Evening Post. SATURDAY, AUGUST 28, 1926. TANGIER AND GIBRALTAR

Evening Post, Volume CXII, Issue 51, 28 August 1926, Page 8

Evening Post. SATURDAY, AUGUST 28, 1926. TANGIER AND GIBRALTAR

The slow, fitful, and reluctant progress of our absent-minded Empire towards greatness, and the occasional hardening of the reluctance into retrogression, arc well illustrated by its original relations to the two ports mentioned in a message from London to-day. Foiled in the attempt to secure a permanent seat on the Council of the League of Nations concurrently with Germany, Spain has since demanded Tangier as the price of her consent to Germany's admission. The comment of the Admir-

alty on this modest demand is said to be that

Tangier is just as much vital to the Mediterranean as Gibraltar, and that

submarines changed the whole strato

gie position. This report confirms the statement attributed on Wednesday to the "Daily News"—though the militant note of the article sounds more like the "Daily Mail" —that "the magic word 'Tangier' " had awakened the British Government to the dangers of the position, and that the success of Spain's attempt to levy "diplomatic blackmail" would render Gibraltar "comparatively useless as the strategic guardian of the Eastern sea routes." At a time when "the magic word 'Tangier' " is credited with enabling the Admiralty to overcome the complaisance of the Foreign Office, it is interesting to recall that Tangier was once a British possession, and that there was then so little magic in its name that the Foreign Office was glad to got rid of it. Still more astonishing is the fact that for about three-quarters of a century it may almost be said to have been one of the cardinal objects of British policy to treat Gibraltar in the same way.

It .was as a part of the dowry which the unfortunate Catherine of Braganza brought to the most profligate of English Kings that Tangier was added to the Empire in 1662. With her first post in Africa, Britain acquired at the same time and in the same way her first post in Asia, but the one was valued just as little as the other. Of. these relics of jthe once groat Empire of Portugal, Bombay—now a city with a population of 1,000,000 and the finest waterfront in the world—was transferred a few years later to the East India Company for a rental of £10 a year; Tangier, after being woefully mismanaged for about twenty years, was dismantled and abandoned. Of this mismanagement Mr. Frewin Lord gives some interesting details in his "English and French in the Mediterranean": — Tangier, which ought to have been well kept in hand as a military cantonment, was furnished with a Mayor and Corporation; a Town Council, grand jury and petty jury, a gallows, stocks, and a ducking-stool as if to emphasise the fact that it was not to be a military depot, but only an ordinary English country town. ' At the same time the army was "not only tied up with red tape, but positively strangled,," and it was doubtless glad enough when an end was put to its incessant conflicts with the Moons by the order for evacuation.

It'may scorn .appropriate that Charles 11., who permitted Admiral de Euyter to sail up the Thames and burn his ships, should have abandoned the foothold both in Asia and in Africa, which fortune had given him, and thrown away the key to the strategy and the trade of the Mediterranean. But to judge the statesmen of the past by our knowledge of the present is a temptation to injustice against which wo must constantly be on guard. In those days India was almost as much off the map as the Suez Canal, and even the Mediterranean, if it did not actually belong rather to the East than to the West, was very far away. How far is shown by the way in which oven Gibraltar was regarded till a full century later. The direct contact with the Mediterranean which Britain lost by the abandonment of Tangier in 1682 was restored in 1704 by the capture of Gibraltar. Within three months afterwards an attack by the Spanish and French was repulsed with the loss of 10,000 men, and two more attacks were delivered in force within the next twenty-five years. It was just as well for the Empire that these attacks were made, for otherwise it is highly probable—indeed, almost certain—that the second of the keys to the Mediterranean might have gone .the way of the flrst.

The capture of: Gibraltar, writes Mr. I. S. Leadarn, made little impression upon the English people. . . .

>Tho efforts of the Spaniards and French were the most potent factors in the education of the public opinipn of the country as to its value

It is, indeed, an almost incredible story. The great fortress which proved impregnable to all the assaults of the jcnemy was in constant danger from within for more than seventy-five years. While Gibraltar had to stand four sieges—the last of which, extending from July, 1779, to February, 1783, is ono of the most famous in history— Mr. Frowcn Lord enumerates no loss

than nine separate attempts on the part of the politicians to trade it away. Even Sir George Rooke, tho admiral who captured the place, apppars to have regarded the British soldiers whom he put in possession as only; visitors

there, for before sailing home he-wrote to the King of Portugal and the Archduke Charles requesting them to supply the whole garrison. The first of tho political attempts to get rid of Gibraltar was in 1718, when Stanhope regarded it as "of no great consequence" but was very eager to purchase the friendship of Spain.

In a panic of terror, writes Mr. Frewen Lord, the British Ambassa- ■ dor at Madrid offered Gibraltar to • Cardinal Alberoni as an inducement to his master to join the Quadruple Alliance. ... Had Alberoni accepted the offer, it is almost certain that England could never have become a Mediterranean Power, for the Rock could never have been retaken if the defences and the garrison had received oven ordinary attention. Fortunately for Britain, the Spanish Primo Minister opened his mouth too wide, and his opportune illness broke off the negotiations and saved Gibraltar. Another attempt was made in 1720 and two in 1721. To one of the latter there is striking testimony in the shape of an autograph letter from George I. to his brother of Spain— I do no longer balance (sic) to assure Your Majesty of my readiness to satisfy you with regard to your demand touching the restitution of Gibraltar, promising to make uso of the first favourable opportunity to regulate this article with the assistance of my Parliament. But the favourable opportunity never came. Tha instinct of the people and their representatives was sounder than that of their German Kings or their own leaders. Lord Townshend complained in 1728 of the violent and almost superstitious zeal which has of lato prevailed among all parties in this kingdom ajainst any scheme for the restitutions of Gibraltar upon any conditions whatever. . . . The , most distant appearance of laying England under an obligation of ever parting with the place would ' be sufficient to put the whole nation in a flame.

The sixth and last of these astonishing attempts was made in 1783—the very year in which Gibraltar survived the greatest of its sieges—and then tho proposal was to take Porto Eico in exchange! Only once in three-quarters of a century, says Mr. Frewen Lord, was "a Prime Minister deemed crazy for suggesting the withdrawal of England, '' and '' even the great Pitt saw no advantage in; maintaining a British garrison in Gibraltar." It was merely as "an offensive outpost" that Gibraltar was then valued. Through such perils has this great Empire of ours emerged to greatness!