THE FASHODA AFFAIR. 317 _ “The despatches which I have recently addressed to your lordship respecting the reports of the massacre of the Marchand Expedition, and the comments made in connection with this rumoured disaster by the French Press, will have already shown your lordship how necessary it has become to remind the French Government of the views held by that of Her Majesty as to their sphere of influence in the Upper Nile Valley ; and it has been with great satisfaction that I have found myself so promptly authorised to make a communication upon the subject to M. Hanotaux. Made in the way in which it has been suggested by your lordship, I see no reason why this communication should prejudice the chances of our coming to a satisfactory arrangement upon the question with which we are dealing in connection with the situation in West Africa.”

Sir Edmund Monson enclosed in the despatch a copy of a note he nad addressed to M. Hanotaux, at that period French Minister of Foreign Affairs, as follows:— “The other point to which it 1s necessary to advert is the proposed recognition of the French claim to the northern and eastern shores of Lake Chad. If other questions are adjusted, Her Majesty’s Government will make no difficulty about this condition. But in doing so they cannot forget that the possession of this territory may in the future open up a road to the Nile; and they must not be understood to admit that any other European Power than Great Britain has any claim to occupy any part of the Valley of the Nile. The views of the British Government upon this matter were plainly stated in Parliament by Sir Edward Grey some years ago during the Administration of the Earl of Rosebery, and were formally communicated to the French Government at the time. Her Majesty’s present Government entirely adhere to the language that was on this occasion employed by their predecessors.”

To this M. Hanotaux replied :-— “In any case the French Government cannot, under present circumstances, refrain from repeating the reservations which it has never failed to express every time that questions relating to the