TOPICS OF THE DAY.
A SECOND DUAL ALLIANCE.
TEE "Latin League" of which Napoleon III. dreamed, and which many French writers advocate with the idea of dominating the Mediterranean and monopolising North Africa and the Levant, will never, we think, come into being. The Italians distrust the French too much, and are, by their history, too much bound up for good and evil with the Teutonic peoples for that great project ever to be realised. It is quite possible, however, that a smaller plan, which yet may have important results, may at no great distance of time be carried out. The Spanish Government is said to be anxious to draw much closer to that of France, and it is most improbable that the Republic, which has just been welcoming the heir to the Spanish throne with enthusiasm at Toulouse, would reject that alliance if offered in sincerity. The gain to her would be too great. She has sought for centuries to establish influence in Spain, which is geographically a continuation of her own territory, and has repeatedly succeeded. The Bourbon "Family Compact" lasted more than a hundred years, was while it lasted a most important factor in European politics, and stood solidly against the strain of many grave naval defeats. If that ancient Compact could be revived in the shape of a hearty affiance, France would be relieved of a serious menace,—the possibility of Spain joining the Triple Alliance and threatening her southern frontier, thereby paralysing at least one-fourth of her forces for defence. In exchange for that danger, which, though latent, always existed while an Austrian Arch- duchess ruled in Spain, she would obtain the aid in a defensive war of at least one hundred thousand excellent soldiers, who need nothing but the better supplies which the wealth of France would secure for them, and who would be invaluable, not only in the case of a German invasion, when they would release for defence three corps d'armee, but in all operations in Northern Africa and the Eastern Mediterranean. They would, in fact, suffice to neutralise Italian hostility, and practically deprive the Triple Alliance of its southern member. France would also rivet that control of Spanish finance which she has already practically secured, and obtain at least the best chance of profiting by the exploitation of Spain, a land of endless unworked resources both in agriculture and minerals. The French are always hoping to make their widespread colonies pay, but nothing they could draw from Indo-China or the Soudan or Madagascar, or all together, would com- pare with the profits they might reap if they could secure for their capitalists, their engineers, and their highly skilled wine-growers a preferential position in Spain and popularity in Spanish America. Spain will never regain the headship of that vast region—she governed it too badly, and the United States has arisen—but Spaniards and friends of Spaniards are still from the Rio Grande del Norte to Tierra del Fuego more welcome than any other Europeans. We cannot wonder that the hope of possessing Spain disturbed the judgment even of Napoleon I., or forget that but for his Corsican distrust of all agents not of his own blood, and the unexpected resolve of Great Britain to fight him in Spain, his vision might have been realised. With Eugene Beauharnais as King in Madrid instead of Joseph Bonaparte, and with conces- sion to the Church instead of persecution as a policy, the Family Compact might have been recemented, and Spain have become to France what India is to ourselves.
On the other hand, the advantage to Spain of strict alliance with France is at once both great and obvious. Relieved of her colonies, of Carlism, and of pressure from the North, she could reduce her army to a hundred thousand men, and with the money saved bring it up to the higher standards of European efficiency. She could make a working compromise both with France and England which would safeguard her " honour " in Morocco, and obviate the danger of an explosion of popular feeling which might as matters stand at present plunge her at any moment into an almost hopeless war. No Spaniard will surrender his " heritage " in Morocco without a, blow. With the assistance of the French dockyards, she could renew her fleet so far as to make it valuable, now that her colonies are gone, for coast defence or any enterprise within the Mediterranean. She would be able to dip, as Russia has dipped, into that bottomless purse, the hoardings of the French money-savers--certainly three-fourths of all France—and she could at will obtain capable scientific direction for the development of her immense undeveloped resources. A few scientific French wine-growers, for in- stance, would in ten years double the value of her vineyards, while French metallurgists are among the most capable in the world. Above all, she would obtain wise guidance in the management of her revenue, always the weakest point in Spanish administration, in the construction of the roads still needed to feed her railways, and in the organisation of the internal forces necessary to secure the perfect, and, so to speak, monotonous, order without which there can be little development of wealth. Spain, in fact, if heartily devoted to the alliance, might gain even more than France, if only from a certainty of protection from a really wealthy protector.
It is all a dream, we shall be told, for the two races will never work together. Their different attitude towards the Church will prevent that, not to speak of their historic• pride. We do not feel so sure. No antipathy of raze prevented their working together during the whole period of the Family Compact, and we note that the deep- seated bitterness which constantly betrays itself between Italian and French workmen on the soil of France does not prevent French and Spanish workmen from labouring together. The pride of both nations received severe wounds in the latter half of the nineteenth century; and though the Spaniard lacks the intelligent self- interest in which the Frenchman almost rivals the Scot, there is no reason why he should not, like the people beyond the Pyrenees, welcome and cling to a great and advantageous alliance. The marvellous economy of the Spanish peasant, the last man left in Europe who is honestly contented without comfort, does not extend to her ruling classes ; nor does its consequent result, indiffer- ence to money, which the Spanish bourgeois now seeks as earnestly as the French or Italian, though it may be with less shrewdness. As for the Church, the Vatican always welcomes any increase to the power of a Latin race, confi- dent that at least it will never be Protestant, or cease when it is religious to confound the claims of heaven with those of the Papacy. The irreligion of France and of Spain is of the same kind—a fierce intolerance of belief qua belief— and all close observers declare that it spreads fast in Spain, more especially among the classes which describe themselves as Socialist, which include nearly all urban artisans, and an extraordinary proportion of the peasants, who cannot in some provinces endure what they think the oppression of the bailiffs. There may be causes at work which we do not perceive that will always separate Frenchmen and Spaniards, but we see many powerful causes just now which are driving them together, and we are disinclined to believe that they will always be blind to what is so clearly their self-interest. And France with Spain as a deter- mined ally, as she was in the eighteenth century, will be a much weightier factor in the politics of the world than she has been of late. Russian support may be much to her in supreme contingencies, but Spain would be worth more in the daily business of international politics, and supreme contingencies are few.
Previous page
