LETTERS TO THE EDITOR..
POLITICAL LUNACY.
[To THY EDITOR Or TR% " SPECTAT0R."1 SIR,—You have raised an interesting question in your critc- cism of my use of the word " lunatics " in your kindly review of my book on " The Sultan and the Powers." May I explain my meaning ? To my mind the policy of the majority of the Great Powers on the Armenian question betokens a species of political lunacy. The fear which haunts and paralyses them is the probable downfall of the Ottoman Empire, and they have been pursuing for two years the very policy which is most likely to precipitate that catastrophe. The evidence of history and the theocratic Constitution of the Turkish Empire make it absolutely certain that an ultimatum pre- sented to the Sultan by all the Powers acting in concert would insure his submission without the firing of a single shot. Yet they refuse to apply the only effectual remedy lest it should produce the evil which it alone can avert.
So with regard to a Russian invasion of India. The Russo- phobists omit two cardinal factors in the problem : first, the enormous magnitude and peril of the enterprise ; secondly, the absence of adequate motive. I believe that during her last campaign against Turkey Russia had about half a million soldiers engaged against the Sultan. Yet her frontier was close to his. She had railways to carry her troops and war material to the Turkish frontier. She bad a friendly popula- tion to co-operate with her on her adversary's soil, and she had the valuable alliance of Roumania, which placed an army of thirty thousand excellent troops at the service of Russia. Yet it took her the best part of a year to conquer Turkey. On the other hand, she is separated from India by populationswhich would resent the invasion of their territories, and by a series of chains of lofty, roadless, rugged mountains, with very few passes, of which we command the outlets; with plains seamed by railways behind us, and a sea commanded by our Fleet.; and with a teeming population of warlike tribes, who would not be likely to help Russia to substitute her yoke for our rule. Certainly Russia would not be likely to venture on such a desperate campaign with a smaller army than that with which she invaded Tarkey,—I mean with less than half a million of soldiers to fling against us on debouching from the mountains upon our frontier. But she would require, in addition, a considerable army to distribute along the line of her communications. The number of camp followers, under, the circumstances, could not be much fewer than the number of soldiers. Now, think of the commissariat necessary for such a host. Well might Prince Gortchakof characterise the fear of a Russian invasion of India as " belonging to the region of political mythology."
And where would be the motive ? Russia possesses vast territories full of undeveloped wealth and sparsely peopled. India is becoming over-peopled for its resources. Lord Lansdowne says that the increase of population during the decade previous to his leaving India was thirty-three millions in the territory under our rule. The acquisition of India, even without war, would be much more likely to impoverish than to enrich Russia, and I do not believe that she would accept it as a free gift. If she wants more territory for the develop- ment of her trade, she may take it in the direction of Persia and China. India is quite out of the question. And this has always been, and is now, the opinion of the best civil and military authorities.
I have, therefore, said that to credit Russia with a deliberate design to invade India is to imply that Russia is a nation of lunatics. You think, on the contrary, both my examples in- dicate not lunacy but folly, because " my ' lunatics' form a very considerable proportion not only of the ordinary popula- tions of the earth, but even of the chosen men who guide the policy of nations." I am disposed to deny that the " lunatics " form a large proportion of the ordinary population of any country. Whole populations may do foolish things from ignorance. But it is " the chosen men who guide the policy of nations " who are commonly guilty of what I call a kind of political lunacy. The vast majority, including the ablest intellects, of this country, believed, a little more than half a century ago, that society in the United Kingdom would be reduced to chaos, and people " would not know " —as Chief Justice Lord Ellenborongh said—" whether they were standing on their heads or on their feet," if the law were abolished which sent men, women, and children to the gallows for theft above the value of 5s. And it was "the ordinary population," the common juries, which compelled the repeal of that law by refusing to convict. People in the mass—as Aristotle observed long ago in his " Politics " —are hardly ever guilty of the mental aberrations which sometimes pervert the judgment of "the educated few." A. powerful ingrained fear or prejudice may cause a few able and honest men to become monomaniacs on any sub- ject; but a whole nation will never become monomaniacs.
I hold, therefore, that the majority of "the chosen guides" of the Concert of Europe have been labouring during the last few years under a visitation of political monomania., inspired by a dread of the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, with its perils for their separate ambitions, and they have thus failed to see that they have been themselves accelerating the dgbciele which alarms them. This is not ordinary foolishness; it is the mental obliquity that comes of an aberration of reason on a particular question ; just as a man who is perfectly rational and perhaps unusually able in general, may nevertheless believe on occasion that his arm is a pump-handle, or may refuse to sit on a chair for fear of breaking his body, which he believes to be made of glass. I have known two such cases.
With regard to solitary action on the part of England, I have to observe that I have not proposed solitary action against the veto of the other Powers. No one can know till the proposal has been made that the other Powers would oppose it. And I seriously doubt whether Lord Salisbury "is now as deeply convinced that England must follow the lead of other Powers, if she is not to bring on a general war, as Lord Rosebery himself." It will not surprise me to learn that Lord Salisbury has taken, not "followed," the lead of the other Powers, even to the extent of proposing coercion. The wave of panic which passed over some minds is to me inexplicable. It assumed that Lord Salisbury was likely to be so mad as to make war on Turkey against the declared hostility of the other Powers. Nobody proposed such madness, and I am sure that no kind or amount of agitation would have forced Lord Salisbury into it. I have no evidence of any change on his part, nor do I believe there has been any, change in the situation to explain the panic. Lobanoff and Goluohowski mutually pledged themselves last autumn to maintain the territorial integrity of Turkey as long as possible. I do not believe that there has been anything else whatever to account for the panic. As to the Khalifat, I do not think that any "expert " doubts that it is an essential qualification for the Khalifat that the candidate should be an Arab of Mohammed's tribe ; that is laid down in the text-books of all orthodox Muslims. Therefore the Sultan is absolutely debarred, and has never been acknowledged as Khalif outside hie own dominions, nor by the Arabs there. Moreover, the office is elective, not hereditary, and is not among the Sultan's legal titles, which I have given in my volume. The Khalifat became formally extinct when Selim conquered Egypt nearly four centuries ago. But it was practically extinct centuries before that. After the rise of independent Musulman sovereignties and dynasties there never has been a Commander of the Faith- ful,—one Supreme Sovereign uniting temporal and spiritual power, whom all Muslims were bound to obey.
As I have criticised Lord Rosebery's Edinburgh speech with great frankness, may I say in your columns what I have said in my book, that I have never doubted his own earnest desire to put an end to the horrors in Armenia, and that I still believe that the policy which prevailed in his Cabinet on that question was not his own ? That is why his Edinburgh speech has so puzzled me. He has many accomplishments, but hypocrisy is not one of them. He could not simulate feelings which do not possess him, and therefore I entirely believe in the sincerity of what he has said at different times on the subject of Armenia.—I am, Sir, &c.,
MALCOLM MACCOLL.
[Canon MacColl is much too confident. It is absurd to. call all the leading foreign politicians lunatics, however much we may differ from them. A lunatic is a person whose brain is believed on good evidence to be diseased.—ED. Speetator.].
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