a Lucia Bay?" I
asked. "Ah!" he replied, "it is not so valuable as it seemed
to be at first. People who were pursuing their own interests
on the spot represented it to be of greater importance than
it really was. And then the Boers were not disposed to take
any proper action in the matter. The bay would have been
valuable to us if the distance from the Transvaal were not so
great. And the English attached so much importance to it that
they declared it was impossible for them to give it up, and
they ultimately conceded a great deal to us in New Guinea and
Zanzibar. In colonial matters we must not take too much in
hand at a time, and we already have enough for a beginning.
We must now hold rather with the English, while, as you
know, we were formerly more on the French side[444]. But, as
the last elections in France show, every one of any
importance there had to make a show of hostility to us."

[Footnote 443: Parl. Papers, Africa, No. 6 (1885), p. 2.]

[Footnote 444: He here referred to the Franco-German agreement of Dec.
24, 1885, whereby the two Powers amicably settled the boundaries of
their West African lands, and Germany agreed not to thwart French
designs on Tahiti, the Society Isles, the New Hebrides, etc. See
Banning, _Le Partage politique de l'Afrique_, pp. 22-26.]

This passage explains, in part at least, why Bismarck gave up the
nagging tactics latterly employed towards Great Britain. Evidently he
had hoped to turn the current of thought in France from the
Alsace-Lorraine question to the lands over the seas, and his henchmen in
the Press did all in their power to persuade people, both in Germany and
France, that England was the enemy. The Anglophobe agitation was fierce
while it lasted; but its artificiality is revealed by the passage
just quoted.

We may go further, and say that the more recent outbreak of Anglophobia
in Germany may probably be ascribed to the same official stimulus; and
it too may be expected to cease when the politicians of Berlin see that
it no longer pays to twist the British lion's tail. That sport ceased in
and after 1886, because France was found still to be the enemy.
Frenchmen did not speak much about Alsace-Lorraine. They followed
Gambetta's advice: "Never speak about it, but always think of it." The
recent French elections revealed that fact to Bismarck; and, lo! the
campaign of calumny against England