When she saw Mr. Gladstone taking what seemed to her the anti-nationalist side in Egypt, she could only believe that he had been forced into this _concession fatale_ by “British mercantile Chauvinists” and Palmerstonians.[383] Mr. Gladstone’s good-will towards France she never doubted; but she deplored that it had been unable to permeate the British Foreign Office.[384] The influence of mercantile Chauvinism Mme. Adam discerned in the Fashoda Affair. It was then giving birth to that British Imperialism, which whether advocated by Mr. Chamberlain or Lord Rosebery[385] seemed to her equally dangerous. In the South African War she saw what she had described as _l’insatiable ambition des agents britanniques_ in Egypt, developing into _la voracité scandaleuse de l’Angleterre en Transvaal_.[386] It was with some dismay, however, that on this question of the Boer Republic’s Independence Mme. Adam found herself in line with her arch-enemy, the Emperor of Germany. And one can hardly congratulate her on the fiction with which she tried to extricate herself from such a lamentable position; for she genuinely persuaded herself that William II was only supporting Kruger in order to please his subjects, and that in reality Queen Victoria’s grandson could not fail to side with his grandmother. Mme. Adam’s hereditary suspicion of _la perfide Albion_ was, as she herself confessed to me, by no means allayed by the Entente Cordiale. It was not until Great Britain retrieved the error of 1870, and definitely entered the Great War as the Ally of France, that this _grande Française_ began to trust us. That she has completely changed her opinion of us, and that she is not ashamed to own it, is proved by this extract from one of her letters written to me in 1916. She is referring to an Englishman who had recently visited her at Gif.... “_Abbaye de Gif_, “_S. et Oise_, “_Le 8 octobre, 1916_. “... _Comme le grand député capitaine respire la volonté, la conviction, le patriotisme! Quelle joie d’apprendre nos alliés si autrement que je croyais les connaître._” One of her British _confrères_, she describes as _le plus parfait gentilhomme du monde_. Now in 1917 she writes: “_L’Angleterre est admirable. Vive l’Angleterre._ Her improvised army is worth the most ancient of armies. Be proud of it. Such words on my lips are not without their value. For I was once your enemy. I blamed your policy at the Berlin Congress and in Heligoland.” “Now, side by side, _fer à fer_, France and the United Kingdom will drive out of France, out of Lorraine, out of Belgium, the German, who is the enemy of us all.”[387]