THE LIBERAL LEADERS AND THE WAR.
NO one can justly say that the Liberal Leaders have net adequately responded to our appeal of last week to declare themselves distinctly as to the policy of resisting the onward march of Russia. Lord Granville, indeed, and Lord Hartington have not made an occasion for speaking, but reserve their more official utterances for the opening of Parliament itself. But Mr. Forster, Sir William Harcourt, and Sir Henry James, all of them leading members of the last Government, have spoken out with singular force ; while a host of influential members—Mr. Lefevre, Mr. Mundella, Mr. Trevelyan, Lord Arthur Russell, and a great variety of the rank and file of the Liberal party—have all spoken in the most emphatic manner on behalf of strict neutrality, and in deprecation of the prevalent fear and jealousy of Russia. Indeed, nothing has been to us more satisfactory than the astounding mass of proof furnished within a few days alike by the leaders and the ranks of voters that there is no such reaction in favour of Turkey as London society was for a few months pleased to imagine, and to per- Suede the superstitious to believe. What opinion in England was in the autumn of 1876, that it still is in the opening of 1878. If there were any vibration in it at all, it was only during the temporary check of Russia before Plevna and Kars, when the gallantry of the Turks roused the admiration, and may in part, perhaps, have deflected the judgment, of a nation rather prone to help those only who can help themselves. But whether there were any such vibration in the publi • opinion of England, we begin to doubt. Nothing is easier than to imagine such ebbs of feeling, nothing more difficult than to verify them, except by the actual test of calling meetings in all parts of the kingdom, or still better, by a general elec- tion, turning expressly on the issue with respect to which the condition of public opinion is to be made known. During many phases of a great question, English opinion really hibernates, listens, offers misleading remarks, and waits for the critical moment. But looking to the remarkable unanimity of Eng- lish opinion in September, 1876, and in January, 1878, it may, we think, be fairly maintained that at no time even between those dates has there really been a moment when England would have seen our neutrality broken and an alliance with Turkey concluded, without a prompt and probably successful effort to overturn the Administration, and without an outbreak of very sharp wrath against the promoters of the pro-Turkish policy.
It is obvious that our Liberal leaders have grown with the occasion. Compare Mr. Forster's admirable speech at Bradford last Saturday with the hesitating and timid speech of October 7, 1876, when he regarded even the autonomy of the Christian provinces of Turkey as, then at least, inadmis- sible,—and we see the magnitude of the step gained. No doubt, Mr. Forster will say, truly enough, that proposals made for re- conciling a rough approximation to justice with peace, before a war, must be very different indeed from what those proposals may well be after the fearful price of war has been paid to the full. And that is perfectly true. Still, we think that if our Liberal leaders,—if Lord Granville, Lord Harlington, and Mr. Forster,—had been a little more courageous and more disposed to support Russia—even without the concurrence of the rest of Europe—before the war, they would have held a far stronger position than they do now. For of course, the influence of an Opposition in relation to foreign policy must he estimated by the effect which a change of Government would have on the course of that foreign policy. No one can deny that an Opposition which had boldly expressed its sym- pathy with the Russian aims, a year ago, and had declared itself willing to co-operate—even, if it must have been, alone— with Russia to obtain those aims, would have had a far stronger position now in relation to this question than the cautious statesmen who now discourse so ably on the little reason we have to fear Russia, or to quarrel with her for her conquest of Turkey, but who a year and a half ago were so anxious to discover a patched-up compromise, however inadequate to the occa- sion, which would but have had the effect of holding Russia back. If Mr. Forster, for instance, could but have said at Bradford last Saturday, "Long before the war I advocated what was then proposed as the Russian solution of the Eastern Ques- tion, and was quite willing to have cooperated—even singly— with Russia, to effect it, and now that Russia has removed the obstacles from her path by force, I am still willing to aid her, and confidently hold that her objects and ours can be entirely reconciled,"—it is obvious how much more powerfully a change of Government, if Parliament or the country had desired a change of Government, would have affected our relations with Russia and the Russian campaign As it is, such a change,—unless indeed it were Mr. Gladstone who formed the new Government,—would only mean this, —that a Cabinet less hostile to Russia than Lord Beacons- field's, but still one distrustful and jealous of her before she entered on her campaign, had laid aside much of that distrust and jealousy, on finding how useless it would be to cherish such feelings. But had Lord Granville, and Lord Hartington, and Mr. Forster, and Sir William Harcourt, and Sir Henry James, spoken, as they speak now, before the strength of Russia was made manifest to all eyes, they would have been able to offer to the people of England an alternative Government with a far greater claim to concessions from Russia, and a far more cordial undArstanding with her, than any Government, except one of Mr. Glad- stone's own formation, could offer us now. We have no fault to find with the present speeches of any of our Liberal leaders. All of them are clear and strong, all of them are wise, and some of them are certainly eloquent. But we cannot but feel how much more effect they would have, if they did but express now the same hearty sympathy with the ap- proaching solution of the Eastern Question which they hal equally expressed formerly, when no one was on that side among the leading English statesmen except Mr. Gladstone.
But as there is no use in crying over spilt milk, so there is no we in regretting that the conversion of our leading Liberals to sound views has rather followed than preceded the event which rendered it inevitable. At all events, we may be well satisfied with the policy now advocated, though it is a little late. Nothing can be more statesmanlike than Mr. Forster's demonstration that to make an ally of Turkey, even for the sake of keeping Constantinople out of Russian hands, would be as fatal and ignoble a policy as it would probably be superfluous,—that the destiny of Constanti- nople is of far greater importance to Austria, and of no less importance to Germany, than it is to England,—and that therefore if we have not, as we probably shall have, very powerful allies in forbidding Russia from permanently occu- pying it, it would not be our duty to engage in a single-handed combat with Russia for such an aim as that. Nothing can be more striking than Sir William Harcourt's proof that even the present Government have utterly ridiculed the notion that Russian conquests in Asia threaten our Indian Empire, or his evidence that Asia, no less than Europe, groans under the misery of the Turkish yoke. Nothing can be more neat and apt than Sir Henry James's demonstration that the opening or closing of a strait like the Dardanelles is a matter of common interest to all the Powers, and that it would be as absurd as it would be selfish for any one Power to go to war for shutting it up in her own interest, against the protests of all the rest of the maritime world. In one word, our Liberal leaders have effectually whittled away Mr. Cross's three points to one ; and we venture to say that no British Government will now venture to embroil us with Russia, unless Russia is silly enough and mad enough, quite without relevancy or excuse, to threaten Egypt and endanger our command of the Suez Canal. This is a great step in Liberal policy, though it can- not be denied that it would have been a still greater step, if it had been formally taken a year and a half ago.
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