TOPICS OF THE DAY.
THE RUSSIAN ASSURANCES.
THE Russian Government certainly sticks to its text. The Emperor himself has now not only stated his own view of his own purposes to the British Ambassador, Lord A. Loftus, but has requested that his statement should be given publicly to the whole world. This has been done in the most formal and official way through the London Gazette, and the Em- peror's words are well worthy the attention of all Englishmen. They amount to a solemn pledge on the personal honour of the Czar that he has no views of conquest, and no desire to become possessed of Constantinople. "His Majesty," writes Lord A. Loftus on November 2 from Yalta, "pledged his sacred word of honour in the most earnest and solemn manner that he had no intention of acquiring Constantinople, and that if necessity should oblige him to occupy a portion of Bulgaria, it would only be provisionally, and until peace and the safety of the Christian population were secured." Assurances could scarcely be clearer, and if they had been given by the Emperor of Germany, or Marshal MacMahon, or the Emperor of Austria, they would have been accepted as final, and made the basis of British policy. We are well aware that after the Khiva incident a similar confidence will not in this country be extended to the Czar, who, it will be alleged, may again be un- able to control his Generals ; but it should not be forgotten that in this instance the assurances of the Czar are in accordance with his past offers, with his direct interests, and with the opinions of many of the ablest men around him. Nothing could be stronger than the guarantee he offered only a few weeks since, when he proposed that Austria should occupy Bosnia, that Russia should occupy Bulgaria, and that the maritime Powers should occupy the Bosphorus. As the Emperor says, that arrangement "would have made Queen Victoria's Fleet the dominant power at Constantinople," which indeed we could then, if needful, have garrisoned, without war, without a breach with Russia, and without excessive exertion. Had this proposal been accepted, as it ought to have been, and would have been, but that Lord Beaconsfield is intent, not on securing the best possible result, but the result most pleasing to the Turks, all that Lord Salisbury can hope to gain by promises, arguments, or menaces would have been secured at once, Constantinople being in fact placed in the power of Great Britain, as her material guarantee that her interests should be protected in subsequent negotiations. We are not pleading for the good-faith of the Czar, who, for aught we know, may be as faithless as the Emperor Napoleon believed his namesake and predecessor to have been, but what has good-faith to do with the matter in hand? The guarantee offered is stronger than any man's word. The mortgagee may mean anything, but when the title-deeds and actual possession are alike placed in the mortgagor's hands, in addition to his written assurances of payment, distrust can be only fatal to the transaction of any business at all. The Em- peror Alexander may see a future in the distance which Englishmen will not like, but who made him a prophet, or what does his prophetic insight matter ? Our interest and that of the world is that the question of Constantinople being left open, the Turks shall be deprived of the power to tyrannise in Europe, and the Emperor promises the result and guarantees the condition in the way of all others allowed to be most effectual. We do not believe that the Romanoffs desire Constantinople, if they can obtain the water- way which is their necessity without it, for they know, like their ablest advisers, that their dynasty planted in the South would rapidly degenerate—but granting that they do, they clearly want other things before that. They are not only not asking for Constantinople just now, but they actually put it definitively out of their own power to take it by placing it under the security of English cannon. While the city is Turkish they might hope to obtain it, either by an invitation from the Sultan, or by an "ugly rush," or most probable of all, by aiding an insurrection from within, but to take Constantinople from under the English guns would tax the resources of far greater Powers than Russia. The Czar may be accused of faithless- ness for other reasons or in other places, and we ourselves doubt his declarations about India—not that his Government wants India, but that it wants to be able to threaten India whenever England is troublesome—but to doubt his good-faith when he offers such a guarantee is to make negotiation all but impos- sible. Why, all the experts are saying that if Russia enters Bulgaria we must occupy Constantinople, as the only guarantee for the imperial interests of Great Britain, and then, when the Czar makes that very guarantee one of his own conditions, we treat him as a potentate whose most solemn assurances must contain some guile, Lord Beaconsfield omits to quote them wheii he publicly defies Russia, and Lord Derby drily replies that the assurances are opportune because Russia is raising a loan and mobilising her army. Why ? Obviously because our states- men cannot yet reconcile themselves to the idea that the Turks are to lose their ascendancy, that whatever the ultimate solution of the immense question, their hour has arrived.
But it will be said, if the Russian Government does not want Constantinople, what does it want ? Why should it not want precisely what the Czar says he wants,—to rescue the Slavic Christians from the Turks ? Grant the Czar to be a mere diplomatist, a man whose frankest utterances cover a hidden policy, and still his want of faith can in no way alter the circumstances of his position. A Pope may be as wily as Englishmen conceive all Popes to be, but he must still want to extend the influence and exalt the prestige of the Roman Church. A Russian Czar may be an Asiatic in guilefulness, but still he must want to protect the Orthodox Church, to enlarge Russian influence, and to strengthen the foundations of his autocracy. All these things the Emperor Alexander can now do, if he can only rescue the Slavic Christians from the Turks, without fighting through a great and probably disastrous war with England. All Russia is on fire for this object, the army is enthusiastic for it the people, as Mr. Hubbard, an old resident in Russia, of un- usual experience, testified in the Times of Monday, are stirred to their very hearts. Before the object of gratifying their wish, the object of gaining territorial extension, or of succeeding in war, or of acquiring Constantinople, sinks into insignificance, and to secure that gratification any sacrifice will be risked or any expenditure incurred. In rescuing the Christians, Russia must of necessity incur the gravest dangers—the risk of a Magyar success at Vienna and a consequent attack in flank, the risk of Bismarck's hostility and the illimitable consequences which might follow ; but he must risk these dangers, and then we suspect him of risking also, out of the mere wantonness of ambition, England's hostility in addition. We must say we think the suspicion foolish,—so foolish that if the British made the occupation of Constantinople the condition of ad- hesion to the Russian programme, the Russian statesmen would unhesitatingly accede. It may be said that the desire we attribute to Russia could be secured at once by accepting Lord Derby's terms, but that argument rests on a wilful blindness to the most patent facts. Lord Derby's terms are mere absurdities, illusions intended to throw dust in the eyes of English friends of the Christian population of Turkey. So late as November 4 he repeats that he is seek- ing, and that only for Bosnia and the Herzegovina, only "a system of local or administrative autonomy, by which is to be understood a system of local institutions which shall give the population some control over their own local affairs, and guarantees against the exercise of arbitrary authority. There is to be no question of the creation of a tributary State. Guarantees of a similar kind are to be provided against mal- administration in Bulgaria." That is precisely as if Charles I. had offered the Parliament peace, if the Houses would pass a Municipal Reform Act and allow him to garrison all the counties. It is an absurdity, in which it is difficult not to recognise a lingering desire to leave the Turks as complete control over their detested subjects as is consistent with a nominal and temporary peace. The Czar cannot accept such terms with either honour or safety. He must have guarantees, whatever the consequences, and he tries once more to avert the worst of those consequences by the most solemn pledges, supported by the most unquestionable proofs. He may fail, nevertheless, and Russia may rue for generations the weakness which did not compel conquering Generals to recede from Khiva, rather than violate even in appearance a promise to the British Crown.
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