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 had
addressed to M. Hanotaux, at that period French Minister of Foreign
Affairs, as follows:--

"The other point to which it is 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 Valley of the Nile have been brought forward. Thus, in
particular, the declarations of Sir Edward Grey, to which the
British Government has referred, gave rise to an immediate protest
by our representative in London, the terms of which he repeated
and developed in the further conversations which he had at the
Foreign Office on the subject. I myself had occasion, in the