was the first outward manifestation of the Anglo-French Entente. The
Anglo-French Convention had been signed two years previously, on April
8, 1904. I cannot say with whom the idea of terminating the
five-hundred-year-old feud between Britain and France originated, but
I know who were the instruments who translated the idea into practical
effect: they were M. Paul Cambon, French Ambassador in London, and my
brother-in-law, Lord Lansdowne, then Foreign Secretary; between them
they smoothed down asperities, removed ancient grievances, and
lubricated points of contact where friction might arise. No one,
probably, anticipated at the time the tremendous consequences of the
Anglo-French Convention, nor dreamed that it was destined, after the
most terrible conflict of all time, to change the entire history of
the world.

In the early part of 1905 the Emperor William had made his theatrical
triumphal progress through the Turkish dominions, and on March 31 of
the same year he landed at Tangier in great state. What exact
agreement the Emperor concluded with the Sultan of Morocco we do not
know, but from that moment the French met with nothing but
difficulties in Morocco, their own particular "sphere of influence"
under the Anglo-French Convention. All the reforms proposed by France
were flouted by the Sultan, and Germans claimed equal commercial and
economic rights with the French. A conference met at Algeciras on
January 10, 1906, to settle these and other disputed questions, but
the French authorities viewed the situation with the utmost anxiety.
They were convinced that the "mailed fist" would be brandished in
their faces on the smallest provocation, and that the French Navy
might have to intervene.

Now came the first visible result of the _entente_. The British