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“An Interrupted Tête-À-Tête”
No caption
This
W. A. Rogers cartoon depicts German antagonism over improving relations
between Britain and France. In April 1904, Britain and France
signed the Entente Cordiale, which helped ensure diplomatic cooperation
between the two nations without establishing a formal alliance.
Among other provisions, the agreement recognized the authority of
Britain in Egypt and of France in Morocco (with a nod to Spanish
interests there). The Entente Cordiale provoked concern in
Germany, which had previously relied on the rivalry between Britain and
France to help check the power of both. On March 31, 1905, Kaiser
Wilhelm II of Germany delivered a speech in Tangier, Morocco, in which
he called for an international conference to ensure Morocco's
independence.
The Germans believed that they could convince President Theodore
Roosevelt to take their side against the French in the international
dispute over Morocco. Roosevelt, who privately leaned toward the
French position, was focused on mediating the Russo-Japanese War
and inclined not to get involved in the Moroccan
matter. However, in June the situation threatened to erupt into
war between Germany and France (and possibly Britain), so the American
president persuaded the French to enter into
negotiations.
The German ambassador, Hermann Speck von Sternburg, lacked diplomatic
skill and ineptly assured Roosevelt that the German government would
accept the American president's decisions "in every
case." Aptly characterizing such diplomatic carte blanche as
"extraordinary," Roosevelt informed the French that he could
exert sufficient influence on the Germans. In early July 1905
(after this postdated cartoon appeared), Germany and France agreed to a
conference in Algeciras, Spain, beginning in January 1906.
Roosevelt appointed Henry White, the U.S. ambassador to Italy, to
represent the United States. The U.S. Senate, skeptical of
American involvement in European affairs, received administration
assurances of the limited, non-voting role of the United States in the
Algeciras Conference, along with many diplomatic documents related to
it.
In February 1906, the negotiations stalled and war-talk
revived. Roosevelt presented a proposal to break the impasse, but
the Germans objected that it was too pro-French. Germany, though,
was not prepared to fight a war over Morocco and was put into a
diplomatic box by Sternburg's earlier promise to Roosevelt. In
April 1906, the conference participants--Germany, France, Britain,
Italy, Russia, and the United States--signed the treaty. Although
the Act of Algeciras reaffirmed Moroccan independence and free trade
with the Great Powers, the French and Spanish continued to police
the African sultanate. The Moroccan crisis was important for
forging closer relations between France, Britain, and the United States,
while further isolating Germany, a diplomatic collision-course paving
the way to World War I (1914-1917).
Ambassador White signed the Algeciras Treaty, but stated that the
American government was under no "obligation or
responsibility" to enforce its terms. Wary senators did not
approve the treaty until December 1906, and only after revising it to
emphasize the agreement's economic provisions and deny that it "depart[ed]
from traditional American foreign policy which forbids participation by
the United States in the settlement of political questions which are
entirely European in their scope." President Roosevelt signed
the revised treaty as the best he could get.
Robert C. Kennedy
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