Théophile Delcassé resigns

On 13 October 1915 the French foreign minister Théophile Delcassé finally left the government. He had directed French diplomacy since August 1914, and earlier, in 1898–1905, he had built the understanding with Britain and strengthened the alliance with Russia. Now he was leaving at a moment when the Entente’s Balkan policy was collapsing before his eyes: German and Austro-Hungarian troops were crossing the Danube and the Sava, and Bulgaria, which Delcassé had been courting for a year, was beginning operations against Serbia, although it had not yet formally declared war. Until a successor was appointed, the foreign ministry was temporarily run by the prime minister, René Viviani.

The date of 13 October is given by most French works. Some sources give 14 or even 15 October, because the resignation was announced and formally accepted with some delay. The decision itself, however, had been maturing for two weeks.

Illness and the dispute over Salonika

The official reason was illness. According to the memoirs of President Raymond Poincaré, Delcassé first wanted to resign as early as 30 September, just after the announcement of general mobilisation in Bulgaria. The president then summoned him, saw that the minister was genuinely ill, exhausted and crushed by his son’s fate, and persuaded him to stay in office. The minister’s only son, Jacques, had been taken prisoner by the Germans in 1914, and in October 1915 a German court sentenced him to a year’s fortress detention for insulting the German army and insubordination. On 8 October Delcassé sent the president a letter of resignation. He explained that he suffered from constant dizziness and that day had been unable to read a single document put before him for signature.

On 12 October the minister renewed his resignation, but this time he added a political reason. The government had decided to send troops to help Serbia through Salonika, where French and British units had been landing since 5 October. Delcassé had been reluctant from the start, and when Greece refused to join Serbia he opposed any distant expedition that would weaken the front in France. He believed that the “secondary” operation in the East should be abandoned and a decision sought on France’s own front. Prime Minister Viviani did not hide his irritation that the minister was raising this only now and was leaving over military operations that did not fall within his department. The other ministers went so far as to accuse him of political disloyalty.

The failure of Balkan diplomacy

There was more behind the resignation than illness and a difference of opinion. For a whole year Entente diplomacy had tried to win Bulgaria over to its side, or at least to keep it neutral. It had been promised part of Macedonia at Serbia’s expense, and the Serbs had been pressed into painful concessions. The Bulgarians played for time for many months, and in September concluded a secret alliance with Germany. When on 12 October Viviani presented the government’s Balkan policy in the Chamber of Deputies, he had to admit that all these efforts had come to nothing and that the difficulties “had always been in Sofia”. Public opinion blamed above all the foreign minister. Delcassé was sharply attacked in his newspaper by Georges Clemenceau, his old political opponent. The German and Austrian press greeted his departure with delight, as proof of the French defeat in the Balkans.

Poincaré feared that a resignation at such a moment would make a bad impression in London and Petrograd. The ministers therefore decided not to change the government’s composition for the time being and to hold out until the end of the parliamentary debate. The post of foreign minister was offered to the 86-year-old Charles de Freycinet, a former prime minister, but he did not want to join the government as long as Alexandre Millerand remained minister of war. Delcassé’s departure proved to be the prelude to a wider crisis. Viviani’s government survived for a little over two more weeks, and for Delcassé, one of the most outstanding French diplomats of his generation, it was the end of his ministerial career.