THE

HE above heading was the title of the first pamphlet I ever published. It is twenty years since it made its appearance, followed by a prompt disappearance. I kept a copy or two as a kind of memorial tablet, such as we erect over the grave of the dead. Such in those old Bulgarian days were the high hopes which we of the Agitation Idared to entertain. What a bitter commentary upon that parable of things to come were the things that did actually occur !

HOW ST. GEORGE WENT TO THE RESCUE IN 1878. For St. George, instead of rushing to the rescue, spent a whole twelve months threatening to attack the Russians, who were locked in a death grapple with the Ogre. Then at the last moment, when the Assassin, gasping for breath, was compelled to relax his hold upon the provinces he had devastated with the revelry of hell, St. George stepped in, restored the Ogre's sovereignty over Macedonia, destroyed the guarantee exacted by the Russians for the protection of the Armenians, and then, to make his infamy complete, picked the Ogre's pocket of his Cypriote handkerchief, and strutted round Europe as the champion of peace with honor.

OF ACCURSED MEMORY.

All that and more was done by Lord Beaconsfield, of accursed memory. No greater shame ever covered the head of any nation than that which descended upon Britain when, alike in the festive halls of the city and in the legislative chambers at Westminster, Lord Beaconsfield, with Lord Salisbury concealed in his sinister shadow, proudly received the plaudits of his countrymen for the crime of Berlin and the three card trick of Cyprus. The indelible infamy of that performance clings to us like the shirt of Nessus. It paralyzes us to-day, and will paralyze us until we pluck up sufficient courage to undo his evil work and sacrifice the booty which is the symbol of our shame, and a standing reminder to all Europe of the trickiness and dishonesty of "perfide Albion.”

ENGLAND'S RESPONSIBILITY FOR THE ASSASSIN.

During the last few weeks England and Scotland have at last made a somewhat tardy but unmistakably national expression of their indignation at the reign of massacre established en permanence on the Bosphorus. It is well that this should be so. A nation that did not feel moved to say "Damn," and say it out full-mouthed in the hearing of God and man, on seeing the slaughtering that has gone on,

and is going on, in the dominions of the Grand Turk, would be a nation without even a semblance of a moral sense. But in the midst of our indignation there has been very inadequate recognition of the fact that the guilt really lies at our own door. If the Assassin reigns

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reseated in his place of light,

The mockery of his people and their bane,"

it is England who placed him there. We sent our fleet through the Dardanelles to protect him against the Russians, who, after incredible hardships heroically surmounted, were in a position to have hurled him into the Bosphorus. We summoned the Berlin Congress in order to re-establish his authority and consolidate his empire. It was England and none other that canceled the clause in the Treaty of San Stefano giving Russia right to compel the Turks to guarantee the Armenians against outrages and massacre. And it was England, through her accredited representatives, who, while re-enslaving Macedonia and Armenia in the name of public law and the independence and consolidation of the Ottoman Empire, filched like a footpad the island of Cyprus under cover of a fraudulent convention which binds us to defend the Assassin against his executioner, but which is to this day unrecognized by the public law of Europe and repudiated by the moral sense of our own people. A pretty St. George, indeed! Even Dick Turpin would have recoiled from such a piece of petty larceny as that which made England appear as the piratical Pecksniff of Europe.

66 THE INSANE COVENANT."

From that day down to the present moment of writing England remains branded with the black and burning shame of that transaction. We may laugh in our sleeves at the simplicity of the Turk, who imagined that we meant to fulfill the obligation to which we solemnly affixed the signature of England. But the Anglo-Turkish Convention stands. It has no force in international law, but it is a binding document between the Assassin and the Queen of England. There have been, of course, various threatening speeches. With many shakings of the head and solemn frowning, the Turk has been told by ministers and others that unless he mends his ways he can no longer expect any support against the Russians. But the convention has never been denounced, and Cyprus, which was the sign and seal of that covenant with Hell, remains in our occupation to this day. As long as the British flag is flying over that island without the sanction of the

European concert, in flat violation of all the principles of international law, upon which our intervention in Turkey has been defended-I do not say justified-so long will it be impossible for us to appeal with any confidence to the other powers for joint action against the Eastern Ogre. Hence, it seems to me that the present agitation which has done honor to the heart of Britain is much less complimentary to her head. For what is the use of vociferation on a thousand platforms that St. George must go to the rescue. when the one thing which renders action impossible is the deep conviction that dominates the policy of all the powers, uttered or unexpressed, that St. George's one object in going to the rescue is to repeat on a larger scale the Cypriote larceny ?

THE PRECEDENT OF BULGARIA.

It is no use for eloquent and impassioned orators, confident in the integrity of their own hearts and the sincerity of their own intentions, to fume and bluster against this plain and straightforward exposition of how the land lies. Those who are running the Armenian agitation, from Mr. Gladstone downward, are no doubt perfectly honest when they declare that they are animated by a disinterested desire to secure the protection of the Armenians from the hands of the Assassin. No one denies that they mean what they say; but the very same set of men said very much the same kind of thing as to the disinterested desire of England to help Bulgaria twenty years ago. Russia undertook at her own cost to liberate the Bulgarians. After she had spent £100,000,000 sterling, and sacrificed the lives of 100,000 of her noblest sons, England, acting through her ministers-whom our agitators were powerless to arrest-re enslaved one-third of Bulgaria, delivered over Armenia to the uncovenanted mercies of the Sultan, and then ran off with Cyprus as their wages for a crime almost unparalleled in history for its combination of Pharisaism and theft. Therefore we have no reason whatever to marvel that every European, and especially every Russian, expects that we shall act in the same way again.

HOW THE RUSSIANS ARGUE.

But "Once bit," say the Russians, "twice shy. It is all very well for English agitators to clamor for armed intervention on behalf of the people whom English ministers have handed back to the Turk. We all know what that comes to. In a year or two the agitation will die out, and when we have spent all our money, and sacrificed the flower of our army, then we shall have to face England as an enemy, and see her running off with the tit-bits of Turkey. Lord Beaconsfield took Cyprus in 1878; we should find Lord Salisbury or some one in his place attempting to seize Constantinople or Gallipoli in 1898. History repeats itself. National characteristics do not disappear in twenty years. As England tricked us then, so England will trick us again. You never can trust the English excepting to look

IS THERE NO PLACE FOR REPENTANCE? This may be a brutal way of putting it, but if we look the facts fairly in the face, it is exactly what every Russian feels, and feels most keenly; nor are there many Frenchmen, Austrians or Germans who would dissent. But what then? "Are we to sit with hands folded and do nothing," I shall be asked, "because Lord Beaconsfield committed a crime twenty years ago? Is England's voice to be silent forever in the councils of Europe because the nation unwillingly acquiesced in the antics of Lord Beaconsfield in 1878? Is it not our duty, the more we have sinned in 1878, to make what reparation is possible in the year of grace 1896 ? And if we enslaved the Armenians and Macedonians in the year of the Anglo-Turkish Convention, is it not all the more reason why we should send our ironclads through the Dardanelles, and let the Bosphorus resound with the roar of our great guns as our blue-jackets shell the Sultan out of his palace at Yildiz?" Such are the questions which many impatient, unthinking, good men and true ask throughout the length and the breadth of the land. But to all these questions there is one sufficient answer.

FIRST-FRUITS MEET FOR REPENTANCE.

By all means let us make such reparation as is possible for the crime of 1878. We were then strenuous for the tyrant and the Assassin; let us now at least defend the cause of his oppressed and slaughtered subjects. But if so, before doing anything else, as the indispensable preliminary to any act of reparation or of penitence, we must denounce the Anglo-Turkish Convention and clear out of Cyprus. Nothing short of that can suffice to convince the powers--with whom we must act if intervention in Turkey is not to make things far worse than they are now-that we have repented of our evil deeds, that they have now to deal with a nation that has given a pledge of its disinterestedness, and that they may at least have a reasonable foundation for their belief that John Bull has amended his ways and means to act quite straight.

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CUI BONO?" THE ANSWER.

It is true that even if we clear out of Cyprus tomorrow, and send the Turkish ambassador packing from London with the shreds of the Anglo-Turkish Convention in his pocket, many Continental cynics would shrug their shoulders and talk about deathbed conversions. But we have no reason to complain of these gibes. We have merited them all too well. What we have to do now is to set about the discharge of a plain duty, which we owe to our own national self-respect, to the subjects of the Assassin, and even to the Assassin himself. If, when we have done all this, we should still find our steps dogged

by inveterate distrust, it would be deplorable, but we should no longer feel that we had neglected the one indispensable step which lay well within our power to take, by which we could have given proof of the sincerity of our penitence.

PRINCE LOBANOFF'S LAST WORDS.

A good deal of this, and more in the same strain, I wrote in the Westminster Gazette in view of the recent visit of the Czar to Balmoral. I did not then know what Madame Novikoff has since brought to the knowledge of Europe-namely, that Prince Lobanoff had explicitly declared in Moscow during the coronation festivities that the attitude of Russia in relation to Armenia was governed by the fact that England was committed by the Anglo-Turkish Convention to defend the Sultan against Russia should she take any action whatever to protect the Armenians against their oppressors. The very last recorded utterance of Prince Lobanoff on this subject is thus reported by Madame Novikoff :

At one of the coronation balls at Moscow I chanced to meet Prince Lobanoff, who, in reply to some observation of mine as to the difficulties between England and Russia, replied very seriously:

"You refer to the terrible Armenian question, I see. But how can we Russians ignore the meaning and importance of the Cyprus Convention, which compels England to oppose Russia whenever a serious danger threatens the integrity of Turkey?"

protested that the English had changed their minds about the sacredness of that treaty.

"No doubt," he replied, "I am not so badly informed as you suppose. I know all about that healthy change for the better. But, nevertheless, that treaty still exists. Do you suppose for one moment that if England were to rescind her obligations under that treaty we should fail to immediately respond with proposals for a new departure?"

Prince Lobanoff is dead. But the ideas of Prince Lobanoff remain, nor can we wonder if his successor resolutely refuses to move a step in the direction of an armed intervention in Turkey until we have hauled down the British flag which was hoisted at Larnica as a menace that no Russian intervention would be permitted on the Asiatic frontier of Tur. key.

ENGLAND'S PROPER ATTITUDE TOWARD RUSSIA.

In the course of the agitation, I regret very much to have seen many expressions of irritation and of indignation at the conduct of Russia-Mr. Gladstone himself not being altogether guiltless in this respect. It is a case in which we should do well to take the beam out of our own eye before raving at the mote in the eye of the Russian. In view of the evidence now patent to all men as to the real essential nature of Turkish rule, England's attitude toward Russia ought certainly not to be that of resentment or of indignation. Granting that, for the moment, the policy of reserve and of inaction adopted by Russia is most deplorable in the interests of humanity, it is but a passing episode of a few months at the most. But England's attitude for fifty years has been just

that which Russia has adopted within the last twelve months. Let us grant, if you please, the worst that can be said against Russian policy, the effect of which has been to secure the twelve months longer lease of immunity to the Assassin of Stamboul. What is that compared with the guilt which we have incurred by our persistent support of the Turkish misrule, a support persisted in for generation after generation, and that not merely by the adoption of a passive policy of non-intervention, but by an active armed intervention on behalf of the Assassin and his predecessors ?

THE CONVERT OF THE ELEVENTH HOUR.

England stands guilty before the world, and espe cially before Russia, for the continuous crime of her traditional policy in the Levant. No doubt, so far as the majority of our people were concerned, it was a sin of ignorance. But that was not true twenty years ago, when the policy was deliberately reaffirmed and enforced by Lord Beaconsfield in face of the angry and passionate protest of the national conscience, which, however, was powerless to prevent the execution of the mischief that he did at Berlin. Therefore, I hope we may hear no more execrations addressed to the Foreign Office at St. Petersburg. The worst that Prince Lobanoff did was to adopt passively, at a remote distance, the policy which the English nation pursued ruthlessly and actively for over fifty years. We have now repented, genuinely I have no doubt, but in the fervor of our conversion it would be more fitting if we were covered with shame and humiliation, and sat silent and abashed before Russia, rather than to venture on the strength of this conversion of the eleventh hour to behave ourselves unseemly and to hurl contumacious words against Russia, who has borne the burden and the heat of the day all these years. This, surely, is the dictate of decency. It is none the less prompted by every consideration of expediency and policy.

ENGLAND, AUSTRIA AND CONSTANTINOPLE.

Those good souls who are shouting themselves hoarse in favor of an isolated intervention by England talk like children. Not less childish, although equally well meaning, is the inane persistence of some journals who seem to imagine that the one way of securing Russian co-operation is to bribe her with an offer of Constantinople. What Russia wants is not to plant herself upon Constantinople, but to be sure that England, or England's ally, Austria, will not take advantage of any upset in the East to establish herself there. To convince Russia that such is not our little game, we must clear out of Cyprus. It is driveling folly to talk of offering Russia Constantinople as the price of her alliance. Constantinople is not ours to give, nor would Russia accept it as a gift if it were. There is reason also to believe that we are at this moment bound by a secret treaty to Austria and Italy, which would compel us to support these powers in making war

against Russia, if she tried to seize Constantinople. Such, at least, is the assertion stoutly made by those who were in the confidence of the Italian Minister by whom the arrangement was concluded-for it is a misnomer to speak of it as a formal treaty.

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"PEACE, IMPERFECT PEACE."

Still, leaving that on one side, those who talk about giving Russia Constantinople forget that what Russia wants is not to bring about a general overturn, but to keep things going without a catas trophe. Anything for a quiet life" is the motto of Russia. "Peace, imperfect peace, rather than no peace at all" is the cry of the Czar and his ministers. Nicholas II. is as desirous of earning the title of The Prince of Peace" as was his father before him, and it is adding insult to injury to assume, as is constantly done in such well-meaning journals as the Spectator, for instance, that all that holds him back from active intervention on behalf of the Armenians is a doubt whether or not we would object to him appropriating Constantinople as his share of the swag. Single-handed intervention by England would. in the opinion of the European nations most concerned, mean that we saw a chance of seizing some coveted position in the East.

THE JINGO SONG OF 1878.

The echoes of the Jingo song with which England vibrated in 1878 have not yet died out of the Continent. The Russians, indeed, have good reason to remember the insolent swagger of the music hall braves when they boasted that they had the ships, the men and the money, and the Russins should never have Constantinople. That rough music hall ditty is believed to express the unchanged traditional policy of Great Britain. It was emphasized in 1878 when our ironclads forced the Dardanelles and anchored almost within gunshot of Constantinople. At that time it was an open secret that plans were prepared for holding Gallipoli, so that England, having command of the sea, might hold the Dardanelles in force. Now, it is just as well to recognize the fact that any move in that direction will be regarded by Russia as practically equivalent to a declaration of

war.

It might be deferred war, but any attempt on our part to seize the Dardanelles would be regarded in Russia and on the Continent generally, not as a means adopted solely in order to execute justice on the Assassin but simply as the seizure of what we intended to keep. In other words, England would have begun the game of grab by seizing the first and most valuable booty for herself.

THE DARDANELLES SONG OF 1896.

It is not very pleasant for our national self-complacency to recognize the fact that this would be the natural conclusion that would be drawn the moment the first British redcoat landed at Gallipoli, but the fact is so. Nor need we be very much surprised that such should be the conclusions of our

neighbors, when we see the kind of thing that is held by some of the more vehement of our agitators. There is, for instance, Mr. William Allan, M.P. for Gateshead, one of the best fellows in the world, enthusiastic, sincere, and full of generous sympathies for the oppressed subjects of the Sultan. But what, we wonder, does he think would be the conclusion which the "Frank and Muscovite" will draw from the warlike ballad which he contributed last month to the Newcastle Daily Leader:

SEIZE THE DARDANELLES.

We fear not Frank nor Muscovite
When Liberty is calling,

With British pluck for those we'll fight,
'Neath Moslem vengeance falling:
Cease your preaching! Load your guns!
Their roar our mission tells,
The day is come for Britain's sons
To seize the Dardanelles.
We need no help from other powers,
When Duty's path pursuing,

To save the weak alone is ours,
And shall be Britain's doing :

So cease your spouting! Load your guns!
Their might no power excels,

It is the hour for Britain's sons
To seize the Dardanelles.

Have Britain's sons forgot their sires.
Who fought for freedom ever?
And faced a thousand battle-fires
All tyrant hordes to shiver :

Come cease your prattling! Load your guns!
Not words for them, but-shells,

And ready now are Britain's sons
To seize the Dardanelles.

Why longer wait when Murder's hand
May victims still be seeking?

Its shadow hovers o'er the land
With blood of thousands reeking:
Cease your babbling! Load your guns!
Hope in their thunder dwells.
The signal flies! Up, Britain's sons!
"We'll seize the Dardanelles !"

Now, it is well for us to seriously face the facts, and to recognize that all this kind of thing is the veriest nonsense. We are not going to seize the Dardanelles. And we are not going to take any isolated action of this kind. We are not going to do so, because it would make matters infinitely worse for every one concerned, including the Armenians. We cannot do so because we are universally distrusted, and rightly-so long as we hold Cyprus. The first thing, therefore, for us to do is to tear up the Anglo-Turkish Convention, and to intimate to all the powers our readiness to evacuate Cyprus the moment they can agree upon the future government of that island.

THE FUTURE OF CYPRUS.

Of course, to surrender to the uncontrolled sovereignty of the Sultan any territory or island where the inhabitants have for twenty years enjoyed the benefits of a civilized administration is not to be

thought of. The Sultan, besides, has forfeited, not to England, but to Europe, all right to any of his dominions in Europe or in Asia, and it would therefore be quite justifiable for the European powers to mulct him in Cyprus as a fine for his contumacy, to hand it over to Greece, or to make any other disposition of it that may seem good in their own eyes. But there is no necessity for taking such drastic measures. There would be no difficulty in restoring the Ottoman sovereignty in Cyprus, subject to such provisions as existed in Eastern Roumelia before that sub-Balkan province was merged in Bulgaria. It would be a profitable experiment for the powers to have to dispose of this little fragment of Turkish territory, which might help them to deal with the rest of the Sultan's possessions, which will sooner or later be placed in liquidation.

WHAT OUGHT TO BE OUR EASTERN POLICY.

But, it will be objected, suppose we clear out of Cyprus, what then? Then we should have taken the first step toward re-establishing the concert of Europe on a basis which would render it possible to arrange for joint action. But joint action for what? Surely it is necessary to envisage the Eastern Question as a whole, and if you are to make sacrifices in order to put in motion this international machinery, you ought to have some definite idea as to the use to which you are going to put it. To what end do you intend to work? What is your policy, in short? To all of which, first, I make a negative reply. My policy is not to propound any of those grandiose schemes of partition which find favor in the eyes of amateur diplomatists writing in the monthly magazines, who propose to precipitate that general division of the Sick Man's dominions which would be the letting loose of all the jealousies and all the animosities-in other words, of bringing about the general war which every statesman in Europe regards it as his first duty to postpone. What we have to do is much more simple.

ENFORCE THE TREATY OF BERLIN !

We have simply to take our stand upon treaty obligations to which we ourselves are parties, and which, if thoroughly fulfilled, would avert the cataclysm. The treaty of Berlin governs the whole position. All our present trouble has arisen from the fact that, as it was everybody's business, it was nobody's business to see that the Sultan carried out those reforms for which written security was taken in the Berlin treaty. It is now generally recognized, even by the most impulsive and headstrong of those who are clamoring for action, that the Russians were perfectly right in objecting to any scheme of reform limited to one corner of Asiatic Turkey, merely because that happened to be marked Armenia upon the map. The Armenians, as Madame Novikoff reminded us twelve months ago, are everywhere, and local reforms limited to three vilayets on the eastern frontier would leave more Ar

menians exposed to the Sultan's fury than it would shield from his vengeance.

FOR THE ARMENIANS.

What then must be done? The answer is written at large in the clauses of the Berlin treaty. To begin with, we have the Armenian clause, which runs thus :

The Sublime Porte undertakes to carry out without further delay (this was agreed to on the 9th of July, 1878) the ameliorations and reforms demanded by local requirements in the provinces inhabited by the Armenians, and to guarantee their security against the Kurds and Circassians, and will make known periodically the steps taken to this effect to the powers who will superintend their application.

The first step should be for the European concert to appoint one thoroughly capable, energetic, upright man as superintendent of the Armenian reforms. The six powers cannot each undertake the superintendence of the reforms.

A EUROPEAN SUPERINTENDENT OF REFORMS

Why then not appoint one high official, who would represent the whole of the six powers, and be armed with their authority, who would be presented to the Porte in the name of the six powers, deputed by them to undertake the task which was eighteen years ago imposed upon all the signatories of the Berlin treaty? Some may doubt the possibility of the six powers agreeing upon any official, but the answer to that is that it depends upon England. If England is honest, and desires to see the Armenians protected-those of them still left alive -she cannot desire a better opportunity of proving the sincerity and disinterestedness of her Armenian enthusiasm than by taking the initiative in the European Concert in proposing that the superintendent delegated by all the powers to superintend the execution of the necessary reforms in the provinces inhabited by the Armenians shall be a Russian. If England and Russia are agreed upon this point, France will certainly make no objection; and if England, Russia and France are agreed, the other three powers of the Triple Alliance will be not less unanimous.

-WHO MUST BE A RUSSIAN.

Therefore, we take it that if we are but in earnest in our desire to work with Russia for the amelioration of the condition of the Christians in the East we have a very good opportunity here of proving it. Considering that it is openly asserted that our government would have no objection whatever to a Russian occupation of Armenia, it would be difficult to see what objection they could make to the much milder measure of appointing a Russian superintendent of reforms, acting in the name and with the authority of all Europe.

EASTERN-ROUMELIANIZE ALL THE REST.

But when that is agreed upon, it by no means disposes of the whole question. Fortunately, our part