| Submit your comments on this article |
| Europe |
| Britain's Entrapment by the French: |
| 2004-08-26 |
| The Triple Anniversary of 2004 Via Samizdata - Geez, I almost put this under 5th column. ..."As I am not a historian I cannot vouch for the accuracy (or otherwise) of the various factual claims and I suppose it behoves me to point out that the Bruges Group is a think-tank staffed mainly by Conservatives who take a famously hostile view of the European Union...." 2004 is a year of three sad anniversaries in the unhappy relationship between Britain and France. Ninety years ago in August 1914 Britain was dragged into a war between France and Germany for which France was largely to blame. It was that French war that fatally undermined British power and thus Britain's ability and willingness to withstand the Nazi and Soviet threats that were the very consequence of the war that France began. Not for the first time France had reduced Europe to ruins with her insane and criminal aggression. There ought to be a monument in English in Compiegne pointing this out. Britain's real folly though took place ten years earlier, one hundred years ago in 1904, when we agreed to the Entente Cordiale. The fact that it is always referred to in French tells us exactly who the beneficiary was. Without it Britain might well have prevaricated over and merely blustered about the German decision to send its troops through Belgium to get to France after war had broken out in 1914. More to the point the French might have had the sense not to go to war with their more powerful neighbour, Germany, if they had been fearful of what an unpredictable Britain might do.... Read the rest |
| Posted by:anonymous2u |
| #2 Problem is France had an alliance w/Russia,while merely an informal understanding w/Britain.And France would not have had that understanding w/out the Kaiser's Germany p****ing off Britain over fleet construction.There is also little matter that France neither started WW1,nor wanted it to happen for several years to come.France(and Germany)discounted British ability to contribute to land operations,France was counting on Russia to help win any war w/Germany.And Russia was several years away from recovering from 1905 Russian-Japanese War fiasco.In fact,if Britain had had a formal alliance w/France there is strong possibility Kaiser would not have agreed to giving Austria the "blank check"that caused WW1.A more appropriate lesson the British might have learned from WW1 is that keeping all your options open,that keeping everyone guessing as to your policy is not the best way to conduct foreign policy,that it is better if the world knows where you stand. |
| Posted by: Stephen 2004-08-26 11:19:42 AM |
| #1 A masterful skewering of France. |
| Posted by: virginian 2004-08-26 9:21:22 AM |