TOPICS OF THE DAY.
THE SEQUEL TO LORD BEACONSFIELD'S TRIUMPH.
THE Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs, Mr. Bourke, seems, not unnaturally perhaps, almost fascinated by Lord Beaconsfield's great words of consolation to Greece,—that she has a future, and that a country which has a future can afford to wait. He repeated this on Tuesday night, with what reads almost like the unintentional appropriateness of semi-hys- terical impulse, in answering Sir Charles Mlle's assertion that Turkey had no intention of complying with the invitation of the Powers to rectify the Greek frontier so as to hand over to Greece a considerable share of Thessaly and Epirus. "Cer- tainly," he said, "the Prime Minister had never concealed his views ; he had said over and over again that Greece had a future, and that anything that had a future could afford to wait," —which, considering that Mr. Bourke was endeavouring to persuade the House that Turkey had not determined to dis- appoint Greece, and that the Memorandum of which Sir Charles Mire spoke was probably a fiction, had a curious ring of candour about it. No doubt, whether Greece can afford to wait or not, she will have to wait ; and as she will have to wait, Mr. Bourke's mind harps with a sort of uncon- scious gratitude on Lord Beaconsfield's dictum that she can afford to wait. Nevertheless there is something quaint in the Under-Secretary's fascination with the saying. And we suspect that it must be due to the general character of the re- flections forced upon an English Minister for Foreign Affairs by the whole complexion of the present crisis. It is not only Greece who has a future and can afford to wait. Certainly it is not only Greece who will have to wait. The great Prime Minister's saying seems to apply with even more aptness to the position to which our grand stroke of diplomacy has reduced the foreign policy of Great Britain her- self. Mr. Bourke of course trusts that Great Britain has a future. Doubtless he hopes that she can afford to wait. But what he must be dwelling upon most painfully at the present moment is that she will certainly have to wait, and to wait long, for that future which, according to the Prime Minister and the Foreign Secretary, she has planned for her- self. Even "peace with honour" does not seem at all nearer at hand than it was before the Congress of Berlin. At that time England was no more at war than she is now. There were, no doubt, certain dangers hanging over her head which have been removed ; but there were others which have not been removed ; and there are some hanging over her head now which were not hanging over her head then, and which have been caused, instead of removed, by the conditions of this "peace, with honour." Look where you please round the horizon, and the omens seem to be many degrees more dishearten- ing than they were before we had beard of the Anglo-Turkish Convention, of the broken promises to Greece, and of the majestic words to Russia, "thus far, and no further."
In the first place, in Bosnia and in the neighbourhood of Batoum we see the visible signs of the disintegration of the Turkish Empire. The Turkish armies no longer obey the orders of the Sultan,—or if they do, they obey orders absolutely contrary to those which the new ally of the Sultan counsels, and believes that she can impose on him. The Mahommedan caste in Bosnia is making that fierce, last fight for its ascendancy, which any one might have anticipated who knew what an ascendant Mahommedan caste means. Near Batoum a General officer of the Porte, and one of distinction, Dervish Pasha, is apparently preparing to fight against the execution of the Treaty, and of course,—if the Sultan be guided by our counsels,—against the orders of the Sultan. What do these great outbreaks portend ? Why, simply that as the Turkish Empire goes to pieces, the Sultan will either struggle vainly against the anger and wrath of his subjects, or if he is only dissimulating, and pretending to do what he is not really doing, that he will find it much easier to set at naught the counsels of his Western ally than the fanaticism of his proper subjects. We care not which alterna- tive be the true one. Either the Mahommedans in Bosnia and on the coast of the Black Sea, are simply defying his control, or if not, if they are doing his will, his will is theirs, and not the will of his British ally. As far as regards the task before us, the task which we have undertaken, the outlook either way is equally bad. In the case of Greece we offered the Porte a strong recommenda- tion. Yet even the British Government does not disguise from itself that as Sir Stafford Northcote said on Tuesday, "no doubt the Porte looked on these arrangements with a certain amount of jealousy,"—which is mild English, we take it for saying that the British Government even now, in the early days of the new alliance, has either no hope of persuading the Porte to do the behest of the Congress, or else,—what certainly Sir Stafford Northcote will not confess,—no sincere wish to do so. Of course we must assume the former alter- native. We must assume that Lord Beaconsfield, after boasting as he did of the very large territory which Greece was to acquire, and contrasting it with the " scurvy " treat- ment of the now independent vassals of the Porte, really contemplated being able to persuade the Porte to give Greece what the Congress suggested. Assuming that to be so, and what do we find ? Why, that almost before the words of Lord Beaconsfield have ceased to vibrate on the air, the Porte haa been so obstinate that Sir Stafford Northcote is compelled to speak apologetically of "the jealousy" with which it natu- rally regards the arrangements of the Congress, and Mr. Bourke to suggest that nothing can be done with Turkey by any Power which is not prepared to use force. But if that very "enlightened and powerful Prince," as Lord Salisbury termed the Sultan, is really either so utterly unable to follow the advice given him, or so unwilling to defer to it, even in relation to the conclusion of the arrangements sanctioned by the Congress, as this result implies, what are we to expect of him, in relation to that much more magnificent field for advice which Lord Beaconsfield contemplates when he speaks of the reorganisation of Asia ? We find the Sultan's authority either set wholly at naught, or used on the wrong side, before even all the ratifications of the Treaty of Berlin had been ex- changed, and this though it may be presumed that Sir Austin. Layard is plying the "enlightened and powerful Prince," with all the best advice of the British Cabinet. Well, if that is so as to the conditions of peace already agreed to,—if we cannot even squeeze "the peace" itself, to say nothing about the "honour," out of the newly-discovered enlightenment of the Sultan,.—how many are we to expect of the vast changes in administration on which Lord Beaconsfield's grand hopes are built ? If in executing the terms of the Congress, either the will or the power of the Sultan is wholly wanting to us, what can we expect when we begin to press upon him to dis- miss Asiatic Pashas, to appoint Indian administrators in their place, to give up once and for ever the giving and receiving of bribes, to exact steadily only a moderate taxation throughout the whole of a great Empire, to protect the people against the official robbers who corrupt the Court in order that the Court may license them in plundering the peasantry, in short, to do justice, cease from exactions and violence, and put away finally the habits of a thousand years ? The answer is pretty clear. Except we exact what we advise, the thing is just as impos- sible as for the leopard to change his spots. Already we see how impossible it is. When the Sultan commands,—or rather, if he commands, for if he does not, we may conclude that even the Sultan himself is as truly beyond any sincere participation in the wishes of the British Government as any of his Pashas, and this we believe to be the truth,—his voice is not and can- not be obeyed. It is a voice in the wilderness which appears to ignore the ideas and habits of centuries, and when was such a voice ever obeyed ? You cannot make a great caste like the Mahommedans of Bosnia forget the pride of race. You cannot even make a great military Power like the Ottomans of Turkey bring themselves to contemplate ceding territory to a foe they despise and hate like Greece, out of deference to verbal counsels offered by a number of European States, who did not seem to be very much in earnest even as to their words. The proposals of the Congress except so far as there was force at their back, no doubt seemed to the Turks like the voices of a dream. And even where there was force at their back, the Mahommedans see no reason why they should not try conclusions with it, in spite of the promises their former rulers may have given,—inasmuch as these promises themselves absolve them from their allegiance. And as it is now, so it will be in the far more magnificent enterprise to which we have pledged ourselves. When we ask promises, we shall get them ;—they are cheap to the Oriental mind, and so much wind simply. When we expect to have them fulfilled, we shall be given a hundred reasons why it has been impossible to fulfil them ; and impossible, in the strongest sense of the word, no doubt it will really have been. The "enlightened and powerful Prince" is not so enlightened as to strip himself suddenly of the ancestral prejudices of cen- turies; nor so powerful, even if he were so enlightened, as to be able to make others do at his command what he would not do for himself. The insolence of the Begs of Bosnia, the savagery of the Lazis of the Black Sea, the pride of the Otto- mans in their military superiority to the Greeks, are but signs to us of the innumerable forms in which all that we propose will be thwarted, all that we counsel will be courteously listened to and straightway forgotten, as soon as we begin to act on the great Asiatic Convention. And then as to Russia. What are the great results of Lord Beaconsfield's triumph in that quarter? How does she seem to be bearing herself under the sting of the proud words, "Thus far, and no farther?" Why, there are rumours, probably untrue, rumours which Mr. Bourke does not believe, but which as certainly he regards as significant of Russia's poli- tical irritation though not of new military action, that Russia has crossed the Oxus. It is admitted that a great embassy has been sent to Cabal, and we are sending an embassy not inferior in dignity to make a not very wise display of rivalry, to countermine her supposed designs on Affghanistan. Here, then, is the net result of the policy of the Govern- ment :—An irritated foe, where we might have had a cordial ally ; an impotent ally more dangerous and costly by far than the most irritated foe ; and a new frontier of a thousand miles for us to defend by the help of the latter against the former ! Truly, Lord Beaconsfield, having carefully sown the wind, is 'beginning very early indeed to get in,—in excellent condition, —his harvest of whirlwinds.
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