill and a man who it was expected would be able to ‘do business’ with de Gaulle. In the event, Soames became embroiled in an affair that took Anglo-French relations to even lower levels. In February 1969 Soames attended a private lunch with de Gaulle during which it was suggested that some sort of Anglo-French dialogue should take place on the future of Europe and its institutions. Given the very poor state of recent Anglo-French relations, Soames was somewhat surprised by de Gaulle’s overture and the implications behind what he seemed to be proposing. Soames reported the conversation back to London where it was met with suspicion and hostility in the Foreign Office. The Labour Foreign Secretary, Michael Stewart, believed that de Gaulle was setting a trap to diminish British standing among the other Five, and he pressed Wilson to discuss de Gaulle’s plans with the German Chancellor, Kurt Kiesinger. The French were outraged by the British revealing what had appeared to be confidential discussions. The British responded to this by releasing ‘doctored’ transcripts of the conversation between de Gaulle and Soames which appeared to suggest that de Gaulle was aiming to replace the EC (and NATO) with a concert of great powers involving the United Kingdom, Germany, Italy and France. Needless to say, France’s EC partners were alarmed by this, but the French viewed the whole episode as once again the British trying to create trouble and division in Europe. It was now clear that not only would there be no further consideration of Britain’s EC application, which was technically still on the table, while de Gaulle was in office, but that there would be no real improvement in Anglo-French relations either. II De Gaulle resigned as President of the Fifth Republic in April 1969 in response to domestic crisis, and he was replaced by Georges Pompidou who, although ‘gaullist’ in most respects, had a much more positive attitude to British membership of the Community.20 This coincided with the entry into office in Britain in 1970, of Edward

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Heath, the Conservative Prime Minister, whose pro-European credentials were indisputable. (Heath had the added attraction for the French of being only lukewarm towards the Anglo-American ‘special’ relationship.) The two held a summit meeting in the middle of 1971, after which negotiations regarding British entry proceeded relatively smoothly. Britain became a member of the EC in 1973, and there was certainly a degree of optimism among French élites that a new Franco-British axis within the EC would result. Several reasons for the seeming change of heart on the part of the French have been offered, but two stand out. First, there is no doubt that the Federal Republic of Germany’s expanding economic power within the EC and its growing confidence in foreign policy symbolised through its Ostpolitik, caused alarm in France, and Britain was seen as a potential useful balance against increasing German power. 21 Second, Pompidou’s primary objective was to secure a permanent funding basis for the CAP which was perceived to be so vital to French national interests. However, it was clear that the tradeoff that France would have to make with the other Five in order to achieve this, was agreement on British membership. It is interesting to note here, that Pompidou insisted on the issue of CAP funding being settled before British entry and also that the British would not take part in the relevant negotiations. This undoubtedly produced a settlement that was more to France’s advantage and Britain’s disadvantage and it was to create the basis for another deterioration in Anglo-French relations after 1974. Negotiations between Britain and the Six formally opened at the end of June 1970, but given that the other Five favoured British membership, in effect these negotiations came down to bilateral talks between the British and the French which did not start well. Pompidou seemed to express all the old gaullist reservations about Britain not being ‘ready’ or European enough, and the British expressed fears that the French were deliberately trying to stall the negotiations.22 Indeed, negotiations did appear stalled in early 1971, but were reactivated by a direct meeting between Pompidou and Heath in May 1971. After this meeting, negotiations proceeded and while the difficulties surrounding the Commonwealth and sterling were not as prominent as they had been in 1962 or 1967, difficulties with the CAP and the level of Britain’s budgetary contributions were obvious. However, Heath’s basic strategy seemed to be to defer these problems until later and membership proceeded in January 1973.23 However, these problems dominated not only Anglo-French relations but also EC politics over the next ten years. In addition, further pressure was

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put on Anglo-French relations with the overt anti-EC attitude in the British Labour Party which was returned to office in 1974 and then, from 1979, by the formidable personality of Margaret Thatcher. I II The mid-1970s was a time of considerable turmoil in British domestic politics and there is no doubt that the EC and EC membership became an important part of this turmoil.24 The Labour Party not only had a precarious position in parliament to take into account, but also a leftwing faction resolutely opposed to the EC and public opinion that still clearly favoured the Commonwealth and the United States. So both Prime Minister Wilson’s and Prime Minister James Callaghan’s strategies of renegotiation of EC membership were also about domestic and party politics. It should also be said that there was some degree of sympathy for Britain’s budgetary position in the European Commission, and support for its arguments about CAP reform within Germany, but a combination of inept diplomacy on the part of Britain’s leaders and opposition from France ensured that the budget and CAP reform remained at the centre of EC politics and Anglo-French relations. The EC’s financial resources come essentially from two sources: the first is from a percentage of VAT revenue from each member state and the second is from the external tariff on agricultural produce and industrial goods. This latter source was regarded as the EC’s own resource, and thus the French were most insistent that it could not be calculated as part of any country’s national contribution. For the United Kingdom this was unacceptable as was France’s opposition to cash rebates. Eventually, a complex compromise was worked out by the Commission that enabled Harold Wilson to present it as a victory for British interests. In reality, although the French had appeared to make some important concessions, all the difficult decisions had only been deferred to be raised again by Wilson’s successor, James Callaghan, in 1978. This particularly irritated the French who were also dismayed by Callaghan’s demonstrable Atlanticist stance and his preference for global (United States) as opposed to regional (EC) approaches to the acute problems being faced in the international economy. However, yet another general election in the United Kingdom changed the political landscape for the next eleven years, and the British ‘battle’ against the EC and its perceived Franco-German hegemony was led by the Conservative Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher.

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By the end of 1979 Thatcher was making clear her demands for a British rebate in the order of £1 billion. The French, in particular, opposed this, insisting not only that any rebate should not exceed £350 million, but also that this should be accepted by the British as a full and final settlement of their claim. This dispute continued into 1980 and 1981, when the British linked their demands for rebates and restructuring of their budgetary contributions to CAP reform and a rise in the VAT revenues regarded as the Community’s own. Relations between Margaret Thatcher and President Giscard d’Estaing were also extremely poor. In her memoirs, Thatcher claims, ‘President Giscard d’Estaing was never someone to whom I warmed. I had the strong impression that the feeling was mutual.’25 There are accounts of Giscard’s patronising attitudes towards Thatcher and her relative inexperience of foreign affairs.26 There are also stories of Thatcher moving a portrait of the Duke of Wellington into the dining room of 10 Downing Street in time for a visit from Giscard.27 Indeed, Pickles reports that by 1980 Anglo-French relations were at their worst for twenty years.28 In 1981, the Socialist leader François Mitterrand became French President, but there was no immediate improvement in either relations with the United Kingdom or the budget situation within the EC. Shortly after assuming office, Mitterrand even went as far as to suggest that the best solution to the crisis within the EC would be for Britain to cease being a full member and instead negotiate some sort of ‘special’ status.29 However, the following year, Argentina invaded the Falkland Islands, and Mitterrand’s unwavering support for the British position certainly endeared him to Thatcher, if not to the British tabloids some of whom were more interested in the fact that French exocet missiles were being used by the Argentinians.30 Still, Thatcher’s respect for Mitterrand certainly made it easier to settle the budget dispute in 1984, although disagreements continued especially over agriculture. French suspicions of the Anglo-American ‘special’ relationship were also prominent during this time of heightened Cold War tension. The French were certainly concerned that the close personal relationship between Thatcher and President Ronald Reagan would create an AngloAmerican diplomatic offensive that would eclipse European Political Cooperation (EPC) which had been established by Pompidou to promote the coordination of the EC member states’ foreign policies outside the EC framework. Unquestionably, the British sometimes took a position that was closer to the American than the European line, for example, over the declaration of martial law in Poland in December

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1981.31 However, Mrs Thatcher was also willing to defy the Americans, such as over the Siberian gas pipeline and participation in the 1980 Moscow Olympics which Washington boycotted. In addition, it should be remembered that this is an area where it is easy to over-estimate both the depth and effect of Anglo-French disagreements. As well as heightened tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union, the late 1970s and early 1980s was a time of concern about American disengagement, especially nuclear disengagement from Europe.32 The French were concerned that one consequence of this would be German ‘neutralisation’ which was a most disturbing possibility in the minds of French policy-makers. Thus the French and the British found themselves together as the most vocal supporters of continued American engagement in Europe, most graphically symbolised by the deployment of American nuclear cruise and Pershing missiles on European soil. President Mitterrand even went so far as to urge the West Germans to vote for the rightwing Christian Democrats on the basis that they were more supportive of the missiles than his German socialist colleagues.33 From the British perspective, a barrier in the way of greater AngloFrench cooperation was the belief that the EC was dominated by a Franco-German cabal that left the United Kingdom isolated and without influence.34 Britain’s lone stance in relation to the budget and the CAP reinforced this, as did fears of the EC developing in ways not favoured by the British. So from around 1984, the British changed their approach towards Europe and without doubt became more adept at playing the EC ‘game’ and using EC language. One manifestation of this new approach was that the British agreed to a French proposal to revive the defunct WEU (Western European Union). However, the British saw this as a way to try and break the Franco-German stranglehold on Europe, rather than as an evolution in European cooperation and certainly not integration.35 This was to cause more problems when the Cold War ended as will be discussed below. What is of more interest here, is the reform proposals that the British came up with for the EC itself. IV At the 1984 Fontainebleau Summit, as well as settling their budgetary dispute, the British tabled a proposal for the future of the development of Europe. 36 Although this proposal made some concessions to Britain’s EC partners, it none the less reflected the

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Thatcher Government’s free-market principles which conflicted with those of the socialist French President. The preference of most of Britain’s partners, led by France, was to take the EC forward through institutional reform and a committee of personal representatives of Heads of State and Government was set up to look into the issue. This committee eventually published the Dooge Report, and its recommendations were heavily influenced by the French representative, Maurice Faure. 37 The British response was that institutional reform was unnecessary and that the most appropriate way to proceed was to develop a true single market. In this the British were aided by the publication of the Cockfield Report which advocated both a timetable and specific proposals for a single market. The issues raised by the Cockfield Report were to be discussed at the Milan Summit in June 1985. However, on the eve of this summit the French and Germans published their ‘Draft Treaty on European Union’. Its late circulation caused some offence, but its content was strikingly similar to the British position, and thus there was very little in it to which the British could object. This caused some speculation that Mitterrand was trying to revive an idea reminiscent of de Gaulle and create a Franco-German-British axis to run the EC. However, largely for domestic political reasons of its own, the Italian presidency of the EC called for an Intergovernmental Conference (IGC) on the issue of revising the Treaty of Rome to which the British did object. British strategy at the IGC, which was held at the end of 1985, was deliberately much less confrontational than had become customary under the Thatcher administration. The result of this, which was probably the British intention, was to force the French in particular to voice preferences that were similar to Britain’s, especially in relation to a limited extension in the scope of majority voting and only a very modest increase in powers for the European Parliament. Both these things, along with emphasis on the single market, were the centrepieces of the resulting Single European Act. So once again, the British and French showed themselves to have core views that were very similar, although they remained opposed on some issues, and undoubtedly had very different techniques and tactics for articulating and achieving their goals. Outside the EC, familiar areas of disagreement between the British and French could be seen. The most notable was the American decision to bomb Libya in April 1986, in retaliation for a terrorist bomb in Berlin which had killed American service personnel, which the British supported and the French did not. There was also French concern that

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the amicable personal relationship between Thatcher and the Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, when combined with the good relationship between Thatcher and Reagan, would further undermine European political cooperation. All in all though, 1985 to 1987 was a reasonably quiet and ‘normal’ time in Anglo-French relations. By 1988, however, familiar quarrels had reemerged over CAP reform and economic and monetary union (EMU). Thatcher’s vitriolic encounters with the French President of the European Commission, Jacques Delors, did not ease the situation. But by the middle of 1989, these problems had to take a back seat as the Cold War rapidly ended and, more specifically, the Berlin Wall rapidly crumbled. V The end of the Cold War saw Britain and France thrown together in opposition to the United States and, at times, other NATO and EU (European Union) allies in two important areas: German reunification and the rôle of nuclear weapons in a post-Cold War environment. Also, since 1994, the French and British have converged their positions somewhat in relation to two other key areas of European security where they had previously disagreed— the rôle of the United States and the relationship between Europe’s various institutions. The key explanatory factor here is the similar conclusions that both have drawn from their unhappy early experiences in Bosnia. In addition, there have been changes in government in both countries. France is now led by the relatively pro-American Jacques Chirac, even if he is somewhat constrained by the current Socialist National Assembly. In Britain, eighteen years of Conservative rule ended in May 1997 when the new Labour Administration of Tony Blair took office. While the Labour Government has maintained some of its predecessor’s differences of opinion with the EU and the French, its more constructive attitude makes managing these differences easier and not so subject to the whims of personality. All this points to a period of reasonably good Anglo-French relations. However, when the Cold War ended Margaret Thatcher was still in office and she was clearly concerned about one of the first manifestations of this development, namely, German reunification. According to the British Prime Minister, President Mitterrand was even more concerned than she was, and, indeed, he had suggested that it was ‘a moment of great danger’ which called, as in the past,

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for a special relationship between the two countries.38 While some East European countries and the Soviet Union also expressed concern about German reunification, the United States did not, which left the British and French to try and conduct their own diplomatic offensives. 39 Initially, both tried to slow down the process of reunification but as soon as it became clear that reunification would proceed, differences in the French and British approaches appeared. For Mitterrand, the solution to this new German problem was to strengthen the mechanisms and institutions of European integration.40 For the Thatcher administration, however, this was anathema as Gernany would inevitably dominate any integrated organisation with supranational characteristics. The Thatcher preference was for a more traditional solution: Only the military and political engagement of the United States in Europe and close relations between the other two strongest sovereign states in Europe—Britain and France—are sufficient to balance German power: and nothing of the sort would be possible within a European superstate.41 Despite these differences, by early 1990 British and French officials were working on proposals for closer Anglo-French cooperation. One of the areas where this closer cooperation was most visible was in nuclear weapons collaboration. Although there had been virtually no nuclear collaboration between the French and the British since de Gaulle’s and Macmillan’s meeting in 1962, the two countries did have significant nuclear interests in common, including defending the possession of nationally ‘independent’ nuclear weapons, and having those weapons excluded from arms control negotiations between the two superpowers.42 At the end of the Cold War they found themselves united in opposition to revisions in NATO strategy which declared nuclear weapons as ‘weapons of last resort’. This, according to Mitterrand, was a concept that France did not share, while Thatcher called it a step towards the fatal position of ‘no first use of nuclear weapons’.43 In October 1992, the British and French established the Joint Nuclear Weapons Commission which was then made permanent by the July 1993 Anglo-French Summit. Its major functions are to coordinate positions in matters of strategic concepts and on issues of arms control and disarmament. 44 A further demonstration of mutual support in the nuclear realm came in 1995 when the French resumed nuclear testing in the South Pacific after a moratorium of

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three years. Here the British Prime Minister, John Major, was the only leader not to express some degree of condemnation or reservation. Chancellor Kohl of Germany, for example, although cautious about what he said in public, definitely disagreed with Chirac.45 The British Prime Minister maintained his supportive stance during a very heated and difficult meeting of Commonwealth Heads of Government in the South Pacific and despite great pressure from Australia and New Zealand among others. Despite this enhanced nuclear cooperation, some differences over nuclear weapons remained which relate to two further areas where British and French disagreements were very evident immediately after the Cold War—the rôle of the United States and the relationship between various European institutions. Basically, the French continued to criticise American dominance of NATO and questioned the reliability of the American nuclear guarantee. Their position was that Europe should develop its own autonomous defence and security capability around the French (and possibly British) nuclear deterrent and the WEU which would be brought under the auspices of the EU.46 The British position was that an American military and nuclear presence in Europe remained essential and that what would undermine credibility the most was the development of a European potential outside NATO. Thus while the British had no problem with greater European cooperation within the WEU, this was to be done in conjunction with NATO and certainly not under the auspices of the EU.47 In most respects, the Treaty on European Union was a bit of a fudge between the two positions where the WEU was named as the defence component of the EU but NATO was named as the primary European security institution.48 However, since the signing of the Maastricht Treaty in December 1991, the British and the French have been heavily involved in the former Yugoslavia, especially Bosnia, and their shared experiences have brought them closer still. By the end of 1994, despite the presence of quite large numbers of British and French ground forces, it was clear that there could be no externally negotiated or enforced settlement without the United States and the explicit might of NATO. This realisation certainly prompted a degree of reassessment on the parts of both the British and the French as regards the rôle of the United States and NATO and the European security architecture. It is also important to recognise the enhanced sense of partnership that was mustered by the experiences on the ground in Bosnia. As the former British Foreign Secretary and Co-Chair of the international conference on the former Yugoslavia, David Owen, expresses it,

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Britain’s defence partnership on the ground with France in Bosnia, as I witnessed, has left both armed forces with considerable mutual respect. The far closer working relationship between the Foreign Office and the Quai d’Orsay established in 1991 with the break-up of Yugoslavia has meant that the old scars from the failed collaboration over Suez in 1956 have largely healed. The French are readier than ever before to act together on security matters.49 As regards the United States, the French appear to have accepted the reality of American and NATO dominance and the British appear to have recognised the limitations and potential dangers involved in this dominance. This has seen the French move much closer to NATO, including hosting NATO exercises on French territory and allowing French forces to come under operational NATO command in Bosnia.50 Despite the summer 1997 announcement that France would not fully re-enter NATO’s integrated military structure, relations between France and NATO and France and the United States are as good as they have been since 1958. While there are a number of reasons for this, including a new pro-American French President, continuing fear of American disengagement and a distinct lack of enthusiasm for French European defence plans among their EU partners, the end result of NATO primacy is obviously in accord with British preferences. However, there is also some evidence of the British at least partially accepting France’s argument about the need to reduce European dependence on the United States. This was after Bosnia so clearly revealed that not only could the Europeans and Americans have divergent interests, but also that the Europeans were pretty much impotent in the face of Washington’s indifference, never mind potential American opposition.51 Although NATO’s Combined Joint Task Force concept is designed to alleviate this problem by allowing the Europeans access to NATO resources, it has not stopped the British stepping up their defence and security cooperation with other Europeans which is something very much in accord with French preferences.52 In terms of how the various European institutions should relate to each other and a general security architecture, the differences between the British and the French, for the moment at least, are not regarded as serious enough to warrant straining the overall relationship. In the run-up to the 1996 Intergovernmental Conference (IGC) and the Treaty of Amsterdam, the French remained the most vocal proponents of incorporating the WEU into the EU and Britain was the most vocal

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supporter of continued WEU autonomy.53 In the event, the IGC did not recommend any change to the status of the WEU, but the WEU remains constrained more by its lack of operational resources.54 While the British remain opposed to duplicating NATO resources, there has none the less been some moves to bolster the operational resources of the WEU such as designating the United Kingdom/Netherlands Amphibious Force as forces answerable to the WEU. Of course, it is always possible that the differences on defence and security issues are simply overshadowed by French domestic crises and especially the drive to meet the criteria for the single currency. Again, while the French and British have diffferent views on the single currency and its management, it seems that they have decided these are differences that can be lived with. Even though there remains suspicion in French circles about British commitment to Europe and frustration in British circles about the action of French farmers and lorry drivers, the relationship between the two countries, within and without the EU, is better than at any point since 1958. The ending of the Cold War has brought a new context to Franco-British relations, if not completely new objectives. The two countries remain agreed on the need for continued American engagement in European security and concerned about the implications of any possible American withdrawal or downgrading of European issues in Washington. They remain disagreed over many aspects of EU development, but fundamentally committed to a successful and dynamic EU which also promotes their own national interests. Both believe in a Germany firmly integrated in NATO and the EU, although it is unlikely that Britain will replace Germany as the centre-piece of French foreign policy.55 To conclude: both countries still derive considerable comfort from the knowledge that they continue to have sufficient common interests that they can rely on each other in ‘moments of danger’ whether this be from American withdrawal or German resurgence or some other unforeseen event. Notes 1

See A. Werth, De Gaulle a Political Biography, London, Penguin, 1965; A. Crawley, De Gaulle, London, Collins, 1969; J.Lacouture, De Gaulle: The Ruler 1945–1970, London, Harper Collins, 1992. Several of de Gaulle’s own works have been translated into English, including War Memories: Volume I, The Call to Honour 1940–1942, London, Collins, 1955; War Memories: Volume II, Unity 1942–1944, London, Weidenfeld

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2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11

12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22

23

341

and Nicolson, 1960; War Memories: Volume III, Salvation 1944–1946, London, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1960; The Edge of the Sword, London, Faber and Faber, 1960. C. de Gaulle, Discours et Messages, Tome III, Paris, Plon, 1970, p. 181. F.S.Northedge, Descent from Power: British Foreign Policy 1945–1973, London, Allen and Unwin, 1974, p. 335. Ibid., p. 335. For a detailed review of Macmillan’s negotiations with de Gaulle see A. Home, Macmillan, 1957–1986: Volume II of the Official Biography, London, Macmillan, 1989, chs 11 and 15. D.Sanders, Losing an Empire, Finding a Role: British Foreign Policy since 1945, London, Macmillan, 1990, p. 139. See D.Pickles, The Government and Politics of France, Volume II, London, Methuen, 1973, pp. 244–5. For a detailed discussion of the negotiations surrounding British entry see M.Camps, Britain and the European Community, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1964. Lacouture, De Gaulle, p. 358; E.Barker, The Common Market, London, Hove, 1976, p. 70. Pickles, Government and Politics of France, II, p. 247. See Home, Macmillan, II, p. 295; S. George, An Awkward partner: Britain in the European Community, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1992, pp. 39–40. There is the additional factor of British belief in their own diplomatic superiority. See A.J.Nicholls, ‘Britain and the EC: the historical background’ in S.Bulmer, S.George and A.Scott (eds), The United Kingdom and EC Membership Evaluated, London, Pinter, 1992, pp. 5–7. C. de Gaulle, Memoirs d’Espoir, Paris, Plon, 1970, p. 188. Northedge, Descent from Power, p. 346. See H.Macmillan, Memoirs, Volume VI: At the End of the Day, London, Macmillan, 1973, p. 367. H.Macmillan, Memoirs, Volume VII: At the End of the Year, London, Macmillan, 1973, p. 367. E.g. N.Beloff, The General Says No, London, Penguin, 1963. Sanders, Losing an Empire, p. 166. Lacouture, De Gaulle, p. 360. A.Cairncross, ‘From the treasury diaries of Sir Alec Cairncross: four Anglo-French conflicts, 1967–68’, Contemporary European History, 1997, vol. 6, pp. 123–5. For the events leading up to de Gaulle’s resignation see P.Seale and M. McConville, French Revolution 1968, London, Penguin, 1968 and Lacouture, De Gaulle, chs 37 and 38. See R.Gildea, France since 1945, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1996, p. 211; S.J.Nuttall, European Political Cooperation, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1992, pp. 47–8. See Gildea, France since 1945, p. 211; Pickles, Government and Politics of France II, pp. 257–8; U.Kitzinger, Diplomacy and Persuasion: How Britain Joined the Common Market, London, Thames and Hudson, 1973, chs 2–5. George, Awkward Partner, p. 56.

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25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32

33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49

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See A.Benn, Against the Tide: The Diaries 1973–1976, London, Hutchinson, 1989; D.Coates, Labour in Power? A Study of the Labour Government 1974–1979, London, Longman, 1980; D.Healey, The Time of My Life, London, Michael Joseph, 1989. M.Thatcher, The Downing Street Years, London, Harper Collins, 1993, p. 70. George, Awkward Partner, p. 149. J.Naughtie, ‘The Tunnel’, BBC, 18 January 1998. See also Thatcher, Downing Street Years, p. 24. D.Pickles, Problems of Contemporary French Politics, London, Methuen, 1982, p. 27. George, Awkward Partner, p. 150. Thatcher, Downing Street Years, p. 182. S.Bulmer and G.Edwards, ‘Foreign and security policy’ in Bulmer et al., United Kingdom and EC Membership, p. 149. See L.Freeman, ‘The Atlantic crisis’, International Affairs, 1982, vol. 58; W.F.Hanrieder, ‘Strategic defence and the German-American security connection’, Journal of International Affairs, 1988, vol. 41; D.Yost, ‘Western Europe and the US strategic defence intitiative’, Journal of International Affairs, 1988, vol. 41. See J.Wright, ‘France and European security’, European Security, 1993, vol. 2. See Thatcher, Downing Street Years, pp. 727–8, 759–63, 814–15; P.M. H. Bell, Britain and France 1940–1994: The Long Separation, London, Longman, 1997, pp. 202–3, 243–4. Bulmer and Edwards, ‘Foreign and security policy’, p. 152. HM Government, ‘Europe-the future’, Journal of Common Market Studies, 1984, vol. 23. George, Awkward Partner, p. 178. Thatcher, Downing Street Years, pp. 792, 796. See also comments of French political scientist, Alfred Grosser in Die Welt, 30 October 1989. Bell, Britain and France, p. 273; D.Moisi and D.Mertes, ‘Europe’s map, compass and horizon’, Foreign Affairs, 1995, vol. 74. See Christian Science Monitor, 30 November 1989, Le Monde, 24 November 1989 and Guardian Weekly, 19 November 1989. Thatcher, Downing Stret Years, p. 791. K.Booth, ‘Disarmament and arms control’ in J.Baylis, K.Booth, J. Garnett and P.Williams (eds), Contemporary Strategy, Volume I, New York, Holmes and Meier, 1987, p. 171. Guardian Weekly, 15 July 1990; Thatcher, Downing Street Years, p. 811. See S.Croft, ‘European integration, nuclear deterrence and FrancoBritish nuclear cooperation’, International Affairs, 1996, vol. 74. Ibid., pp. 782–3. Wright, ‘France and European security’. See A.J.K.Bailes, ‘European defence and security: the role of NATO, WEU and EU’, Security Dialogue, 1996, vol. 27. See W.Nicoll and T.Salmon, Understanding the New European Community, London, Prentice Hall/Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1994, pp. 207–11. The Economist, 24 January 1998.

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50 51 52

53 54 55

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R.Grant, ‘France’s new relationship with NATO’, Survival, 1996, vol. 38. See P.Neville-Jones, ‘Dayton, IFOR and alliance relations in Bosnia’, Survival, 1996–7, vol. 38. On Combined Joint Task Forces see C.Barry, ‘NATO’s combined joint task forces in theory and practice’, Survival, 1996, vol. 38. On increased British-European defence collaboration see The Times, 3 September 1996; The Financial Times, 12 November 1996; Croft, ‘European integration’. Western European Union, W E U Contribution to the European Intergovernmental Conference of 1996, WEU Council of Ministers, no. 1492, Madrid, 14 November 1995. The European, 19–25June 1997. See Bell, Britain and France, pp. 275, 296.

Index

Abyssinian crisis (1935–1936) 182–4 Acheson, Dean 272, 276 Adenauer, Konrad 274, 282, 295 Africa 318 and ‘Western Union’ 253, 255, 273 colonial reform 306–8 see also North Africa Agadir crisis (1911) 23–5, 43–4, 61 agriculture 326, 328 see also CAP Algeciras conference (1906) 19, 21, Algeria 312, 313, 314–16, 317, 318 54 Allied Military Government of Occupied Territories (AMGOT) 238 Alphand, Hervé 270, 271 America see United States of America Amery, Leo 39, 132, 153 Anglo-French entente agreement (1904) 11, 16, 37, 50, 51 see also entente cordiale Anglo-French guarantee treaty (1919) 104–16, 123, 144, 146 Anglo- German Declaration (1938) 192 Anglo- German Naval Agreement (1935) 184 Anglo-Russian Convention (1907) 42 appeasement (1935–1938) 181, 182, 184, 185, 190, 191–2, 195 colonial 185–8

Arab states 310, 311, 317 see also Middle East; North Africa army British in World War I 73–4 British and French in World War I 83 French in World War II 235–6 Asquith, Herbert 23, 62, 72, 77, 78 Attaturk, Kemal 125 Auriol, Vincent 209, 210 Austria, annexation (1938) 190, 191 Austria-Hungary 26, 27, 42, 120 Baghdad Pact (1955) 312 Baghdad Railway 15 Baldwin, Stanley 131, 132, 133, 175 Balfour, Arthur 15–16, 90 and Anglo-French entente (1904–1914) 38–9, 45 in opposition and foreign policy 37, 40, 41–2, 42, 43, 46 and World War I 46, 79 and Russia 97 and post-war relations 107, 121–2, 126, 128–9, 132 and League of Nations 145, 149 Balkans campaign (1915) 76–7, 78 Bank of England and French economic crisis (1936–1939) 206–7, 211, 212, 214, 216 Bank of France 212, 214, 216 Barthou, Louis 175, 176 Battle of France (1940) 225 Baudouin, Paul 227

346

Index

Beeley, Harold 316 B EF see British Expeditionary Force Belgium 132, 206 World War I 72, 73 Franco-Belgian occupation of the Ruhr 129–30, 150 Berlin crisis (1948–1949) 259 Berthelot, General Henri 97 Berthelot, Philippe 90 Bertie, Sir Francis and Anglo-French entente 17, 18, 22, 23, 26 and Spain 53–4, 56, 57, 62, 66 and Joseph Caillaux 63–4, 75 Bevin, Ernest and ‘Western Union’ 244–5, 248, 253–5, 256, 257, 258–9, 261, 266, 267, 269 and France 246, 247, 248, 249, 254 and Germany 250 and North Atlantic Treaty 261 and European economy 269, 270, 272, 276 and colonies 303, 306, 310 Bidault, Georges 274, 289 and ‘Western Union’ 247, 248, 251, 252, 266, 267 proposals for a European Assembly 268, 269 and colonies 306 Billy, Robert de 65 Birkenhead, Lord 132 Blum, Léon 181, 191, 208, 212, 215, 252 and colonial appeasement 186 and Spanish Civil War 189 and Czech crisis 191 and Soviet Union 196 and French economy 208, 210, 211, 212 Bolsheviks 92–3, 94, 95, 96, 97, 98, 99, 100 Bonnet, Georges 212 and Czech crisis 191, 192, 195 and French economy 212–13, 214 and Soviet Union 196, 197, 198 Borden, Sir Robert 148 Bosnia 338–9

Bourgeois, Léon 141, 142 Bourges-Maunoury, Maurice 312 Brest-Litovsk Treaty (1918) 93 Briand, Aristide 83, 128, 132, 133, 147 and World War I 82, 121 and post-war relations 128, 132, 133, 146, 152 Britain foreign policy and French entente before World War I 11–28 and France and Spain (1898–1914) 50–67 Conservative party and entente cordial (1905–1914) 37–47 World War I 71–85 and France and Russia (1918–1920) 89–101 Anglo-French guarantee treaty (1919) 104–16 Anglo-French relations (1919–1925) 120–34 and France and League of Nations in 1920s 139–55 Anglo-French relations (1929–1934) 158–77 Anglo-French relations (1935–1939) 180–99 and French economic crisis (1936–1939) 206–1 World War II 223–41 foreign policy and France (1945–1949) 244–61 failure of new entente (1947–1950) 264–78 Anglo-French relations (1951–1954) 280–97 imperial relations (1954–1962) 301–20 Anglo-French relations (1958–1998) 324–40 British Expeditionary Force (BEF) World War I 73–4, 79 World War I I 224, 225 Bruce Lockhart, Robert 93, 94 Brüning, Heinrich 166, 167 Brussels Pact (1948) 255, 257, 265, 267 adaptation of 291, 292–5

Index Buchanan, Sir George 94 Bullitt Mission (1919) 97 Bülow, Bernhard von 18, 19 Bunsen, Sir Maurice de 55, 60, 61 Byrnes, James 247 Cadogan, Sir Alexander 170 Caillaux, Joseph 25, 61, 62–4, 64, 75 Calais 81 Calais Conference (1917) 81 Callaghan, James 332 Cambon, Jules 57 and Spain 51, 53, 55, 56, 57, 58, 60 and Agadir crisis 24, 61 Cambon, Paul 122 and Anglo-French relations 14, 15, 16, 19, 26, 38, 52 and Spain 52, 56, 58, 60 and World War I 78, 79 Campbell, Sir Ronald 227 Canada 148, 268 Canalejas, José 59 CAP (Common Agricultural Policy) 326, 331, 332 Casablanca Conference (1943) 235 Cecil, Lord Robert 131, 142, 142–3, 150 CFM see Council of Foreign Ministers CGT (Conféderation Générale du Travail) 208 Chamberlain, Austen 42, 44, 46 and post-war relations 124, 131, 132, 133, 134, 153 Chamberlain, Joseph 14, 15, 39 Chamberlain, Neville and appeasement 184, 187, 187–8, 192 and Czech crisis 190–1, 192 and Soviet Union 197, 198 and French economic crisis 210–11, 216 Channel tunnel 38, 105, 107, 125–6 Chatfield, Sir Ernle 182 Chautemps, Camille 187, 212, 214 China 13, 280, 302, 304 Chirac, Jacques 336 Churchill, Sir Winston and naval talks 26

347

and Russia 90, 97, 101 and postwar relations 124, 125, 132, 133 and World War I I 224, 225, 226, 228, 229, 230–1, 232–3, 238 and de Gaulle 233, 234–5, 235, 236, 237, 239–40, 246 and France 290, 294, 297, 304 Clemenceau, Georges 85, 90, 91,105 and Germany 57 and Russia 93, 97, 98, 100 and post-war relations 104, 105, 106–7, 107–8, 109–15, 144, 159 and League of Nations 141, 142, 144 Clerk, Sir George 208 Cobbold, Cameron Fromanteel 208, 210, 212, 213, 214, 215, 217, 218 Cockfield Report (1985) 335 Cold War 324, 333, 336 Colombo Plan (1950) 303 colonies 13 and Anglo-French relations before 1904 13, 15 and Anglo-French entente (1904) 16, 17, 18, 38 Anglo- German relations and 26 and post-World War I relations 127 and appeasement 185–8 World War I I 232 Anglo-French imperial relations 301–20 and ‘Western Union’ 253–4, 255, 272–3 Committee of National Liberation 235, 236, 237, 238 Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) 326, 331, 332 Commonwealth 304, 326 see also colonies Communauté 308, 309 communism 181, 255 in France after World War I I 249, 251–2, 256, 266 South East Asia 302, 303 see also Russia; Soviet Union Conféderation Générale du Travail (CGT) 208

348

Index

Conservative party 36–7 and entente cordiale (1905– 1914) 37–47 Coolidge Naval Conference (1927) 161 Corbin, Charles 174 Cot, Pierre 196 Council of Europe 269 Council of Foreign Ministers (CFM) 1945 meeting 246, 249 1947 meeting 254, 256, 267 Cromer, Earl of 15 Crowe, Sir Eyre 23, 65, 151 Cruppi, Jean 61 Curzon, Lord George 90, 129, 132, 133, 134 and Russia 42, 97 and post-war relations 105, 120, 121, 124, 127, 128, 129, 131, 132, 133, 134 and League of Nations 146 customs unions German-Austrian (1931) 162– 3 post-World War I I proposals 245, 269, 270, 271, 271–2 Cyprus 317, 318 Czech legion revolt (1918) 94, 95 Czechoslovakian crisis (1938) 190–5, 196 Daladier, Edouard 169, 176, 191, 215 and Czech crisis 191, 192, 195 and rearmament 194 and Soviet Union 196, 197, 198 and French economy 215, 216 Darlan, Admiral François 231, 232–3 Dawes committee 129, 130, 150 de Billy, Robert 65 de Bunsen, Sir Maurice 55, 60, 61, 65 de Gaulle, General Charles 237, 249, 325, 330 World War I I 231, 233–5, 235, 238, 248 and government of France 234, 236, 238 and Churchill 234, 236, 239–40, 246 and Britain post-war 248, 266

and French colonies 306, 308, 309, 317, 318, 318–19 and EC and Britain 325–30 de Latour, General Boyer 314 de St Aulaire, Comte 91 de Selves, Justin 61, 63, 64 Debo, Richard 91, 91–2 decolonisation 301, 318, 319 Defferre, Gaston 307 Delbos, Yvon 187, 189 Delcassé, Théophile 19, 38, 54 and Morocco 14, 15 and Spain 51, 52 and World War I 79 Delors, Jacques 336 Denikin, General Anton Ivanovich 96, 98 Depression (1930s) 162–3, 205 Derby, Lord 76, 124 devaluation of the franc (1930s) 206, 207–8, 209, 210, 213, 215 Dien Bien Phu siege 288, 305 disarmament talks after World War I 150, 158–77 Dominions 304 see also colonies Dooge Report (1985) 335 Doumenc, General Joseph 197, 198 Dowding, Sir Hugh 225 Drax, Admiral Reginald 198 Drummond, Sir Eric 145 Duff Cooper, Alfred 245, 252 Dulles, John Foster 288, 289, 290, 291, 305, 313, 316 Dunkirk evacuation (1940) 224–5 Dunkirk, Treaty of (1947) 251, 252–3, 266, 277 Durand, Sir Henry Mortimer 52 Eastern Telegraph Company 55 EC (European Community) 324, 325–6, 332 colonies and 309 Britain’s membership applications 329–31 Britain’s renegotiation of membership 332–3 foreign policies 333–4 proposed reforms 334–5 see also EU

Index Economic Council (1947) 273–4 economics French economic crisis in 1930s 205–19 post-World War II 269–73, 274, 275, 276, 319 E DC (European Defence Community) 280–2, 284–6, 287– 8, 290, 291, 296 Eden, Anthony 184, 297 and inter-war disarmament talks 170 and appeasement 185, 186, 187–8 and Spanish Civil War 196 and World War I I 237 and Anglo-French relations 246, 282–3 and ED C 282, 284–5, 285–6, 287, 288, 296 and Geneva Conference 288– 9, 290, 295, 305 and NATO and Brussels Pact adaptation 290, 291–4, 295–6, 296–7 Edward VI I, King 12 E EC see EC Egypt 13, 15, 16, 312, 313, 317 Eisenhower, Dwight 288, 313 Eliot, Sir Charles 95 empire see colonies entente agreement (1904) 11, 16, 37, 50, 51 entente cordiale (1904–1914) 11, 16, 16–28, 72 Conservative Party and 37–47 Spain and 50–67 E PC (European Political Cooperation) 333 Esher, Lord 75 Etat Français see Vichy government E U (European Union) 275, 336, 338, 340 see also EC Europe des Patries 326 European Assembly, proposals for 268–9, 271 European Community see EC European Defence Community see E DC

349

European Economic Community see EC European Free Trade Area 325–6 European Political Cooperation (EP C) 333 European Union see E U Evian Accords (1962) 318 Faure, Maurice 313–14, 335 Federal Republic of Germany see West Germany Feltern und Guilleaume telegraph company 55 Ferry, Jules 13 FFI (Forces Francaises de l’Intérieur) 236 finance see economics First World War see World War I Flandin, Pierre-Etienne 184–5, 207 Foch, Marshal Ferdinand 82, 97, 106, 110, 144 Forces Francaises de l’Intérieur (FF I) 236 foreign ministers, French 90 Foreign Office, British and French economic crisis (1936–1939) 214, 215, 217 Lloyd George and 90 Fountainebleau Summit (1984) 334–5 Fournier, Robert 213 franc, devaluations of 206, 207–8, 209, 210, 213, 215 France and British foreign policy before World War I 11–28 and Britain and Spain (1898– 1914) 50–67 entente cordiale and the Conservative Party (1905–1914) 37–47 World War I 71–85 and Britain and Russia (1918–1920) 89–101 Anglo-French guarantee treaty (1919) 104–16 Anglo-French relations (1919–1925) 120–34 and Britain and League of Nations in 1920s 139–55

350

Index

France—continued Anglo-French relations (1929–1934) 158–77 Anglo-French relations (1935–1939) 180–99 econcomic crisis (1936–1939) 205–19 World War I I 223–41 and Britain’s foreign policy (1945–1949) 244–61 failure of new entente (1947–1950) 264–78 Anglo-French relations (1951–1954) 280–97 imperial relations (1954–1962) 301–20 Anglo-French relations (1958– 1998) 324–40 Franchet d’Espérey, General 97 Franco, General Francisco 188 Franco-Italian Bases of Agreement (1931) 162 Franco-Soviet Pact (1935) 195–6 Franco-Spanish convention (1904) 50, 52–3, 63 Franklin-Bouillon, Henri 125 Free France movement World War I I 231, 232, 233–4, 236 and French government 235, 236, 237 French, Sir John 75, 78, 79–80, 82, 82–3, 83 French Union 306, 307 Gamelin, General Maurice 164, 191, 193, 196 Geneva Conference (1954) 288–90, 296, 305 Geneva Disarmament Conference (1932–4) 163–76, 177 Geneva Protocol (1924) 131, 150–2 Genoa conference (1922) 128 Geoffray, Léon 60, 61 Germany and Britain 13–14, 14–15, 15–16, 17, 18, 25–6, 27, 42–3 navy 53 and Anglo-French entente 19, 20, 21, 22–3, 23, 27, 39

and Morocco 18, 23–4, 53, 54, 59, 61, 65 and disarmament talks 159, 160, 165, 166–7, 168, 169, 172, 173–4, 175, 176, 177 and Spain 54, 55–6, 57, 58, 59 World War I 73, 84 and Russia 92, 92–3 post-World War I 105, 112, 113, 120, 125, 126, 128–9, 131–2, 132, 139, 152 inter-war years 162–3, 163, 169, 176–7 and appeasement 184, 185, 186–7, 188, 190, 191 and Spanish Civil War 188 and Czechslovakia 190–3, 195 World War I I 224, 225, 227–8, 231, 231–2 post-World War I I 248–9, 250, 266, 273–6 reunification 336–7 see also West Germany Ghana 309 Gibraltar 18, 51, 52, 54, 56–7, 57 Giraud, General Henri 235 Giscard d’Estaing, President 333 Gold Bloc 206 Gorbachev, Mikhail 336 Göring, Hermann 187 Gort, Lord 193, 224 Gouin, Félix 251 Grandval, Gilbert 314 Graves, Hubert 284 Grey, Sir Edward 39 and Anglo-French entente 16, 19–21, 23, 24, 26–7, 28, 39–40, 45, 54–5, 62 and Germany 20–1, 25–6, 27, 55–6 and the Opposition 40–1 and Russia 42 and Liberal radicals 43, 44 and World War I 46–7, 72 and Spain 55, 56, 57, 58, 59, 62, 63 Grigorev, Nikifor 96 Guinea 308, 309 Hafid, Moulay 60

Index Hague Congress (1948) 268–9 Haig, Field Marshal Douglas 75, 76, 80, 81, 82, 84 Haldane, R.B. 20, 25, 26 Halifax, Lord 187, 191, 195, 197, 198 Hankey, Sir Maurice 108, 123, 145 Hardinge, Sir Charles 22, 56, 57–8, 124, 125–6, 128 Harvey, Oliver 251 Heath, Edward 330–1, 331 Henderson, Arthur 123, 151, 161, 162, 163 Henderson, Nevile 188 Herriot, Edouard 130–1, 150, 151, 163, 168, 169, 176 Hitler, Adolf 169, 172, 185 and inter-war disarmament talks 173, 174 and colonial revision 186, 187, 188 and Czechoslovakia 191, 192 and Soviet Union 198 and World War I I 227 Hoare, Sir Samuel 132, 183 Hoare-Laval Plan (1935) 183–4 Home, Lord 318 Hurst, Cecil 108 Hymans, Paul 142 Indo- China war (1946–1954) 280, 281, 283–4, 286, 288–90, 303–5 Intergovermental Conferences (IGCs) (1985) 335 (1996) 339–40 International Blockade Committee (1921) 149 Ironside, General Edmund 193 Ismay, General Hastings 193 Israel 311, 312, 317 Italy 26, 27, 120 and inter-war disarmament talks 161, 162, 173 and Abyssinian crisis 182–3, 184 and Spanish Civil War 188 World War I I 228 Izvolsky, Alexandre 58 Janin, General Maurice 95 Japan 14, 16, 92, 161 Joffre, General Joseph 75, 78, 79, 80

351

Joint Nuclear Weapons Commission 337 Kellogg Pact (1928) 170 Kerensky, Alexander 92 Kerr, Philip 123, 145 Kiderlen-Waechter, Alfred von 24, 61 Kitchener, Lord 72, 75, 79, 80, 84 Knox, Major-General Alfred 95 Koenig, General Pierre 233, 236 Korean War (1950–1953) 280 Labour party 123 and Europe 329, 332, 336 language barrier in World War I 83 Laniel, Joseph 288 Lanrezac, General 80, 83 Lansdowne, Lord 12, 37 and Anglo-French entente 15, 16, 18, 19, 37–8, 45 and Germany 13, 13–14, 14–15, 16, 19 in opposition 42, 43–4, 46 and Spain 52 Larnaude, Ferdinand 142 Lattre de Tassigny, General Jean de 268, 304 Laval, Pierre 184 and Abyssinian crisis 182, 183, 184 and economic crisis 205–6 and World War I I 231, 232 Law, Bonar 43–4, 44, 45–6, 46 League of Nations 131, 132, 139–55 and disarmament talks 159, 160, 164–5 and Abyssinian crisis 182 League of Nations Union, British 145, 154 League society, French 154 Lebanon 232, 236 Léger, Alexis 189, 196 Lejeune, Max 312 Lenin, Vladimir Ilich 92, 125 Levant 236, 246, 247 Liberal Party 36, 43 Liberation of France (1944) 240 Libya 317, 335 Lister, Reginald 65

352

Index

Litvinov, Maxim 97 Lloyd George, David 85, 89–90, 90, 91, 134 and Germany 24, 25 and World War I 76, 78, 81, 82, 121 and Russia 97, 98, 99, 100 and post-war relations 104, 105, 106–7, 107–8, 109, 112, 127–8, 133, 146 and League of Nations 140, 141, 142, 143–4, 145–6 Lloyd, Selwyn 308, 316 Locarno Treaty (1925) 132, 133, 134, 152–3 Lockhart, Robert Bruce 93, 94 London Accords on Germany (1948) 274 London Naval Conference (1930) 161, 162 London Nine-Power Conference (1954) 293–5, 296–7 Londonderry, Marquess of 164 Maastricht Treaty (1991) 338 Macdonald, Malcolm 303 MacDonald, Ramsay 41, 152, 163 and post-war relations 130, 131, 133, 134 and League of Nations 131, 150–1 and inter-war disarmament talks 160–1, 161, 162, 164, 167, 167–8, 170–1 McGrath, M. 213 MacLeod, lain 318 Macmillan, Harold 237 and colonies 316, 317, 318 and EC membership 326, 327 Maffey Report (1935) 182 Major, John 337–8 Malaya 283, 302–3, 303 Mangin, General Charles 98 Marchandeau, Paul 215 Marshall, George 267 Marshall Plan 265, 277 Matignon Agreement (1936) 189, 208 Maura, Antonio 57, 58, 59 Maurras, Charles 231

Mediterranean accords (1907) 57–9, 66 Melilla campaign (1909) 59 Mendès-France, Pierre 289, 290, 292–3, 294, 305 Mers-el-Kébir action (1940) 228–9 Middle East 125, 181, 310, 311–13, 317 Milan summit (1985) 335 Millerand, Alexandre 75, 79, 90, 99 Mitterand, François 333, 334, 335, 336, 337 Mollet, Guy 315 Molotov, Viacheslav 246, 247 Monick, Emmanuel 209 Monis, Ernest 60 Monnet, Jean 270–1, 275, 276 Montgomery, Field Marshal Bernard 267, 268 Morley, John 12 Morocco 1900s 14, 15, 16, 18, 22–3, 52–3, 54, 55, 59–60, 60–1, 63 Agadir crisis 23, 24–5, 43–4, 61 settlement 64, 65–6 1950s 310, 313, 314, 315, 318, 319 Moulin, Jean 236 Movement for Colonial Freedom 301 Munich Agreement (1938) 193, 194 Mussolini, Benito 182 Mutual Asistance, draft Treaty of 131, 150 Naggiar, Paul-Emile 197 Nassau Accords (1962) 327 Nasser, Gamal Abdul 312, 313 NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organisation) 265, 280, 290 and France and North Africa 316–17 and Germany 280, 287–8, 290, 291, 292, 293–4 United States and 280, 338, 339 navies naval talks (1912) 26–7 German 53 Anglo- German naval race 42, 43 French fleet in World War I I 227, 228–9

Index Nicolson, Harold 123–4, 134 Nicolson, Sir Arthur 15, 23, 24, 26, 72–3 Nivelle, General Robert 81, 82 Nkrumah, Kwame 309 Norman, Montagu 211, 214 North Africa 1900s 15, 50 World War I I 232–3, 235 1950s 310, 313–17 see also Morocco North Atlantic Treaty (1949) 258, 259, 261, 268 North Atlantic Treaty Organisation see NATO Noulens, Joseph 94 nuclear weapons 311, 327, 328, 337–8 Odessa, French occupation (1918–1919) 96–7, 98 Organisation of European Economic Cooperation 277 Painlevé, Paul 81, 82 Paléologue, Maurice 90 Palestine 181 Paris Accords (1954) 295 Paris Protocols (1941) 231–2 Parmoor, Lord 151 Passchendaele offensive (1917) 76 Paul-Boncour, Joseph 169, 176, 191 Pentagon Talks (1948) 258, 259 Pétain, Philippe and World War I 81, 82 and World War I I 226, 227, 228, 230, 231 Phillimore Commission (1918) 140–1 Phipps, Sir Eric 174, 215 Pichon, Stephen 56, 57, 58, 60, 90 Pinay, Antoine 312 Pineau, Christian 312, 313 Plymouth Committee (1936) 186 Poincaré, Raymond 66, 83, 128, 130, 133 and Anglo-French entente 64–5, 65 and post-war relations 110–11, 128, 129–30, 134, 147 Poland 98–9, 194, 196, 197

353

Pompidou, Georges 330, 331 Pownall, General Sir Henry 193 Prieto, Garcia 61 Ramadier, Paul 270, 306 Reagan, Ronald 333 rearmament (1935 onwards) 194, 211 Regnault, Eugéne 60, 61, 64, 65, 95 reparations, German after World War I 128–9, 130 Réquin, Colonel 150 resistance, French 233, 234, 236 Revers, General Georges 267 Reynaud, Paul 194, 216, 217–18, 226, 227 Rhineland post-World War I 104, 106–7, 110, 111, 112, 113–15, 124 German remilitarisation 185 Ribot, Alexandre 76 Roberts, Sir Frank 316 Robertson, Sir William 79, 81, 82 Robins, Raymond 93, 94 Rome Agreements (1935) 182 Roosevelt, Franklin D 230, 235, 236, 237, 238 Roumania 189, 194, 196, 197 Rouvier, Pierre Maurice 19 Rowe-Dutton, Ernest 207, 208–9, 211–12, 216, 217 Ruhr Franco-Belgian occupation (1923) 129–30, 150 post-World War I I 249, 250 Russia pre-World War I 14, 15, 28 Anglo-Russian Convention (1907) 42 World War I 72 Civil War 89, 91, 92–101 see also Soviet Union Russo-Polish War (1920) 89, 99 Sadoul, Jacques 93–4 St Aulaire, Comte de 91 Sakiet Sidi Youssef raid (1958) 315–16 Salisbury, Lord 51 Salonika campaign (1915) 76–7, 78

354

Index

Sargent, Orme 245 Sarrail, General Maurice 77, 82 Schacht, Hjalmar 186, 187 Schuman Plan (1950) 265, 275, 276 Schuman, Robert 269, 275, 276, 310 S EATO (South East Asian Treaty Organisation) 305 Second World War see World War I I Sèvres, Treaty of (1920) 129 Siberia 95 Silvela, Francisco 51 Simon, Sir John and inter-war disarmament 165, 165–6, 171, 173, 174, 175, 176 and colonial appeasement 186 and French economic crisis 214, 216 Single European Act (1985) 335 Smuts, Jan C 123, 142, 146 Soames, Sir Christopher 330 social reforms, French (1930s) 189, 211 South American Cable Company 55 South East Asia 302, 304 see also Indo- China war; Malaya; Vietnam South East Asian Treaty Organisation (S EATO) 305 Soviet Union 181 and Poland 99 and Spanish Civil War 188, 196 pre-World War I I relations 194, 195–8 World War I I 231, 239 postWorld War I I 245, 247, 267 and United States 334 see also Russia Spain and Anglo-French relations (1898–1914) 21, 50–67 Spanish Civil War 188–90, 196 Spears, Edward 76, 80–1 Stalin, Joseph 133, 195, 196, 197, 198 steel industries 275, 276 Stewart, Michael 330 Stimson, Henry 166, 167 Stresa Front (1935) 182, 184 Stresemann, Gustav 132 Sudeten, Czechslovakia 191,192 Suez 311, 312, 313

Supreme War Council World War I 81 and Russian Civil War 93 World War II 223, 224, 226 Syria 181, 232, 236 Tangier, Morocco 52, 53, 64, 66 Tardieu, André and post-war relations 105, 108, 110, 112, 115 and inter-war disarmament talks 165, 167, 176 telegraph communications 55–6 Temperley, General A.C. 170 Templer, Sir Gerald 303 Thatcher, Margaret 332–3, 336, 336–7 Third Force’ 255, 256, 257, 258, 259, 260 Third Republic 89–90, 206, 230 Thomas, Albert 79, 82 Thomas, Hugh Lloyd 210 Tirpitz, Alfred von 26, 53 Touré, Sekou 309 trade 12, 209–10 see also customs unions Treaty of Dunkirk (1947) 251, 252–3, 266, 277 Treaty of Mutual Assistance, draft 131, 150 Treaty of Sèvres (1920) 129 Treaty of Versailles (1919) 104, 106, 111, 115, 145, 159 Tripartite Declaration (1950) 311 Triple Alliance (1882) 17, 26, 27 Triple Entente 23, 24, 74 Trotsky, Léon 93, 94 Tunisia 310, 313, 315–16, 318, 319 Turkey 125, 129, 197 Tyrell, Lord 175 Ukraine 96, 98 United States of America World War I 74, 84 and Russia 93, 95 post-war relations 106, 107–8, 108–9, 120 and League of Nations 140, 144–5, 146, 147 and inter-war disarmament talks

Index 173 and French economic crisis 209 prior to World War I I 181, 194 World War I I 230–1, 237–8, 239 post-war 245, 268, 272, 273 and ‘Western Union’ 256–7, 257–8, 258–60 and Indo-China 280, 283, 305 and ED C 280, 285, 287–8 and Brussels Treaty adaptation 292 ‘special relationship’ with Britain 246, 325, 327, 328, 331, 333–4 and Europe 334, 336, 338, 339 Vansittart, Sir Robert 162, 182, 196 Venezuela 15 Versailles, Treaty of (1919) 104, 106, 111, 115, 145, 159 Vichy Government (World War I I) 231–3, 235 Viet-Minh 280, 283, 284, 286, 288, 289, 305 Vietnam 280, 283, 284, 286, 289, 289–90, 303, 304, 305 Villaverde, Raimundo 51–2 von Bethmann-Hollweg, Theobold 25 von Kiderlen-Waechter, Alfred 24, 61 von Neurath, Constantin 169, 185 von Papen, Franz 168 von Ribbentrop, Joachim 198 von Schleicher, Kurt 168

355

von Tirpitz, Alfred 26, 53 Voroshilov, Field Marshal Kliment 197–8 Vuillemin, General Joseph 193 Wall Street Crash (1929) 162 West Germany 274, 282, 291 and NATO 291, 292, 293, 295 and EC 324, 331 see also Germany Western European Union (WE U) 295, 296, 329, 334, 338, 340 ‘Western Union’ 244–5, 246, 248, 253–7, 257–61, 265–7, 269 Weygand, General Maxim 164, 224, 226, 232 White Russians 97, 98 Wilhelm I I, Emperor 18, 53 Wilson, Harold 329, 332 Wilson, General Sir Henry 76, 124 Wilson, Woodrow 144 and Russia 93, 94, 95, 97 post-war relations 104, 105, 106, 107, 108 and League of Nations 140, 141–2, 142, 153 World Disarmament Conference (1932–1934) 158, 163–77 World War I 71–85, 121 post-war relations 104–16, 120–34 World War II 85, 199, 223–41 Wrangel, General Petr Nikolaevich 99 Yalta Conference (1945) 240 Youssef, Mohammed ben 314 Yugoslavia 189, 338–9