"Recent European Agreements"

M. Andre Tardieu delivered yesterday afternoon in Sanders Theatre the seventh of his Hyde lectures on "La France et les Alliances." Under the title of "Les Nouvelles Ententes Europeennes" the lecturer discussed briefly the recent treaties or understandings between France, Spain, and England, France and Japan, Russia and Japan, and England and Russia.

The first of these was necessary to the maintenance of the status quo in the countries of the western Mediterranean and the eastern Atlantic. The Algeciras conference, although it has by no means yet solved the Moroccan question, has put Spain in a better position than any it has occupied since the war with the United States.

The France-Japanese agreement was simply a safeguard for French Indo-China, but owing to the bad French translation of its original form, it may one day give China a pretext for complaint of unjustifiable foreign interference in her affairs. The treaty between Russia and Japan, though drawn up at Portsmouth when the war ended, was not reduced to satisfactory form till the autumn of 1907. Although bearing hardly on Russia, in some respects it ensures peaceful conditions for Russian activities in the Far East.

The Anglo-Russian agreement of 1907 is the most important understanding of its kind today. It gives England the ascendency in Afghanistan and equal rights in Persia and Thibet, but it frees Russia from all frontier troubles. France is the chief gainer by it, as the quarrels between England and Russia, which Germany has in the past turned to such good account against the French interest, are now obviated, and the affairs of France on three continents are thereby greatly improved and simplified.