FRANCE, RUSSIA, AND GERMANY. T HE visit of President Loubet to
Lyons was not alto- gether of good omen for the continued tranquillity of the Waldeck-Rousseau Ministry. Although by far the best and most honest Ministry France has had since that memorable day when Marshal MacMahon upset the Ministry of M. Jules Simon, the Cabinet of M. Waldeck- Rousseau is of too composite a character to permit of the feeling of confidence and complete mastery of the situa- tion. Relying for its existence on the orthodox Repub- licans on the one hand, and the heterodox Socialists on the other, it finds the problem of satisfying both wings a difficult task, as the interpellation at the very opening of the Chamber of Deputies shows. M. Waldeck-Rousseau met that interpellation with his accustomed agility, but the incident showed that the Ministry may at any moment be placed in a very awkward corner. To return, however, to the Lyons affair, where the President was unveiling a monument to the memory of President Carnot. M. Loubet, in the discharge of his functions, had first to accept the hospitality of two local bodies at war with one another,—the Municipal Council, which is ultra-Radical, and the Chamber of Commerce, which is distinctly Moderate ; and secondly, he had to receive and acknowledge a telegram from the Emperor of Russia, in which the old reference to the " friendly and allied nations " was repeated.
The extreme Radicals and Socialists on whom M. Waldeck-Rousseau and perhaps President Loubet himself have to rely in order to combat reaction, not only objected to the Chamber of Commerce banquet, they seem also to have disliked the Imperial telegram. To tell the truth, though in a sense the Franco-Russian Alliance seems a logical outcome of the singular situation in Europe, the glamour of that Alliance has somewhat faded in France ; and while it was never lustrous in the more advanced political circles, it has now become rather dim. Too much attention must never be paid to national any more than to individual moods, and we are not inclined to take any more seriously the "slump" in Russophil sentiment than we formerly took the ardent " boom." France is a nation of varying moods, but she is also a nation of practical business instincts. She did not enter into the Russian understanding in order to amuse herself, but for distinct practical ends. What many Frenchmen seem to question now is whether those ends have been or are likely to be achieved.
What the actual terms either of the Triple Alliance or the Dual Alliance are, not a dozen persons in Europe really know. But assuming the Dual Alliance to be a reality, what, we may ask, are its advantages and disad- vantages ? To take the latter first, those French people who are in the mood to depreciate it may ask with some reason what it has done for France. On the face of it, its principal result seems to have been the sinking of an immense amount of French capital in Russian loans. Very useful for Russia, but of what particular advantage to France ? The Russian side of the Alliance seems very practical, the French side more sentimental. Russia is building railways and populating Siberia out of the enormous savings of French shop- keepers and peasants. It is the crow and the turkey over again, and the Slav is securing the more valuable bird. The purely political question of an Alliance between a democratic Republic and an Autocracy reinforces this business consideration. France is the most western of all Western Powers; she has given to the world the very ideas on which Western institutions are founded. There is not a community in Western Europe or America, no matter how imperfect its practice, in which the "rights of man " doctrine is not more or less implicitly believed in. But Russia is but half Western ; she has one foot in the Orient, she has apparently no liking for Western institu- tions, and she opposes to French agnosticism an almost fanatical belief.
It would seem, therefore, that the logic of the European political situation, which demands a Franco-Russian rapproeh.ement, is cancelled by the utter divergence existing between the two Powers. But a. glance deeper will show that each gains a solid advantage in the shape of security. Both Russia and France need peace of all things,—France to recover from the effects of her great dibetzle, Russia to develop her immense internal resources. Germany threatens either singly, but is harmless against the two when allied. Few can doubt what the result of another Franco-German War would be ; and while it is quite possible that Russia would prove ultimately as invulnerable as before, yet such damage might be inflicted on her by Germany that her development might be thrown back half a century, and her incipient industrial competi- tion with other nations might be practically destroyed. By means of that secret parchment known as the Franco- Russian Alliance, whatever its actual contents, a cheap insurance has been secured by both Powers.
The comedy of the European situation is that, while armaments are growing every day, the two Alliances have produced a, stalemate. Never before was such a singular issue brought about. Germany, Austria, and Italy first made an Alliance against possible dangers from France and Russia. Then France and Russia made an Alliance against the designs, actual or possible, of this Dreibund. But while the two rival Alliances are in full vigour (or are, at least, supposed to be so), the chief party to the Triple Alliance, Germany, ostentatiously cultivates the friendship of one of the parties to the Dual Alliance, Russia, the Emperor obviously adhering to the Russophil policy laid down both by William I. and Prince Bismarck. In this way Germany secures two objects,—she becomes the chief pivot of the European system, and she is enabled to mediate in a way between France and Russia. It is an astute and almost unprece- dented policy, to proclaim yourself on terms of friendship with an ostensible rival, thereby to keep the peace with another rival, and all the while to maintain an Alliance for protection against those very two potentially hostile Powers. But that is the actual line taken by German diplomacy, and its success can hardly add to the satis- faction felt in France over the Alliance with Russia. This singular condition of things, however, contrives at great cost, and by a roundabout method, to maintain the peace of Europe, and it is therefore likely to be upheld for some time to come. It would be the possible advent to power in France of a "Nationalist" Ministry which would call on Russia to do something to prove the reality of her Alliance that would precipitate trouble. We may all hope that that is a very remote contingency.
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