THE REOCCUPATION OF NORTHERN AFRICA 287 
were most friendly and cordial. Then came the “Entente 
Cordiale” with Great Britain, which commenced with the 
visit of King Edward to Paris in 1903 and the return trip of 
President Loubet to London, and was concluded in the 
remarkable treaties of 1904,! which concerned not only all 
the French and British possessions in northern Africa, but 
also embraced their interests in Siam, Gambia, Nigeria, 
Madagascar, the New Hebrides, and Newfoundland. Here 
the agreement was reached that England, on the one hand, 
should be unhampered in her administration of the finances 
and government of Egypt as long as the French bondholders 
were protected, and that France, on the other hand, should 
be free to assist the Sultan of Morocco in “improving the ad- 
ministrative, economic, financial, and military condition of 
his country,” provided that the integrity of the Sultan’s 
domains was preserved, the commercial interests of Great 
Britain safeguarded, and the special rights of Spain in north- 
ern Morocco recognized. 
The friendship of Spain was cultivated by the mediation 
of France in the negotiations which closed the Spanish- 
American War, and by coiperative arrangements between 
the two neighbors for the economic development of northern 
Spain in August, 1904, and F ebruary, 1905. The King of 
Spain visited Paris and London, and in 1906 married the 
niece of King Edward. Spain gave her adhesion to the 
Franco-British treaty of April, 1904, in an agreement with 
France concerning Morocco in October of the same year,? 
and the whole series of alliances and treaties was successfully 
capped in 1907 by a three-cornered arrangement between 
France, Spain, and England, guaranteeing the perpetuation 
of the status quo in North Africa.3 
1 Arch. Dip., 1904, vol. I, p. 413; and letters of Lansdowne and Delcassé, 
tbid., pp. 556 and 711. 
3 Ibid, 1905, vol. 1v, pp. 677-78. 
$ Ibid, 1907, vol. 1, pp. 49-53