It is our interest to reconcile Italy and Turkey so far as we can.
France and Russia have united in opposition to the Central European Triple Alliance.

France's European policy is overshadowed by the idea of _revanche_.

For that she makes the most painful sacrifices; for that she has forgotten the hundred years' enmity against England and the humiliation of Fashoda.

She wishes first to take vengeance for the defeats of 1870-71, which wounded her national pride to the quick; she wishes to raise her political prestige by a victory over Germany, and, if possible, to regain that former supremacy on the continent of Europe which she so long and brilliantly maintained; she wishes, if fortune smiles on her arms, to reconquer Alsace and Lorraine.

But she feels too weak for an attack on Germany.