1898] The Fashoda Yellow Book 303 



to war, would fight too, and we should be attacked in India. I see that 

 Redmond is openly declaring himself at Dublin in favour of the French, 

 but I doubt if either Ireland or India is really attackable. 



" 24th Oct. — Wagram was away all day shooting at Chantilly with 

 the Due de Chartres. Prince Henri d'Orleans was there and showed 

 him a number of abusive letters he had received, mostly from Ger- 

 mans, in connection with the Dreyfus case, he being a violent anti-re- 

 visionist. Wagram brought back with him in the evening the Fashoda 

 Yellow Book just published. 



" 25 th Oct. — The new Yellow Book gives a much more dignified 

 form to the French argument than it has received in our Blue Book, 

 and I consider that, logic for logic, M. de Courcel has the best of it. 

 It is also clear that, as I suspected, Lord Salisbury has been negotiating, 

 though it is equally clear that he has allowed his back to be stiffened by 

 the London Press and his colleagues' speeches and Lord Rosebery's. 

 The French terms are now pretty fairly formulated. They will evacu- 

 ate Fashoda on being allowed to keep the Bahr el Gazal with access to 

 the White Nile. A Cabinet has been called in London for to-morrow, 

 when a final decision will be come to. In face of the extraordinary out- 

 burst of Jingo violence in England I doubt such terms being accepted 

 and war seems probable ; nobody, however, here seems of that opinion. 



' M. Hanotaux, late Minister of Foreign Affairs, and M. Vandal 

 were here to-day and I had much conversation with both. Neither 

 would hear of war for such a trifle as Fashoda. M. Hanotaux main- 

 tained that no war would be popular in France, that nobody knew where 

 Fashoda was, or cared three straws about the Marchand Mission. He 

 even considered the Egyptian question itself one of small importance for 

 France. As for the Bahr el Gazal, it was ' a country inhabited by 

 monkeys and by black men worse than monkeys.' A war with England 

 over such a dispute would be worse than a crime, a folly. He was of 

 opinion that such a war would ruin both countries. It would last two 

 years ; it would be carried on interminably because neither could vitally 

 attack the other. ' I admit,' he said, ' that your fleet may destroy ours, 

 that you may blockade our ports, and that we could not land troops in 

 England, but what then? You could not touch us in France, or even 

 in Algeria or Tunis ; it would ruin your trade and leave you at the end 

 worse off than ourselves. You would find yourselves faced by a triple 

 coalition. I do not believe in the possibility of war.' I told him of the 

 military fever we were suffering from in England, but he refused to 

 believe that Lord Salisbury, who was ' un homme d'Etat,' who looked 

 at the future, would quarrel to this extent with France, England's only 

 possible ally, for any such cause. 



" I asked him about the Army, what its feeling was, what line it would 

 take ? ' The French Army,' he said, ' is always ready to fight when the 



