The Washington herald., 1913-07-20

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N. Poincare il the third French Pfesi.
land. and before the third republic came
to stay only twice did. q French monarch
pay Britain the same compliment. The
first King of France. who came on q
y,rit TO sovereign OF England was Louia
i hilippe. the citizen King. who. In or
der to return Queen victoria's call at IRE
port in the previous year uS<0 visited
Windsor and was honored with the Gar
ter.
The same honor was accorded to Ma
po'eon III. when he visited London dur
ing the Crimean war and received q re-
turn visit from Queen Victoria and
FRINGE Albert at Paris some months later.
The Queens visit to Louis Philippe In
1875 was the first incident OF its kind
since 1870. when Henry VIII crossed the
channel to meet Francis at the Field
Of the Cloth of Gold.
President Poincare heard the MAR
sc!llaise" many times during his brief
stay in England, and IT is 10, be hoped
that he bore the repetition with more
.auanimity than WAS displayed by the
Shah of Persia under similar circum-
stances. When in 1889 Nasr-ed-Din made
a tour Of the English provinces. all the
principal town bands played the Persian
national anthem in his honor. On de-
parting from Manchester he sent a meg
seDger In advance TO the station. re-
qaesting the officer commanding guard
II honor to suppress that particular air.
The Shad had heard II so many times
lE England" said the messenger. that
disastrous effects might be anticipated
from any further repetition OF it,
The visit of NJ. Poincare added an
Il 20
French amity. II is becoming difficult
for the people of either France or
Great Britain to realize that barely a
decade ago they were separated by a
seemingly incurable antagonism. Few
things change more rapidly or more
completely than the face Of interna-
tional politics, and the revolution
which since the opening OF the pres
ent century has overtaken Anglo
French relations not only illustrates
that useful and often overlooked tru-
ism. but affords good ground for hop
ing that other Observation-Disclosures
likewise will yield to the influence OF
time and reason.
The Anglo-French agreement of 1904
was born OF the union OF three Diff
ferent tendencies. One represented the
reaction in Great Britain against the
philo-Germanism of the late Lord Sal
isbury's foreign policy: another. the
desire of France to simplify and CO.
ordinate her external interests. and the
third. a sudden weariness and disgust
among the French and British peoples
with the seedlings, and recriminations
of Fashoda. the Dreyfus case. and the
Boer war.
Great Britain's policy during the last
Sxr-1 Aan 80 ha ,srA satr.
was. roughly speaking, no policy at
all. Between the Dual and the Triple
Alliances she remained neutral, though
with an inclination of sentiment
toward the latter. There seemed a
chance at one time that England's 8
weight would be definitely thrown on
the German side of the balance. I
need not now detail the various incl
dents and influences that gradually
changed the popular and ofYicial atti-
tude of England toward Germany. II
is enough to state the fact that by
the time the Boer war ended a very
decided change had taken place. and
that Anglo-French relations began au-
tomatIcaIly to improve. when the anx-
ieties OF France lest Great Britain
should be found arrayed against her
were allayed.
At the same time a movement toward
an Anglo-French rapprochement began
to declare itself in Paris NJ. Delcasse.
who had been in charge Of the French
foreign affairs since 1895, based his policy
on the conviction that France could not
afford two first class hatreds. She could
not be at one and the same time anti
German and anti-British. She could not
simultaneously oppose the strongest mill
tary and the strongest naval power in
the world.
II became necessary to make a choice.
NJ. Delcasse decided that haphazard
and provocativ colonial policy which
brought England to France face TO face