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"To gain time, M. Delcassé," writes our Ambassador, "wished that I should request your lordship to consent to a telegram being sent by the French agent at Cairo to Khartoum, to be forwarded from thence up the Nile to Fashoda.
We have accordingly opened negotiations through our Ambassador with M. Delcasse, the French Minister for Foreign Affairs, and with the President of the Republic himself. I have the supreme satisfaction of being in a position to lay before you the result of these negotiations in the form of a despatch just received from our Ambassador in Paris.
It is quite probable that M. Millerand will prove to be the Lazare Carnot "The Organizer of Victory" of the present war. With M. Theophile Delcasse as Minister of Foreign Affairs, French diplomacy cannot be in better hands.
In Paris he had a long conversation with Delcassé, who told him that the Kaiser himself once made a proposal to him to join in producing "the complete isolation" of the United States. What the Kaiser meant was that if the great Powers of Europe would hold off, he would put the Monroe Doctrine to the test and smash it.
And from these places, sometimes the most incongruous one hears, for instance, of M. Delcasse maintaining his dignity in a bedroom now used as the office for the minister of foreign affairs the red tape is unwound which eventually sends the life-blood of the remotest province flowing up to its appointed place at the front.
The Franco-Russian Alliance gave him pause, especially since June 1898, when a resolute man, Delcassé, became Foreign Minister at Paris and showed less complaisance to Germany than had of late been the case . Besides, in 1898, the Kaiser had concluded with Great Britain a secret arrangement on African affairs, and early in 1900 acquired sole control of Samoa instead of the joint Anglo-American-German protectorate, which had produced friction.
Suppose Sir Edward Grey remonstrates, and Monsieur Delcasse replies, "Russia and France have humbled one Imperial Bully, and are prepared to humble another. I have not forgotten Fashoda. Stop us if you can; or turn, if you like, for help to the Germany we have smashed and disarmed!"
I have already had the honour to tell you that it is MM. Poincaré, Delcassé, Millerand and their friends who have invented and pursued the nationalistic and chauvinistic policy which menaces to-day the peace of Europe, and of which we have noted the renaissance. It is a danger for Europe and for Belgium.
It is not the usual Turkish brew. No, this comes from Aden, the finest coffee in the world. A ship captain brings it to me, especially." Beamingly he sipped the scalding stuff, then darted back to that suspended sentence. "But you were saying something of a trusteeship?... Do I understand that it is an aunt of Madame Delcassé the former Madame Delcassé who is leaving this money?"
The Countess had her eyes on the Prince, so this left me free to take care of Delcasse. My work was now to learn if the French minister held any meetings with Sir Edward Grey or Winston Churchill, ministers from England, who were shortly expected also to arrive at Nizza. Subsequently I guessed there would be a final meeting with the Prince.