FRANCE AND RUSSIA.

Sun (Christchurch), Volume III, Issue 761, 19 July 1916, Page 6

FRANCE AND RUSSIA.

BIRTH OF AN ALLIANCE WOMAN'S LIFE WORK. (By Juliette Adam, in the "Daily Chronicle.") {Juliette Adam is one of the molt distinguished of jiving: Frenchwomen. Mer life work has been to brine Russia and France together against Germany, and now in the late evening of her days—she has passed her eirhtieth birthday—her dream has been realised to the full. The war of 1870 71 and its result convinced her that the future of France was with Russia, and hence forward la ravanche was the cardinal principle of her life—a revenge of which the first condition was alliance with Russia. In 1891 that condition was fulfilled. Now in May, 1916—exactly 25 years later—Russian troops have landed on French soil, and the auspicious event has awakened memories of the past and a legitimate pride in the soul of this venerable old lady, who may fairly claim to be the original authoress of the present grouping of Powers against the traditional enemy of Frarice.l

Small are the number of Frenchmen who, since 1871, have watched the historical development of Russian sympathies for Fiance. My hope of avenging (la ravanche) through an alliance with Russia the defeat suffered by the French had its birth in one single fact, which comforted me and greatly relieved my patriotic distress. Immediately the postal service was resumed after Paris had been forced to capitulate, I saw in the first newspaper which came into my hands the following simple words:— The Tsarcvitch has refused to join in the toast given by his father, the Tsar, for the victory at Sedan. On reading those few lines my hope for a ravanche became so intensified, and appealed to me with such force, that ever since then the whole of my life has been guided by it. Russian history and politics became the object of my daily occupations. A possible alliance with Russia has haunted my mind without respite. I went far in my research and founded my presumptions on all the facts which tended to indicate to me the struggle of certain Russian minds against Germanism. Everywhere I found proof of this. All those who held Germany to be an enemy of Russia became, ipso facto, friends of France. I paused in my search into the past, and found that everything pointed to the same conclusion as in 1846. Definite symptoms appeared. Having been generated and grouped together, they took root and developed under the impulse given them by Constantin Aksakoff, Komaroff, and Kireevsky (Note: The three leaders of the Slavophils), and by the publication of the "Moskovsky Sbornik." The start had been given, and hatred against Germany and sympathy for France firmly established. Russian Conservatives, bosom friends of the Germans, in bitter rage had the "Moskovsky Sbornik" suppressed, but could not check the impulse given to the movement that was nourished and developed by the passionate literature of the true Russians of the middle classes. An Anti-German Campaign. However, the Congress of Berlin and the treaty which robbed Russia of the fruit of her victories at last opened the eyes of the upper classes. One might mention in this connection England, and the treacherous union which associated Disraeli with

Bismarck, and which caught Gainbetta, represented by M. Waddington, a man of British origin, in one of the most Machiavellian traps. The great Katkoff, who possessed the most intellectual mind, the greatest heart and finest character, and was the best speaker and writer Russia ever had, suddenly became aware

much as an inglorious German shot. A few months later the next ranking admiral, von Behnckc, Chief of the Admiralty Staff, followed von Ingenohl into the official bourne whence no Teuton incompetent returnelh. Von Behncke's felony was also associated with the fiasco of the Tirpitz plan to conquer Britain by U-boat. Into von Ingenohl's boots stepped another eminent admiral, von Pohl. The latter did not contrive to wear them any more gloriously, and early this year so silently did he take them off that it was only after he had died, in February, that Germans learned of von Fold's unostentatious "retirement" from the commandership of the Kaiser's imprisoned sea forces. "Impropaganda." No sorrier descent from the pinnacle has been executed than the fate which broke Germany's conspirators in the United States—Dernburg. the Propaganda Generalissimo dispatched across the Atlantic during the first fortnight of the war (Americans called Dcrnburg's manoeuvres on their hospitable soil "Impropaganda"); Boy-Ed, the naval attache at the Washington Embassy; and the military attache, the ineffable von Fapen, who ought to be known, I think (following the precedent of allowing von Midler to call himself von Muller-Emden), as von Papcn-Falmouth.

l)r Dclbruck's "retirement" from he Imperial Ministership of the Inferior (what would be known here j as the Home Secretaryship) is probably the most striking exemplified-1 tion yet of the German system of intolerance of incompetents. Be-; cause, after 18 months of super-orga-nisation, centralisation, and "con-! trol," the regulation of the domestic: food supply still leaves much to bej desired. Delbruck, despite years of. meritorious bureacratic service, has had to make way for a man who the. Kaiser thinks is better fitted for the I job. The Kaiser is at war, and he j will not have around him any men! who are demonstrated failures at] such a fateful hour. I

jof the shameless Machiavellianism which the Treaty of Berlin representj ed. An ardent partisan of autocracy, he remained Conservative, but the imore he repudiated Teutonic influjence the more he was obliged to turn j his sympathies towards France. Aksakoff, General Tscherniaieff j (called the hater of the Germans), Skobelcff (whose motto was: !"Every German is an enemy") pre- ' ceded Katkoff in their hatred, and | they and Count Nicholas Ignatieff, the diplomat of genius, one of the | parties to the treaty of San Stefano, i united in the anti-German campaign, and, supporting same, did not fight those of the National Party. ; If the title of "associate" appears j vulgar in certain business combinaI liens, nevertheless it is a great favI our to gel it when one has fought 1 for it. In the "National Commerce" j I had ihe honour, of which I am especially proud, of being an assojciate or Skobelcff, of Katkoff, of | Count Ignatieff, during the long and I difficult campaign of propaganda for bringing about the Franco-Russian Alliance.

I have related in my "Memoirs" the mean crime of Bismarck which resulted in the death of Katkoff and Skobelcff. Bismarck organised shameful attacks on Katkoff and his Moscow paper. One would like to read again the article in which Katkoff answered Bismarck's calumnies. Only one Russian paper remained faithful to the German Chancellor, and that, I would add, to its utter disgrace. This paper, which in the dispute between Katkoff and Bismarck took the part of the latter, was the "Grajdanla" of Prince Mschersky. The Franco-Russian Entente. The influence exercised by Katkoff on the growth of anti-German feeling in Russia, and his influence over the mind and soul of Alexander 111 cannot be over-estimated. Cronstadt, Toulon, Marseilles have been —nay, are—its consequences. About 1876 I had the honour to receive a letter from Gambetta, in which he called me "impudent." The following is the text of the letter, full of praise for me:— One must be quite impudent to wish for a Russian Alliance.

. I have also right to recall what I wrote in my "Foreign Policy" in the "Nouvelle Revue" on October 30, 18!>3:

"At last the day has come, the unforgettable day, the blessed day, when the whole French nation, without distinction of caste, party, religion, or philosophy, has acclaimed the Franco-Russian Entente. At first timidly, sometimes despairing always ardently, I have dreamt for more than 20 years of possibilities at last realised by events in Cronstadt, Toulon, Paris, Lyons, and Marseilles. If my anguish with regard to the future was sometimes cruel, how splendid it now is that my most exalted wishes have now been realised, my most cherished dreams surpassed! "How many friends have been.lost on the way, how many others found, how many hopes abandoned, how many encouragements picked up during this struggle of a quarter of a century! At first in small numbers, then in masses, the friends of Russia have not interrupted their march towards their end, and though many leaders fell by the way most of them were struck down by the enemy—Tco, Chanzy, Skobeleff, Katkoff, Aksakoff—but each time when they left us to struggle alone a consolation arose, a comforting word sustained us, and this word came from the Tsar. It is he, and he

alone, who has answered lo our appeal, and has encouraged our efforts.

"Shall I write some day the history of these 20 years, the war that I waged and which was waged against me in the field of foreign politics? How severe were the leaders of the opportunist parties upon a woman whose sole crime has been to carry proudly aloft the banner of the Franco-Russian Entente! "Shall 1 unveil the means which our diplomacy has employed, the intrigues it has sown, the arms it has furbished, the ambushes it has laid in order to hanu as over to the victor after Sedan, as Austria was delivered up after Sadowa. Every possible mistake has been committed abroad under the pretence of the exigencies of the great opportunist policy inspired by Conservative England. . . .

"In Toulon, in Faris, in Lyons, in Marseilles, in every town, in every village the French people have testified thir real love of Russia to him who personified the great Empire of the North."

Towards our nation, also, the ; friends of Russia have never ceased to demonstrate what France owes to Russia; to the three Alexanders. For she was saved from being cut to pieces at the Congress of Faris by Alexander I. From war in 1875, when we were busy rearming, by Alexander 11. And because we owe the alliance with Russia to Alexander 111.

THE ENEMY'S ASSET. The great military advantage, which Germany and Austria still retain is their central position. It enables them, so long as they have a strong body of spare troops available for offensives, to hurl these rapidly from side to side, now against this enemy, now ;; ainst that. It prevented the Western Allies from being able to interfere substantially with the course of the 191j campaign against Russia; it prevented Russia from being able to do any more to relieve the pressure this spring on Verdun.— "Chronicle."