M. CAMBON is a living monument of history. He has been the principal moderator, and often the chief director, of Anglo-French relations under three reigns in England, and under a long succession of presidents of the French Republic. Prudent and firm, pertinacious and adaptable, long-sighted, yet tactful and tactical, uniting charm of manner to strength of will, wielding great influence in his own country and scarcely less in ours, Paul Cambon is one of those men who insensibly become institutions while remaining thoroughly human.

Calling recently to bid him farewell, I reminded the Ambassador of our conversations at critical moments before the war and during the war; of one in particular, on the morning of Sunday, August 2, 1914. The news had come in the night of the invasion of the Grand Duchy of Luxemburg, whose neutrality was guaranteed, singly but not jointly, by five Great Powers.

I had then asked him if he had any news of what England would do. The Luxemburg Treaty lay before him on his table. Why ask me?' he had said, almost abruptly. "There is the treaty. I have just shown it to Sir Edward Grey and put to him the same question you have put to me. What did he answer? Nothing. I do not know whether this evening we shall not have to strike

the word "honor" out of the English vocabulary.'

'Did I say that?' asked M. Cambon quickly. 'It was a very stiff thing to say.'

'Yes, M. l'Ambassadeur, you said it, and I, though an Englishman, took no offence at it, for it was a very stiff situation and your responsibility was terrific.'

'Ah!' he continued. "Those were the only three days of real difficulty in all the years I have spent in London the first, second, and third of August, 1914. Think what they meant. Your Cabinet had been discussing the European crisis repeatedly. We had relied on the support of three or four ministers. Some of them, but not all, had been influenced by weighty representations from important men in the city in favor of British neutrality. On the morning of Saturday, August 1, there had been another Cabinet meeting. Afterward, I saw Grey, who told me that the government had not been able to decide upon intervention in the war. He spoke very gravely. I replied that I could not and would not tell my government that. "After all that has passed between our two countries," I exclaimed, "after the withdrawal of

our forces ten kilometres within our frontier so that German patrols can actually move on our soil without hin

drance, so anxious are we to avoid any appearance of provocation; after the agreement between your naval authorities and ours by which all our naval strength has been concentrated in the Mediterranean so as to release your fleet for concentration in the North Sea, so that if the German Fleet sweeps down the Channel and destroys Calais, Boulogne, and Cherbourg, there can be no resistance, you tell me that your government cannot decide upon intervention? How am I to send such a message? It would fill France with rage and indignation. My people would say you have betrayed us. It is not possible. I cannot send such a message. It is true the agreements between your military and naval authorities and ours have not been ratified by our governments, but there is a moral obligation not to leave us unprotected.'

'I saw Grey again that night and again next morning after the Cabinet meeting, but not until the evening of Sunday, August 2, could he give me the assurance that the British Fleet would protect our unguarded northern coast. I felt that he was with us at heart. I knew that Mr. Asquith and Mr. Winston Churchill were with us, too. But could they carry with them their colleagues, and could they command the support of the House of Commons?'

'You will remember the King's reply to President Poincaré's letter of July 31, M. l'Ambassadeur,' I interrupted, 'with its "correct" but discouraging assurance that "my government will continue to discuss freely and frankly any point which might arise of interest to our two nations with M. Cambon," prefaced by the statement that "as to the attitude of my country, events are changing so rapidly that it is difficult to forecast future developments?' I have heard it whispered that the King afterward called it "my wretched let

ter." He must have felt it hard to write so guardedly at such a moment.'

'How could his Majesty go beyond his government?' inquired M. Cambon. 'He is the most constitutional of sovereigns not only formally but out of principle. Like his chief ministers, and like Mr. Balfour and Lord Curzon among the Opposition leaders, he was with us at heart, and showed it as soon as he could do so constitutionally. But it was not until Grey spoke in the House of Commons on the afternoon of Monday, August 3, that we could breathe.'

'But surely, M. l'Ambassadeur, the government already knew of the German ultimatum to Belgium and had resolved on war? The decision must have been taken at the second Cabinet meeting on Sunday, August 2?'

"They may have known of the ultimatum,' replied M. Cambon; 'but they did not know of the invasion of Belgium. Besides, powerful influences were still at work for neutrality. The late Lord Rothschild told me that he was called to No. 10 Downing Street while the Cabinet was sitting on the morning of the second. He assured me afterward that he had worked for intervention, but I was not quite reassured.'

'Some people think you were right in not feeling reassured,' I said. 'But was there not, on August 3, a curious episode but for which Grey's speech might have been much more positive than it was? Did not the late Belgian Minister, Count de Lalaing, receive, early in the afternoon of the third, a telegram from his government announcing that the Germans were on Belgian soil? I have heard that he took it to the Foreign Office and asked to see Grey. They told him that Grey was at the House speaking on the crisis. He inquired at what hour Grey would return and went home again with his telegram

in his pocket. Had he gone to the House and sent the telegram in to Grey, had Grey known that Belgium was actually invaded at the moment when he spoke, how much more direct would his appeal have been! As it was, Grey's speech was largely hypothetical, and it was only by his sincerity and honest moderation that he carried the House with him.'

'Perhaps,' replied the Ambassador. 'Poor Lalaing! He is dead now. God rest his soul! In justice to him you must remember that he had been overwhelmed by the thought of the invasion of the country and by the rush of unwonted business which the crisis brought with it. It was a tremendous situation.'

'After war had been declared, Grey said to me, "You must have thought we were frightfully slow in making up our minds, but I assure you that it could not have been done more quickly. The House of Commons, the country, the Dominions needed to know that we had spared no effort to avert war, and that we had no option but either to ignore our treaty obligations toward Belgium and our moral obligations toward you and thus to dishonor ourselves for ever, or to preserve our honor and fight for our very existence." I, who knew the difficulties, could but agree with him, but the anxiety of those days was nevertheless terrible. And how magnificently your people behaved when their minds were made up! 'How they fought, how they gave, how they threw themselves into the struggle! I can never forget it, my country will never forget it, and the world can never forget it. Our military authorities had sometimes been more sanguine than the facts warranted. General Foch, who, before the war, was at the head of our Ecole de Guerre, used to attend manœuvres here and to discuss matters with your leading sol

diers. He knew how splendidly General Sir William Robertson and Sir Henry Wilson had worked on the details of an Expeditionary Force. But I had to warn him that there could be no question of sending from this country more than four divisions at first; that, possibly, two more divisions might follow; that in no case would it be prudent to reckon upon the arrival of British forces in France until fifteen days after the outbreak of war. Foch was sceptical but, in the event, my estimate proved to be exactly right.'

'One day, during the Peace Conference at Paris, I went to see Mr. Balfour at the rue Nitot. In the doorway I happened to meet Mr. Lloyd George, who was accompanied by M. Paul Mantoux, the well-known interpreter at all Allied Conferences and at the Peace Conference. Lloyd George laughingly pointed his finger at me and said to Mantoux, "That's the man who dragged England into the war." I replied, "No, my dear Prime Minister, you are the man who made it clear that England would fight." "I?" returned Lloyd George; "how do you make that out?" "Why," I said, “did you not make a famous speech at the Mansion House in 1911 at the moment of the Agadir crisis? Was it not you who an-. nounced that England could not be held of no account in the affairs of the world? Did you not then support the just claims of France which Germany had challenged?"

""Yes," exclaimed the Prime Minister, “and I am not ashamed of it." Indeed, he has no reason to be ashamed of it, nor of his great part in the war; nor has England or the British Empire any reason to be ashamed. Nor have I, on leaving London with the consciousness that I have done, since the moment of my arrival soon after the Fashoda incident, everything I could to promote friendship between my

country and yours and to stimulate their reciprocal comprehension of their indissolubly-linked interests, any reason to be ashamed of what I have tried to do. I can only be thankful.'

"The days after Fashoda must have been almost as difficult as the days just before the war,' I suggested.

'Don't let us talk of Fashoda,' observed M. Cambon. "There were faults on both sides and, fortunately, things ended less badly than they might have ended. But I remember the sequel well. One of my first tasks was to negotiate with Lord Salisbury the delimitation of our respective boundaries in Northern Africa. The work went quickly and smoothly, for Lord Salisbury knew his own mind. By the spring of 1899 the agreement was signed. Then I suggested to Lord Salisbury that there were several other matters which might be settled in an equally friendly spirit. He shook his head and smiled. "I have the greatest confidence in M. Delcassé," he said, "and also in your present government. But, in a few months' time, they will probably be overturned and their successors will make a point of doing exactly the contrary of what they have done. No, we must wait a bit."

'When Lord Salisbury left the Foreign Office, Lord Landsdowne, who succeeded him, showed greater confidence in the durability of our Cabinets. I told him of my talk with Lord Salisbury and suggested the subjects on which I should have liked to negotiate an agreement. He asked whether he might make a note of them, but I said he need not trouble as I would write him a personal letter enumerating them. This I did and foolishly never kept a copy of it. I wish I had, for it would be interesting now. Next evening there was a big dinner at Buckingham Palace. I was placed next to King Edward, who said: "Lans

downe has shown me your letter. It is excellent. You must go on. I have told the Prince of Wales about it. You can discuss it also with him." After dinner, the Prince of Wales, now King George, spoke to me eagerly of the letter, and said what a good thing it would be if we could have a general agreement. He wanted to know when it would be concluded. I told him that we could not go quite so fast as he might wish, but that, with patience and good will, it ought to be possible. Thus began the conversations which led, in April 1904, to the conclusion of the Entente Cordiale.

He

'Of course, King Edward helped immensely. His visit to Paris in the spring of 1903 really made it possible. The visit was his own idea and was undertaken on his own initiative. went on a cruise in the Mediterranean after paying the first of his visits of Accession to his friend King Carlos of Portugal. One day Lord Lansdowne told me that on the way back from the Mediterranean the King wished to stay in Paris. I asked whether it would be an official visit, and said that, however unofficial it might be, the President of the Republic would at least have to ask the King to dinner. Lord Lansdowne thought it would be quite an informal affair, and showed some apprehension as to the way in which the King would be received.

'France, like the rest of Europe, had been strongly in favor of the Boers,N and it was not pleasant to think that a Sovereign who was well disposed toward France might be received with cries of "Vivent les Boërs!" I informed my government, and Lord_Monson, then British Ambassador in Paris, was not a little astonished to receive an in quiry from the Quai d'Orsay as to how the King would wish to be received. He telegraphed to King Edward, who answered that he wanted to be re