91 the first definite signs of an increasing
intimacy with some of the European countries showed themselves. In
March, 1891, England and France agreed to arbitrate the Newfoundland
fisheries question which had been a long standing cause of
difficulties and diplomatic dissensions between the two countries.
Some time later in July and August, 1891, a large French fleet paid
an official visit to Kronstadt, the port of Petrograd, and was
received there with the most remarkable expressions of friendship
and good will. This latter event was the beginning of the
Franco-Russian alliance. It was followed in October, 1893, by a
visit of a Russian fleet to Toulon, which was greeted with similar
enthusiasm.

In 1894 the so-called Dreyfus affair was responsible for a revival
of the anti-German feeling, because Dreyfus, who was then a captain
in the French army, had been accused and found guilty of selling
military secrets to a foreign power which was by everybody
considered to have been Germany. However, beyond intensifying the
anti-German sentiment nothing resulted, and in May, 1895, France
found it possible to join Germany and Russia in demanding from Japan
the return of the Liao-Tung peninsula to China.

The popular sentiment in France during the South African War was
strongly pro-Boer, although the official attitude was one of
neutrality. In September, 1896, France arrived at an understanding
with Italy concerning the former's desires for political supremacy
in Tunis. The next month brought a visit from the newly crowned Czar
Nicholas who was received in France with great hospitality. The
visit was reciprocated in August, 1897, by President Faure and
Europe made up its mind then that France and Russia had become
allied. In the next month England, too, as Italy had done before,
made arrangements to acknowledge French supremacy in Tunis.

In September, 1898, however, it looked for a short time as if
England and France were to go to war with each other on account of
further French advances in north Africa. In that month Major
Marchand with French troops occupied Fashoda, a town located on the
upper Nile in territory which England claimed to belong to its own
sphere of interest. Lord, then still Sir Herbert, Kitchener, who was
Governor General of the Sudan, demanded the withdrawal of the French
troops which demand was refused; but a few months afterward the
matter was amicably adjusted and the French withdrew from Fashoda.
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