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THE INTERNATIONAL SITUATION. MR. E. J. DILLON'S PLEA FOR ANGLO-RUSSIAN GOODWILL. THE first place in the Contemporary is given to a paper by Mr. E. J. Dillon, on Russia and Europe. He dismisses as childish tall talk the project of our isolated action in Armenia, and is scarcely less civil to the statesmen's policy of waiting on the concert of Europe. His counsel is for an Anglo-Russian understanding :

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Russia is now recognised by all as the predominant factor of the situation. Whatever other effects the Tsar's trip may have had, it has brought home to the dullest apprehension the important fact that the hegemony of Europe has passed away from Germany to her north-eastern neighbour. This important change took place long before it became visible to all. The recent travels of Nicholas II. merely revealed the fact that the Tsar is at present the arbiter of war and peace, while he or his successor is believed to be destined to become one day the lawgiver of Europe and of Asia. . . . At present, supported by the mightiest army, she is absolutely invulnerable and virtually irresistible.

Mr. Dillon cogently insists that "Russia's oft-repeated desire for peace is genuine." She has learned "the uses of unbroken tranquillity and the benefits of many-sided development."

At present her ministries teem with schemes for reform and enterprise in every branch of the administration. . . . . She is constructing vast railways, strategical and commercial, spanning broad rivers with bridges, disciplining her army, strengthening her line of fortifications, increasing her fleet, improving her finances, affording increased facilities for trade, assimilating the various tribes and nations of which her subjects are composed, colonising Siberia and Manchuria, kneading the Balkan States of Slav nationality, sending her Far Eastern neighbours into hypnotic slumber, and carrying out endless plans and projects which require time, money, and prolonged peace.

Therefore she is in no mood to wage war with Turkey. Turkey is rapidly ripening for Russia even now, and will certainly in due time fall into her lap without the European tree once being shaken. To fight the Sultan now would be to bring Hungary to Saloniki, cripple Russia for a quarter of a century and spoil her Far Eastern game :

Hence Russia's anxiety to maintain the peace, nay, to induce what may be termed military catalepsy and political Van Winkledom in Europe, crystallising the actual state of affairs here while studiously keeping things Asiatic in chronic flux ready for her mark and mould.

The "Concert" is agreed on peace but on nothing else. We should have a larger area of agreement with Russia and France.

The Franco-Russian Alliance is not more natural or more beneficial to the two contracting parties than would be an Anglo-Russian understanding.

The anti-English tone of the Russian press represents neither Tsar nor people. The inveterate ambition of Russia to acquire the whole of Asia, India included, recognizes that that goal is centuries distant, and need not affect present relations with Britain. Prince Lobanoff's policy was not anti-English so much as intensely Russian. And "Russia's interests clash less with the essential aims and aspirations of the British Empire than with those of the French Republic." To his whole proposal the writer adds the condition "provided always that Russia's schemes afford her no adequate grounds for refusing an

arrangement which on the face of it bids fair to confer lasting benefits upon both nations.”

M. DE PRESSENSE ON ENGLAND'S ALTERNATIVES. The first place in the Nineteenth Century is given to the same theme-with variations. Mr. Dillon, as we have seen, suggests an Anglo-Russian as preferable to FrancoRussian entente. M. de Pressensé, foreign editor of the Temps, urges the entry of England as third member in the alliance of France and Russia. "If there is henceforth a fact solidly settled among the data of European politics, it is that France and Russia have tied a loveknot between themselves, and formed for the nonce an indissoluble league." Over against the Triple Alliance stands this Dual Alliance: the appearance of the new constellation requires England to forsake her erratic and solitary orbit. " means simply Splendid isolation cessive and contradictory flirtations." It is time for England to make her choice between the duplice and the triplice. "She must choose." It cannot be a question of substituting one country for another in the intimacy of Russia... There can be for England no association with Russia, if France has no part and lot in it."

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"The crux of the whole matter, is, before all, a matter of trust," as M. de Pressensé pointedly puts it; in the Armenian business" diplomacy is just strong enough to paralyse philanthropy; philanthropy is just strong enough to paralyse diplomacy." Mr. Gladstone's moral indignation is admirable, but his clamour for separate action, seems to the writer "hot-headed" and "childish," his abuse of the "unfortunate heir of a deplorable system, unjust, unfounded, and un-Christian."

When we come to conditions for restoring "trust" and joining the duplice, we are confronted by M. de Pressensé with Cyprus and Egypt. Salvation lies along the lines indicated by Mr. Courtney; with French generosity the writer speaks of "the unequalled and incomparable independence of this hero sans peur et sans reproche of true freedom of thought."

This way lies the hope of a renewal of the entente cordiale of former times. This way, too, lies the chance of an agreement with Russia. If England begins to tread the road of conciliation in Africa, the chances are for her following the same impulse in Asia. Thus would be made easy the new triple alliance.

Only England cannot remain as she is. The article is one long "Choose ye this day whom ye will serve."

OUR UNFULFILLED DUTY TO CYPRUS.

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Against any proposal to abandon Cyprus, Mr. Edward G. Browne plea is hard in the New Review. England's duty to Cyprus," he argues, "has not been done." We have given her justice and liberty, but we have taxed her far more unmercifully than the Turk. At the same time, largely owing to French and other protective tariffs, the wine trade of Cyprus and her agriculture have suffered a sore depression. We have made few roads and not a single railway, and have arranged no regular steamboat service. And worst of all, over and above the heavy cost of administration, we exact a "tribute" to Turkey of £63,000 a year, which is really paid over to bondholders. Yet the island is fertile enough to pay her way, even under this fearful load.

Mr. Browne goes on to ask to whom are we to make over this land of beauty and wealth and strategic strength? To the Sultan? That is out of the question.

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To Greece? The Turks in Cyprus have already avowed their intention to fight if Greece were to try to take them over. Then to a joint control? This last suggestion Mr. Browne only answers by calling the arrangement," that Abomination of Desolation." He urges rather the replacement of the old loan for which the £63,000 are extorted by a new loan at lower interest and with British guarantee; and generally a more generous policy of developing the resources of the island.

MR. WILFRID BLUNT'S PROPOSAL.

Mr. Wilfrid Scawen Blunt, in the Nineteenth Century, traces back all the present trouble in the East to the perfidious Anglo-Turkish convention of 1878. He is very severe on Mr. Gladstone and the Liberals for not repudiating this convention on their accession to power, and for actually withdrawing the perambulating consuls whom Lord Salisbury had sent through Asia Minor to promote reform. At Mr. Gladstone's door, too, is laid the heavier charge of having, for the sake of the bondholders, suppressed the native movement for constitutional reform in Egypt and the rest of Turkey, and for having made the reactionary despotism of the Sultan supreme over his subjects. Hence all our sorrows now. English encouragement of Armenian aspirations after autonomy, as distinct from annexation to Russia, alienated Russian help from Armenia and incited them to revolt, which has been quenched in massacre. After this heavy criticism of England's past Eastern policy, Mr. Blunt indicates three lines of possible policy for the immediate future: (1) Go blindly to war with the Sultan for our honour's sake; which we dare not do with Europe at his back; (2) Do nothing; according to the advice of Lord Rosebery, who represents the great English gods of trade and finance, which we probably shall follow; (3) Insist on our Government arranging with the Powers most interested a new European Congress: and this last project Mr. Blunt earnestly advocates. At that Congress, he demands, England must appear clean-handed, as a suppliant for her Armenian protégés, ready to see the whole Ottoman case treated without reserve, prepared, therefore, to put Egypt and the Soudan with Cyprus and Armenia on the table of the Congress. Our honour being vindicated and confidence restored, Russia might protect the Armenians, and Europe intervene to uphold the Porte against the palace and disband the Sultan's guard.

PUTTING TURKEY IN COMMISSION.

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Diran Kélékian writes in French, to the same review, on Turkey and its sovereign. He finds the secret of the Sultan's misrule in his desire to oppose the movement among his subjects for Constitutional Government. counterbalance these liberal forces, he has invoked the deadly powers of Mohammedan bigotry and fanaticism. He has also been guided by Macchiavelli's Prince towards his present disastrous system of personal centralisation of government. Anatolia has long been regarded as the last refuge of Turkey when the Ottomans are driven out of Europe, and their other dominions are snapped up by the Powers; and the Sultan desires to have this last resort complicated with no Armenian claims. The solution of the crisis which the writer advocates is that the Sultan be allowed to reign, but not to govern; and the establishment at Constantinople of a European control or a national representative having, as base, a decentralised constitution on the Austrian principle of nationalities, with European supervision for several years. This to be brought about by the ambassadors of the six

great Powers meeting at the Yildiz Palace and "presenting to the Sultan as to a condemned criminal the decisions of Europe with the threat of an immediate collective rupture."

GENERAL GORDON'S PLAN.

Sir Edmund du Cane communicates to the same review a letter sent him by General Gordon, January 16th, 1881, on the Blue Book on the condition of Asia Minor. The remedy he suggested for Turkish misgovernment was to take the power out of the hands of the Pashas and put it in the hands of the people themselves; certainly not to transfer them to the government of foreign powers. The most important paragraphs in his letter are these:

The Turkish peoples know exactly the full extent of the corruption and rottenness of their government; they know how and in what way any remedy they may enact will act on the country. They are in every way interested, for themselves and their children, in obtaining a good government; whereas to the Turkish Pachas, so long as they can fill their purses it is all they care.

To put the power in the hands of the Turkish peoples is a fair, perfectly just effort on the part of foreign governments; it is merely the supporting of the Sultan's own design when he gave his constitution. Foreign governments who support this liberation of the Turkish people cannot be accused of intrigue or selfishness; they will gain the sympathy of the peoples.

A foreign government is no match for the Sultan and the Pachas it has not the knowledge necessary to cope with them : it is the Turkish peoples who alone have the power to hold their own, besides which no foreign government has any right to interfere.

By the way foreign governments are now working they are inevitably drifting, day by day, into still increasing interference with the internal affairs of Turkey, and are helping to band Sultan, Pachas, and peoples against any improvement. Such interference must end in serious complications, and can in no way further the professed object-improved government. It is urged that the Turkish peoples are not fit for representative government. Well, look at Roumania and Bulgaria, and, in some degree, to Roumelia; they succeed very fairly. If the peoples never have a chance, they will never be able to show what they can do. Had we waited till our monarchs or our lords had given us representative assemblies, we would be without them to this day.

What I maintain, therefore, is that our government should unce asingly try, with other governments, to get the Midhat constitution reconstituted; that they should leave that very dubiously just (in fact it may be called iniquitous) policy of forcing unwilling peoples under the yoke of other peoples, which is not only unfair to the coerced and ceded peoples, but is a grave mistake, for by it are laid the seeds of future troubles.

MR. FREDERICK GREENWOOD.

Mr. Greenwood contributes his views on the situation to the Cosmopolis in the form of a diatribe against sentiment in politics. He opens it with the picture of "an ideal Europe," as it might be drawn by pilgrims in Palestine and on the Mount of the Sermon:

An ideal Europe would be one wherein the nations lived side by side in unmenaced freedom and settled content-all of them, great and small, softened to the mood which one or two little States have been drilled into by conditions that subdue ambition without denying prosperity. Aggression on the grander scale having gone the way of cattle-rieving, "absorption" as obsolete as piracy, even tariff-wars would be no more. The most hostile contention between one nation and another would be that of craftsmen in the same workshop, merchants in the same port, colleges in the same university.

This was what England hoped the nineteenth century would realize. But it has proved to be a hallucination "the after-dinner dream of an Imperial Dives."

DARWINISM IN FOREIGN POLICY.

The real Europe, Mr. Greenwood evidently thinks, can be better understood from the Darwinian standpoint: the national rivalry which prevents an ideal Europe, and which is worse than any conflict of individualism between men and men is but "part of the universal scheme that makes Nature red in tooth and claw with rapine."

Matter in the wrong place is dirt. Idealism and sentiment in the wrong place are exemplified in such agitations as we have just had about Armenia. As a consequence, England is not the commanding power that it was at so recent a date as the fiftieth birthday of Mr. Gladstone. British policy has been ruled by Radical sentiment, which is marked by "an impatience to escape from the more brutal necessities of national competition," and insists on government by the popular will." The latter leads to the people being kept in ignorance by their leaders of the facts of international rivalry, and to their refusing to feel the consequent necessities. It is not want of heart, or want of thought, but want of knowledge.

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Mr. Greenwood goes on to supply the knowledge, albeit in a muffled, semi-diplomatic tone, as though to break his views gently to the unaccustomed ear of Demos. The fact is," in short, England has a position to regain, or an empire to lose. That is the exact situation when cleared of the illusions which . . . have brought it about. It is not a situation that can endure a pause.” WHOM SHALL WE COPY?

How, then, shall we re-model our machinery for the management of foreign affairs?

The most perfect system in Europe is soon found. It is as nearly as possible the opposite of our own, and, being of the most antique and unreformed type, is even like no other in Europe. Yet that it is the most perfect is seen by its long-continued success, a success unequalled. It will be understood at once that the Russian system is meant; and therefore that, however well it may work, there can be no thought of imitating it.

But Mr. Greenwood will be merciful. He will not urge us to copy "this effective me liævalism."

Let us turn from this too shining example of victorious unsentimental policy, and look to France, which has shown us a successful way of rising from difficulties infinitely greater than our own. When France was beaten to the ground, had a strong and violent foe standing over her, and no very assured friends at some distance, she had many Governments, but only one policy--a policy that every Frenchm in understood and played his part in . ... we should do what France did; that is to say, go softly, stick to our own affairs, and promptly and urgently make up England's strength to whatever point would enable her to face combinations and attract alliances.

But "nothing of this kind is likely to be done." The only hope is to turn out fancy with fact, and make our people understand that "the balance of power is destroyed, and what that means is no secret from any one-a dictatorship."

THE INTERNATIONAL DICTATORSHIP.

We are face to face with "a change which seems destined to prove another of the great turning-points in history." The European system has resulted in a despotism.

That it is an enormous triumph for the dictator is confessed by every known manifestation of homage; which also confesses that the triumph was achieved neither by guile nor violence. And if it opens a more glorious future for France, the rejoicing of France is as blameless as natural. Europe a dictatorship is very far indeed from ideality. It is a change that portends long conflict, boundless disturbance, as much of the Continent feels; and when it is said that this

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vast change is due to England's withdrawal from the European system, I know not what can be alleged to the contrary.... Her great endeavour now should be restoration to the European system on safe and honourable terms.

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THE FUTURE OWNER OF CONSTANTINOPLE.

Mr. Spenser Wilkinson writes in the National Review "The Value of Constantinople." He lays stress on its focal position:

Constantinople lies upon a route which must needs be followed by the whole trade of a vast region. The Black Sea has a coast-line of more than two thousand miles, to which the Sea of Azov adds six hundred more. To the Black Sea goes all the trade of the great navigable rivers, the Danube, the Dniester, the Dnieper, and the Don, with some portion of the trade of the Volga, transhipped to the Don. All this great trading area communicates by sea with the outside world only through the Bosphorus. . . . If we take a larger view, and look at the natural directions of traffic between East and West, and between North and South, we find that Constantinople is the centre of a circle, of which radii run along the Euphrates and the Persian Gulf, along the Suez Canal and the Red Sea, and along the Nile. All these are natural and necessary directions of trade.

The three Powers most interested in these routes are Russia and Austria on ground of nearness, and Britain on ground of her carrying trade.

The Dardanelles, fortified so as to make the of passage a hostile fleet impossible, would enable Russia, if Constantinople became hers, to exclude from the Black Sca all ships of war but her own. Her armies could be moved across it without fear of molestation: and as an army carried in steamers moves many times faster than an army upon land, she could not be resisted landing on any country bordering on that sea:

Roumania, Bulgaria, and Northern Asia Minor would at once become, in fact if not in theory, portions of the Russian Empire. The frontier which Russia would thus acquire would place the eastern half of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy at her mercy.

Rather than allow which, Austria-Hungary would fight. Moreover, Russia in possession of the Dardanelles could keep the Black Sea as a training-dock for as large a navy as she pleased to construct, with which to sally forth and take the initiative whensoever she pleased. This would give her such a preponderance as would lead other nations to resent it, and, if possible, prevent it.

Constantinople Austrian would not be so general an affront to the rest of Europe, but would have its grave risks:

The Black Sea would not become an Austrian lake, but there would sooner or later be a naval war between Austria and Russia for its command, in which, however, the cessation of her trade would paralyse the southern provinces of Russia, and an Austrian victory would be disastrous to the Northern Empire. For these reasons Russia is as strongly driven to resist an Austrian acquisition of Constantinople as Austria to oppose a Russian attempt upon that place.

A prince of European origin, sovereign or nominally under the Sultan, acting as Administrator-General, might have Constantinople as the seat of his government. The passage of warships through the Straits would still be a difficulty. They should be closed to all or none. But in either case Russia would seek special advantage for herself. The way out of the difficulty suggested is this:

The closure of the Straits to ships of war might be effected by separating the ownership of Constantinople from that of the Dardanelles. A principality of Constantinople with Northern and Central Asia Minor is not more rational nor more natural than a principality of Western Asia Minor, with its capital st Smyrna, and its northern limits at the Mysian Olympus, the Sea of Marmora, and the lines of Bulair.

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OUR ALLY THE ASSASSIN.

IS THE CYPRUS CONVENTION STILL BINDING? MR. T. G. BOWLES contributes an article in the Fortnightly Review for November apparently with the express purpose of justifying all that Madame Olga Novikoff and Prince Lobanoff have said as to the absurdity of discussing the adoption of any effective measures against the Sultan so long as the Cyprus Convention blocks the way. In reply to their plea for the repudiation of the Convention and the evacuation of Cyprus, we have been told that the Convention is practically dead. Mr. Gladstone, with one breath, says that it is so dead that it is impossible for Prince Lobanoff truthfully to say that it is any obstacle to Russian intervention, and in the next breath he says it is so much alive as to afford a valid basis for our single-handed action against Turkey. Lord Rosebery says that it is a sham to begin with-which is no doubt true-and that it has practically ceased to exist; but even he does not deny that its uneasy ghost haunts the Foreign Office.

THE VERY LATEST RUSSIAN

"AGENT."

He does not object to its being laid with bell, book and candle. Mr. Bowles, however, takes up the cudgels on behalf of the contention of Madame Novikoff and Prince Lobanoff. Of course, he will be horrified to see his name coupled in print with Russian diplomatists, whom he seems to regard as the natural enemies of Great Britain; but no Russian could have done Madame Novikoff a kindlier service than has Mr. Bowles in the November number of the Fortnightly. For therein, writing from the point of view of a staunch Turkophil, Mr. Bowles succeeds in demonstrating to his own infinite satisfaction, but hardly to the edification of the leaders of the Armenian agitation, that the Cyprus Convention binds us hand and foot to defend the Assassin, should Russia make any movement that could be construed into a menace of the integrity of his Asiatic possessions. If Mr. Bowles can gravely and even fervently argue thus, even now when the wail of Armenia still rings in the ears of our people, and when the Russian Government shows no disposition to send a single soldier across the frontier, it is not difficult to imagine how passionately the Convention would be invoked in favour of war against Russia, when the memory of the massacre dies down and international jealousies are roused by the movements of Russian armies.

THE QUESTION STATED

Mr. Bowles opens his article by asking:

What now is the Cyprus Convention? Has it been abrogated by disuse? Is it null and void? If not, can it be nullified and avoided? And if so, how? And, if it be nullified, what would be the results? These are questions to which various diplomatic documents, authoritatively published in the Blue Books, supply a very complete reply.

Mr. Bowles deals first with the view of Lord Rosebery that the treaty is practically abrogated, and then having demolished this position, proceeds to defend the Convention against those who would formally repudiate it :

Lord Rosebery described the Convention as one of three clauses. The one article of which it consists does indeed contain three stipulations, whereof it would have been simpler and plainer to make three separate articles; but the annex contains six other stipulations, each in a separate article; so that the stipulations are nine in all.

-AND ANSWERED.

Have these nine stipulations been abrogated by disuse, as Lord Rosebery says? So little is this the case that it will be found on examination that, so far as the contingeney has arisen

or the situation been created, for which each stipulation provided, every one of them has been carried out; and that instead of there being disuse and abrogation, there has been, and still is, a constant use, execution, and maintenance of the Convention.

Every one of the stipulations has been in use and has received its execution, so far as the contingency provided for has arisen in each instance. There has been no disuse whatever, nor any abrogation arising therefrom. Neither can the Convention, in any sense, be considered

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IZZET BEY,

Chief Adviser of the Sultan.

(Photograph by Abdullah Frères, Constantinople.)

as "null and void," or as a "dead letter." For, in virtue of this Convention alone, England has occupied and administered Cyprus during eighteen years; she still occupies and administers it; and she thus occupies and administers avowedly and professedly for no other purpose than to enable her to carry out her engagement to defend Asiatic Turkey by force of arms against further Russian attack.

ARE TREATIES IRREVOCABLE?

Having thus dealt with Lord Rosebery, and those who maintain that the treaty has practically lapsed, he turns to those who maintain that it exists, and therefore should be formally disowned. He argues in a strain which implies that it would be a scandalous outrage upon treaty faith if we were to withdraw from any treaty whatever, no matter how grossly the other party to the treaty violated his obligations. In fact, Mr. Bowles' argument would be just as strong, supposing the Sultan, in addition to massacring his Armenian subjects, were to have the children of all the English residents in Turkey served up to him as roasted baby for breakfast every morning as long as they lasted. The possibility of the Sultan forfeiting his claims to be regarded as anything but an enemy to the human race is not yet borne in upon Mr. Bowles' mind. Possibly, if Mr. Bowles were to be impaled by a Turkish pasha, he would for the first time, in the last moments of his life, understand the true inwardness of his friend and ally the Turk.

WHY THE CONVENTION IS MAINTAINED.

Mr. Bowles maintains in the true old Russophobist strain that the Turk may be a fiend incarnate, but that does not matter, the Convention was not made for love of him, but to defend India against Russia. Here we have the same old mildewed rubbish carted out once more:

What this means is plain enough. It means that the Cyprus Convention was made for the protection of India-as, of course, it was--and if Lord Salisbury's arguments were good in 1878, to show the necessity of the Convention for that protection, they must be equally good now.

There is no need for further extract. Mr. Bowles' article is amply sufficient to confound the critics of Madame Novikoff and Prince Lobanoff by justifying to the letter the suspicions and misgivings with which the Russians regard us so long as the Convention remains in force.

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