FRANCE AND SIAM.
IT is exceedingly difficult to understand the policy of the French Republic as regards Colonial extension. To all appearance, the " directing classes," including suc- cessive Governments and the permanent officials of the Foreign Office, maintain one policy, while the body of the electors, and especially the rural electors, are determined upon another. The latter are hotly opposed to any in- crease in the liabilities of France. They see no advantage whatever in tropical or sub-tropical Dependencies ; they suspect that they are acquired mainly for purposes of jobbery ; and they detest the employment of their children in garrisoning and defending them. They know from bitter experience that conscripts are used up in such Colonies at a terrible rate, and that, even when there are no battles, they are sent home invalided in crowds, to be discharged, for the most part, without the health essential to happy lives either as peasants or as artisans. Being too ignorant to understand obscure questions of distant geography, they do not at first resist ' • but the moment a disaster occurs, or they are asked for a Colonial grant, they grow furious, and either ostracise a Minister, as they have ostracised M. Jules Ferry for the conquest of Tonquin, or threaten to overturn a Government on the Colonial clauses of the Budget. " Keep the soldiers at home for the German war," is, in brief, their standing order to the Deputies. On the other hand, the Government, supported steadily by the journalists, and fitfully by the section of the Deputies interested in foreign commerce, steadily extend the responsibilities of the country, and only seem to regret that they cannot advance more rapidly. Successive French Governments risked a war with Italy in order to acquire Tunis, with its vague boundary to the south. They keep fidgeting about a plan, of no interest except to themselves, for a large " development " of Senegal. They have risked a war with China to obtain the sovereignty of Tonquin, and hold down their acquisi- tion, which is never at rest, by a considerable expendi- ture of men. They have acquired a position in Mada- gascar which the Hovas no doubt interpret as a mere right to give advice, but which the French interpret as a formal Protectorate, and which at all events bars out any other European State from effecting a settlement on the immense and fertile island, one-eighth larger than all France. They made a spring the other day at Dahomey, though, not being ready, they jumped short; and they have quite recently made an agreement with Lord Salisbury under which he says they get the Sahara, but they say they obtain Tim- buctoo as a centre for indefinite extension. And now it is reported from Bangkok, doubtless on official informa- tion because there can be no other, that they have seized a very large, little-known dependency of Siam,—all " Siam," in fact, as marked on common maps, east of the great Mekong River. With the exception of Tunis, the French utilise none of these possessions except for exploration, do not make their sovereignty strong, and in some cases, as in Madagascar, put up with angry opposition in a way which, if English statesmen did it, would be denounced as " meek." It is difficult not to believe, in fact, that the men who direct these extensions are aware that the nation is not with them, and are content to obtain nominal rights which may be made profitable whenever an opportunity shall arise, or opinion shall take a new turn. It is rather a dangerous policy, because the agents sent out to manage these new acquisitions, whether of territory or of rights of control, are apt, being Frenchmen, to take themselves very seriously, and to do acts which lead either to insur- rection, or to a kind of warfare in which disaster, or at all events a great expenditure of life, is always possible ; but it is the policy they are pursuing. War of the serious kind is in this instance, we should say, most improbable. The French are almost certainly not intending to annex or even to attack Siam itself, for they know they cannot do it until they have made some arrangement with Great Britain, :which will not divide Siam with them, nor allow them to claim the whole of the vast Kingdom for themselves. As regards partition, we have a great deal too much Indo-Chinese territory as it is. Burmah is not yet connected with India by railway ; and so far from having any quarrel with Siam, the Foreign Office regards that Power as one of the friendliest of Asiatic States. The extinction of Siam by a French army would be regarded in the Foreign Office with deep displeasure, and in Calcutta with a sort of horror • and no such attempt, therefore, will be sanctioned, much less com- manded, in Paris. The force for such an enterprise does not exist on the spot, and M. de Freycinet is not the man to ask for twenty thousand men and two millions for an object which the electors would not understand, and which might involve a serious quarrel with Great Britain. If he is ready for such a quarrel, or desirous of it, Egypt would offer a much better excuse, and one, too, in which he would be helped by the Napoleonic tradition. We expect, therefore, no war on Siam from the French side, while we can hardly believe that it will be declared on the side of the Siamese. The Court of Bangkok is ruled by Princes who have obtained some tincture of European knowledge, and who are therefore painfully aware of their weakness as against European Powers. They could not defend Bangkok itself against an ironclad fleet, and an in- vasion of Tonquin is hopelessly beyond their means. They will not, we feel almost sure, fight without allies ; and though they might purchase German favour by special commercial privileges, a serious ally for the defence of their Eastern territory, territory never quite subdued, is hardly to be obtained. Neither we nor China shall go to war for Luang Prabang. Great Britain does not want the French on her Burmese frontier, but she does not greatly fear them, and can wait, at all events, until the French agents begin intriguing with her own dependent Shan States. Lord Salisbury will not, we may be sure, break up the peace of Europe to save Siam merely from humilia- tion, or to save British Burmah from neighbours who cannot cross the frontier without a declaration of war for which there are a hundred better and more plausible occa- sions. We have had the French for neighbours at Pondi- cherry for nearly a hundred years, and have felt no ill result. The Chinese, no doubt, will be enraged, for they hold Siam to be a kind of dependency, and will feel very much as Americans feel when a European Power threatens a Spanish-American State ; but they will hardly repeat over again their Tonquin experience. They could not on that occasion risk the stoppage of food-supplies to Pekin, and they cannot risk it now. They may send secretly some small help, but, with that exception, they will allow the Shan chief who holds the territory to struggle alone, and be beaten or compromise, as seems to him most advisable. The Siamese Court will do the same, and in all proba- bility, after two or three years of skirmishing, he will yield, and Tonquin will be stretched westward to the Mekong. It will not be a more valuable possession for that, and certainly not more formidable to the British position in Asia, which rests at last upon the sea, and upon our power of maintaining rapid and safe communica- tion between London and Bombay. It is necessary to observe France in Indo-China, but for the present, we fancy, we may content ourselves with observation.
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