The Franco-Russian entente ripened into an alliance in the year 1895.  So, at least, we may judge from the reference to Russia as “notre allie” by the Prime Minister, M. Ribot, in the debate of June 10, 1895.  Nicholas II., at the time of his visit to Paris in 1896, proclaimed his close friendship with the Republic; and during the return visit of President Faure to Cronstadt and St. Petersburg he gave an even more significant sign that the two nations were united by something more than sentiment and what Carlyle would have called the cash-nexus.  On board the French warship Pothuau he referred in his farewell speech to the “nations amies et alliees” (August 26, 1897).

The treaty has never been made public, but a version of it appeared in the Wiener Allgemeine Zeitung of September 21, 1901, and in the Paris paper, La Liberte five days later.  Mr. Henry Norman gives the following summary of the information there unofficially communicated.  After stating that the treaty contains no direct reference to Germany, he proceeds:  “It declares that if either nation is attacked, the other will come to its assistance with the whole of its military and naval forces, and that peace shall only be concluded in concert and by agreement between the two.  No other casus belli is mentioned, no term is fixed to the duration of the treaty, and the whole instrument consists of only a few clauses[273].”

[Footnote 273:  H. Norman, M.P., All the Russias, p. 390 (Heinemann, 1902).  See the articles on the alliance as it affects Anglo-French relations by M. de Pressense in the Nineteenth Century for February and November 1896; also Mr. Spenser Wilkinson’s The Nation’s Awakening, ch. v.]

Obviously France and Russia cannot help one another with all their forces unless the common foe were Germany, or the Triple Alliance as a whole.  In that case alone would such a clause be operative.  The pressure of France and Russia on the flanks of the German Empire would be terrible; and it is inconceivable that Germany would attack France, knowing that such action would bring the weight of Russia upon her weakest frontier.  It is, however, conceivable that the three central allies might deem the strain of an armed peace to be unendurable and attack France or Russia.  To such an attack the Dual Alliance would oppose about equal forces, though now hampered by the weakening of the Empire in the Far East.

Another account, also unofficial and discreetly vague, was given to the world by a diplomatist at the time when the Armenian outrages had for a time quickened the dull conscience of Christendom[274].  Assuming that the Sick Man of the East was at the point of death, the anonymous writer hinted at the profitable results obtainable by the Continental States if, leaving England out of count, they arranged the Eastern Question a l’aimable among themselves.  The Dual Alliance, he averred, would not meet the needs of the situation; for it did not contemplate the partition of Turkey or a general war in the East.