alternatehistory.com

Done!

Part One-Hundred Four: War By Other Means

Diplomatic Overtures:
The battlefield was not the only place the New Coalition and the Alliance Carolingien clashed during the first year of the Great War. Through 1906, the diplomatic corps on both sides scrambled to get neutral countries to join the conflict, or at least grant them diplomatic and economic support. The greatest diplomatic venture during this time was to Egypt. The French advisory delegation under Charles Jonnart suggested that Ibrahim II[1] close the Suez Canal to any shipping by members of the New Coalition. However, the British and Russian ambassadors to Egypt strongly heard of the potential closure and protested to the Egyptian Sultan. Nikolai Achinov, the Russian ambassador, even tried to convince the Egyptians to throw off the French and join the New Coalition. This Achinov Plan would have given Egypt the Nile valley and all the French territory on the Red Sea coast, but the offer was soon scrapped after the Tsar received word and rejected it. The British ambassador, Evelyn Baring, gave Ibrahim II a more subtle offer through his Vizier, Boutros Ghali[2]. Ghali favored keeping the canal neutral and soon convinced Ibrahim of his position. Ibrahim II formally declared the Suez CAnal a neutral waterway in November of 1906, but in deference to France the Suez Canal Company charged British ships a higher fee to pass through the canal and sent some of the profits to the French government through the company's French holders.

Other diplomatic overtures were sent to other minor European countries, but few countries were receptive to either the New Coalition or the Alliance Carolignien. Belgium refused British attempts to bring them in, still remembering the devastation to the country from the Second Napoleonic War. Both Germany and Italy made overtures to the kingdom of Illyria. Germany certainly had an advantage over Italy in Ljubljana from the start of the country's courting. The emissary from Kaiser Frederick offered Illyria the ports of Fiume and Trieste. While many of the German members of the Auersperg court and the Illyrian parliament supported an entry into the war on Germany's side, king Adolf Anton declined the German representative and sought to continue neutrality in the conflict. The decision was largely taken due to Illyria's reliance on Italy and Hungary for access to the Adriatic Sea and international trade.

Istanbul was also the recipient of diplomatic missions by the New Coalition. The attempts to bring Turkey to the side of the New Coalitions were also met with indifference. The Ottoman Empire was still recovering from the Turkish War less than five years before. Additionally, the Russian and Greek participation in the war led to frigid relations between the Sultan and the New Coalition. The war had also incited internal tensions as Bulgarians and Albanians launched revolts soon after French soldiers left the Balkans. The Bulgarian uprising was put down quickly by Ottoman forces. But the Albanian rebellion, which began in Skadar after protests against the city's transfer to Montenegro escalated and spread to Durrazzo and other Albanian cities, continued due to the removal of Turkish forces from the area as part of the Treaty of Rome.


The War at Home:
While diplomatic efforts by both sides of the Great War was focused in Europe, discussion of the war in Washington and elsewhere in the country became just as heated. While public interest in the war has small at first, by the fall many prominent Americans were arguing over the course of the war and how involved America should be. While there was disagreement on American involvement, the debate over which side it should be on was very one-sided. As conflict escalated and Great Britain attempted to blockade French shipping across the Atlantic, politicians and business leaders in the Northeast were quick condemned of the British actions in the war. However, calls for the United States to outright enter the war were hesitant. President Roosevelt made an early commitment to neutrality in his letter to the Olympic Committee, and later reaffirmed this position. Despite calls by Congressmen from the Democratic and his own Progressive Party, Roosevelt adopted a wait and see approach to the war. However, in a letter to Secretary of War Taft, Roosevelt revealed his private support for war against the British and advised the War Department to draft plans for an American entry.

The American position regarding the Great War quickly became one of the most decisive issues of the 1906 midterm election campaign. With several major newspapers openly declaring support or opposition to an entry into the war, the media created a large factor in the campaigns. Newspapers such as Joseph Pulitzer's Saint Louis Post-Dispatch and New York Herald advocated immediate entry into the war in support of the Alliance Caorlingien, while the rival New York Post[3] pushed for continued neutrality and noninterference. A journalist for the New York Post, Oswald Garrison Villard[4], blended media and politics by running as a Republican for New York's 5th Congressional district. Villard won the seat as one of the few victories the Republicans had that year. Anti-war candidates also performed well in the Old Northwest where opposition to the war was greater.

Meanwhile, pro-war candidates were bolstered by the anti-British propaganda and a more friendly association of the French in the mindset of most Americans. Areas with large Irish communities saw the greatest support for pro-war candidates owing to the animosity of Irish diaspora toward Great Britain. In Maryland, a traditionally Republican stronghold at the time, pro-war Democratic and Progressive candidates performed unusually well in the 1906 elections. The large Irish community in Baltimore and the state's connection to the trade across the Atlantic helped these candidates, and gained the Progressives two of the state's twelve Representatives. In Louisiana, however, the popularity of pro-war candidates led to a surprising result. Both the Democratic senator and the Progressive challenger split the vote in Louisiana, giving the election result to Republican isolationist Frank Caffery[5].

[1] TTL son of Sa'id Pasha.
[2] OTL Prime Minister of Egypt from 1908-1910 and grandfather of UN Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali.
[3] Then the New York Evening Post, whose editor, Edward Lawrence Godkin, was an anti-imperialist.
[4] Also an anti-imperialist. As a sidenote, ITTL his father Henry Villard is not in Wiesbaden but in New York when Oswald is born.
[5] TTL son of Donelson Caffery, post-war Democratic senator from Louisiana. He had sons in OTL but I couldn't find their names.


P.S. The composition of the 60th Congress is as follows:

Senate: 39 D (-2), 36 R (+1), 21 P (+7) (Total 96)
House: 151 R (-18), 122 D (+5), 59 P (+16), 1 AS (+0) (Total 336)