England is clearly a hindrance in the way of Italy’s justifiable efforts to win a prominent position in the Mediterranean.  She possesses in Gibraltar, Malta, Cyprus, Egypt, and Aden a chain of strong bases, which secure the sea-route to India, and she has an unqualified interest in commanding this great road through the Mediterranean.  England’s Mediterranean fleet is correspondingly strong and would—­especially in combination with the French Mediterranean squadron—­seriously menace the coasts of Italy, should that country be entangled in a war against England and France.  Italy is therefore obviously concerned in avoiding such a war, as long as the balance of maritime power is unchanged.  She is thus in an extremely difficult double position; herself a member of the Triple Alliance, she is in a situation which compels her to make overtures to the opponents of that alliance, so long as her own allies can afford no trustworthy assistance to her policy of development.  It is our interest to reconcile Italy and Turkey so far as we can.

France and Russia have united in opposition to the Central European Triple Alliance.  France’s European policy is overshadowed by the idea of revanche.  For that she makes the most painful sacrifices; for that she has forgotten the hundred years’ enmity against England and the humiliation of Fashoda.  She wishes first to take vengeance for the defeats of 1870-71, which wounded her national pride to the quick; she wishes to raise her political prestige by a victory over Germany, and, if possible, to regain that former supremacy on the continent of Europe which she so long and brilliantly maintained; she wishes, if fortune smiles on her arms, to reconquer Alsace and Lorraine.  But she feels too weak for an attack on Germany.  Her whole foreign policy, in spite of all protestations of peace, follows the single aim of gaining allies for this attack.  Her alliance with Russia, her entente with England, are inspired with this spirit; her present intimate relations with this latter nation are traceable to the fact that the French policy hoped, and with good reason, for more active help from England’s hostility to Germany than from Russia.

The colonial policy of France pursues primarily the object of acquiring a material, and, if possible, military superiority over Germany.  The establishment of a native African army, the contemplated introduction of a modified system of conscription in Algeria, and the political annexation of Morocco, which offers excellent raw material for soldiers, so clearly exhibit this intention, that there can be no possible illusion as to its extent and meaning.