THE HISTORY OF BRITISH FOREIGN POLICY.* WHEN we say that
Mr. Hassall's History of British Foreign. Policy is not a success we mean only that the object he proposes to himself is unattainable. He has been struck by " the absence of a continuous account" of the foreign policy of Great Britain, and he has not stopped to inquire what the reason of this absence is. Had he done so be would either have turned his one volume into many or limited his account to a single period. As it is we begin with Athelstan, who would probably have been surprised to hear that ho had a foreign policy, and it is not till Mr. Hassall has written considerably more than half his volume that he reaches what is the real starting-point of English foreign policy as distinct from English history—the fall of Napoleon If he had begun here he would have had room to give a far more detailed narrative of the alliances and under- standings of the last hundred years, whereas within the limits he has set himself he is compelled to make much of his narrative little better than a catalogue of names and dates. As such his book has an undoubted use, but it is not the use the author intended.
Thus we learn that in 1898 there was a crisis in the relations of England and France, "owing to the presence at Fashoda of Colonel Marchand with a small French force " ; and that early in 1899 "Delcasse signed a treaty definitely !acknowledging that the whole Nile Valley lay within the British sphere of influence." But of the causes which led to this sudden change of policy we are only told that
The History of British Foreign Policy from the Earliest Times to 1012. By Arthur Hassall. London: W. Blackwood and Sons. [10s. 6d. net.]
Lord Salisbury's " firm and unyielding, though conciliatory attitude, proved effective." No doubt it did, but it is equally certain that France had reasons which led her to wish to be friends with England. and that it was her appreciation of these reasons that made England so willing to enter into the Agreement of 1904. Of this Agreement we read, among other things, that " the French agreed not to obstruct British policy in Egypt "; that Great Britain undertook "not to obstruct French policy in Egypt "; and that by the operation of this instrument " the two countries which since the Treaty of Berlin in 1878 had been in constant rivalry in different parts of the world, and at least on two occasions on the verge of war, were now bound together by ties of friendship and interest." That, no doubt, was the net result of a long series of negotiations, but in a History of Foreign Policy we should like to have heard something about the causes which occasioned and shaped them.
The account of our understanding with Russia is even shorter. " In 1907 an agreement with Russia ended the long rivalry between the two countries, and now no further disputes with regard to the Indian frontier, Tibet and Persia seem likely to arise." But agreements and under- standings are not a policy, they are only evidences of a policy. What the reader wants to know is the motives which led the Russian Government to abandon its traditional attitude on the Indian frontier policy, and induced the English Government to put confidence in the lasting character of this revolution. Until the reader learns some- thing on this head the foreign policy of Great Britain in these eventful years, 1904 and 1907, will remain a sealed book to him. He is told, indeed, that in each of them something was signed, but of the reasons which led the Powers concerned to sign it he is left in ignorance. The formation of the Triple Alliance and the consequent changes in the position of Germany had made the maintenance of the peace of Europe at once a more essential and a more difficult task. So long as the Great Powers which stood outside the Triple Alliance had no unity among themselves they could not approach the problem to any purpose. When it was taken in hand with a real desire to subordinate individual ambitions to this great object, the obstacles which had seemed so insurmountable disappeared, and from a dream the Triple Entente became a fact. On this simple explanation of the change Mr. Hassall is silent. He describes the effect—that " Great Britain, after passing through a period of semi- isolation, is now no longer without allies," but he says nothing about the causes which brought it about.
Nor is he any more informing about the confused and con- tradictory diplomacy which led to the Crimean War. This is the more singular that Lord Morley, in his Life of Gladstone, has made " that shifting, intractable, and interwoven tangle of conflicting interests, rival peoples, and antagonistic faiths, that is veiled under the easy name of the Eastern Question," as clear as the nature of the case will allow. If the English Ministers had been of one mind in June 1853, the war might almost certainly have been avoided. Throughout that eventful summer neither Russia nor, had they been left alone, the Turks, wanted war; the English Prime Minister was a passionate lover of peace, and he was supported, though with less enthusiasm, by the English Foreign Secretary. Yet in spite of these influences we drifted into war. In fact, there were counter-influences, not so important in appearance, but more so in fact. There was a Home Secretary who desired war, and who from his previous tenure of the Foreign Office had great weight in Cabinet Councils ; an Ambassador at Constantinople who worked so hard to bring about war that the Queen was moved to say to Lord Aberdeen that "it had becomes serious question whether they were justified in allowing Lord Stratford any longer to remain in a situation that enabled him to frustrate all the efforts of his Government for peace " ; and finally an Emperor who thought that his own throne would be made more stable by fighting Russia in partnership with Great Britain. Of the events preceding the Crimean War Mr. Hassall gives a good sketch, but when we come to the causes of the war and the rival policies which found expression in the English Cabinet, they are dismissed in a sentence or two. We would suggest that in a second edition he gives up the attempt to bring so large a subject within so small a compass, and gives us a history of the foreign policy of Great Britain during the last hundred years.
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