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1 .1 T [J 11 la i i i w i 
 
THE EASTERN QUESTION 
 
 A HISTORY OF THE OTTOMAN TURKS AND 
 
 OF EUROPEAN DIPLOMACY IN THE 
 
 BALKANS TO 1917 
 
 By J. A. R. MARRIOTT 
 
 SOME PRESS NOTICES OF THE FIRST EDITION 
 
 * Pleasant to read, full of information, and giving the mature thought of a man 
 who has made Modern History his life-work, it is one of the most valuable 
 historical books I have seen. Moreover, it is specially needful and appropriate 
 at the present time. ... I warmly commend it to the careful study of all our 
 readers.' — Dr. Agar Beet, in the London Quarterly Review. 
 
 ' Mr. Marriott has earned our thanks by giving us, at the cost of no slight 
 labour, a study which has long been needed and should certainly be widely read.' 
 
 Times Literary Supplement. 
 
 ' It could not have appeared at a more fitting moment. It creates a suitable 
 background for contemporary political discussion, and presents the public with 
 a reading of European history which is urgently needed.' — Observer. 
 
 * Mr. Marriott has given us a brilliant epitome of recent Balkan history and 
 contemporary politics. ... A valuable piece of historical research. ... A book 
 for the historian and scholar. . . Its style is dignified, it is fully documented.' 
 
 Glasgow Herald. 
 
 * The author has supplied a real need in English historical literature. It comes 
 at a very opportune time. It is the work of a genuine scholar, learned and free 
 from conscious bias.' — Evening Transcript, Boston, Mass. 
 
 * The book is a library in itself.' — St. Louis Globe Democrat. 
 
 * Mr. Marriott has accomplished his task with masterly skill and thoroughness, 
 and holds the interest of the reader from the first to the last of his 444 pages.* 
 
 Birmingham Post. 
 
 * This invaluable book.' — Sir Ernest Satow, in the English Historical Review. 
 
 * The volume fills a gap in English historical literature. . . . The careful state- 
 ment of facts, the easy, lucid style, and its solid historical worth make this book 
 one which will aid serious readers in arriving at an opinion on the settlement of 
 the question of the Balkans and Turkish rule in Europe.' — Philadelphia Press. 
 
 « Owing to his vast knowledge of modern Europe and its affairs, and his great 
 skill as a writer [Mr. Marriott] has produced a most interesting book. . . . His 
 work should count as the standard treatise on its subject not alone in this 
 country.'— Prof. D. S. Margoliouth, in The Moslem World. 
 
 * An immense amount of knowledge and of judgment is compressed into his 
 ])ages, and et the narrative is never overladen or heavy. It is a popular book, in 
 the soundest sense of the word, and its value to students of contemporary politics 
 is practically incalculable. Mr. Marriott is to be heartily congratulated upon the 
 clear and scholarly performance of a highly intricate task.' — Daily Telegraph. 
 
 Second Edition Revised, Now Ready. Price 8s. 6d. net. 
 
 J 
 
THE 
 EUROPEAN COMMONWEALTH 
 
 ^ARRiorr 
 
OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS 
 
 LONDON EDINBURGH GLASGOW NEW YORK 
 
 TORONTO MELBOURNE CAPE TOWN BOMBAY 
 
 HUMPHREY MILFORD 
 
 PUBLISHER TO THE UNIVERSITY 
 
THE EUROPEAN 
 COMMONWEALTH 
 
 'FROBLEMS HISTORICAL 
 
 AND 
 
 DIPLOMATIC 
 
 BY 
 
 J. A. R. MARRIOTT 
 
 FELLOW OF WORCESTER COLLEGE AND MEMBER OF PARLIAMENT FOR 
 
 THE CITY OF OXFORD 
 
 Author of The Eastern Question ; England since Waterloo ; 
 
 George Canning and his Times; The Re-making of 
 
 Modem Europe; Makers of Modern Italy, &c. 
 
 OXFORD 
 
 AT THE CLARENDON PRESS 
 
 1918 
 
\'^ 
 
 ^^NA 
 
 
 T.n, 
 
PREFACE 
 
 The essays contained in this volume represent a selection 
 from a much larger number contributed to quarterly and 
 monthly Revietvs during the last four years. They have been 
 selected because, though not originally designed as steps in a 
 coherent argument, they seem to possess a certain measure of 
 unity and consistency. With one exception all have been 
 written, since the outbreak of the war, and the single excep- 
 tion (Chapter III) stands in at least as close a relation to 
 recent events as the rest. Suggested though they were by 
 successive aspects of the great struggle in which Europe and 
 the world have been involved, the essays are the fruit of 
 studies which have claimed a large portion of my time during 
 the last thirty years. 
 
 The underlying unity of the book will be found in the 
 problem presented to Europe by the evolution of the Nation- 
 State and the working of the influential though elusive 
 principle of nationality. For four hundred years the founda- 
 tion of the unified and consolidated Nation-State was the 
 goal of political ambition. The present war has raised in an 
 acute form the question whether the resulting product can be 
 regarded as the last word in political science ? Has the 
 process ended in bankruptcy ? Is the States-system, in the 
 form with which Europe has been familiar since the close of 
 the fifteenth century, destined to disappear ? If so, what is 
 to take its place ? These are problems rather for the political 
 philosopher or the international jurist than for the mere 
 historian ; but the historian may perhaps make some modest 
 contribution to their solution, and it is in the hope of making 
 it, at a moment when the world is confronted by a multitude 
 of obstinate questionings, that I have been moved to publish 
 this volume. 
 
 398130 
 
vi PREFACE 
 
 Of the fifteen essays five have appeared in the Edinburgh 
 Review^ five in the Nineteenth Century and After ^ three in the 
 Fortnightly Review^ one in the Quarterly Review, and one in 
 the Hibbert Journal. None of the articles are reproduced 
 precisely in the form in which they originally appeared ; all 
 have been carefully revised, and some of them have been 
 largely re-written. Nevertheless, I owe and desire to express 
 my grateful thanks to Messrs. Longmans, Green & Co., to 
 Mr. W. Wray Skilbeck, to Messrs. Chapman & Hall, to 
 Mr. John Murray, and to the Rev. Principal Jacks, for per- 
 mission to utilize the substance of articles contributed to the 
 above Reviezus. I must also thank Sir Arthur Evans for per- 
 mission, most generously accorded, to* use* his map of the 
 Adriatic and the Balkans, and Mr. C Grant Robertson, C.V.O. 
 and Mr. Bartholomew, for permission to make a like use of 
 two maps of Poland contained in their invaluable Modern 
 Historical Atlas. To my publishers I am deeply indebted for 
 the great care bestowed upon the adaptation and preparation 
 of the maps, and not least to their compositors and readers for 
 the manner in which they have lightened my task of proof 
 reading. It is proper to add that I have previously made 
 some use of three of the articles in my history of the Eastern 
 Question (Clarendon Press, 191 7), but their inclusion seemed 
 essential to any claim to completeness, however slight, to 
 which the present volume might pretend. 
 
 J. A. R. MARRIOTT. 
 
 Oxford, 
 October f 19 18. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 I. INTRODUCTORY 
 
 Nationalism, Internationalism, and Super- 
 nationalism 
 
 PAGES 
 
 Unity — Nationalism — Liberalism — The European Settlement of 
 1815 — Dante's De Monarchia — The Quest for World-unity — 
 Peace by the German Sword — A Social Compact among the 
 Nations — The Reign of Law — A European Commonwealth . i-i 7 
 
 II. THE RISE OF MODERN DIPLOMACY 
 
 Recent works on Diplomacy — Sir E. Satow — Dr. D. J. Hill — 
 The Origins of European Diplomacy — The Mediaeval Unities — 
 The Church and the Empire — The Renaissance and the Refor- 
 mation — The emergence of the Nation-State — England — France 
 — Spain — International relations — The European equilibrium — 
 ' The great design ' of Henri IV — Hugo Grotius and Inter- 
 national Law — William Penn — The Abbe de Saint-Pierre — His 
 Projet — Immanuel Kant — Essay on Perpetual Peace — The 
 European Anarchy 18-39 
 
 III. ENGLAND AND EUROPE 
 
 A CHAPTER OF ENGLISH DIPLOMACY, 3853-71 
 
 Some recent biographies of English Diplomatists — Sir Robert 
 Morier — The Earl of Clarendon — Lord Lyons — The Crimean 
 War — The Congress of Paris — England and the Italian Risorgi- 
 mento — Napoleon III and Italian Unity — The Italian War of 
 1859 — Garibaldi — The Liberation of South Italy — Cavour — 
 Union of North and South — The Kingdom of Italy — The Prus- 
 sianization of Germany — The Schleswig-Holstein Question — Bis- 
 marck and the Danish Duchies — Prussia and Austria — The Seven 
 Weeks' War — Bismarck and Napoleon III — The Hohenzollern 
 Candidature in Spain — The Ems Telegram — The Franco-German 
 War — Russia and the Black Sea — Napoleon III and Belgium — 
 The Draft Treaty — ^The Completion of German Unity — The End 
 of an Era . . 40-72 
 
viii CONTENTS 
 
 IV. WORLD POLITICS : A NEW ORIENTATION 
 OF HISTORY 
 
 PAGES 
 
 The Opening of a new Era — The results of Science — The Shrink- 
 age of the World — The new Imperialism — Lord Beaconsfield — ' 
 Commercial Nationalism — List and Cobden — ' Plantations ' — \ 
 Germany and Colonial expansion — German Africa — French 
 Africa — British Africa — The motives of German Colonization — 
 The Conquest of the German Colonies — Their Future . . 73-89 
 
 V. THE LOGIC OF HISTORY: THE HOHEN- 
 
 ZOLLERN TRADITIONS 
 
 Les fuceurs politiques — The Hohenzollern Tradition — The 
 making of Brandenburg-Prussia — The unification of Germany — 
 The work of Bismarck and the Emperor William I — The new 
 Germany — Germany a world-power ? — Epochs in the evolution 
 of Prussia — Napoleon and Prussia — The War of Liberation — 
 The settlement of 1 815 — Staatenbund ox Bundesstaat ? — Reaction 
 in Germany, 1815-48 — The Zollverein — The Revolutions of 1848 
 
 — The Frankfort Parliament — Liberalism and Nationalism — 
 Bismarck — Schleswig-Holstein — England and the Danish 
 Duchies — The War with Austria and France — The success oi 
 Blood and Iron — Its consequences — Germany and Europe — 
 Origins of the European War — Weltmacht oder Niedergang — 
 Issues of the War — A War of Ideals 90-116 
 
 VI. AFTER TWELVE MONTHS: DEMOCRACY, 
 DIPLOMACY AND WAR 
 
 Democracy at War — The Experience of the first twelve months 
 
 — Amateurs and Experts — Mr. Oliver's Ordeal by Battle — De- 
 mocracy in the Furnace — Manhood Service and Manhood Suf- 
 frage — Collectivism — The Wars of the eighteenth century — 
 Aristocracy and Democracy 117-140 
 
 VIL THE PROBLEM OF SMALL NATIONS 
 
 AND BIG STATES 
 
 The Cult of the small Nation — The Teutonic School of English 
 Historians — Stubbs and Seeley — The Cult of the big State — 
 The stampede of the Intellectuals — English Foreign Policy — 
 Henry VII — Elizabeth — Cromwell — England and the smaller 
 States — England and France — England after 181 5 — Canning, • 
 Castlereagh, and Palmerston — The value of small States — Is it 
 possible to preserve them ? 141-157 
 
CONTENTS ix 
 
 VIII. ENGLAND AND THE LOW COUNTRIES 
 
 PAGES 
 
 The Causes and Occasions of War — The War of 1914 — The 
 Violation of Belgian Neutrality — England and Belgium — Retro- 
 spect of relations — Wessex and Flanders — The Norman Conquest 
 and Flanders — ' The Reign of Wool ' — England and the Flemish 
 Cities — Flemish merchants in England — Prance and the Counts 
 of Flanders — The Hundred Years' War — Economic Issues — The 
 fifteenth century — The Burgundian Alliance — The Tudors and 
 Burgundy — The Intercursus Magnus (1496) -- The Habsburg 
 Empire — Queen Elizabeth and the Netherlands — The Ascen- 
 dancy of France — Louis XIV and the Low Countries — William III 
 
 — The Grand Alliance — Marlborough's victories — The French 
 Revolution — France and the Netherlands — English Policy — Pitt 
 and Castlereagh — Napoleon and Belgium — Union of Holland 
 and Belgium — The disruption of 1830 — Palmerston's Policy — 
 
 The Kingdom of Belgium — The Treaties of London . . 158-183 
 
 IX. THE PROBLEM OF POLAND. (I) 
 
 Significance of the problem to Europe — Proclamation of Grand 
 Duke Nicholas — Retrospect of Polish history — Growth of 
 Poland — Poland and the Teutonic Knights — Poland and East 
 Prussia — Poland, Sweden, and Russia — The Turks and Poland 
 
 — John Sobieski — The decrepitude of Poland — Its causes — The 
 Polish Constitution — The First Partition (1772) — France and 
 Poland — Attempted Reform in Poland — The Second Partition 
 (1793) — The Third Partition (1795) — Napoleon and Poland — 
 The Settlement of 1815 — The Congress Kingdom — Russian 
 Policy in Poland — The Revolution of 1830 — The Insurrection of 
 1863 — Bismarck and Russia — Economic Progress of Poland — 
 Austrian Poland — Prussian Poland 184-218 
 
 X. THE PROBLEM OF POLAND. (II) 
 
 Prussia, Poland, and Ireland 
 
 The Central Empires and Poland — Proclamations of November 5, 
 1916 — Prussian Policy in Poland — English Policy in Ireland — 
 The Anglo-Norman Pale — The Tudors and Ireland — The Eccle- 
 siastical Problem — The Agrarian Problem — Strafford in Ireland 
 
 — Cromwell's Policy in Ireland — Whig Policy in Ireland — Con- 
 stitutional Relations — Commercial Policy — The Penal Code — 
 Grattan's Parhament — The Irish Rebellion — The Legislative 
 Union — Catholic Emancipation — The Irish Famine — The Irish 
 
X CONTENTS 
 
 PAGES 
 
 Land Question — Dual ownership — Land Purchase — Irish Edu- 
 cation — An English Poland ? — Prussian Policy in Poland — The 
 Rescript of 1 815 — Insurrection in Posen — Bismarck and Poland 
 
 — The Kulturkafnpf — Prussia and Polish Schools — Prussian 
 Colonization in Poland — Economic Progress of the Poles . 219-243 
 
 XI. THE PROBLEM OF THE NEAR EAST (I) 
 A Preliminary Survey 
 
 The * Eastern Question ' — Definition of— The Ottoman Turks — 
 Characteristics — The Turks in the Balkans — Progress of Con- 
 quest — Condition of the Balkans — The Eastern Empire — The 
 Danubian Principalities — The Turkish Conquest — Zenith of 
 Turkish Power — Its decline — Russia and Turkey — Napoleon 
 and the Near East — The Hellenic Rising — England and Greece — 
 The Greek Kingdom (1832) — Mehemet Ali — Treaty of Unkiar- 
 Skelessi — England and Russia — The Crimean War — The Balkan . 
 Peoples — Insurrection of 1875 — Russo-Turkish War — The Trea- 
 ties of San Stephano and Berlin (1878) — Roumania, Serbia, and 
 Bulgaria 245-273 
 
 XIL THE PROBLEM OF THE NEAR EAST (II) 
 A New Factor 
 
 Germany and Turkey — Bismarck's Policy — William II and 
 Abdul Hamid — The vacancy at Constantinople — The Armenian 
 Massacres — Attitude of the Powers — The Turks — Greek War 
 (1897) — The Kaiser William and the Moslems — Germany and 
 Asia Minor — The Bagdadbahn — The Young Turk Revolution 
 (1908) — Austria and the Southern Slavs — The Balkan Wars — 
 The Treaty of Bucharest (191 3) — Position of Serbia — Assassina- 
 tion of the Austrian Archduke — The Ultimatum to Serbia — The 
 European War " 274-295 
 
 XIII. THE PROBLEM OF THE NEAR EAST (III) 
 The Latest Phase 
 
 The Russian Revolution — Entente Diplomacy in the Near East — 
 The Entente and Greece — German Treaty with the Ukraine — 
 Roumania and the European War — Intervention and defeat — 
 Treaty of Bucharest (May 7, 1918) — Germany and Roumania — 
 Germany and the Near East — British Victories in Mesopotamia 
 and Palestine — Results — Berlin to Bokhara ? — Berlin to Tokio ? 
 
 — Balkan Reconstruction 296-311 
 
CONTENTS xi 
 
 XIV. THE PROBLEM OF THE ADRIATIC 
 Italy, Austria, and the Southern Slavs 
 
 PAGES 
 Factors in the Problem — Italia Ir7'edenta — The Southern Slavs 
 
 — The Central Empires — Origin of the Problem — Bismarck, 
 Austria and Italy — The Trentino — Trieste — Istria — Dalmatia 
 — Italia Irredenta and Serbia Irredenta — Valona — England and 
 Italy — England and the Jugoslavs — The Italo-Jugoslav Com- 
 mittee — The Pact of Rome (April 1918) 313-336 
 
 XV. PROJECTS OF PEACE: THE HOLY 
 ALLIANCE AND THE CONCERT OF EUROPE 
 
 The organization of Peace — Alexander I — The Holy Alliance — 
 Alexander I and Pitt — Nationality and Liberalism — England 
 and the Holy Alliance — TYi^ Quadruple Treaty (November 20, 
 181 5) — Lord Castlereagh and the Concert of Europe — Govern- 
 ment by Congresses — Congress of Aix-la-Chapelle (1818) — The 
 ' Pentarchy ' — Reaction and Revolution — Spain and the two 
 Sicilies — Congress of Troppau (1820) — Metternich and the Tsar 
 
 — The Protocol of Troppau — Austria and Naples — Castlereagh 
 and non-intervention — Canning — Congress of Verona (1822) — 
 The South American Colonies — End of Holy Alliance — Causes 
 of its failure — The Settlement of 1815 — Based on obsolete prin- 
 ciples — The new Leaven — Intervention — A League of Kings or 
 a League of Nations — The League of Nations Society — Its pro- 
 gramme — Difficulties in the way of realization — The alternative ? 
 
 — The Evolution of a League 337-370 
 
CHAPTER 1 
 
 Introductory 
 
 NATIONALISM, INTERNATIONALISM, AND 
 SUPERNATIONALISM 
 
 It is at once a paradox and a truism that one of the most 
 striking results of the present conflict of the nations should 
 have been the rediscovery of European if not of world unity. 
 That rediscovery has been peculiarly difficult for a typical 
 Englishman, and even more difficult perhaps for a typical 
 American. The insularity of the one, the geographical re- 
 moteness and the political security of the other, has un- 
 questionably tended to induce in both, in times gone by, 
 a political and intellectual isolation. The ' good European ' 
 has been rare among Englishmen ; in America he is, naturally 
 enough, almost unknown. But rapid changes are in progress. 
 Science has annihilated distance ; war has broken down many 
 barriers ; and the abrupt emergence of broad ethical issues 
 has rendered continued aloofness not merely an offence against 
 good manners, but a crime against humanity. Nay, more : 
 war has not only reawakened a sense of the brotherhood 
 of man ; it has gone far to re-establish the community of 
 nations. The stirring of a new spirit has operated very 
 differently upon different minds : it has led some to look 
 back wistfully to the oecumenical unity of the past ; it has 
 led others to look forward hopefully to the possibility of 
 realizing, by very different methods, a different kind of unity 
 in a not too distant future. How to reorganize society ; 
 to reconstruct institutions ; to reshape the European polity, 
 so as to avert a recurrence of the cataclysm which has lately 
 engulfed the world — this is of all the problems raised by 
 the War the largest and the most insistent. 
 
 2120 B 
 
2' • TH£' EUROPEAN COMMONWEALTH 
 
 But tneVe^ krer 'maft5r others. For the last four hundred 
 years Europe has presented the aspect less of a unified 
 polity, governed at least in some important domains of 
 human interests and activities by a common law, owing 
 allegiance to a common ecclesiastical superior, than of a 
 congeries of independent nation-states. During the last 
 century, ever since the revolutionary and Napoleonic wars, 
 the principle of Nationality has occupied a joint throne with 
 the dogma of Liberalism. Neither commands to-day unques- 
 tioning obedience. Liberalism, as interpreted by the disciples 
 of Bentham, has landed us, so men are apt to assert, in social 
 and economic anarchy at home. Nationalism, finding its 
 apotheosis in the sovereignty of the absolute State, has simi- 
 larly conduced to anarchy abroad. Be the indictment against 
 Liberalism and Nationalism flimsy or substantial, there can 
 be no question that the suspicion is widely entertained. The 
 fashionable revolt against the orthodox doctrines of the nine- 
 teenth century is tending, however, towards a further paradox. 
 Men seek to redress the evils arising from the doctrine of 
 laisser-faire by invoking in domestic affairs the assistance 
 of the State ; in the field of international politics they seek 
 to restrain the omnipotence of the State by infringing its 
 sovereign rights and by erecting a super-national authority. 
 But the paradox is superficial rather than substantial. In 
 both cases men are feeling after a corrective to unrestrained 
 individu^sm. In both they invoke the intervention of au- 
 thority. The authority must, however, derive not from the 
 will of the ruler, but from tlie assent of the ruled. The 
 State, if it is to be vested with large powers for the restraint 
 of the individual citizen, must rest upon a democratic basis. 
 The super-national authority must be the organ of a league 
 not of autocrats but of peoples. 
 
 Ideas such as these, inchoate and indefinite though they 
 be, are widely diffused. How far they are likely to assume 
 material shape, how far, if they do, they will assist or retard 
 the reconstruction of a shattered civilization, are questions 
 which cannot now be pursued. The mere existence of such 
 speculations is a sufficiently impressive phenomenon. It seems 
 
NATIONALISM 3 
 
 to point to the passing of one era in world-politics, and to 
 the inauguration of another. 
 
 Experience forbids the supposition that after an upheaval 
 such as in these last years we have witnessed, a settlement 
 can be reached merely by a restoration of the status quo 
 ante bellwn. The diplomatists who in 1814 assembled at 
 Vienna made a valiant attempt to eradicate the doctrines 
 bequeathed to Europe by the French Revolution ; to obliter- 
 ate all traces of the havoc wrought by the conquests of 
 Napoleon ; to set up again land-marks that had been thrown 
 down ; to carve out duchies and kingdoms for the cadets of 
 ruling dynasties; to delimit frontiers and to distribute terri- 
 tory. But the scourge which Napoleon had applied to the 
 ancient Europe had not been wholly destructive. His per- 
 sonal ambitions were those of a vulgar conqueror, but the 
 results of his conquests were in several cases, notably in Italy 
 and Germany, palpably and happily constructive. German 
 nationalism and Italian nationalism alike owe an immense 
 debt to the ruthlessness of Napoleon. The diplomatists of 
 Vienna strove to set back the hands of the clock, and to 
 make things seem as though they had not been. But they 
 strove in vain. 
 
 As a consequence of this failure the Metternichs, the 
 Castlereaghs, and the Talleyrands have fared ill at the hands 
 of historical critics. But it is essential to a fair judgement to 
 remember that while the critics have only had to deal with 
 the diplomatists, the diplomatists had to deal with the facts'. 
 And the facts of the situation by which they were confronted 
 were unusually awkward. 
 
 It is commonly asserted and believed that the authors of 
 the settlement of 1815 were actuated by an exclusive deference 
 to the claims of dynasties ; that they clung to the outworn 
 dogmas of the eighteenth century, and sought only to restore 
 the ' Balance of Power '. There is abundant evidence to 
 support this contention, but it does not contain the whole 
 truth. Down to 18 14 the statesmen of the Coalition had one 
 supreme end in view : the overthrow of the Napoleonic 
 Empire, if not necessarily the dethronement of Napoleon. 
 
 B 1 
 
4 THE EUROPEAN COMMONWEALTH 
 
 To attain that end many treaties were concluded, and many 
 obligations were incurred. To guard his flank against Napo- 
 leon in 1812, the Tsar Alexander had been compelled by 
 the Treaty of Abo to promise Norway to Sweden ; by the 
 Treaty of Kalisch (February 1813) he had undertaken that 
 Prussia should be restored to a position not less territorially 
 favourable than that which she had occupied before the 
 disastrous Treaty of Tilsit ; by the Treaty of Toplitz (Sep- 
 tember 1813) Austria had received a promise that she should 
 recover the territories she had held prior to 1805, and the 
 independence of the Confederates of the Rhine had been 
 guaranteed ; by the Treaty of Ried (October 181 3) the King 
 of Bavaria had extorted a pledge that he should retain full 
 sovereign rights and all the territories which he acquired 
 through Napoleon except the Tyrol and the Austrian districts 
 on the Inn. It had also been agreed that Belgium should 
 be united with Holland, that Venetia and part of Lombardy 
 should go to the Emperor of Austria in compensation for 
 the loss of the Austrian Netherlands (Belgium), and that 
 Genoa should be handed over to the kingdom of Sardinia. 
 In each of these cases substantial arguments could be ad- 
 vanced in favour of the proposed arrangement ; moreover, 
 these bargains represented the price which had to be paid 
 for the continued solidarity of the alliance against Napoleon. 
 The diplomatists who in the autumn of 1814 assembled round 
 the council-board at Vienna could neither ignore the arrange- 
 ments nor repudiate them. Their hands were tied. And 
 however little we may like the ultimate results of their 
 labours, this much may be said on behalf of the statesmen 
 of that day: they got rid of Napoleon and they secured 
 to Europe forty years of peace. Little trace of their handi- 
 work can now be discerned upon the map of Europe. Norway 
 and Belgium have taken their places among Sovereign States ; 
 Alsace and Lorraine, retained, thanks to the good offices 
 of Wellington, by France in 1815, have been retaken by 
 Germany ; the viorccllevunt of Italy has given place to 
 Unity; Venetia, torn in 1814 from the side of Italy, has 
 at last taken its place in the unified kingdom. But only 
 
NATIONALISM 5 
 
 in part. Bismarck made his bargain with Italy in 1866, 
 but his pledges were fulfilled with a niggardly hand ; the 
 Trentino remained in the hands of the Habsburgs; Trieste, 
 Istria, and Dalmatia are still 'unredeemed'; the problem of 
 the Adriatic is still, therefore, as will be seen later, unsolved. 
 The problem of Poland, of all the problems which confronted 
 the diplomatists at Vienna perhaps the most difficult, has 
 thus far defied every attempt to solve it. Equally insoluble, 
 it would seem, is a problem to which little heed was paid 
 in 1815, the problem as to the future of the Balkan peninsula, 
 and of the other territories which have formed part of the 
 Ottoman Empire in Europe, Africa, and Asia. 
 
 These questions are, however, mainly territorial. They 
 may be solved, so simple folk suppose, by the application 
 of a formula — the principle of ' self-determination '. The 
 formula is attractive, but its application is not easy. Much 
 must depend upon the selection of the unit. To whom is 
 the right of ' self-determination ' to be conceded ? To the 
 Genoese, for example, or to the Italians? To the Trentini 
 or to the Tyrolese? To the Czechs or the Austrians? 
 To Britons or Welshmen ? To the people of Ireland, or the 
 people of Ulster? But even if we may hope to find a solu- 
 tion for territorial problems ; even if we can satisfy the claims 
 of nationalities ; there will still remain problems of even 
 larger import. 
 
 One such problem was forced into prominence by the 
 immediate antecedents of the present War. Are solemn 
 treaties to be regarded as mere ' scraps of paper ' ? Is their 
 observance to be merely a matter of international convenience? 
 Is there such a thing as ' public law ' in Europe ? Who is 
 to enforce the fulfilment of contracts between State and 
 State? Where may we look for the sanctions of inter- 
 national law ? ' The time will come when Treaties shall be 
 more than truces, when it will again be possible for them to 
 be observed with that religious faith, that sacred inviolability, 
 on which depends the reputation, the strength, and the pre- 
 servation of Empires.' So ran the preamble to the Treaty 
 of Kalisch, concluded, as we have seen, between Russia and 
 
6 THE EUROPEAN COMMONWEALTH 
 
 Prussia in 1813. A hundred years have passed, but the 
 hopes held out in the preamble have not yet been realized. 
 Treaties are still regarded, in some quarters, as no more than 
 truces, and in no sense entitled to ' sacred inviolability '. 
 
 Can it ever be otherwise so long as the sovereignty of 
 independent nations is regarded as the last word in inter- 
 national politics? Is not * anarchy' the inevitable consequence 
 of unrestricted nationalism ; of the exaltation of the doctrine 
 of State rights ? ' Every State has its right to exist, acquired 
 by history, and it follows the lines of evolution prescribed 
 for it by nature and history. But the State-will, which has 
 found a vehicle in a firmly-compacted fabric, is above all else 
 a striving for power (Machtstreben), Hence the nations are 
 obliged to try issues with each other (sich miteitiander 
 abztifinde7i). Their co-existence is an eternal battle, in which 
 only the efficient nation can stand upright, and the supreme 
 interest of the State is to maintain itself.' ^ Thus a dis- 
 tinguished German historian. The theologian's language is 
 not dissimilar : ' The continuous interaction of nations {der 
 Prozess der Volker tmter einander) is War, and that will 
 never be otherwise, as things are ordered in this world.' ^ 
 Granted the premisses, it is difficult to detect any flaw in the 
 reasoning. 
 
 In what direction, then, must we seek a way of escape ? 
 The Germans have no doubt as to the answer : * A world- 
 peace will be obtained by the German sword; the Empire 
 of the Hohenzollern will bring to the world a repose such 
 as it has never known since the dissolution of the Empire 
 of the Caesars. The last and greatest of the Ghibellines, the 
 true heir of " the Holy Roman Empire of the German 
 people ", shall succeed where Hohenstaufen and Luxemburgs 
 failed, and shall realize the ideal at once of Dante and of 
 Machiavelli.' The claim appears to us to be absurd and extra- 
 vagant ; yet it were folly to ignore the grain of idealism 
 
 ^ Paul Herre, Professor of History at Leipzig, WeltpoUtik und Welt^ 
 katastrophe, 1890- 191 5, p. 12, 
 
 * Dr. Feme, /Creuz-Zei/ung for June 17, 191 5. Both these passages 
 are quoted by Mr. Edwyn Bevan, 7/te Method in the Madness, 
 PP* 36, 37' See also note at end of chapter. 
 
NATIONALISM 7 
 
 contained in the bushel of bombastic chafif. That the 
 Germanic heaven can be reached only after much tribulation 
 may be true ; but it is irrelevant. The world must be purged 
 as by fire ; but ultimately it will win through Purgatory to 
 Paradise. Such is the Teutonic solution of a problem ad- 
 mittedly obstinate and baffling. 
 
 Though baffling, the problem is not new; it is unprecedented 
 only in its proportions. On a smaller scale it confronted 
 the statesmen and thinkers of medieval Italy. The greatest 
 of those thinkers wrestled with it both in poetry and prose. 
 In the De Moiiarchia we have an attempt to solve it. That 
 the great Ghibelline poet, 'weary of the endless strife of 
 princes and cities, of the factions within every city against 
 each other, seeing municipal freedom, the only mitigation 
 of turbulence, vanish with the rise of domestic tyrants V 
 should look to a revival of the power of the world- 
 empire of Rome, in the person of a German prince, was 
 natural enough. The Guelphs could bring no peace to a 
 distracted Italy. In its Temporal mission the Papacy had 
 lamentably failed. Where Pope had failed, Emperor might 
 succeed. In the De Monarchia we have, therefore, an elabo- 
 rate argument for an Empire or world-power. The first 
 requisite for the attainment of the goal of human civilization 
 is peace. ' In quietness the individual grows perfect in know- 
 ledge and in wisdom ; clearly, then, it is in the quiet or 
 tranquillity of peace that society as a whole is best fitted 
 for its proper work, which may be called divine,' and for the 
 attainment of world-peace ' there must be a monarchy or 
 Empire '. Independent sovereignties are inconsistent with 
 the maintenance of peace : ' between any two princes, one of 
 whom is in no way subject to the other, contention may arise, 
 cither through their own fault or that of their subjects. 
 Wherefore, there must needs be judgement between them. 
 And since the one may not take cognizance of what concerns 
 the other, the one not being subject to the other (for a peer 
 has no rule over his peer), there must needs be a third, of 
 wider jurisdiction, who has princedom over both . . . hence 
 ' Bryce, Holy Roman Empiie^ p. 265. 
 
8 THE EUROPEAN COMMONWEALTH 
 
 the necessity for a world-empire.' The Roman Empire was, 
 therefore, ordained of God to secure tranquillity to mankind ; 
 the Emperors were the servants of their people ; in subjecting 
 the world to itself the Roman people attained to Empire by 
 right ; and that right was established and revealed by God- 
 given victory in arms. Under that Empire, at the zenith 
 of the Augustan monarchy, Christ himself chose to be born. 
 But Christ sanctioned the authority of that Empire not only 
 by His birth but by His death, accepting as judicially valid 
 the sentence of Pontius Pilate. Nor did the subsequent 
 institution of the Church impair the prior authority of the 
 Empire. Church and Empire were alike ordained of God ; 
 both were dependent upon God ; neither was subordinate 
 to the other ; each was in its separate sphere supreme ; the 
 supreme pontiff in the spiritual sphere ordained 'to lead 
 the human race in accordance with things revealed to life 
 eternal ' ; the Emperor, in the secular sphere, ordained ' to 
 guide humanity to temporal felicity in accordance with the 
 teachings of philosophy '. 
 
 Such, in brief, is the argument of Dante's famous treatise. 
 The summary, however rapid and rough, will suffice to show 
 how readily the argument, devised as an apology for a 
 Luxemburg Emperor, lends itself to the ambitions of the 
 HohenzoUern. The divine right of the Augustan Empire 
 was transmitted, through the Roman Pontiff, to the Holy 
 Roman Empire of the Ottos, the Hohenstaufen, and Habs- 
 burgs; and from thence it has descended, morally if not 
 juridically, to the HohenzoUern Emperors of modern Germany. 
 To the HohenzoUern it will fall, by the judgement of the 
 God of battles (cf. De Monarchia, Book H, c. viii), to restore 
 to- a distracted world the blessings of perpetual peace— peace 
 attained by the German sword. 
 
 Is this a legitimate inference from the argument of the 
 De Monarchial That it contains a superficial plausibility 
 cannot be denied. But the inference is neither exhaustive 
 nor exclusive. Go back to the argument of Dante. For 
 the well-being of the world the first prerequisite is Justice ; 
 the most dangerous enemy to Justice is cupidity: 'when 
 
NATIONALISM 9 
 
 the will is not pure from all cupidity, even though justice 
 be present, yet she is not absolutely there in the glow of 
 her purity.' To execute justice the Ruler must empty him- 
 self of all selfish ambitions, and must ' render to each what 
 is his due', and must render it in the spirit of Christian 
 charity. Only in a monarch can this be looked for (Book I, 
 c. xi). It is clear, then, that Dante's Imperialism, as one 
 of the best of modern commentators has pointed out, ' does 
 not mean the supremacy of one nation over others, but the 
 existence of a supreme law which can hold all national 
 passions in check.' ^ Deeply penetrated by the teaching of 
 Aristotle, and adapting, like his master, the teleological 
 method, Dante defines things by their end or purpose (TeXo?). 
 God has created nothing in vain. The goal of human civi- 
 lization is the realizing of all the potentialities of the human 
 mind. This realization demands the harmonious development 
 and co-operation of the several members of the universal 
 body politic ; for such co-operation peace is essential, and 
 for the attainment of peace there must be ' one guiding or 
 ruling power. And this is what we mean by Monarchy or 
 Empire' (I. 5). Monarchy, then, is necessary for the well- 
 being of the world. 
 
 Rome supplied the need. The harmonious co-operation 
 of the several members of the universal body politic was 
 secured through the supremacy of law. The Roman law, as 
 Dr. Wicksteed comments, ' is the supreme instrument for the 
 regulation of the earthly affairs of men ' ; but it is powerless 
 without an efficient executive. To this thought Dante fre- 
 quently recurs in the Ptirgaiorio : 
 
 Che val, perche ti racconciasse il freno 
 Giustiniano, se la .sella e vota? 
 Senz' esso fora la vergogna meno. (vi. 88-90.) 
 
 Le leggi son, ma chi pon mano ad esse ? 
 NuUo : pero che il pastor che precede 
 Ruminar puo, ma non ha I'unghie fesse. (xvi. 97-9.) 
 
 ^ Dr. P. H. Wicksteed, Latin Works of Dante, noi^ to De Monarchia, 
 I. X (p. 149). 
 
lo THE EUROPEAN COMMONWEALTH 
 
 Soleva Roma, che il buon mondo feo, 
 Due Soli aver, che Tuna e I'altra strada 
 Facean vedere, e del mondo e di Deo. 
 
 (xvi. 106-8.) 
 
 Only under the reign of law can the world enjoy true 
 liberty. But whence may we look for the return of the 
 Saturnia regita ? When shall Justice be enthroned ? Such 
 questions make, a direct and special appeal to the heart and 
 conscience of mankind to-day. The conviction deepens that, 
 if the blood so freely offered up on the altars of patriotism 
 and humanity is not to have been poured out in vain, some 
 means must be found for the re-establishment of the reign 
 of law ; the world must not be allowed to relapse into the 
 condition of anarchy in which, as many hold, the present 
 conflict had its origin. The quest is not an easy one ; but 
 it is being pursued with ardour. In the United States of 
 America there has been established ' A League to enforce 
 Peace '. In this country the principle of a ' League of 
 Nations ' commands an increasing number of influential and 
 thoughtful adherents. Such movements may at least be 
 taken as symptomatic of a conviction that mere nationalism 
 will not solve the problem of humanity, that ' wheresoever 
 contention may arise there must needs be judgement ' ; that 
 to pronounce judgement there must be a supreme tribunal, 
 and that a supreme tribunal demands a sovereign prince. 
 
 But sovereignty, as Hobbes perceived and insisted, need not 
 be vested in an individual. The Great Leviathan may take the 
 form of a Commonwealth. And whatever the form the end is 
 the same : ' the maintenance of security and the enforcement of 
 covenants ' ; and * covenants without the sword are but words '. 
 For the enforcement of covenants, throughout a large part of 
 the civilized world, and to the maintenance of peace there has 
 been no more effective guarantee in world-history than that 
 provided by the British Empire. And never has this truth 
 been more clearly perceived or more emphatically proclaimed 
 than by a soldier-statesman who once bore arms against us. 
 
 * People talk*, said General Smuts, ' about a league of nations 
 and international government, but the only successful cxperi- 
 
 I 
 
NATIONALISM li 
 
 ment in international government that has ever been made is 
 the British Empire, founded on principles which appeal to the 
 highest political ideals of mankind.'^ 
 
 And elsewhere : 
 
 ' This ideal of an organized free co-operative basis for the 
 Society of Nations, which would have appeared chimerical 
 before the War, is so no longer, though jnany generations will 
 elapse before it will be in full working order. The interesting 
 point is that in the . . . British Commonwealth of Nations this 
 transition from the old legalistic idea of political sovereignty, 
 based on force, to the new social idea of constitutional freedom, 
 based on consent, has been gradually evolving for more than 
 a century. ... As the Roman ideas guided European civiliza- 
 tion for almost two thousand years, so the newer ideas 
 embedded in the British constitutional and colonial system 
 may, when carried to their full development, guide the future 
 civilization for ages to come.' ^ 
 
 It may seem a far cry from Dante to General Smuts, from 
 the De Monarchia to the British Commonwealth, yet the 
 transition is less abrupt than would superficially appear. The 
 great Florentine poet beheld, with agonized soul, an Italy 
 distracted by faction and war. The tragedy of medieval Italy 
 is re-enacted on an infinitely larger stage before the eyes of 
 mankind to-day. How to evolve order out of the chaos, how 
 to make impossible for the future a recurrence of the cata- 
 strophe, how to rebuild upon the ruins of a shattered civilization 
 a more stately and more stable edifice — this is the problem 
 upon which, for many years to come, the best thought of the 
 best minds must needs be concentrated. 
 
 The following chapters are based upon essays all of which 
 have been written during the last four years. They were not 
 written with any idea of republication in a single volume, and 
 the thread upon which they are now strung may seem to be in 
 places somewhat slender. But a thread, I think, there is. Thus, 
 the next chapter discusses the origins of modern diplomacy, and 
 sketches the evolution of the States-system of modern Europe. 
 In the third I attempt to indicate the attitude of Great Britain 
 towards some of the chief questions which disturbed conti- 
 nental Europe in the latest period of the Nation-State era. 
 * War-Time speeches, p. 13. ^ Ibid., p. vii. 
 
12 THE EUROPEAN COMMONWEALTH 
 
 That era, as we are now beginning to perceive, came to an end 
 with the seventies of the last century. By I878 Europe was 
 exhaustively parcelled out among Nation-States. But already 
 a new era was dawning. The horizon of men's minds, and the 
 orbit of their ambitions, were enlarged by the discoveries of 
 science. Contests for hegemony in Europe began to seem but 
 a puny matter in comparison with the struggle for world - 
 empire which was more and more clearly perceived to be 
 impending. The expansion of Russia, the marvellous develop- 
 ment of the United States of America, and above all the 
 growing cohesion and increasing self-consciousness of the 
 British Empire announced to the world that Politics had 
 entered upon a new phase. With this new phase, with the new 
 orientation of history, and the development of a Weltpolitik, 
 the fourth chapter is concerned. A rapid succession of events, 
 momentous in isolation, but even more significant when 
 regarded from the point of view of their cumulative effect, 
 illustrated and emphasized the new political tendencies : the 
 British occupation of Egypt ; the expansion of the French 
 Empire in Tunis and Morocco ; the partition of the African 
 continent among the European Powers ; the tardy but im- 
 pressive foundation of a German Colonial Empire : its large 
 share in the partition of Africa : its appearance in the Pacific ; 
 the discovery of gold in the Transvaal and the consequent 
 rush of European speculators ; the rapid expansion of British 
 influence on the African continent : in Nigeria ; on the East 
 coast ; in Uganda ; in the Soudan ; the war between China 
 and Japan ; the new significance attached (in 1895) to a 
 boundary incident in a small South American republic ; the 
 Spanish- American War; the conquestof the Philippines and the 
 definite acceptance by the United States of the responsibilities 
 of world-power; the occupation of strategical points in the 
 northern Pacific by Germany, Russia, France, and Great 
 Britain ; the war between Britons and Boers in South Africa ; 
 the rapid development of the German navy ; the Boxer rising 
 in China and the consequent intervention of the Powers ; the 
 conclusion of an alliance between Great Britain and Japan ; 
 the agreement between England and France ; the dramatic 
 
xNATIONALISM 13 
 
 defeat inflicted by Japan upon a great European Power ; the 
 Anglo-Russian Convention ; the reopening of the Near 
 Eastern question ; the annexation of Bosnia and the Herze- 
 govina by Austria-Hungary ; the Italian expedition to Tripoli ; 
 the formation of the Balkan League and the outbreak of the 
 Balkan Wars ; the apparently imminent annihilation of the 
 last remnants of the Ottoman power in Europe ; the inaugura- 
 tion of a Mittel-Europa policy and the promotion of the 
 scheme for an all-German route from Hamburg to the Persian 
 Gulf — all these things seemed to portend the opening of a new 
 era in world-history. 
 
 Other chapters in this volume will deal with questions more 
 directly arising out of or accentuated by the present War : 
 with the policy which, with rare consistency, has been for 
 centuries pursued by the Hohenzollern rulers of Prussia and 
 of Germany ; with the difficulties encountered by Great 
 Britain in adapting its institutions to the exigencies of war ; 
 with the place of Belgium in the European polity, and the 
 influence of the Low Countries upon English policy ; with 
 the problem presented to Europe by the annihilation of the 
 kingdom of Poland and the unquenched and unquenchable 
 aspirations of the Polish people ; with successive phases of the 
 Balkan problem ; with the problem of the Adriatic and the 
 conflicting aspirations of Italians and Southern Slavs. 
 
 Emphasis will be laid not merely or so much upon the 
 particularist aspects of these and other problems as upon their 
 relation to the common weal of Europe ; and attention will be 
 drawn to the interesting experiment in the organization of 
 peace initiated by the Tsar Alexander I. It is in some ways 
 unfortunate that the practical outcome of that experiment, 
 deflected from its original purpose by the dominating influence 
 of Metternich, should have tended to obscure the generous 
 and pure-minded if fantastic aspirations which had captured 
 the mystical imagination of Alexander. Corruptio optimi 
 pessima. The Holy Alliance quickly degenerated into a 
 league of despots, bent upon eliminating from the body-politic 
 of Europe the last traces of the revolutionary virus with which 
 it had been inoculated by France. But autocracy was not of 
 
14 THE EUROPEAN COMMONWEALTH 
 
 the essence of the experiment. The Holy Alliance foundered 
 upon a rock the danger of which had from the first been 
 perceived and emphasized by two of the most brilliant of 
 English diplomatists. Castlereagh and Canning, though not 
 less anxious than Alexander for the maintenance of good 
 relations between the Powers, were profoundly mistrustful of 
 the means by which the Tsar proposed to attain his ends. 
 For them it was not easy to judge the Holy Alliance apart 
 from the personality of the Holy Allies. To the English 
 statesmen the character of the Tsar appeared to be compounded 
 of calculating ambition and impracticable mysticism. Metter- 
 nich they regarded as a mere reactionary, devoted to the 
 principle of autocracy and determined at all costs and in all 
 directions to assert it. A later generation may view the epi- 
 sode of the Holy Alliance in more generous and more accur- 
 ate perspective. But whatever the ultimate judgement may 
 be it will not be denied that the history of the experiment is 
 of peculiar significance at a time when the world has been 
 again plunged by the blood-lust of a single Power into a 
 devastating war ; when men are again most anxiously and 
 gravely canvassing the possibility of avoiding a recurrence of 
 similar cataclysms in the future ; and, in particular, when 
 projects of a League of Peace are in the air. 
 
 There is indeed a consensus of opinion that if the present 
 War should end without a serious and sustained effort for the 
 better organization of peace the bankruptcy of modern states- 
 manship would stand confessed. Under these circumstances 
 the thoughts of men tend to recur to first principles. How did 
 man originally emerge from that state of perpetual war which, 
 as certain philosophers have taught, was his primitive con- 
 dition ? He emerged, so we have learnt on the same authority, 
 by the conclusion of a mutual covenant. 
 
 The doctrine of a Social Compact, as enunciated by Hooker, 
 and Milton, and Hobbes, may have been unhistorical ; contract, 
 as Maine contended, may be the goal rather than the origin of 
 civil society ; but the doctrine, true or false, played an im- 
 portant and indeed decisive part in more than one of the great 
 crises of modern history ; developed and interpreted by Locke, 
 
NATIONALISM 15 
 
 it provided a philosophical apology for the aristocratic revolu- 
 tion of 1688 in England ; enlarged and applied by the genius 
 of Rousseau, it supplied a formula for the democratic revolution 
 in France. Historically false, it was nevertheless philosophic- 
 ally valid, and politically it served to ease several difficult 
 situations. 
 
 Nor is its utility exhausted. Serviceable as a solvent of 
 domestic problems, it may be destined to an even more im- 
 portant function. The theory of contract may yet supply the 
 solution of the international problem. For the last few cen- 
 turies we have regarded the Sovereign State as the final stage 
 in the evolution of European society, as the last word in the 
 science of the State. But the doctrine of State-Sovereignty 
 has landed us in anarchy. It is clearly necessary to reconsider 
 the validity of the premisses from which many of our most 
 cherished deductions have been drawn. Among these is the 
 hitherto accepted basis of international relations. The experi- 
 ence of the last four years has proved that in the sphere of 
 international politics our boasted advance is almost wholly 
 illusory. No one ever imagined that the same sort of sanctity 
 attached to international agreements as to municipal laws. 
 The absence of a common superior forbade the supposition. 
 On the other hand, it was unimaginable that solemn treaties 
 would be treated as mere * scraps of paper ' to be torn up at the 
 first moment when such a process suited the convenience of 
 any one of the signatories. It was hoped by the more sanguine 
 that the rapid progress of international arbitration would 
 render a war between leading Powers almost impossible ; even 
 the less sanguine supposed that if war should break out it 
 would be conducted with due regard to the rules, framed in 
 the interests of humanity and embodied in a series of inter- 
 national conventions, such as those concluded at Geneva in 
 1864 and 1868, and at St. Petersburg in 1867. But these 
 hopes have been destroyed, these suppositions have been 
 falsified by the hard and hideous realities of the present con- 
 test. The forces of barbarism are unchained ; the boasted 
 achievements of science have been turned to the destruction of 
 civilization. 
 
i6 THE EUROPEAN COMMONWEALTH 
 
 Again we are fain to ask : where is the path of escape ? 
 To the rule of force there would seem to be only one alterna- 
 tive : the reign of law, and the consequent enforcement of 
 contracts. Within the sphere of municipal government we 
 have learnt that without law there can be no true liberty. 
 Destroy the sanction of law and we shall all be flung back 
 into the state of nature imagined by Hobbes, where the life of 
 man is ' nasty, brutish, and short '. For the individual citizen, 
 then, law is not the antithesis but the complement of liberty. 
 Can law also secure liberty to nations ? This much at least is 
 certain : that, if brute force is to supply the only cement of the 
 European edifice, small states, if not small nations, are doomed 
 to extinction. In a real European Commonwealth, resting 
 upon the sanction of law, they may still find a place. The 
 problem of the small State will demand attention in subse- 
 quent chapters. Here it must suffice to have indicated its 
 existence. 
 
 A further question remains. Assume the promulgation of 
 an international code : assume the establishment of a social 
 compact between independent States. Quis custodiet custodes ? 
 Who will guarantee the observance of treaties and the fulfil- 
 ment of contracts ? Clearly this task must be confided to a 
 super-national authority ; the mere erection of such an 
 authority would imply the limitation of absolute State- 
 Sovereignty; such a limitation could, as things are, only 
 result from voluntary renunciation. Are the peoples of the 
 world ready for such an act of abnegation ? Further : even if, 
 under the stress of discipline and suffering, their minds are 
 attuned to a break with the traditions of the recent past, 
 have they reached such a point in the development of an inter- 
 national public opinion as to justify a reasonable hope that 
 they would, even to their own national detriment, persist in 
 well-doing? No quixotic impulse begotten of the contempla- 
 tion of the misery of a war-ridden world will suffice to sustain 
 an altruistic resolution. Nothing save the continuously exerted 
 pressure of a changed public opinion will avail. No one but 
 a cynic would say a word which could retard the change ; but 
 it is the part of prudence to recognize that such a change must 
 
NATIONALISM 17 
 
 be gradual and will probably be slow. When the Projet de 
 paix perp^tuelle of the Abbd de Saint-Pierre was submitted 
 to Cardinal Fleury, the Cardinal is said to have observed 
 laconically: 'Admirable, save for one omission; I find no 
 provision for sending missionaries to convert the heart of 
 princes.' The observation, though perhaps cynical, indicates 
 succinctly a line of argument which it were folly to ignore. 
 Before the consummation, devoutly to be wished for, can 
 be reached, there must be among the nations a real change of 
 heart ; there must, in the language of the Christian Ethic, be 
 * repentance ' ; the whole world must ' repent ' in sackcloth 
 and ashes. Without such a change of heart the erection of 
 the elaborate machinery of super-nationalism would be a vain 
 and delusive enterprise ; given a change of heart, the machinery 
 might prove to be superfluous.^ 
 
 ^ I am glad to find the main argument advanced in this chapter power- 
 fully reinforced by Mr. G. L. Beer's suggestive work The English-speakin^i^ 
 Peoples (New York, 1917), a work which came to my notice only after 
 my own volume went to press. 
 
CHAPTER II 
 THE RISE OF MODERN DIPLOMACY 
 
 The days in which we live are, in more than one sense, 
 critical. It is a testing time for nations, for individuals, for 
 established institutions, and not least for preconceived ideas. 
 None may hope to survive unless they can establish their claim 
 before the supreme tribunal of reason. Great traditions, great 
 achievements, even great and acknowledged services will avail 
 little to mitigate the severity of the judgement, except in so far 
 as these things afford a presumption of high efficiency in the 
 present, and of sure promise for the future. 
 
 In this general scrutiny the methods and machinery of 
 Diplomacy cannot hope to escape. There is a general disposi- 
 tion to affirm, and in some quarters to believe, that ' Diplomacy ', 
 as hitherto practised and understood, is largely responsible for 
 the great tragedy which for four years or more has filled the 
 world-stage. Whether that grave charge can or cannot be 
 substantiated is a question which need not for the moment be 
 discussed. Other critics, more reflective and better trained, 
 push the responsibility one stage farther back. They attribute >. 
 the present catastrophe less to the conduct of international 
 l^^ffairs than to the fact that affairs should be international at all. 
 The ultimate genesis of the world conflict of to-day is sought, / 
 and by some inquirers is found, in the relatively recent develop-/ 
 ment of the existing European polity — a polity based upon the 
 recognition of the rights of a large number of Nation-States, 
 entirely independent and nominally coequal. Both attributions 
 may be regarded as slightly academic, but, as will be seen 
 presently, they are not really so wide apart. 
 
 There is, however, another point of more immediate signifi- 
 cance. It is safe to assume that the present War or the peace 
 by which it is concluded will mark an exceedingly important 
 
RISE OF MODERN DIPLOMACY 19 
 
 epoch in the history of diplomacy. The young democracies, 
 and the more advanced parties in the older democracies, will 
 obviously not be content to leave the ordering of international 
 relations to the high priests of the diplomatic mysteries. They 
 are determined to control foreign no less than domestic policy. 
 Whether such control is likely to conduce to the maintenance 
 of peace, is a question on which there may legitimately be 
 differences of opinion. One thing, however, is certain : the 
 leaders of the New Democracy are not likely to be deterred 
 from the attempt by any diffidence as to their competence for 
 the task they essay. It is not denied that they may in the 
 future make mistakes, but in their own opinion those mistakes 
 are likely to be fewer, more venial, and less disastrous in their 
 consequences than the blunders perpetrated in the past by 
 trained diplomatists, by crowned heads, and by uncrowned 
 capitalists. Whatever may be thought of these confident 
 anticipations, and of the implied criticism of the existing 
 system, there can be little doubt that an attempt will, in the 
 near future, be made to ' democratize ' foreign policy, to devise 
 new machinery for the control of the Chanceries, and to transfer 
 to elected assemblies, or to committees selected from and imme- 
 diately responsible to them, functions which have hitherto been 
 deemed to belong to the executive rather than to the legisla- 
 tive side of government. If, however, the attempt is not to 
 issue in disaster, swift and irretrievable, there is one condition 
 precedent, the importance of which will not by any reasonable 
 person be denied : those who essay the task of controlling 
 foreign policy must equip themselves by patient and assiduous 
 study both of the science of Politics and of the art of Diplomacy. 
 It may, indeed, be objected that it is superfluous to acquire 
 the rules of the game, since the new diplomatists do not mean 
 to play the same game nor to play it according to the old 
 rules. But they cannot avoid the pitfalls unless they know 
 their location, nor amend rules which they have never recited. 
 The literature of the subject, in English, has hitherto been 
 singularly, though characteristically, meagre. France, for 
 reasons easily intelligible, is, on the contrary, exceptionally 
 affluent in this respect. There is, for example, nothing in 
 
 C a 
 
20 THE EUROPEAN COMMONWEALTH 
 
 English at all comparable to the series of diplomatic dispatches 
 which the French Government has published in a series of 
 admirably edited volumes — Recueil des Instructions donnies 
 aux Ambassadeurs et Ministres de France. The student of 
 English medieval history is indeed fortunate in the possession 
 of the great collection of Chronicles issued under the aegis of 
 the Master of the Rolls. From Roger of Hoveden and Walter 
 of Coventry, for example, you may learn all that any one can 
 reasonably want to know of the foreign policy of the early 
 Plantagenets. The historian of the sixteenth century is pro- 
 vided with the Calendar of State Papers to assist his researches 
 into the diplomacy of Henry VII, of Wolsey, of Burleigh, or of 
 Queen Elizabeth. No such facilities exist for the study of the 
 seventeenth century, or the eighteenth or nineteenth centuries. 
 The historian of these periods must seek his materials in manu- 
 script either at the Record Office or the Foreign Office, but 
 without a special permit he can obtain access to the Foreign 
 Office Papers only down to 1837, and with a permit only down 
 to i860, a date quite arbitrarily selected.^ For the actual texts 
 of nineteenth-century treaties recourse may be had to the 
 collection of Sir Edward Hertslet, and for the period actually 
 covered (18 14-91) it would be impossible to better that collec- 
 tion. For the rest, there are the stray volumes of the Historical 
 Manuscripts Commission, the annual volume of British and 
 Foreign State Papers, and the Parliamentary Papers. But 
 the latter lack consecutiveness, and have been carefully ' edited '. 
 At every turn the serious students of English diplomacy are 
 discouraged and baffled ; while the people who look up to 
 them are not fed. It is small wonder, therefore, that the 
 governing masses in this country should be less well equipped 
 for the intelh'gent discussion of questions of foreign policy than 
 most of their continental neighbours, nor that, in the circum- 
 stances, they should hitherto have betrayed little curiosity as 
 to the conduct of oversea affairs. 
 
 There are, however, indications that this indifference is 
 coming to an end. The outbreak of a great war has stimu- 
 lated interest in the history and methods of, diplomacy as 
 
 * Cf. C. H. Firth, Presidential address to the Royal Historical Society. 
 
 ] 
 
RISE OF MODERN DIPLOMACY 2ii 
 
 nothing else could have done, with the result that the shelves 
 in our libraries devoted to European History and Diplomacy 
 are rapidly filling up. Among the works on this subject 
 recently published brief mention may be made of two or 
 three. 
 
 One is from the pen of Sir Ernest Satow, himself a diplo- 
 matist of distinction and wide experience, and bears the title 
 A Guide to Diplomatic Practice} On behalf of Sir E. 
 Satow's work the claim is made by its editor that ' it is 
 unique with regard to the method of treatment of the sub- 
 ject, as well as the selection of the topics discussed'. Nor, 
 so far as English literature is concerned, can the claim be 
 contested. Its intention and scope are precisely indicated by 
 its title. The first volume may be regarded primarily as a 
 text-book for practical diplomatists. It deals in detail with 
 the machinery of diplomacy ; the constitution and functions 
 of the Ministry for Foreign Affairs ; the language of diplo- 
 matic intercourse and forms of documents ; credentials ; the 
 selection, position, immunities, and classification of diplomatic 
 agents ; the reception and termination of a mission, and so 
 forth. The treatment is, however, far less forbidding than 
 such a bare enumeration would suggest. Apart from special 
 chapters devoted to such topics as precedence among States, 
 titles and precedence among sovereigns, maritime honours, and 
 ' counsels to diplomatists ', the more technical topics are treated 
 with a wealth of historical illustration which renders them 
 hardly less attractive to the historical student than to the 
 budding diplomatist. 
 
 This is even more strikingly the case in the second volume, 
 which deals with congresses and conferences, treaties and other 
 international compacts, ' good offices ' and mediation. Here, 
 too, the method is analytical rather than historical, but the 
 subject-matter is presented in a form which will make the 
 book an exceedingly valuable, if not an indispensable, adjunct 
 to the study of European history during the last three centuries. 
 For erudition, conspicuous and profound, has not converted 
 Sir E. Satow into a dry-as-dust, and he combines weight of 
 ^ Two volumes. Longmans, 19 17. 
 
32 THE EUROPEAN COMMONWEALTH 
 
 learning with a skill in exposition which will gain for his words 
 an audience far beyond the circles of professed diplomatists. 
 
 Another work, recently completed, is Mr. D. J. Hill's History 
 of Diplomacy ift the International Development of Europe} 
 Mr. Hill, like Sir E. Satow, has won distinction both as a 
 scholar and as a diplomatist, but his work is planned on lines 
 quite distinct from those followed by the latter author. As is 
 clearly implied in the title, his book is historical rather than 
 
 uridical. A history of diplomacy, as the author justly insists, 
 properly includes ' not only an account of the progress of 
 
 nternational intercourse, but an exposition of the motives by 
 which it has been inspired and the results which it has accom- 
 plished '. More even than that ; it must include also * a con- 
 sideration of the genesis of the entire international system and 
 of its progress through the progressive stages of its develop- 
 ment *. 
 
 What is the scientific terminus a quo of such an inquiry? 
 ' It is customary', writes Mr. Hill, * to regard the Congress and 
 Peace of Westphalia as the starting-point of European diplo- 
 macy, but this is principally due to the fact that so little has 
 been known of earlier diplomatic activity.' That may be so. 
 But the customary practice has something, as will be argued 
 presently, to recommend it. Moreover, it is worthy of notice 
 that Mr. Hill sets out to write a history of diplomacy in the 
 international development of Europe. It is, therefore, perti- 
 nent to inquire where the international development begins. 
 Can it begin before the development of the Nation- State ? By 
 implication Mr. Hill answers this question with an emphatic 
 affirmative. The first of his three substantial volumes starts 
 with an analysis of the condition of Europe under the Roman 
 Empire ; it carries us on to the revival of the Empire in the 
 West, to the dismemberment of the Carolingian Empire, and 
 to the Holy Roman Empire of medieval times. He then traces 
 the conflict of the Empire and the Papacy, and so brings us to 
 the development of Italian diplomacy. The real genesis of 
 modern diplomacy he finds in the City-State system of 
 medieval Italy. 
 
 * Three volumes. Longmans, 1905-14. 
 
RISE OF MODERN DIPLOMACY 33 
 
 *A little world by itself, whose component parts were 
 numerous, feeble and hostile, Italy soon created an organism 
 to take the place which the Empire had left vacant. To know 
 the intentions of one's neighbour, to defeat his hostile designs, 
 to form alliances with his enemies, to steal away his friends 
 and prevent his union with others — became matters of the 
 highest public interest. . . . The system long in use by Venice 
 was now applied by every Italian State . . . but Venice 
 continued to be the school and touchstone of ambassadors ' 
 (i. 359). 
 
 From the development of Italian diplomacy, Mr. Hill passes 
 to the rise of national monarchies, and thence to the formation 
 of modern States. With the gradual absorption of the great 
 feudal duchies, the expulsion of the English from France, the 
 overthrow of Charles the Bold of Burgundy, and the unifica- 
 tion of France under Louis XI and Charles VIII, we reach by 
 general consent the dawn of the modern era. May not this be 
 regarded as the true terminus a quo for a history of European 
 diplomacy, for the study of international relations ? Mr. Hill 
 repudiates the suggestion with scorn : 
 
 ' The essence of diplomacy does not lie in the character 
 of its organs or its forms of procedure. Intrinsically it is 
 an appeal to ideas and principles rather than to force, and 
 may assume a great variety of specific embodiments. . . . 
 What is to be said of the Italian cities winning their local 
 liberties from the greatest emperors of the Middle Ages by 
 means of their leagues and alliances? And what of the 
 Republic of Venice, in particular, situated between powers 
 of overwhelming magnitude, yet not only maintaining from 
 the beginning its virtual independence but acquiring by its 
 compacts a vast colonial dominion from the spoils of the 
 Eastern Empire? If these were not feats of diplomacy, in 
 what age shall we expect to find them ? . . . The importance 
 of that period both for the international development of 
 Europe and for the part played in it by diplomacy cannot 
 be over-estimated. In it were elaborated and set in motion 
 ideas and influences that have never ceased to affect the 
 destinies of Europe ' (II, py. vi, vii). 
 
 All this is, in one sense, true to the verge of truism. But 
 it is true only if we are prepared to give to the terms 
 'diplomacy' and 'international' a somewhat elastic and non- 
 technical connotation. The question as to the proper and 
 
24 THE EUROPEAN COMMONWEALTH 
 
 precise connotation of those terms is one which must presently 
 engage attention. Well before the end of the second volume, 
 which closes with the Treaties of Westphalia (1648), we are 
 launched upon the period when those terms may, beyond 
 dispute, be appropriately employed. But to that period we 
 shall revert. 
 
 To his third volume, published in 1914, Mr. Hill gives 
 a sub-title: *The Diplomacy of the Age of Absolutism.' 
 He prefaces the volume by a statement which seems 
 strangely self-contradictory, though not un-characteristic of 
 the author. 
 
 'Men', he writes, * had sought refuge from anarchy by 
 establishing the supremacy of the State and concentrating 
 power in the hands of a few. We behold entire nations 
 moving en masse in directions not determined by their needs 
 or their individual desires, nor yet in view of their well-being, 
 but by the command of one man who — for reasons of his 
 own, for which he had to give no account — acted as he saw 
 fit.' . . . ' Yet it is impossible to explain this period in terms 
 of individual action ... it was the thought and feeling of the 
 time that made monarchy absolute' (HI, p. v). 
 
 Precisely. Power was committed to a ruler, virtually dic- 
 tatorial, in order, on the one hand, to rescue the adolescent 
 Nation-State from feudal anarchy, and on the other to achieve 
 territorial readjustments which, if not * determined by national 
 needs ', or conceived in the national interests, were distinctly 
 so regarded by the mass of the nation. M. Albert Sorel 
 cannot be described as an adulator of absolutism, but what 
 says he of that traditional foreign policy of which the abso- 
 lute monarchs of France were conspicuous exponents ? 
 
 ' La politique frangaise avait ^te dessinee par la geographic : 
 Tinstinct national la suggera avant que la raison d'etat la 
 conseillat. Elle se fonde sur un fait : I'empire de Charle- 
 magne. Le point de depart de ce grand proces qui occupe 
 toute I'histoire de France c'est I'insoluble litige de la succes- 
 sion de I'Empereur ... a mesure que le temps s'eloigne 
 I'image du grand Empereur s'eleve et prend des proportions 
 colossales. De Philippe-Auguste a Napoleon elle plane sur 
 I'histoire de France.' 
 
 This is the truly philosophical view of a great historical 
 
RISE OF MODERN DIPLOMACY 25 
 
 tradition ; but M. Sorel does but re-echo the language of 
 Richeheu himself: 
 
 ' Le but de mon ministere a ete de rendre a la Gaule 
 les frontieres que lui a destinees la Nature, de rendre aux 
 Gaulois un roi gaulois, de confondre la Gaule avec la France 
 et partout ou fut I'ancienne Gaule d'y retablir la nouvelle.' 
 
 It is perfectly true that the time came when Louis XIV, 
 in the vain pursuit of dynastic ambitions, transgressed the 
 limits suggested by geography, and departed from the policy 
 hallowed by tradition ; but it is useless to ignore the fact 
 that up to a point the policy of the absolute monarchy was 
 not one whit less national than that pursued by the states- 
 men of the First or the Third Republic. The doctrine of 
 • Les Limites naturelles ', the idea that the national frontiers 
 of France were marked by the Rhine, the Alps, and the 
 Pyrenees, has profoundly and continuously influenced the 
 diplomacy of France, whether the agents of that diplomacy 
 received their instructions from a Bourbon, a Buonaparte, or 
 a servant of the Republic. A parliamentary minister is not 
 necessarily a more faithful interpreter of the national will 
 than an 'absolute' monarch, as an historian like Mr. Hill 
 ought to have perceived. Alsace and Lorraine were acquired 
 for France at the zenith of the Bourbon monarchy. Did the 
 First or the Second Republic ever show the least disposition 
 to restore those provinces? The United Provinces, under 
 the Dutch Republic, pursued their colonial ambitions with 
 at least as much eagerness as Spain under Charles V or 
 Philip II. Dynastic motives do not account for national 
 policy consistently pursued under varying political conditions. 
 But we need not go abroad to find illustrations of so obvious 
 a truth. No country in Europe has been less influenced, in 
 its foreign policy, by the individual desires of an absolute 
 monarch than Great Britain ; yet no country has pursued 
 certain ends with greater persistence or more undeviating 
 consistency. 
 
 Mr. Hill's argument would seem, therefore, to be somewhat 
 vitiated by a prejudice, not to be expected in a philosophical 
 historian, against the ' enlightened despots ' of the seventeenth 
 
26 THE EUROPEAN COMMONWEALTH 
 
 and eighteenth centuries. Yet the point must not be pressed 
 against him too far, nor does the defect, if such it be, seriously 
 detract from the value of a work which is conceived on 
 original lines and is executed, in the main, with conspicuous 
 skill. His erudition is undeniable, his style lucid and at- 
 tractive, while the general treatment of an important theme 
 is full without being prolix, and scholarly without being dull. 
 The method and plan which he has chosen to adopt raise, 
 however, a large question of historical principle into the 
 discussion of which, interesting though it be, we must not, 
 for the moment, be beguiled. 
 
 The purpose which inspires this chapter is a different one. 
 It is to consider how far the recent publication of works such 
 as these may be held to betoken an awakened interest, on 
 the part of the English public, in the machinery and methods 
 of diplomacy, and in the problems with the solution of whicli 
 diplomacy is concerned. The interest, if awakened, is un- 
 questionably recent and tardy. Yet one point should not 
 be ignored. Diplomacy, as now understood, is itself a rela- 
 tively new development ; international relations are, in an 
 historic sense, a thing of yesterday. The word ' diplomacy ' 
 is said to have been first employed, in its modern signification, 
 by Edmund Burke towards the end of the eighteenth century. 
 The system itself— * a uniform system based upon generally 
 recognized rules and directed by a diplomatic hierarchy 
 having a fixed international status ' — was finally established, 
 according to Mr. Alison Phillips, ' only at the Congresses of 
 Vienna (1815) and Aix-la-Chapelle (1818)*.^ Even if we 
 accept the wider definition or description preferred and 
 adopted by Mr. Hill, and take ' diplomacy ' to be synonymous 
 with international relations, it is difficult to assign its genesis 
 to a period earlier than the close of the fifteenth century. 
 Before that time we look in vain for the Nation-States, be- 
 tween whom mutual relations were possible. Not until then 
 did Europe really begin to emancipate itself from the grip 
 of the legacy bequeathed to it by the world-empire of Rome. 
 The Roman Empire had long since passed away, but for 
 * Encyclopaedia Britannica (nth edition), art. ' Diplomacy '. 
 
RISE OF MODERN DIPLOMACY 27 
 
 a thousand years after its passing Europe continued to be 
 dominated by the institutions which arose out of its ashes. 
 The Empire of the Caesars bequeathed to the world the 
 idea of a World-State, the idea of a Catholic Church, and 
 a system of land-tenure which ultimately developed into one 
 of the most powerful principles of government and society 
 which has ever impressed itself upon mankind — the relation 
 of lordship and vassaldom, a political, social, and personal 
 nexus based upon the tenure and cultivation of land. The 
 Hqly Catholic Church, the Holy Roman Empire, the feudal 
 system — these were the institutions, these furnished the ideas 
 and principles which dominated European society from the 
 overthrow of the Caesarean Empire down to the new birth 
 of learning and the Protestant Reformation. 
 
 The system reared upon these foundations never extended 
 in its integrity beyond the continent of Europe. England 
 always occupied, in this, as in other respects, an exceptional 
 position. Even a Saxon king claimed to be alterms orbis 
 imperator ; many archbishops of Canterbury were in effect 
 alterius orbis Papae ; while feudalism, though fully developed 
 in the hands of the Norman lawyers into a coherent system 
 of land tenure, was firmly repudiated, alike by the Norman 
 and the Angevin kings, as a method of government. England, 
 therefore, stood from the first outside the unified and unifying 
 influence which, throughout the Middle Ages, moulded the 
 life and decided the destinies of her continental neighbours. 
 To this, among other reasons, must be attributed the ' pre- 
 cocious sense ' of national identity and national unity which, 
 in the view of foreign commentators upon English institutions, 
 was the most characteristic and differentiating feature of 
 medieval England. The people of this country attained 
 nationhood at least three centuries before the people of any 
 other country in western Europe. But as it takes two people 
 to make a quarrel, so it seems to demand at least two nations 
 to render possible an ' international ' system. So long as the 
 Empire and the Papacy retained any real political effective- 
 ness the modern States-system could be nothing more than 
 embryonic. 
 
28 THE EUROPEAN COMMONWEALTH 
 
 By the end of the fifteenth century, however, the principle 
 of NationaHty was making rapid progress in two at least 
 of the great States of western Europe, France and Spain. 
 In France unity was gradually achieved through the con- 
 vergent operation of various forces. First and most important 
 was the growing strength of the Crown. The monarchy 
 made France. Out of a loosely-compacted bundle of feudal 
 duchies and counties the Crown created a compact, coherent, 
 and centralized State. The Crown was powerfully assisted 
 in the completion of its task on the one hand by its alliance 
 with the Church ; on the other, by the development of a 
 system of law and of legal procedure based upon the Justinian 
 code. Of that legal system the Parlement of Paris was the 
 focus and centre, and it would be difficult to over-estimate the 
 part played in the unification of France by this great judicial 
 institution. Hardly less important, in the long run, was the 
 prolonged contest with England, known as the ' Hundred 
 Years' War '. That war inflicted upon France indescribable 
 sufferings, but by the time it was ended France was all but 
 made. The contest with Charles the Bold of Burgundy 
 continued and almost completed the process after the victory 
 of Louis XL Brittany alone of all the great duchies of 
 medieval France remained independent, and in 149 1, by the 
 marriage of the young Duchess Anne with Charles VHI of 
 France, Brittany was absorbed into the kingdom. At last 
 France was able to take its place in the European polity as 
 a Nation-State. 
 
 If medieval France was a bundle of feudal duchies and 
 counties, medieval Spain was a congeries of kingdoms. What 
 the Hundred Years' War did for France was done for Spain 
 by the secular crusade against the Moors. The gradual 
 absoption of the smaller kingdoms by the monarchies of 
 Aragon and Castile, the marriage of Ferdinand of Aragon 
 with Isabella of Castile, the final expulsion of the Moors, 
 and the conquest of Granada practically completed the 
 consolidation of the peninsula, and in 15 16 Charles I 
 (afterwards the Emperor Charles V) succeeded to a united 
 Crown. 
 
RISE OF MODERN DIPLOMACY 29 
 
 The unification — substantially simultaneous— of the French 
 and Spanish kingdoms announced to Europe the passing 
 of the centralized system of the Middle Ages, and the advent 
 of a new era, distinguished by the emergence of a number 
 of Nation-States, and by the recognition of their complete 
 independence. The new era dawned at the end of the 
 fifteenth or the beginning of the sixteenth century ; the pro- 
 cess was not completed until nearly the end of the nineteenth. 
 Not until the decade 1870-80 was continental Europe ex- 
 haustively parcelled out among independent States, based 
 for the most part upon the recognition of the national 
 idea. France, Spain, and the United Provinces emerged 
 as Nation-States in the course of the sixteenth century ; 
 modern 'Austria' came to the birth with the virtual death 
 of the medieval Empire at the Treaty of Westphalia (1648) ; 
 a unified and self-conscious Russia was brought into being 
 by the genius of Peter the Great, early in the eighteenth 
 century ; the birth of Prussia, due to the industry and per- 
 sistence of the Hohenzollern Electors of Brandenburg, was 
 almost coincident with that of Russia. But the rapid multi- 
 plication of Nation-States came only with the nineteenth 
 century. Belgium as a Nation-State dates from 1830 ; Greece 
 from the same time ; while the Balkan States, Roumania, 
 Serbia, Bulgaria, and Montenegro, gradually re-emerged from 
 the superimposed dominion of the Ottoman P^mpire between 
 1859 and 1878. From the same period must be dated the 
 birth of still greater Nation-States. The Italian Risorgimento, 
 originating, as Mazzini admitted, in the Napoleonic occupa- 
 tion, stimulated by the sporadic revolutions of 1848, helped 
 on, a further stage, by the calculating intervention of 
 Napoleon III in 1859, brought near to fruition by the wise 
 statesmanship and adroit diplomacy of Cavour and Victor 
 P^mmanuel, finally attained its zenith in 1 870-1. In the 
 same year, Bismarck, with the help of Roon and Moltke, 
 completed the fabric of a united Germany. 
 
 This catalogic summary may sufiice to suggest that the 
 European polity, regarded as a congeries of independent 
 Nation-States, is the resultant of an evolutionary process of 
 
30 THE EUROPEAN COMMONWEALTH 
 
 relatively recent date. Nor has that process escaped serious 
 criticism directed against it from widely divergent stand- 
 points. An eminent Roman Catholic historian and a distin- 
 guished philosopher come curiously close together, both in 
 their condemnation of the existing polity, and in their 
 analysis of its genesis. *The thing which at Miinster 
 and Osnabriick' [the settlement effected by the Peace of 
 Westphalia in 1648] 'stereotyped itself in the world's history 
 was ', writes Father William Barry, ' a world's catastrophe — the 
 break-up of Christendom.'^ That a Roman Catholic divine 
 should regard the Protestant Reformation as responsible for 
 the dissipation of European harmony and the inauguration of 
 European anarchy is natural enough. The Holy Catholic 
 Church and the Holy Roman Empire did give to medieval 
 Europe, as we have seen, a semblance of unity. That the 
 philosophical publicist should re-echo the lament and reinforce 
 the argument is more remarkable. ' In the great and tragic 
 history of Europe there is', writes Mr. Lowes Dickinson, 
 * a turning-point that marks the defeat of the ideal of a world 
 order and the definite acceptance of international anarchy. 
 That turning-point is the emergence of the sovereign State at 
 the end of the fifteenth century.' ^ There is, of course, a sense 
 in which the propositions advanced by Father Barry and 
 Mr. Dickinson are indisputably true. 
 
 We must, however, guard ourselves against a further assump- 
 tion common to both writers : that the prevailing ' anarchy ' 
 has been responsible for modern wars. It is true that in the 
 Middle Ages there is a notable absence of 'international' war. 
 Equally notable, however, is the absence of ' international ' 
 trade, of * international ' diplomacy, of ' international ' law. 
 There was no ' internationalism ' for the simple and sufficient 
 reason that there were no nations; that continental Europe 
 consisted, as Bishop Stubbs was wont to say, of * great bundles 
 of States ', not of compact and consolidated kingdoms. But 
 if wars on the modern scale were happily unknown there was 
 plenty of fighting on a small scale : between noble and noble ; 
 
 » The World's Debate, p. 17. 
 
 - G. L. Dickinson, The European Anarchy ^ p. 9. 
 
RISE OF MODERN DIPLOMACY 31 
 
 between town and town ; between district and district ; and to 
 the individual who is called upon to sacrifice life or limb it 
 matters little whether he is a unit in an army of five millions 
 or in a levy of five hundred. The absence of international war 
 did not, then, imply the prevalence of peace. Yet that is the 
 implication of the argument contained in passages of which the 
 following is a sample : 
 
 ' There was a time', writes Mr. Dickinson, ' when the whole 
 civilized world of the West lay at peace under a single ruler ; 
 when the idea of separate Sovereign States always at war or 
 in armed peace, would have seemed as monstrous and absurd 
 as it ndw seems inevitable, and that great achievement of the 
 Roman Empire left, when it sank, a sunset glow over the 
 turmoil of the Middle Ages. Never would a medieval church- 
 man or statesman have admitted that the independence of 
 States was an ideal. It was an obstinate tendency, struggling 
 into existence against all the preconceptions and beliefs of the 
 time. 
 
 ' One Church, one Empire, was the ideal of Charlemagne, 
 of Otto of Barbarossa, of Hildebrand, of Thomas Aquinas, of 
 Dante. The forces struggling against that ideal were the 
 enemy to be defeated. They won. And thought, always 
 parasitic on action, endorsed the victory. So that now there 
 is hardly a philosopher or historian who does not urge that 
 the sovereignty of independent States is the last word of 
 political fact, political wisdom.'^ 
 
 How far this statement is consistent with the same writer's 
 * noble ideal of free and progressive personality', and with his 
 passionate demand for the preservation and multiplication of 
 small nations, are questions which may not detain us. But 
 this exaltation of the Middle Ages, however natural to a 
 Roman Catholic historian, is passing strange in the mouth 
 of the modern pacificist. Despite the periodic recurrence 
 of great international conflicts, no one with any sense of 
 historical perspective can seriously suggest that in the life 
 of the average citizen fighting plays as large a part to-day 
 as it did in the period over which the Roman Empire cast 
 a * sunset glow'. 
 
 Nevertheless, the argument advanced by such writers as 
 
 ^ G. L. Dickinson, After the War, pp. 20, 21. 
 
32 THE EUROPEAN COMMONWEALTH 
 
 Father Barry and Mr. Dickinson is not merely true but 
 truistic. It was, as they insist, the dissolution of the medieval 
 Empire and the circumscription of the authority of the 
 medieval Church that permitted the emergence of the modern 
 States-system which has formed the basis of the European 
 polity from the sixteenth century onwards. 
 
 In this new order of things modern diplomacy had its 
 genesis. In the Middle Ages there had been much coming 
 and going of special envoys on special missions, but a perma- 
 nent embassy in a foreign State — apart, of course, from the 
 Legatine system of the Papacy — was a thing unknown to 
 medieval Europe ; only gradually was the diplomatic system, 
 as we know it, defined and elaborated. Hardly, however, had 
 the old landmarks disappeared and the new States-system 
 begun to emerge, before men set themselves to devise a new 
 machinery for the regulation of international intercourse. 
 Throughout the greater part of the sixteenth century 
 Habsburg and Valois strove in internecine rivalry. Borrowing 
 an idea familiar to medieval Italy, a distracted Europe sought 
 deliverance from this condition of almost perpetual warfare in 
 the development of the idea of an equilibrium between the 
 greater Powers. But the equilibrium proved to be singularly 
 unstable, and the more enlightened statesmen sought more 
 satisfactory and permanent solutions than that afforded by the 
 balance of power. In this quest the * Great Design ' of 
 Henri IV had its genesis. That ' Design \ as a disciple 
 has insisted, 'is the first indication of an Occidental as 
 opposed to a purely national policy which had been seen 
 since the days of the Crusades. Utopian in detail, but 
 profoundly true in principle, the scheme of Henri IV boldly 
 put forward the conceptions, so startling for that age, of 
 western Europe as a peaceful confederacy of free states ; 
 of a common council to arbitrate in international disputes ; 
 of mutual toleration for the three recognized sects — Catholic, 
 Lutheran, and Calvinist ; and thus of the removal of any 
 future cause for P2uropean war. It is particularly to be noted 
 that the map of Europe, as he planned it, included not the 
 slightest augmentation of P'rench territory. '. His intention ', 
 
RISE OF MODERN DIPLOMACY 33 
 
 says Sully ,^ * was voluntarily and for ever to relinquish all 
 power of augmenting his dominions ; not only by conquest 
 but by all other just and lawful means. By this he would 
 have discovered the secret to convince all his neighbours that 
 his whole design was to save both himself and them those 
 immense sums which the maintenance of so many thousand 
 soldiers, so many fortified places, and so many military 
 expenses require ; to free them for ever from the fear of those 
 bloody catastrophes so common in Europe ; to procure them 
 an uninterrupted repose ; and finally to unite them all in 
 an indissoluble bond of security and friendship.' ^ Europe 
 was to consist of a Christian Commonwealth composed 
 of fifteen confederate States, Protestant and Catholic, repub- 
 lican and monarchical, elective and hereditary. The affairs 
 of the Commonwealth were to be administered by a per- 
 petual Senate, renewable every three years and presided over 
 by the Emperor. This Senate or Council was to consist 
 of sixty-four plenipotentiaries representing the component 
 States, and was to be competent to decide all disputes arising 
 between the several Powers, and to determine any questions 
 of common import. * It is ', says a modern historian, * on this 
 Grand Design that all other projects of peace, directly or 
 indirectly, consciously or unconsciously, are based — from that 
 which Em^ric Cruc^ gave to the world under the title of 
 Le nouveau Cynie^ two years before Grotius published his 
 De lure belli et pads to the latest programme of the modern 
 Peace Societies.' •' 
 
 Whether this ambitious and resounding project was seriously 
 devised by its author, or whether it was merely the diversion 
 of an idle hour, is a question which need not detain us. Two 
 things in regard to it are certain : first, that its immediate 
 effect was nil, and, second, that seriously projected or no, 
 its promulgation at least testifies to the embarrassments into 
 which Europe had been plunged by the dissolution of the 
 
 'It need hardly be said that modern criticism attributes the 'design * 
 not to Henri IV but to his minister Sully. The latter attributed the 
 original suggestion to Queen Elizabeth. 
 
 "'■ J. H. Bridges, France under Richelieu and Colbert, pp. 109, no. 
 
 ^ W. Alison Phillips, Confederation of Europe, p. 19. 
 
 2170 D 
 
34 THE EUROPEAN COMMONWEALTH 
 
 older unities and the development of international rivalries 
 and antagonisms. 
 
 Further evidence of the crying need of the day is furnished 
 by the efforts of Hugo Grotius to establish, on the basis of 
 a lus Naturae^ a system of International Law. The great 
 work of Grotius, De hire belli et pads, was written while the 
 author was an exile in France, in 1625. Oppressed by the 
 recent memory of the civil wars in France and Germany ; 
 of the bloody contest between the United Netherlands and 
 Spain ; confronted by the desolation and misery wrought by 
 the Thirty Years' War in Germany, the Dutch jurist might 
 well come to the conclusion that the break-up of the medieval 
 unities had dissolved Europe in perpetual anarchy. The work 
 of Grotius has had a profound influence upon the thought and 
 indeed upon the practice of modern Europe. He may be 
 said, without exaggeration, to have founded a new science. 
 Sir James Mackintosh goes so far as to affirm that Grotius 
 * produced a work which we may now, indeed, justly deem 
 imperfect, but which is perhaps the most complete that the 
 world has yet owed, at so early a stage in the progress of 
 any science, to the genius and learning of one man '} The 
 measure of practical success achieved by Grotius, although not 
 answerable to his hopes, has, of course, been incomparably 
 greater than that of Sully and Henri IV; but the lack of any 
 material sanction still impedes progress, and recent events 
 have, for the moment at any rate, flung the world back into 
 that state of nature wherein, as Hobbes taught us, ' force and 
 fraud are the two cardinal virtues ' and the life of man is 
 ' nasty, brutish and short '. 
 
 Hobbes, as we have seen, sought in the conclusion of a 
 mutual compact a way of escape from intolerable domestic 
 disorder ; others were looking for a means of ending a condi- 
 tion of anarchy in the community of nations. During the 
 latter half of the seventeenth century the arch-disturber of the 
 peace of Europe was Louis XIV of France, and it was during 
 the devastating wars initiated by him that William Penn 
 published his Essay ioivards the Present and Future Peace 
 ^ Miscellaneous Works , i. 351. 
 
RISE OF MODERN DIPLOMACY ^5 
 
 of Europe (1693), in which he suggested the setting up of an 
 international court of arbitration. Penn's principles bore 
 good fruit in his famous colony in North America, but in 
 Europe they produced little immediate result. 
 
 Far more important was the work of the well-known French 
 writer Charles Irenee Castel, Abb^ de Saint-Pierre. The 
 Abbe de Saint-Pierre was secretary to the Abbe de Polignac 
 when he acted as French plenipotentiary in the negotiations 
 which preceded the conclusion of the Peace of Utrecht, and 
 it was at Utrecht that the Abbd de Saint-Pierre published, 
 in 1713, his famous Projet de traitd pour rendre la paix 
 perpSluelle} 
 
 It was by the Abbe de Saint-Pierre that the * problem of 
 perpetual peace was fairly introduced into political literature'.^ 
 Like Henri the Fourth, the Abbe proposed to establish a 
 Confederation of Europe, based upon a perpetual and irrevoc- 
 able alliance between the Sovereigns. The organ of the Con- 
 federation was to be a Congress to which each Sovereign was 
 to send plenipotentiaries, and it was to control a common 
 fund. The Congress was to define the cases which would 
 involve offending States being put under the ban of Europe, 
 and the Powers were to enter into a mutual compact to take 
 common action against any State thus banned, until the 
 offender should have submitted to the common will. Like 
 similar projects, that of the Abbe de Saint-Pierre excited 
 the contempt of the cynics, and was disregarded by the 
 *men of affairs'. But we cannot fail to be struck by 
 the fact, as an able commentator points out, that there is 
 scarcely one of the provisions of this remarkable project which 
 * does not emerge at least as a subject of debate among the 
 Powers during the years of European reconstruction after 
 1814 \^ It is safe to assume that they will re-emerge after the 
 close of the present War. 
 
 Towards the end of the eighteenth century there came an 
 
 ^ Cf. Siegler Pascal, Un Contemporain egar^ au xviii^ Steele. Les 
 Pro jets de r abbe de Saint-Pierre^ 16^8-174^ (Paris, 1900), and A. Phillips, 
 The Confederation of Europe. 
 
 * M. C. Smith, Preface to Kant's Perpetual Peace, p. 30. 
 
 ^ A. Phillips, op. cit., p. 23. 
 
 D 2 
 
36 THE EUROPEAN COMMONWEALTH 
 
 echo to the Abba's Projet from the other side of the Rhine. 
 In 1795 there was pubh'shed Immanuel Kant^s famous essay 
 on Perpetual Peace — an essay in which, in the view of a 
 discriminating critic,^ * we catch the highest notes ever struck 
 by a German publicist '. Unlike Rousseau, Kant was under no 
 illusion as to a golden age of peace from which man has 
 progressively degenerated. 
 
 'A state of peace among men who live side by side is not 
 the natural state {status naturalis)^ which is rather to be 
 described as a state of war : . . . Thus the state of peace must 
 be established. For the mere cessation of hostilities is no 
 guarantee of continued peaceful relations, and unless this 
 guarantee is given by every individual to his neighbour — 
 which can only be done in a state of society regulated by law 
 — one man is at liberty to challenge another and treat him as 
 an enemy.' ^ 
 
 How, then, is peace to be established'^ Kant lays down what 
 he describes as two ' definitive articles of Perpetual Peace '. 
 The first is that * the civil constitution of each State should 
 be republican \ The ' republic ' was not necessarily to be 
 democratic, it might be monarchical in form, but the essential 
 point was that it should be ' representative '. * The form of 
 government,' he writes, * if it is to be in accordance with the 
 idea of right, must embody the representative system, in which 
 alone a republican form of government is possible, and without 
 which it is despotic and violent, be the constitution what it 
 may.' 
 
 The second * definitive article ' is that * the law of nations 
 should be founded on a federation of free States'. Kant 
 repudiated, therefore, the idea of a universal empire such as 
 that to which the argument of the De Monarchia had seemed 
 to point. * It is ', he writes, ' the desire of every State, or of 
 its ruler, to attain to a permanent condition of peace in this 
 very way ; that is to say, by subjecting the whole world as far 
 as possible to its sway. But Nature wills it otherwise. 
 Nature brings about union not by the weakening of competi- 
 tive forces, but through the equilibrium of these forces in 
 
 * Mr. G. P. Gooch. 
 ' Eng. Trans., p. 119. 
 
RISE OF MODERN DIPLOMACY 37 
 
 their most active rivalry.' To examine Kant's argument in 
 detail would be beyond the scope of the present chapter.^ 
 It must suffice to have indicated thus briefly his place in the 
 development of the ' international ' idea. 
 
 When Kant published his Perpetual Peace Europe was in 
 the third year of a war destined to last for another twenty 
 years. Nine years later the Tsar Alexander I dispatched his 
 friend Nikolai Nikolaievich Novosiltsov on a special mission 
 to England to lay before Pitt the Tsar's scheme for the recon- 
 stitution of the European policy upon the lines of a great 
 Christian republic. The ideas then adumbrated subsequently 
 took practical shape in the * Holy Alliance '. The history of 
 that famous experiment in the organization of peace will form 
 the subject of a later chapter. 
 
 This brief reference to a remarkable succession of * peace 
 projects' will sufficiently indicate the dissatisfaction with 
 which the existing system was regarded alike by thinkers and 
 by practical politicians. But diplomacy was not, as is too 
 frequently assumed, the cause of the prevailing ' anarchy ', but 
 the consequence of it. Nay more, it was an attempt to miti- 
 gate the inconveniences which resulted from the dissolution of 
 the medieval unities. Yet from the first it was regarded with 
 suspicion. ' An ambassador ', according to the jocose defini- 
 tion of Sir Henry Wotton, ' is an honest man sent to lie 
 abroad for the good of his country.' If for * good ' we might 
 read 'destruction', the definition would command wide and 
 serious acceptance among a large number of latter-day 
 pacificists. 
 
 Diplomacy, and particularly ' secret diplomacy ', has come 
 in for hard knocks of late. It would be impossible within the 
 prescribed limits of this chapter to attempt any vindication of 
 its methods, or to estimate the results of its activities, even 
 were the materials available. For reasons already indicated, 
 the materials are not available, nor, unless the legal custodians 
 
 ^ A critical analysis of Kant's argument will be found prefaced to the 
 English translation by Miss M. C. Smith. It is not without significance 
 that a reprint of this translation should have been recently published 
 (Allen & Unwin, 191 5). 
 
38 THE EUROPEAN COMMONWEALTH 
 
 of our State Papers can be induced to offer more generous 
 opportunities to responsible students of recent history, are they 
 likely to be. In the absence of materials the prosecution and 
 the defence are alike at a disadvantage. Something may be 
 learnt from memoirs, biographical or autobiographical, such 
 as those of Sir Robert Morier, Sir Horace Rumbold, Lord 
 Redesdale, and Lord Lyons, but much of the evidence derived 
 from such sources is necessarily ex parte ^ and accusation and 
 apology must therefore be based largely upon conjecture. 
 If, however, it is permissible, in the absence of any possibility 
 of definite proof, to hazard a conjecture, it would be in the 
 direction that * diplomacy ' has done infinitely more to pre- 
 serve peace and to retard the advent of war than many of its 
 more vociferous critics would be disposed to allow. Lord 
 Cromer once confessed that what he most feared during his 
 reign in Egypt, 
 
 'was not deliberate action taken by the diplomacy of any 
 nation, but rather the occurrence of some chance incident 
 which would excite a whirlwind of national passion, and 
 which, being possibly manipulated by some skilful journalist 
 who would focus on one point all the latent hysteria in France 
 or England, would create a situation incapable of being con- 
 trolled by diplomacy '} 
 
 Lord Cromer may not as a critic have been in a position of 
 complete detachment, but few men were better qualified to 
 form a judgement, and none was more honest in expressing a 
 judgment when formed. Diplomacy was, in his view, the 
 handmaid of peace ; war the confession of failure. It is true 
 that recent revelations have lent colour to the views popularized 
 by Mr. Norman Angell as to the mischievous machinations of 
 * war-lords and diplomats ' ; but the depravity of individuals 
 does not involve the condemnation of a system. * Diplomacy ' 
 may be blameless, though the diplomatist be guilty. In any 
 case, if the argument attempted in the foregoing pages be 
 sound, diplomacy is the necessary concomitant of that States- 
 system which has characterized and dominated the European 
 polity for the last four hundred years. Is that system destined 
 to pass and to give place to a new order ? and if so, on what 
 ^ Political and Literary Essays (Second Series), p. 290. 
 
 ■arr: 
 
RISE OF MODERN DIPLOMACY 39 
 
 lines is the reconstruction of Europe likely to take place? Are 
 we to look to a revival of the oecumenical order of tlie Middle 
 Ages, to the realization of Dante's dream of a world-State 
 under a world-emperor ? Such was unquestionably the vision 
 which floated before the eyes of some of the most gifted sons 
 of Germany when the German nation, with their Kaiser at their 
 head, plunged the world into the cataclysm of war. The 
 omens to-day do not seem favourable to this solution of the 
 problem. 
 
 Must we, then, look for a solution to some modification of 
 the schemes which, ever since the modern States-system 
 emerged, have appeared to offer some softening of the 
 asperities, some escape from the recurrent catastrophes which 
 quickly revealed themselves as inherent in the new order? 
 Shall we, like Dr. C. W. Eliot,^ the venerable and venerated 
 ex-President of Harvard, look to the realization of the scheme 
 which, in one form or another, commended itself to the political 
 idealism of Henri IV, to the piety and benevolence of the Abbe 
 de Saint-Pierre, to the calm and detached reason of Immanuel 
 Kant ? y Is security and stability to be found in the foundation 
 of a League of Nations, equipped with a complete apparatus 
 of international federalism ? These are large questions ; they 
 are naturally suggested by a review, however summary, of the 
 history of European diplomacy, and they are likely to force 
 themselves with ever-increasing insistence upon a world which 
 for some years has been face to face with all the hitherto 
 unimaginable horrors of modern warfare. To some of them 
 it may be possible to attempt an answer in a later chapter. It 
 must, for the present, suffice to have indicated the genesis of 
 the problem by which Europe and the world are confronted. 
 
 ^ The Road to Peace (Constable & Co., 191 5). 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 ENGLAND AND EUROPE 
 
 A Chapter of English Diplomacy, 1853-71 
 
 The origins of modern diplomacy and the emergence of 
 the modern States-system were briefly indicated in the pre- 
 ceding chapter. In the course of the last three centuries the 
 greater European Powers have gradually evolved a more or 
 less traditional theory of international relations and a more 
 or less consistent practice in foreign policy, but neither in the 
 theory nor in the practice have our own countrymen shown 
 themselves gravely concerned. 
 
 Few Englishmen, it is commonly and truly said, take a 
 sustained and continuous interest in foreign affairs. ^ Fewer 
 still make any serious study of the subject. When a war 
 breaks out or a crisis threatens, people who like to be regarded 
 as well informed make a scrambling effort to 'get up' the 
 points at issue, and amid a shoal of minnows they promptly 
 pose as authoritative whales. But not outside the ranks of 
 professional publicists and politicians, nor always perhaps 
 within them, is there any systematic and scientific investiga- 
 tion of the difficult and devious ways of European diplomacy. 
 To this rule the world of high finance is, of course, an excep- 
 tion ; that world, however, is not English but cosmopolitan. 
 
 For this characteristic ignorance and indifference many 
 reasons may be alleged. Owing to their insular detachment, 
 Englishmen, it is said, have less need than their neighbours to 
 concern themselves with international rivalries and with the 
 conflicting ambitions of continental States. Besides, questions 
 of domestic policy are peculiarly absorbing in this country ; 
 earlier than any other nation in Europe or in the world, we 
 were called upon to confront the social and economic problems 
 
ENGLAND AND EUROPE 41 
 
 roused into fresh life, if not actually created, by the industrial 
 revolution of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. 
 There is substance in both these excuses or explanations ; and 
 there is even more in a third. People who take a somewhat 
 wider view of their political responsibility are apt to allege 
 that the true ambit of the external interests of Great Britain 
 cannot be confined within the limits of European diplomacy ; 
 that, in Seeley's famous phrase, they are not thalassic but 
 oceanic ; that they touch Asia, Africa, and America more con- 
 tinuously and more intimately than Europe ; in short, that to 
 the citizen of a world-wide Empire the affairs of Europe are 
 of secondary, if not negligible, significance. 
 
 This latter view r^epresents a welcome and wholesome recoil 
 against the confined outlook which was characteristic of the 
 statesmen and not less of the historians of the middle decades 
 of the nineteenth century ; and it contains, beyond question, 
 a large element of truth. But another reaction is already in 
 sight. Proper as it is to endeavour to appreciate the unique 
 position of Great Britain in world-politics, it is not less 
 important to understand that, despite reflex action at the 
 extremities, the nerve centres are still mainly concentrated in 
 Europe. Not less, therefore, to the student of Weltpolitik 
 than to the diplomatist of the older school is a knowledge of 
 les moetirs politiques — the traditions of the European courts 
 and chancelleries — 'indispensable. 
 
 To such knowledge there have lately been made several 
 notable contributions.^ Mrs. Rosslyn Wemyss has given us 
 the Memoirs and Letters of her distinguished father Sir 
 Robert Morier,^ a work which is already recognized as 
 not only indispensable to a knowledge of Anglo-German 
 relations in the middle years of the last century, but of great 
 value to the student of modern German history. Lord 
 Clarendon has found a most sympathetic biographer in 
 Sir Herbert Maxwell,^ while the work of Lord Lyons has 
 
 ^ Written in 19 14. The remarkable Memories of Lord Redesdale had 
 not then appeared. 
 
 ^ Edward Arnold, 191 1. 
 
 ^ The Life a7id Letters of the fourth Earl of Clarendon^ by Sir Herbert 
 Maxwell (Arnold, 191 3). 
 
4a THE EUROPEAN COMMONWEALTH 
 
 been described in a work of real distinction by Lord Newton.^ 
 Lord Clarendon, Sir Robert Morier, and Lord Lyons each 
 played a notable part on the stage of European politics 
 during the mid-Victorian era. But the scenes of their activities 
 were far apart. Lord Clarendon, though not without personal 
 experience of continental missions, spent most of his political 
 life at the Foreign Office ; Morier's experience was gained 
 almost wholly in Germany ; Lord Lyons's principal work was 
 done in Washington and in Paris. 
 
 Sir Herbert Maxwell's biography of Lord Clarendon, though 
 not quite void of offence as regards the colleagues and con- 
 temporaries of his subject, is eminently satisfactory as a portrait 
 of the central figure of the tale. To make that figure singularly 
 attractive was not indeed a difficult task. Lord Clarendon was 
 happy in the possession of high intellectual gifts, happier still 
 in the affection of many friends, and happiest in his own sunny 
 temper and in a character honourable and sincere. His mission 
 in life was peacemaking — in the family circle, in his party, 
 in continental diplomacy. 
 
 Born in 1 800, George William Frederick Villiers entered the 
 diplomatic service in 1820. Recalled from Petersburg in 1823 
 to become Commissioner of Customs, he was sent to Paris in 
 1 83 1 by Lord Althorp, then Chancellor of the Exchequer, to 
 negotiate a commercial treaty with France. Two years later 
 Lord Palmerston appointed him Minister to Madrid, and there 
 he remained until 1839. In 1838 he had succeeded his uncle 
 as fourth Earl of Clarendon, and he desired to settle down at 
 home. In 1839 he married, refused the Governor-Generalship 
 of Canada, and was admitted to the Cabinet as Lord Privy 
 Seal. He went out with his party in 1841 ; came in again 
 in 1846 as President of the Board of Trade, and in 1847 
 became Lord Lieutenant of Ireland. As Lord Lieutenant, 
 Clarendon was responsible for rescuing from famine a starving 
 people, for quelling the 'Young Ireland' rebellion, and for 
 passing the well-intentioned but disastrous Encumbered Estates 
 Act of 1849. In the latter year he played host to Queen 
 
 * Lord Lyons : A Record of British Diplomacy^ by Lord Newton 
 (Arnold, 191 3). 
 
ENGLAND AND EUROPE 43 
 
 Victoria and Prince Albert. When Lord Palmerston was dis- 
 missed from the Foreign Office in 1851, it was regarded as 
 certain that Lord Clarendon would succeed him, but the latter, 
 always generous and complaisant, waived his strong claims in 
 favour of Lord Granville. Two years later, however, Lord 
 John Russell, who had temporarily taken the Foreign Office 
 under Lord Aberdeen, relinquished it to Lord Clarendon. 
 The latter, therefore, was responsible for the negotiations 
 which preceded the outbreak of the Crimean War. At the 
 Foreign Office he remained during the rest of Lord Aberdeen's 
 premiership and throughout Lord Palmerston's first administra- 
 tion, 1853-8. Lord IJerby pressed him to retain office when 
 the Conservatives came into power in 1858, but he refused 
 with some acerbity, and when, in 1859, Lord Palmerston 
 formed his second Cabinet, Lord John Russell, to the annoy- 
 ance of the Queen, insisted on having the Foreign Office for 
 himself. Lord Clarendon, however, continued, though un- 
 officially, to exercise much influence in foreign affairs until the 
 way was reopened to the Foreign Office by Lord Russell's 
 accession to the premiership (1865). Except during the 
 interval of the Derby-Disraeli Government (1866-8), Clarendon 
 presided over the Foreign Office until his deaths in 1870. 
 
 Sir Robert Morier's diplomatic service in Germany coincided 
 almost precisely with Lord Clarendon's successive periods at 
 the Foreign Office. Appointed to the Vienna Embassy as 
 unpaid attache in 1853, Morier served at Berlin, at Frankfort, 
 at Darmstadt, at Stuttgart, and at Munich, until, in 1876, he 
 finally quitted Germany for Portugal. 
 
 In the same year (1853) ^^^^ Morier embarked upon a 
 diplomatic career in Germany, Lyons was entrusted with an 
 important and semi-independent mission to Rome, and 
 remained in Italy until 1858. From 1859 to 1865 he served 
 as Minister at Washington ; he was transferred to the Embassy 
 at Constantinople in 1865, and then as ambassador at Paris 
 (1867-87) he witnessed the outbreak of the Franco-German 
 War, the fall of the Second Empire, and the establishment of 
 the Third Republic. 
 
 It will be observed that the public careers of these three 
 
44 THE EUROPEAN COMMONWEALTH 
 
 men— Clarendon, Morier, and Lyons — are curiously comple- 
 mentary, and that in the aggregate they contribute an impor- 
 tant chapter to the history of English diplomacy. To gauge 
 the significance of that chapter is the purpose of the pages 
 that follow. 
 
 What was the diplomatic situation when, in 1853, Morier 
 went to Vienna, Lyons to Rome, and Clarendon took up the 
 reins at the Foreign Office ? The peace of Europe trembled 
 at that moment in the balance. Napoleon HI — the designing 
 villain of Kinglake's brilliant melodrama — had but lately 
 (December 185a) made himself Emperor of the French, and 
 by the other crowned heads of Europe was regarded as little 
 better than a successful parvenu. While still President of the 
 Republic, Napoleon had made a bid for clerical support in 
 France and for the favour of the Catholic Powers by reasserting 
 the claims of the Latin Church to the guardianship of the 
 Holy Places in Palestine. Such reassertion naturally brought 
 Napoleon into collision with the Tsar Nicholas — the protector 
 of the Greek monks then in possession. But to fix upon 
 Napoleon exclusive or indeed primary responsibility for the 
 outbreak of the Crimean War seems to ignore the operation 
 of other forces which, if more remote, were not less potent. 
 A study oi les mceurs politique s reveals the fact that ever since 
 the Treaty of Kainardji (1774) the Russian Tsars had been 
 aiming at a virtual protectorate over the Orthodox subjects of 
 the Ottoman Sultan. To the Tsar Nicholas it seemed that in 
 1853 the opportunity had arrived for the final assertion of this 
 claim. It is but fair to say that before taking overt action the 
 Tsar attempted, not for the first time, to come to a frank 
 understanding with Great Britain in regard to the Eastern 
 Question. When visiting England in 1 844, he had opened his 
 mind on the subject to Lord Aberdeen, then at the Foreign 
 Office, to Peel, and above all to the Prince Consort. He had 
 then insisted that * in the event of any unforeseen calamity 
 befalling the Turkish Empire, Russia and England should 
 agree together as to the course that should be pursued '. 
 These overtures were resumed at Petersburg in January 1853. 
 
ENGLAND AND EUROPE 45 
 
 In two memorable interviews with Sir Hamilton Seymour the 
 Tsar, after a general survey of the Eastern Question, made 
 certain specific suggestions for its solution. He proposed that 
 the Danubian Principalities, Serbia, and Bulgaria should be 
 erected into independent States under Russian protection, and 
 that England, in order to make absolutely secure her route 
 to the Far East, should annex Crete, Cyprus, and Egypt. The 
 English Ministers, who had been captivated by the personality 
 of the Tsar in 1844, were aghast at the coolness and candour 
 of the proposals when submitted to them in 1 853 through the 
 ordinary diplomatic channels. They refused to admit that the 
 dissolution of the sick pan was imminent ; they repudiated 
 with some heat the idea of a possible partition of his inheri- 
 tance, and indignantly declined the specific proposals of the 
 Tsar. A foreign critic, quick to detect perfidy and hypocrisy 
 in the policy of Albion, might be forgiven for observing that, 
 while Russia is no nearer the Golden Horn than she was in 
 1 853, Great Britain is in possession both of Cyprus and Egypt. 
 It does not, perhaps, become an English critic to obtrude the 
 point. 
 
 Repulsed in his efforts to come to terms with Great Britain, 
 the Tsar then determined to revert to the traditional policy of 
 his House. The question of the Holy Places jn Palestine was 
 of secondary significance. It was, indeed, virtually settled 
 when Prince Menschikoff, the rough soldier who represented 
 the Tsar at Constantinople, peremptorily demanded that the 
 Sultan should make a virtual acknowledgement of the Tsar's 
 protectorate over all the Orthodox subjects of the Porte. This 
 demand was based upon the seventh and fourteenth articles of 
 the Treaty of Kainardji. But the text of that famous docu- 
 ment shows that the Tsar's demand involved a most extravagant 
 and wholly unwarranted extension of very vague and indefinite 
 engagements.^ The Porte, inspired throughout the whole of 
 these negotiations by Lord Stratford de Redcliffe, naturally 
 declared the Tsar's contention to be inadmissible. 
 
 The correspondence of Lord Clarendon throws additional 
 
 * See Holland, Treaty Relations between Russia and Turkey ^ 
 pp. 41, 42. 
 
46 THE EUROPEAN COMMONWEALTH 
 
 and interesting light upon the relations which existed between 
 the Cabinet and their masterful representative at the Porte. 
 Sir James Graham, writing of * his morbid vanities and im- 
 placable antipathies ', declares Lord Stratford de Redclifife to 
 be capable, in the face of peremptory orders to the contrary, 
 of advising the Turk to be refractory, and urges Lord Clarendon 
 to be 'ready to supersede him without the loss of a day'. 
 Superseded he would probably have been, had there been any 
 one to take his place. Lord Cowley, the only possible man, 
 could not be spared from Paris. Lord Clarendon, though 
 disposed to trust and support the ' man on the spot^ refers to 
 Stratford as ' the real Sultan ', and admits that ' although he 
 ostensibly and officially obeys his instructions he lets his dissent 
 from them be known, and upon that the Turks act'. 
 
 To the Russian demand for the acknowledgement of their 
 right to a protectorate over the Greek Christians Lord 
 Clarendon was, however, quite as firmly opposed as was 
 Lord Stratford ; and, in the following dispatch, he stated his 
 grounds with unanswerable force and lucidity : 
 
 ' No Sovereign \ he wrote, ' having a proper regard for his 
 own dignity and independence could admit proposals so un- 
 defined as those of Prince Menschikofif and by treaty confer 
 upon another and more powerful Sovereign a right of protec- 
 tion over a large portion of his own subjects. However well 
 disguised it may be, yet the fact is that under the vague 
 language of the proposed Sened a perpetual right to interfere 
 in the internal affairs of Turkey would be conferred upon 
 Russia, for, governed as the Greek subjects of the Porte are 
 by their ecclesiastical authorities, and looking as these latter 
 would in all things do for protection to Russia, it follows that 
 fourteen millions of Greeks would henceforth regard the 
 Emperor as their supreme protector, and their allegiance to 
 the Sultan would be little more than nominal, while his own 
 independence would dwindle into vassalage.' 
 
 It is not within the scope of the present chapter to follow in 
 detail the course of the negotiations which preceded the 
 Crimean War, still less that of the actual military operations. 
 It is, however, pertinent to refer to an article which appeared 
 in the Edinburgh Review in April 1863.^ Written by the then 
 ^ Vol. xvii, pp. 307-52. 
 
ENGLAND AND EUROPE 47 
 
 editor, Henry Reeve, it was care fa Uy revised by Lord Claren- 
 don himself. It may therefore be accepted as the authorita- 
 tive apologia of the Aberdeen Cabinet. Primarily intended as 
 a criticism of the first two volumes of Kinglake's Invasion of 
 the Crimea, it contains a merciless exposure of the shallow 
 sophistries by which that brilliant romancer sought to fasten 
 the responsibility for the war upon the Emperor Napoleon, 
 and to exhibit Great Britain as the latter's unsuspecting dupe 
 and innocent tool. Nothing, as Lord Clarendon and Mr. Reeve 
 insist, could have been further from the truth. Great Britain 
 was not ' drawn or driven along by another Power '. She 
 adopted certain measures * because they were demanded by 
 her own conception of the duty she had to perform '. The 
 critical point was reached with the rejection by Turkey of the 
 Vienna Note, and that rejection was due to one man. 
 
 ' No man ever took upon himself a larger amount of respon- 
 sibility than Lord Stratford when he virtually overruled the 
 decision of the four Powers, including his own Government, 
 and acquiesced in — not to say caused — the rejection of the 
 Vienna Note by the Porte after it had been accepted by 
 Russia. The interpretation afterwards put upon that note by 
 Count Nesselrode showed that he was right ; but, nevertheless, 
 that was the point on which the question of peace and war 
 turned. . . . Russia had formed the design to extort from 
 Turkey, in one form or another, a right of protection over the 
 Christians. She never abandoned that design. She thought 
 she could enforce it. The Western Powers interposed, and 
 the strife began.' ^ 
 
 What did the war achieve ? Sir Robert Morier perhaps 
 expressed the current opinion when he described it as 'the 
 only perfectly useless modern war that has been waged — 
 useless, that is, from the point of view of public utility '.^ A 
 greater than Morier enshrined in classical phrase the opinion 
 that in the Crimean War ' England put her money on the 
 wrong horse '. Does the verdict of history endorse the judge- 
 ment of Sir Robert Morier and Lord Salisbury, or does it 
 incline to that of the late Duke of Argyll, who, towards the 
 close of his life, avowed himself as quite unrepentant for his 
 
 ^ Ibid., p. 331. . 
 2 Op. cit.y ii. 215. 
 
48 THE EUROPEAN COMMONWEALTH 
 
 own share in the matter ? ^ What would have happened if the 
 Western Powers had stood aside and permitted Russia to work 
 her will upon the Turk ? The Tsar would have been the sole 
 and formal Protector of the Christian subjects of the Sultan ; 
 the Black Sea would have been converted into a Russian lake ; 
 Constantinople would have become an outpost of the Russian 
 Empire ; Russia would have dominated the narrow straits — 
 thus realizing the ambitions of a century— and would have 
 established an exclusive and dangerous domination in the 
 Eastern waters of the Mediterranean. Could the mistress of 
 India have contemplated these results with complacency? 
 The Aberdeen Cabinet decided that she could not, and on the 
 whole the best historical criticism tends towards an approval 
 of that decision. That the immediate results of the war were 
 not commensurate with the sacrifices it entailed may be ad- 
 mitted. That is true of almost every war. It is also true that 
 the Crimean War appeared to redound much more to the 
 credit of France, or rather of Napoleon, than of England. But 
 the power which gained most from it was neither England nor 
 France, but Sardinia. 
 
 Among the diplomatists who, in March 1856, assembled in 
 Congress at Paris, by far the most striking personality was 
 that of Count Cavour. To gain access to that Congress 
 Cavour had overborne the opposition of his colleagues and had 
 sent a Sardinian contingent to take its place side by side with 
 the English and French armies in the Crimea. The Italian 
 troops had done their work gallantly. In the waters of the 
 Tchernaya the stain of Novara was wiped out for ever ; out of 
 the mud of the trenches before Sebastopol modern Italy was 
 built. Later on, when the plenipotentiaries of the Great 
 Powers assembled in Congress at Paris, Cavour took his place 
 as the representative, not merely of Sardinia, but in a sense of 
 Italy. To the tale of misgovernment and oppression unfolded 
 by the Sardinian premier the English representatives, Lord 
 Clarendon and Lord Cowley, lent sympathetic though cautious 
 
 * Our Responsibilities for Turkey (1896), p. 10. 
 
ENGLAND AND EUROPE 49 
 
 cars. Napoleon, seldom cautious, was ready with something 
 more than sympathy. The interest of the ex-Carbonaro in 
 the destinies of Italy may have been inconstant, but it was 
 genuine. 'Que peut-on faire pour I'ltalie?' was Napoleon's 
 question to Cavour. The latter was ready with his answer ; 
 the bargain was struck and sealed at Plombieres in 1858, and 
 in 1859 Europe was startled by the outbreak of the Franco- 
 Sardinian War against Austria. 
 
 Napoleon's Italian policy has been very hardly judged 
 both in England and in Italy itself. Lord Palmerston, 
 writing to Clarendon at the height of the crisis (April 24, 
 1859), puts the whole case pithily and with characteristic 
 directness : 
 
 ' My belief is that, for many years past, Napoleon has had a 
 fixed desire to improve the internal condition of Italy by free- 
 ing as much of that country as possible from the crushing 
 weight of Austrian domination, and that he has at various 
 times thought of various ways of attaining his object, but that 
 his object has been one and the same ; and I must say that 
 the end he has had in view is much to be wished for.' ^ 
 
 That Napoleon, whatever his motives, rendered an incompar- 
 able service to the cause of Italian freedom and Italian unity 
 can hardly be denied by any one conversant with the facts. 
 True he demanded and obtained a heavy price, but even this is 
 hardly sufficient to account for the fact that, with singular 
 unanimity, the gratitude of modern Italy is denied to the 
 ' magnanimous ally ', and is reserved for the friendly sympa- 
 thizer — Great Britain. 
 
 How was that gratitude earned ? That the Italian question 
 excited immense interest in England goes without saying. 
 In the highest quarters it was regarded primarily from the 
 point of view of the European equilibrium : the respect for 
 existing treaties and the maintenance of peace. The attitude 
 of the Court is generally described as pro-Austrian ; it would 
 seem rather to»have been anti-Napoleonic. The Queen, like 
 many of her most experienced statesmen, including Lord 
 Clarendon himself, was profoundly mistrustful of the Emperor 
 
 ^ Maxwell, op. cit., ii. 182. 
 2120 E 
 
50 THE EUROPEAN COMMONWEALTH 
 
 of the French. At the other end of the social scale there was 
 a small but interesting group of people who were in close 
 sympathy and friendship with Mazzini and the exiles, and 
 desired to see Italy not merely emancipated from a foreign 
 yoke, but united in adherence to republican institutions. 
 The responsible leaders of English Liberalism held a middle 
 position : they ardently hoped that Italy might achieve free- 
 dom, but they had not yet dreamed of unity.^ 
 
 The Cabinet which came into office in June 1859 contained 
 three men whose names are enshrined in the hearts of Italian 
 patriots alongside those of Victor Emmanuel, Cavour, Gari- 
 baldi, and Mazzini. Ever since 1848 Lord Palmerston had 
 held the view that Austria would be better without Italy, and 
 that Italy would be better without Austria. * Italy is to 
 Austria ', he wrote, ' the heel of Achilles and not the shield of 
 Ajax. The Alps are her natural barrier and her best defence.' ^ 
 Lord John Russell had a general passion for * freedom ' as 
 understood by a typical English Whig, and particular sympathy 
 with Italian aspirations. Mr. Gladstone had been moved to 
 the deepest moral indignation by a sojourn in Naples (1850-1), 
 and by the sight of the tortures inflicted by the Government 
 of the Two Sicilies upon political prisoners. His indignation 
 found characteristic vent in two open letters addressed to Lord 
 Aberdeen in July 1851, and in an article contributed to the 
 Edinburgh Rcvieivm 1852. 
 
 Lord Palmerston sent copies of Mr. Gladstone's letters to 
 all the British representatives in continental capitals, and 
 when asked to circulate, in similar fashion, the official reply of 
 the Neapolitan Government he refused to send out a document 
 ' consisting of a flimsy tissue of bare assertions and reckless 
 denials, mixed up with coarse ribaldry and commonplace 
 abuse *. 
 
 When the crisis came Lord Palmerston was out of office. 
 Neither Lord Derby nor Lord Malniesbury shared Palmerston's 
 enthusiasm for Italian liberties. Both shared their sovereign's 
 supreme anxiety to prevent an outbreak of war. To this 
 
 * Cf. e.g. Morley's Gladstone^ i. 402, ii. 12. 
 ' June 15, 1848, Ashley's Life^ i. 98. 
 
ENGLAND AND EUROPE 51 
 
 end the Queen wrote an autograph letter to the Emperor 
 Napoleon (4th of February 1859), urging him to 'respect 
 treaties ', and three weeks later Lord Cowley, who was 
 still British Ambassador in Paris, was dispatched on a 
 mediatorial mission to Vienna. Lord Cowley was the bearer 
 of an autograph letter from the Queen to the Emperor of 
 Austria.^ 
 
 But the time for mediation or for friendly solicitation had 
 in truth gone by. The pact of Plombieres was in force. 
 Cavour was bent on war ; Austria played into his hands. On 
 the 23rd of April, 1859, Austria peremptorily demanded the 
 disarmament of Piedmont ; Cavour gleefully accepted the 
 challenge ; a French army was immediately landed at Genoa, 
 and on May 13 Victor Emmanuel welcomed to Italian soil his 
 * magnanimous ally'. Queen Victoria poured out her feelings to 
 ' Uncle Leopold ' : ' The rashness of the Austrians is indeed 
 a ^r^^/ misfortune, for it has placed them in the wrong. Still 
 there is one universal feeling at the conduct of France, and of 
 great suspicion' (May 3, 1859). 
 
 Events now moved quickly. Napoleon and Victor Em- 
 manuel went together to the front. ' It was roses, roses, all 
 the way,' writes the biographer of Cavour, *as befitted that 
 May afternoon and the Maytime of hope in every Italian 
 heart. Then, if ever, might Napoleon believe himself to be a 
 benefactor of mankind.' ^ On June 4 they won a great victory 
 at Magenta ; on the 8th, amid scenes of indescribable enthu- 
 siasm, they entered Milan ; on the 24th they won the double 
 battle of Solferino and San Martino. And then — Napoleon III 
 stopped short, and sought an armistice from the Austrian 
 Emperor. Exactly nine weeks after he had landed at Genoa 
 Napoleon started home again. In Turin he met *an arctic 
 chill '. ' Thank God he 's gone ' was Victor Emmanuel's 
 commentary. 
 
 This is not the place to canvass Napoleon's motives ; our 
 concern is with the policy of the English Government. Between 
 
 ^ See Queen Victoria, Letters^ vol. iii, c. 28, and Martin's Prince 
 Consort, iv. 366, 392. 
 '^ Thayer, Life of Cavour. 
 
 E 2 
 
5a THE EUROPEAN COMMONWEALTH 
 
 the battles of Magenta and Solferino that Government had 
 changed hands. Lord Palmerston, Mr. Gladstone, and Lord 
 John Russell were now in power. After Solferino Napoleon 
 had the effrontery to request Great Britain to place his terms 
 before Austria as the basis of an armistice. Lord Palmerston, 
 having no mind to act as Napoleon's cat's-paw and draw upon 
 himself the odium of the Italians, somewhat curtly refused. 
 Nevertheless, on July ii the preliminaries of an armistice were 
 arranged at Villafranca. 
 
 Upon one aspect of this curious transaction additional light 
 has been recently thrown by the published papers and corre- 
 spondence of Sir Robert Morier. The motives of Napoleon, 
 much canvassed at the time, have now been pretty clearly 
 revealed. Among other things it is established that the 
 military situation after Solferino was less favourable to the 
 victorious allies than has been generally supposed. But the 
 elucidation of one difficulty creates another. If at Villafranca 
 Napoleon made a virtue of necessity, why did Austria agree to 
 help him out of his difficulties ? The political and military 
 situation in Germany supplies the answer to both conundrums. 
 The events of 1859 engendered immense excitement in 
 Germany, and of this excitement Prussia prepared to take 
 advantage. 
 
 * Prussia was on the point, at the head of her army and at 
 the head of the German Confederation, to carry the war to 
 France at a moment . . . when the chances were all in our 
 favour. Had we been victorious Prussia would have come 
 out with a heightened position in Germany and in the world 
 at large. It was the task and will of Austria to prevent this, 
 and for this purpose the sacrifice even of Lombardy did not 
 seem too great.' ^ 
 
 Count von Moltke, writing to his brother, put the same point 
 more pithily : * The gist of the thing is that Austria would 
 rather give up Lombardy than see Prussia at the head of 
 Germany.' But the cession of Lombardy to Piedmont was 
 only one part of the bargain made at Villafranca. The two 
 
 ^ Memorandum of a conversation between the Prince Regent of Prussia 
 (afterwards the Emperor WiUiam I) and the King of Bavaria, at Baden, 
 written by the former on June 20, i860. Cf. Morier, i. 235. 
 
ENGLAND AND EUROPE 53 
 
 Emperors proposed the formation, under the presidency of 
 the Pope, of an Itahan Confederation, of which Venetia and 
 the Duchies and States of Central Italy were to be component 
 parts. Lord Palmerston did not like the notion, and, what 
 was even more important, the peoples concerned were inflexibly 
 opposed to it. In the spring of i860 Tuscany, Modena, Parma, 
 and the Roman Legations resolved by plebiscite upon union 
 with Piedmont. It did not become Napoleon III to question 
 the validity of plebiscites, and he acquiesced in the aggrandize- 
 ment of his ally ; only, however, on condition that Nice and 
 Savoy should be handed over to France in compensation. 
 The cession of these provinces aroused natural but perhaps 
 unreasoning indignation in England ; a volunteer force of 
 130,000 men was rapidly organized, and the Queen scored a 
 point against her ministers by pointing to the perfidy of the 
 ' liberator ' of Italy. Events even more stirring were, however, 
 at hand, and interest shifted quickly from the north to the 
 south of the Peninsula. 
 
 Early in April i860 the Sicilians raised the standard of 
 insurrection, and on May 6 Garibaldi and his Thousand sailed, 
 under the virtual but unavowed protection of the Italian fleet, 
 from Genoa to Marsala, With incredible rapidity Garibaldi 
 made himself master of the island, and prepared to cross to the 
 mainland. 
 
 Would the maritime Powers permit the extension of the 
 Garibaldian enterprise ? It was during the three critical 
 months which followed that Great Britain rendered incom- 
 parable service to the cause of Italian unity. Napoleon 
 implored the English Government to send a combined fleet 
 to obstruct Garibaldi's passage across the Straits. Palmerston 
 and Lord John had no mind to help Napoleon, but they had, 
 every desire to assist Cavour. They imagined that Cavour 
 was not less anxious than Napoleon to prevent a Garibaldian 
 mvasion of Naples. Cavour had, in fact, oyer- finessed. To 
 the Powers, which, with the one exception of Great Britain, 
 were suspicious and unfriendly, he had been compelled to take 
 the 'correct' attitude in regard to., Garibaldi's unauthorized 
 attack upon a friendly Power. He was, however, genuinely 
 
54 THE EUROPEAN COMMONWEALTH 
 
 alarmed lest Great Britain should unwittingly assent to 
 Napoleon's proposition. What was he to do ? 
 
 Mr. George Trevelyan, in the third part of his famous 
 trilogy, has told the whole story with masterly skill ; how 
 Cavour consulted Sir James Hudson ; how Hudson suggested 
 an unofficial intermediary ; how this intermediary, Sir James 
 Lacaita, got access to Lord John Russell and snatched him 
 from the very jaws of Napoleon's emissary (July 24), and 
 how, on the next day, the Cabinet, quite unsuspicious of the 
 influences which had been brought to bear, decided to refuse 
 Napoleon's request.^ On July 26 the formal but fateful 
 dispatch was sent off to Paris, and Napoleon was informed 
 that Her Majesty's Ministers 'were of opinion that no case 
 had been made out for a departure on their part from 
 the general principle of non-intervention', and that *the 
 Neapolitans ought to be masters either to reject or to receive 
 Garibaldi '. Well might the PVench Government be amazed 
 at this sudden change of front ; Lacaita had done his work 
 well. 
 
 But Cavour's difficulties were not over, and once more 
 he owed much to Great Britain. Garibaldi's march from 
 Spartivento to Naples was a triumphal progress, and, master 
 of Naples, he announced his intention to annex Rome. At all 
 costs this mad folly must be prevented, and while the King 
 of Naples held Garibaldi in check on the Volturno a Sardinian 
 army was marched into the Romagna. * Go to Naples,' was 
 Palmerston's advice to Cavour. He went. On October 21 
 Naples and Sicily declared for union with North Italy: on 
 October 26 Garibaldi handed over the Southern Kingdom 
 to Victor Emmanuel, and on October 27 Lord John 
 Russell indited to Sir James Hudson * one of the most 
 famous dispatches in the history of our diplomacy '.^ Having 
 reviewed the motives which seemed to him to justify the 
 popular rising in the Roman and Neapolitan States, he 
 concluded : 
 
 * Trevelyan, Garibaldi and the Making of Italy ^ p. 104 seq. and 
 Appendix A. 
 
 * The phrase is Lord Morley's {Gladstone^ ii. 15). 
 
ENGLAND AND EUROPE 55 
 
 ' Such having been the causes and concomitant circumstances 
 of the revolution of Italy, Her Majesty's Government can see 
 no sufficient grounds for the severe censure with which Austria, 
 France, Prussia, and Russia have visited the acts of the King 
 of Sardinia. Her Majesty's Gov^ernment turn their eyes 
 rather to the gratifying prospect of a people building up 
 the edifice of their liberties, and consolidating the work of 
 their independence, amid the sympathies and good wishes 
 of Europe/ ^ 
 
 This dispatch caused Russell to be ' blessed night and morn- 
 ing by twenty millions of Italians', but it excited the anger 
 of all the Courts (not excluding our own) in Europe. ' Ce n'est 
 pas de la diplomatic,' said Baron Brunnow ; ' c'est de la 
 polissonnerie.' Diplomacy or not, it effected its purpose. 
 On November 7 Garibaldi and Victor Emmanuel entered 
 Naples side by side, and Italy was all but made. The work 
 begun by Napoleon III was, by a curious irony, completed 
 by his great rival. 
 
 The centre of diplomatic interest now shifts from Italy 
 to Germany. In 1862, Bismarck, after serving his diplomatic 
 apprenticeship at Frankfort, St. Petersburg, and Paris, was 
 recalled to assume the reins of power at Berlin. The Polish 
 insurrection of 1863 gave him the opportunity of gaining the 
 goodwill of Russia and of gauging at once the impotence of 
 France and the indifference of England. In Italian affairs 
 the Whig leaders were genuinely interested, and were 
 able to effect a good deal simply by the manifestation of 
 platonic sympathy. In Germany they had to deal with 
 a diplomatist who paid no attention to words unsupported 
 by action. 
 
 Words were never wanting to Lord John Russell. Burning 
 with sympathy for oppressed nationalities, he addressed to 
 the Tsar a characteristic homily on the subject of Poland, and, 
 for reply, was told to mind his own business. Napoleon would 
 have liked to interfere more forcibly, but was preoccupied 
 with the affairs of Mexico, and contented himself with the 
 suggestion of a Congress. The British Government refused 
 
 ^ Maxwell, C7cvent/ou, ii. 203. 
 
S6 THE EUROPEAN COMMONWEALTH 
 
 to join him in an invitation ; ^ the Tsar was left to work his 
 will upon the Poles. The whole incident has a significance 
 quite apart from Poland. It exhibited the foreign policy of 
 the Whigs in its worst and weakest aspect — a priggish and 
 hectoring tone, combined with an unreadiness to employ- 
 force in support of convictions ; it secured the benevolent 
 neutrality of Russia towards the policy which Bismarck had 
 already in contemplation ; it led to the refusal of Great 
 Britain to join Napoleon in calling a European Congress to 
 consider the European situation at large, and thus weakened 
 at a critical moment the Anglo-French entente ; ^ above 
 all, it enabled Bismarck to take the measure both of Napo- 
 leon III and the Whig Government in England. * I do not 
 desire war, but neither do I desire peace.' Thus Napoleon 
 to the French Senate (March 17, 1863). Lord Russell 
 genuinely desired peace, but he desired also to secure the 
 results which only successful war could have given him. 
 Neither the Tsar nor Bismarck was a man to concede 
 anything except to force, and the final result not only con- 
 stituted a decided rebuff for Russell, but reacted very un- 
 favourably upon the position of England and France in 
 regard to the Schleswig-Holstein question. This intricate and 
 embarrassing problem was once more brought prominently to 
 the front by the death, in 1863, of King Frederick VII of 
 Denmark. Frederick was not only King of Denmark but 
 Duke of Schleswig and Holstein, and his death raised in an 
 acute form an historic controversy. Into the merits of that 
 controversy it is impossible to enter.^ Most Englishmen 
 content themselves with the repetition of Lord Palmerston's 
 convenient epigram. The more curious may be referred to 
 an admirable risiimd of the whole question from the accom- 
 plished pen of Sir Robert Morier."* Here it must suffice to 
 
 * See ap. Maxwell's C/rt;r^«^/^«,ii. 286, a very interesting letter addressed 
 to Lord Clarendon by Queen Sophia of Holland, deploring the refusal of 
 England. 
 
 2 For Palmerston's reasons cf. his letter to King Leopold, ap. Ashley^ 
 ii. 237. 
 ^ For fuither details cf. Chapter V infra, 
 
 * Op. cit.^ i, p. 90 seq. 
 
ENGLAND AND EUROPE 57 
 
 say that Great Britain was primarily responsible for the 
 Treaty of London (1H52). Great Britain was herself a party 
 to that treaty, as were Denmark, Russia, France, Prussia, 
 and Austria, but not, be it noted, the Germanic Confedera- 
 tion. The essential point of the treaty was that the Powers 
 recognized the right of Prince Christian of Gliicksburg to 
 succeed to the whole of the States united under the sceptre 
 of the Danish King, and specifically based their recognition 
 upon the importance to European peace of * the maintenance 
 of the integrity of the Danish monarchy '. 
 
 Bismarck was not slow to perceive that the integrity of the 
 Danish monarchy was inconsistent with his ideal of a domi- 
 nant, or even a powerful, Prussia. To him the Schleswig- 
 Holstein question meant two things : the chance of acquiring 
 for Prussia the great harbour of Kiel, and the opportunity of 
 fastening a quarrel upon Austria and the Germanic Bund. 
 With complete unscrupulousness but with consummate adroit- 
 ness he achieved both ends. Austria, having foolishly con- 
 sented to join Prussia in an attack upon the Duchies, subse- 
 quently found herself compelled to fight her partner in infamy. 
 The German Diet sided with Austria, and Prussia emerged 
 from the brief conflict mistress of the Duchies, President of 
 a North German Confederation, and the first military Power 
 on the Continent. 
 
 At these pregnant events England looked on impotent. 
 Russell, if left to himself, might perhaps have sent an English 
 squadron to the Baltic to enforce mediation, and have invited 
 Napoleon to send an army to the Rhine. But Palmerston 
 did not like the idea of a French army on the Rhine. Nor did 
 Queen Victoria. Dynastic influences operated, at this juncture, 
 in divergent directions. On the one hand the daughter of 
 Prince Christian of Gliicksburg, by this time King of Denmark, 
 had but lately arrived in England, and the English people had 
 at once taken to their hearts the beautiful bride of the Prince 
 of Wales. On the other hand, the prospects of the Princess 
 Royal of England were sensibly improved by the aggrandize- 
 ment of Prussia. Nor were these the only interests involved. 
 The Kingdom of Hanover and the Electorate of Hesse each 
 
58 THE EUROPEAN COMMONWEALTH 
 
 in its way closely connected with Great Britain, were among 
 the spoils which fell to Prussia after the Seven Weeks' War. 
 Nevertheless, the Queen's attitude throughout these trying 
 times was consistently * correct ', and extorted the admiration 
 of Mr. Gladstone. 
 
 * Often as I have been struck ', he wrote, * by the Queen's 
 extraordinary integrity of mind ... I never felt it more than 
 on hearing and reading a letter of hers . . . about the Danish 
 question. Her determination in this case, as in others, not 
 inwardly to " sell the truth '* overbears all prepossessions and 
 longings, strong as they are, on the German side.' 
 
 That the events in Germany, 1863-7, reacted unfavour- 
 ably upon English prestige cannot, however, be denied. 
 Thus the late Lord Salisbury wrote in 1864: 'Lord Russell's 
 fierce notes and pacific measures furnish an endless theme 
 for the taunts of those who would gladly see the influence of 
 England in the councils of Europe destroyed.' Lord Salisbury 
 might be suspected of partisan bias. Not so the ripe 
 diplomatist Sir Alexander Malet, the last representative of 
 Great Britain at Frankfort. Reviewing these events in his 
 valuable work on T/ie Overthrow of the Germanic Con- 
 federation, published in 1870, Malet affirmed his deliberate 
 opinion that England's 'desertion of Denmark lowered her 
 national reputation and left a stigma of egotism on the 
 nation * } 
 
 The worst consequence of British policy at this juncture 
 was the impression conveyed to the mind of Bismarck that, 
 on the Continent, he could work his will with impunity, secure 
 from any interference on the part of Great Britain. The 
 next move in the diplomatic game revealed this consequence 
 only too clearly. - 
 
 * It is France ', wrote Marshal Randon, * which has been 
 conquered at Sadovva.' ' The French Empire ', says Lord 
 Acton, * was imperilled as much as the Austrian by the war 
 of 1866.' The Seven Weeks' War was barely ended when 
 Bismarck avowed his belief that it 'lay in the logic of history' 
 that 'a war with France would follow upon the war with 
 
 » p. 27. 
 
ENGLAND AND EUROPE 59 
 
 Austria '. The accuracy of these forecasts was quickly demon- 
 strated. After the dramatic and decisive defeat of Austria, 
 Napoleon could hardly afford to sit still. His own health 
 was failing ; his political prestige had been fatally damaged 
 by the Mexican fiasco; things looked black, if not for 
 his country, at least for his dynasty. Bismarck, meanwhile, 
 had taken an accurate measure of the man. In 1865 he met 
 the Emperor at Biarritz, and by dangling before his eyes the 
 bait of territorial aggrandizement had secured the promise of 
 Venetia for Victor Emmanuel and of French neutrality in the 
 imminent struggle with Austria. In regard to that struggle 
 Napoleon made a prodigious miscalculation. He imagined 
 that the contest between the two great German Powers would 
 be not merely bitter but prolonged, and that when the com- 
 batants were mutually exhausted he would be able to step in 
 as mediator. After such a service he would not depart un- 
 rewarded. That France must obtain territorial compensation 
 for the recent aggrandizement of the Hohenzollern seems to 
 have become a fixed article of political faith with Napoleon 
 and the statesmen of the * Liberal Empire' — notably Gramont 
 and Ollivier. And the idea was encouraged by Bismarck 
 himself. He was careful that there should be no record of 
 the * conversations ' at Biarritz, but that the question of 
 compensations was under friendly discussion is not open to 
 doubt. Napoleon, therefore, was not without warrant for 
 the belief that when his claims were put forward — perhaps to 
 a Rhine province, perhaps to Luxemburg, perhaps even to 
 Belgium — he would meet with no opposition from Berlin. 
 
 Vastly different was the event. Not more than three men 
 in Europe were prepared for the completeness of Prussia's 
 triumph over Austria and the Bund. And not even Roon or 
 Moltke or Bismarck was prepared for the rapidity with which 
 it was achieved. Still less was Napoleon. As a result, all his 
 calculations were upset. So far from coming in as an arbitrator, 
 naming his own price for indispensable services, he found him- 
 self, after the Treaty of Prague, a humble suitor to Bismarck 
 for some unconsidered trifle. Appear before the Parisian 
 populace empty-handed he dare not. The Rhenish Palatinate 
 
6o THE EUROPEAN COMMONWEALTH 
 
 might suffice. Having got the suggestion in black and white, 
 Bismarck sent on Napoleon's letter to Bavaria, to whom the 
 Palatinate belonged. Nothing did more to procure the 
 adhesion of Bavaria when the greater conflict opened in 1870, 
 Belgium was the next suggestion, the suggestion being almost 
 certainly stimulated by Bismarck himself.^ Be this as it may, 
 the suggestion served Bismarck's purpose admirably. On no 
 point were English susceptibilities more acute. Queen Victoria 
 evinced the greatest anxiety on the subject, and wrote to 
 remind Lord Clarendon (January 14, 1869) that she had 
 * invariably expressed the strongest opinion that England was 
 bound, not only by the obligations of treaties, but by interests 
 of vital importance to herself, to maintain the integrity and 
 independence as well as the neutrality of Belgium'. Even 
 Mr. Gladstone was moved to unusual directness of utterance, 
 and insisted to his Foreign Secretary 'That the day when 
 this nation seriously suspects France of meaning ill to Belgian 
 independence will be the last day of friendship with that 
 country, and that then a future will open for which no man 
 can answer'. On March 16, 1869, Lord Clarendon wrote to 
 Lord Lyons : ' We are very anxious about the Belgian business 
 because more or less convinced that the Emperor is meaning 
 mischief and intending to establish unfriendly relations with 
 Belgium preparatory to ulterior designs.' ^ 
 
 Lord Clarendon held the opinion that the idea of Bismarck 
 egging Napoleon on to an attack on Belgian independence 
 was a mare's-nest. But Clarendon had not the evidence before 
 him. Nevertheless he perceived clearly enough the general 
 tendency of Bismarckian diplomacy. *A quarrel between 
 France and England,' he wrote, * or even a coolness, is the 
 great German desideratum ' ; and again : ' I believe that 
 nothing would be more agreeable to Prussia than that the 
 intimacy between the two countries should be disturbed by 
 a territorial encroachment which would run on all fours 
 with Prussian aggrandizement.' 
 
 For the time being Bismarck gave no sign, but just at the. 
 
 * It is right to say that Lord Clarendon scouted this notion. 
 ' Newton's Lord Lyons ^ i. 215. 
 
 y 
 
ENGLAND AND EUROPE 6i 
 
 appropriate moment, in 1870, as we shall see, he published 
 the Emperor's proposal to the world, and thus completely 
 alienated England's sympathies from France. 
 
 There remained only Luxemburg, but Luxemburg was 
 neutralized under European guarantee by the Treaty of 
 London ; and, foiled in that quarter also, Napoleon had no 
 alternative but to persuade himself and his people that, after 
 all, Prussia was weakened rather than strengthened by the 
 events of 1866, and that in reality no territorial compensation 
 was due to France. 
 
 The events which immediately preceded the outbreak of 
 war between Germany and France may be conveniently 
 followed in the copious correspondence of Lord Lyons.^ The 
 latter arrived in Paris as British ambassador in October 1867, 
 and he remained there for twenty years. Almost all his 
 correspondence with Lord Stanley and Lord Clarendon (1867- 
 70) bears witness to the unrest of the public mind in Paris ; 
 to the apprehensions of a coup de thidtre on the part of the 
 Emperor, to the rumours of war between France and Prussia. 
 Yet, again and again. Lord Lyons expresses his belief in the 
 pacific intentions of the Emperor. Thus, in March 1868, he 
 writes to Lord Stanley : ' For my own part I am more inclined 
 to believe that the Emperor is sincerely anxious to preserve 
 peace.* In this belief he was probably right. As to Prussia 
 he was less well informed. In October 1868 he reports conver- 
 sations of Lord Clarendon with the King and Queen of Prussia 
 and General Moltke. 
 
 * The sum of what was said by all three is that Prussia 
 earnestly desires to keep at peace with France ; that she will 
 be very careful not to give offence, and very slow to take 
 offence ; that if a war is brought on she will act so as to make 
 it manifest to Germany and to Europe that France is the 
 unprovoked aggressor ; that a war brought on evidently by 
 France would infallibly unite all Germany.' 
 
 It is noticeable that Bismarck was not included in the con- 
 versations. But if he had been it is likely enough that Lord 
 Clarendon would have carried away from Berlin precisely 
 
 ^ I, chs. vi, vii, viii. 
 
62 THE EUROPEAN COMMONWEALTH 
 
 the same impression, and for the sufficient reason that this 
 was the impression which Bismarck desired to diffuse, and 
 which, as a fact, he did diffuse. Mr. Gladstone himself, 
 writing in the Edinburgh Review in October 1870, gave 
 characteristic expression to the prevailing belief: 
 
 ' We sorrowfully place upon record ', he wrote, * the convic- 
 tion that the whole proceedings of the French Government, 
 in the conduct of its controversy, constituted one series of 
 unrelieved and lamentable errors; errors so palpable and 
 wanton that, when men observe them in the conduct of a 
 Government which rules perhaps the most richly endowed 
 nation in the world, they appear so wholly unaccountable, 
 upon any of the ordinary rules of judgement applicable 
 to human action, that they are almost perforce referred 
 by bewildered observers to blind theories of chance and 
 fate.' 
 
 To this opinion it is still, of course, possible to subscribe 
 even with a fuller knowledge of the facts than Mr. Gladstone 
 possessed in 1870. French diplomacy was indeed inspired 
 during the years preceding the war by ' a spirit of perverse 
 and constant error'. What was imperfectly understood in 
 1870 was the Machiavellian skill and adroitness with which 
 Bismarck lured the Emperor to his doom. Two distinguished 
 Cambridge scholars — Lord Acton and Dr. Rose — have done 
 more perhaps than any one else to disclose to the English read- 
 ing world the secret springs of Bismarck's diplomacy during 
 these fateful years. The King and Queen of Prussia, and 
 even General Moltke, might talk peace to Lord Clarendon at 
 Berlin, but Bismarck was bent on war. He was in no hurry 
 about it ; every year strengthened his own position, and 
 relatively weakened that of his opponent. None the less, war 
 with France was essential to his plans : essential to the acquisi- 
 tion of Alsace and Lorraine ; essential to the adhesion of the 
 South German States to the North German Confederation, 
 and essential to the consolidation of Germany under the 
 hegemony of Prussia. And it was vitally important that 
 France should appear as the aggressor. 
 
 That the promotion of the Hohenzollern candidature for 
 the throne of Spain was deliberately designed with this object 
 
ENGLAND AND EUROPE 63 
 
 is no longer questionable. Lord Acton has proved the accusa- 
 tion to the hilt. In 1868 the Spaniards deposed their none too 
 reputable Queen Isabella and declared for a ' constitutional ' 
 monarchy. The offer of the throne was in turn declined 
 by Ferdinand, King-Consort of Portugal, and by Victor 
 Emmanuel's nephew, the Duke of Genoa, Thereupon Bis- 
 marck contrived that the Spanish throne should be offered 
 to Prince Leopold of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen, a cadet of 
 the Prussian House. Prince Leopold hung back ; ^50,000 of 
 Prussian bonds found their way to Madrid ; ^ the offer was 
 renewed in 1870, and on July 4 was accepted by the Prince. 
 
 Events then moved with almost incredible rapidity. It 
 was perfectly well known at Berlin that the acceptance of the 
 Spanish Crown by Prince Leopold would be regarded by France 
 as a casus belli, and on July 4 Napoleon sent a formal in- 
 timation to that effect. Bismarck had now only one obstacle 
 to fear: the straightforward honesty of his own sovereign. 
 On July 12 Prince Leopold withdrew from the candidature; 
 the Prussian King assented to the withdrawal : the crisis 
 seemed to have been averted, and Bismarck was left to 
 contemplate the ruins of the diplomatic structure he had so 
 laboriously erected. But again fate was kind to him. There 
 were two persons in France not less eager for war than 
 himself: the Due de Gramont and the Empress. With in- 
 conceivable folly the Due de Gramont required of the King of 
 Prussia an engagement that under no circumstances would he 
 consent to the revival of the Hohenzollern candidature. This 
 preposterous and provocative demand, presented to him at 
 Ems, was courteously but firmly refused by King William, 
 and Lord Granville, as amicus curiae ^ urged the French Govern- 
 ment to withdraw it. But, even had they been willing to do 
 so, it was too late. Bismarck had got his chance, and he did 
 not let it slip. If France wanted war and was mad enough 
 to provoke it, war she should have. Too much has been 
 made of the incident of the Ems telegram. There was neither 
 ' forgery ' nor ' fraud '. The conduct of Gramont in Paris and 
 Benedetti at Ems gave Bismarck a legitimate opportunity, and 
 ^ Acton, Historical Essays y p. 214. 
 
64 THE EUROPEAN COMMONWEALTH 
 
 he turned it to good account. The Emperor still struggled 
 to avert a war for which France was not prepared, but the 
 Empress and Gramont, backed by the Parisian populace, 
 were too strong for him. By a majority of one the Cabinet 
 decided on war (July 14), and on July 19 the declaration of 
 war reached Berlin. 
 
 What part did Great Britain play in the events just narrated ? 
 Without affectation or reservation she declared herself the 
 friend of both parties to the dispute. At Paris she was very 
 ably represented by Lord Lyons, whose correspondence tends 
 rather to confirm than to correct the accepted view of British 
 diplomacy during this period. In October 1868 the French 
 Government virtually requested that Great Britain should 
 *give advice to Prussia' on the subject of disarmament. Lord 
 Stanley refused to meddle. Both parties, however, continued 
 to saddle Great Britain with responsibility for the maintenance 
 of peace. Both agreed that England had only to declare 
 that she would join against whichever Power broke the peace. 
 But the real meaning of this was, as Lord Newton insists, 
 ' that at Paris it was expected that England should announce 
 beforehand that she would side with France in case of war, 
 while at Berlin it meant that she should announce before- 
 hand that she would side with Prussia'.^ In September 1869 
 Lord Clarendon used the privilege of an old friend to give 
 good advice to Napoleon. The latter, in reply, suggested that 
 Prussia should begin, and in January 1870 Lord Clarendon, 
 at the instance of Count Daru, consented to try to persuade 
 them to do so. ' Perhaps ', he wrote to Lyons, * we are in as 
 good a position as any other Power to make an attempt to 
 bell the cat.* The only practical result was an interesting 
 interchange of views on the general subject of disarmament 
 between Clarendon and Bismarck,^ and an extraordinary 
 tribute to the character and influence — if not to the perspicacity 
 — of the English minister. On the 27th of June, 1870, Lord 
 Clarendon died, ' in the very act ', to use Lord Granville's 
 words, * of trying to arrange a matter necessary to civilization 
 in Europe '. M. Pierre de la Gorce, in his brilliant Histoire du 
 ^ Op. cit.y i, pp. 246-7. ^ Newton, Lyons^ I, c. vii. 
 
ENGLAND AND EUROPE 6^^ 
 
 Second Empire, has expressed the opinion that Clarendon's 
 death was an irreparable disaster to France. Bismarck meant 
 the same thing when, on meeting Lord Clarendon's daughter, 
 he opened the conversation with the abrupt remark : * Never 
 in my life was I more glad to hear of anything than I was 
 to hear of your father's death.' Lady Emily Russell showed 
 the surprise she naturally felt, and Bismarck added : ' What 
 I mean is that, if your father had lived, he would have pre- 
 vented the war/ 
 
 We may doubt whether, for once, Bismarck was not more 
 polite than accurate. But this much may be admitted : if 
 Clarendon could not have prevented the war, no one else could. 
 Truly it lay in the logic of history. 
 
 The war itself had sequelae, if not consequences, of high 
 concern to England. That it cost us the friendship of both 
 principals goes without saying. France thought that we 
 might have done more for her before and during the war ; 
 Prussia thought that we did too much. And Bismarck's 
 wrath was never impotent. A hint to Russia, and England 
 found herself, in October 1870, confronted by two disagreeable 
 alternatives : either to acquiesce in the denunciation of the 
 Black Sea clauses of the Treaty of Paris, or to fight Russia 
 single-handed. We were not prepared to fight for the neutrality 
 of the Black Sea, and by the Treaty of London (1871) an 
 important section of the Treaty of Paris was torn up. 
 
 The Black Sea, however, was relatively remote. Belgium 
 was close to our shores. The neutrality of Belgium had long 
 been a matter of intimate concern to Great Britain. Bismarck 
 was well aware of British susceptibilities in this matter, and on 
 July 1^5, 1870, he caused to be published in T/ie Times the 
 draft of a secret treaty which, so it was alleged, had formed 
 the basis of a negotiation between France and Prussia in 
 1866. 
 
 The history of these negotiations is a tangled and compli- 
 cated one, and many points are still obscure ; there are two, 
 however, which may be stated with confidence. On the one 
 hand, it is certain that on the eve of the critical struggle with 
 Austria in 1866 Bismarck was supremely anxious to secure 
 
 2120 F 
 
66 THE EUROPEAN COMMONWEALTH 
 
 the neutrality of France. Nor is it likely that he would have 
 been over-scrupulous as to the means of securing it. On 
 the other hand, it is equally certain that after the rapid 
 and decisive victory of Prussia in the Seven Weeks' War 
 Napoleon III was anxious to secure 'compensations' for 
 France. But the boot was now on the other leg. Bismarck 
 had no longer any use for Napoleon's friendship. On the 
 contrary, as we have seen, he was already contemplating and 
 preparing for the war with France which in his view must 
 inevitably follow upon that with Austria. 
 
 Where, then, did the question of Belgium come in? 
 According to Bismarck's own version Napoleon HI had 
 privately discussed the matter with him, while he was 
 ambassador in Paris, as far back as 1 862. It may well have 
 been so, for the Emperor's mind, as Lord Palmerston wrote 
 at the time, was 'as full of schemes as a warren is full of 
 rabbits'. Moreover, it would help to explain Napoleon's 
 passivity in regard to the Danish Duchies in 1863-4. In 
 September 1865 Bismarck met Napoleon at Biarritz, just at 
 the moment when he was completing his plans for the 
 diplomatic isolation of Austria. That the question of Belgium 
 was again under discussion is more than likely. In June 
 1866, on the eve of the Seven Weeks' War, there were 
 definite negotiations between Bismarck and Count Benedetti, 
 the French ambassador at Berlin. If the report of the latter 
 may be accepted (and it was made at the time), Bismarck 
 refused to consider the possibility of ceding Rhenish Prussia, 
 but hinted that he might be able to obtain for France the 
 Prussian district of Treves, together with Luxemburg, or parts 
 of Belgium or Switzerland. Benedetti, on his part, claimed to 
 have made it clear to Bismarck that the idea of seizing Belgian 
 or Swiss territory would not be entertained at Paris. If, then, 
 there had been previous negotiations on the subject, either 
 Benedetti was in ignorance of them, or his diplomatic guile 
 and subtlety were at least equal to those of Bismarck. And 
 this has not been suggested. 
 
 The Seven Weeks' War ensued. Prussia won the resounding 
 victory of Koniggratz or Sadowa (July 3), and France, there- 
 
ENGLAND AND EUROPE 67 
 
 upon, promptly put forward a formal demand for the cession 
 of the Bavarian Palatinate, Mainz, and the Prussian territory 
 on the Saar. Bismarck, however, was no longer in a com- 
 plaisant temper ; the demand was unconditionally refused, and 
 France accepted the rebuff. But before the end of August 
 negotiations were resumed at Berlin, and this was probably 
 the moment when the 'Draft Treaty' was indited which 
 Bismarck published to the world on the eve of the Franco- 
 Prussian War. 
 
 That Draft Treaty has been the subject of so much dis- 
 cussion, and its terms are intrinsically so important, that it 
 seems desirable to reproduce the ipsissima verba of the docu- 
 ment as it first appeared in The Times on July 25, 1870 : 
 
 ' Projet de Traite. 
 
 ' Sa Majeste le Roi de Prusse et Sa Majeste I'Empereur des 
 Fran9ais, jugeant utile de resserrer les liens d'amitie qui les 
 unissent et de consolider les rapports de bon voisinage 
 heureusement existant entre les deux pays, convaincus 
 d'autre part que pour atteindre ce resultat, propre d'ailleurs 
 a assurer le maintien de la paix generale, il leur importe de 
 s'entendre sur des questions qui interessent leurs relations 
 futures, ont resolu de conclure un traite a cet effet et nomme 
 en consequence pour leurs plenipotentiaires, savoir : — 
 
 ' S. M. &c. 
 S. M. &c. 
 
 ' Lesquels, apr^s avoir echangd leurs pleins pouvoirs trouves 
 en bonne et due forme, sont convenus des articles suivants : — 
 
 '"Art. I. — Sa Majeste I'Empereur des Francais admet et 
 reconnait les acquisitions que la Prusse a faites a la suite de la 
 derniere guerre qu'elle a soutenue contre I'Autriche et contre 
 ses allies. 
 
 ' "Art. II. — Sa Majeste le Roi de Prusse promet de faciliter 
 a la France Tacquisition du Luxembourg ; a cet effet la dite 
 Majeste entrera en negociations avec sa Majeste le Roi des 
 Pays-Bas pour le determiner a faire a I'Empereur des Fran9ais 
 la cession de ses droits souverains de ce Duche moyennant telle 
 compensation qui sera jugee suffisante ou autrement. De son 
 cote I'Empereur des Fran9ais s'engage a assumer les charges 
 pecuniaires que cette transaction peut comporter. 
 
 ' " Art. III. — Sa Majeste I'Empereur des Fran9ais ne s'oppo- 
 sera pas a une union f^derale de la Confederation du Nord avec 
 
 F % 
 
68 THE EUROPEAN COMMONWEALTH 
 
 les Etats du Midi de TAllemagne a Texception de rAutriche, 
 laquelle union pourra etre basee sur un Parlement commun, 
 tout en respectant, dans une juste mesure, la souverainet^ des 
 dits fetats. 
 
 ' " Art. IV. — De son cote, Sa Majestd le Roi de Prusse, au 
 cas ou Sa Majeste I'Empereur des Frangais serait amene par 
 les circonstances a faire entrer ses troupes en Belgique ou a la 
 conqudrir, accordera le secours de ses armes a la France, et il 
 la soutiendra avec toutes ses forces de terre et de mer, envers 
 et contre toute Puissance qui, dans cette eventualite, lui 
 declarerait la guerre. 
 
 '"Art. V. — Pour assurer Tenti^re execution des dispositions 
 qui precedent, Sa Majesty le Roi de Prusse et Sa Majeste 
 TEmpereur des Frangais contractent, par le present traite, une 
 alliance offensive et defensive qu'ils s'engagent solennellement 
 a maintenir. Leurs Majest^s s'obligent, en outre et notam- 
 ment, a 1' observer dans tous les cas ou leurs Etats respectifs, 
 dont elles se garantissent mutuellement I'integrite, seraient 
 menaces d'une agression, se tenant pour liees, et de ne decliner, 
 sous aucun pretexte, les arrangements militaires qui seraient 
 commandes par leur interet commun conformement aux 
 clauses et provisions ci-dessus enoncees." ' ^ 
 
 The terms of this remarkable document are extraordinarily 
 free from ambiguity. France was to recognize a federal union 
 between all the German States, South as well as North, except 
 Austria, and in return was to be assisted by Prussia to 
 purchase Luxemburg from the King of the Netherlands 
 and, should circumstances require it, to invade and absorb 
 Belgium. 
 
 The Times pledged itself to the 'authenticity' of the docu- 
 ment, and wrote in its leading article : 
 
 * It is not difficult to extract from the paper itself the secret 
 of its origin. We might easily deduce from internal evidence, 
 if we were not otherwise assured of the truth, that the pro- 
 posed Treaty was submitted by France to Prussia. . . . The 
 proposed Treaty was rejected at the time it was tendered. . . . 
 It was rejected, but, unless we are misinformed, — and, speak- 
 ing with all reserve on a subject of such importance, we are 
 satisfied that our information is correct, — the Treaty has been 
 recently again offered as a condition of peace. Means have 
 
 < 
 
 * A facsimile of this document will be found in Archives Diploinatiques, 
 1 87 1-2, vol. iii. 280-1. 
 
 mm 
 
ENGLAND AND EUROPE 69 
 
 been taken to let it be understood that the old offer was 
 open, and that a ready acceptance of it would save Prussia 
 from attack. The suggestion has not been favourably 
 received . . .' 
 
 Whatever the origin of this project we now know that it 
 was revealed by Bismarck. His object is obvious. He intended 
 to excite English susceptibilities on a question which has 
 always been regarded as vital, and thus to alienate their 
 sympathies from France. In the realization of this purpose 
 he was completely, if temporarily, successful. 
 
 Bismarck's version was promptly repudiated in France : 
 by Benedettr, by de Gramont, and in a letter indited from 
 Metz (July 2>S) by the Emperor himself. 
 
 ' M. de Bismarck a dit,' wrote Napoleon : " Vous cherchez 
 une chose impossible. Vous voulez prendre les provinces du 
 Rhin qui sont allemandes, et qui veulent le rester. Pourquoi 
 ne pas vous adjoindre la Belgique,Qu existe un peuple qui a la 
 meme origine et parle la meme langue . . . S'il (I'Empereur) 
 cntrait dans ces vues, nous Taiderions a prendre la Belgique. 
 . . ." En un mot, c'est la Prusse qui a fait I'offre, et c'est nous 
 avons elude de repondre.' ^ 
 
 Still the Draft was in Benedetti's handwriting, and it was 
 written on the paper of the French Embassy. According to 
 the French version, on the other hand, the proposal was 
 dictated to Benedetti by Bismarck and when submitted to the 
 Emperor was immediately declined by him.^ 
 Count Benedetti's exact words were : 
 
 * Dans une de ces conversations, et afin de me rendre un 
 compte exact de ses combinaisons, j'ai consenti a les transcrire 
 en quelque sorte sous sa dictee . . . M. de Bismarck garda cettc 
 redaction voulant la soumettre au Roi. De mon cote je 
 rendis compte au Gouvernement Imperial des communications 
 qui m'auraient ete faites. L'Empereur les repoussa des qu'elles 
 
 ^ For the full text of the Emperor's letter cf. Fitzmaurice's Lfye of 
 Lord Granville, ii. 40 ; see also Lord Newton's Life of Lord Lyons, 
 i. 302-4. Cf. also Hertslet, British and Foreign Stale Papers, LX, 
 pp. 885 seq. 
 
 ■^ Cf. P. de la Gorce, fiisL du Second Empire, v. 1-80. In a letter 
 to The Times (August 15, 19 14) Sir W. Haggard gave, on the authority 
 of a German friend, a circumstantial account of the incident, but sub- 
 sequently admitted that the evidence was inconclusive. 
 
70 THE EUROPEAN COMMONWEALTH 
 
 parvinrent a sa connaissance. Je dois dire que le Roi de 
 Prusse lui-meme ne parut pas vouloir en agreer la base.' 
 
 The precise truth as to the genesis of the proposal may 
 never perhaps be ascertained ; but as to the effect of the 
 publication there is no obscurity. Both Germany and France 
 were eager to convince the world in general and Great Britain 
 in particular of their innocence, and readily agreed to enter 
 into renewed engagements to respect the neutrality of Belgium. 
 Those engagements were embodied in two separate treaties 
 concluded between Great Britain and Prussia and France 
 respectively. 
 
 By the Treaty of the 9th of August 1870 the King of 
 Prussia declared his * fixed determination to respect the 
 neutrality of Belgium so long as the same shall be respected 
 by France ', and at the same time entered into an engagement 
 with Great Britain to maintain 'then and thenafter the 
 neutrality of Belgium '. Two days later a precise counterpart 
 of the Anglo-German Treaty was concluded between Great 
 Britain and France. In both treaties Great Britain pledged 
 herself to co-operate with either Germany or France, as the 
 case might be, against the Power which should violate 
 the neutrality of Belgium. It was expressly provided, how- 
 ever, that the co-operation of Great Britain should be strictly 
 confined to the consequences of the violation of Belgian 
 neutrality, and that her military operations should not extend 
 beyond the limits of Belgium.^ 
 
 One word may be added to emphasize the significance of 
 this incident. Bismarck's diplomacy in 1 870, however faith- 
 less and unscrupulous, at least testifies to his belief that to 
 violate Belgian integrity was to touch England to the quick. 
 In this he judged aright. In 1870 it suited Prussia's game that 
 Belgium's neutrality should be respected by both countries 
 Bismarck's disclosure of the previous negotiations between 
 PVance and Prussia was a masterstroke of unscrupulous 
 diplomacy. Nor did it fail of its immediate purpose. England 
 stood by and saw France humiliated and despoiled by 
 Germany. 
 
 ^ Hertslet, op. cit., pp. 1887 and 1 890. 
 
ENGLAND AND EUROPE 71 
 
 The Franco-German War closes a chapter in the history of 
 European diplomacy. By that war Bismarck placed the coping- 
 stone upon the two edifices most essentially characteristic 
 of the work of the nineteenth century — a United Germany 
 and a United Italy. It needed only the assault of France to 
 bring Bavaria and the other South German States into line 
 with the North ; a fortnight after the first shot had been fired 
 on the Rhine the last French soldier left Civita Vecchia. 
 ' Better the Prussians in Paris than the Piedmontese in 
 Rome.' So the Empress Eugenie is reported to have said. 
 The dilemma was unreal ; the two dread events were almost 
 simultaneous. In September 1870 the Piedmontese entered 
 Rome ; in January 1871 Paris capitulated to the Germans. 
 
 These were tangible events. In a more intangible sense 
 the year 1 870-1 seems to close an epoch for Europe and for 
 Great Britain. British diplomacy during the mid- Victorian 
 era was essentially continental. It is in connexion with 
 European politics that the names of Palmerston, Aberdeen, 
 Russell, Stanley, Malmesbury, and Clarendon will be remem- 
 bered. On world-politics they left but slight impress. Nor 
 is that remarkable if we recall their attitude towards ' Im- 
 perial ' questions. Take, for example, the following sentence 
 from a dispatch from Lord Stanley to Lord Lyons (April 4, 
 1867) : 
 
 ' The Americans, as you will see, have bought a large 
 amount of worthless territory (Alaska) from Russia at a 
 nominal price. Their motive is probably twofold : to establish 
 a sort of claim in the future to British North America, lying 
 as it does between their old and their new possessions ; 
 and to gain a victory over us by doing without our knowledge 
 an act which they probably think will annoy England. In that 
 expectation they will be disappointed, for I cannot find any one 
 who cares about the matter, and the Press in general treats it 
 with indifference.' 
 
 Lord Clarendon was something more than indifferent about 
 our possessions in North America. ' I wish \ he wrote to Lyons 
 (June I, 1870), 'that they would propose to be independent 
 and to annex themselves (i.e. to the U.S.A.). We can't throw 
 them off, and it is very desirable that we should part as 
 
72 THE EUROPEAN COMMONWEALTH 
 
 friends.' Three years later The Times advised the Canadians 
 to set up for themselves, ' as the days of their apprenticeship 
 were over '. Well might Tennyson ask : ' Is this the voice of 
 Empire?* 
 
 The voice of Empire it was not. Rather was it the groan 
 of the ' weary Titan ' who ha^ been taught by the prophets of 
 the Manchester School to re-echo : 
 
 ' A strain to shame us, " Keep you to yourselves. 
 So loyal is too costly ! friends — your love 
 Is but a burthen : loose the bond and go." * 
 
 But the reaction against the doctrine of laisser-faire, in 
 politics as in economics, was at hand. The diplomatic firma- 
 ment in which Clarendon and Russell, Morier, Stanley and 
 Lyons were luminaries was on the point of dissolution. The 
 horizon of diplomatic activity was before long to be im- 
 measurably extended. European politics were to be seen in 
 a new perspective. The era of European parochialism was 
 closed ; a struggle for world-supremacy was at hand. 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 WORLD-POLITICS: A NEW ORIENTATION OF 
 HISTORY 
 
 * The cardinal fact of geography in the twentieth century is the shorten- 
 ing of distances and the shrinkage of the globe. . . . The result is that 
 problems which a century ago, or even fifty years ago, were exclusively 
 European now concern the whole world.' — GENERAL Smuts. 
 
 The preceding chapters have been concerned mainly with 
 the evolution of the States-system of modern Europe. Begin- 
 ning in the last years of the fifteenth century, that process, as 
 we have seen, culminated towards the end of the nineteenth. 
 It had proceeded under the influence of two governing ideas : 
 the idea of nationality and the idea of liberty ; these were the 
 two principles which dominated the nineteenth century, and 
 the sovereign State was consequently the tdtima ratio alike 
 in politics and in philosophy. 
 
 The seventies of the last century witnessed the completion 
 and culmination of this development. At last Europe was 
 exhaustively parcelled out among a number of independent 
 sovereign States. Of these, some owed their existence to 
 great rulers ; some to geographical advantages ; some, like the 
 Balkan States, were the outcome, on the one hand, of intense 
 nationalism, on the other, of international rivalries ; others 
 again, like Switzerland and Belgium, based their right to 
 national independence and territorial integrity upon the faith 
 of international treaties. But in one way or another they had 
 all ' arrived '. Nationalism had reached its zenith. 
 
 Did the final triumph of Nationalism promise the permanent 
 maintenance of the European polity ? Ever since the disso- 
 lution of the medieval unities and the emergence of the 
 independent Nation-State Europe had been striving to attain 
 a condition of stability and equilibrium. From the turmoil of 
 
74 THE EUROPEAN COMMONWEALTH 
 
 Italian politics, from the internecine rivalries of her City-States, 
 there had come the idea of a * balance of power'. Applied to 
 the larger field of European politics that idea operated in two 
 different ways : on the one hand, it induced the several Powers 
 to combine in resistance to the domination of an over-ambitious 
 autocrat ; on the other, it led to a succession of territorial re- 
 adjustments which aimed, without any regard to the wishes or 
 traditions of the peoples immediately concerned, at an equit- 
 able distribution of the spoils among the victors. Four times 
 in four centuries have the Nation-States of Europe been 
 compelled to combine against the threatened domination of 
 one of their number. It was her desire to maintain the Euro- 
 pean equilibrium which gave real consistency to the superficial 
 inconsistencies and vacillations, to the apparently bewildering 
 caprice, of the diplomacy of Queen Elizabeth. The dispersion 
 of the Spanish Armada not only preserved the independence 
 of England and of the United Netherlands, it not only saved 
 the cause of religious liberty, but it dealt a death-blow to the 
 ambitions of Philip the Second, and asserted the nascent 
 principle of European equilibrium. A century later the peace- 
 ful transference of the English crown from James the Second 
 to the Dutch Stadtholder, the consequent formation of a grand 
 alliance under William's presidency, the seamanship of Rooke, 
 and the genius, military and diplomatic, of John Churchill, 
 Duke of Marlborough, delivered Europe from the threatened 
 thraldom of Louis the Fourteenth. Another century passed, 
 and the sea-power of England, backed by her long purse and 
 assisted by a soldier second only, if he was second, in ability 
 to Marlborough, frustrated, in similar fashion, the ambition of 
 Napoleon Buonaparte. Against the fourth attempt to enthrall 
 Europe — and not Europe only — we are still in arms. 
 
 The theory of the Balance of Power has fallen into dire 
 discredit ; not unintelligibly, yet in part undeservedly. Unde- 
 servedly, if we bear in mind the inspiration it afforded to a 
 succession of attempts, happily successful, to avert the domina- 
 tion of any single Power; intelligibly, if we concentrate attention 
 upon the crimes wrought in its name against the territorial in- 
 tegrity and the political independence of States great and small. 
 
WORLD-POLITICS 75 
 
 The Partition Treaties arranged at the end of the seventeenth 
 and the beginning of the eighteenth century, though vehemently 
 denounced by Lord Macaulay, did no violence to the principles 
 which are now held in most esteem. The Empire of the 
 Spanish Habsburgs was purely dynastic in origin, and the fact 
 of its partition (however objectionable some of the details) did 
 not in itself contravene the idea of nationality, nor part asunder 
 peoples who had been joined together in organic union. It 
 mattered little to the people of the Southern Netherlands 
 whether they were ruled by an Austrian or a Spanish Habs- 
 burg; whether they had to look for orders to Vienna or to 
 Madrid. The claims of the Bourbons to the Two Sicilies were 
 not historically inferior to those of the Habsburgs : the people 
 were not more Spanish than French. It was far otherwise 
 with the three successive treaties, by which the ancient 
 kingdom of the Poles was wiped off the map of Eurof)e, by 
 which its people became the unwilling subjects of the three 
 neighbouring Powers, Russia, Prussia, and Austria. For such 
 a crime — for the annihilation of a genuine Nation-State — 
 there could be no valid excuse. The same principles which 
 dictated the Polish partitions of 1772, 1793, and 1795 inspired 
 the great European settlement of 18 15. 
 
 Already, however, the new leaven was at work. The 
 territorial readjustments effected at Vienna did not pass with- 
 out protest from those who had discovered the faint streaks of 
 the dawn of a new era. The French Revolution had pro- 
 claimed the doctrines not merely of Fraternity and Equality, 
 but of Liberty. ' Liberty ' began to acquire a fresh connota- 
 tion : the emancipation not only of the individual from the 
 shackles of domestic tyranny, but of peoples from alien rulers. 
 The principle of 'self-determination' was already implicitly 
 affirmed. As early as 1804 Alexander the First, the most 
 idealistic and not the least ambitious of the rulers of his day, 
 had put forward the idea of ' nationality ' as a* basic principle 
 for the reconstruction of the European polity. The boundaries 
 of the several States were to be so drawn as to respect the 
 principle of les limites naturelleSy but also — and the words are 
 noteworthy — ' so as to compose the several States of homo- 
 
76 THE EUROPEAN COMMONWEALTH 
 
 geneous peoples, which could agree among each other and act 
 in harmony with the government that rules them/ ^ M. Albert 
 Sorel had therefore reason when he wrote that in 1792 
 France had preached the cosmopolitan Revolution, while in 
 1813 ' Russia unchained the war of nationalities '. 
 
 It was that doctrine of nationality which gave coherence to 
 the distracting phenomena of European politics during the 
 greater part of the nineteenth century. The Greeks affirmed 
 it in their initial insurrection against the Ottoman Turks in 
 1822 ; it was at the back of the movement for Belgian inde- 
 pendence in 1830; it imported an element of romance to the 
 Italian Risorgime^ito ; it inspired the Balkan peoples in their 
 struggle for independence ; it powerfully assisted the ambition 
 of the Hohenzollern in Germany. Though its operation is 
 manifest, and though its influence upon recent political history 
 has been profound, the idea itself is singularly elusive and 
 defies every attempt at analysis. We recognize its presence 
 by the effects it produces. But by the 'seventies its character- 
 istic work had been achieved. Nationalism was triumphant. 
 
 Since the 'seventies we have entered, both in the realm of 
 thought and of action, upon an entirely new era ; we have 
 passed, consciously or unconsciously, under the dominion of 
 unfamiliar forces. Some of these we begin to discern. 
 The first is that of physical science. The key-note of the 
 earlier Renaissance — that new birth of learning which reached 
 its zenith in the sixteenth century — was the revelation of a 
 new heaven and a new earth. The scientific work of the 
 astronomers, of Copernicus and Tycho Brahe, of Kepler and 
 Galileo, was clearly complementary to that of Christopher 
 Columbus and Bartholomew Diaz, of Vasco da Gama and the 
 Cabots. Similarly in the nineteenth century ; science has reacted 
 powerfully upon politics. By the immense impetus it has given 
 to the means of transport ; by the utilization of electricity as 
 a means of communication ; by telegraphy, telephony, and by 
 the invention of aircraft it has led to a conspicuous shrinkage 
 in the world. For all practical purposes the world is much 
 
 * Czartoryski, A/>/«^/rj, ii p. 36 ; cf. Fh'iWips, Con/ederaf ton 0/ Euro^c\ 
 p. 61. 
 
WORLD-POLITICS 77 
 
 smaller than it was half a century ago. Asia, America, 
 Australia, and Africa have come within the ambit of European 
 politics ; the continental Chanceries are hardly less concerned 
 with the Pacific than they are with the Mediterranean. This 
 in itself would have involved a shifting in the centre of political 
 gravity. But other forces have been tending in the same 
 direction. The first is that of Imperialism, by which, in this 
 connexion, we denote a desire for territory. Sir John Seeley 
 was perhaps the first among English publicists to give blunt 
 expression to this motive in politics. * The future', he declared, 
 writing nearly forty years ago, ' is with the big States, States 
 of the type of Russia, the United States, and the British 
 Empire.' Seeley's little volume The Expansion of Englmid 
 exercised an influence upon political thought, and indeed 
 political action, comparable to that produced a century earlier 
 by Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations. Biology also was pressed 
 into the service of Imperialism. The fittest were destined 
 to survive, not only in the animal but in the political world, 
 and the devil would take the hindmost among the nations as 
 among individuals. In the sphere of action Disraeli had been 
 steadily working in the same direction as that indicated, in the 
 sphere of political philosophy, by Professor Seeley. The 
 purchase of the Khedive's shares in the Suez Canal (1875); 
 the proclamation of Queen Victoria as Empress of India 
 (1876) ; the annexation of the Transvaal (1877) ; the acquisi- 
 tion of Cyprus (1878) mark progressive stages in the realization 
 of a definite and conscious policy. For Disraeli had the 
 imagination to perceive, long before the truth was revealed to 
 the mass of his countrymen, that a new era was dawning : 
 
 ' You have ', he said, * a new world, new influences at work, 
 new and unknown objects and dangers with which to cope. . . . 
 The relations of England to Europe are not the same as they 
 were in the days of Lord Chatham or Frederick the Great. 
 The Queen of England has become the sovereign of the most 
 powerful of Oriental States. On the other side of the globe 
 there are now establishments belonging to her teeming with 
 wealth and population. . . . These are vast and novel elements 
 in the distribution of power . . . what our duty is at this 
 critical moment is to maintain the Empire of England.' 
 
 mmmmmmmmsiSlMSim^ 
 
78 THE EUROPEAN COMMONWEALTH 
 
 Lord Beaconsfield was denounced by opponents as a 
 political charlatan, an Oriental adventurer, a pinchbeck 
 Imperialist. Posterity will decide whether the denunciation 
 was just, or whether the accusations will recoil upon the heads 
 of the accusers. But this is certain : that Lord Beaconsfield 
 perceived that a vast change was taking place under the eyes 
 of his contemporaries, though by the majority of them unper- 
 ceived, in the centre of political gravity. * A new world, new 
 influences at work.' Lord Beaconsfield was at least enough 
 of an Englishman to entertain an ardent hope that the new 
 world would be predominantly English, that the new influences 
 might be directed into channels which would subserve the 
 interests of England, and therefore (as an Englishman may be 
 forgiven for believing) the interests of mankind. Such a belief 
 is, doubtless, an apposite illustration of that new imperialistic 
 temper which, since 1870, has contributed one of the dominant 
 notes to European politics. 
 
 A second may be discerned in the revival of commercial- 
 nationalism, the neo-protectionism first popularized in Germany 
 by Friedrich List. The triumph of the Manchester School was 
 hailed in England as the inauguration of a new era in inter- 
 national relations. The demolition of commercial barriers was 
 to be the prelude to a universal peace. The most characteristic 
 of all the mid-Victorian singers addressed to the cosmopolitan 
 patrons of the Great Exhibition of 1862 the famous adjuration: 
 
 O ye the wise who think, the wise who reign, 
 From growing commerce loose her latest chain. 
 And let the fair white-wing'd peacemaker fly 
 To happy havens under all the sky, 
 And mix the seasons and the golden hours. 
 Till each man find his home in all men's good, 
 And all men work in noble brotherhood. 
 Breaking their mailed fleets and armM towers. 
 And ruling by obeying nature's powers, 
 And gathering all the fruits of earth 
 And crowned with all her flowers. 
 
 Such was the dream of the Cobdenites : free trade would 
 render war, if not impossible, at least ridiculous ; international 
 commerce, if not international law, would silence arms. But 
 
 "W 
 
WORLD-POLITICS 79 
 
 the dream faded. The fiscal policy of England found few 
 imitators. So far from ' breaking their mailed fleets and 
 armed towers ', the wise who reigned (to say nothing of the 
 wise who thought) piled armaments on armaments. So far 
 from loosing from commerce her latest chain, they raised ' 
 higher and higher their protective tariffs. Statesmen of the 
 ' realistic ' school turned not to Adam Smith but to Friedrich 
 List for inspiration. Not cosmopolitanism but economic 
 nationalism became the fashionable philosophy. 
 
 Further consequences ensued. If the nations of Europe 
 were to be self-sufficing, they must needs acquire the com- 
 mand of lands, tropical or semi-tropical, which could supply 
 them with the raw materials essential for the production of 
 their manufactured goods. 'Formerly', as General Smuts 
 lately said in an address to the Geographical Society, 
 
 * we did not fully appreciate the tropics as in the economy of 
 civilization. It is only quite recently that people have come 
 to realize that without an abundance of the raw materials which 
 the tropics alone can supply, the highly developed industries 
 of to-day would be impossible. Vegetable and mineral oils, 
 cotton, sisal, rubber, jute, and similar products in vast quantities 
 are essential requirements of the industrial world.' 
 
 More than that ; they must secure markets in which to 
 dispose of their finished products. It was a revival of the 
 old idea of * plantations ' ; of oversea estates to be worked 
 for the benefit of the home proprietors ; in a word, the old 
 colonial system denounced by Burke and Adam Smith as 
 unworthy of any nation, save a nation of shopkeepers, and 
 unworthy even of them. Other motives were at work, notably 
 in the new German Empire. A characteristic feature of the 
 Industrial Revolution had everywhere been the rapid growth 
 of population and its aggregation into the towns. With the 
 depletion of the country districts the problem of the food- 
 supply began to loom largely upon the horizon even in those 
 countries which are economically more self-sufficing than is 
 England. In 1871 over sixty-three per cent, of the people of 
 Germany lived in villages and small towns (under 2,000 
 population), less than two per cent, lived in towns of over 
 100,000 population. In 1905 only forty-two per cent, lived 
 
8o THE EUROPEAN COMMONWEALTH 
 
 in the villages and small towns, while the percentage of 
 dwellers in big cities (over 100,000) had risen from 1*96 to 
 19. This is a fact of great significance in relation to German 
 Weltpolitik, German manufacturers were on the one hand 
 more and more in need of supplies of raw materials, such 
 materials as only tropical lands could supply. On the other 
 hand they needed overseas markets for the disposal of their 
 surplus manufactures. Such markets were not provided by 
 Germans living under the German flag abroad. Emigrants 
 were, indeed, leaving the shores of Germany in increasing 
 numbers. For some years they were leaving at the rate of 
 200,000 a year, and in 1882 the number reached 250,000. 
 But when they left Germany they were lost to the Fatherland. 
 Of the 2,225,000 Germans who emigrated in the thirty years 
 between 1876 and 1906, over 1,000,000 went to the United 
 States of America ; other American States attracted 60,000, 
 less than 10,000 went to Africa. 
 
 For some years before the outbreak of the present War 
 German emigration had virtually ceased. The tide indeed 
 had turned. The case for the rendition of the German 
 colonies has lately been argued with great moderation and 
 some plausibility by a writer second to none among English- 
 men in his knowledge of Germany.^ But much of his argu- 
 ment is, I would respectfully submit, not relevant to the 
 existing situation. He points out, truly enough, that whereas 
 England possesses 287 square miles of overseas Empire to 
 every 1,000 of the home population ; whereas France possesses 
 115, Germany possesses only 16; and he insists that the 
 rapid growth of the home population and its increasing 
 density entitles Germany to colonial outlets. But does she 
 desire them ? Let Baron von Rechenberg, formerly Governor 
 of German East Africa, answer Mr. Dawson : 
 
 * For a number of years immigration into Germany has 
 been much greater than emigration from Germany. . . . Even 
 in times of peace German agriculture had not a surplus but 
 a shortage of labour, and it cannot possibly accord with our 
 interests to increase the shortage by encouraging emigration. 
 
 * W. H. Dawson, Problems of the Peace, 
 
WORLD-POLITICS 8i 
 
 . . . Regrettable though it is, there can be no question at the 
 conclusion of peace of acquiring extensive territory for settle- 
 ment ; there is no appropriate country, and there are no 
 farmers to settle on it.' ^ 
 
 But I anticipate the sequence of events. The depletion of 
 German citizens steadily proceeding for thirty years was 
 regarded as serious from the economic point of view ; certainly 
 as not less serious in its military aspect. Upon colonial enter- 
 prise as such Bismarck looked coldly. He had set before 
 himself two clear and definite but limited ambitions : first, to 
 make Prussia dominant in Germany — to unify Germany under 
 the hegemony of the Hohenzollern ; and, secondly, to make 
 Germany dominant in continental Europe. The first ambition 
 was attained in 1871 ; the second was practically achieved by 
 1882. The formation of the Triple Alliance in the latter 
 year seemed to render Germany reasonably secure from attack 
 on either front. Her powerful neighbours had, moreover, 
 been diverted to more distant enterprises. England had 
 been encouraged to occupy Egypt; Tunis had been tossed 
 to France; Russia had been stimulated to enterprise in 
 Central Asia, in order that she might give trouble to British 
 India on the N.W. frontier. Divide et impera. Set England 
 and France by the ears in Egypt ; France and Italy in Tunis ; 
 Russia and England in Central Asia. Such was the object 
 of Bismarck's diplomacy. 
 
 Meanwhile, pressure was put upon Bismarck to permit and 
 even to encourage the overseas enterprise of his countrymen ; 
 but he was strangely reluctant to do so. In his view Ger- 
 many's place was not on the water, but on the continent. In 
 1882 there was not a single German living under the German 
 flag abroad. In that year, however, the DeiUscher Kolonial- 
 verein was founded, and two years later the Germans' made 
 their first serious plunge into Weltpolitik. Once started their 
 progress was aftnazingly rapid, and within three years the 
 Colonial Empire of Germany, an Empire extending over 
 1,000,000 square miles of territory, and embracing a native 
 population of over 12,000,000, was 2, fait accompli, 
 
 * Quoted by General Smuts, Geographical Journal, \o\. li, No. 3, p. 140. 
 
 2120 G 
 
82 THE EUROPEAN COMMONWEALTH 
 
 In Africa Germany had played a considerable part in the 
 preliminary work of exploration. Among geographers and 
 explorers the names of Friedrich Hornemann, who before the 
 end of the eighteenth century made a memorable journey 
 from Tripoli to the Niger ; of Baron Karl von der Decken, 
 who surveyed Mount Kilimanjaro in 1 860 ; of Eduard Mohr 
 and Karl Mauch ; of Gerard Rohlfs and Gustav Nachtigal, will 
 always be held in high renown. But it is a significant and 
 characteristic fact that German exploration was not followed 
 by German settlement and colonization. The motive force 
 of colonization was lacking to Germany in the 'sixties and 
 early 'seventies, as it was lacking to England in the sixteenth 
 century. And when the impulse did come it came, charac- 
 teristically, not from the people but from the Government. 
 
 'In a degree unparalleled in the history of European Im- 
 perialism, the German colonial Empire', writes Mr. Ramsay 
 Muir, * was the result of force and design, not of a gradual 
 evolution. It was not the product of German enterprise 
 outside of Europe, for, owing to the conditions of her history, 
 Germany had hitherto taken no part in the expansion of 
 Europe ; it was the product of Germany's dominating position 
 in Europe, and the expression of her resolve to build up an 
 external empire by the same means which she had employed 
 to create this position.' ^ 
 
 It is well and truly said. Nevertheless, once the work was 
 taken in hand, it was carried through by the Government with 
 extraordinary thoroughness, rapidity, and success. The first 
 annexation of the Transvaal by Great Britain, in 1877, and its 
 retrocession in 1881 led, in each case, to direct diplomatic 
 negotiations between Pretoria and Berlin. Paul Kruger him- 
 self made two journeys to Berlin and was, on both occasions, 
 cordially welcomed by the old Emperor and his Chancellor. 
 In 1884 Germany made a territorial start in Africa. In that 
 year she established a formal protectorate over what has since 
 been known as German South- West Africa : the whole of the 
 coastlands, with the exception — an important one — of Walfisch 
 Bay, from the Orange River to Cape Frio ; in the north-west 
 
 ^ The Expansion of Europe^ p. 140, an illuminating work to which I 
 wish to acknowledge my indebtedness for several suggestive ideas. 
 
 iMiiaa— liiiiMii^iiiMir il 1 imm 
 
WORLD-POLITICS 83 
 
 of the same continent she annexed Togoland and the 
 Cameroons, while in the Pacific she acquired the greater part 
 of Samoa, the northern coast of New Guinea, and the New 
 Britain and other islands, since known as the Bismarck Archi- 
 pelago. A year later the German East Africa Company was 
 established and rapidly acquired a large and important territory 
 on the east coast of the continent. The planting of the 
 German flag in East and South-West Africa and her territorial 
 acquisitions in the Pacific aroused stormy protests from the 
 British colonists in South Africa and even stronger protests 
 from the Britons of Australasia. But the protests were dis- 
 regarded by the Home Government, at that time in the hands 
 of Mr. Gladstone, Lord Granville, and Lord Derby. Bismarck 
 had indeed taken good care, as we have seen, that the hands 
 of the English Government should be securely tied ; on the 
 one hand by the complications between England and France 
 which had ensued upon the British occupation of Egypt ; on 
 the other by the Anglo-Russian rivalry in Central Asia. 
 
 Meanwhile, other European Powers had not been idle on 
 the African continent. France had established some trading 
 settlements on the Gambia and Guinea Coast in the seventeenth 
 century ; she had made good her position in Algeria between 
 1830 and 1847 ; Tunis, as we have seen, had fallen to her in 
 1881. She occupied the Ivory Coast in 1891 ; Dahomey, with 
 which she had long had dealings, in 1892, and Madagascar in 
 1895. Her claims upon Morocco were finally conceded by 
 England in 1904, by Germany in 1909 ; and a great portion ot 
 the Congo has also fallen to her share. Italy, after many 
 vicissitudes, managed to establish herself on the East Coast in 
 Somaliland, and on the Mediterranean Coast in Tripoli. But 
 alike strategically, geographically, and commercially the posi- 
 tion of England is incomparably stronger in Africa than that of 
 any of her European rivals. Securely planted on the Atlantic, 
 the Mediterranean, the Red Sea, and the Indian Ocean ; con- 
 trolling, in large measure, three out of four of the great African 
 waterways, the Nile, the Niger, and the Zambesi, Britain's 
 position is or ought to be impregnable. What it would have 
 been but for the foresight of Cecil Rhodes, the organizing 
 
 G Q, 
 
84 THE EUROPEAN COMMONWEALTH 
 
 genius of Lord Cromer, and the military skill of Lord Roberts 
 and Lord Kitchener, is more doubtful. What is certain is 
 that it would not be what it is could Germany have prevented 
 it. So long ago as 1879 Ernst von Weber, the real parent of 
 German enterprise in Africa, urged upon Bismarck the acquisi- 
 tion of the Transvaal and the permeation, economic and 
 political, of South Africa. 
 
 ' If, he writes, ' a European Power were to succeed in 
 gradually bringing these countries altogether under its 
 dominion, or at least under its political influence, a kingdom 
 would be won thereby which in circumference, as well as in the 
 wealth of its productions, would not be second to the British 
 East Indian Empire. It was this unlimited room for annexa- 
 tion in the north, this open access to the heart of Africa which 
 principally inspired me with the idea . . . that Germany 
 should try, by the acquisition of Delagoa Bay and the subse- 
 quent continual influx of German emigrants to the Transvaal, 
 to secure the future dominion over this country, and so pave 
 the way for the foundation of a German African Empire of the 
 future.' 
 
 That menace to British ascendancy in South Africa could 
 never have arisen had Lord Kimberley been willing to spend 
 a relatively small amount^ on the purchase of Delagoa Bay 
 in 1872 ; it was averted by the firmness of Cecil Rhodes, of 
 Mr. Chamberlain, and Lord Milner. But though averted, the 
 history of the last four years has clearly proved that it was not 
 dissipated. In no quarter of the world has the struggle between 
 the British Commonwealth and the German Empire been more 
 severe than upon the African continent. In that struggle British 
 sea-power has been the dominating factor ; but hardly second 
 to it in importance have been the wonderful initiative, valour, 
 and endurance of His Majesty's subjects, led by General Botha 
 
 * I regret to say that diligent search has not enabled me to verify this 
 statement; but I find in Sir Charles Dilke's Greater Brtiain (i. 556, ed, 
 1890), the following passage which is in a general sense confirmatory : 
 
 * Mr. Merriman has, I believe, often said that it is a pity that Delagoa 
 Bay was not purchased by us at a time when a comparatively small sum 
 would have bought out the claims of Portugal. Lord Carnarvon has gone 
 further and has said : " When I succeeded to office I had reason to think 
 that the offer of a moderate sum might have purchased that which a very 
 large amount could not now compass." ' 
 
 For neither statement does Dilke add references, and his comment upon 
 Lord Carnarvon's statement betrays prejudice. 
 
WORLD-POLITICS 85 
 
 and General Smuts in South Africa, and the loyalty and 
 discipline of the native levies in West and East. 
 
 The surrender of the German colonies in the North- West — 
 Togoland and the Cameroons — was an obvious concession to 
 the Mistress of the Seas. But it was far otherwise in regard 
 to German South- West and German East. We have paid 
 dearly in the last four years for the weakness and procrastina- 
 tion exhibited by Whitehall in the early 'eighties. The inertia 
 which permitted the German occupation of the South- West 
 has never been forgotten or forgiven in South Africa. But 
 not until the present War were the perils involved in it fully 
 revealed. For the Union Government the presence of the 
 Germans in ' South-West ' meant not only an enemy vigilant 
 and ready to strike at their gates ; but a peril, stealthy, perva- 
 sive, and imminent, to be countered within the citadel. Before 
 General Botha could proceed to his difficult task in German 
 South-West, he had to deal with the domestic disaffection 
 so carefully fomented by German intrigues in the Union 
 itself. Over rebels at home, and enemies without, he has 
 achieved a victory^ notable and complete. He has done more 
 than that. He has emancipated the natives of South-West 
 Africa from one of the most cruel and galling tyrannies ever 
 imposed by one race upon another. The history of the 
 dealings of the white man with the black contains many 
 chapters which no one can read without regret, and indeed 
 repulsion. But there is no more horrible chapter than that 
 which records the treatment of the Hereros by the Germans 
 in South-West Africa. The entire population, which increases 
 with almost menacing rapidity under the British flag in Africa, 
 has diminished in the South-West from 300,000 to about 
 140,000 ; 30,000 to 40,000 Hereros perished in the rebellion of 
 1904-5 alone, and the race has been virtually exterminated. 
 It is the same in Togoland, where the native population, 
 officially estimated at 2,500,000 in 1894, had declined in 1914 
 to 1,032,000. In the Cameroons whole districts have been 
 denuded of inhabitants and thousands of natives have taken 
 refuge under the British flag in Nigeria. Yet, notwithstanding 
 these facts, familiar to every educated white man and notorious 
 
86 THE EUROPEAN COMMONWEALTH 
 
 among the natives from Capetown to the Zambesi, there must 
 be ' no annexations ', lest we violate a formula first proclaimed 
 in Petrograd, lest we offend the Olympian impartiality of 
 invertebrate cosmopolitans, lest we expose ourselves to the 
 imputation of self-seeking motives and territorial greed. It 
 is not too much to say that the mere suggestion of a rendition 
 of German South-West would evoke the bitterest resentment 
 alike among Britons and Boers in Cape Colony, and indeed 
 throughout the Union, and would arouse, as it would desei-ve, 
 the contempt of every black man south of the Zambesi. 
 
 The position in German East is not essentially dissimilar. 
 The case against rendition is not on South African grounds so 
 strong, but it is not less strong on the ground of Imperial 
 strategy, and not much weaker on the humanitarian ground. 
 East Africa is rich in raw material, both human and industrial. 
 Both kinds have been exploited with skill and persistence by 
 the Germans. The task of General Smuts and his successors, 
 and of the truly Imperial forces under their command, 
 has therefore been particularly arduous. But it has been 
 accomplished. And as to the future of the territory? On 
 what principle is it to be determined ? 
 
 Dr. Solf, the German Secretary for the Colonies, has lately 
 propounded a simple solution of the problem. 
 
 * In redividing Africa,' he is reported to have said, * those 
 nations which have proved most humane towards the natives 
 must be favoured. Germany has always considered that to 
 colonize meant doing mission work. That is why even in the 
 present War the natives of our colonies stick to us. England's 
 colonial history, on the other hand, is nothing but a list of 
 dark crimes.' 
 
 Let the test proposed by Dr. Solf be accepted: provided 
 that he is not permitted to act as judge as well as advocate 
 we have no reason to decline it. Apply, if it were possible, 
 the principle of self-determination. The letter from the 
 Principal of St. Andrew's College, Zanzibar,^ affords some 
 indication of the probable response : 
 
 * If the Germans ever return to East Africa ', said his native 
 pupils, * they will find an empty land, for the people will have 
 
 * The Times, March ii, 191 8, 
 
WORLD-POLITICS 87 
 
 crossed the border to live under the English ; they will not 
 stay to be done to death by revengeful Germans. If, they 
 asked, 'the English mean to give us back to the Germans, 
 why did they bring the war to our land in the beginning ? If 
 they don't want to keep it, why did they want to take it? 
 We shall all have suffered, and so many of our brothers will 
 have died in vain if the only result of the fighting is to lay up 
 for us a German revenge.' 
 
 These native-students may be babes and sucklings in 
 philosophy ; but in their simplicity they seem to have pro- 
 pounded a dilemma which may perhaps confound the wisdom 
 of the wisest diplomatists. 
 
 There are three points at least from which the future of the 
 German colonies may be regarded : that of raw materials, of 
 man-power, and of Imperial strategy. On the first there may 
 be room for reasonable compromise ; and there is no reason 
 why the door should not be kept open in a commercial sense 
 to all comers ; but on the second and third points compromise 
 is impossible. * Sovereignty ' cannot be divided, nor, as some 
 amiable phrase-makers appear to think, * internationalized '. 
 The case is put with admirable explicitness from the German 
 standpoint in the following extracts. The first is from the 
 Deutscher Kurier : 
 
 'German might and influence must be carried far beyond 
 the fortress of Europe. . . . Turkish sovereignty in the Persian 
 Gulf, a German Central African Empire from Dar-es-Salaam 
 (German East) to Duala (Cameroons), will flank the Indian 
 world-sea and will bring our frontiers to the southern part of 
 the Atlantic. Fleet bases in New Guinea and Samoa, on the 
 Moroccan Coast, and in the Azores will complete our influence 
 on the high sea road that girdles the earth.' 
 
 The development of submarine activity, in combination with 
 wireless telegraphy, gives to this paragraph a striking, and, for 
 the British Empire, a most sinister significance. On one side 
 we may have to face direct communication, by land and inland 
 seas, from Berlin to Kabul ; on another we must contemplate 
 the possibility of a naval base established in the Sea of 
 Marmora and battleships and submarines issuing therefrom to 
 menace our line communications in the Eastern Mediterranean ; 
 Duala would threaten our trade via the Cape, while from half 
 
88 THE EUROPEAN COMMONWEALTH 
 
 a dozen harbours on the 500 miles of sea-board possessed by 
 German East the German fleets would be in a position to 
 interrupt our trade with India and Australasia via the Canal. 
 The prospect from the standpoint both of overseas trade and 
 of Imperial strategy is menacing beyond the power of com- 
 putation. 
 
 Such an analysis is, however, far from exhaustive. There 
 is the man-power aspect. This War has demonstrated beyond 
 dispute the value of the coloured soldier. The French have 
 utilized the Senegalese to good purpose on the Western front ; 
 the Congolese have fought well under Belgian officers in 
 German East, and our own Nigerian troops have given an 
 excellent account of themselves in the Cameroons. None, 
 however, have done better than the native troops brought 
 into the field against us in the East African campaign. The 
 German militarists regard Central Africa, naturally enough, 
 as an almost illimitable recruiting ground. 
 
 ' Experience of this War has shown ', says a writer in the 
 Kolnische Zeitung, * that an East African native, if sufficiently 
 trained and led by Europeans, makes an efficient soldier, 
 while the South- West African is an even better soldier given 
 similar circumstances. In future, in order to prevent her 
 colonies from being overrun by other peoples, Germany must 
 utilize to the full those resources of man-power.' 
 
 Herr Emil Zimmermann, the leader of the Central African 
 School, writing in the Europdische Staats- und Wirtschafts- 
 Zeitung (June 23, 19 17), is even more precise : 
 
 * If the Great War makes Central Africa German, fifty years 
 hence 500,000 and more Germans can be living there by the 
 side of 50,000,000 blacks. Then there may be an army of 
 1 ,000,000 men in German Africa, and the colony will have its 
 own war-navy like Brazil. An England that is strong in Africa 
 dominates the situation in Southern Europe and does not 
 need us. But from Central Africa we shall dominate the 
 English connexions with South Africa, India, and Australia, 
 and we shall force English policy to reckon with us.' ^ 
 
 Under the brilliant inspiration of M. Andrd Chdradame and 
 in deference to the cogent reasoning of Dr. Naumann we have 
 devoted time and thought during the last three years to Pan- 
 
 * The Times ^ Nov. 9, 191 7. 
 
WORLD-POLITICS 89 
 
 Germanism and to Mittel-Europa. Has not our vision, as usual, 
 been too circumscribed ? Sir Stanley Maude dissipated, we 
 trust for ever, the dream of an all-German route from Berlin 
 or perhaps Antwerp to Bagdad and Basra. But what if the 
 Berlin to Bokhara scheme be substituted for Berlin to Basra ? 
 Vladivostock may be as serviceable as Basra in the develop- 
 ment of schemes of Weltpolitik. Duala and Dar-es-Salaam 
 may, if restored, cut our lines of communication at two 
 points. 
 
 The Germans may not have proved themselves to be suc- 
 cessful colonists : they have not indeed sought colonies for the 
 sake of colonization. But at least they have learnt to ' think 
 imperially'. Their colonial aims, as General Smuts has lately 
 pointed out, are * entirely dominated by far-reaching con- 
 ceptions of world-politics. Not colonies but military power 
 and strategic positions for exercising world-power in future 
 are her real aims.' 
 
 This truth cannot be too strongly impressed alike upon 
 statesmen, upon the leaders and guides of public opinion, and, 
 above all, upon British citizens in all parts of the world. 
 Germany staked everything upon this War. For her it was 
 consciously Weltmacht oder Niedergang. She made, neces- 
 sarily, a late entrance upon the stage of world-politics. But 
 that fact may in itself have contributed something to her 
 clearness of vision and concentration of purpose. Belgrade 
 and Antwerp first : Calais, Boulogne, and perhaps Havre a 
 little later. Yet this was not, in itself, an end. It was a 
 means by which she could fasten her fangs in the throat of 
 England : throttling her in the English Channel ; cutting her 
 line of communications in the Eastern Mediterranean ; holding 
 up her trade in the Indian Ocean ; and, above all, compelling 
 her to concede German claims in Central Africa. 
 
 The foregoing paragraphs are in no sense, of course, ex- 
 haustive ; they are intended to be merely suggestive of the 
 new Orientation of History and Politics, and indicative of the 
 new demands which will in the immediate future be made upon 
 the imagination alike of historians and of statesmen. Both 
 will be compelled to ' think imperially ' as they have never 
 done before. 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 THE LOGIC OF HISTORY: THE 
 HOHENZOLLERN TRADITION 
 
 * La guerre est I'industrie nationale de la Prusse.' 
 
 Securus iudicat orbis terrarum. The judgement of the world 
 has already decided that the responsibility for the present 
 War lies upon the shoulders of Germany : upon its rulers and 
 its people.^ Nor can there be any doubt that the verdict is 
 in accordance with the facts. As regards the immediate 
 antecedents of the War the judgement may be accepted as 
 final. It may suffice, it has already sufficed, to ease the 
 conscience of ; the peace-loving people of this country ; it 
 has nerved' our soldiers, sailors, and airmen to the fulfilment 
 of their heroic duty in the fighting line; it has encouraged 
 our rulers' at home to patient persistence in well-doing. 
 
 But the scientific student of history has a further duty to 
 perform. It is his, in a large sense, to ' vindicate the ways of 
 
 * These words were written in September 1914, and the substance of 
 the present chapter was published in the Nineteenth Century and After 
 for October 1914. Since that time evidence in support of this verdict 
 has steadily accumulated. No impartial mind could resist the conclusion 
 suggested by the Collected Diplomatic Documents relating to the Outbreak 
 of the European War^ published early in 191 5. To these has since been 
 added the Greek White Book, which was not published, for obvious 
 reasons, until August 1917. The conclusions derived from a study of the 
 official documents have been substantiated in many quarters : notably by 
 the works of Mr. Gerard, the American Ambassador in Berlin ; by the pub- 
 lication early in 1918 of the Revelations of Prince Lichnowsky, who down 
 to the outbreak of war was German Ambassador in London ; by the 
 speeches of Sir Edward (now Viscount) Grey and Mr. Asquith (in particular 
 Mr. Asquith's speech at Cardiff on October 2, 1914, and a 'statement* 
 issued by Sir E. Grey on September i, 191 5) ; by an article in Le Temps 
 (September 1914), by M. Isvolsky, formerly Russian Ambassador in Paris ; 
 and not least by an article contributed by Mr. Take Jonescu to the 
 Grande Revue for Marchii9i5, a period long anterior to Roumania's entry 
 into the War. Innumerable articles and speeches might be added to this 
 list, but I quote those only upon which the historian of the future may 
 rely as * original authorities *. 
 
THE HOHENZOLLERN TRADITION 91 
 
 God to man ' ; it is his function to inquire whether, for the 
 great events which are passing before our eyes, there may not 
 be a more remote, but not therefore less direct, responsibility ; 
 whether the past ought not in justice to share the moral 
 burdens of the present ? The personal equation is always 
 important in politics, and never more so than in war and in 
 the preparations for war. But there is a force more potent 
 than that exerted by the individuals who play their part upon 
 the contemporary stage. It is the force of historical tradition, 
 moulding throughout the ages the policy of States, and 
 bending to its imperious dictates even the stubborn wills of 
 autocratic rulers. It is the force exerted by what one of the 
 most brilliant of French historians ^ has felicitously described 
 as les mceurs politique s. 
 
 In no European State, ancient or modern, has political 
 tradition exercised a more profound or more persistent influ- 
 ence than in the territories ruled by the Hohenzollern.^ No 
 one who fails to acquaint himself with the Hohenzollern 
 tradition can possibly apprehend the full significance of the 
 events which are passing before our eyes to-day, nor set them 
 forth in anything which approximates to correct historical 
 perspective. Bismarck himself paid deference, perhaps un- 
 conscious deference, to this subtle force when he made his 
 famous declaration : * That a war with France will succeed 
 that with Austria lies in the logic of history.' In the present 
 chapter it is proposed to subject that logic to more detailed 
 analysis, and to give to Bismarck's aphorism a more extended 
 application. 
 
 It may be well at the outset to invite, and if possible 
 obtain, assent to a series of propositions which may be sum- 
 marily stated thus : 
 
 (i) That modern Prussia is essentially an artificial polity — 
 a literally manufactured product ; ^ 
 
 (ii) that it has been manufactured by its kings, and by the 
 
 ^ M. Albert Sorel. 
 
 * This tradition has been expounded in detail in The Evolution of 
 Prussia^ by J. A. R. Marriott and C. Grant Robertson (Clar. Press, 1915). 
 
 ^ This proposition has more recently been demonstrated in Professor H. 
 Bergson's brilHant essay The Meaning of the War (Fisher Unvvin,. 1916). 
 
92 THE EUROPEAN COMMONWEALTH 
 
 armies to the maintenance of which they have, during long 
 ages, hypothecated all the resources of the State ; 
 
 (iii) that by the foresight of Prussian statesmanship and 
 the strength of Prussian arms the modern German Empire 
 has been brought into being ; and 
 
 (iv) that the triumph of Prussian policy during the last 
 half-century has not run counter to, but has, in the main, 
 corresponded with the national sentiments of Germany as 
 a whole. 
 
 It is no doubt true that the rough methods of Potsdam 
 have not always commended themselves to the smaller States 
 of Germany, and that the interference of the Prussian drill- 
 sergeant has been resented in the lesser German Courts and 
 Principalities which have been the traditional homes of German 
 culture in the pre-Treitschke sense. Still, there can be no 
 greater mistake than to suppose that Prussian hegemony has 
 not fulfilled some at least of the political aspirations of a great 
 but formerly disunited nation. Those centripetal aspirations 
 found their consummation in the events of 1870 and 1871. 
 'Against whom are the Germans now fighting?' was a 
 question addressed by Thiers to Leopold von Ranke in the 
 autumn of 1870, after the overthrow of Napoleon HL ' It is 
 against Louis XIV that we have now to wage war,' was the 
 great historian's reply. And the reply was as accurate as it 
 was apposite. For at least two hundred years it had been 
 a fixed maxim of French diplomacy to encourage the centri- 
 fugal tendencies of the smaller German States and, by main- 
 taining constitutional anarchy and political disintegration, to 
 prevent the growth of a powerful Empire beyond the Rhine. 
 To this end the French conquered and annexed Alsace and 
 a great part of Lorraine. To this end they maintained cordial 
 diplomatic relations with Constantinople, Warsaw, and Stock- 
 holm. The archives of the French Foreign Office, which 
 have in late years been made public,^ disclose beyond all 
 dispute the "leading motives of French diplomacy and the 
 persistence with which, for at least three centuries, the pre- 
 determined policy was pursued. Even at a moment like the 
 
 * Cf. Instructions donndes aux Ambassadeurs et Ministres de France, 
 
THE HOHENZOLLERN TRADITION 93 
 
 present a sense of historical fair-play compels us to remember 
 that in 1870 Germany had some ground for the belief that 
 the defeat and dismemberment of France must precede any 
 effective effort for the realization of German unity. Plainly, 
 that was what Ranke meant when he declared that the 
 Germans, in 1870, were fighting against Louis XIV. It was 
 a clear apprehension of his meaning which, contrary to ex- 
 pectatiQn, brought the South German States into line with 
 the North German Confederation, and caused all discordant 
 notes to be, for the moment, hushed. 
 
 ' Seldom had such a national rising been seen — so swift, so 
 universal, so enthusiastic, sweeping away in a moment the 
 heartburnings of liberals and feudals in Prussia, the jealousies 
 
 of North and South Germans, of Protestants and Catholics 
 
 Never before for centuries, not even in the War of Liberation 
 of 1814, had the whole people felt and acted so completely 
 as one.' ^ 
 
 Thus wrote Lord Bryce in the full glow of Teutonic 
 enthusiasm generated by the victories of 1870, and none can 
 gainsay the accuracy of his words. 
 
 But a crucial question remained. Was the consummation 
 of German unity in 187 1 to be regarded as a goal or as 
 a starting-point? Did German sentiment as opposed to 
 Prussian ambition demand a further step? Bismarck and 
 the old Kaiser unquestionably believed that their life-work 
 had been accomplished by 1871. They sought only, in their 
 remaining years, to conserve the acquisitions of the previous 
 decade; to avert the diplomatic isolation of Germany; and, 
 above all, to obstruct any rapprochement between France on 
 the one hand, and Austria, and still more Russia, on the other. 
 But though the old men might chant their Nunc Dimittis, 
 though they might rest content with the attainment of German 
 unity under a Prussian hegemony, though they might depre- 
 cate the extension of the sphere of German activity and 
 discourage the idea of colonial expansion, their successors 
 could hardly be expected to take the same view. Even the 
 elder statesmen never ceased to be apprehensive as to the 
 
 ^ Holy Ro7nan Empire (supplementary chapter), p. 433. 
 
94 THE EUROPEAN COMMONWEALTH 
 
 designs of France. They were astonished and dismayed by 
 the extraordinary rapidity with which France recovered, both 
 poHtically and economically, from the crushing disaster of 
 1 87 1. They almost precipitated a renewal of the contest 
 in 1875, and to the end of their days they were on their 
 guard against a war of revanche^ for the recovery of Alsace 
 and Lorraine. 
 
 The suspicions entertained by William I deepened into 
 certainty in the mind of his grandson. The firm establish- 
 ment of the Third Republic in France ; the elimination of 
 one monarchical candidate after another; the reorganization 
 of the French army ; the rapprochement of France and Eng- 
 land, the conclusion of an alliance between France and Russia ; 
 the formation of the triple entente — these things might by 
 themselves have tempted William I, and would certainly have 
 induced Bismarck, to renew the contest with France at the 
 first favourable opportunity. 
 
 Meanwhile, a new ambition had entered into the soul of 
 William II and the military caste upon which he relied. To 
 them the realization of German unity was not the goal but 
 the starting-point of German policy. To have attained to the 
 first place among the continental Powers was something, but 
 it was not enough. The rapid growth of population, the 
 amazing development of commerce, the patient and persistent 
 training of the nation in arms, the perfection of the military 
 machine — all this suggested more extended ambitions and 
 afforded substantial guarantees for their fulfilment. 
 
 Nor can it be denied that from the German point of view 
 there was, if not an adequate excuse, at least a plausible 
 motive for war. For a country conscious of greatness the 
 geographical position of Germany is palpably disadvantageous. 
 Wedged in between enemies on land, her eastern frontier 
 exposed to attack, with a coast-line singularly contracted and 
 ill-adapted to become a base for naval warfare, Germany 
 found herself in an uneasy situation. If she could have rested 
 content with the magnificent position she had already achieved 
 in Europe, well and good. Not for many years, if ever, was 
 that position likely to be effectively threatened. The develop- 
 
THE HOHENZOLLERN TRADITION 95 
 
 ment of the Pan-Slavic sentiment might ultimately have 
 compelled her to defend her eastern frontier, and such 
 a defence might have given the signal for a renewal of the 
 attack from France. But Russia was herself not exempt 
 from menace, and there were other directions towards which, 
 by cautious diplomacy, her ambitions might have been 
 diverted. 
 
 Germany had, then, no obvious motive for taking the 
 offensive against either Russia or France, except, indeed, as 
 a means to an end ; except for the purpose of enabling her 
 to work her will upon another Power. 
 
 For some years past Germany has been consumed by the 
 ambition to challenge the world-power of the British Empire. 
 This truth, long since revealed to the few, can now be denied 
 by none. To the generation of Germans who have graduated 
 in the school of Treitschke the truth is elementary. To an 
 extent which is even yet hardly recognized in England, 
 history has in Germany become the handmaid of politics. 
 The Prussian school of historians, recoiling from the more 
 severe and more scientific method of Ranke, has systematically 
 set itself to the fulfilment of a patriotic purpose. Dahlmann, 
 Hausser, Duncker, Droysen, Sybel, Treitschke — the apostolic 
 succession is unbroken. The first article in the creed of the 
 new cult was the exaltation of the Hohenzollern tradition and 
 the justification to the other German States of the Prussian 
 hegemony. The next was the fulfilment of the world- 
 mission of Germany. But this, as it seemed to the disciples 
 of this school, could be accomplished only by the development 
 of sea-power and by a successful challenge to the world - 
 empire of Britain. As long ago as 1863 Treitschke wrote: 
 ' No salvo salutes the German flag in a foreign port. Our 
 country sails the sea without colours, like a pirate.' General 
 von Bernhardi, whose book came belatedly into circulation in 
 England, is the loyal disciple of Treitschke. 
 
 ' The German nation,' wrote Bernhardi, ' from the stand- 
 point of its importance to civilization, is fully entitled ... to 
 aspire to an adequate share in the sovereignty of the world 
 far beyond the limits of its present sphere of influence. ... It 
 
96 THE EUROPEAN COMMONWEALTH 
 
 is a question of life and death for us to keep open our oversea 
 commerce. . . . The maintenance of the freedom of the seas 
 must therefore be always before our eyes as the object of all 
 our naval constructions. Our efforts must not be merely 
 directed towards the necessary repulse of hostile attacks ; we 
 must be conscious of the higher ideal, that we wish to follow 
 an effective world-policy, and that our naval power is destined 
 ultimately to support this world-policy. . . . England is planted 
 before our coasts in such a manner that our entire oversea 
 commerce can be easily blocked. . . . We cannot count on an 
 ultimate victory at sea unless we are victorious on land.' 
 
 These citations are culled from various parts of General 
 von Bernhardi's Germany and the Next War, but it will not 
 be denied that in the aggregate they fairly represent his 
 general line of argument. The author assumes that Germany 
 will have to fight Erance, Russia, and England, possibly in 
 succession, more probably in combination ; and he contends 
 that, therefore, France must be ' completely crushed ' as a 
 preliminary to the defeat of England. This is the food on 
 which young Germany has been nourished. ' Paris first, then 
 London.' The annexation of the northern sea-ports of Belgium 
 and France, as a first step towards the capture of English 
 commerce and the acquisition of English colonies. 
 
 If Bismarck was right in saying that Sedan followed 
 logically upon Sadowa, Bernhardi may be equally justified 
 in insisting that a second Sedan must prepare the way for the 
 defeat and dismemberment of the British Empire. Such, 
 according to the German reading, is the logic of history. To 
 examine, rather more closely, the premisses of the syllogism 
 is the purpose of the pages that follow. If those premisses 
 are sound, it is not easy to resist the conclusion. 
 
 The primary link in the chain of argument is supplied by 
 the first of the propositions enunciated above. The Hohen- 
 zollern power represents not the result of natural evolution, 
 but a highly artificial and laboriously manufactured product. 
 Prussia has been made, in defiance of nature, by the genius 
 of her rulers, the valour of her soldiers, and the industry and 
 devotion of a singularly competent civil service. 
 
 No political philosopher who looked upon the map of 
 
THE HOHENZOLLERN TRADITION 97 
 
 Europe so lately even as the seventeenth century could possibly 
 have predicted the rise of the Hohenzollern to a dominant 
 position in Germany, still less in Europe. Nothing could have 
 been more unpromising than their situation or prospects. From 
 the sandy waste of Brandenburg they derived an electoral title, 
 but little else ; they had lately (161 8) succeeded by inheritance 
 to the poor and isolated Duchy of East Prussia, but they still 
 held it as vassals of the King of Poland ; they also had claims, 
 eventually conceded, upon one or two duchies in the Rhine- 
 land. 
 
 Upon these unpromising materials the Electors of Bran- 
 denburg set to work, with the clear intention of building up 
 a powerful State in North Germany. From the outset they 
 realized that natural disadvantages could be overcome only 
 by the maintenance of an army quite disproportionate to the 
 immediate requirements of the Electorate. To maintain this 
 army it was essential to develop, or rather to create, the 
 economic resources of the country. Its climate was unfriendly, 
 its soil infertile, its people unskilled, and its geographical 
 situation unfavourable for commerce. The only chance was 
 to import skilled workers, to afford protection to their 
 products, and thus artificially to cultivate the germs of 
 industry and commerce. The expulsion of the Huguenots 
 from France gave the Hohenzollern an opportunity for calcu- 
 lated hospitality which they did not miss. Meanwhile, cautious 
 and ever-watchful diplomacy, combined with the power to 
 strike an effective blow when necessary, enabled the Bran- 
 denburg Electors to enter upon the path of territorial con- 
 solidation and aggrandizement. The first step was taken at 
 the close of the Thirty Years' War. During the first twenty 
 years of the war Brandenburg played a sorry part. For once 
 the Hohenzollern failed to produce the man for the emergency. 
 Frederick the Great pronounced the Elector George William 
 to have been 'utterly unfit to rule', and our own Charles II 
 might have said of him as he did say of George of Den- 
 mark : ' I have tried him drunk and I have tried him sober. 
 Either way there is nothing in him.' Such was the man 
 to whom ill Germany's most fateful hour were committed 
 
 21J0 H 
 
98 THE EUROPEAN COMMONWEALTH 
 
 the fortunes of Brandenburg-Prussia. Fortunately for his 
 country, death released him in 1640 from a burden to which 
 he was manifestly unequal, and during the last eight years 
 of the war the position was to a great extent redeemed by 
 the genius of Frederick William, known to contemporaries 
 and to history as the ' Great Elector '. His reign of forty- 
 eight years (1640-1688) marked the turning-point in the 
 fortunes of his House and country. Himself a strong Cal- 
 vinist, married to Louisa Henrietta, the eldest daughter of 
 Frederick Henry of Orange, he obtained for the German 
 Calvinists the same privileges as had been granted to the 
 Lutherans by the Peace of Augsburg (1555), and by placing 
 himself at the head of the Corpus Evangelicorum, secured 
 the leadership of German Protestantism. The Treaty of 
 Westphalia (1648) also brought to him valuable territorial 
 acquisitions : the eastern (or ' upper ') half of Pomerania, 
 together with the securalized Bishoprics of Cammin, Halber- 
 stadt, and Minden, and the reversion (which in 1681 fell in) 
 to the rich archbishopric, with its great fortress-capital, of 
 Magdeburg. Brilliant, indeed, was the contrast between the 
 position of the Electorate in 1640 and in 1648. But that was 
 only a beginning. By the Treaty of Oliva (1660) the Great 
 Elector freed his Duchy of East Prussia from the suzerainty 
 of Poland, and three years later made his solemn entry 
 into Konigsberg to take over the sovereign power. Attacked 
 by the Swedes in 1674, at France's direction, Frederick 
 William won a brilliant victory at Fehrbellin (1675), but was 
 deprived, again by the intervention of Louis XIV, of all the 
 fruits of it. His son's reign marked a further step in the 
 progress of the HohenzoUern. Admitted to the charmed 
 circle of royalty in 1701, Frederick I chose to take his kingly 
 title, not from his Electorate of Brandenburg but from his 
 non-German Duchy of East Prussia. His son, Frederick 
 William I (1713-40), was in the main content to husband 
 and develop the economic resources of the infant kingdom. 
 But they were husbanded, as ever, with one supreme object. 
 By the most exact and careful administration a small and 
 poor country, containing only two and a half millions of 
 
THE HOHENZOLLERN TRADITION 99 
 
 inhabitants, was enabled to maintain a standing army ot 
 83,000 men. Macaulay, in a famous essay, satirized the 
 methods and scouted the achievements of the old 'drill 
 sergeant'. More critical history is able to perceive that he 
 played his part not unworthily in the development of the 
 drama of his House. To the recruiting, training, and equip- 
 ment of a seemingly disproportionate army he devoted all 
 the powers of a keen if narrow intellect, and all the resources 
 of an overtaxed and overburdened people. Nor was the 
 appropriate prize withheld. This potent instrument of am- 
 bition was bequeathed, in due time, to the drill sergeant's 
 son^ the Great Frederick (1740-86). To what purpose the 
 inheritance was used the history of the eighteenth century 
 eloquently testifies. 
 
 The great Duchy of Silesia was the fruit of two wars with 
 Austria (1740-48 and iy^6-6^), while West Prussia represented 
 Frederick's share in the first partition of Poland (lyyOt). By 
 these vitally important acquisitions Prussia became for the first 
 time a really compact and consolidated kingdom. But Frede- 
 rick's resounding victories in the field did more than fill in and 
 round off the territorial position of his own ancestral dominions. 
 They afforded a rallying-point for German patriotism. ' Never 
 since the dissolution of the Empire of Charlemagne had the 
 Teutonic race won such a field against the French (as the 
 battle of Rossbach). The fame of Frederick began to supply 
 in some degree the place of a common government and 
 a common capital. Then first it was manifest that the 
 Germans were truly a nation.' Thus wrote Carlyle with 
 characteristic over-emphasis and exaggeration, but not without 
 substantial truth ; and the truth is more clearly revealed in 
 Frederick's last political achievenient. The Fiirstenbund^ or 
 league of German princes, which in 1785 Frederick the Great 
 formed to restrain the ambition of the Emperor Joseph II, 
 seemed actually to foreshadow the transference of supremacy 
 from Vienna to Berlin. But Prussia's hour had not yet come. 
 The war of the French Revolution ensued. Fishing in very 
 troubled waters, Frederick William II was able to secure 
 large slices of the doomed kingdom of Poland in 1793 
 
 H 2 
 
loo THE EUROPEAN COMMONWEALTH 
 
 and 1795- By this means South Prussia and New East 
 Prussia were incorporated in the dominions of the Hohenzol- 
 lern. But these partitions of Poland represented, for the time 
 being, the last of a long and unbroken series of cynical and 
 shameless successes. A time of tribulation was at hand. 
 Prussia's initial intervention in the war against revolutionary 
 France was brief and inglorious, and by the Treaty of Bale 
 (1795) she purchased from the French Republic peace at the 
 price of honour. For the next ten years she took no further 
 part in the war, being now contemptuously caressed and now 
 brutally bullied by Napoleon. In 1805, however, Napoleon's 
 insults became unbearable, and the Prussian worm at last 
 turned. And the worm had to pay heavily for turning. The 
 only result of Prussia's plucky but ill-timed intervention was the 
 crushing military disaster at Jena, followed by the occupation 
 of Berlin, the humiliation of the Prussian king, and the dis- 
 memberment of the Prussian kingdom. The Treaty of Tilsit 
 (1807) marked the nadir of the Hohenzollern fortunes. At 
 one fell blow Prussia was deprived of all her possessions west 
 of the Elbe and of all that she had nefariously obtained from 
 the spoils of Poland since 1772 ; she had to pay a crushing 
 war-indemnity, to recognize the new Napoleonic kingdoms in 
 Germany and elsewhere, to keep her harbours closed against 
 English trade and English ships, and, a little later, to reduce 
 her own army to 42,000 men. 
 
 The Treaty of Tilsit marked, however, for Prussia not 
 only the nadir of degradation, but the beginning of regenera- 
 tion. Out of her deep humiliation came resurrection and 
 salvation. In three years (1807-10) a small group of 
 singularly enlightened statesmen, of whom one only was by 
 birth a subject of the Hohenzollern, carried through a series 
 of reforms which transformed Prussia hardly less completely 
 than those of the Constituent Assembly had transformed 
 France. Stein, Hardenberg, Scharnhorst, Humboldt — these 
 men literally re-made Prussia. The first two reorganized the 
 social, the agrarian, and, to a large extent, the political system 
 of the country. Scharnhorst initiated a series of far-reaching 
 reforms which transformed the old and obsolete army-system 
 
THE HOHENZOLLERN TRADiriON i', i idi 
 
 of Frederick the Great into the efficient machine of to-day. 
 Henceforth every citizen in Prussia was to be trained in the 
 use of arms. The active army, in obedience to Napoleon's 
 dictates, was cut down to 40,000 men ; but after a short 
 sei*vice with the colours the citizen was to pass into the 
 reserve, and, in addition, there was to be a Landwehr for 
 home defence, and a Landsturm^ or general arming of the 
 population, for guerrilla warfare. What Scharnhorst and his 
 colleague Gneisenau did for national defence, Humboldt 
 effected in the sphere of national education. Thus was Prussia 
 completely transformed. In a social, an economic, a military, 
 and an educational sense Prussia was born again. And the 
 new Prussia listened eagerly to the patriotic appeals of 
 Schiller and Fichte. Nor was it Prussia only that responded 
 to the appeal. Out of the enthusiasm thus generated came 
 the impulse to the German War of Liberation. There is in 
 some quarters in England a natural disposition to regret 
 the disappearance of the Germany which gave birth to 
 Kant's Critique of Pure Reason^ to Beethoven's Ninth Sym- 
 pho7iy, and Goethe's Faust. The regret is generous and in- 
 telligible. But let us not forget, no German can forget, that 
 the Germany which devoted itself to the production of these 
 masterpieces of literature and art was politically impotent, 
 and shortly after their production was compelled by Napoleon 
 to walk wearily through the valley of humiliation.^ The 
 Kleinstaaterei of Germany may have produced great works of 
 art, but it did not avert political catastrophe. Mazzini has 
 won general admiration for his unselfish renunciation of 
 a literary career in favour of the ungenial work of political 
 agitation. He believed and asserted that national self-respect 
 is essential to all vital art. Germany is somewhat incon- 
 sistently accused of having preferred political unity to artistic 
 fertility. No self-respecting German could have contemplated 
 without repugnance the idea of a repetition of the disasters 
 which overtook the divided States of the Fatherland between 
 
 ^ Cf. the once famous pamphlet Germatiy i7i her Deep Humiliation, for 
 the publication of which Pahn, a Nuremberg bookseller, was shot by order 
 of Napoleon in i8c6. 
 
*Spi?{;;Ht,BE ; EUROPEAN COMMONWEALTH 
 
 1795 and 1812. It was, after all, only at Leipsic (1813) that 
 Napoleon for the first time learnt what it meant to be at war 
 not merely with the German sovereigns but with the German 
 people. 
 
 In the great settlement of 1815 the fates were kind to the 
 Hohenzollern. For the moment the Prussian rulers seemed 
 to have lost sight of their ' German mission ' ; dynastic and 
 reactionary influences were in the ascendant at Berlin, and 
 if Prussia could have had her way she would have expanded 
 northwards and eastwards ; she coveted Poland and the Baltic 
 littoral. Fortunately for herself, her ambitions in that direc- 
 tion were thwarted by Russia, and she had to seek com- 
 pensation in the west. It came to her in the shape of a 
 great province on both banks of the Rhine — now Rhenish 
 Prussia. The bias thus given to Prussian policy proved to be 
 the turning-point in her political fortunes. She had lost — to 
 Russia — a population mainly Slavic in origin; she gained 
 a population of Germans; she ceased to look towards the 
 Niemen ; she began to look across the Rhine. True, between 
 Brandenburg and Rhenish Prussia there was a wide gap ; but 
 that gave an excuse for abridging it in t866. Destiny seemed 
 to be fighting for the Hohenzollern against themselves. 
 
 For some time it seemed doubtful whether the Hohen- 
 zollern would not defeat destiny, whether they would ever 
 regain the traditional path trodden by the founders of the 
 policy of their House — by the Great Elector, by Frederick 
 William I, and by Frederick II. The territorial settlement of 
 1 8 15 brought to Prussia more advantages than she deserved. 
 The constitutional settlement represented a decisive defeat for 
 Prussia, and a triumph for her Habsburg rival. Stein and the 
 Prussian patriots would fain have secii Germany united in a 
 Bundesstaat. Metternich fought strenuously, and, in the end, 
 successfully, for the establishment of a loose confederation, a 
 mere Staatenhtmd. This arrangement, though profoundly 
 disappointing to the patriots, suited Austria's game, and 
 Austria maintained it, with a brief interval, until Bismarck 
 finally dissolved it at Sadowa. The period between 1815 and' 
 t86o was, then, a period of reaction alike for Germany in 
 
THE HOHENZOLLERN TRADITION 103 
 
 general and in particular for Prussia. Prussian statesmen 
 followed deferentially in the policy which was dictated from 
 Vienna, first by Prince Metternich and afterwards by Felix 
 Schwarzenberg. To the general law of reaction there was 
 only one exception. This was found in the conclusion of a 
 Zollverein between Prussia and most of the other German 
 States. This Customs-Union not only conferred upon Prussia 
 and upon Germany immense benefits from the economic and 
 commercial standpoint, but achieved political results of even 
 greater importance. Politically its significance was threefold : 
 it brought the German States together in a natural way, and 
 cemented their friendship by enduring ties of mutual self- 
 interest ; it brought them together under the hegemony of 
 Prussia ; and it led to the virtual exclusion of Austria and her 
 heterogenous Empire from the Germanic body. Apart from 
 the Zollverein there was, however, nothing between ICS15 and 
 i860 to indicate that the leadership of the German peoples 
 was likely to pass from Vienna to Berlin. 
 
 On the contrary, it seemed as if the Hohenzollern had 
 definitely renounced any such ambition. To a contemporary 
 the history of the revolutionary year 1848-9 must have 
 appeared conclusive in this sense. That year was fraught 
 with profound consequences for the whole future of Germany, 
 and indeed of the world, and its events deserve to be studied 
 with close attention by all who would seek to understand the 
 political psychology of the German people of to-day.^ The 
 enthusiasm engendered by the War of Liberation had not yet 
 burnt itself out. German liberalism was still almost synony- 
 mous with German nationalism. The reforming party in the 
 several States supplied the driving-power to the movement for 
 the realization of national unity. The Bund which had been 
 established in 18 15 was efificient only in the repression of every 
 manifestation of popular feeling. Gradually, therefore, people 
 came to understand that domestic reform was hopeless without 
 a fundamental change in the character of the central institu- 
 
 ^ Mr. H. A. L. Fisher has devoted an admirable chapter to this subject 
 in his Republican Tradition in Europe ; and cf. Evolution of Prussia., 
 by J. A. R. Marriott and C. G. Robertson. 
 
I04 THE EUROPEAN COMMONWEALTH 
 
 tions of the Germanic Confederation. For the purpose of 
 effecting such a change a national Convention was called 
 together at Frankfort on March 31, 1848. This Convention 
 summoned a national Constituent Assembly to be elected on 
 the basis of manhood suffrage. This Assembly, known to 
 history as the Frankfort Parliament, met on May 18, and after 
 interminable discussion, drafted a constitution which was to 
 take the form of a federal Empire endowed with an hereditary 
 Emperor, a central representative Parliament, and an executive 
 responsible thereto. The Imperial crown was offered to 
 Frederick William IV of Prussia, but, to the infinite disappoint- 
 ment of the Frankfort delegates, and indeed of all German 
 liberals, the offer was declined. 
 
 The decision thus made by Frederick William IV was one 
 of the most fateful ever reached in the history of Germany. 
 The reasons for it are not obscure. The Prussian king was 
 a romanticist and a conservative ; loyal to the Habsburgs, a 
 devout believer in the doctrine of Divine Right, gravely mis- 
 trustful of the forces of democracy. He refused to wear what 
 to him would have been a ' crown of shame ' ; he was not 
 prepared to demean himself and his House by becoming ' the 
 serf of the Revolution ' ; above all, he was resolved that Prussia 
 should not be * merged in Germany '. 
 
 To the merging of Prussia in Germany there was, however, 
 an alternative : Germany might be merged in Prussia. That 
 the alternative was adopted was due to the genius and resolu- 
 tion of one man. In the year 1861 William I, who since 1858 
 had ruled Prussia as Prince Regent, succeeded his brother as 
 king. A year later he called to his counsels Count Otto von 
 Bismarck. 
 
 The first ten years of Bismarck's rule were crowded with 
 events of high significance. Bismarck was perfectly clear as 
 to the task before him, and not less clear as to the means by 
 which it was to be accomplished. To its accomplishment he 
 brought large experience of statecraft and diplomacy, an in- 
 flexible will and a conscience entirely void of scruple. As 
 Prussian representative in the Diet of Frankfort he had gauged 
 the tendencies of Austrian policy. He was convinced that 
 
 o» 
 
THE HOHENZOLLERN TRADITION 105 
 
 Austria's supreme object was to thwart the progress of Prussia, 
 and to do this by fomenting the jealousy of the smaller States. 
 As ambassador to Petersburg and to Paris he had not only 
 put his finger on the pulse of European diplomacy, but 
 had taken the measure of two considerable personalities, 
 Alexander II and Napoleon III. He came back to Berlin in 
 1862 well equipped for the work to which he put his hand. 
 That work was the Prussianization of Germany and the 
 accomplishment of German unity and Prussian hegemony. 
 
 Bismarck was under no illusion as to the instruments which 
 he would be compelled to use. * The great questions of the 
 time are not to be solved by speeches and parliamentary vgtes, 
 but by blood and iron.' The iron was supplied by the genius 
 and industry of Roon and Moltke. The former had already 
 rearmed the Prussian army with a new weapon— the needle- 
 gun — destined to give it an easy victory in the next great 
 war. In the latter Bismarck found a strategist and organizer 
 of war of the very highest order. Both his coadjutors were 
 soon put to the test. 
 
 In 1863 war between Prussia and Austria seemed imminent. 
 The Emperor Francis Joseph had convoked a conference of 
 the reigning princes of Germany to discuss a revision of the 
 Federal Constitution. Bismarck induced his master to de- 
 cline the Emperor's invitation on the ground that the * Austrian 
 project did not harmonize with the proper position of the 
 Prussian monarchy or with the interests of the German people '. 
 Relations between the two Powers were seriously strained by 
 this discourteous refusal, but war was temporarily averted by 
 the revival of another question of pre-eminent significance. 
 
 By the death of Frederick VII of Denmark, in 1863, a crisis 
 was precipitated in regard to Schleswig-Holstein. Bismarck 
 instantly perceived the possibilities of the situation, and with- 
 out scruple or hesitation proceeded to turn it to the profit of 
 Prussia. Thus regarded, Schleswig-Holstein is the first act in 
 a drama which in January 1871 reached its brilliant denoue- 
 ment in the Hall of Mirrors in the Palace of Versailles. It is 
 worth while to follow the action of this drama with some 
 attention ; we are witnessing the epilogue to-day. 
 
io6 THE EUROPEAN COMMONWEALTH 
 
 No man could have played a diplomatic game as Bismarck 
 played it, from 1863 to 187 1, unless he had carefully thought 
 out each successive and consequential move beforehand. Those 
 moves it is now possible to discern and disclose. 
 
 The first was upon Schleswig-Holstein. Into the tangled 
 historical problems presented by the position of these Duchies 
 it is happily unnecessary to plunge. The relations of the two 
 Duchies to the Crown of Denmark on the one side and to the 
 Germanic body on the other ; the conflicting claims of Prince 
 Christian of GlUcksburg (afterwards Christian IX of Denmark) 
 and of Duke Frederick of Augustenburg ; the attitude and 
 policy of the Great Powers, and notably the obligations of 
 Great Britain, France, and Russia, of Prussia and Austria, as 
 signatories of the Treaty of London (1852) — these things, 
 though of high intrinsic importance, are not our primary con- 
 cern. In the present connexion the Schleswig-Holstein question 
 is significant as affording the opportunity for the first move in 
 Bismarck's extraordinarily ingenious and perfectly unscrupu- 
 lous diplomatic game. 
 
 In the imbroglio about the Duchies Bismarck perceived 
 three possibilities : (i) the possibility of acquiring for Prussia 
 an extended coast-line and a magnificent harbour; (ii) the 
 possibility of fixing a quarrel upon Austria ; and (iii) the 
 possibility of inducing his master, who was not only a keen 
 Prussian but a loyal German, to deal a death-blow at the 
 Germanic Bund — an organization which had long been em- 
 ployed to promote Habsburg and to obstruct Hohenzollern 
 interests. His crafty calculations were fulfilled with marvellous 
 precision. 
 
 His first business was to induce Austria to pull the chestnuts 
 out of the fire for Prussia in Schleswig-Holstein. This Austria, 
 with almost incredible stupidity, consented to do. The claims 
 first of Prince Christian, then those of Duke Frederick, were 
 roughly repudiated. The Danes resisted by arms the intrusion 
 of the Germans, but they were presently overpowered, and 
 Austria and Prussia found themselves in possession of the 
 Duchies. But what had become of the signatory Powers which 
 in 1852 had guaranteed Danish integrity? Russia had been 
 
THE HOHENZOLLERN TRADITION 107 
 
 * squared ' beforehand by Bismarck's friendly attitude during 
 the Polish insurrection of 1863. Napoleon III was already 
 involved in his fatuous Mexican adventure ; England, in the 
 hands of Lord Russell, could be safely counted on to talk 
 much and do little. It was not that English statesmen were 
 blind to the significance of the question. ' There is no use ', 
 said Palmerston in 1863, 
 
 * in disguising the fact that what is at the bottom of the German 
 design ... is the dream of a German fleet and the wish to 
 get Kiel as a German sea-port. That may be a good reason 
 why they should wish it ; but it is no reason why they should 
 violate the rights and independence of Denmark. ... If any 
 violent attempt were made to overthrow those rights and 
 interfere with that independence, those who made the attempt 
 would find in the result that it would not be Denmark alone 
 with which they would have to contend.' 
 
 Brave words. To our eternal shame it has to be confessed 
 that Bismarck estimated them at their true value. Between 
 Prussia and the attainment of her ambitions in Schleswig- 
 Holstein there was nothing but *a scrap of paper'. It is true 
 that the paper bore the signature of Great Britain. But Great 
 Britain was in an ultra-pacific temper. Moreover, Lord 
 Palmerston had of late years been growing — and not without 
 reason — more and more mistrustful of Napoleon III, and he 
 preferred, on the whole, to see a Prussian army in Schleswig 
 than a French army on the Rhine. 
 
 Not from England, therefore, had Bismarck to fear effective 
 resistance to his predatory schemes. That her desertion of 
 Denmark fatally damaged her prestige on the Continent is 
 unquestionable. Bismarck certainly drew very definite con- 
 clusions from this diplomatic episode, and bequeathed them as 
 maxims of State to his successors. England might be relied 
 upon to moralize and to lecture, but not for the sake of a 
 ' scrap of paper ' would she draw the sword. Had England 
 acted differently in 1864 she might not have been compelled, 
 in order to enforce respect for another 'scrap of paper', to 
 draw the sword fifty years afterwards. 
 
 Meanwhile, Bismarck continued to play a very difficult 
 game with consummate adroitness and complete success. By 
 
io8 THE EUROPEAN COMMONWEALTH 
 
 the Treaty of Vienna, in 1864, the Danish Duchies were 
 handed over conjointly to Austria and Prussia. Almost 
 immediately, quarrels broke out between the partners in crime 
 as to the disposal of the booty. Austria was scandalously 
 treated by Prussia ; but was backed by the Bund and things 
 looked like war, 
 
 Bismarck, however, was not quite ready, and accordingly a 
 conference between the sovereigns was arranged at Gastein to 
 'paper over the cracks' (1865). But the cracks widened, and 
 by 1866 Bismarck was ready. He complained that Austria 
 was encouraging the ' pretensions ' of Duke Frederick of 
 Augustenburg, the legitimate heir to the Danish Duchies. 
 Austria, accordingly, was unceremoniously bundled out of 
 Holstein by Prussia. 
 
 This was the signal for war. The German Diet responded 
 (June 14, 1866) by ordering a mobilization of the Federal 
 forces against Prussia. On June 15 Prussia declared war upon 
 Hanover, Hesse, and Saxony. By the i8th her troops had 
 occupied the three States, and on the same day she declared 
 war upon the other members of the Bund, including Austria. 
 A week's campaign in Bohemia culminated on July 3 in a 
 brilliant victory over the Austrians at Koniggratz (Sadowa) ; 
 before the end of July the Prussians were within striking 
 distance of Vienna ; preliminaries of Peace were arranged on 
 the ii6th, and the definitive treaty was signed at Prague on 
 August a. 
 
 One of the most momentous wars in modern history had 
 lasted less than seven weeks. 
 
 Bismarck already had his next move in sight and the terms 
 imposed upon Austria were consequently studiously moderate. 
 Prussia asked for no territory from her, though she insisted 
 upon the transference of Venetia to the new kingdom of 
 Italy; she extorted very little money, but on one point 
 she was adamant. The Habsburg Empire, even in respect 
 of its Teutonic provinces, was henceforward to be excluded 
 from Germany. The old * Bund ' was ignominiously dis- 
 solved after an inglorious existence of half a century ; Prussia 
 annexed Hanover, Hesse-Cassel, Nassau, and the free city of 
 
THE HOHENZOLLERN TRADITION 109 
 
 Fran kfort-on- Main, as well as the Danish Duchies, Schleswig, 
 Holstein, and Lauenburg. The Hohenzollern thus acquired 
 nearly 25,000 miles of territory and 5,000,000 subjects, and 
 for the first time became masters of a country which stretched 
 continuously from beyond the Niemen to beyond the Rhine. 
 They also became Presidents of a new North German Con- 
 federation comprising all the States north of the Main. 
 
 After Sadowa Austria was spared, not to say caressed. 
 Bismarck's caresses were never bestowed without calculation. 
 What was his motive ? 
 
 The history of the next four years supplies the answer. 
 Before the war of 1866, Bismarck, who never left anything to 
 chance, had, as we have seen, met Napoleon III at Biarritz, 
 and had secured his benevolent neutrality by a very indefinite 
 suggestion of some territorial compensation to France — 
 perhaps Belgium, or Luxemburg, or the Palatinate, even it 
 might be the country of the Moselle. Napoleon eagerly 
 swallowed the bait, the more so as he believed that, after 
 Prussia and Austria had mutually exhausted each other, he 
 would be able to step in as mediator, and name his own price 
 for the services rendered. * Croyez-moi,' he said to Walewski 
 in 1865, *la guerre entre I'Autriche et la Prusse est une de ces 
 eventualites inesperees qui semblaient devoir ne se produire 
 jamais, et ce n'est pas a nous de contrarier des vell^it^s belli- 
 queuses qui reservent a notre politique plus d'un avantage.* * 
 His miscalculation was as profound as it was pardonable ; 
 by first crushing and then caressing Austria, Bismarck entirely 
 turned the tables on Napoleon, and France was left out in 
 the cold. Thus foiled and disappointed, French diplomacy 
 went from blunder to blunder. A demand for Mainz and the 
 Palatinate served only to bring the South German States into 
 line with the North ; a request for Belgium and Luxemburg 
 enabled Bismarck to excite alarm and suspicion in London 
 and Petersburg. The Tsar was given a free hand in the 
 Eastern Question, and Napoleon found himself isolated in 
 Europe. 
 
 The Franco-German War was, then, the logical sequel to 
 the Seven Weeks' War of 1 866. 
 
no THE EUROPEAN COMMONWEALTH 
 
 'La guerre de 1870', as M. Sorel wrote, 'a ete la conse- 
 quence logique des negociations de 1866. Elle a eclate comme 
 un coup de foudre pour la France, qui ignorait ces negocia- 
 tions ; elle ne surprit pas les hommes qui suivaient depuis 
 quatre ans la marche des evenements.' 
 
 Bismarck not only followed events : his was the hand that 
 shaped them. If the war of 1870 ' lay in the logic ' of history, 
 it was Bismarck who ruthlessly applied the logic to a par- 
 ticular case. That he deliberately willed the conflict with 
 France is no longer disputed. It was, however, essential to 
 the fulfilment of his purpose that France should be made 
 to appear as the aggressor. And never was a game more 
 skilfully played. Napoleon's diplomacy was as clumsy as 
 Bismarck's was subtle. Into one trap after another the 
 Emperor tumbled. Anything more maladroit than his manage- 
 ment of the Hohenzollern candidature in Spain it would be 
 impossible to imagine. Bismarck, it is true, had all the 
 cards, but his play was so consummate that it is difficult to 
 believe that he would have been beaten, even if Napoleon 
 had held the trumps. As things were, cards and skill were 
 combined ; adroit diplomacy was backed by overwhelming 
 force ; the Second Empire in France was demolished. France 
 herself was crushed and dismembered ; all the Teutonic folk 
 save the Austrian subjects were united under Prussian hege- 
 mony, and the Hohenzollern king accepted from the hands of 
 his princely colleagues the crown of a new German Empire. 
 
 Bismarck's purpose was accomplished ; the destiny of 
 Prussia was fulfilled. 
 
 The success of Bismarck's statesmanship and diplomacy is 
 of profound significance to Germany and to the world ; but 
 if the results be significant, even more so are the methods by 
 which they were achieved. The Prussianization of Germany 
 was a triumph for the doctrine of force. To that doctrine the 
 German intellect consequently surrendered. Prussia's triumph 
 meant the exaltation of the idea of the State. That idea forms 
 the kernel of the political philosophy of Germany. ' The 
 State ', as Treitschke taught, ' is the summit of human society ; 
 above it there is absolutely nothing in the history of the 
 
THE HOHENZOLLERN TRADITION iii 
 
 world.' The State is Might. ' To maintain its power is the 
 highest duty of the State ; of all political shortcomings, weak- 
 ness is the most abominable and the most contemptible. It 
 is the sin against the Holy Ghost of Politics.' 
 
 The teaching of Treitschke is thus complementary to the 
 policy of Bismarck. Between 1862 and J 871 blood and iron 
 did the work which in 1848-9 the talkative journalists and 
 professorial doctrinaires had grievously failed — from little 
 fault of their own — to accomplish. Germany was hypnotized 
 by the success of Prussia, by the triumph attained through 
 the traditional methods of the Hohenzollern. 
 
 Those methods seemed to be applicable to commerce no 
 less than to war. The success of German traders between 
 1870 and 19 14 was not less dazzling than that achieved by 
 Prussian soldiers in the decade 186^^-71. Could any one set 
 limits to the successful application of Hohenzollern methods ? 
 To have transformed the Germany of i860 into the Germany 
 of 1900 was an achievement, political and economic, of which 
 any one might well be proud. What wonder that the 
 intoxicating wine mounted to the brain of the German people 
 and their rulers ? Was not a people which could achieve so 
 much destined to achieve much more ? What power on earth 
 could hope successfully to oppose the combined offensive of 
 German organization, German science, and German arms? 
 Not the uncivilized Slav ; nor the decadent Gaul ; least of all 
 the Englishman absorbed in the pursuit of pleasure and dis- 
 tracted by domestic divisions. 
 
 For the last forty years Europe has been, admittedly, in 
 a state of unstable equilibrium. Great armies have been 
 crouching, ready at the given signal to spring at each other's 
 throats. More recently, the Powers had combined into two 
 groups ; and of these one was armed — very imperfectly armed 
 — primarily for defence ; the other was armed quite obviously, 
 and much more efficiently, for offence. Both groups agreed 
 that the condition of unstable equilibrium could not perma- 
 nently endure. But while the one group believed that the 
 armed peace might gradually give place to a commonwealth 
 of nations ; to an internationalism based upon the recognition 
 
iiz THE EUROPEAN COMMONWEALTH 
 
 of the principle of national freedom and national independence 
 — for the small and weak no less than for the powerful and 
 great ; the other group was convinced that the solution could 
 come only from the victory in arms of the strongest and best 
 equipped. 
 
 So the issue of 1848-9 has to be fought out afresh, on 
 a larger scale, and, as we confidently hope, to a different 
 conclusion. European order must at all costs be restored. 
 Some measure of unity must be attained. As things are there 
 would seem to be only two possible alternatives. Germany 
 may be merged in Europe; may take its place in the 
 commonwealth of free nations ; or Europe may be merged 
 in Germany; may achieve a semblance of unity under the 
 hegemony of the Hohenzollern. 
 
 * After bloody victories the world will be healed by being 
 Germanized.' So said Professor Karl Lamprecht, one of the 
 most distinguished of German historians, in August 1914. 
 That is the Bismarckian method. That is the political appli- 
 cation of the philosophy of Treitschke. Europe must be 
 united as Germany was united, not by doctrinaires but by 
 soldiers ; not by parliamentary debates and parliamentary 
 resolutions ; but by blood and iron. 
 
 Is this indeed the destiny of Europe ? To attain peace by 
 the Prussian sword? To be rescued from anarchy by the 
 German army ? To surrender freedom in exchange for peace ? 
 To be organized into happiness and drilled into contentment ? 
 Should the Central Empires ever be in a position to dictate 
 the terms of peace, such would unquestionably be the fate 
 of the peoples upon whom the German yoke was imposed. 
 For the irony of the situation is that Germany cannot, as Sir 
 Walter Raleigh has phrased it, 'escape from the entanglement 
 of her own delusions '. The Germans, as he truly says, are 
 already beginning to be 
 
 * uneasy about their creed and system, but there is no escape 
 for them ; they have sacrificed everything to it ; they have 
 impoverished the mind and drilled the imagination of every 
 German citizen, so that Germany appears before the world 
 
THE HOHENZOLLERN TRADITION 113 
 
 with the body of a giant and the mind of a dwarf; they have 
 sacrificed themselves in millions that their creed may prevail, 
 and with their creed they must stand or fall. The State 
 organized as absolute power, responsible to no one, with no 
 duties to its neighbour and with only nominal duties to 
 a slightly subordinate God, has challenged the soul of man in 
 its dearest possessions! 
 
 The soul of man has responded to the challenge. The 
 military machine, brought to a marvellous pitch of perfection 
 by the German genius for organization, may have succeeded 
 in destroying the body of more than one of the European 
 States. But though it may kill the body, it cannot kill the 
 soul. On the contrary, the peoples opposed to Germany 
 have, in the long-drawn agony, found their souls : Belgium, 
 France, Italy, are to-day infinitely greater, and, whatever the 
 issue of the conflict, will remain infinitely greater, than they 
 were before the flood descended upon them. Is it otherwise 
 with ourselves ? By the admission of friends and foes the 
 British Empire is other and greater to-day than it was in 
 July 1 914. It too has found its soul. 
 
 This war is, then, primarily a war of creeds. It is not 
 a conflict between ecclesiastical formulae, but between con- 
 trasted spiritual ideals. For Germany, not less than her 
 opponents, is fighting for an ideal. To ignore this truth is 
 to underate the strength of the forces to which we find our- 
 selves opposed. This is the conclusion to which we are led 
 by M. Emile Hovelaque in his luminous study of The Deeper 
 Causes of the War, Germany, as he points out, 
 
 ' has transformed the practice and theories of Prussia and her 
 own theories on the essential superiority of the Germanic race 
 into a blind dogma, a mysticism and a religion. . . . She has 
 converted a whole race to the fanatical belief that this war 
 is a supreme duty, a holy crusade, and the domination of the 
 world and all other races a sacred right. ... Her militarism 
 is consequently a spiritual force opposed to the spiritual forces 
 of the Allies.' 
 
 Now, as in the wars of the French Revolution, it is with ' an 
 armed doctrine \ as Burke then phrased it, that we are at war. 
 The War, therefore, can end only when one ideal or the other \s 
 definitely dissipated and destroyed. No premature or patched- 
 
114 THE EUROPEAN COMMONWEALTH 
 
 up peace will suffice. Germany must be compelled, not merely 
 to relinquish the territories she has incorporated, not merely 
 to restore the lands she has devastated, and the homes she has 
 desecrated, but to abandon the doctrines which, in her own eyes, 
 justified her acts of aggression, her deeds of cruelty and rapine. 
 There is only one way by which that end may be attained. It 
 must be proved to Germany by the only argument she can 
 appreciate that the dogma she has embraced leads not to 
 success but to disaster. ' When one succeeds,' said Frederick 
 the Great, *one is never in the wrong.' She must therefore 
 not be permitted to succeed, or she will believe that she is 
 right. The falsity of Germany's dogma must be demonstrated 
 by material misfortune. Between the truth of rival creeds 
 the sword must decide. 
 
 If the argument pursued in the foregoing pages be sound, 
 no peace can be lasting so long as the philosophy which 
 justified the outbreak and the conduct of the present War is 
 accepted by any Government or any people. It can only be 
 discredited, being what it is, by failure to achieve the intended 
 result. It postulates Weltmacht oder Niedergang. The only 
 possible answer to it is ' Downfall ', not, be it observed, the 
 downfall of the German people, but the destruction of the 
 philosophical theory which for the last half-century the German 
 people have accepted, the theory which from the days of 
 Frederick the Great has inspired the statecraft of the Hohen- 
 zollern. The distinction here drawn is not perhaps super- 
 fluous. The issue raised by the War should be carefully 
 defined. There can be no question as to the survival of the 
 German nation : that is assured. No one to-day proposes to 
 erase Germany from the map as Poland was erased in the 
 eighteenth century. But Europe is determined that Germany 
 shall be suffered to exist only as a unit in a free commonwealth 
 of nations; as a sociusy not a dominus\ as an equal, not as 
 a master. And even for a position of equality she must, by 
 good conduct during a period of probation, demonstrate her 
 fitness. France was deemed to have forfeited her right to 
 an equal place in the society of nations by the lapse of the 
 
THE HOHENZOLLERN TRADITION 115 
 
 * Hundred Days', and not until after the Congress of Aix-la- 
 Chapelle (i8t8) was she readmitted. Germany's offences are 
 in a different category, and the period of probation must 
 necessarily be more prolonged. For the intolerable crimes 
 instigated by the Hohenzollern there can be no forgiveness 
 until repentance has been proved by conduct. Otherwise, the 
 sufferings and sacrifices of this present time would have been 
 endured and offered in vain. 
 
 The Allies are in arms to inaugurate and to enforce a new 
 standard of international morality. They dare not lay down 
 their arms until the new code of conduct is accepted, and until 
 effective guarantees have been devised that the laws of the 
 new code will be respected. They have formally proclaimed 
 that they can accept no settlement which does not provide for 
 the ' reorganization of Europe, guaranteed by a stable regime 
 and based at once on respect for nationalities and on the right 
 to full security and liberty of economic development possessed 
 by all peoples, small and great, and at the same time upon 
 territorial conventions and international settlements such as to 
 guarantee land and sea frontiers against unjustified attack'. 
 It IS idle to ignore the fact that the acceptance of these 
 principles must needs involve the territorial dismemberment of 
 both the Hohenzollern and the Habsburg Empire. It is the 
 fatality of these Empires that both have been founded upon a 
 negation of the principle which is now generally regarded as 
 the only principle which can give stability to an international 
 system — the principle of Nationality. On that principle the 
 Danes of Schleswig must be free to rejoin the Danes of the 
 kingdom ; the Prussian Poles must be reunited with their 
 brethren in a united and autonomous Poland ; the people of 
 Alsace and Lorraine must be allowed to choose the flag under 
 which they will live. Austria-Hungary is, of course, in a 
 worse position even than its partner in crime. Out of the 
 mosaic of nationalities several States will probably emerge. 
 Slavs, Roumans, Italians, and Czecho-Slovaks will naturally 
 gravitate towards their co-nationals, and the Habsburgs must 
 be content with a shrunken realm which may still be based on 
 dualism, or even on trialism, but cannot be permitted to impose 
 
 I 1 
 
116 THE EUROPEAN COMMONWEALTH 
 
 an alien yoke upon peoples whose national aspirations have 
 long been stunted and denied. It is, however, supremely im- 
 portant that the Allies should make it clear beyond the 
 possibility of misunderstanding that the reconstruction of the 
 map, foreshadowed in their published Note,^ shall be carried 
 out in deference to general principles and not under the 
 monitions of national self-interest or individual ambition. Even 
 so there will be plenty of ' ragged edges '. No settlement can 
 be perfect or permanent. But at least we may avoid some of 
 the errors which vitiated the settlement of 1815, and thereby 
 secure for Europe a period of prolonged if not perpetual peace. 
 
 Such a peace can be secured only by the definite annihilation 
 of one ideal of international relations and the acceptance and 
 enthronement of another. To the rule of force there is only 
 one alternative : the rule of law. 
 
 The possibility of such a substitution constitutes the simple 
 and supreme issue of the present War. The dim apprehension 
 of that fact has furnished the stimulus and the inspiration to 
 the free peoples who are in league to-day against the Empires 
 whose very existence is a denial of the principle of liberty, 
 a negation of the doctrine of nationality. Is it imaginable that 
 the freedom-loving sons of Canada, New Zealand, Australia, 
 and South Africa would have sprung to arms to secure a 
 territorial readjustment in the map of Europe, or even to 
 curtail the dynastic ambition of Hohenzollern or Habsburg ? 
 When Germany flung her armies into Belgium it was in- 
 stinctively realized by every man bred in the traditions of 
 ordered freedom that the Hohenzollern were not merely bully- 
 ing a weak neighbour, but were seeking to impose upon the 
 world the acceptance of a principle which would ultimately 
 prove destructive alike to national liberty and to international 
 morality. ' The nation which is too weak to defend itself 
 has ', so Treitschke thought, ' no right to exist.' Plainly, then, 
 the liberty of the individual nation depends upon the code 
 which governs the relations between States. Shall that code 
 be based upon the rule of force or upon the reign of law ? 
 The present agony will decide. 
 
 ^ January 19 1 7. 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 AFTER TWELVE MONTHS: DEMOCRACY, 
 DIPLOMACY, AND WAR 
 
 ' Do not allow yourself to have your judgement of the 
 Welthistorische warped by the accidental, however all-absorb- 
 ing and terrible that accidental may be.' ^ The warning 
 uttered many years ago by one of the most brilliant of English 
 diplomatists seems to be peculiarly apposite in a time like the 
 present. More particularly should it be taken to heart by the 
 historian who attempts to gauge the significance of con- 
 temporary happenings. Any appreciation of passing events 
 must necessarily be provisional ; for the contemporary 
 chronicler suffers alike from lack of information and, even 
 more seriously perhaps, from lack of perspective. Yet the 
 chronicler is not without compensating advantages. He is in 
 a far better position for observing and registering variations of 
 political temperature, and for noting the more subtle changes 
 in popular opinion, than the student who must needs rely upon 
 ' sources ' and documents. 
 
 One such change has obviously taken place in England 
 during the last twelve months.^ The change is not exactly 
 one from optimism to pessimism ; from absurd and irrational 
 over-confidence to equally unreasoning despair. Only in the 
 least informed quarters was there over-confidence a year ago ; 
 only in the same quarters is there anything which can fairly be 
 described as pessimism to-day. Nor can the change of temper 
 be ascribed entirely to disillusionment and disappointment. 
 
 ^ Sir Robert Morier, Memoirs, ii. 227. 
 
 ^ The substance of this chapter appeared in the Edinburgh Review for 
 October 191 5. The text of the article was supplied by the recently pub- 
 lished work of Mr. F. S. Oliver, Ordeal by Battle (Macmillan, 191 5). The 
 date of publication must be carefully borne in mind. 
 
ii8 THE EUROPEAN COMMONWEALTH 
 
 That there has been some disillusionment it would be idle to 
 deny ; that there is some ground for disappointment is a 
 proposition too obvious to demand demonstration. On the 
 other hand, there are many features of the situation for which 
 we ought to be profoundly grateful : for the hitherto undis- 
 puted supremacy of our sea-power ; for the almost complete 
 immunity from attack enjoyed by our oversea trade ; for the 
 untiring energy which Lord Kitchener threw into the task 
 of raising a voluntary army not ridiculously contemptible 
 even in the eyes of the great military nations ; for the fine 
 response to the call of duty made by a large section of the 
 population at home — whether duty calls to direct military 
 service, or to arduous toil in mine and factory and in the work 
 of transport ; above all, for the superb and self-sacrificing 
 loyalty exhibited by the Dominions and the Dependencies. 
 All these things are a source of legitimate satisfaction, if not 
 of pride. Nevertheless, it were both disingenuous and unwise 
 to refuse to recognize that there is another side to the picture, 
 or to deny that there is solid ground for disappointment, and 
 even, in some respects, for humiliation. The whole nation 
 now knows what had long been suspected by the few, that for 
 three years previous to August 1914 war between Great 
 Britain and Germany had been virtually inevitable and had at 
 one time (August 191 1) been imminent. It now realizes that 
 between our diplomacy and our military administration there 
 was no sort of correspondence, and that consequently, when the 
 expected actually occurred, we plunged into war without the 
 least attempt — in a strictly military sense — to count the cost. 
 Had Sir John French's gallant little army suffered the fate 
 which as a fact it so narrowly escaped, we should have had no 
 one but ourselves to blame. The splendid tenacity with which 
 that army has maintained a position which for a time was all 
 but untenable has compelled the admiration alike of allies and 
 enemies. Had the expeditionary force yielded before the first 
 fierce onset of the enemy we should have grieved, and we 
 should have suffered, but we could not have wondered or 
 complained. Again : had there been delay in the raising and 
 training of the new armies we should have had little reason for 
 
DEMOCRACY, DIPLOMACY, AND WAR 119 
 
 astonishment. We have never been, in the continental sense, 
 a miHtary nation, and that Lord Kitchener should, even under 
 the stress of war, have gone so far to make us one is a 
 wonderful tribute to his organizing genius and driving power. 
 What does, however, inspire consternation is the fact that a 
 ' nation of shopkeepers ' should have shown itself deficient in 
 business capacity ; that we should have proved ourselves weak 
 precisely where we thought ourselves strong, and that, con- 
 fronted by problems of industrial production and commercial 
 organization and distribution, we should hitherto have failed to 
 solve them. 
 
 For this failure there have of course been abundant explana- 
 tions. But whatever the explanation the fact remains that a 
 nation which has believed itself to possess a peculiar genius for 
 the organization of industry, has failed to adapt itself with 
 rapidity and ingenuity to industrial demands which, though 
 novel in direction and unprecedented in volume, ought not to 
 have been beyond the administrative capacity of the greatest 
 industrial and commercial nation in the world. It is, of course, 
 ' nobody's fault '. The business men ascribe the failure to the 
 ascendancy of a clique of political lawyers and complacent 
 bureaucrats ; the politicians question the efficiency of the 
 captains of industry ; while both parties are inclined to lay the 
 chief blame upon the unbending conservatism of political 
 trade-unionism, and to the cd canfiy methods of organized 
 labour ; but charges and counter-charges against particular 
 classes do not constitute a sufficient answer to the indictment 
 preferred against the nation as a whole. 
 
 That which Burke declared to be impossible is impossible 
 no longer. Under an autocracy, or even under an aristocracy, 
 it may be impossible to prefer an indictment against a nation. 
 Under a democracy the case is different. A democracy may 
 fairly be said to get the government it deserves, and to deserve 
 the government it gets. We have been taught that self- 
 reproach is indulgence in a * shameful pleasure '. Democracies 
 are so little prone to this particular indulgence that the vice 
 may almost merge into a virtue, and, though a class may not 
 frame an indictment against a nation, there is nothing in 
 
I20 THE EUROPEAN COMMONWEALTH 
 
 reason to prevent a nation from framing an indictment against 
 itself. 
 
 Something of this sort is, in fact, taking place, as a result of 
 the retrospect encouraged by the completion of a year of war. 
 Thus the change of sentiment to which allusion has been made 
 is not so much a transition from optimism to pessimism ; from 
 excessive elation and ungrounded expectation to undue de- 
 pression, disillusionment, and disappointment. It is rather a 
 change from excitement to reflection ; from denunciation to 
 introspection ; from righteous indignation against the atrocious 
 misdeeds of our enemies to a closer and clearer and more 
 critical apprehension of our own shortcomings. 
 
 The change is, on the whole, decidedly for the better. De- 
 nunciation of the wickedness of opponents may conduce to 
 personal satisfaction, but it will not really help to win the War. 
 A stern and reasoned conviction as to the righteousness of the 
 cause for which we fight is a moral asset of incalculable value ; 
 but though we may trust in God to defend the right we must 
 not neglect to keep our powder dry. 
 
 In Richard II, a superb study of character, Shakespeare has 
 pointed the moral for us. We do not like the * vile politician ', 
 Henry Bolingbroke. We are not meant to like him. We are 
 repelled by his cold and calculating character, by his treacher- 
 ous policy towards his kinsman, by his political craft. On the 
 other hand, we cannot wholly resist a feeling of attraction 
 towards that * sweet lovely rose *, Richard of Bordeaux, weak 
 and sentimental though he be. Yet by the hard, inexorable 
 and remorseless logic of facts we are compelled to give a con- 
 sidered verdict in accordance with Shakespeare's summing up. 
 He knows on which side our sentiments will lie ; he shares 
 them to the full. The duty which he has to perform is a 
 painful one ; yet he does not shrink from it ; Richard, the 
 anointed of the Lord, is deposed and dies a violent death ; for 
 the anointed of the Lord has betrayed his trust, and has 
 neglected the obvious material precautions against the wiles 
 of a clever, crafty, and determined foe. Thus Richard of 
 Bordeaux fails. Henry of Lancaster succeeds; but success, 
 thus attained, brings neither satisfaction nor content : 
 
DEMOCRACY, DIPLOMACY, AND WAR 121 
 
 God knows, my son, 
 By what by-paths and indirect crook'd ways 
 I met this crown ; and I myself know well 
 How troublesome it sat upon my head. 
 
 It was indeed ' an honour snatched with boistrous hand '. But 
 the crown snatched by Henry Bolingbroke had already fallen 
 from the brow of Richard of Bordeaux. His weakness as a 
 man, his failure as a king, was clearly demonstrated in the 
 great scene on the coast of Wales, where Richard had just 
 landed on his return from Ireland. He had come too late ; 
 yet he is all elation : 
 
 I weep for joy, 
 To stand upon my kingdom once again. — 
 Dear earth, I do salute thee with my hand. 
 Though rebels wound thee with their horses' hoofs: 
 As a long parted mother with her child 
 Plays fondly with her tears and smiles in meeting. 
 So, weeping, smiling, greet I thee, my earth. 
 And do thee favour with my royal hands. 
 
 Then, noting perhaps some signs of impatience among his 
 followers : 
 
 Mock not my senseless conjuration, lords: 
 This earth shall have a feeling, and these stones 
 Prove armed soldiers, ere her native king 
 Shall falter under foul rebellion's arms. 
 
 The old Bishop of Carlisle bluntly reminds his sentimental 
 sovereign that God helps them who help themselves : 
 
 The means that Heaven yields must be embrac'd 
 And not neglected ; else, if Pleaven would 
 And we will not. Heaven's offer we refuse, 
 The proffer'd means of succour and redress. 
 
 But Richard will have none of this rationalistic philosophy : 
 Bolingbroke's are the works of darkness, his triumph will be 
 dissipated as the morning mist before the rising sun of 
 monarchy : 
 
 Not all the water in the rough rude sea 
 Can wash the balm from an anointed king; 
 The breath of worldly men cannot depose 
 The deputy elected by the Lord. 
 
122 THE EUROPEAN COMMONWEALTH 
 
 From this extreme of confidence he is plunged, by the 
 arrival of bad news, into the depths of unmanly despair : 
 
 Of comfort no man speak. 
 Let's talk of graves, of worms, and epitaphs. 
 For God's sake let us sit upon the ground, 
 And tell sad stories of the death of kings. 
 
 Richard II is superbly typical of the inefficient sentimen- 
 talist ; he is an amateur in the art of life ; and especially in 
 the art of statesmanship. Henry IV, personally much less 
 amiable and attractive, is an artist. He does not shrink from 
 looking facts in the face. He wills not only the end, but the 
 means. He knows precisely what he wants, and he knows 
 how he means to get it. He does not waste time in apo- 
 strophes when he ought to be sharpening his sword ; he does 
 not seek to curry favour with his enemies, as Richard does, 
 by bearing heavily upon his friends — a temptation to which 
 weak men are particularly prone ; he does not expect to 
 gather grapes from thorns, still less does he expect them to fall 
 into his lap from the sky ; if he wants grapes he plants vines. 
 Like a true artist, he seeks his ends by the means appropriate 
 to them and not to some other end. He cultivates, in short, 
 the scientific temper, the temper which looks for certain effects 
 to follow certain causes. 
 
 The contrasted types of character suggested by Richard of 
 Bordeaux and Henry Bolingbroke — the attractive sentimen- 
 talist and the repellent but efficient expert — still divide 
 between them the world of affairs. Thus the keen-sighted 
 German critic felicitously imagined by Mr. Frederick Oliver 
 in his Ordeal by Battle is quick to contrast the * quiet 
 experts' who virtually rule Germany through its civil service 
 with the * loquacious amateurs ' whom he supposes to be 
 dominant in Great Britain. * Our civil service, which you 
 are pleased to describe as a Bureaucracy, is', he contends, 
 ' distinguished among all others existing at the present time, 
 by the calibre of its members, by its efficiency and honesty, 
 by its poverty and not less by the honour in which it is held 
 notwithstanding its poverty.' He boasts that so far Germany 
 has ' succeeded in maintaining public officials of all grades in 
 
DEMOCRACY, DIPLOMACY, AND WAR 123 
 
 higher popular respect than men who devote their lives to 
 building up private fortunes and also to those others who 
 delight and excel in interminable debate '. ' With you ', he 
 adds, caustically but not untruly, 
 
 * the fame of the showy amateur fills the mouths of the public. 
 We, on the contrary, exalt the expert, the man who has been 
 trained to the job he undertakes. In so doing we may be 
 reactionaries and you may be progressives ; but the progress 
 of Germany since j 870 — a progress in which we are every- 
 where either already in front of you or else treading closely 
 on your heels — does not seem to furnish you with a conclusive 
 argument.' 
 
 With the argument of ' Baron von Hexenkuchen ' we may 
 profitably contrast the views of a friendly neutraP — now 
 President of Harvard University. Reviewing English insti- 
 tutions some seven or eight years ago, Mr. Laurence Lowell 
 found the secret of English efficiency — the secret of the 
 success of self-government in England — in the felicitous com- 
 bination of amateur and professional, of layman and expert : 
 the co-operation of the great unpaid and the professional 
 clerk to the Justices; the professional judge and the amateur 
 jury; the Cabinet Minister and the permanent official; the 
 lay Chairman of a Railway Company and the expert General 
 Manager — and so forth. The point is not a novel one. Sir 
 George Cornewall Lewis observed many years ago : ' It is not 
 the business of a Cabinet Minister to work his Department. 
 His business is to see that it is properly worked/ But 
 though not novel the generalization comes with peculiar 
 force from an exceptionally competent and ' outside ' critic of 
 English Institutions.^ 
 
 Is President Lowell right, or is Mr. Oliver right? The 
 approbation of the former, it is proper to point out, refers 
 to a period anterior to that which has incurred the special 
 opprobrium of the latter. Ordeal by Battle is primarily an 
 exposure of the shortcomings which characterized the ' squalid 
 episode' in the history of English politics which filled the 
 
 ^ Written, be it remembered, in 1915. 
 
 "^ The Government of Englafid, by A. Laurence Lowell (1908), vol. I, 
 
124 THE EUROPEAN COMMONWEALTH 
 
 period between 1905 and 1914. In effect, however, if not in 
 form, it is a singularly incisive indictment of the methods of 
 * Democracy ', more particularly in relation to diplomacy and 
 national defence. Democracy must, as Mr. Oliver justly con- 
 tends, be judged, like any other form of government, by results. 
 Popular government is to-day standing its trial : 
 
 ' No nation, unless it be utterly mad, will retain a form of 
 government which from some inherent defect is unable to 
 protect itself against external attack. Is democratic govern- 
 ment capable of looking ahead, making adequate and timely 
 preparation, calling for and obtaining from its people the 
 sacrifices which are necessary in order to preserve their own 
 existence ? Can it recover ground which has been lost, and 
 maintain a long, costly, and arduous struggle, until, by victory, 
 it has placed national security beyond the reach of danger ? ' 
 
 The answer which the author would himself be inclined 
 to give to these searching questions may perhaps be inferred 
 from the following passage : 
 
 * When a people becomes so self-complacent that it mistakes 
 its own ignorance for omniscience — so jealous of authority and 
 impatient of contradiction that it refuses to invest with more 
 than a mere shadow of power those whose business it is to 
 govern — when the stock of leadership gives out, or remains 
 hidden and undiscovered under a litter of showy refuse — 
 when those who succeed in pushing themselves to the front 
 are chiefly concerned not to lead, but merely to act the part 
 of leaders * in silver slippers and amid applause ' — when the 
 chiefs of parties are so fearful of unpopularity that they will 
 not assert their own opinions, or utter timely warnings, or 
 proclaim what they know to be the truth — when such things 
 as these come to pass, the nation has reached that state 
 which was dreaded by the framers of the American Constitu- 
 tion and which — intending to warn mankind against it — they 
 branded as ** Democracy ".' 
 
 In the present War there is, of course, much more at stake 
 than a particular form of government. Still, as Mr. Oliver 
 insists, it is in effect, if not in intention, a war against 
 democracy. For democracy, as a form of government, could 
 not survive the defeat of the Allies ; it could not even survive 
 their failure to achieve complete and decisive victory. And 
 the English democracy, albeit much more tardily than that 
 
DEMOCRACY, DIPLOMACY, AND WAR 125 
 
 of France, or of Serbia, more tardily even than that of Italy, 
 would seem to be awakening to the fact. But what is the 
 condition of success ? There is no obscurity about Mr. Oliver's 
 answer to this question. The nation must find a Man, and 
 the Man must tell the nation the truth. ' Democracy ', he says 
 truly, ' is by no means invincible.' Before it can conquer ' it 
 must find a leader who is worthy of its trust '. 
 
 ' Leadership is our greatest present need, and it is here that 
 the Party System has played us false. To manipulate its vast 
 and intricate machinery there arose a great demand for 
 expert mechanicians, and these have been evolved in a rich 
 profusion. But, in a crisis like the present, mechanicians will 
 not serve our purpose. The real need is a Man, who by the 
 example of his own courage, vigour, certainty, and steadfast- 
 ness will draw out the highest qualities of the people ; whose 
 resolute sense of duty will brush opportunism aside ; whose 
 sympathy and truthfulness will stir the heart and hold fast 
 the conscience of the nation. Leadership of this sort we have 
 lacked.' 
 
 Mr. Oliver's interesting and vigorous essay gives rise to 
 many reflections, and challenges an answer to several obstinate 
 questions. Is the form of government really a matter of 
 supreme moment ? Is it of primary importance in the sphere 
 of diplomacy and the conduct of war ? If so, is democracy 
 at a proved disadvantage as compared with autocracy or 
 aristocracy ? Are the shortcomings which seem to Mr. Oliver 
 to be revealed by the experience of the last ten years the 
 inevitable result of the democratization of our institutions, 
 or may they rather be ascribed to the peculiar circumstances 
 under which, in England, the democratic experiment has been 
 attempted? What is the real test of the success of any 
 particular constitution ? Is there any valid reason to appre- 
 hend that democracy will fail to respond to the test ? Assum- 
 ing failure, is there any ground for the supposition that any 
 other system would yield better results? Questions such as 
 these naturally arise and might be indefinitely multiplied. 
 With none of them is it possible to deal exhaustively or even 
 adequately within the limits of this chapter. But discussion, 
 though summary, may not be wholly unprofitable. 
 
126 THE EUROPEAN COMMONWEALTH 
 
 To the question as to the importance of the form of govern- 
 ment political philosophers have given answers unusually 
 diverse even for philosophers. The gamut extends from 
 Aristotle to Pope. The latter dismissed the whole problem 
 in the familiar couplet : 
 
 For forms of government let fools contest : 
 Whate'er is best administered is best. 
 
 To Aristotle, on the contrary, the question seemed to be of 
 supreme moment. Nor was his solicitude unintelligible. In 
 the Greek City-State everything depended upon the form of 
 the polity. The constitution stood to the State as the soul 
 to the body. The identity of the State depended, therefore, 
 not, as with us, upon identity of territory but upon the 
 continuity of the constitution. Upon the form of the govern- 
 ment depended also the character of the educational system, 
 for education ' must be relative to the polity \ Most important 
 of all : the constitution determined the character of the 
 individual citizen. ' The virtue of the citizen is relative to 
 the polity.' To the modern publicist these are hard sayings. 
 To the Greek philosophers they were a commonplace. ' Each 
 constitution embodied', as Newman says, 'a scheme of life, 
 and tended consciously or not to bring the lives of those 
 living under it into harmony with its particular scheme.' ^ 
 This intimate interdependence of ethics and politics was not 
 impossible of practical realization in the tiny City-State of 
 Greece. Calvin, too, hoped to achieve it, in the City-State 
 of Geneva. In the vast Nation-States of the modern world, 
 the connexion between the ^^09 of the constitution and the 
 life and character of the individual citizen is necessarily less 
 intimate. Nevertheless, there is ground for the belief that 
 even in the modern State there is a close connexion between 
 structure and policy. * No State ', said Treitschke, ' is entitled 
 to renounce that egotism which belongs to its sovereignty.' 
 The * egotism which belongs to its sovereignty ' would seem 
 to be the Teutonic equivalent for the ^^09 of the constitution, 
 to which Aristotle, like his German disciple, attributed such 
 supreme importance. 
 
 * Politics of Aristotle, i. 209. 
 
DEMOCRACY, DIPLOMACY, AND WAR 127 
 
 Modern writers have, as a rule, exhibited some impatience 
 with the time-honoured debate as to the best type of constitu- 
 tion. There is, says the scientific historian of the Positivist 
 School, no * best type \ There is no single type equally 
 appropriate to all States at all stages in their political develop- 
 ment. The excellence of a constitution is a matter not of 
 abstract and universal theory, but of applicability to the 
 environment of the particular State. In this matter the 
 Positivist surely has reason on his side. To assume, for 
 example, as some are apt to do, that the peculiar type of 
 democracy — and English democracy is in many respects std 
 generis — which has in the course of centuries been gradually 
 evolved in this country is applicable to all countries, at all 
 times, at all stages, betrays both ignorance of history and 
 characteristic lack of imagination. Nevertheless, though we 
 may not presume to say that the particular form of polity 
 to which evolution has brought us in this country is 
 abstractedly superior to other forms, there is a. presumption 
 that it is the form best adapted, for the time being, to our 
 own peculiar circumstances. 
 
 But this presumption is obviously conditional. The con- 
 dition is that the constitution is apt to fulfil the first political 
 law— that of self-preservation. In the modern international 
 economy self-preservation depends, in the first instance, upon 
 skilful diplomacy, and ultimately upon the adequacy of 
 national defence. 
 
 How has the democratic constitution of modern England 
 fulfilled this condition ? How has it responded to the test ? 
 To this question Mr. Oliver's answer is unequivocal. Our 
 diplomacy, though transparently well-intentioned, has been as 
 unskilful as our military preparations have been inadequate. 
 Worse still : there has been complete lack of correspondence 
 between policy and armaments. And the blame for this he 
 imputes not to the personality of a Foreign Secretary, to 
 whose high-mindedness and integrity he pays a tribute as 
 ample as it is just, but to the condition of domestic politics 
 and the mischievous ascendancy of the party system. 
 
 Can 'democracy' be held responsible for these short- 
 comings ? 
 
138 THE EUROPEAN COMMONWEALTH 
 
 Before attempting to answer this question, it is important 
 to remember that even ' democracies ' do not all conform to 
 a single type. The Swiss type, for example, differs fundamen- 
 tally from our own. The Swiss Confederation exists to prove 
 that the party system, as we understand it, is by no means 
 the necessary complement of a democratic constitution, and 
 that the highest type of individual liberty is consistent with 
 the universal obligation of military service. Into the Swiss 
 executive the idea of party has never, I believe, intruded. 
 Certain it is that party mutations in the legislature in no- 
 wise affect the personnel of the executive. Nor has it ever 
 been suggested in Switzerland that personal freedom involves 
 exemption from the liability to take a share in national 
 defence. There are, of course, many other points of contrast 
 between English and Swiss democracy : the most obvious 
 being the fact that the former is unitary and the latter federal. 
 But even more important is the fact that while English 
 democracy is representative^ Swiss democracy, like that of 
 the Greek City-States, is in no inconsiderable degree direct. 
 The latter principle obtains in lesser degree in the United 
 States, and even more conspicuously in the Australian 
 Commonwealth. 
 
 Generalization in politics is proverbially dangerous ; yet the 
 mention in close conjunction of the Swiss Confederation and 
 Australian Commonwealth might seem to suggest that the 
 successful working of democratic institutions is not unrelated 
 to the size of the State or rather of the population. That the 
 Greek philosophers held this view is, of course, notorious. To 
 Aristotle the size of the State was of pre-eminent importance. 
 A State of some fifty thousand citizens was, in his judgement, 
 ideal. Ten thousand were inadequate to that self-sufficiency 
 which he predicated as essential : one hundred thousand tended 
 to degenerate into a mob. In the great Nation-States of the 
 modern world democracy has necessarily assumed a representa- 
 tive character. Has it, under this necessity, lost some element 
 essential to its completeness and success? Swiss publicists 
 would answer this question with an emphatic affirmative. 
 Indeed, in their scientific literature the term 'democracy' is 
 
DEMOCRACY, DIPLOMACY, AND WAR 129 
 
 employed as the antithesis of 'representative government'. 
 The point, though it cannot be elaborated, is unmistakably 
 suggestive. It might be regarded, perhaps, as tiresomely 
 academic, were it not that federalism is at hand to suggest 
 a practical if partial reconciliation. It should not, however, 
 escape observation that the democracies of Switzerland and of 
 Australia, alike small in population, alike federal in type, alike 
 in some measure * direct \ are alike also in the acceptance of 
 the primary obligation of citizenship. ' A democracy ', says 
 Mr. Oliver, ' which asserts the right of manhood suffrage while 
 denying the duty of manhood service is living in a fool's 
 paradise ' (p. 400). Neither the democracy of Switzerland 
 nor that of Australia (to say nothing of France) is obnoxious 
 to this charge. 
 
 In England, on the contrary, the people have been not 
 merely permitted but encouraged to select this particular site 
 for their habitation. This is the real gravamen of the charge 
 preferred by Mr. Oliver against the political leaders of the 
 English democracy. Rather than risk the ingathering of an 
 abundant harvest of domestic and social reforms, or, as a less 
 friendly critic might put it, rather than risk the loss of the 
 possession or the prospect of office, our politicians have 
 deliberately withheld from the people, whom they affect to 
 trust, a knowledge of facts which the people, if really sovereign, 
 had a right to know, and which politicians with a single eye 
 to national security would not have hesitated to divulge. A 
 graver indictment could not be preferred against politicians. 
 
 To this indictment there are only two possible answers: 
 first, that a revelation of the facts would have accentuated the 
 danger and might have precipitated the War, which it was the 
 supreme object of English diplomacy to avoid ; and, secondly, 
 that the proposal of the only remedy appropriate to the actual 
 situation revealed by the publication of the facts would have 
 provoked a social revolution. In other words, the politicians 
 can rebut the grave charge preferred against themselves only 
 by framing an indictment against the nation. 
 
 Is there a true bill ? Detailed investigation must be de- 
 ferred to a more convenient season, but it must be confessed 
 
 2120 K 
 
130 THE EUROPEAN COMMONWEALTH 
 
 that the proceedings at the Trade Union Congress at Bristol 
 (September 1915) — despite obvious and praiseworthy restraint 
 — and still more the language employed by one or more 
 leaders of organized labour in the House of Commons, do un- 
 fortunately afford some justification for an affirmative answer. 
 
 Let us assume, for the moment, that the Trade Union Con- 
 gress — occasionally described with some grandiloquence as the 
 ' Parliament of Labour ' — does fairly represent the considered 
 opinion of the aristocracy of the manual workers of the country. 
 That Congress, by an almost unanimous vote, expressed its 
 belief that 'all the men necessary can and will be obtained 
 through a voluntary system properly organized ', while the 
 President of the Miners' Federation went so far as to say, amid 
 approving cheers, that * it will be the duty of organized labour 
 to prevent conscription taking place '. That the dislike of 
 conscription is not due to any wish to evade personal 
 responsibility for the defence of the country is proved by the 
 magnificent response made by the working classes to the call 
 for voluntary recruits. On the other hand, it is probably true 
 that the magnitude of the task before us is even now imper- 
 fectly realized by the wage-earning as by other classes. 
 
 Lack of imagination has always been a prominent charac- 
 teristic of the English people. Relatively remote from the 
 actual scene of the conflict, it is not easy for us to apprehend 
 either its magnitude or its ferocity. The power to do so 
 postulates not only a vivid imagination, but full and accurate 
 information. The former is denied to us by nature, the latter 
 is intercepted by authority. But apart from these deficiencies 
 common to all classes, the men represented at the Trade 
 Union Congress are inspired, in their opposition to compulsory 
 service, by a motive which is a natural derivative from the 
 organization of which they form part. Trade unionism, 
 which may fairly be regarded as the economic complement of 
 political democracy, has, from the first, proposed to itself two 
 main objects : on the one hand, to maintain an organization 
 for the purpose of collective bargaining with the employers ; 
 and, on the other, to improve in every way possible, the 
 conditions of labour, more particularly though not exclusively 
 
DEMOCRACY, DIPLOMACY, AND WAR 131 
 
 by obtaining for it a larger and larger share in the product of 
 industry. 
 
 The opposition of trade unionism to compulsory service 
 to-day is prompted by the same reasons that have led trade 
 unionists to oppose compulsory arbitration in the past. 
 
 The leaders of political trade unionism are afraid that if 
 compulsion is applied in respect of military service, it will, 
 during war-time, be applied also to industrial service, and 
 they are apprehensive lest the whole of the complicated and 
 elaborate machinery of trade unionism should, in the process, 
 be seriously dislocated and perhaps permanently damaged. 
 The apprehension is, from the point of view of men whose 
 whole being is saturated with class-consciousness, not merely 
 natural but intelligible. Conscription — the application of the 
 principle of compulsion to the service of the citizen on the 
 field of battle as in the field of industry—- would unquestionably 
 revolutionize for the time being the entire relation at present 
 subsisting between the individual and the State. This truth 
 is perceived, somewhat confusedly perhaps, by * labour *, and its 
 perception is at the back of the demand that if the State claims 
 the right to dictate to the individual labourer, the manner in 
 which he shall employ his labour, and the amount of remunera- 
 tion he shall obtain for it, the State shall also dictate to the 
 capitalist the direction in which he shall employ his capital and 
 the amount of remuneration that capital may earn. Nor can it 
 be denied that there is both logic and equity in the contention. 
 Certainly it is not disputed by the possessors of capital ; though 
 in applying the principle it must always be remembered that 
 ' labour ' possesses an element of fluidity and mobility which 
 does not by any means invariably attach to ' capital '. A 
 sudden demand for the transfer of capital from one employment 
 to another might result simply in its destruction. Nevertheless, 
 in principle, the demands of the State must be conceded in the 
 one case as promptly as in the other. 
 
 Those who, like the Swiss peasants or our own fellow country- 
 men in Australia, believe that the duty of manhood service 
 is the corollary of the right of manhood suffrage, may find it 
 difficult to comprehend, and still more difficult to justify, the 
 
 K 1 
 
132 THE EUROPEAN COMMONWEALTH 
 
 attitude of organized labour in this country. It is, in truth, 
 impossible to do either without realizing that English trade 
 unionism is itself one of the peculiar products of that inflexible 
 individualism which dominated English thought and English 
 politics during the middle years of the nineteenth century — 
 the period in which trade unionism was painfully struggling 
 for a recognized place in the industrial economy. That the 
 trade unionists of to-day would deny their paternity and 
 would repudiate with derision any affinity to individualism is 
 likely enough. But it is, nevertheless, abundantly clear that 
 they have not grasped the fundamental principle of Collectivism. 
 With many of the economic applications of the latter principle 
 no one has less sympathy than the present writer ; but it is 
 obvious that the State must, in war, temporarily assume 
 responsibilities and perform functions which, in days of peace, 
 are properly left to individuals. Various sections of the people 
 have eagerly acclaimed the partial application of this principle ; 
 it is clear that no section has yet grasped its integral signifi- 
 cance. Until it is grasped by the nation as a whole there is no 
 chance of bringing a great war to a successful issue, whether 
 the form of the polity be democratic, aristocratic, or autocratic. 
 In this respect, at any rate, the form of government is unim- 
 portant. War necessarily involves the unquestioned supremacy 
 of the State, and in war the State itself can survive only by 
 committing the supreme direction of affairs to a very small 
 number of individuals, preferably to one. For the time being 
 these men or this man must be virtually autocratic. The 
 problem is to find the man. 
 
 The question under discussion would seem, then, to narrow 
 itself. Under what particular form of government is it most 
 easy to find the man ? The apologists of democracy are fond 
 of pointing to the example of the first French Republic 
 triumphant over the monarchical coalition which was opposed 
 to it. How far does this example go to prove the capacity 
 of democracy for the conduct of a great war ? It would be 
 impossible to analyse the many causes which contributed to 
 the remarkable success of French arms during the period 
 between the fall of the monarchy and the advent of Napoleon. 
 
DEMOCRACY, DIPLOMACY, AND WAR 133 
 
 But one may be noted. Out of the agony of the Terror there 
 emerged two men of genius : Danton, who dared everything 
 to save France, and Carnot, perhaps the greatest organizer of 
 war that ever Hved. If, however, we are to appeal from theory 
 to experience, the appeal may more conveniently be confined 
 to the history of our own country. 
 
 Until 1688 England was ruled by a personal monarch ; the 
 aristocracy were supreme in affairs until 1832 ; democracy has 
 been a fact only since 1 867, or it would be safer to say since 
 1885. During the period of personal monarchy there was only 
 one great international struggle in which England was seriously 
 engaged. Until the close of the Middle Ages there were no 
 international wars for the simple reason that except England 
 there was not in Western Europe any nation. The Hundred 
 Years' War was not a contest between the English and French 
 nations. The French nation had not yet come into existence. 
 It was a feudal struggle between the King of Paris supported 
 by some of his feudatories against other feudatories, led by 
 the most powerful among them, who happened also to occupy 
 the English throne and was thus able to bring into the field 
 his English subjects. The first great international war was 
 that between France and the Austro-Spanish Habsburgs. The 
 first in which England took a serious part was the contest with 
 'Spain which culminated in the Armada fight. But the latter 
 contest was fought, except for one or two desultory and unim- 
 portant expeditions to the Low Countries, entirely at sea. Not 
 until the Revolution of 1688 and the accession of the Dutch 
 Stadtholder to the English throne did England, as a nation, 
 take a leading part in military operations on the Continent or 
 overseas. 
 
 The Second Hundred Years' War with France, begun in 
 1689, ended only with Wellington's victory on the field of 
 Waterloo. During the whole of that period English politics 
 were dominated by a small knot of great territorial magnates. 
 How did we fare as regards diplomacy and war under the 
 rule of an aristocracy ? It might be inferred from a bare state- 
 ment of the facts that the aristocratic governments of the 
 eighteenth century were especially prone to military enter- 
 
134 THE EUROPEAN COMMONWEALTH 
 
 prise. But the inference, though natural, would be directly 
 contrary to the truth. The territorial magnates were not as 
 a class naturally inclined either towards a ' spirited foreign 
 policy ', or towards participation in continental wars. The 
 Tories among them belonged mostly, if we may accept the 
 testimony of Bolingbroke and Swift, to the ' blue-water school '. 
 The Whig magnates, on the other hand, carried on the political 
 traditions of William HI, believing with him that the preserva- 
 tion of the domestic liberties of England was inconsistent with 
 the ascendancy of the Bourbons in Europe. 
 
 The so-called wars of the League of Augsburg and the 
 Spanish Succession v/ere due — apart from the masterful per- 
 sonality of William HI — to the conviction of Louis XIV that 
 in order to dominate the continent of Europe he must secure 
 a controlling influence in the domestic affairs of England. 
 Thus William HI was able to convince the English Whigs 
 that if they would preserve domestic liberty they must circum- 
 scribe Bourbon supremacy upon the Continent. The success 
 of English arms in the first round of the contest (1689-17 13) 
 must be ascribed to the fact that in the person of John 
 Churchill, Duke of Marlborough, we produced a man as skilful 
 in diplomacy as he was brilliant in war. 
 
 The second and more important round (1739-63) was, as 
 regards English intervention, purely commercial and colonial 
 in origin. The commercial classes were by this time becoming 
 an important element in the Whig party. Their appetite for 
 oversea trade had been whetted by the commercial concessions 
 made to us by Spain and embodied in the Treaty of Utrecht. 
 The renewal of the war against the Bourbons was directly due 
 to commercial rivalry, leading to repeated ' incidents ' in the 
 southern seas. The first half of the war, ended by the Treaty 
 of Aix-la-Chapelle (1748), brought little advantage to either 
 side. The critical portion of the struggle was still to come. 
 It opened with a threefold attack on the part of France and a 
 threefold disaster suffered by England. 
 
 If any antidote be needed to the feeling of disappointment 
 engendered by the net results of the first twelve months of the 
 present War, it may most surely be derived from a glance at 
 
DEMOCRACY, DIPLOMACY, AND WAR 135 
 
 the history of the first twelve months of the most brilHantly 
 successful war ever waged by this country. The opening 
 scene of that war was marked by a terrible reverse to English 
 arms in the Ohio Valley, where General Braddock was defeated 
 and killed. That defeat filled the nation with well-grounded 
 alarm for the safety of all its possessions in North America. 
 Hardly had it recovered from the shock administered by the 
 news of Braddock's defeat, when from the Mediterranean there 
 came the news that one of our two vantage points — the island 
 of Minorca — had, thanks to the ineptitude of Admiral Byng, 
 been captured by the Due de Richelieu. From India came the 
 news that Calcutta had fallen to Surajah Dowlah, the senseless 
 tyrant who inflicted upon a band of English residents the 
 terrible sufferings of the Black Hole. Nearer home, too, the 
 situation was equally discouraging, for the Duke of Cumberland 
 had been compelled to sign at Kloster-Seven an engage- 
 ment to disband his forces and to take no further part in 
 the war. 
 
 Still more depressing and alarming was the condition of 
 affairs in England. The * doge ' of the ' Venetian ohgarchy ' 
 was the Duke of Newcastle, who, in 1754, had succeeded to 
 the place vacated by his much abler brother Henry Pelham, 
 solely by virtue of his influence in the small borough con- 
 stituencies whose representatives filled the House of Commons. 
 Newcastle, a man * not fit to be chamberlain in the smallest 
 of German Courts ', was utterly dismayed by the outbreak of 
 war and still more by the succession of disasters which fell upon 
 his country. He turned for help to Pitt, but Pitt was not 
 minded either to serve under Newcastle or to cover his retreat. 
 By the autumn of 1756 the cup of Newcastle's unpopularity 
 was full, and the streets of London resounded with the cry * to 
 the block with Newcastle and to the yard-arm with Byng '. In 
 November, Newcastle resigned, and Pitt took office under the 
 nominal leadership of the Duke of Devonshire.. But he held 
 it only until April 1757. Pitt was the idol of the populace; 
 but popular support availed little. No ministry could main- 
 tain itself in the House of Commons unless it enjoyed the 
 sanction of Newcastle and the favour of the King. The Pitt- 
 
T36 THE EUROPEAN COMMONWEALTH 
 
 Devonshire Ministry enjoyed neither, and in April 1757 ^^ was 
 dismissed. 
 
 For eleven weeks — from April until June 39 — -the country 
 was* without a ministry. Well might the stoutest hearts be 
 filled with the presage of disaster. ' Whoever is in, or whoever 
 is out,' said Lord Chesterfield, ' I am sure we are undone both 
 at home and abroad. . . . We are no longer a nation. I never 
 yet saw so dreadful a prospect.' ' It is time ', said Horace 
 Walpole, ' for England to slip her cables and float away into 
 some unknown ocean.' ' The Empire is no more ' was Pitt's 
 own comment. 
 
 From an intolerable situation there was only one possible 
 means of escape, and Pitt perceived and seized it. He 
 'borrowed Newcastle's majority' to carry on the Government. 
 In this way he was able to rule England for four years (1757-61), 
 virtually as a dictator. In those four years the foundations of 
 English supremacy were firmly laid in India ; the destiny of 
 North America was determined ; and the danger of a Bourbon 
 ascendancy was finally dissipated in Europe. Only the greatest 
 of men could, under the conditions, have achieved such results. 
 ' England ', said Frederick the Great, * has been long in labour, 
 but at last she has produced a man.' And the man had 
 complete confidence in himself. ' I know that I can save this 
 country and that no one else can.' * I want to call England 
 out of that enervate state in which 30,000 men from France 
 can shake her.' The response to his call was immediate and 
 effective. In Macaulay's glowing phrase, * the ardour of his 
 soul set the whole kingdom on fire. It inflamed every soldier 
 who dragged the cannon up the heights of Quebec, and every 
 sailor who boarded the French ships among the rocks of 
 Brittany.' This was the secret of Pitt's success — the magnet- 
 ism of his personality. His courage, too, was superb ; his 
 disinterestedness unquestioned ; his patriotism at once passion- 
 ate and pure. ' He loved England as an Athenian loved the 
 city of the violet crown.' 
 
 The Empire saved by Pitt was in large measure lost by 
 George III. The Peace of Paris of 1763 and that of 1783 
 marked respectively the zenith and the nadir of our Imperial 
 
DEMOCRACY, DIPLOMACY, AND WAR 137 
 
 fortunes. * This ', said Lord Granville in 1763, 'has been the 
 most glorious war and the most triumphant peace that England 
 ever knew.' That of 1783 was the most shameful. But within 
 twelve months the younger Pitt had entered on his long tenure 
 of office. His genius, though hardly less great, was quite unlike 
 his father's. He had little natural aptitude for the conduct of 
 war, and his military policy during the first years of the 
 struggle with republican and Napoleonic France was full of 
 blunders. None the less it was his serenity, his courage, and 
 his tenacity which made the final victory sure. The same 
 qualities were conspicuous in Castlereagh, upon whom his 
 mantle fell and by whom his work was completed. Marl- 
 borough, Chatham, Pitt, Castlereagh, Nelson, Wellington — 
 these were the men thrown up by the oligarchy of the 
 eighteenth century, and by them our most brilliant triumphs, 
 alike in war and diplomacy, were achieved. 
 
 From the above survey, rough and summary though it has 
 been, there would seem to emerge one or two points which 
 are not without significance to-day. The first is, that even in 
 a period marked by great triumphs and conspicuous for great 
 men there were some very black hours. One such was the 
 crisis of 1756-7, which it has seemed worth while to examine 
 in some detail ; another occurred in 1780-2, when we lost the 
 thirteen colonies in North America, when we all but lost India 
 and our Mediterranean power, and when Ireland wrested from 
 nerveless and impotent hands her legislative independence ; a 
 third was the crisis of 1797. Another point would seem to be 
 that in military, as opposed to naval, operations, it takes us 
 some time to get into our stride. In a word, we are bad 
 starters. It was so in 1756, and again, even more conspicu- 
 ously, in and after 1793. Nor is this unintelligible. We have 
 never pretended to be a military nation, and though the navy 
 is always ready for action, the army as a rule is not. In this 
 respect the aristocracy of the eighteenth century differs little 
 from democracy of the twentieth. Whether, in the midst of 
 nations which are military, and face to face with an enemy 
 which has challenged, and unless beaten in the present War, 
 will continue to challenge, our whole position in the world, we 
 
138 THE EUROPEAN COMMONWEALTH 
 
 can still afford to remain an unarmed people is too large a 
 question for discussion at the close of this chapter. 
 
 A third point which emerges clearly enough from a survey 
 of the eighteenth century is that the strength of an oligarchy 
 is its capacity for the production of leaders. Nor was this 
 capacity demonstrated only by the aristocracy of the older 
 England. It was equally apparent in the new. What chance 
 would the Puritan States have had against the mother country 
 in the. American Revolt but for the leadership supplied by 
 the Virginian aristocracy ? The military blunders committed 
 by the British commanders in that fratricidal conflict were 
 almost beyond belief, but despite those blunders the con- 
 federate armies must again and again have been annihilated 
 but for the tenacity, the resourcefulness, and skill of George 
 Washington. 
 
 Salvation, then, would seem to depend, whatever the precise 
 form of the polity, upon two interdependent conditions : the 
 existence of leaders who are not afraid to lead, and the ability 
 of the mass of the nation to discern true leadership and its 
 readiness to follow. 
 
 According to the classical theory, it is the characteristic 
 weakness of democracy to be unable to fulfil these conditions. 
 It is apt to produce tyrants, and it is not infertile in dema- 
 gogues, as The Knights of Aristophanes will always live to 
 remind us. Another peculiarity of democracy, according to 
 the same theory, is the prevalence of a false conception of 
 * freedom ' and ' equality ' — the notion that ' freedom and 
 equality mean the doing what a man likes '. But this, says 
 AristotlCj is wrong : ' men should not think it slavery to live 
 according to the rule of the constitution ; for it is their 
 salvation.' ^ The admonition addressed by Demosthenes to 
 the Athenian democracy is more stern. * Take care lest in 
 trying to get rid of war you find yourselves slaves.' The 
 antithesis is striking. Military service is the corollary of 
 freedom. But enough, it may be said, of ancient saws and 
 of classical theory. The democracy of modern England 
 is not that of Demosthenic or Aristotelian Athens. The 
 * Politics, V. 9, 14. 
 
 J 
 
DEMOCRACY, DIPLOMACY, AND WAR 139 
 
 reminder is pertinent, but the implied argument is double- 
 edged. 
 
 That the environment and conditions of ancient Athens 
 were fundamentally different from those of modern England 
 is obviously true. A City-State as compared with a world- 
 wide Empire ; the limitation of citizenship to freemen ; the 
 economic substratum supplied by slavery; the direct form 
 of democracy as compared with representative government — 
 these and other circumstances should unquestionably induce 
 caution in instituting comparisons, but they do not entirely 
 vitiate them. There is another caution which should equally 
 be borne in mind. It was impressed upon our grandfathers 
 by no less an authority than John Stuart Mill : 
 
 ' Democracy is too recent a phenomenon and of too great 
 magnitude for any one who now lives to comprehend its 
 consequences. A few of its more immediate tendencies may 
 be perceived or surmised ; what other tendencies destined to 
 overrule or to combine with them lie behind there are not 
 grounds even to conjecture. ... It is not, therefore, without 
 a deep sense of the uncertainty attaching to such predictions 
 that the wise would hazard an opinion as to the fate of man- 
 kind under the new democratic dispensation.' ^ 
 
 Precisely three-quarters of a century have elapsed since 
 Mill penned these words. But they are still true and still 
 apposite. The 'democratic dispensation' is even yet relatively 
 new. We cannot yet comprehend its consequences. There 
 are not yet sufficient grounds for conjecture. 
 
 Still, the fact is sufficiently obvious that the modern world, 
 and in particular the English race, is engaged in the trial of 
 an experiment without precedent or parallel in the experience 
 of mankind. We English folk, dispersed in distant homes, 
 are attempting to administer not merely a City-State like 
 Athens, not merely a Nation-State of the ordinary modern 
 type, but a World- Empire the several parts of which are at 
 different stages in political, economic, and social development. 
 And we are attempting to administer it under the ultimate 
 sovereignty of a scarcely veiled democracy, and, for the most 
 part, by means of democratic machinery. This experiment 
 
 * Edinburgh Review^ October 1840. 
 
140 THE EUROPEAN COMMONWEALTH 
 
 is new ; and if we were able to take up a point of observation 
 scientifically detached we should watch it with the interest 
 and curiosity which similar experiments in politics have been 
 wont to command. Such detachment is, however, impossible 
 to an Englishman ; nor, at a time like the present, will the 
 required point of observation be easily found elsewhere. 
 
 This World-Empire is in the pangs of a struggle for exist- 
 ence. In the battle of the nations there is, of course, much 
 more at stake than any particular form of government. But 
 among other issues this, if not the most vital, is not the least 
 interesting. It is a testing time for many things ; among 
 them for democracy. A popular dictatorship secured us 
 against the onslaught of Spanish despotism in the sixteenth 
 century. In the eighteenth century a genuine aristocracy 
 brought us triumphant out of the prolonged contest with 
 France — with a France, monarchical, republican, and im- 
 perialist in turn. In the twentieth century the English de- 
 mocracy, in close alliance with the peoples of France, Russia, 
 Serbia, Italy, and Japan, finds itself at death-grips with a 
 people who have cheerfully confided their political fortunes 
 to a military autocracy. In the first bout of the contest that 
 autocracy has enjoyed all the advantages which naturally 
 accrue from many years of conscious, careful, and sustained 
 preparation ; nor has it failed to make full and profitable use 
 of them. Can the English democracy, in conjunction with its 
 allies, make good the lost time and recover the lost ground ? 
 If it can, it will not merely have preserved and vindicated 
 its own existence, it will also have responded triumphantly 
 to the severest test ever imposed upon a particular form of 
 polity. 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 THE PROBLEM OF SMALL NATIONS AND BIG 
 
 STATES 
 
 * The supreme touchstone of efficiency in imperial government lies in 
 its capacity to preserve the small state in the great union.' — H. A. L. 
 Fisher. 
 
 The cult of the Small Nation is once more in the ascendant./ 
 Of this fact there are numerous and unmistakable indica- 
 tions. Nor is the reason far to seek. The re-emergence of the 
 Balkan States after centuries of submersion ; the heroic resis- 
 tance and the patient suffering of Belgium ; the splendid fight 
 which Serbia made against overwhelming odds ; the encourage- 
 ment given by the proclamation of the Grand Duke Nicholas 
 to the national aspirations of the Poles — all these have touched 
 the imagination and evoked the sympathy of a large part of 
 the civilized world. There would seem, however, to be a some- 
 what more subtle reason for the revival of interest in the smaller 
 nationalities. The Great War has already administered a severe 
 shock to many complacent minds ; it has disturbed many pre- 
 possessions and has dissipated many prejudices. Most people, 
 indeed, have, during the last six months,^ been engaged, con- 
 sciously or unconsciously, in an attempt to readjust the intel- 
 lectual focus. Nor has the process been entirely painless. 
 Especially has it been painful to those who learnt their lessons 
 of history and politics — and which of us did not ? — from the 
 apostles of the Teutonic school. There is, for example, a touch 
 of pathos in the postscript suffixed by Mr. C. R. L. Fletcher 
 to the Preface of his recently published Making of Western 
 Europe? ' I let the text of this book stand ... as a penance, 
 
 ^ First published— in substance— in the Fortnightly Review for 
 February 191 5. 
 
 * London : John Murray, 191 4. 
 
142 THE EUROPEAN COMMONWEALTH 
 
 to be imposed upon myself for the hard things which I have 
 written in it about the Slavonic nations and for the high 
 praise that I have given to the efforts of the medieval 
 emperors to destroy or germanize the Slavs.' Mr. Fletcher 
 expresses with characteristic courage and candour what many 
 people are feeling. I do not, for one instant, suggest that all 
 the lessons learnt in the Teutonic school will have to be 
 unlearnt. On the contrary, it is certain that the message of 
 a man like Stubbs or Seeley contains in it elements of 
 indestructible value. Nevertheless, the fact remains that the 
 student will be compelled to look at ascertained facts through 
 a new lens ; to find for familiar phenomena a fresh inter- 
 pretation. 
 
 With Bishop Stubbs's famous vindication of the Teutonic 
 basis of English society and English institutions this essay 
 is not directly concerned. There would seem to be much 
 sense and some safety in the audacious but immortal jingle 
 with which Defoe confounded the captious critics of his patron 
 * Dutch 'William: 
 
 For Englishmen to boast of generation 
 
 Cancels their knowledge and lampoons the nation. 
 
 A true-born Englishman's a contradiction, 
 
 In speech an irony, in fact a fiction ; 
 
 A metaphor invented to express 
 A man akin to all the universe. 
 
 The Romans first with Julius Caesar came, 
 
 Including all the nations of that name, 
 
 Gauls, Greeks and Lombards and, by computation, 
 
 Auxiliaries or slaves of every nation. 
 
 With Hengist, Saxons ; Danes, with Sueno came. 
 
 In search of plunder, not in search of fame. 
 
 Scots, Picts, and Irish from Hibernian shore, 
 
 And conquering William brought the Normans o'er. 
 
 From this amphibious ill -born mob began 
 That vain ill-natured thing an Englishman. 
 The customs, surnames, languages and manners 
 Of all these nations are their own explainers : 
 
SMALL NATIONS AND BIG STATES 143 
 
 Whose relics are so lasting and so strong 
 They ha' left a shibboleth upon our tongue, 
 By which with easy search you may distinguish 
 Your Roman-Saxon-Danish-Norman-English.^ 
 This oblique reference to an ancient controversy is made 
 for a particular reason. It is undeniable that the teaching of 
 Stubbs, Kemble, Freeman, J. R. Green, and other English 
 apostles of the Teutonic school had a very important political 
 influence. It predisposed the minds of their disciples to an 
 active sympathy with Bismarck's astounding achievement, the 
 unification of Germany under the hegemony of Prussia. 
 
 More than this. It encouraged the cult of the great Nation- I 
 State./ In this respect the work of Stubbs at Oxford was 
 powerfully seconded by that of Seeley at Cambridge. The 
 two men were poles asunder, in their opinions, in their habits 
 of mind, and in their historical methods. But the political 
 effect of Seeley's teaching was curiously complementary, in 
 one respect, to that of Stubbs. The latter was more concerned 
 with the Germania of Tacitus; the former with the Germany 
 of Napoleon and Stein. Stubbs was the disciple of Maurer ; 
 Seeley of Ranke ; but both were saturated with Teutonic 
 scholarship, and both were Teutonic in sympathy and outlook. 
 The following passage may be cited in illustration from 
 v'Seeley's Life and Times of Stein — his greatest though not 
 his best-known book: 
 
 * The three principal wars of Prussia since her great disaster 
 (at Jena), those waged in 1813, in 1866, and in 1870, have 
 a character of greatness such as no other wars have. They 
 have, in a manner, reconciled the modern world to war, for \ 
 they have exhibited it as a civilizing agent and a kind of ' 
 teacher of morals.*/ 
 
 In regard to the war of Liberation (1813) the claim was not, 
 perhaps, extravagant ; it is much more doubtful as regards 
 that of 1870, and how Seeley could ever have brought himself 
 to write thus of the war of 1866 now passes comprehension. 
 In fairness, it should be remembered that the secrets of 
 Bismarck's diplomacy had not then been revealed ; still less 
 could Seeley have anticipated the reductio ad absurdtim of 
 ^ The True-born Englishman. 
 
144 THE EUROPEAN COxMMONWEALTH 
 
 his argument contained in the works of Treitschke and 
 Bernhardi. 
 
 The argument of the Life of Stein is, however, entirely 
 consonant with that of Seeley's much more famous book, 
 The Expansion of England (1883). The latter was one of the 
 few books of the nineteenth century which can literally be 
 described as ' epoch-making '. Its effect upon political thought 
 is fairly comparable to that produced upon economic thought, 
 a century earlier, by Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations. Like 
 the Stein it tended to the exaltation of the big State. It is 
 true that Seeley was carefuj to insist that 'bigness is not 
 necessarily greatness *. Still there is, throughout the lectures, 
 an assumption that the future of the world is with the big 
 States, and that if England desires to take rank alongside 
 Russia and the United States and to take ' a higher rank than 
 the States of the Continent ', she must form a federal union 
 with the Dominions oversea.^ 
 
 / Contemporary events suggested a similar conclusion. It is, 
 perhaps, rash to anticipate the judgement of posterity, but it 
 can hardly be doubted that the historian who, a century hence, 
 reviews the events of the nineteenth century will indicate as 
 its most characteristic feature the triumph of the nationality 
 principle, and will point to the unification of Italy and the 
 unification of Germany as the most illustrious exemplification 
 of that principle. It is true that the force of nationality is not 
 uniform in operation ; that its effects have sometimes been 
 centrifugal, sometimes centripetal. If, on the one hand, it is 
 responsible for the making of modern Germany and modern 
 Italy, equally, on the other, it must accept responsibility for 
 the separation of Belgium from Holland, of Norway from 
 Sweden ; for the disintegration of the Ottoman Empire, and 
 for the separatist movement in Ireland. None the less it was 
 natural that the generation to which Seeley belonged should 
 have been impressed much more by the constructive than by 
 the destructive influence of the idea of nationality ; that it 
 should have deemed the unification of Italy more important 
 than the independence of Greece, and the consolidation of 
 ^ Cf. e.g. Lecture I, p. 16. 
 
SMALL NATIONS AND BIG STATES 145 
 
 Germany as outweighing the resurrection of Serbia or Bulgaria. 
 ^ 'Lord Bryce, when introducing, in 1905, a volume on the Balkan 
 problem, appeared to lament the predominant tendency of the 
 nineteenth century. 'The most conspicuous feature', he wrote, 
 *in the evolution of the modern world has been the efifacement 
 of the smaller and the growth of the larger nations and nation- 
 alities. . . . Local patriotism, with all that diversity and play 
 of individuality which local patriotism has evolved, withers 
 silently away ' ; ^ and yet, twenty years before, there was no 
 more enthusiastic champion of the big-State movement than 
 Professor Bryce. Writing of the war of 1870-71, he said : 
 
 ' The unbroken career of victory which carried the German 
 arms over the east and centre of France, and placed them at 
 last triumphant in the capital of their foes, proved in the truest 
 sense what strength there is in a righteous cause. ... It is the 
 tra dition of a glorious unity, in the days when Germany led 
 the'world, that has made Germany again the central power of 
 continental Europe and the arbiter of its destinies.' 
 
 And again, in reference to the parallel movements in Italy 
 and Germany, he wrote : 
 
 * The triumph of the principle of nationality is complete ; 
 the old wrongs are redressed ; the old problems solved : we 
 seem to have closed one great page in the world's history, and 
 pause to wonder and conjecture what the next may have to 
 unfold. . . . Through western and central Europe the small 
 States have disappeared and the great States have reached 
 their natural boundaries of race and languages.' ^ 
 
 In 1880 Professor Bryce was, no less than Professor Seeley, 
 an adherent of the doctrine of les limites naturelles^ even 
 though the unification of the big States was purchased at the 
 price of the elimination of the smaller. And both Professors 
 were typical of the prevailing temper of the time. , The doctrine 
 of nationality was invoked not so much in defence of the small 
 State as to justify the expansion of the larger aggregates. 
 
 Recently, however, there has been an unmistakable reaction.^ 
 
 And, just as the unification of Germany was to the publicists 
 
 of the last generation the pre-eminent illustration of the working 
 
 of the principle of nationality in its centripetal and integrating 
 
 ^ Villari (ed.), The Balkan Problem, pp. 12, 13. 
 
 2 The Holy Roman Empire (seventh edition, 1880), pp. 433, 442-4- 
 
 2120 L 
 
146 THE EUROPEAN COMMONWEALTH 
 
 aspect, so now the political and intellectual revolt against 
 Germany and German ideals has provided a text for the 
 justification of the small State. The real significance of 
 German political philosophy, the true meaning of German 
 political evolution, have been revealed, as it were in a flash- 
 light, by the eruption of the present War. The consequence 
 is that we are witnessing something like a stampede of the 
 intellectuals, a stampede which is perhaps somewhat lacking 
 alike in dignity, in sense of humour, and above all in sense of 
 proportion. Primarily, of course, it is due to the reductio ad 
 absurdum of political theories and philosophies which, when 
 presented in moderation and not pushed to extremes, com- 
 manded, and justly commanded, a large measure of respect 
 and assent. The unification of great States on the basis of 
 nationality is a case in point. All the mid-Victorian liberals 
 rejoiced in the unification of Italy,- even though it involved the 
 absorption of Genoa and Venice ; most liberals regarded with 
 satisfaction, and many, like Professor Bryce, welcomed with 
 enthusiasm, the consolidation of Germany under the hegemony 
 of Prussia. 
 
 " Since the 'seventies the wheel of fortune has revolved with 
 unusual rapidity. Modern Germany, not content with the 
 achievement of national unity and the realization of national 
 identity, aspires to domination ; seeks to revive the empire not 
 of Otto but of Charlemagne. The liberties of Europe are once 
 more threatened as in the days of Philip H, of Louis XIV, and 
 of Napoleon Bonaparte. The shock administered to the 
 intellectuals is severe. They turn and rend the prophets of the 
 last generation. Where now are the doctrines of Carlyle? 
 Interpreted by the light afforded by Bismarck and the Kaiser 
 William II, the 'rectifications' of frontier effected by Frede- 
 rick II begin to wear a more sinister aspect. Even Carlyle, 
 with all a valetudinarian's admiration for physical prowess, 
 failed to justify the partition of Poland, but what are we to say 
 of the annexation of the Silesian Duchies ? Must the history 
 of the eighteenth century, no less than that of the nineteenth, 
 be re-written ? 
 
 Before we commit ourselves to a volte-face so complete, 
 
SMALL NATIONS AND BIG STATES 147 
 
 before we execute a movement so humiliating and painful, it 
 seems desirable to sketch, with extreme brevity, the evolution 
 of the States-system of modern Europe. 
 
 -^ It was not until the sixteenth century that the modern 
 States-system began to take shape. During the Middle Ages, 
 as Bishop Stubbs was wont to insist, there was no international 
 system in Europe ; there were, in fact, with insignificant ex- 
 ceptions, no nations. England had indeed, as we have seen, 
 attained to a precocious and perhaps a premature sense of 
 national unity in the thirteenth century ; Hungary also was a 
 conscious entity, but for the rest Europe was made up of 
 ' great bundles of states '. * France, Germany, and Spain were 
 busily striving either for consolidation or against dissolution.' 
 Most of the greater Powers * were prevented by the interposi- 
 tion of small semi-neutral territories from any extensive or 
 critical collision . . . the kingdoms of France and Germany 
 were kept at arm's length from each other, and, being at arm's 
 length, in an attitude something like friendship '.^ 
 
 This state of things lasted roughly down to the end of the 
 fifteenth century. The consolidation of France under Louis XI ; 
 the aggregation of the Spanish kingdoms under Charles V ; 
 the destruction of the feudal system and the absorption of 
 feudal principalities ; the development of centralized adminis- 
 trations ; the emergence of powerful monarchies ; the virtual 
 dissolution of the medieval empire ; the partial repudiation of 
 the authority of the Papacy — all these things, more or less 
 coincident, combined to revolutionize the medieval polity. 
 Out of the chaos produced by the dissolution of the older 
 unifying forces the new States-system, as we have shown in 
 a previous chapter, emerged. 
 
 What was the attitude of the oldest of the Nation-States 
 towards the new order of things? English diplomacy has 
 never been highly regarded upon the Continent for the virtue 
 of consistency. Nevertheless, as will be shown by a specific 
 and detailed illustration in the next chapter, English foreign 
 policy has exhibited, on broad lines, a remarkable adherence 
 1 Cf. Preface to the Chronicle of Roger of Hoveden, pp. 186-7. 
 
 L 3 
 
148 THE EUROPEAN COMMONWEALTH 
 
 to certain fixed principles. Among these the doctrine of the 
 European equilibrium has always held a foremost place. 
 Whether or no the authorship of the ' Great Design ' of 
 Henri IV may, as some hold be imputed to Queen Elizabeth, 
 certain it is that she consistently acted upon the principle 
 which that essay was designed to illustrate. The whole of her 
 policy was based upon the idea of a ' balance of power '. And 
 herein she followed in the path trodden by the wisest of her 
 im med iate ■ predecessors. 
 
 Of English foreign policy, in the modern sense, the first real 
 exponent was Henry VH. He was the first English states- 
 man who found himself confronted by the new problem, who 
 perceived the implications of the new States-system. And he 
 comported himself and guided the counsels of his country, 
 under new and difficult conditions, with eminent success. 
 Bacon described him as ' a wonder for wise men \ and added : 
 * Certain it is, that though his reputation was great at home, 
 yet it was greater abroad. For foreigners that could not see 
 the passages of affairs, but made their judgements upon the 
 issues of them, noted that he was ever in strife and ever aloft.' 
 The more discerning of later critics concur in this judgement 
 as to Henry's abilities and success. * A cold, steady, strongly 
 purposed man, patient, secret, circumspect' ; he 'found Eng- 
 land weak and poor, and divided against herself and isolated 
 in Europe', he left her 'having a place in the councils of 
 Europe second to none, courted on every side and able to 
 make her weight felt perceptibly in the balance '. Such is the 
 judgement of Bishop Stubbs.^ The most elaborate study of 
 the policy of the reign comes from the pen of a great German 
 scholar, Dr. Wilhelm Busch, and his summary is as follows : 
 ' Assured peace, an honoured position among the Powers, 
 English trade pushed to the front in the general competition 
 . . . all this would have been impossible without the prudent, 
 clear-sighted, judicious, and far-seeing policy of Henry VH.' ^ 
 The key-note of that policy was the maintenance of the conti- 
 nental equilibrium. Exhausted by the Hundred Years' War 
 
 * Lectures on Medieval and Modern History ^ p, 370. 
 ' England under the Tudors^ p. 240. 
 
SMALL NATIONS AND BIG STATES 149 
 
 with France and discouraged by its issue; distraught by- 
 dynastic rivahies at home and plunged into social anarchy by 
 lack of * governance ' ; relatively poor in resources and popula- 
 tion ; possessing neither fleet nor army, England, despite her 
 precocious realization of national unity, might well have 
 counted for naught in the new Europe which came into being 
 in the later fifteenth century. The prudent and vigilant diplo- 
 macy of the first of the Tudors secured for his country a great 
 position, and established a tradition of incalculable service to 
 his successors. Wolsey walked with cautious steps in the 
 path defined by Henry VII. Henry VIII temporarily strayed 
 from it to his undoing. The marriage of his elder daughter 
 threatened to reduce England to the position of a mere appan- 
 age in the mighty empire of the Habsburgs ; the virginity and 
 incomparable prudence of the younger rescued the country 
 from the entangling toils of continental alliances, and re- 
 established England's position as thesustainerof the European 
 equilibrium and the arbiter in European diplomacy. How 
 great had been the danger alike to England and to Europe if 
 Queen Mary had not been childless, or if Queen Elizabeth had 
 yielded to the solicitations or succumbed to the attacks of 
 Philip of Spain, may be learnt from the pages of Seeley's 
 illuminating essay on British foreign policy.^ It must, for our 
 present purpose, suffice to note that Queen Elizabeth con- 
 fronted a most dangerous conjunction of circumstances external 
 and internal, and overcame it by circumspect adherence to the 
 policy inherited from the grandfather she so* closely resembled. 
 By the end of the sixteenth century that policy was, as the 
 next chapter will demonstrate, rapidly hardening into a tradi- 
 tion. The theory of the equilibrium involved friendly relations 
 with and occasional succour to the smaller Powers and in par- 
 ticular, during this period, to the northern provinces of the 
 Netherlands. The defeat of Philip's Armada secured the 
 independence of the United Provinces. During the next half- 
 century, however — under the early Stuarts and Cromwell — the 
 development of commercial rivalries, notably in the Far East, 
 
 ^ Gi'owth of British Policy. 
 
ISO THE EUROPEAN COMMONWEALTH 
 
 interposed a serious barrier to the friendship of the two 
 countries. 
 
 The foreign policy of the Protector was, indeed, rather 
 equivocal. In assisting Mazarin to overthrow the power of 
 Spain he seemed to show himself indifferent to the principle of 
 the equilibrium. On the other hand, the conclusion of treaties, 
 though primarily commercial in significance, with Sweden, 
 Denmark, and Portugal, indicated a desire for friendship with 
 the smaller nations. 
 
 The alliance with Portugal has been maintained, virtually 
 without interruption, from that day to this. Cemented by the 
 marriage of Charles H with Catherine of Braganza, it was 
 confirmed by the famous ' Methuen ' Treaty of 1703. In the 
 War of the Spanish Succession, still more in the campaigns 
 against Napoleon, the friendship of Portugal was of inestimable 
 value to a maritime State. The debt incurred by England 
 was more than repaid to Portugal by Canning and Palmerston, 
 but by their day the ancient alliance betw^een the two coun- 
 tries was too firmly established to be permanently affected 
 either by party oscillations in England or by dynastic and 
 constitutional vicissitudes in Portugal. 
 
 It was otherwise in regard to the Scandinavian States. The 
 close connexion between Sweden and France, steadily main- 
 tained for two centuries, precluded, at least during the 
 eighteenth century, any genuine cordiality between Stockholm 
 and the Court of St. James's. Denmark too was, during the 
 same period, rather persistently unfriendly to England. Our 
 maritime code bore hardly upon her as upon others, and she 
 showed her not unnatural resentment in the Armed Neutrality 
 and the Northern League. The truth is that from 1688 to 
 1 815 the absorption of England in the world-struggle against 
 France left her little leisure for the improvement of her rela- 
 tions with the smaller nations. This preoccupation may in 
 part account for the acquiescence of Great Britain in the ' most 
 cynical crime in modern history * — the partition of Poland. 
 ' No wise or honest man ', wrote Burke, ' can approve of that 
 partition, or can contemplate it without prognosticating great 
 mischief from it to all countries at some future time.' Burke 
 
SMALL NATIONS AND BIG STATES' 151 
 
 indubitably spoke the mind of the better part of his contera- 
 pories, but Lord North was too busy in America, Pitt was 
 too much absorbed in the war against the Revolution, to pay 
 much heed to the affairs of Poland. Hence it came that it was 
 not until after the conclusion of the Napoleonic wars that 
 England was again in a position to espouse with effect the 
 cause of the smaller nationalities. 
 
 It was the perversion of the principles of the Holy Alliance 
 which reawakened the conscience of England in this matter. 
 The originator of that Alliance — the Tsar Alexander — was a 
 curious mixture of cloudy mysticism and calculating shrewd- 
 ness. But his Great Design was at least as void of all self- 
 seeking motives as that of Henri ly. The Tsar and his 
 scheme were, however, captured by Metternich, and it was not 
 long before the machinery of the Alliance was assiduously 
 employed for the suppression of all liberal movements in the 
 individual States. To the Alliance itself England was never 
 formally a party, and against the perversion of its principles 
 Lord Castlereagh stoutly protested. Death — self-inflicted — 
 robbed him of much of the credit which undeniably belonged 
 to him, and Canning reaped where Castlereagh had sown. 
 Greece, Portugal, and the South American Colonies of Spain — 
 now recognized as independent States — all had cause to bless 
 the name of England and Canning. The powerful autocrats 
 of Central and Eastern Europe stood for the principle of inter- 
 ference in the interests of absolutism ; England stood for the 
 individual liberties of the smaller States. Castlereagh and 
 Canning founded the recent tradition of English policy. 
 Palmerston accepted and enforced it with a vigour certainly 
 not inferior to theirs. The independence of Belgium, assured 
 by the Treaty of Lon"don (1839), was a conspicuous triumph 
 for his diplomacy. In regard both to Greece and Portugal 
 Lord Palmerston maintained and completed the work of 
 Canning. England was largely instrumental in obtaining for 
 Denmark a guarantee of integrity (185^), but unfortunately, 
 when the crisis arrived, in 1863, Lord Palmerston and Lord 
 John Russell were more suspicious of Napoleon than of Bis- 
 marck, and Prussia was permitted to annex the Danish 
 Duchies without any effective protest from Great Britain. 
 
152 THE EUROPEAN COMMONWEALTH 
 
 With the exemplary manifestation of nationality principles 
 in Italy England found herself in complete sympathy. But 
 here the principle operated as an integrating force. In the 
 Balkans, on the contrary, its tendency was disruptive. In this 
 latter case England found herself in a dilemma. The abstract 
 principles of liberty and nationality commanded her enthu- 
 siastic assent. But a deepening mistrust of the supposed 
 ambitions of Russia rendered the application of those principles 
 rather inconvenient and inopportune. To Russia, therefore, 
 rather than to England the re-emerging nationalities of the 
 Balkans — Serbia, Bulgaria, and Montenegro — looked for sym- 
 pathy and support against the Ottomans. The Slav nations 
 were conscious that their efforts to throw off the Turkish yoke 
 were watched with eager and enthusiastic sympathy by power- 
 ful sections of the English public ; but the Foreign Office was 
 committed to the doctrine of the integrity of the Ottoman 
 Empire in Europe, and down to 1880 the sympathy extended 
 by Englishmen to the Balkan nationalities was unofficial. 
 
 After 1880 there was a rapid change if not in public 
 sentiment, at least in the official attitude, and when it was 
 realized that the new nations in the Near East could assert 
 and maintain their independence not only of Constantinople 
 but also of Petersburg and Vienna all hesitation was banished 
 even from more cautious minds. Thenceforward all sections 
 of opinion in England concurred in the belief that the time 
 had come for Europe to rid itself from the nightmare and 
 incubus of the Turk ; for the restoration of the soil of the 
 Balkan peninsula to the peoples who through long centuries 
 of oppression and misgovernment had retained the memory 
 of national independence and cherished the hope of reassert- 
 ing it. 
 
 There is, however, a question, searching and fundamental, 
 which at this point we are compelled to face ; Is the multi- 
 plication of small States, in itself, desirable ? Is it likely to 
 serve the cause of humanity? Will it conduce to the pro- 
 gress of civilization and promote the peace of the world ? 
 
 The controversy between the large and the small State is 
 one of long standing. Even to-day much of the argument 
 
SMALL NATIONS AND BIG STATES 153 
 
 in favour of the latter is coloured by the memory of the 
 incomparable though transitory brilliance of the City- States 
 of ancient Hellas. Over scholarly minds Aristotle still exer- 
 cises — and fortunately exercises — an undisputed sway. But 
 with the origins we are not immediately concerned. The 
 case for the small State has lately been re-stated with con- 
 spicuous and characteristic skill by Mr. H. A. L. Fisher.^ 
 
 ' Almost everything which is most precious in our civiliza- 
 tion ', writes Mr. Fisher, ' has come from small States, the 
 Old Testament, the Homeric poems, the Attic and the 
 Elizabethan drama, the art of the Italian Renaissance, the 
 common law of England. Nobody needs to be told what 
 humanity owes to Athens, Florence, Geneva, or Weimar. The 
 world's debt to any one of these small States far exceeds all 
 that has issued from the militant monarchies of Louis XIV, 
 of Napoleon, of the present Emperor' of Germany.' The 
 claim is a large one, and the argument appears to assume 
 that the big monarchical State must necessarily be ' militant ' 
 —a point to which I shall recur — but the debt is undeniable 
 and nobody desires to repudiate it. Nor will any one who 
 is acquainted with the /history of the City-State deny that the 
 essential limitation of size possessed conspicuous advantages. 
 Undoubtedly, it raised the average of the individual citizen ; 
 it multiplied the opportunities for the development, of indi- 
 vidual genius in politics, in art, and in literature; by the 
 identification of local and central government it intensified 
 the sense of patriotism. J^ The City-State, as Mr. Fisher truly 
 affirms, 'served as a school of patriotic virtue, not in the 
 main of the blustering and thrasonical type, but refined and 
 sublimated by every grace of instinct and reason. It further 
 enabled the experiment of a free, direct, democratic govern- 
 ment to be made with incalculable consequence for the political 
 thinking of the world. Finally, it threw into a forced and 
 fruitful communion minds of the most different temper, giving 
 to them an elasticity and many-sidedness which might other- 
 
 ^ The Vahie of Small Slates, by H. A. L. Fisher, one of an admirable 
 series of pamphlets published by the Oxford University Press. 
 ^ Cf. Freeman, Federal Government, pp. 29 seq. 
 
154 THE EUROPEAN COMMONWEALTH 
 
 wise have been wanting or less conspicuous, and stimulating, 
 through the close mutual competition which it engendered, 
 an intensity of intellectual and artistic passion which has 
 been the wonder of all succeeding generations.' It should, 
 perhaps, have been pointed out that the fruitful experiment 
 of direct democracy was rendered possible, not merely by 
 the contracted area of the city, but by the existence of 
 a large body of slaves whose manual labour provided the 
 * citizens ' with the leisure essential for the pursuit of the 
 higher life, political and intellectual. But to pass on. Most 
 people will agree that it is eminently desirable to avoid drab 
 uniformity and to preserve variety of type. Small States 
 may also be valuable, as Mr. Fisher ingeniously urges, as 
 laboratories for social experiment. Similar advantages might 
 perhaps be secured, even in big States, by the enlargement 
 of the sphere of local government and the freer use of 
 permissive legislation. One further point may be conceded 
 to Mr. Fisher. ' There is no grace of soul, no disinterested 
 endeavour of mind, no pitch of unobtrusive self-sacrifice, of 
 which the members of small and pacific communities have 
 not repeatedly shown themselves to be capable.' That is 
 undeniably true, but is it true only of the citizens of the 
 smaller States? Are these virtues denied to members of 
 great nations or even to the subjects of militant monarchies ? 
 
 The truth is that, despite the eloquence of his pen and 
 the unquesticinable force of many of his pleas, there underlies 
 Mr. Fisher's argument a strong trace of the mid- Victorian 
 Cobdenite, the assumption that the nationality principle 
 operates with peculiar force in small communities, that the 
 latter are necessarily pacific in temper and tendency, and 
 that great States are ' organized for th-e vulgarity of aggressive 
 war' (p. ii). With the din of the doctrines of Treitschke, 
 Dr. Rohrbach, Professor Delbriick, and other publicists and 
 historians of the Prussian school ringing in our ears, it is 
 permissible, perhaps, to make this assumption. But, after 
 all, the German Empire is not the only great State of the 
 modern world. Neither the British Empire, monarchical and 
 unitary in form, nor the federal republic of the United States 
 
SMALL NATIONS AND BIG STATES 155 
 
 can be said to be ' organized for the vulgarity of aggressive 
 war ', and both are incomparably larger than Germany. 
 
 From Mr. Fisher, one of the most accomplished of living 
 historians, we may turn to an historian, who, though lacking 
 the brilliance of the younger writer, was eminently repre- 
 sentative of the writers of the last generation, and was equally 
 conspicuous for his robust faith in liberalism. , In curious 
 contrast to Mr. Fisher, Mr. Freema n insisted that the multi- 
 plication of small States not only multiplied the possibilities 
 and increased the probability of war, but tended also 'to 
 produce a greater degree of cruelty in warfare, and a greater 
 severity in the recognized law of war '.^ As regards internal 
 politics the small State tended, in his opinion, to intensify 
 party strife; and render it more bitter and more enduring. 
 Moreover, the life of the City-State was proverbially insecure, 
 and government was consequently unstable. Large States 
 have their disadvantages: the substitution of representative 
 government for direct democracy provides for the citizen an 
 inferior political education; electors are apt to be at once 
 ignorant, careless, and corrupt. Neverth~eless the balance of 
 advantage would appear to lie with the larger aggregates: 
 they lessen local prejudice; they diminish the horrors of 
 external war, and they increase the chances of peace over 
 relatively extended areas. 
 
 Such, in brief, is Mr. Freeman's argument, and whatever 
 may be thought of that argument as a whole, the last point 
 — a point of pre-eminent importance — must surely be conceded. 
 There can be no real assurance of peace, internal or external, 
 save in the recognition of the rule of law. In maintaining 
 this thesis it is unnecessary to subscribe to the purely legal 
 conception of politics entertained by Hobbes. Still, Hobbes 
 comes near the truth when he says : ' Where there is no 
 common power, there is no law ; and where no law, no 
 justice.' Beyond the limits of territorial sovereignties there 
 is at present, in the above sense, no law and, therefore, nothing 
 to enforce the keeping of covenants. Internationally, we are 
 once more plunged into the state of nature. To multiply 
 petty sovereignties is, under prevailing conditions, to contract 
 ^ Federal Governinent (second edition), p. 53. 
 
156 THE EUROPEAN COMMONWEALTH 
 
 the operation of the rule of law, and to substitute for the 
 obligation of contract the arbitrament of force. But, on the 
 other hand, to ignore the claims of that most elusive but not 
 least real of all political forces, the force of nationality, is 
 simply to perpetuate unrest and to invite ultimate disaster. 
 
 Is it then possible to reconcile the claims of the smaller 
 nationalities with the formation of the larger aggregates which 
 can alone secure to an increasing number of the human race 
 the supreme advantages of the rule of law? Mr. Asquith 
 declared in a memorable utterance, at the beginning of the 
 War, that * we shall never sheathe the sword . . . until the 
 rights of the smaller nationalities of Europe are placed upon 
 an unassailable foundation '. To that declaration the whole 
 nation assented. But where is the foundation to be laid, 
 and how is it to be rendered unassailable ? Treaties solemnly 
 concluded, the faith of great nations repeatedly pledged, 
 could not avail to save Belgium from invasion and desola- 
 tion at the hands of a ruthless and overbearing enemy who 
 preferred ' necessity ' to law. What is to prevent a repetition 
 of the offence? Not, surely, the mere multiplication of 
 small and independent sovereignties. But can we, without 
 multiplying sovereignties, concede the claims and satisfy the 
 aspirations of small nationalities ? 
 
 Upon many minds, and not the least thoughtful, the con- 
 viction has, for some time past, been forcing itself that a 
 reconciliation between the centripetal and the centrifugal 
 forces which are so manifestly operating in the modern world 
 can be effected only by an extension of the principle of 
 federalism. But towards this consummation we can advance 
 only by slow and cautious steps. The Tsar Alexander I, 
 with his Great Design for a confederation of the European 
 States, was much before his time ; still more was Henri IV ; 
 Alexander's association with Metternich naturally exposed 
 him to the suspicion of all liberal statesmen, and the 
 suspicions were quickly justified by the rapid degenera- 
 tion of the Holy Alliance. But apart from the perversion 
 of the original conception the scheme itself was born out 
 
 of due time.^ 
 
 * Cf. infra, Chapter XV. 
 
^ 
 
 SMALL NATIONS AND BIG STATES \^^ 
 
 Where the Tsar Alexander had failed Mr. Cobden thought 
 he might succeed. In the doctrines of the Manchester School 
 there was more of idealism than has been generally sup- 
 posed. Tennyson, pre-eminently the poet of Imperialism, 
 was not proof against the seductions of those who 
 
 . . . Dipt into the future far as human eye could see, 
 Saw the vision of the world and all the wonder that 
 
 would be, 
 Saw the heavens fill with commerce, argosies of magic 
 
 sails, 
 Pilots of the purple twilight dropping down with costly 
 bales. 
 
 Till the war drum throbbed no longer and the battle 
 
 flags were furled 
 In the parliament of man and the federation of the 
 
 world. 
 
 The * federation of the world ' is still far distant. Even the 
 federation of Europe is not yet. Nevertheless^ there can be 
 no security for the independence of small States save in the 
 acceptance and extension of the federal principle. / Without 
 federalism would Germany be fighting as one man to-day? 
 If Lincoln had not preserved the federal union of the United 
 States, would internal peace prevail to-day throughout that 
 vast area? If Sir John Macdonald and Lord Carnarvon had 
 not applied the principle to the several provinces of Canada, 
 would there be the same unanimity of sentiment in the great 
 Dominion? If the time is not ripe for the federation of 
 Europe, still less for the federation of the world, it is ripe for 
 the formation of larger aggregates of States in which the 
 smaller nations will find an honoured, a secure, and a suffi- 
 ciently independent place; the time is overdue for the con- 
 solidation of the British Dominions into an organic and 
 coherent federation. Such a federation might well be the 
 precursor of others ; in Scandinavia, it may be ; perhaps in 
 the Balkans; 'perhaps in the vast-stretching. dominions but 
 lately subject to the Tsar. /Only, it would seem, by the bold 
 application of this principle can we at the same time secure 
 the independence of the smaller nations and promote the 
 cause of international peace. 
 
 / 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 ENGLAND AND THE LOW COUNTRIES 
 
 * There hath beene, time out of mind, even by the naturall situation of 
 those Lowe Countries and our realme of Englande, one directly opposite 
 to the other, and by reason of the ready crossing of the seas, and 
 multitude of large and commodious havens respectively on both sides, 
 a continuall traffique and commerce betwixt the people of Englande, and 
 the naturall people of these Lowe Countries. . . . There hath beene in 
 former ages many speciall alliances and confederations not onely betwixt 
 the Kings of England and the lordes of the said coontries but also 
 betwixt the very naturall subjectes of both Countries. ... By which mutual ' 
 bondes, there hath continued perpetual unions of the peoples heartes 
 together and so by way of continual intercourses from age to age the 
 same mutuall love hath bene inviolablie kept and exercised.' — QuEEN 
 Elizabeth to her People, 1585. {Somers' Tracts^ i. 411.) 
 
 What Aristotle said of Revolution is true also of War. ' It 
 is not the causes of revolutions which are unimportant, but 
 only the occasions.' The ' occasions ' of wars have, generally 
 speaking, been quite unimportant. It was the amputation of 
 Captain Jenkins's ears that opened a world conflict between 
 Great Britain and the Bourbons ; it was the flinging over- 
 board of some tea-chests into the waters of Massachusetts Bay 
 that occasioned the final breach between England and her 
 American colonists ; it was Bismarck's revision and publica- 
 tion of the Ems telegram that evoked a declaration of war 
 from Paris in 1870. In these and other cases the immediate 
 occasion was trifling ; the essential causes of the wars that 
 followed were, on the contrary, of profound and far-reaching 
 significance. 
 
 Does the great war of 1914 form an exceptign to the rule? 
 As regards the participation of Great Britain, the occasion 
 was hardly less significant than the deep, long-operating, and 
 fundamental cause. The latter must, of course, be traced to 
 the fixed determination of Germany to challenge the world- 
 
ENGLAND AND THE LOW COUNTRIES 159 
 
 empire of Great Britain. That subject has, however, been 
 discussed in a previous chapter, and it need not detain us. 
 Nor can there be any dispute as to the immediate occasion 
 of the War. That is to be found in the cynical disregard 
 displayed by Germany for solemn treaty obligations, and her 
 shameless violation of the neutrality of Belgium. 
 
 Whether Great Britain would now be at war if Germany 
 had respected Belgian neutrality is a question which fortunately 
 we are not called upon to consider. It should, however, be 
 noted that the ' strong bid ' for British neutrality made by the 
 German Chancellor on July 29 referred primarily not to 
 Belgium but to France.^ Herr von Bethmann-Hollweg had 
 the effrontery to suggest that Great Britain should stand by 
 and see France defeated, humiliated, and stripped, at any rate 
 of her colonial possessions, by Germany. It need not be said 
 that by assenting to such a suggestion this country would have 
 incurred indelible infamy. Mr. Asquith, speaking as Prime 
 Minister, justly denounced the Chancellor's proposal as 
 
 * infamous ', and Sir Edward Grey's dispatch is on record to 
 prove that it was, without a moment's hesitation, repudiated.^ 
 That we should have acted otherwise — that w& should have 
 accepted the naval assistance of France in the Mediterranean 
 and then have left her northern coasts at the mercy of the 
 German marine — is happily unthinkable. 
 
 Nevertheless, it is certain that the actual and proximate 
 occasion of the War between Great Britain and Germany was 
 the unprovoked attack of Germany upon Belgium. To the 
 scientific student of politics the occasion was not less signifi- 
 cant than the cause. 
 
 The modern kingdom of Belgium occupies, like the Swiss 
 Confederation, a peculiar position in the European economy. 
 That position rests in a formal sense upon a series of inter- 
 national agreements. Article VII of the Treaties of London 
 (November 15, 1831,. and April 19, 1839) runs as follows: 
 
 * Belgium . . . shall form an independent and neutral State. 
 It shall be bound to observe such neutrality towards all other 
 
 ^ Correspondence respecting the European Crisis^ No. 85. 
 
 ^ Correspondence^ No. loi, Sir E. Grey to Sir E. Goschen, July 30. 
 
i6o THE P:UR0PEAN COMMONWEALTH 
 
 States.'^ Great Britain, France, Austria, Prussia, and Russia 
 were the assenting parties to the Treaties of London, and by 
 those Powers the independence and neutrality of Belgium was 
 solemnly and specifically guaranteed. 
 
 But the matter does not rest there. France, Prussia, and 
 Great Britain entered, as we have seen, into further engage- 
 ments on the subject during the Franco-German War in 
 August 1870.2 
 
 In 1870 it suited Prussia's game that the neutrality of 
 Belgium should be respected by both combatants. But for 
 some time past it has been tolerably clear that the conditions 
 of the game had altered. It was natural, therefore, when the 
 dogs of war seemed likely to be loosed in 191 1, that Belgium 
 should seek in Berlin renewed assurances as to her inter- 
 national position. In reply the German Chancellor declared 
 ' that Germany had no intention of violating Belgian neutrality'. 
 On April 29, 1913, Herr von Jagow replied to an interpellation 
 in the Reichstag : ' Belgian neutrality is provided for by Inter- 
 national Conventions, and Germany is determined to respect 
 those Conventions.' 
 
 On July 31, 19 14, the German Minister at Brussels expressed 
 his conviction ' that the sentiments expressed at that time had 
 not changed'.^ If Herr von Below was well informed the 
 change of sentiment at Berlin must have been extraordinarily 
 rapid. On August 2 German troops entered Luxemburg, 
 and on the same day the German Government announced at 
 Brussels its intention of sending troops into Belgium. Belgium 
 promptly (August 3) retorted that she would be faithful to her 
 international obligations, and would repel, by force if need be, 
 every attack upon her rights.* On the following day (A ugust 4) 
 England formally required Belgium to * resist with all the 
 means at her disposal ' any attempt to force her * to abandon 
 her attitude of neutrality ', and promised to join Russia and 
 France in affording her assistance.^ • 
 
 * Cf. Hertslet, Map of Etirope by Treaty, pp. 863, 985. 
 
 ^ Supra, chapter iii, and Hertslet, op. cit., pp. 1887, 1890. 
 ^ See Diplomatic Correspondence respecting the War published by the 
 Belgian Government, No. 12, 191 4, pp. il, 12. 
 
 * Op. cit., pp. 18, 19, 21. » Op, cit., p. 25. 
 
ENGLAND AND THE LOW COUNTRIES i6i 
 
 The result of these negotiations is now matter of history. 
 To tell the story of Belgium's heroic resistance, to appraise its 
 military value to the strategy of the allies, and still more 
 its moral significance for the world at large, will hereafter 
 demand the pen of a Thucydides. Happily, we are concerned 
 with only one aspect of the story. 
 
 The insolent demand of Germany and the valiant resistance 
 of Belgium furnished assets, moral and military, which were of 
 incalculable value to the British Cabinet. Here was the one 
 issue which could be counted on to close the ranks in England ; 
 the one issue which could be made intelligible to all classes in 
 the electorate. In the event, the decision of the Cabinet was 
 endorsed with a unanimity which none would have dared to 
 anticipate. That unanimity was evoked by something more 
 than admiration for the pluck of a small nation ; by more 
 than resentment at the wanton attack of an overbearing bully; 
 by more than regard for treaty obligations and international 
 good faith. Consciously or, more probably, unconsciously, 
 the nation was obedient to an instinct which at several great 
 crises has inspired the action and the policy of England. 
 That instinct has established a political tradition, and on that 
 tradition is founded one of the soundest and most persistent 
 maxims of English statecraft : that under no circumstances 
 may the Low Countries be absorbed by, or pass under the 
 exclusive influence of, their powerful neighbours either on 
 the east or on the west. Thus, for many centuries, the 
 Netherlands have formed the pivot of England's continental 
 policy. 
 
 The land which has now won for itself imperishable fame 
 under the name of Belgium has undergone many vicissitudes 
 both of designation and of political allegiance. As such the 
 Kingdom of Belgium has subsisted only since 1831. United 
 with the Kingdom of the Netherlands in 18 14, it had for the 
 twenty years previous to that date formed an integral part 
 of France. During the eighteenth century (1714-94) it had 
 been one of the many Provinces in the miscellaneous Empire 
 of the Austrian Habsburgs. From the days of Philip II down 
 
 2120 M 
 
i62 THE EUROPEAN COMMONWEALTH 
 
 to the Peace of Utrecht (17 14) it had adhered to Spain and 
 had been known as the Spanish Netherlands. In the fifteenth 
 century it had formed part of the great inheritance of the 
 Valois Dukes of Burgundy, and from them had passed, through 
 the marriage of Charles the Bold's heiress, Mary, to the acquisi- 
 tive Habsburgs. Earlier still, there had been on the low lands, 
 at the delta of the Rhine and the Scheldt, and the Meuse, a 
 bundle of Duchies and Counties and Bishoprics, rendering 
 a somewhat uncertain allegiance to the Emperor or the King 
 of France. But no shifting of political allegiance and no 
 change of nomenclature has ever sufificed to break the tradi- 
 tional connexion between the Low Countries and England. 
 Flanders, Burgundy, the Spanish Netherlands, the Austrian 
 Netherlands, or- Belgium — no matter the name — the land has 
 always possessed for us the same interest and significance. 
 
 Of this persistent connexion a few salient illustrations must 
 suffice. As early as the ninth century there was some rudi- 
 mentary trade between Flanders and the Kingdom of Wessex. 
 Nor was the connexion wholly economic. King Alfred's 
 daughter Elfrith wedded Baldwin H, Count of Flanders. 
 Thenceforward the alliance between Wessex and Flanders was 
 continuous. In the middle of the eleventh century the great 
 problem for England was whether she was to remain in 
 barbaric and insular independence under a native dynasty or 
 to form part of the empire of the Normans. Godwin, the 
 great West-Saxon Earl, and William the Norman alike realized 
 the importance of securing, in the impending struggle, the 
 friendly neutrality, if not the active assistance, of Flanders. 
 Earl Godwin found in Judith, a daughter of the reigning 
 Baldwin, a wife for his son Tostig; William the Bastard 
 married another daughter, the Countess Matilda. The Norman 
 made the better thing of it, for numbers of Flemings fought 
 under his banner at Senlac, and, after the Conquest, established 
 themselves permanently in England. 
 
 Thus far the connexion between the two countries had been 
 dynastic, political, strategical. A new and even stronger tie 
 was now to be forged. From the thirteenth century to the 
 sixteenth 'wool was king', and during that period wool 
 
ENGLAND AND THE LOW COUNTRIES 163 
 
 formed the chief economic bond between England and Flanders. 
 Gradually the fact became recognized in England, particularly 
 among the monks of the Cistercian order, that in the fleeces 
 of English sheep we possessed an asset of the highest value 
 both in a commercial and in a political computation. On two 
 occasions, first in 1274 and secondly in 1297, Edward I 
 compelled compliance with his demands upon Flanders by 
 prohibiting the export of English wool. From the thirteenth 
 century onwards continuous intercourse was maintained between 
 England and the Flemish cities, such as Bruges, Antwerp, 
 Ypres, and Ghent, now rapidly attaining to the industrial pre- 
 eminence they so long enjoyed. In the twelfth century the 
 Flemish merchants had already got a special street of booths 
 in the famous fair of Winchester. A charter granted to Bruges 
 in 1240 makes mention of the * Hansa of London' — a league 
 which at one time included as many as seventeen towns. All 
 the Flemish towns of any importance were members of the 
 league, and, at one time, Chalons, Rheims, St. Quentin, Courtrai, 
 Amiens, and Beauvais were included in it as well.^ Of all 
 the cities, however, Bruges and Ghent were the two which 
 maintained the closest and most continuous relations with 
 England. In the course of the thirteenth and fourteenth 
 centuries this connexion was subjected to a severe political 
 strain. The consolidation of the French kingdom under the 
 Capetian dynasty, and its expansion towards the Rhine, 
 seriously threatened the independence of Flanders. The 
 Counts were indeed drawn, almost irresistibly, into the 
 political orbit of France. But in Flanders the cities counted 
 for at least as much as the Princes, and while the Princes 
 looked to Paris the cities looked to London. Thus the great 
 victory at Courtrai (1302), won by the citizens against the 
 chivalry of France, was hardly less a triumph for the English 
 connexion than for the democratic party in the Flemish 
 towns. 
 
 But French ambition, though repulsed, was not finally 
 
 repelled. In 1328 Philip VI avenged the humiliation of 
 
 Courtrai by a great victory at Cassel. The immediate sequel 
 
 * Ashley, Economic History^ i. 109. 
 
 M 2 
 
i64 THE EUROPEAN COMMONWEALTH 
 
 of this victory was an order to the Count of Flanders to arrest 
 all the English merchants in his dominions. To this challenge 
 Edward HI, following the precedent set by his grandfather, 
 retorted by placing a strict embargo upon the export of wool 
 to the Flemish towns. Great was the consternation in Ypres, 
 Ghent, and Bruges, and the Flemish merchants soon made it 
 clear that, if their Count was willing to take orders from Paris, 
 the cities were not. Thus the high-handed action of Philip VI 
 proved to be the prelude to a drama upon which the curtain 
 did not fall until the middle of the fifteenth century. 
 
 The causes of the Hundred Years' War have formed the 
 theme of innumerable academic disputations, and it is no part 
 of my purpose to add to the number. Many things combined 
 in the earlier years of the fourteenth century to embitter the 
 relations between the Kings of England and France. On the 
 one side, there was the natural anxiety of the French Crown 
 to absorb the English possessions in Gascony and Guienne ; 
 on the other, an equal anxiety to be rid of the embarrassing 
 alliance between Scotland and France. But the causa causans 
 of the war was the determination of the English King and of 
 the Flemish towns to keep a door open for the entrance of 
 English wool into Flanders. That object was vital to both 
 countries. From the time of Edward I onwards the English 
 Crown was increasingly dependent upon the export duty on 
 raw wool. That duty was at one time loo per cent, ad 
 valorem, and it is satisfactory to know that in this case the 
 whole of the tax fell upon the foreigner. Had England not 
 possessed a virtual monopoly of the commodity such a result 
 would, of course, have been impossible. But in the case of 
 a monopoly bold financial methods rarely lack justification. 
 If the export duties formed an important item in the Plantagenet 
 budgets, the wool itself was essential to the industrial prosperity 
 of the Flemish cities. Against such strong bonds of mutual 
 self-interest the diplomatic connexion of the French kings 
 and the Flemish counts availed little.^ 
 
 ^ It is worthy of note that when, in 1340, Edward III assumed the title 
 and quartered the arms of King of France, the step was taken to satisfy 
 the scruples of his Flemish allies. 
 
ENGLAND AND THE LOW COUNTRIES 165 
 
 In the fifteenth century there was change in many of the 
 conditions of the struggle. But one feature remained constant 
 — the alliance between England and the Low Countries, now 
 united under the Valois Dukes of Burgundy. And the interest- 
 ing fact is that the alliance persisted not merely apart from 
 dynastic and party connexions but despite them. The great 
 position attained by Henry V in France rested fundamentally 
 upon the Burgundian alliance. ' This is the hole through 
 which the English entered France.' So said a Carthusian 
 monk when exhibiting the skull of John, Duke of Burgundy, to 
 Francis I ; and he spoke truly. The marriage of John, Duke 
 of Bedford, to Anne, sister of Philip the Good, Duke of 
 Burgundy, cemented the alliance during Henry VI's minority. 
 Momentarily broken by the Treaty of Arras (1435), it was 
 renewed under the Yorkists when Edward.I V married his sister 
 Margaret to Charles the Bold, and it was at the court of his 
 brother-in-law that Edward took refuge when in 1470 he was 
 compelled to flee from England. To the Yorkists, indeed, 
 the alliance was as important commercially as it had been 
 strategically and politically to the Lancastrians. 
 
 The maintenance of the Burgundian alliance was one of the 
 causes of the rupture between Edward IV and his ' over-mighty 
 subject', Warwick the King-maker. For political reasons 
 the latter favoured an alliance with Louis XI of France. The 
 King, with shrewd insight, put economics before politics, and 
 delighted the London merchants by professing friendship with 
 the Low Countries. 
 
 Towards the close of the fifteenth century there was a 
 change of dynasty in both countries; In 1477 Maximilian, 
 the eldest son of the Emperor Frederick III, married Mary, 
 the daughter and heiress of Charles the Bold of Burgundy. 
 As a result of that characteristically lucky marriage the 
 Netherlands passed, in 1482, to the Habsburgs. Three years 
 later the battle of Bosworth placed the crown of England on 
 the head of Henry Tudor. 
 
 The accession of Henry Tudor momentarily threatened 
 the connexion between the two countries. The Yorkist plots 
 which embarrassed the earlier years of Henry VII's reign were 
 
i66 THE EUROPEAN COMMONWEALTH 
 
 hatched at the Court of the Duchess Margaret. But com- 
 munity of economic instincts once more proved too strong for 
 dynastic antipathies, and the Inierctirstis Magnus of 1496 
 marked the renewal of commercial friendship. 
 
 With the opening of the sixteenth century the modern 
 European problem, of which the Netherlands have formed 
 the pivot, comes still more clearly into view. Hitherto the 
 European States-system had existed only in embryo ; but 
 with the absorption of feudal principalities into strong and 
 centralized national monarchies (as in France) ; with the 
 agglomeration of kingdoms (as in Spain); and the develop- 
 ment of the royal power, Europe was confronted by a new 
 danger. 
 
 Four times in the course of four centuries has the equilibrium 
 of Europe, and the national independence of the several States, 
 been menaced by the domination of a single Power : in the 
 sixteenth century by the Habsburgs ; in the late seventeenth 
 by the Bourbon monarchy of France; a century later by 
 Napoleon Bonaparte, and in the twentieth by the Hohenzollern. 
 The issue of the latest attempt we may not yet predict. In 
 each of the three earlier crises the European equilibrium was 
 preserved by the efforts of England ; in each; England's 
 intervention was stimulated by an attack upon the Low 
 Countries; in each her military operations were mainly 
 concentrated upon Flanders. 
 
 Few words are needed to demonstrate the truth of this 
 generalization. 
 
 The crisis of the sixteenth century was produced by the 
 astonishingly rapid rise to pre-eminence of the Habsburgs. 
 Proverbially fortunate in their marriages, they never used their 
 favourite method with better effect than in this period. 
 Grandson of Maximilian and Mary of Burgundy, grandson of 
 Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castille, the Emperor 
 Charles V attained a position which was indeed imposing. 
 Yet he made less of it than might have been anticipated. 
 To Germany indeed his rule was disastrous. But his heart 
 was never in Germany. Something of an Austrian, more of 
 
ENGLAND AND THE LOW COUNTRIES 167 
 
 a Spaniard, Charles V was primarily and predominantly a 
 Burgundian. Flanders was the real pivot of his policy. Still 
 more menacing than the position of Charles V, despite the 
 partition of the Habsburg inheritance, was that of his son 
 Philip II. To the Crown of Spain, the Lordship of the Low 
 Countries, the Duchy of Milan, the Kingdom of the Sicilies, 
 and the empire of Spanish South America, Philip in 1580 
 added the Crown of Portugal and with it acquired the great 
 empire of Portugal in the far East and the far West. His 
 marriage with Mary Tudor had threatened, as we saw in the 
 last chapter, to bring England also into the net of the 
 Habsburg system. Mary's childlessness averted the danger 
 for the moment ; Elizabeth's prudent procrastinations still 
 further postponed it ; the revolt of the Netherlands sensibly 
 relieved the pressure, and the danger was finally dissipated by 
 the defeat of the Armada. In the prolonged contest between 
 Philip II and the Netherlands the defeat of the Armada was 
 indeed only an incident, but it was far from being an insignifi- 
 cant one. Don John of Austria, Philip's brilliant bastard 
 brother, clearly perceived the interdependence of the two 
 questions. ' The true remedy for the evil condition of the 
 Netherlands/ he wrote (May 37, 1576), *in the judgement of all 
 men, is that England should be in the power of a person 
 devoted and well-affectioned to your Majesty's service ; and it 
 is the general opinion that the ruin of these countries and the 
 impossibility of preserving them to your Majesty's Crown 
 will result from the contrary position of English affairs.' 
 
 Nor was perception of this truth confined to foreigners. 
 The interests of England plainly demanded that neither 
 France nor Spain should gain possession of the Netherlands. 
 'Better far', wrote Walsingham to Cecil (January 1585), 'if 
 the Queen would herself take the protection of those countries, 
 with a resolution, if necessary, to spend half a million of money 
 there. The burden would be willingly borne by the realm 
 rather than they should come to the hands of the French or 
 Spaniards.' ^ In this opinion Cecil cordially concurred, and 
 had already expressed it in terms not less unequivocal : ' The 
 * Froude, xi. 550, 
 
i68 THE EUROPEAN COMMONWEALTH 
 
 day when France became possessed of Holland and Zealand 
 would be the last of England's independence.' But the more 
 immediate menace came, of course, from Philip of Spain. ' As 
 King of Spain without the Low Countries', wrote Cecil, 'he 
 may trouble our skirts of Ireland, but never come to grasp 
 with you, but if he once reduce the Low Countries to an 
 absolute subjection I know not what limits any man of 
 judgement can set unto his greatness.'^ 
 
 In their concern for the independence of the Netherlands 
 Cecil and Walsingham did but adhere to a national tradition 
 of foreign policy. But the circumstances of the day supplied 
 additional reasons for that adherence. In the Low Countries 
 England found the weapon with which to withstand the 
 threatened domination of Philip of Spain. 
 
 Yet Elizabeth had little liking for the indispensable instrument 
 of her policy. The Dutch were not only rebels but Calvinists, 
 and as such were doubly abhorrent in the Queen's eyes. But 
 Elizabeth never allowed her personal prejudices to blind her 
 eyes to the interests of her country. Help, therefore, was sent 
 from England to the Netherlands, at first surreptitiously, and 
 only in sufficient quantity to keep the insurrection alive 
 without enabling it to achieve complete success. The seizure 
 of the treasure destined for Alva (1568) was an enterprise 
 altogether to Elizabeth's liking, and as the struggle became 
 sterner more help was forthcoming. The proffered sovereignty 
 of Holland and Zealand was prudently declined in 1575, ^^^^ 
 the murder of William of Orange in 1584 marked a serious 
 crisis in the affairs of the Netherlands; and, consequently, 
 in 1585 Elizabeth concluded a definite alliance and sent her 
 favourite Leicester to their assistance. Leicester's intervention 
 availed little, but three years later the cause of the Nether- 
 lands was saved by the defeat of the Armada. 
 
 Drake's victory did more than keep alive the flickering 
 flame of Dutch independence ; it did more than assure the 
 safety of England ; it restored the threatened equilibrium of 
 western Europe. Ten years later Philip H died, a defeated 
 
 ^ Froude, xi. 163; Somers' Tracts^ i. 170, quoted in Professor Firth's 
 Presidential Address, Trails^ Royal Hist. Soc, third series, vol. ix. 
 
ENGLAND AND THE LOW COUNTRIES 169 
 
 and disillusioned man. The menace of a Spanish domination 
 was at an end. The might of Philip II had shattered itself 
 against the stubborn resistance of the Netherlands, encouraged 
 and sustained by Queen Elizabeth, and finally assured of 
 success by Drake's brilliant victory off Gravelines. 
 
 After Philip II, Louis XIV. By the middle of the seven- 
 teenth century France was rapidly superseding Spain as the 
 pre-eminent foe to the * liberties of Europe '. The old French 
 monarchy — built up by the patient labours of a succession 
 of great administrators — was now^ nearing its zenith under 
 le roi soleil. Richelieu, by consistent pressure applied to 
 nobles and Huguenots, had subdued the last opponents of 
 absolutism and centralization. To the young sovereign 
 Louis XIV he bequeathed, as Bismarck bequeathed to 
 William II, a weapon of dangerous potency. Supreme in 
 his own kingdom, Louis XIV determined to make France 
 dominant in Europe. For this also the way had been pre- 
 pared, though unintentionally, by Richelieu. In his eyes as 
 in those of all Frenchmen the natural frontiers of France were 
 defined by the Ocean, the Pyrenees, the Mediterranean, the 
 Alps, and the Rhine. Richelieu went some way towards 
 attaining that ideal. By the Treaty of Westphalia (1648) 
 France acquired a firm grip upon the middle Rhine. The 
 three Lorraine Bishoprics — Metz, Toul, and Verdun — first 
 taken in 1552, were confirmed to her; she secured Breisach 
 and the Austrian Alsace, though the great fortress of Stras- 
 burg was specifically reserved to the Empire ; she acquired 
 the right to garrison Philippsburg ; other Rhine fortresses 
 were to be demolished, and no works were to be allowed 
 on the right bank between Bale and Philippsburg. Secure on 
 the line of the Vosges, in the Meuse Valley, and on the 
 middle Rhine, P^rance now held a position of enormous 
 strength, alike for defence, and, unfortunately, also for offence. 
 The Treaty of the Pyrenees (1659) was the complement of 
 the Treaty of Westphalia. By the acquisition of Roussillon 
 and Cerdagne the French frontier was scientifically advanced 
 to the Pyrenees ; Pinerolo was to guard her frontier towards 
 
I70 THE EUROPEAN COMMONWEALTH 
 
 Savoy, and, on the north-east, a large part of Artois passed 
 into French hands. 
 
 Mazarin would have liked even more. As long ago as 
 1646 he had written : * L'acquisition des Pays-Bas espagnols 
 fournirent a la ville de Paris un boulevard inexpugnable.' 
 This great prize was denied to the Cardinal for the moment, 
 but the marriage of Louis XIV to Marie Therese of Spain 
 opened up possibilities which, despite his wife's renunciation, 
 he steadily strove to convert into concrete realization. 
 
 Louis' first opportunity came with the death of his father- 
 in-law, Philip IV of Spain, in 1665. For the last six years 
 his diplomacy had been ceaselessly directed towards the 
 attainment of two objects : the nullification of the Queen's re- 
 nunciation, and the isolation, first of his intended victim 
 Spain, and then of his potential rival the Emperor Leopold. 
 In 1665, with shameless audacity, Louis XIV claimed, in 
 virtue of a pretended * right of devolution ', the greater part 
 of the Spanish Netherlands together with parts of the * Free 
 County ' of Burgundy and the Duchy of Luxemburg. The 
 military operations which followed were a triumphal progress. 
 Turenne made himself master of the Spanish Netherlands 
 in three months ; Conde overran the Free County in three 
 weeks. 
 
 But Nemesis lay in wait for the over-bold conqueror who 
 threatened at once the ' liberties of Europe ' and the integrity 
 of Belgium. Down to this attack upon Belgium, England 
 had looked on quite unmoved at the rapid advance of France. 
 Neither the Treaty of Westphalia nor the Treaty of the 
 Pyrenees had opened the eyes of England to the fact that 
 Spain was hopelessly decadent, and that a new Power had 
 arisen, and was already on the march towards that dangerous 
 pre-eminence from which Spain had been hurled by the 
 defeat of the Armada. Cromwell, indeed, had put six thou- 
 sand of the best troops in Europe at the disposal of Mazarin, 
 and had thus helped, shortsightedly, to upset the equilibrium. 
 Lord Bolingbroke's judgement may have been jaundiced, but 
 there is force in his criticism : 
 
 * Our Charles I was no great politician, and yet he seemed 
 
ENGLAND AND THE LOW COUNTRIES 171 
 
 to discern that the balance of power was turning in favour 
 of France some years before the Treaties of Westphalia. . . . 
 Cromwell either did not discern this turn of the balance of 
 power long afterwards when it was much more visible ; or, 
 discerning it, he was induced by reasons of private interest 
 to act against the general interest of Europe. Cromwell 
 joined with France against Spain, and though he got Jamaica 
 and Dunkirk, he drove the Spaniards into a necessity of 
 making a peace with France that has disturbed the peace 
 of the world almost four score years, and the consequences 
 of which have well-nigh beggared in our times the nation he 
 enslaved in his/ 
 
 Dunkirk, the sole fruit of Cromwell's continental enterprise, 
 was resold to Louis XIV by Charles II in 166!^, and England, 
 under the restored dynasty, entered upon the most shameful 
 period of her foreign policy. But not even Charles II's venal 
 and cynical contempt for national ideals and national interests 
 could induce the nation to look on unconcernedly while 
 Louis XIV was making himself master of the Spanish 
 Netherlands. The defence of those Provinces against the 
 aggression of powerful neighbours had by this time become 
 an established principle of English diplomacy. To that 
 principle Sir William Temple gave a fresh application when, 
 in 1668, his patient and patriotic labours brought about a 
 triple alliance between England, Sweden, and the United 
 Provinces; Louis XIV, to his lasting chagrin, was arrested 
 in the full tide of conquest^ and by the Treaty of Aix-la- 
 Chapelle (1668) was compelled to relax his hold on the 
 Free County of Burgundy. Still, he was permitted to retain 
 the towns and districts of Charleroi, Binche, Ath, Douai, 
 Tournai, Oudenarde, Armentieres, Courtrai, Bergues, and 
 Furnes, and thus to secure for P'rance an impregnable frontier 
 between Dunkirk and Charleroi. 
 
 Having accomplished so much, Louis next turned to deal 
 with the triple allies who had baulked him of a still greater 
 prize. Sw^eden was always disposed to be complaisant towards 
 France ; Charles II was effectually squared by the Treaty of 
 Dover (1670) ; the Dutch were never forgiven. 
 
 Four years after the Treaty of Aix Louis launched his 
 attack upon the United Provinces (1672). The attack was 
 
i7a THE EUROPEAN COMMONWEALTH 
 
 conceived in a spirit of measureless contempt for, and blind 
 rage against, the ' insolent merchants ' who had dared to 
 frustrate the well-laid plans of the Most Christian King. The 
 Dutchmen were republicans, they were Protestants, they were 
 prosperous in trade and powerful in arms ; above all, they 
 stood between Louis and his darling project : the incorpora- 
 tion of the Spanish Netherlands and the attainment of the 
 Rhine frontier from source to delta. The war of 1672 was 
 a campaign of hatred, and the passion, so inimical to coolness 
 in arms or in diplomacy, recoiled upon the man who indulged 
 it. For this war proved to be the turning-point in the reign 
 of the Grand Monarque. ' In Holland ', says the greatest 
 of modern French historians, ' the political system of France 
 made shipwreck.' All the maxims of statecraft bequeathed 
 to Louis XIV by Henri IV, by Richelieu, by Mazarin, and 
 Colbert were, in a moment of passion, forgotten. Policy was 
 quenched in mad thirst for revenge. The Palatinate was laid 
 waste; Franche-Comte was conquered; the Jura became — 
 for the first time — the eastern frontier of France. But bril- 
 liant as were his victories in the field, more permanent forces 
 were working against Louis XIV. The attack upon the 
 Provinces brought back to power the Orange party, and, in 
 William III, Louis XIV encountered an opponent of indomi- 
 table persistence. England, dragged into the struggle on the 
 side of France by the cupidity, or, as some will have it, by 
 the Machiavellian astuteness, of Charles II, withdrew from the 
 war in 1674. But the nation was true to its ancient faith. 
 The French attack was launched against ' the natural frontier 
 of England *, and England was ' in a flame '. Parliament 
 ceased to be supine ; a shower of pamphlets issued from 
 a press which was just beginning to realize its power. In 
 April 1677 the French ambassador warned his Government 
 that Members of Parliament were ready *to sell even the 
 shirts off their backs to maintain a war against France for 
 the preservation of the Netherlands'.^ Even a Stuart felt 
 obliged to bow to the storm. The marriage of the Princess 
 Mary to the Prince of Orange announced the change of 
 
 * Rousset, LoiivoiSy ii. 309, quoted ap. Firth, op. cit.^ p. 15. 
 
ENGLAND AND THE LOW COUNTRIES 173 
 
 policy (November 4, 1677) ; Parliament voted supplies with 
 a lavish hand, and early in 1678 England re-entered the war 
 in opposition to France. But Charles II was incurably double- 
 minded ; his ways were hopelessly unstable, and in May 1678 
 he concluded with Louis XIV another secret treaty, by which 
 he engaged to disband his army and to prorogue Parliament. 
 In July the Dutch came to terms with France, and a definitive 
 treaty was concluded at Nimeguen. France retained Franche- 
 Comte and a strong line of fortresses, including Ypres, 
 Maubeuge, Saint Omer, and Valenciennes, stretching from 
 Dunkirk to the Meuse. On the other hand, many of the 
 towns acquired In 1668 were handed back to the Spanish 
 Netherlands to protect the Dutch against future attack. But 
 by far the most significant result of the war was personal. 
 It confided to the Prince of Orange the championship of 
 European liberty. 
 
 William III was firmly resolved to save Europe from the 
 domination of France. To this end he formed, in 1686, the ^ 
 League of Augsburg. But no merely continental coalition 
 would, as he perceived, avail. He entered, therefore, into 
 negotiation with the opponents of his Stuart father-in-law, 
 and in 1688 he accepted their invitation to come to England. 
 The Stuarts owed their undoing to their Gallican and Roman 
 Catholic sympathies. The instinct of their subjects was 
 perfectly sound. The English people do not, as a rule, 
 follow the intricacies of continental diplomacy either closely 
 or intelligently. But they have a few unalterable prejudices, 
 and of these the strongest is, as we have seen, relentless 
 hostility to any Power which threatens the European equi- 
 librium or the independence of the Low Countries. Louis XIV 
 was a palpable transgressor ; Louis XIV must therefore 
 be crushed, even if the process involved the substitution of 
 a Dutchman for a gallicized Scot. William III had as little 
 liking for the English people as they for him, but he sub- 
 mitted to the inconvenience and humiliation of wearing a 
 ' constitutional ' crown for the sake of achieving his purpose 
 as a European diplomatist. 
 
 The war which was closed, or rather interrupted, by the 
 
174 THE EUROPEAN COMMONWEALTH 
 
 Treaty of Ryswick (1697) was, as the protagonists were aware, 
 a mere prologue to a greater drama. Both Louis XIV and 
 Wilh'am wanted to take breath before the mortal combat. 
 For that combat William prepared Europe by the formation 
 of the Grand Alliance in 1701. Even then, however, his 
 supreme purpose might have been frustrated by the English 
 Parliament had not his opponent made a colossal blunder. 
 
 The English people would never have gone to war about 
 the 'Spanish Succession' had not Louis XIV, in arrogant 
 folly, occupied Luxemburg, Namur, Mons, Charleroi, Oude- 
 narde, and the sea towns of Ostend and Nieuport. The recog- 
 nition of the * Old Pretender ' added fuel to the flames of 
 English anger, and a few months later (March 1702) William III 
 died happy in the knowledge that his life's purpose was 
 achieved, and that the execution of his policy was safe in the 
 hands of the greatest soldier ever reared in PZngland. 
 
 The victories of Marlborough, with a single brilliant excep- 
 tion, were all won in the ' cockpit ' of Europe. Dean Swift, 
 writing for once as a venal scribe, might denounce the strategy 
 of the Whigs and their self-seeking General. But the argu- 
 ment of the Conduct of the Allies was as paradoxical as it was 
 brilliant. In making the Netherlands his principal campaign- 
 ing ground the Duke of Marlborough was faithful to the 
 ingrained instincts of the English people, nor did he betray 
 their interests. Still less did the Tories, in concluding peace, 
 surrender any principle which it was important to maintain. 
 On the contrary, the Treaty of Utrecht secured to this country 
 great and manifold advantages : in the Mediterranean ; in 
 North America ; in the South Seas ; but not the least of the 
 advantages gained at Utrecht was the stipulation in regard 
 to the Low Countries. The Spanish Netherlands passed to 
 the Austrian Habsburgs, by whom they soon came to be 
 regarded as an intolerable incubus, gladly exchanged in 
 1 815 for Italian territory. By the 'Barrier Treaty', which 
 England guaranteed, the Dutch obtained the right to garrison 
 a line of fortresses — Namur, Tournai, Menin, Furnes, Warneton, 
 Ypres, and Knocque — stretching from the Meuse to the sea. 
 The net result of the war was security for the Dutch, and an 
 
ENGLAND AND THE LOW COUNTRIES 175 
 
 emphatic reassertion of the established principle that neither 
 France nor a nominee of France should ever be permitted to 
 retain possession of Belgium. To this end we had fought 
 one of the greatest of our wars. 
 
 A greater was still to come. Among the lovers of peace 
 the younger Pitt was one of the most ardent. Trained in the 
 school of Adam Smith, he was ambitious to initiate far-reaching 
 domestic reforms : fiscal, administrative, and economic. Even 
 after the outbreak of the revolution in France he did not 
 abandon his objects or the hope of attaining them. So late as 
 February 1792 he ventured to anticipate for Europe a period 
 of prolonged peace ; and his famous sinking-fund scheme was 
 based upon that anticipation. Never was fate more perversely 
 ironical. Within a year England had plunged into a war 
 from which she did not finally emerge until 18 15. 
 
 What was the force which drew us into the vortex ? Many 
 things combined to inflame passions between England and 
 France, but the immediate and essential causes of the war 
 were curiously parallel to those which, in August 19 14, com- 
 pelled the intervention of Great Britain against Germany. 
 Ardently as he desired the maintenance of peace, Pitt refused 
 to permit the French Republic to make void, at its will, 
 a solemn international obligation, or to threaten the integrity 
 of Belgium. By the Treaty of Westphalia (1648) the naviga- 
 tion of the Scheldt had been definitely and exclusively reserved 
 to the Dutch. In 179.3 the French Republic declared it to be 
 open to all nations. The excuse put forward for this high- 
 handed action was hardly less obnoxious than the original 
 offence ; the Convention affirmed ' that the river takes its rise 
 in France, and that a nation which has obtained its liberty 
 cannot recognize a system of feudalism, much less adhere to it '. 
 Pitt promptly disavowed this spurious sentiment and repu- 
 diated the subversive doctrine on which it rested. * England ', 
 he declared, ' will never consent that another Power shall 
 arrogate the power of annulling at her pleasure and under the 
 pretence of a pretended natural right the political system of 
 Europe established by solemn treaties and guaranteed by the 
 consent of all the Powers.' 
 
176 THE EUROPEAN COMMONWEALTH 
 
 It was not, however, only with false doctrine that England 
 was at war. Before the end of 1792 France had invaded 
 Belgium and was threatening Holland. She fell back before 
 the advance of the Allies in 1793, but in the following year 
 she again occupied and annexed Belgium, and in 1795 Holland 
 was transformed into the Batavian Republic in close depen- 
 dence upon France. Henceforward, for nearly twenty years 
 Belgium formed an integral part of France and, like the rest 
 of the country, was divided up in symmetrical departments. 
 
 It has long been the fashion to assert that in joining the 
 Allies against France in 1793 Pitt was guilty of a grave error. 
 In the light of recent events the Whig historians must be 
 invited to revise their text-books. If the argument of this 
 chapter is sound Pitt had no option. Unless he was prepared 
 to see international engagements torn up by a single Power he 
 was bound to protest against the opening of the Scheldt ; 
 unless he was prepared to defy the unbroken tradition of 
 English policy he was bound to resist the incorporation of 
 Belgium into France. A distinguished Viennese historian has 
 himself insisted that it was the French absorption of Belgium 
 which * lent an irreconcilable character to the war with 
 Britain and made that Power a central factor in European 
 politics'.^ 
 
 No one realized the importance of the Low Countries more 
 clearly than Napoleon. Towards the close of 1800 he declared 
 to his confidant, Roederer, that, if necessary, he would fight 
 single-handed against the world *to keep the Stadtholder out of 
 Holland and to retain for France Belgium and the left bank of 
 the Rhine '. His refusal to evacuate Holland contributed sub- 
 stantially to the rupture of the Peace of Amiens in 1803. To 
 Antwerp he devoted special attention when he was preparing 
 for the invasion of England in 1 804-5. -^ dockyard was to be 
 constructed big enough to contain twenty-five battleships, with 
 a corresponding flotilla of frigates and sloops ; a gigantic for- 
 tress was to be built on the opposite side of the River Scheldt 
 to protect the dockyard and arsenal, and so Antwerp would be 
 * a loaded pistol held at the head of England '.^ 
 
 * Auguste Fournier, Nafoleon /, i. 86. 
 2 Rose, Napoleon^ i. 439. 
 
ENGLAND AND THE LOW COUNTRIES 177 
 
 To this truth and all that it imported Lord Castlereagh was 
 as keenly alive as Napoleon. It was this which in 1809 in- 
 spired the scheme of an expedition to Walcheren, a scheme 
 brilliantly conceived by Castlereagh and disastrously executed 
 by Lord Chatham and Sir Richard Strachan. It was this 
 which Castlereagh had ever in mind during the peace nego- 
 tiations in 1 813 and 18 14. We can imagine, therefore, 
 Castlereagh's dismay when, in November 1H13, Metternich 
 proposed that France should be allowed to retain the line of 
 the Rhine, which included Antwerp, the Scheldt, and Flushing, 
 as well as the whole of Flanders. ' I must particularly entreat 
 you', he wrote to Aberdeen (November 13, 1813), 'to keep 
 your attention upon Antwerp. The destruction of that arsenal 
 is essential to our safety. To leave it in the hands of France 
 is little short of imposing upon Great Britain the charge of 
 a perpetual war establishment.' ^ 
 
 The allied Sovereigns yielded to the cogent reasoning of 
 Castlereagh and unanimously resolved to prosecute the war 
 without relaxation. Meanwhile, the British Cabinet, acutely 
 conscious of the fact that in the recent negotiations at Frank- 
 fort less than due regard had been paid by the Allies to the 
 views and interests of Great Britain, decided to invite Lord 
 Castlereagh himself to represent them in the Councils of the 
 Allies. Castlereagh accepted the honourable but anxious 
 mission, and in the last week of the year 1813 a series of 
 Cabinet Councils was held to discuss the instructions which 
 should be given to the British Plenipotentiary. The Cabinet 
 sat on Christmas Eve, on Christmas Day, and on Sunday the 
 26th. It rose at half-past six on Sunday. On Monday 
 (December 27) Lord Castlereagh and his suite started for 
 Harwich, whence he sailed for Holland, en route for Bale. 
 
 There still exists in the archives of the Foreign Office 
 a memorandum marked ' most secret and confidential ', and 
 bearing on its face conclusive testimony in the shape of correc- 
 tions, re-corrections, and interlineations to the prolonged 
 and anxious deliberations of which it was the final outcome. 
 In that memorandum Lord Castlereagh was instructed to 
 ^ Castlereagh Correspondence, third series, i. 74. 
 
 2180 N 
 
178 THE EUROPEAN COMMONWEALTH 
 
 state in general terms that if the Maritime Power of France 
 were ' restricted within due bounds by the effectual establish- 
 ment of Holland, the Peninsula, and Italy in security and 
 independence', but not otherwise, Great Britain would be 
 inclined to * apply the greater portion of her conquests to 
 promote the general interests '. If pressed for details he was 
 to make it clear that there were two objects on which Great 
 Britain would insist and without which she would refuse to 
 give up any of her conquests : first, * the absolute exclusion 
 of France from any naval establishment on the Scheldt, and 
 especially at Antwerp', and, secondly, 'the security of Holland 
 being adequately provided for, under the House of Orange, 
 by a barrier which shall at least include Juliers and Antwerp, 
 as well as Maestricht, with a suitable arrondissement of 
 territory in addition to Holland as it stood in 1792 '.^ 
 
 The result of these instructions is familiar to all students ot 
 the history of this period, but it is less generally recognized 
 how commanding was the influence which during the critical 
 months that followed Castlereagh exercised upon the Allies. 
 A brilliant French statesman-historian has thus appraised it : 
 * In mind honest and penetrating, in character prudent and 
 firm, capable at once of vigour and address, having in his 
 manner the proud simplicity of the English, he was called to 
 exercise, and did exercise, the greatest influence. . . . With his 
 character and instructions you might almost say that England 
 itself had risen up and formed the camp of the Coalesced 
 Sovereigns'.^ The prime object of Castlereagh's solicitude 
 was the independence and integrity of the Low Countries, 
 threatened, in 1814, by the ambition of France. To leave 
 Antwerp in the hands of France was, in Castlereagh's view, as 
 in Napoleon's, to point a loaded pistol at the head of England. 
 
 What was true of France in i8i4istrueof Germany in J 914. 
 For Great Britain, quite apart from questions of international 
 obligations, no peace was or is possible which leaves Belgium 
 or Holland in the hands of a potential enemy. Napoleon 
 
 ^ I owe my first knowledge of the existence of this most interesting and 
 important Memorandum to an anonymous article which appeared in the 
 Morning Post^ December 26, 19 13. 
 
 ' Thiers, Consulate and Empire ^ xvii. 199. 
 
ENGLAND AND THE LOW COUNTRIES 179 
 
 realized this truth to the full, and confessed to Colonel 
 Campbell at Elba that for the sake of Antwerp he had lost the 
 throne of France. If Castlereagh had not insisted upon the 
 giving up of Belgium, peace, he declared, would have been 
 made at Chatillon.^ Without corroboration Napoleon can 
 never be believed ; but, in this instance, he spoke truly. 
 
 Napoleon's abdication did not, however, solve the problem 
 of Belgium. To the Austrian Habsburgs it had been, 
 as we saw, a perpetual nuisance ever since they had 
 acquired it at the Peace of Utrecht, and they had made 
 repeated attempts to exchange it, if possible, for Bavaria. I 
 But Bavaria, caressed by Napoleon, had prudently insured I 1/ 
 against his overthrow by the Treaty of Ried. Disappointed « 
 of Bavaria, the Habsburgs were glad to give up Belgium in ex- 
 change for Venice. But what was to become of Belgium ? 
 
 The idea of the formation of a strong barrier-State, inter- 
 mediate between France and Germany, had long been in 
 the minds of European diplomatists. Lord Grenville had 
 suggested it as long ago as 1798. In 1814 the opportunity 
 for achieving it had manifestly come. Accordingly, by the 
 first Treaty of Paris (18 14), Belgium was united with Holland 
 in a kingdom of the Netherlands under the House of Orange- 
 Nassau. 
 
 The union thus consummated proved to be singularly ill- 
 assorted. Between the Dutch of the Northern Provinces and 
 the Flemings and Walloons of the South there was little in 
 common. Racially they were akin, but despite the large 
 admixture of Flemish blood the peoples of the Belgian 
 Provinces were powerfully attracted towards France, of which 
 country they had for twenty years actually formed part. In 
 creed and in historical tradition North and South were sharply 
 divided, and the division was accentuated by commercial 
 rivalry. Nevertheless, a conciliatory policy on the part of the 
 House of Orange, if steadily pursued after 1815, might have 
 done much to obliterate differences and to weld North and 
 South into a united Power, if not into a homogeneous people. 
 Such policy was conspicuous by its absence. King William 
 * Rose, op, cit., ii. 399. 
 N Q, 
 
i8o THE EUROPEAN COMMONWEALTH 
 
 of the Netherlands was, as Palmerston's biographer wittily- 
 phrased it, ' one of those clever men who constantly do foolish 
 things, and one of "those obstinate men who support one bad 
 measure by another worse.' ^ The Dutch, though numerically 
 inferior, treated Belgium almost as a conquered province, 
 imposing upon it disproportionate burdens and denying it 
 equal opportunities. They made, in fact, no secret of their 
 intention to absorb Belgium into Holland. This policy was 
 deeply resented and stoutly opposed by the Belgian patriots, 
 and they found staunch allies in the Clericals, who were greatly 
 incensed against the Calvinist authorities of Holland. Thus 
 in 1830, as in 1790, the Clericals and Democrats of Belgium 
 combined against an alien ruler, and both found encourage- 
 ment and opportunity in the French revolution of July, and 
 in the general upheaval which ensued thereon. 
 
 Into the details of the Belgian insurrection it is unnecessary 
 to enter. The Powers were, for the most part, opposed to the 
 destruction of a corner-stone of the diplomatic edifice of 18 14, 
 but the Belgians found a warm friend in Lord Palmerston, who 
 became Foreign Secretary in the Ministry of Lord Grey in 
 1830. Palmerston was convinced that the recognition of 
 Belgian independence was the only alternative to its absorp- 
 tion by France, and to the latter alternative he was as strongly 
 opposed as Burleigh or Pitt or Castlereagh. But the danger of 
 absorption was by no means remote. The Belgians themselves 
 elected as their king the Due de Nemours, the second son ot 
 King Louis-Philippe. Palmerston bluntly declined to allow a 
 French prince to wear the Belgian crown, and by a combina- 
 tion of firmness and adroitness he induced Louis-Philippe not 
 only to decline the Crown, on his son's behalf, but to admit 
 the candidature of Prince Leopold of Saxe-Coburg, a German 
 by blood, but an Englishman by residence and sympathies, 
 and the sometime consort of the Princess Charlotte, the heiress- 
 presumptive to the English throne. 
 
 On June 26, 1831, Prince Leopold accepted, not without 
 hesitation, the Belgian Crown. The hesitation was justified ; 
 for the situation which confronted the new monarch was 
 * Lord Bailing, Palmerston^ ii. 2. 
 
ENGLAND AND THE LOW COUNTRIES i8i 
 
 appallingly difficult. The Dutch, refusing the bases de separa- 
 tion^ upon the ratification of which Leopold's acceptance of the 
 Crown was conditional, marched 50,000 men into Belgium. 
 The latter appealed for help to France and England. Louis- 
 Philippe complied, and a French army occupied Belgium. War 
 between France and Holland — perhaps a general European 
 conflagration — was averted only by the diplomacy of Lord 
 Palmerston. But the situation was still critical. Great Britain 
 could not contemplate a French occupation of Belgium, and 
 Lord Palmerston told Louis-Philippe plainly that his troops 
 could remain there only on pain of war with England. But 
 French troops could not be withdrawn until Belgium was 
 secured against the attack of Holland. The dilemma appeared 
 insoluble. Ft was ultimately solved by the combined firmness, 
 patience, and tact of Lord Palmerston on the one side, and on 
 the other by the genuine anxiety of Louis-Philippe to keep 
 on good terms with England. Not, however, until 1833 did 
 Holland acquiesce in the decision of the Powers to recognize 
 Belgian independence, and not until 1 839 was this acquiescence 
 embodied in a definite treaty. That treaty was concluded 
 between Great Britain, Austria, France, Prussia, and Russia on 
 the one part and the Netherlands (Holland) on the other, and 
 was signed in London on April 19, 1839. It constitutes the 
 charter and defines the international position of the modern 
 kingdom of Belgium. It places the independence, the neutrahty, 
 and the territorial integrity of Belgium under the guarantee of 
 the five Great Powers. This was not, as Lord Clarendon 
 pointed out in 1867, a mere collective undertaking. It was an 
 individual obligation imposed by each Power on itself.^ 
 
 Thus ended a troublesome and dangerous episode. Thai 
 the issue was relatively peaceful and completely satisfactory 
 was due mainly to Lord Palmerston. Thanks to his plain 
 dealing three definite results had been achieved : an essential 
 part of the settlement of 1814 had been destroyed without 
 involving Europe in war; an independent Belgian kingdom, 
 pledged to perpetual neutrality, had been brought into being 
 under a constitutional monarchy and a European guarantee ; 
 ^ Hansard, vol. clxxxviii. 152. 
 
iH!Z THE EUROPEAN COMMONWEALTH 
 
 and France, though the most effusive and most effective friend 
 of Belgium, had been compelled to forgo any hope of terri- 
 torial acquisition or political advantage for herself. Truly, 
 a diplomatic achievement of which Great Britain and Lord 
 Palmerston might well be proud. 
 
 As regards three of the parties to the Treaty of London, 
 the obligations accepted in 1839 were, as we have seen, 
 specifically and solemnly renewed in 1870. Prussia, France, 
 and Great Britain may therefore be said to stand in a special 
 relation to Belgian neutrality and independence. 
 
 On August 4, 1 9 14, one of the three Powers shamelessly 
 broke its plighted word. ' This morning the armed forces 
 of Germany entered Belgian territory in violation of Treaty 
 engagements/^ That grievous wrong was thereby done to 
 Belgium was not denied at Berlin. The invasion constituted, 
 as Herr von Bethmann-Hollweg admitted, ' a breach of inter- 
 national law '.^ To repair that breach Great Britain and the 
 whole British Empire flew to arms. 
 
 In the foregoing pages an attempt has been made to concen- 
 trate attention upon a single point of quite exceptional signifi- 
 cance. Between the people of England and the people of the 
 Netherlands there has existed for a thousand years a connexion 
 and a friendship almost unbroken. In its origin it was based 
 largely on an obvious geographical fact ; but other considera- 
 tions, political, strategical, dynastic, and, above all, economic, 
 quickly and firmly cemented it. 
 
 It was remarked by Bossuet and repeated by De Witt that 
 the English people are more unstable than the sea which 
 encircles them. Fickleness and uncertainty are the charac- 
 teristics most commonly attributed to our diplomacy by 
 continental observers. But to one maxim of statecraft, to 
 one line of policy, England has been, as the above pages 
 prove, extraordinarily constant. Against the predominance 
 of any one Power we have always stood as adamant, and we 
 have consistently used the Low Countries as the most con- 
 
 * M. Davignon, Belgian Foreign Minister, ap. Collected Diplomatic 
 Documents y p. 321. 
 "^ Speech m Reichstag, August 4, 1914. 
 
ENGLAND AND THE LOW COUNTRIES 183 
 
 venient weapon with which to resist that predominance. Each 
 Power which has in turn threatened the European equilibrium 
 has announced its anjbitious design by an assault upon the 
 independence of the Low Countries. By the side of the Low 
 Countries England has invariaby arrayed herself. 
 
 It has mattered nothing what dynasty has been on the 
 throne, or what party has been in power : Plantagenets and 
 Lancastrians, Yorkists and Tudors, Whigs, Tories, and Radi- 
 cals — all alike have accepted it as a fixed and pivotal maxim 
 of English policy, that the Low Countries must never be at 
 the disposal of any Power— be it Spanish, French, or Prussian — 
 which is in a position to threaten the ' liberties of Europe '. 
 
 Happily, the crisis of 19 14 has provided no exception to an 
 unbroken rule. Never have the ancient saws of British policy 
 been reaffirmed with more complete unanimity and more deter- 
 mined purpose. Never has the resentment of the English 
 people been more passionately aroused than by the treacher- 
 ous, cynical and brutal assault of Germany upon Belgium. 
 Never has English sympathy gone out more truly and more 
 tenderly than to the innocent and hapless victims of German 
 'Kultur' — the heroic and suffering people who have always 
 been our friends and are now our guests. 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 
 THE PROBLEM OF POLAND. P 
 
 *The future of Europe really depends on the ultimate destiny of 
 Poland.'— Napoleon I. 
 
 * Poland will live again. By the will of Tsar Nicholas II, supported by 
 France and England, an end will be put to one of the greatest crimes in 
 history.'— M. Cl^menceau, August i6, 1914. 
 
 * La question la plus excltisivement europeenne est celle qui 
 concerne la Pologne.' Thus wrote Talleyrand to Metternich 
 during the Congress of Vienna, precisely one hundred years 
 ago. It may be doubted whether the full significance of 
 Talleyrand's words was adequately apprehended by the diplo- 
 matists of 1815. It is certain that since that time the deeper 
 meaning of the words has for the most part eluded historical 
 commentators. Every student of European history is, of 
 course, aware that among the problems which confronted and 
 perplexed the monarchs and diplomatists assembled at Vienna 
 not the least complicated was that of Poland. A solution 
 was, for the time at least, provided by the firmness and 
 promptitude of the Tsar Alexander. Inspired on the one hand 
 by the liberal enthusiasm of his Polish counsellor Prince 
 Adam Czartoryski, on the other by the promptings of an 
 ambition as generous as it was shrewd, the Tsar insisted upon 
 the restoration of an independent kingdom of Poland. He 
 insisted further, that of the revived kingdom he must himself 
 be the first king. These resolutions brought the Tsar into 
 sharp conflict with Metternich, who was supported by Great 
 Britain, France, and Holland. At the beginning of 1815 
 a secret treaty was concluded between the latter Powers, and 
 war between them and their Eastern allies seemed imminent 
 
 ' Published in the Edinburgh Review for April 19 15. 
 
THE PROBLEM OF POLAND 185 
 
 when news reached Vienna which caused all such minor 
 dissensions to be put aside and the bonds of alliance to be 
 drawn closer than ever before. Napoleon had escaped from 
 Elba, had landed at Cannes, and was once more Emperor 
 of the French. The restoration of the Empire was followed 
 by the episode of the ' Hundred Days ', an episode closed by 
 the victory of Wellington and Bliicher at Waterloo. In regard 
 to Poland, Alexander's will prevailed and the * Congress 
 Kingdom ' came into being. 
 
 Five years ago a brilliant French critic introduced to French 
 readers a remarkable work from the pen of a Polish states- 
 man.^ In performing this function M. Anatole Leroy-Beaulieu 
 employs language which curiously recalls that of Talleyrand 
 at Vienna. 
 
 'La question polonaise', he writes, *est essentiellement une 
 question europeenne dont aucun Europeen, dont aucun 
 Fran9ais surtout, ne pent se xdesinteresser, car d'elle depend 
 I'avenir de I'Europe, le maintien ou la ruine de ce qui 
 reste de I'^quilibre europeen, la balance des pouvoirs et le 
 sort des alliances.' 
 
 M. Leroy-Beaulieu's meaning is illustrated and amplified 
 in M. Dmowski's singularly interesting and temperate treatise. 
 M. Dmowski, it should be said, writes on this subject with 
 unique authority. He represented Warsaw in the second 
 and third Dumas, and, as leader of the Polish Parliamentary 
 Group, was the principal exponent in the Duma of the 
 nationalist aspirations of his fellow countrymen. His work, 
 La Qtiestion polonaise, has a twofold significance. On the one 
 hand, it is at once a revelation and an illustration of the 
 change which since the fiasco of 1863 has passed over the 
 spirit of Poland's dream. On the other hand, it explains 
 with admirable lucidity the close connexion between the 
 national aspirations of Poland and the international situation 
 in Europe as a whole. 
 
 ' Cette lutte [for Polish liberties] a une portee immense non 
 seulement pour I'existence nationale des Polonais, mais pour 
 I'Europe tout entiere. Pour que I'Europe entiere n'en vienne 
 pas un jour a etre gouvernee sur des ordres de Berlin, il faut 
 
 ^ La Question polonaise f par R. Dmowski* (Paris, Colin, 1909.) 
 
i86 THE EUROPEAN COMMONWEALTH 
 
 que la nation polonaise conquiere les conditions d'un deve- 
 loppement rapide, la possibilite d'un travail large et fecond, 
 et par la les forces nJcessaires pour mener a bien une lutte 
 historique longue et difficile. . . Le principal danger qui 
 menace I'existence nationale de la Pologne reside dans I'ac- 
 croissement disproportionne de la puissance allemande sous 
 la direction de la Prusse. . . Les peuples slaves voient leur 
 existence menacee par I'accroissement de I'influence allemande 
 sur leurs territoires ; ils comprennent que c'est le resultat de 
 la lutte entre le polonisme et le germanisme qui decidera dans 
 une grande mesure de leurs propres destinees. . . C'est pr^- 
 cisement par ce lien qui la rattache a la cause de tous les 
 Slaves et a la question du role de I'AUemagne dans toute 
 I'Europe orientale, que la question polonaise, sous sa forme 
 actuelle, est d'une importance capitale, et cela non seulement 
 pour les seuls Polonais, mais, nous le repetons, pour I'Europe 
 tout entiere.' 
 
 Considerations such as these go far to explain the impor- 
 tance attached to the proclamation issued to the Poles by the 
 Grand Duke Nicholas in August 1914. The full text of 
 that Proclamation is as follows : 
 
 ' Poles ! 
 
 ' The hour has struck in which the sacred dream of your 
 fathers and forefathers may find fulfilment. 
 
 * A century and a half ago, the living flesh of Poland was 
 torn asunder, but her soul did not die. She lived in hope 
 that there would come an hour for the resurrection of the 
 Polish Nation and for sisterly reconciliation with Russia. 
 
 * The Russian Army now brings you the joyful tidings of 
 this reconciliation. May the boundaries be annulled which 
 cut the Polish Nation to pieces ! May that Nation re-unite 
 into one body under the sceptre of the Russian Emperor. 
 Under this sceptre Poland shall be re-born, free in Faith, in 
 language, in self-government. 
 
 ' One thing only Russia expects of you : equal consideration 
 for the rights of those nationalities to which history has 
 linked you. 
 
 'With open heart, with hand fraternally outstretched, 
 Russia steps forward to meet you; She believes that the 
 Sword has not rusted which, at Griinwald, struck down the 
 enemy. From the shores of the Pacific to the North Seas, 
 the Russian armies are on the march. The dawn of a new 
 life is breaking for you. 
 
 ' May there shine, resplendent above that dawn, the sign 
 
THE PROBLEM OF POLAND 187 
 
 of the Cross, symbol of the Passion and Resurrection of 
 Nations ! 
 
 ' (Signed) 
 
 ' Commander-in-Chief General Adjutant 
 
 ' Nicholas. 
 ' I (14) August, 1914.'^ 
 
 A month later, when Russian troops had invaded Galicia, 
 tlie promise contained in the Grand Duke's manifesto was 
 repeated, even more specifically, and in the name of the Tsar 
 Nicholas himself: 
 
 ' If, with God's help, he is victorious. His Imperial Majesty 
 promises to unite in one autonomous nation all the parts of 
 ancient Poland which are under the sway of Germany, Austria, 
 and Russia, and to revive Poland under the sovereignty of 
 the Emperor of Russia.' 
 
 As to the precise degree of significance to be attributed 
 to the Proclamations opinions naturally differ. In some 
 quarters there has been a disposition to regard them as a 
 mere ' artifice of war ' ; it has been pointed out that similar 
 Proclamations were issued by the German allies; that ex- 
 pectations not less exalted were held out to the Poles a 
 century ago by the Tsar Alexander, and that they remain 
 unfulfilled. But it is noteworthy that the motives of the 
 Russian Government are least mistrusted in quarters where 
 suspicion would be most pardonable. Representatives of the 
 leading democratic parties in Poland — the Democratic National 
 Party, the Polish Progressive Party, the Realistic Party, and 
 the Polish Progressive Union — met in Warsaw on August 16, 
 and in response to the Grand Duke's Proclamation they 
 forthwith issued the following important manifesto : 
 
 * The representatives welcome the Proclamation ... as an 
 act of the foremost historical importance, and implicitly believe 
 that upon the termination of the war, the promises uttered 
 in that proclamation will be formally fulfilled, that the dreams 
 of their forefathers will be realized, that Poland's flesh, torn 
 asunder a century and a half ago, will once again be made 
 whole, that the frontiers severing the Polish nation will vanish. 
 
 ^ The above Proclamation was issued in the Polish language, in the 
 Gazetta Warszawska of August 16. It is here reproduced by kind 
 permission from Miss Laurence Alma Tadema's pamphlet, Poland^ 
 Russia^ and the War. 
 
i88 THE EUROPEAN COMMONWEALTH 
 
 The blood of Poland's sons, shed in united combat against 
 the Germans, will serve as a sacrifice upon the altar of her 
 Resurrection.' ^ 
 
 It would, perhaps, be pedantic to expect more precise and 
 particular definition in proclamations issued at a moment 
 of high political excitement and intended for popular con- 
 sumption. The appeal must necessarily be to sentiment, and 
 the force of sentiment might well be impaired by precision. 
 Prudence also may forbid excessive particularization. The 
 publicist is, however, entitled, and indeed required, to scru- 
 tinize the language of the Grand Duke somewhat more 
 closely. 
 
 That the living flesh of Poland was torn asunder by the 
 Partitions of the eighteenth century is undeniable. Equally 
 undeniable is it that ever since those days the Polish nation 
 has lived in hope of a resurrection. The desire for ' sisterly 
 reconciliation with Russia ' is, however, a sentiment of more 
 dubious authenticity, or at any rate of more recent growth. 
 It was not manifested very vividly in 1830 or in 1863. 
 Again : ' the boundaries which cut the Polish nation to pieces 
 are to be annulled.' But which boundaries ? What is to be 
 the terminus a quo ? Are you going to start from the stattis 
 quo ante-V2LX\A\\on — say from 1770? Or do you mean to go 
 farther back? You allude to Griinwald — to the famous 
 victory won, in 14 10, by the Poles against the Teutonic 
 Knights near Tannenberg. Do you then mean to claim for 
 Poland the Duchy of East Prussia, as well as West Prussia 
 and Posen? These are merely samples of the many ques- 
 tions which the pedantic historian, perhaps also the practical 
 politician, would fain address to the Grand Duke Nicholas, 
 to the Polish democrats, and to all those sympathizers who 
 throughout the world have enthusiastically applauded the 
 Grand Duke's Proclamation. 
 
 Whatever line the authentic answers may eventually take, 
 one thing is immediately and indisputably clear: the Pro- 
 clamation of August 14 is a document of first-rate historical 
 importance, and it challenges, in an acute and arresting fashion, 
 
 ^ Cf. L. Alma Tadema, Poland^ Russia^ and the War^ p. 14. 
 
THE PROBLEM OF POLAND 189 
 
 a final solution of an historic problem. To sketch the historical 
 evolution of that problem, and to examine critically its bearings, 
 is the purpose of the pages that follow. 
 
 During the later Middle Ages and well beyond them ; before 
 the many Russias had attained to any semblance of unity ; 
 before the Hohenzollern had set foot in Brandenburg ; before 
 the Habsburgs had acquired either Bohemia or Hungary and 
 while their position in Germany was still far from estab- 
 lished ; before Constantinople had fallen to the Turks ; while 
 the issue of the Hundred Years' War between England and 
 France was still uncertain ; before the Spanish Kingdoms had 
 united under the Habsburgs ; while the Moriscoes were still 
 in Granada ; Poland was the greatest Power in Eastern Europe 
 and among the foremost Powers of the Continent. Formless, 
 and, save for its superb river-system, featureless, the great 
 plain of Poland stretched at one time from the Baltic to the 
 Black Sea, almost from the line of the Oder, to that of the 
 Dwina and the Dnieper, from Danzig in the north-west to 
 Kiev in the south-east, from beyond Cracow in the south- 
 west to beyond Witebsk in the north-east.^ But the heart 
 of Poland proper is and always has been the basin of the 
 Vistula. Much of the soil is fertile ; iron, copper, and lead 
 are procurable in considerable profusion, while the salt-mines 
 of Cracow have always formed a coveted source of wealth. 
 
 Poland emerges into the light of authentic history in the 
 later years of the tenth century, when she accepted Christianity 
 — unlike the Russias — in its Western, i. e. Roman form. To- 
 wards the end of the fourteenth century she had taken her 
 place as one of the great Powers of Europe. The marriage 
 (in 1386) of her Queen Jadwiga to Jagiello. Grand Duke of 
 the adjacent land of Lithuania, at once established Poland's 
 territorial position and gave a decisive bias to her policy. 
 Including, as at one time it did, Bohemia, Moravia, Silesia, 
 Lusatia, and Pomerania, Poland might have been expected 
 to challenge the German Kingdom in Central Europe and 
 to aspire to a place in the States-system of the West. But 
 
 * These limits, of course, include Lithuania and Courland, Volhynia, 
 Podolia, and the Ukraine. 
 
I90 THE EUROPEAN COMMONWEALTH 
 
 between the twelfth and the fourteenth centuries Poland lost 
 most of her western territories, while the union with Lithuania 
 drew her irresistibly towards the north-east. 
 
 In that region she found herself in conflict with the famous 
 military Order of the Teutonic Knights. These Knights, one 
 of the many Orders called into existence by the Crusades, 
 were summoned in the thirteenth century to the task of 
 conquering, civilizing, colonizing, and christianizing the 
 heathen lands along the Baltic littoral. Early in the four- 
 teenth century the Order established its head-quarters at 
 Marienburg, and from there directed an elaborate political 
 organization extending over Prussia and Livonia and some 
 parts of Lithuania and Pomerania. Under the influence of 
 excessive wealth and prosperity the Order rapidly degenerated, 
 and, in 1410, on the historic field of Griinwald, near Tannen- 
 berg, it sustained a crushing defeat at the hands of the Polish 
 King Ladislas. From that defeat the Order never recovered, 
 and in 1466 the Poles dictated to the Knights the terms of 
 the famous Treaty of Thorn. Once again the Poles regained 
 the command of the mouths of the Vistula ; the district of 
 West Prussia, including the cities of Danzig, Thorn, and 
 Marienburg, was incorporated in the Kingdom of Poland, 
 while the district of East Prussia was restored to the Knights, 
 to be held by them henceforward in fief from the Polish Crown. 
 The Teutonic Order was secularized, at Luther's suggestion, 
 in 1525, and the then Grand Master, Albert of Hohenzollern, 
 became the first hereditary Duke of East Prussia, still holding 
 the Duchy as a vassal of Poland. The Prussian Hohenzollern 
 became extinct in 161 8, and by an arrangement, known as an 
 Erbverbrilderungy the inheritance passed to the Hohenzollern 
 Electors of Brandenburg. By the Treaty of Wehlau (1657) 
 the latter succeeded in throwing off the suzerainty of Poland, 
 and when, in 1701, they attained to kingly rank, they took 
 their title not from the Electoral Mark of Brandenburg but 
 from the still isolated Duchy of East Prussia. This choice, 
 apparently fortuitous, was not devoid of high political 
 significance. 
 
 Thus early in their career had the Hohenzollern come into 
 
THE PROBLEM OF POLAND 191 
 
 conflict with the neighbouring Slavonic people with whose 
 fortunes their own were destined to be so closely intermingled. 
 Meanwhile, the Polish Kingdom had already attained and 
 passed the meridian of its greatness. The beginning of its 
 decline is usually dated from the end of the sixteenth century. 
 Thirty years earlier its security had seemed to be cemented 
 by the compact of Lublin (1569). Under that instrument the 
 connexion with Lithuania, hitherto merely personal, was con- 
 verted into an organic legislative union. Hardly had the 
 union been consummated when a heavy blow befell the united 
 realm. In 15712 the male line of the Jagiellos — the House 
 under which Poland-Lithuania had attained to a position 
 of dazzling ascendancy in Eastern Europe — became extinct. 
 The Polish monarchy was henceforward exposed, in grim 
 reality, to all the perils and uncertainties involved in an 
 elective throne. 
 
 Precisely two centuries separated the extinction of the 
 Jagiellos from the first Partition. During the whole of that 
 period Poland plays a considerable part in European politics, 
 and is responsible for one or two brilliant episodes. The first 
 is supplied by the reign of Stephen Batory, who, after the flight 
 of Henry of Valois, was elected to the Polish throne (1675). 
 Batory, ' by his sole merit ', to adopt Krasinski's phrase, ' had 
 risen from the rank of a simple Hungarian gentleman to the 
 dignity of sovereign prince of Transylvania ', and proved him- 
 self, in the same writer's judgement, to be ' the greatest 
 monarch that Poland has ever possessed '. Whether this praise 
 be deserved or no, Stephen undoubtedly left his mark, despite 
 the brevity of his reign (1575-86), no less upon the domestic 
 institutions than upon the external position of his kingdom. 
 He founded the University of Wilna ; he organized the famous 
 Cossack regiments ; he temporarily repressed the selfish and 
 suicidal turbulence of the Polish aristocracy, and, finally, by 
 vigorous opposition to the Tsar of Muscovy, Ivan the Terrible, 
 he acquired the whole of Livonia for Poland, thus thrusting 
 back the Russians from long-coveted access to the Baltic 
 littoral. His own subjects he treated with a frankness which 
 was indicative of his independence, and might, if taken to heart. 
 
19? THE EUROPEAN COMMONWEALTH 
 
 have saved theirs. * Poles,' he said, * you owe your preserva- 
 tion not to laws, for you know them not', nor to government, 
 for you respect it not ; you owe it to nothing but chance.' 
 
 Chance served them ill during the next two centuries. On 
 Stephen's death Boris Godunoff, then virtually ruler of the 
 Russias, made a vigorous attempt to secure the throne of 
 Poland for his brother-in-law, the reigning Tsar. The terms 
 he offered to the Poles were sufficiently alluring. The two 
 peoples were to be united in eternal and indissoluble friend- 
 ship ; Russian arms would be ever ready to defend Poland and 
 Lithuania against external foes ; Esthonia was to be cleared 
 of Danes and Swedes and annexed, with the exception of 
 Narva, to Poland-Lithuania ; similarly, the Turks were to 
 be expelled from Moldavia, Wallachia, Servia, Bosnia, and 
 Hungary, and these provinces were to be absorbed by Poland ; 
 freedom of intercourse and trade was to be guaranteed mutually 
 to the subjects of both kingdoms, and the internal liberties of 
 Poland to be scrupulously preserved. Perhaps the promises 
 seemed too glowing. Anyhow the Polish oligarchy declined 
 them, and the Crown was offered to and accepted by Sigismund 
 Vasa, the lineal heir to the throne of Sweden, and, through his 
 mother, a Jagiello. It is interesting to speculate how the fate 
 of northern Europe might have been affected had Sweden, 
 Lithuania, -and Poland been united into a single kingdom. 
 But Sigismund's ardent Catholicism forbade the experiment : 
 the Swedish Lutherans would have none of him, while to the 
 Jesuits in Poland he gave a free rein. Apart from the Jesuit 
 persecutions, Sigismund's reign (1567-1632) is memorable 
 chiefly for his attempt to impose upon the Russian throne 
 a palpable Pretender in the person of the ' false Demetrius '. 
 The attempt proved abortive, but in view of the reversed 
 relations of the two Crowns in the eighteenth century it is not 
 devoid of curious interest. At once ambitious and unsuccessful 
 in his foreign policy Sigismund did nothing to remedy anarchy 
 at home, and the situation, grave during his reign, grew rapidly 
 worse under his sons and successors, Ladislas (1632-48^) and 
 John Casimir (1648-65). The latter— the last of the Vasa- 
 Jagiello kings — found the situation insupportable, and in 1668 
 
" THE PROBLEM OF POLAND 193 
 
 he abdicated.^ Before, however, taking leave of his subjects 
 he had given utterance to a remarkable prediction: 
 
 * God grant that I may be a false prophet, but I warn you 
 that, unless you take steps to heal the diseases of the State, 
 the Republic will become the prey of its neighbours. The 
 Muscovites will do their utmost to detach the Russian provinces 
 up to the Vistula. The greedy Hohenzollern will seize Great- 
 Poland. Austria will pounce upon Cracow. Each of these 
 Powers will prefer to partition Poland rather than possess it 
 as a whole under the anarchical conditions of to-day.' ^ 
 
 John Casimir's abdication was followed by a perfect orgy of 
 foreign intrigue at Warsaw. Louis XIV, in particular, made 
 a vigorous effort to secure the Polish crown either for the 
 Prince de Conde or his son, the Due d'Enghien. He was 
 foiled in his immediate purpose by the election of a noble of 
 Ruthenian descent, Michael Korybut (1669-73), but he founded 
 a tradition in French diplomacy which lasted until Poland itself 
 was extinguished.^ Michael's election meant one more nail in 
 the coffin of Poland. The losses incurred by Poland had 
 already, under John Casimir, been serious. The Treaty of 
 Wehlau (1657) permitted the Hohenzollern to renounce Polish 
 suzerainty over East Prussia ; by the Treaty of Oliva (1660) 
 Poland resigned to Sweden Esthonia, Livonia, and the island 
 of Oesel ; by that of Andruszovo (1667) she lost to Russia 
 Smolensk, Kiev, and all the 'left bank of the Dnieper. It was 
 not, however, only Germans, Swedes, and Russians who were 
 advancing at the expense of Poland. In 167^1 the Turkish 
 Vizier, the famous Ahmad Kiuprili, dictated to the Poles the 
 Treaty of Buczacz. The terms were terribly humiliating to 
 their pride. They agreed to cede Podolia to the Sultan, to 
 acknowledge his suzerainty over the Ukraine, and to pay an 
 annual tribute of 220,000 ducats.* 
 
 ^ His farewell speech, in Latin, is still preserved in the Bodleian 
 Library, MS. Rawlinson A 477 fol. 154. 
 
 ^ Cf. Recueil des Instructions donnSes aux Ainbassadeurs et Ministres 
 de France (Pologne, par Louis Fargues. Paris, Alcan, 1885), p. Ixxxi. 
 
 ^ Cf. Recueil des Instructions^ a collection of diplomatic documents 
 indispensable to the student of European politics in the seventeenth and 
 eighteenth centuries. 
 
 * After Sobieski's successful campaign the Treaty of Buczacz was 
 denounced. 
 
 2120 o 
 
194 THE EUROPEAN COMMONWEALTH 
 
 The rot had manifestly set in, though its progress was 
 temporarily hidden beneath the brilliant military achievements 
 of John Sobieski (1674-96). Renowned as the conqueror of 
 the Turks and the deliverer of Vienna, Sobieski did little, 
 however, for his native country. The Tsar, Nicholas I, once 
 remarked that John Sobieski and himself were the two most 
 foolish kings Poland ever had, since they were the only Kings 
 of Poland who had ever gone to the help of Austria. There 
 was more than a grain of truth in the cynical remark. The 
 interests of Poland might have been better served by leaving 
 Vienna to its fate, and by a steady alliance with France. The 
 Treaty of Carlowitz (1699) did indeed restore to Poland the 
 Ukraine, Podolia, and Kamieniec, but Sobieski's achievements 
 in the field had done nothing to arrest the decrepitude of his 
 kingdom. After his death (1696) all the disintegrating forces 
 acquired fresh momentum, but before we enter upon the last 
 period of Poland's existence as an independent State, it may 
 be well to see precisely what those forces were and how they 
 severally contributed to the final catastrophe. 
 
 11. 
 
 Few events in the history of the modern world have left 
 upon the mind and conscience of mankind an impression so 
 ineffaceable as the erasure of Poland from the map of Europe. 
 The rectification of frontiers, the shifting lines of political 
 geography, do not as a rule touch human interest very closely. 
 But the complete annihilation of an ancient State is a spectacle 
 sufficiently rare and imposing to stir the most sluggish imagi- 
 nation. It is therefore natural that men should seek a detailed 
 explanation of a failure so conspicuous and complete. Conse- 
 quently the causes of Poland's decrepitude have been analysed 
 with a minute assiduity which threatens to render them the 
 commonplace of the school-boy essayist. It is, however, 
 essential to a just apprehension of the present problem that they 
 should be constantly before our niinds, and it is necessary, 
 therefore, very briefly to recall them. The causes, as usual, 
 were partly external and objective, but much more internal 
 
Clarendon Trefi, Oxford. 
 
 o % 
 
196 THE EUROPEAN COMMONWEALTH 
 
 and subjective. The destruction of Poland has been described, 
 ad nauseam^ as the most cynical crime in modern history. 
 The cynicism of the partitioners can scarcely be exaggerated. 
 But the event seems to present the characteristics less of a 
 crime than of a tragedy. Professor Bradley, following Hegel, 
 has taught that the essence of tragedy lies in the conjunction 
 of some striking external misfortune and some canker of 
 character within. Before a tragedy can be achieved — as dis- 
 tinct from the commission of a vulgar crime — there must be 
 a traitor within the citadel. 
 
 Pre-eminently was this the case with the tragedy of Poland. 
 The fortress was surrendered by treachery. Nevertheless, the 
 multiplication of external enemies was sufficiently ominous : 
 the consolidation of the Russias ; the brilliant military exploits 
 of the Vasa Kings of Sweden ; the persistent progress of the 
 Hohenzollern in North Germany ; the increasing cohesion of 
 Habsburg power in the South — all these things, mainly the 
 fruit of the seventeenth century, unquestionably threatened 
 the commanding position to which Poland had attained. But 
 they offered an insufficient excuse for the singular fatuity 
 which was characteristic, during that period, of Polish policy. 
 During the first half of the seventeenth century, thanks to ' the 
 collapse of Muscovite tsardom in the east and the submersion 
 of the German Empire in the west by the Thirty Years' War, 
 Poland had ', as has been well pointed out, * an unprecedented 
 opportunity of consolidating once for all her hard-won position 
 as the dominating Power of Central Europe \ It would then 
 have been ' no difficult task for the Republic to have wrested 
 the best part of the Baltic littoral from the Scandinavian 
 Powers and driven the distracted Muscovites beyond the 
 Volga. Permanent greatness and secular security were within 
 her reach at the commencement of the Vasa period.' ^ 
 
 Why was the opportunity neglected ? Why, instead of 
 taking a bold offensive, did Poland suffer repeated blows at the 
 hands of her neighbours — of Sweden, Russia, Brandenburg, 
 and Austria — until, pitied by some but -despised by all, her 
 
 ^ A Short History of Austria- Hungary and Poland ^ by H. W. Steed, 
 W. A. Phillips, and D. Hannay. 
 
THE PROBLEM OF POLAND 197 
 
 name was finally erased from the map of Europe ? ' The 
 Republic ', said Waclaw Rzcwuski in bitter scorn, ^ died long 
 ago, only it has forgotten to tumble down/ The disease 
 from which Poland suffered was indeed of long standing. 
 What was its specific nature ? Montesquieu's aphorism, as 
 brilliant as it is penetrating and profound, supplies an un- 
 equivocal answer. ' L'independance de chaque particulier est 
 I'objet des lois de la Pologne, et ce qui en resulte, I'oppression 
 de tous.* While Poland was hugging the phantom of aristo- 
 cratic * liberty ', Russia, Brandenburg, and even Sweden were 
 submitting, more or less cheerfully, to the discipline of cen- 
 - tralizing autocracies. In Poland, on the contrary, the monarchy 
 was steadily losing ground. The monarchy had always been, 
 in constitutional theory, elective, and after 1572 practice con- 
 formed to theory. At each vacancy the Crown was in fact put 
 up to auction by the greedy and selfish aristocratic electors. 
 A Frenchman, a Hungarian, three Swedes, one or two Gallophil 
 Poles, two Saxon Kings nominated by Austria, and finally, the 
 discarded lover of the Empress Catherine of Russia — such were 
 the men upon whom during the last two centuries of ' indepen- 
 dence ' the. oligarchy conferred the dubious honour of the Polish 
 crown. It is little wonder that under these circumstances 
 Warsaw became a hot-bed of foreign intrigue. France, in 
 particular, took incessant pains to maintain French influence 
 in Poland. In regard to the Crown itself neither Louis XIV 
 nor Louis XV was particularly successful, but the Recueil des 
 Instructions donnees aux Ambassadeurs et Ministres de France 
 proves how minute and continuous was the attention which 
 France devoted to Polish afiairs, and how highly her rulers 
 valued Poland as an asset in the diplomatic game. A super- 
 ficial acquaintance with French politics, or even with the 
 work of French publicists, will suffice to prove that the 
 tradition of eighteenth-century diplomacy is still potent in 
 the twentieth. 
 
 The Polish aristocracy not only elected their Kings : they 
 imposed upon them, at each election, a humiliating capitula- 
 tion known as the Pacta Conventa, which restricted the action 
 of the Crown within the narrowest limits. The ridiculous 
 
198 THE EUROPEAN COMMONWEALTH 
 
 privilege of veto (liberum veto) ^ possessed by each individual 
 member of the aristocratic Diet rendered hopeless all attempts 
 at reform. The clergy, like many of the nobles, were enor- 
 mously wealthy and possessed high privileges. For a hundred 
 years or more after the Reformation Poland set the example 
 of genuine religious toleration. The Diets of 1563, 1568, and 
 1569 conceded equal civil rights to the members of all religious 
 denominations. Even Socinians and Anabaptists, though 
 excluded from toleration even by the most liberal States, found 
 in Poland not merely an asylum but a home. In the seven- 
 teenth century, however, the Jesuits became all powerful there 
 as elsewhere, and Poland surrendered this eminent distinction. 
 Thenceforward all non-Catholics or * dissidents ' were deprived 
 not only of all special privileges, but of the ordinary rights of 
 citizenship. True, those rights were restored in the latter part 
 of the eighteenth century, but it was at the bidding of inter- 
 fering foreigners and from motives that were wholly sinister. 
 The social and economic condition of the country was 
 not less hopeless than the political. The ' nation ' consisted 
 of 150,000 noble families. The mass of the people (though 
 not entirely devoid of rights, were serfs, tied to the soil. A 
 native middle-class did not exist : commerce was almost 
 entirely in the hands of Germans and Jews, and the few towns, 
 therefore, afforded no counterpoise to the power of the nobles 
 and no avenue of ambition to the peasants. 
 
 Rotten within, Poland could offer no resistance to assaults 
 from without. That her territory had remained so long intact 
 was due chiefly to the fact that it had suited the interest and 
 convenience of her neighbours to respect her nominal inde- 
 pendence. Russia, in particular, was well content with the 
 existing situation. From the moment (1733) when she put 
 
 * Neither the Pacta Conventa nor the Liberum Veto were, as is often 
 erroneously supposed, institutions peculiar to Poland. Both devices jfind 
 a place in one form or another in many medieval constitutions (cf. Une 
 Aniithese du Principe inajoritaire en Droit polonais by Dr. Konopczynski, 
 pp. 336-47, ap. Essays in Legal History (ed. Vinogradoff, Oxford 
 University Press, 1913). It was the unhappy fate of Poland not to have 
 been able, like more fortunate countries, to emancipate herself from 
 these oligarchical shackles. As a fact, the Liberum Veto was first exercised 
 in Poland in 1652. 
 
THE PROBLEM OF POLAND 199 
 
 Augustus III of Saxony upon the Polish throne Russia 
 treated Poland ^s a vassal State. Government in Poland 
 there was none. The Saxon King rarely visited the ' Repub- 
 lic ' ; there was no central executive, no regular administrative 
 system ; the legislature met periodically at Grodno and 
 Warsaw, but was rendered impotent by the liberum veto ; 
 each nobleman did what was right in his own eyes, and dealt 
 as he would with the chattel -serfs. No other class, except 
 that of the nobles, counted. 
 
 Such was the condition of affairs when, in 1763, Augustus III 
 died. The moment was an intensely critical one for Poland, 
 and indeed for Central Europe. The Seven Years' War had 
 just ended. Despite the strength of the coalition opposed to 
 him, Frederick the Great had managed to keep his hold on 
 Silesia and to come through the war territorially unscathed. 
 He would hardly have done it but for the opportune death of 
 the most determined of his opponents, the Tsarina Elizabeth 
 of Russia. Elizabeth entertained a conviction which has 
 recently obtained an increasing measure of assent, that Prussia 
 could be rendered harmless to her neighbours only by restrict- 
 ing the Hohenzollern to their original Brandenburg Electorate. 
 East Prussia was to reward the sacrifices of Russia. Eliza- 
 beth's death (Jan. 1^ 1762) saved Prussia. Her successor, 
 Peter III, was a madman, a fanatical admirer of the Prussian 
 King, and was permitted to reign only a few months. Still, 
 his brief reign gave a new and fatal direction to Russian 
 policy. 
 
 His widow Catherine II is generally accounted one of the 
 shrewdest and most successful rulers Russia ever had. In the 
 light of later events her Polish policy stands revealed as not 
 merely a dastardly crime but a gigantic blunder. For the 
 first Partition she was not primarily responsible. But if 
 this fact is held to diminish the criminalty of Catherine, 
 it enhances her stupidity. Had she stood firm against the 
 criminal suggestion of Frederick the Great the game was in 
 her hands. She threw away the trump cards by pursuing 
 simultaneously two incompatible policies. The dream "of a 
 Slav Empire at Constantinople created for Russia the Polish 
 
200 THE EUROPEAN COMMONWEALTH 
 
 problem, and compelled Petersburg for a century and a half to 
 pay to Berlin more deference than was consistent with self- 
 interest or even with self-respect. France — the natural ally 
 of Russia — had long been interested both in Turkey and in 
 Poland, When Poland was threatened, France, powerless at 
 the moment to afford direct assistance, pulled strings at Con- 
 stantinople, and Catherine, attacked by the Turks, yielded to 
 the solicitations of Prussia. 
 
 From the policy of Catherine we may turn for a moment to 
 that of Prussia. Frederick's motives were as transparent as 
 his success was unequivocal. He was, in general, greatly 
 impressed ^by the rapid development of the power of Russia, 
 and, in particular, he dreaded a renewal of the alliance between 
 Russia, Austria, and France — an alliance which had so nearly 
 proved fatal to Prussia in the Seven Years' War. How was 
 he to retain the friendship of Russia and at the same time 
 remove from Austria the temptation of flinging herself into 
 the arms of either Russia or France? The problem, says 
 M. Albert Sorel, would have been insoluble ' si la Pologne, 
 pour son malheur, ne s'etait trouvee la '. 
 
 That Frederick the Great was the first to conceive the idea 
 of a partition of Poland is not the case. Charles XI of Sweden 
 had actually proposed a scheme in 1667 ; it had been mooted 
 between Peter the Great and Frederick I of Prussia in 1710 ; 
 Augustus ri had suggested it to Frederick William I in 1733. 
 Still, it was Frederick the Great who translated dreams into 
 the terms of political actuality. The one chance for Poland 
 was a radical reform of ' the most miserable constitution that 
 ever enfeebled and demoralized a nation '.^ A group of Polish 
 patriots led by the Czartoryskis were anxious to initiate 
 reforms — in particular to make the Crown hereditary and to 
 abolish the liberum veto, Frederick and Catherine accordingly 
 intervened to perpetuate the prevailing anarchy. In April 
 1 764 a memorable Treaty was concluded between them : they 
 agreed to co-operate in procuring the election to the Polish 
 crown of Stanislas Poniatowski, a Polish nobleman of irreso- 
 lute character and one of Catherine's discarded lovers; to 
 ^ Lecky, History of England ^ v. 539. 
 
THE PROBLEM OF POLAND 201 
 
 secure toleration and equal civil rights for the Polish dissidents 
 — a fruitful source of internal weakness ; and to veto the 
 constitutional reforms promoted by the Czartoryskis. 
 
 Meanwhile, each of the three powerful neighbours had sever- 
 ally assured Poland of their benevolent intentions. In January 
 1764 Frederick declared that he would ' constantly labour to 
 defend the States of the Republic in their integrity'. Two 
 months later Maria Theresia assured the Poles of her ' resolu- 
 tion to maintain the Republic in all its rights, prerogatives, and 
 possessions', while the Empress Catherine, in May 1764, gave 
 Poland ' a solemn guarantee of all its possessions '. This was 
 at the precise moment when the Russian and Prussian sove- 
 reigns were doing their utmost to prevent the patriotic Poles 
 from putting their own house in order. In accordance with 
 the arrangement concluded between them Stanislas Poniatow- 
 ski was, in August 1764, elected to the throne of Poland, and 
 in 1768 a Diet, elected under the influence of a Russian army 
 of occupation, repealed all existing laws against the dissidents, 
 declared the liberiim veto and other intolerable abuses to be in- 
 tegral, essentia], and irrevocable parts of the Polish Constitution, 
 and placed that Constitution under the guarantee of Russia. 
 
 At this critical juncture a little group of patriots made yet 
 another effort to escape from the toils in which their devoted 
 country was being enmeshed. Taking advantage of a recog- 
 nized constitutional device they met in Podolia, and, en- 
 couraged by Austria and France, formed the Confederation of 
 Bar. The objects of the confederates were to put an end to 
 Russian domination and to restore the supremacy of Roman 
 Catholicism. This was the point at which Vergennes, in the 
 desperate hope of saving Poland, stirred up the Turks to 
 declare war upon Russia. * La France ', as Sorel puts it, 
 ' essaya de soutenir les confeddr^s catholiques avec les armes 
 des Musulmans.' The Turkish attack brought disaster upon 
 themselves ^ and did not save Poland. On the contrary, as 
 we have seen, it precipitated partition. Catherine II would 
 
 * The Treaty of Kutchuk-Kainardji concluded between Catherine II 
 and the Turks in 1774 was the real beginning of the transference of 
 ascendancy in the Black Sea and the Balkans from Turkey to Russia. 
 
2o% THE EUROPEAN COMMONWEALTH 
 
 very much have preferred the maintenance of the status quo in 
 Poland. Her preoccupation in south-eastern Europe inclined 
 her to listen to the voice of the Prussian tempter. 
 
 Austria, too, was on the move. The Empress Maria 
 Theresia was strongly opposed, on grounds alike of policy 
 and morality, to the idea of partition. Nor can it be doubted 
 that she was right. Poland, even in its decrepitude, was an 
 invaluable buffer interposed between the Habsburg and the 
 Russian dominions. It is true that in 1769 Austria, alarmed 
 by the Russo-Turkish war on her frontiers, deemed it prudent 
 to reoccupy the County of Zips which had been mortgaged 
 by Hungary to Poland in 141 i^, but nevertheless Maria 
 Theresia was perfectly sincere when, in 1771, she- protested 
 unalterable friendship for Poland and repudiated the idea of 
 partition. 
 
 Early in 1 669 Frederick had definitely proposed a partition 
 of Russia, and in 177 1 the latter disclosed the project to 
 King Stanislas. The wretched monarch made a desperate 
 but fruitless appeal to France. France, however, could do 
 nothing ; Maria Theresia was overborne by her minister 
 Kaunitz and by her son Joseph II, always greedy of territory 
 and then hypnotized by Frederick ; and Catherine, despite the 
 advice of ^ome of her wisest counsellors, succumbed to the 
 same malign influence. 
 
 Thus, in 1772, the first Partition of Poland was consummated. 
 Austria obtained parts of Galicia and Podolia, the Palatinates 
 of Lemberg and Belz, and half those of Cracow and Sando- 
 mierz, with a population of 2,700,000 people and a large 
 revenue. Prussia acquired West Prussia and the Netze district, 
 but was denied the great prize of Danzig and Thorn ; 
 Russia's share consisted of Polish Livonia, with the Palatinates 
 of Witebsk and Mstislavl, and parts of those of Polozk and 
 Minsk. Poland lost in all about one-third of her territory, and 
 more than one-third of her subjects. The cessions were 
 formally recognized by a Diet at Grodno in 1773, ^^^ ^^ '^775 
 Poland accepted a revised constitution. The new constitution 
 had some merits, but it retained the two worst features of its 
 predecessor : the liberum veto and the elective monarchy. 
 
THE PROBLEM OF POLAND ^203 
 
 Two questions seem, at this point, to demand an answer : 
 first, upon whom does the responsibiHty for this nefarious 
 transaction primarily rest; and second, how was it regarded 
 by contemporaries? The first question may be more con- 
 veniently considered in reviewing the completed transaction. 
 As to the second question, it is sometimes affirmed ^ that the 
 transaction was little regarded by contemporaries, and that the 
 moral indignation which it has evoked was the product of a 
 later and more sentimental age. The Annual Register for 1772 
 exists to refute this assertion. The passages here cited are 
 instinct with the political philosophy of Burke and were 
 almost certainly indited by him : 
 
 'The breach that has now been made in those compacts 
 that unite States for their mutual benefit establishes a most 
 dangerous precedent ; it deprives, in a great measure, every 
 separate Power in Europe of that security which was founded 
 in treaties, alliances, common interest, and public faith. It 
 seems to throw nations collectively into that state of nature 
 in which it has been supposed that mankind separately at one 
 time subsisted, when the security of the individual depended 
 singly upon his own strength, and no resource was left when it 
 failed. . . . The present violent dismemberment and partition 
 of Poland without the pretence of war or even the colour of 
 right is to be considered as the first very great breach in the 
 modern political system of Europe. . , .' 
 
 But though Burke was quick to apprehend the significance 
 of events in Eastern Europe, neither of the two great Western 
 Powers was in a position, in 1772, to make effectual protest. 
 Still more was this the case when, after the outbreak of the 
 Revolutionary Wars, the work begun in 1772 was continued 
 and completed. 
 
 In the interval the Poles made a real effort to put their 
 house, or what remained of it, in order. Nor was the general 
 European situation unfavourable to the attempt. The alli- 
 ance between Catherine and PVederick came to an end in 
 1780; in 1786 Frederick himself passed away; and in 1788 
 Russia found herself involved in two wars : with Turkey on 
 the one hand, with Sweden on the other. The same year 
 witnessed the conclusion, mainly through the diplomacy of 
 1 e. g. by Mr. R. Nisbet Bain, Slavonic Europe^ p. 396. 
 
204 THE EUROPEAN COMMONWEALTH 
 
 Pitt, of a triple alliance between England, Prussia, and the 
 United Provinces, directed against the policy of the two 
 Eastern Empires. Poland might have secured the protection 
 of the Triple Alliance, but only on a condition certainly painful 
 to her pride and perhaps injurious to her interests. Prussia, 
 though endowed with West Prussia, had not yet acquired 
 Danzig or Thorn. The price which Poland was now asked 
 to pay for HohenzoUern friendship, carrying with it that of 
 Great Britain, was the cession of these two great Vistula 
 fortresses. The Vistula, as has been said, is Poland, and 
 Poland naturally demurred to the price. Could she have 
 brought herself to pay it, Pitt would have afforded her 
 protection against Russia, while Frederick William II of 
 Prussia promised to secure to her the restoration of Galicia, 
 Austria being indemnified for its loss at the expense of 
 Turkey. Poland, however, preferred Danzig and Thorn to 
 Galicia, and the diplomatic opportunity was allowed to slip, 
 never to return. In 1790 England and Holland refused 
 further support to the somewhat unscrupulous policy of 
 Prussia, and the latter (in the Treaty of Reichenbach) came 
 to terms with the Emperor Joseph II. 
 
 Poland, deserted by Prussia, sought salvation in a monarchical 
 revolution. Ever since 1788 a Diet had been in continuous 
 session at Warsaw, engaged on the task of constitutional 
 revision. Nothing had really been effected when in 1791 
 King Stanislas, yielding to the pressure of the ' Party of 
 Patriots', suddenly propounded a comprehensive scheme of 
 reform. By a stroke of the pen Poland was to be transformed. 
 The Crown was to be made hereditary, and to be advised by 
 a responsible ministry ; the Legislature was to be bicameral, 
 and the lower House was to include representatives of the 
 cities ; the liberum veto and right of confederation were to go ; 
 the caste system was to disappear; citizens might become 
 nobles and nobles might engage in trade; the condition of 
 the serfs was to be ameliorated, and all citizens were to be 
 equal before the law ; Roman Catholicism was to remain the 
 established religion of the State, but there was to be complete 
 toleration for other creeds ; the larger towns were to have 
 
THE PROBLEM OF POLAND 205 
 
 municipal self-government, and social and economic reforms 
 were to be taken seriously in hand. 
 
 The Diet promptly accepted the proposals of the King, and 
 all except a handful of Deputies took a solemn oath of 
 fidelity to the new Constitution. An English publicist hailed 
 this event as ' a glorious revolution ', and proceeded to 
 predict : 
 
 * History will one day do justice to that illustrious body 
 [the Diet of 1790], and hold out to posterity, as the perfect 
 model of a most arduous reformation, that revolution which 
 fell to the ground from no want of wisdom on their part, but 
 from the irresistible power and detestable wickedness of their 
 enemies.' ^ 
 
 How did those enemies regard the coup d'dtat of King 
 Stanislas ? Austria, now under the wise rule of the Emperor 
 Leopold, was cordially and unaffectedly pleased ; Frederick 
 William of Prussia, uncertain as to his relations with Russia, 
 . thought it prudent to congratulate Poland, and actually con- 
 cluded a Treaty with Austria involving the acceptance of the 
 new Polish Constitution (July 1791). Catherine, meanwhile, 
 was cudgelling her * brains to urge the Courts of Vienna and 
 Berlin to busy themselves with the affairs of France ' so that 
 she might have her ' own elbows free '. The German Courts 
 played her game for her. Provoked by their inane Declara- 
 tion of Pillnitz (September 1791) France, in April 1 792, declared 
 war, and Catherine's * elbows were free '. 
 
 Internal faction in Poland contributed to the same end. In 
 May 1792 a discontented minority formed the Confederation 
 of Targowica, denounced the new Constitution as the establish- 
 ment of despotism, and implored the assistance of Russia for 
 the protection of their ' liberties '. In a ios^ weeks Poland was 
 again in the grip of a Russian army, and in January 1793 the 
 Second Partition was consummated. Prussia, admitted to 
 a share of the spoils, obtained the provinces of Great Poland, 
 Posen, Gnesen, and Kalisch, together with the long-coveted 
 districts of Thorn and Danzig — comprising a population of 
 one million and a half. Russia's share in Eastern Poland was, 
 
 * Edinburgh Review, xxxvii, pp. 501-2. 
 
2o6 THE EUROPEAN COMMONWEALTH 
 
 in area, four times as large as that of Prussia, with about twice 
 as many inhabitants. Austria, deeply engaged in the Western 
 war, got nothing. The Polish patriots were impotent to ward 
 off this second blow — a blow even more cynically cruel and 
 much more disastrous than the first. The Diet interposed all 
 the delays of which it was capable, chiefly in the hope of 
 sowing dissension between the partitioners ; but all to no 
 purpose, and in September 1793, under pressure from Russia, 
 the Diet at Grodno gave a silent assent to the revocation 
 of the Constitution of 1791 and to the terms of the Second 
 Partition. 
 
 The final act in the tragedy was not long delayed. In 1794 
 the Poles, driven to desperation by the insolent tyranny exer- 
 cised by the Russian Minister at Warsaw, rose in revolt, pro- 
 claimed the famous Kosciuszko commander-in-chief, and 
 expelled the Russian garrisons from Cracow, Warsaw, and 
 Wilna successively. But their triumph was short-lived. 
 Prussia, leaving the French to work their will upon the Rhine., 
 concentrated her attention upon Poland ; Russia sent a strong 
 force under Suvaroff ; Kosciuszko and his forces were routed, 
 and in November the Russians entered Warsaw in triumph. 
 Catherine thereupon advanced her frontier to the Bug and 
 the Niemen, leaving Austria and Prussia to quarrel about the 
 rest, though her own disposition was in favour of Austria. 
 Ultimately, Prussia got the provinces subsequently known as 
 South Prussia and New East Prussia, including Warsaw ; 
 Austria got Cracow and Western Galicia. Thus the curtain 
 falls upon the last act of the tragedy of Poland. It is com- 
 paratively easy to annihilate a State ; it is far more difficult 
 to extinguish a nation. ' On a supprime,' as M. Vimard 
 graphically puts it, ' a la fin du XVIII® siecle, un Etat de 13 
 a 14 millions d'habitants, pour avoir cent vingt ans plus tard 
 une nation de 24 millions d'hommes, consciente, unie, un peu 
 en retard sur plusieurs de ses volsines, mais ^conomiquement 
 et intellectuellement en progr^s, en croissance numerique 
 rapide, anim^e d'un patriotisme invincible, d'autant plus 
 profond qu'il se manifeste moins et qu'il est plus combattu, 
 forte de toutes les ddfaites de ceux qui ont voulu la r^duire.' 
 
THE PROBLEM OF POLAND 207 
 
 Of the transactions sketched above widely divergent views 
 have been expressed. The conduct of the partitioning Powers 
 is, with varying degrees of vehemence, generally condemned. 
 But not invariably. If the political philosophy of Treitschke 
 is to be accepted as sound, Poland had forfeited all right to 
 continued existence as an independent Nation-State. History, 
 as he points out, * shows the continuous growth of great States 
 out of decadent small States. . . . The State is power. . . . 
 Of all political weaknesses that of feebleness is the most 
 abominable and despicable ; it is the sin against the Holy 
 Spirit of Politics.' In destroying Poland, then, Frederick the 
 Great and his partners and successors showed an intelh'gent 
 anticipation of the philosophy of Treitschke and afforded 
 material assistance to the operations of the Holy Spirit. 
 Poland, it must be admitted, was feeble and decadent. There 
 is some plausibility also in the argument that Poland was 
 *a nuisance as well as a temptation to neighbouring monarchs '.^ 
 Nor can we wholly ignore the judgement passed by the 
 Prussian historian, von Sybel : ' When one weighs these rela- 
 tive conditions, one can hardly speak of the Polish nation 
 having been overthrown by the Partitions. What fell in 1793 
 was the inhuman domination of a few noblemen over the 
 Polish people. These only changed their masters, and watched 
 the change which, even upon the Russian side, could not bring 
 them more harm than good with indolent indifference/ ^ Xo 
 von Sybel's judgement the late Marquess of Salisbury lent 
 the weight of his great authority. In an essay contributed to 
 the QiLarterly Review in 1863 ^ he argued that long before the 
 partitions Poland had ceased to be a nation ; that the * nation ' 
 consisted of 150,000 intolerant, incompetent, and narrow- 
 minded slave-owners ; that for the mass of the peasantry the 
 partitions resulted only in a change of masters, not wholly for 
 the worse ; that Polish anarchy was incurable and contagious ; 
 that her neighbours had no alternative except perpetual 
 tutelage or partition ; and that, as regards Russia, the parti- 
 
 * A. Phillips, Poland, p. 58. 
 
 ' History of French Revolution, Eng. trans., ii, 407. 
 ^ Republished in 1905 in Essays (Foreign Politics). London : John 
 Murray. 
 
2o8 THE EUROPEAN COMMONWEALTH 
 
 tion was no more than a re-conquest of lands which had. 
 formerly belonged to her, and that the re-conquest was com- 
 pletely justified by the persecutions inflicted by the dominant 
 Roman Catholics or the ' Dissidents \ * So far \ he concluded, 
 * as any conquests can be defended, the defence of Catherine 
 appears to us to be complete. The plea of a common religion, 
 which was held to justify conquests in old time; the plea of 
 a common nationality, which in our own days has been deemed 
 an ample apology for the most lavish bloodshed and the most 
 flagrant contempt of treaty; the plea of ancient possession, 
 which has been allowed as at least a good excuse for war in 
 every age ; the exigencies of her frontier and the necessity of 
 a counterpoise to the growth of powerful neighbours, which is 
 a principle not wholly unknown to the European diplomacy 
 of the present generation ; all these pleas combine to justify 
 the annexation of the provinces which Catherine reconquered 
 from her hereditary foe.' ^ That there is some force in these 
 arguments will hardly be denied ; as regards the Russian 
 acquisitions of 1772 they are unanswerable ; but in reference 
 to the partitions as a whole it is difficult to resist the conclu- 
 sion that Lord Salisbury seriously underrated the real strength 
 and persistence — apart from the * slave-owners ' — of Polish 
 nationality, and that he was uViduly lenient in his judgement 
 of Catherine H. As for Maria Theresia, no one is inclined to 
 press the case against her too far. She sincerely deplored the 
 transaction into which sheVas driven by the criminal cupidity 
 of her neighbours. * Let us ', she declared, ' be looked upon 
 rather as weak than as dishonest.* 'With what right', she 
 asked, * can we rob an innocent Power the defence and support 
 of which has hitherto been our constant boast? I do not 
 understand the polity which allows a third Power, for the 
 mere sake of present convenience and prospective advantage, 
 to imitate the unrighteous action of two sovereigns who have 
 employed their overwhelming might to destroy an innocent 
 neighbour.' But despite her pious protestations she yielded at 
 last. As a cynic has pithily put it : * Elle pleurait, mais elle 
 prenait.' She had good reason for her tears. Her territorial 
 » op. cit, p. 39. 
 
THE PROBLEM OF POLAND 209 
 
 portion was a large and rich one ; but her permanent political 
 interests were not really served by partition. On the contrary, 
 she had reason to deplore the destruction of a State which 
 might still have done something to maintain the balance in 
 Eastern Europe, and in particular to interpose a buffer between 
 the conglomerate empire of the Habsburgs and the rising 
 power of the HohenzoUern. Austria has been at once 
 weakened externally by the destruction of an independent 
 Poland, and distracted internally by the incorporation of a 
 large Slavonic population. But in view of the policy of her 
 neighbours Maria Theresia was helpless : * I find there is 
 nothing else to be done. I cannot look on quietly at the in- 
 crease of these two Powers, but still less do I wish to join them.' 
 Maria Theresia was reluctant; Catherine was gladly ac- 
 quiescent ; the real criminal, it is now generally agreed, was 
 Frederick of Prussia. * Frederick II was the author of that 
 project,' writes Krasinski.^ ' C'est le roi de Prusse ', said Albert 
 Sorel, ^ qui engagea I'operation et la conduisit a son terme.' ^ 
 From these judgements Lord Salisbury would not have dis- 
 sented. ' To Frederick the Great ', he wrote, * belongs the 
 credit of having initiated the scheme which was actually carried 
 into execution. . . . Frederick had never been troubled by 
 scruples upon the subject of territorial acquisition, and he was 
 not likely to commence them in the case of Poland. Spolia- 
 tion was the hereditary tradition of his race.' Thus perished 
 the Polish State ; the Polish nation still lives ; and, almost 
 negligible in the period of relative prosperity, the force of 
 Polish nationality has proved its persistence during a long 
 century of adversity. 
 
 Ill 
 
 To this last period brief reference must now be made. After 
 the final dismemberment of Poland a large number of Poles 
 took refuge in France, and a Polish legion was formed to fight 
 under the banner of the Republic. It was naturally hoped 
 that the gratitude of France would take a practical shape. 
 
 ^ The Polish Question and Panslavistn, by Count Valerian Krasinski 
 (London, 1855), p. 69. 
 2 Op. cit., i. 69. 
 
 2120 P 
 
2IO THE EUROPEAN COMMONWEALTH 
 
 Napoleon's advance upon Prussia (1806) roused to a high 
 pitch the expectations of the Poles ; when the Emperor 
 actually set foot on Polish soil he was enthusiastically 
 acclaimed as the liberator of the country, and thousands of 
 volunteers flocked to his standard. His own declarations, 
 however, were distinctly evasive and conditional. ' I wish to 
 see if you desei-ve to be a nation.' Apparently he was only 
 partially convinced, for after the Treaty of Tilsit he offered 
 Polish Prussia to the Tsar Alexander with the title of King. 
 The Tsar was shrewd enough to decline Napoleon's offer, and 
 consequently the whole of the territory acquired by Prussia in 
 the second and third Partitions was erected into the Grand- 
 Duchy of Warsaw and conferred upon Napoleon's faithful 
 henchman, the King of Saxony. Two years later Western 
 Galicia, snatched from Austria, was thrown into the Grand- 
 Duchy. The Grand-Duchy of Warsaw forms but an episode 
 in the history of Poland, but it is not a wholly insignificant 
 one. Many of the principles of the French Revolution were 
 temporarily transmitted into the Napoleonic Duchy : serfdom 
 was abolished ; judicial procedure was reformed ; the Code 
 Napoleon became the basis of Polish law ; elementary schools 
 were established ; the equality of all citizens before the law 
 was proclaimed ; and some real measure of authority was 
 confided to the Diet of Warsaw, to which representations of 
 the Commons were admitted. Above all, the Polish army 
 was reorganized and re-equipped. To Napoleon's 'grand 
 army ', collected for the invasion of Russia, Poland con- 
 tributed 80,000 men, and earnestly petitioned the Emperor 
 for a restoration of the Kingdom. It is now generally admitted 
 that in refusing the petition Napoleon committed a serious 
 blunder. If instead of advancing upon Moscow he had halted 
 at Smolensko, and had reconstituted the ancient Kingdom of 
 the Poles, he might have saved the Grand Army and paralysed 
 the opposition of Russia. There might then have been no war 
 of German liberation, no Leipzig, perhaps no Waterloo. But 
 Napoleon had so far forgotten the catch-words of his youth 
 that he could no longer pay even lip-homage to the principle 
 of nationality. 
 
THE PROBLEM OF POLAND 211 
 
 To this principle Alexander inclined a more sympathetic 
 ear, particularly when his ear was attuned by his confidant, 
 Prince Adam Czartoryski. The idea of Polish nationality 
 was by no means an unfamiliar one to the Tsar. He had 
 indeed announced a definite resolution on the subject as far 
 back as 1812. It ran as follows : 
 
 ' I hereby declare before heaven and earth, that I will 
 rebuild and restore the kingdom of Poland ; and calling forth 
 the aid of Almighty God, I put on my head the Polish Crown, 
 a separate crown, but through my person connected with the 
 Russian Empire, and I accept it for myself and for my suc- 
 cessors, and, finally, I endorse the Constitution of May 3, 
 1 79 1, in principle, as a Polish fundamental law in respect of 
 organization, form of government, and administration of laws, 
 and on that basis I will rule, govern, and co-operate with you 
 to secure and establish your happiness.' ^ 
 
 Alexander, therefore, came to the Congress of Vienna fully 
 resolved upon a restoration of the kingdom of Poland. The 
 difficulties in his path were by no means negligible. Prussia 
 had no mind to surrender the provinces assigned to her in 
 the second and third Partitions. Yet the Grand-Duchy of 
 Warsaw now belonged to Russia by right of conquest. Ulti- 
 mately Prussia was permitted to retain the provinces of Posen 
 and Gnesen together with Thorn and Danzig, not to speak 
 of large compensations in central and western Germany. 
 Austria retained Galicia ; Cracow was constituted, and until 
 1846 remained, an independent republic under the guarantee 
 of the Powers ; the rest of the Grand-Duchy of Warsaw 
 passed to the Tsar as King of Poland. 
 
 These arrangements were far from satisfactory to the 
 Western Powers. Lord Castlereagh in particular strove ear- 
 nestly but in vain to secure a restoration of Polish inde- 
 pendence : ^ failing that, he pleaded for the largest possible 
 measure of autonomy. 
 
 ' Since', he wrote, ' the restoration of an independent kingdom 
 of Poland appears to be impossible, it is greatly to be desired 
 that tranquillity should be re-established in all the parts of 
 
 * First published in the Wieczernie Wremia for September 3, 19 16. 
 '^ ' Lord Castlereagh was virtually left alone to maintain the contest for 
 Poland, and with it for European independence.'— Alison, Life^ ii. 513. 
 
 P 1 
 
31^ THE EUROPEAN COMMONWEALTH 
 
 ancient Poland on firm, liberal principles favourable to the 
 general welfare by means of a conciliatory administration 
 adapted to the spirit of the nation ; and as experience has 
 proved the complete uselessness of all the attempts that have 
 been made to make the Poles forget their nationality and 
 even their language by introducing foreign institutions re- 
 pugnant to their manners and ideas, it is much to be desired 
 that the three Powers should before leaving Vienna mutually 
 pledge themselves to treat the parts of Poland under their 
 dominion ... as Poles! 
 
 Lord Castlereagh so far prevailed that the first article of 
 the Final Act of the Congress ran as follows : 
 
 ' The Duchy of Warsaw . . . shall be irrevocably attached 
 to [the Russian Empire] . . : in perpetuity. His Imperial 
 Majesty [of Russia] reserves to himself to give to this State, 
 enjoying a distinct administration, the interior improvement 
 which he shall judge proper. . . . 
 
 ' The Poles who are respective subjects of Russia, Austria, 
 and Prussia shall obtain a Representation and National In- 
 stitution regulated according to the degree of political con- 
 sideration that each of the Governments to which they belong 
 shall judge expedient and proper to grant them.' 
 
 To the * Congress Kingdom ', as distinct from Lithuania 
 and Russian Poland, large concessions, modelled upon the 
 French Charter of 1814, were accordingly granted by the 
 Tsar : a bicameral legislature ; a Senate consisting of Nobles 
 and Bishops selected by the Crown, and an elected Chamber 
 of Deputies ; biennial Parliaments ; a * responsible * ministry ; 
 a separate budget ; liberty of person and of the press ; a 
 national army under the national flag ; municipal self-govern- 
 ment for the towns, and the use of the Polish language for 
 official purposes. On paper the guarantees for the recognition 
 of a separate Polish nationality were ample, and that the 
 Tsar genuinely meant to observe them is unquestionable. 
 The Vice-royalty and the command of the army were offered 
 to Kosciuszko, leader of the insurrection of 1794, and, on his 
 refusal, the former office was conferred upon General Zajaczek 3 
 a native Pole who had served under Napoleon, while the 
 command of the army was given to the Tsar's brother the 
 Grand Duke Constantine. 
 
 Three years later (1818) the Tsar presided in person at the 
 
EMPIRE 
 
 The 
 Congress Kingdom of 
 
 POLAND 
 
 1815 
 
 English Miles 
 o t,o ioo> 150 
 
 To Russia 1772 -1795 
 To Prussia » >> 
 
 To Austria •> » 
 
 The Congress Kingdom 1815 ' 
 
 Sea 
 
 Clarendon fye/l Oxford 
 
214 THE EUROPEAN COMMONWEALTH 
 
 opening of the First Diet, and earnestly exhorted his new 
 subjects to ' prove to contemporary kings that the liberal 
 institutions which they associated with doctrines threatening 
 the entire social system with a frightful catastrophe were not 
 a dangerous illusion '.^ Unhappily, the exhortation was 
 ignored, and no inference favourable to liberal institutions 
 could be drawn from the history of the Congress Kingdom. 
 The aristocratic oligarchy seemed bent only upon proving 
 that, like the restored Bourbons, they had learnt nothing and 
 forgotten nothing during times of adversity. The natural 
 leaders of the people were mutually suspicious and agreed 
 only in factious opposition to the sovereign. Consequently 
 the Second Diet (i8ao) was compelled to acquiesce in severe 
 curtailment of liberty, and the reign of Alexander closed 
 (1825) in gloom, disappointment, and disillusion. 
 
 His brother and successor Nicholas was a man of very 
 different temper. Much less ' Western ' in outlook than Alex- 
 ander ; shrewd but uncultured ; utterly devoid of any leanings 
 towards liberalism or nationalism, a man of magnificent 
 physique, of strong character, and, above all, Russian to 
 the core. 
 
 His Polish kingdom, despite exceptional economic pros- 
 perity, was seething with discontent. With very little 
 encouragement discontent would blaze out into insurrection. 
 The July Revolution in Paris (1830) sufficed for the purpose, 
 and towards the end of November revolution broke out in 
 Warsaw. The Tsar Nicholas promptly sent into Poland a 
 Russian force of over 110,000 men under Marshal Diebitsch, 
 who had lately brought the Turks to their knees. Diebitsch 
 was less successful in Poland ; the Poles, who had a well- 
 trained army of 60,000 men, fought with magnificent courage 
 and for a time with conspicuous success. But in council they 
 showed themselves incapable of eradicating the faults and 
 weaknesses which had been their undoing in the past : suspi- 
 cion, jealousy, faction ; and the insurrection ultimately col- 
 lapsed. Prussia had carefully guarded Russia's northern flank, 
 and Lord Palmerston had been too much concerned with 
 
 ^ Skrine, Expansion of Russia^ p. 65. 
 
THE PROBLEM OF POLAND 5^15 
 
 Belgium to interfere in Poland. The collapse of the revolu- 
 tion was followed by a policy of russification. The Congress 
 Kingdom became a Russian province ; the constitution of 
 1815 was replaced by an Organic Statute; the Polish army 
 was suppressed ; the Universities of Warsaw and Wilna were 
 abolished, and the official use of the Polish language was 
 prohibited. 
 
 For twenty-five years the system of repression was con- 
 sistently and, to all appearances, successfully pursued. The 
 reign of the Emperor Nicholas was, in the phrase of a 
 competent English Critic, 'one long conspiracy on the part 
 of a monarch to denationalize a people'.^ The accession of 
 Alexander II brought some amelioration in the lot of this 
 unhappy people. The pressure of religious persecution was 
 sensibly relaxed ; the Universities were re-established ; a con- 
 siderable measure of autonomy was restored ; above all, the 
 serfs were emancipated. But the Poles displayed no gratitude 
 towards the liberator. According to some critics they owed 
 none: the serfs were emancipated, it is argued, simply to 
 establish a counterpoise against the separatist tendencies of 
 the Polish nobility. Be that as it may, the fact remains that 
 these healing measures failed to heal, and that in 1863 the 
 embers of discontent, never really extinguished, again burst 
 into flame. The insurrection of that year was ill-advised, 
 inopportune, and from the outset hopeless. It served to set 
 back a movement towards reform which, thanks to the concord 
 between the Marquis Vielopolski and the new Tsar Alexander II, 
 might ultimately have achieved considerable success ; it de- 
 prived Poland of her recently recovered autonomy ; it sent 
 thousands of her noblest sons into exile ; it afforded the 
 Tsar an excuse for complete russification ; above all, it gave 
 Bismarck the chance of demonstrating afresh the insidious 
 and calculated friendship of Prussia for Russia. As a conse- 
 quence, Russia was still further enmeshed in the toils of the 
 Prussian alliance, and Bismarck, relying upon the friendly 
 neutrality of Russia, could play with the completer confidence 
 the clever but hazardous game which, by the three stages of 
 
 ^ Day, Russian Gov eminent in Poland. 
 
2i6 THE EUROPEAN COMMONWEALTH 
 
 1864, 1866, and 1870, at last led to the attainment of German 
 unity. Bismarck's friendship gave Russia the opportunity of 
 denouncing in 1870 the Black Sea Clauses of the Treaty 
 of Paris, but otherwise Russia paid dearly for Prussian assis- 
 tance. A discontented Poland has deflected Russia from her 
 natural policy, alienated her natural friends, and subordinated 
 her interests to those of Berlin. 
 
 Since 1863 Russia has had another chance in Poland, but 
 she has utterly failed to conciliate her Polish subjects : she 
 has placed every obstacle in the way of their advancement, 
 intellectual or economic ; she has fettered their industries 
 and neglected to provide for the most elementary needs 
 of modern civilization ; she has cramped their education 
 and persecuted their religion. Yet despite every discourage- 
 ment the economic development of the country during the 
 last hundred years has been remarkable. The Polish peasant- 
 proprietors are among the most progressive agriculturists in 
 Europe ; they have adopted co-operative methods similar to 
 those which have met with marked success in Denmark and 
 Ireland ; they have established credit-banks ; they have pro- 
 moted, not perhaps without ulterior motives, every form of 
 economic association. Even more marked has been the 
 progress of industry. Warsaw, in the course of a century, 
 has increased in population from 40,000 (1815) to 8oo,oco 
 (1915); Lodz, which in 1791^ was a village with less than 
 aoo inhabitants, is now a town of over 500,000. But capital 
 is still mainly in the hands of the Jews, and the Poles 
 themselves, though not averse from industrial life, are lacking 
 in initiative and capacity for direction and management. 
 Perhaps on this account they have the more energy for 
 political agitation. Never since 1815 has there been any 
 prolonged abstention from it. The national spirit is in- 
 vincible. 
 
 Only in Austrian Poland has there been any approach to 
 contentment, and then only in the last half-century. Between 
 the ' restoration ' of 18 15 and the revolution of 1848 Metter- 
 nich's rule was as harsh and repressive in Poland as else- 
 where. The annihilation of the republican independence of 
 
THE PROBLEM OF POLAND 217 
 
 Cracow (1846) and its absorption into Galicia, was at once 
 a breach of faith and an affront to Polish sentiment. But 
 since 1876 there has been a marked change for the better in 
 the administration of Austrian Poland. The Poles under 
 Habsburg rule have enjoyed virtual autonomy under their 
 own elected Diet ; the administration and the schools are 
 alike ' native ', the people are free to use their own language 
 and to worship according to their own faith, which is also, 
 be it noted, the faith of their rulers. Small wonder, there- 
 fore, if the Poles of Russia showed tepid zeal in a fight 
 against Austria. 
 
 Nevertheless, there is reason to believe that despite the 
 relative rigour of Russian rule, despite the lenity of Habsburg 
 methods, the Galician Poles would have gladly embraced the 
 opportunity of re-union with the Russian Poles in an auto- 
 nomous Poland under the suzerainty of the Tsar. Still more 
 cordially, of course, will they welcome re-union if it can be 
 achieved in conjunction with complete independence. 
 
 The position of the Prussian Poles presents, both politically 
 and geographically, a much more complex problem, the 
 consideration of which must be deferred to the next chapter. 
 
 Meanwhile, as to the attitude of the Allies towards the 
 Polish problem as a whole there has been and there is no 
 ambiguity. The relations between France and the undivided 
 Poland were continuously cordial and close. If France could 
 have averted the destruction of Polish independence in the 
 eighteenth century she would have done so. England, 
 through Castlereagh, did her utmost to secure the restoration 
 of Polish independence in 181 5. Nothing could have con- 
 tributed more effectually to the emancipation of Russian 
 diplomacy, under the old regime, from its thraldom to 
 Potsdam, than a pacified Poland. * La Pologne a ^te', as 
 M. Leroy-Beaulieu insists, 'pendant plus d'un siecle, le lien, 
 ou mieux la chaine, qui, malgrd de reciproques antipathies 
 nationales, a tenu la politique russe unie et comme rivee "a 
 la politique prussienne. La Russie ne recouvrera la pleine 
 liberty de sa politique que le jour ou elle saura briser cette 
 chaine en se conciliant ses sujets de la Vistule, en faisant de 
 
31 8 THE EUROPEAN COMMONWEALTH 
 
 ces provinces polonaises, aujoiird'hui pour elle une cause de 
 faiblesse et dependance vis-a-vis de la Prusse, une force et 
 un rempart en face de TAllemagne et du pangermanisme, qui 
 se souviennent encore que, avant Jena et Tilsitt, le Prussien 
 regnait a Varsovie.' ^ 
 
 Nowhere was the proclamation of the Grand Duke Nicholas 
 more enthusiastically applauded than in England and France. 
 It was, in the graphic words of M. Hanotaux, statesman and 
 historian, an awakening from nightmare. ' A nightmare op- 
 pressed Europe : a nation cut to pieces, panting, living, and 
 at the same time dead, under the knife of the oppressors. 
 All just men, all oppressed peoples turned their eyes towards 
 Poland, the eldest of all martyrs.' ^ ' Poland ', said M. Cle- 
 menceau, 'shall live again.' So long as the old regime 
 subsisted in Russia there was, naturally, some reticence among 
 the Tsar's allies as to the precise mode of Russia's resurrec- 
 tion. England and France could but italicize the terms of 
 the proclamations issued by the Russian government and hope 
 that the most generous interpretation would ultimately be 
 given to them. Western Europe, and France in particular, 
 always regarded Poland as an outpost of European civiliza- 
 tion; as an antidote to the more primitive culture alike of 
 Prussian and Muscovite. A strong and independent Poland, 
 could strength have been achieved and independence main- 
 tained, would, as Lord Castlereagh so clearly perceived, have 
 been the most effective barrier between the Teutonic and 
 the Slav Empires, and would therefore have offered a reliable 
 guarantee for the maintenance of peace in Europe. Its 
 utility, in this respect, is not exhausted. Talleyrand's dictum 
 is as true to-day as when he first uttered it, a century ago, 
 * La question la plus exclusivement europdenne est celle qui 
 concerne la Pologne.' 
 
 ^ Ap. Dmowski, op. cit., p. vii. ^ Le Figaro, August l6, 1914. 
 
CHAPTER X 
 THE PROBLEM OF POLAND. IP 
 
 Prussia, Poland, and Ireland 
 
 ' There would perhaps have been no world-war to-day if independent 
 Poland had remained a Baltic Power possessed of a fleet in the Gulf of 
 Dantzig and of a country traversed by a network of strategic railways.' — 
 E. J. Dillon. 
 
 The last chapter was devoted to a discussion of one aspect 
 of the Polish problem. Since the words were written that 
 elusive problem has entered upon a new phase. So much, 
 but only so much, is certain. It is possible to exaggerate 
 the significance of recent events ; it is equally possible to 
 minimize it ; but to ignore it would be something worse than 
 affectation. 
 
 On November 5, 1916, General von Beseler, the German 
 Governor of Warsaw, issued a proclamation which may possibly 
 prove to be historic. Professedly, it announced to the Poles 
 the re-establishment of Poland as an independent State, and 
 the guarantee of a Constitution under an hereditary monarchy. 
 The terms of the proclamation were as follows : 
 
 ' To the inhabitants of the Government of Warsaw. — His 
 Majesty the German Emperor and His Majesty the Austrian 
 Emperor and Apostolic King of Hungary, sustained by their 
 firm confidence in the final victory of their arms, and guided 
 by the wish to lead to a happy future the Polish districts 
 which by their brave armies were snatched with heavy sacrifices 
 from Russian power, have agreed to form from these districts 
 an independent State with an hereditary Monarchy and a 
 Constitution. The more precise regulation of the frontiers of 
 the Kingdom of Poland remains reserved. 
 
 ' In union with both the Allied Powers the new Kingdom 
 will find the guarantees which it desires for the free develop- 
 
 ^ Published in the Edinburgh Review for January 191 7. 
 
<z%o THE EUROPEAN COMMONWEALTH 
 
 ment of its strength. In its own Army the glorious traditions 
 of the Polish Army of former times and the memory of our 
 brave Polish fellow-combatants in the great War of the present 
 time will continue to live. Its organization, training, and com- 
 mand will be regulated by mutual agreement. The Allied 
 Monarchs confidently hope that their wishes for the State 
 and national development of the Kingdom of Poland will now 
 be fulfilled with the necessary regard to the general political 
 conditions of Europe and to the welfare and security of their 
 own countries and peoples. 
 
 * The great western neighbours of the Kingdom of Poland 
 will see with pleasure arise again and flourish at their eastern 
 frontier a free and happy State rejoicing in its national life. 
 
 ' By order of His Majesty the German Emperor, 
 
 ' Von Beseler, Governor-General.' 
 
 A proclamation in similar terms was on the same day issued 
 at Lublin by the Austro-Hungarian Governor. Simultaneously 
 the late Emperor Francis Joseph made a further announcement 
 in reference to a fresh concession to his Polish subjects in 
 Galicia. After referring in sympathetic terms to the ' many 
 proofs of devotion and loyalty ' which during his reign he had 
 received from Galicia, and to the * great and heavy sacrifices 
 which this province, exposed in the present War to a fierce 
 enemy assault ' had had ' to bear in the interests of the eastern 
 frontiers of the Empire', the late Emperor proceeded as 
 follows : 
 
 * It is therefore my will, at the moment when the new State 
 comes into existence and coincident with this development, to 
 grant Galicia also the right to manage independently its own 
 internal affairs in as full a measure as this can be done in 
 accordance with its membership of the State as a whole and 
 with the latter's prosperity, and thereby give the population 
 of Galicia a guarantee for its racial and economic develop- 
 ment.' ^ 
 
 It may be said at once that taken by itself there would be 
 nothing in the proclamation of the Austrian Emperor to 
 excite surprise or suspicion. On the whole, the record of 
 Austria in regard to the treatment of its Polish subjects is or 
 was much cleaner than that of the other partitioning Powers. 
 This fact is admitted, and indeed emphasized, by Dr. Friedrich 
 
 ^ The Times f November 6, 1916. 
 
THE PROBLEM OF POLAND 2Zi 
 
 Naumann in his recently published Mitteleuropa. ' We may ', 
 he writes, * state frankly that, however imperfect are the results 
 of handling nationalities in Austria and Hungary, there is, 
 nevertheless, much more real understanding there of this type 
 of problem than with us.' ^ Hence, if it had not been for the 
 sinister conjunction of the proclamation of General von Beseler 
 at Warsaw, the words of the Emperor Francis Joseph might 
 have brought a real ray of hope to the Galician Poles. It is 
 not, however, with Austrian policy in Poland that this chapter 
 in concerned. 
 
 The German proclamation wears, by general consent, a very - 
 different aspect. It has been assumed in this country and 
 elsewhere that it must be interpreted as one of the many 
 signals of distress which the Central Empires have lately put 
 out ; that it indicates an exhaustion of the available man 
 power in Germany ; a desire to regularize the raising of a large 
 force of Poles, and to induce the Polish recruits to embrace 
 with ardour the cause in which they will be called to fight. 
 That such considerations have weighed heavily with the 
 statesmen of the Wilhelmstrasse is beyond dispute ; it may 
 even be that no other motives have inspired this latest move 
 in the development of Prussian policy in Poland ; but there is 
 a possibility that reasons rather less obvious than those which 
 have been generally assigned to the German Emperor and his 
 advisers have been operating ; and there is a further possibility 
 that the Poles, careless as to the motives which have inspired 
 the offer, may deem it prudent to close with it, and to extract 
 what satisfaction they can from a situation which no broken 
 pledges or disappointed hopes could render much more 
 distressing than that with which they are now confronted. 
 
 The proclamation issued on November 5 by order of the 
 German Emperor was addressed, it will be observed, to the 
 * inhabitants of the Government of Warsaw ' — the centre of 
 the Polish districts which had been ' snatched from Russian 
 power ' ; it is those districts which are to be * formed into an 
 independent State ', and the ' more precise regulation of the 
 frontiers of the Kingdom of Poland' is specifically and 
 ■• Central Europe^ P- 79* 
 
222 THE EUROPEAN COMMONWEALTH 
 
 ominously reserved.^ All this may be deemed to be confirma- 
 tory of the interpretation commonly placed upon the matter in 
 countries outside the Central Empires. Nevertheless, no critic 
 who is at once candid and informed can ignore the fact that, 
 quite apart from a desire to conciliate the newly-conquered 
 Congress Kingdom of Poland, apart from anxiety to recruit 
 her exhausted armies, Prussia has at least one strong reason 
 for a new departure in her Polish policy. That reason is to 
 be found in the disastrous failure of the policy hitherto pursued 
 in Poland. For the last forty-five years Prussia has been 
 administering to her Poles successive doses of coercion, each 
 dose appreciably stronger than the previous one. Each 
 and all have failed either to cure or kill the patient. The 
 Prussian Poles are no more * Germanized ' to-day than when 
 Bismarck embarked upon the policy of intimidation in 1872. 
 No one could be more candid in admitting or deploring this 
 characteristic failure than the influential publicist already 
 quoted. * Prussia ', writes Dr. Naumann, * took compulsion in 
 one hand and material prosperity in the other, and demanded 
 mental adhesion in exchange. She brought about much 
 material good, but discovered no way to the heart of the 
 Polish people. . . . The German schools have made them useful 
 and industrially capable bilinguists but not Germans. A Pole 
 remains a Pole, very often even when he goes to live in Berlin 
 or Westphalia. Even as a travelling workman he retains his 
 national character and dreams of other things than the 
 German inspectors who allot him his work.' "^ 
 
 Candid critics are at least as numerous in England as in 
 Germany ; and among them there are those who have consis- 
 tently maintained that the treatment of the Poles by Prussia 
 finds a close parallel in English policy in Ireland, and that 
 it is not for England to cast a stone at Prussia. It is super- 
 
 * Between the time (December 1916) when these words were originally 
 written and the time (January 1917) when they were published, the Tsar 
 Nicholas in an Imperial Order of the Day specifically and solemnly 
 pledged himself to the ' Creation of a free Poland from all the three at 
 present dismembered Provinces '. The Western Allies also plighted afresh 
 their troth to Poland. 
 
 ^ Op, cit, pp. 79-80. 
 
THE PROBLEM OF POLAND 223 
 
 fliious to add that every effort is made by German publicists 
 to disseminate this reading of political history/ and that, in 
 consequence, the doctrine that Ireland is England's Poland is 
 wfdely accepted in Germany. 
 
 No words written in this country are likely to reach German 
 readers to-day ; much less to carry any weight, if they should 
 reach them. But, for the sake of English readers whose 
 consciences may be troubled, it seems worth while to inquire, 
 with such dispassionateness as circumstances permit, how far 
 the suggested parallel can be sustained. To push home that 
 inquiry is the purpose of the pages that follow. 
 
 Geographical conditions seem to suggest a preliminary 
 parallel. The temptation to the annexation of West Prussia 
 after the union of the Duchy of East Prussia with the 
 Electorate of Brandenburg was, we may admit, irresistible. 
 Equally certain was it that the Norman adventurers, having 
 conquered England, would, in course of time, attempt the 
 conquest of the isolated island to the west. But between 
 William the Bastard's conquest of England in the eleventh 
 century and Henry the Second's conquest of Ireland in the 
 twelfth there was a striking contrast. The Norman Conquest 
 of England was a ' clean job ', and was accomplished in four 
 years. The so-called 'conquest' of Ireland was to the last 
 degree superficial and incomplete, and was imperfectly accom- 
 plished at the end of four hundred years. The reasons for 
 the divergence have never been more brilliantly analysed than 
 by Sir John Davies, Attorney- General for Ireland in the reign 
 of James I, and to his illuminating book any curious reader 
 may be referred. A couple of sentences, which go to the root 
 of the matter, must here suffice for quotation : 
 
 'The first attempt to conquer this Kingdom was but an 
 adventure of a few private gentlemen. . . . We cannot conjecture 
 this army to have been so great as might suffice to conquer all 
 Ireland being divided into so many principalities and having 
 so many Hydra's heads as it had at that time. For a 
 barbarous country is not so easily conquered as a civil, 
 whereof Caesar had experience in the wars against the Gauls. 
 
 ' Cf., for instance, Etigland imd Irland, by Carl Peters, Hamburg, 
 1915. 
 
224 THE EUROPEAN COMMONWEALTH 
 
 A country possessed with many petty Lords and States, is not 
 so soon brought under as an entire Kingdom governed by one 
 Prince or Monarch/ ^ 
 
 In brief, Ireland was not yet enough of a unity, either 
 social or political, to be susceptible of rapid or complete 
 conquest. The premature attempt proved equally disastrous 
 to the semi-conquerors and to the semi-conquered people. 
 The result was the establishment on the east coast of Ireland 
 of an Anglo-Norman settlement known as the 'Pale'; a settle- 
 ment which in Mr. Lecky's fine imagery ' acted like a running 
 sore, constantly irritating the Celtic regions beyond the Pale 
 and deepening the confusion which prevailed there '. Had the 
 attempted conquest been deferred for two or three centuries 
 the Irish tribes would almost certainly have evolved some 
 semblance of political unity. The planting of a fragment of 
 feudal England on the other side of St. George's Channel 
 served only to arrest spontaneous internal development. The 
 Anglo-Normans were never in sufficient force to conquer the 
 whole island ; the Irish tribesmen were too disunited to expel 
 the Anglo-Normans. A hopeless situation was consequently 
 stereotyped. The Anglo-Normans found Ireland in the tribal 
 stage in the twelfth century ; in that stage it remained in the 
 seventeenth. In the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries the 
 ' Pale' maintained a precarious and ever-diminishing hold upon 
 Ireland : partly in consequence of lack of adequate support 
 from England ; partly by reason of the assimilation of the 
 ^colonists' to the native tribesmen, an assimilation so complete 
 that the colonists became, in proverbial phrase, Hibernicis ipsis 
 Hibeniiores. By the end of the fifteenth century the Pale was 
 almost extinct. 
 
 The Tudors consequently had to confront a difficult problem. 
 The support given to the Yorkist pretenders in Ireland com- 
 pelled the reluctant attention of Henry VII ; Sir Edward 
 Poynings was sent over as Deputy ; and the Statute known 
 by his name, which was passed in the Parliament of Drogheda, 
 for the first time defined the constitutional relations of the two 
 countries. The Parliament of Ireland became in 1494, and 
 
 ^ Discoverie of the true causes why Ireland was never conquered. 
 
THE PROBLEM OF POLAND ^^5 
 
 until 1782 remained, entirely dependent upon the English 
 Privy Council. Henry VHI made a characteristically vigorous 
 attempt to anglicize Ireland, and might perhaps have succeeded 
 but for the fatal blunder of attempting to force an essentially 
 * Anglican' Reformation upon an unprepared and intensely 
 Catholic Ireland. Few if any of the native Irish were converted 
 to Protestantism ; little attempt was made to convert them ; 
 but the * Reformation ' Statutes passed in the English Parlia- 
 ment were re-enacted in Ireland, and Anglicanism became the 
 State religion of Ireland as of England.^ From that day 
 onwards the English rulers of Ireland were confronted with an 
 ecclesiastical problem. 
 
 Upon the ecclesiastical problem there soon supervened 
 an agrarian problem. Throughout a great part of the reign 
 of Elizabeth Ireland was in a state of rebellion. Those 
 rebellions were due in part to the intrigues of the Catholic 
 Powers of the Continent; in part to the ecclesiastical unrest 
 in Ireland ; but chiefly to the fear of the Irish tribesmen 
 that they were to be driven from the soil they loved. The 
 fears, though exaggerated, were not wholly groundless, for the 
 ' plantation ' of Ireland had now become a fixed policy wi.th 
 English statesmen. Not until the very end of Elizabeth's 
 reign were the rebellions stamped out, and by that time 
 Ireland, as we learn from the terrible description of Edmund 
 Spenser, was literally a desert.^ 
 
 To this desert the Stuarts succeeded. The reign of James I 
 was memorable for the plantation of Ulster with English and, 
 still more predominantly, with Scottish colonists. Thence 
 sprang the Ulster problem, which still baffles British states- 
 manship. The reign of Charles I is associated in Irish 
 memories mainly with the name of Thomas Wentworth, Earl 
 of Strafford. • Strafford was, in many respects, the type of 
 ruler whom the Ireland of the seventeenth century sorely 
 needed : energetic, firm, and essentially enlightened. He 
 repressed aristocratic disorder ; he did much for the Church 
 
 ^ For Tudor policy in Ireland cf. Richey, Short History of the Irish 
 People ; and Bagwell, Ireland under the Tudors— both admirable. 
 ^ Cf. Spenser, Vieiv of the State of Ireland (1596). 
 
 2130 Q 
 
226 THE EUROPEAN COMMONWEALTH 
 
 and for education ; he gave an immense impulse to the material 
 prosperity of the island ; but the ' rule of Thorough ' was hate- 
 ful to the most powerful classes in Ireland; the great lords 
 hounded Strafford to his death ; and six months later the 
 Catholics of the North rose in rebellion and massacred every 
 Protestant within their reach. 
 
 For that massacre the English Puritans demanded ven- 
 geance ; and terrible vengeance was ultimately exacted by 
 Cromwell. But Cromwell was no mere avenger of blood : he 
 carried to a logical conclusion the policy of ' plantation ' ; he 
 abolished the Irish Parliament ; he gave to the Irish constitu- 
 encies representation at Westminster ; he admitted Ireland to 
 full partnership in England's trade. His reforms ended with 
 the Commonwealth. The Restoration gave a new turn to the 
 wheel of Ireland's fortune ; Cromwell's policy was upset, having 
 had no real chance to demonstrate either its failure or its 
 success, and after the Revolution of 1688 Ireland had to be 
 again reconquered. 
 
 The Treaty of Limerick ushered in the worst period of 
 Anglo-Irish relations. Whig policy in Ireland rested upon a 
 triple foundation : political ascendancy, commercial exclusive- 
 ness, and the rigid proscription of the Irish Catholics. The 
 assertion (by the declaratory Act of 6 George I) of the right 
 of the Parliament of Great Britain to legislate for Ireland 
 deprived the Irish Parliament of such remnants of indepen- 
 dence as had been left it by Poynings' Law. The generous 
 commercial policy of Cromwell was reversed, and, by a series 
 of protective measures passed in the interests of English manu- 
 facturers and English agriculturists, Ireland was excluded from 
 the English market and deprived of the right to compete with 
 England in neutral markets. By this means the incipient 
 prosperity of Ireland, noticeable in the seventeenth century, 
 suffered a rude check in the eighteenth, and was never again 
 manifested until Ireland was economically re-made by Sir 
 Horace Plunkett. The cruel proscription to which, in the 
 eighteenth century, the vast majority of the Irish people were 
 subjected under the provisions of the Penal Code is notorious. 
 Burke's fervid denunciation of that code contains no 
 exaggeration. 
 
THE PROBLEM OF POLAND 227 
 
 ' I must ', he wrote, * do it justice ; it was a complete system, 
 full of coherence and consistency, well digested and well com- 
 posed in all its parts. It was a machine of wise and elaborate 
 contrivance, and as well fitted for the oppression, impoverish- 
 ment, and degradation of a people, and the debasement in 
 them of human nature itself, as ever proceeded from the 
 perverted ingenuity of man.' " 
 
 To capture the three strongholds of Whig policy, the new 
 Irish Party, led by Flood, Grattan, and Charlemont, was 
 formed. Thanks to the defeat of England in the war of 
 American secession ; thanks to the enrolment of a large force 
 of Protestant volunteers in Ireland ; and thanks, not least, 
 to the eloquence of Flood and Grattan, remarkable success 
 attended the agitation, and by 1782 a large part of the 
 programme of the new Irish Party had been triumphantly 
 carried out. 
 
 But not the whole of it. The movement affected mainly the 
 Anglo-Irish colony. It hardly touched Celtic Ireland. By 
 the legislation of 1780 Ireland got a considerable instalment 
 of commercial freedom ; by that of 1782-3 the chief restric- 
 tions upon the independence of the Irish Parliament were 
 removed. The Parliament of Great Britain renounced its 
 right to legislate for Ireland, and the Irish Parliament repealed 
 Poynings' Law. Two of the stumbling-blocks were thus 
 removed ; but the third — the political proscription of the 
 Irish Catholics — still remained to trouble Grattan's Parlia- 
 ment. 
 
 The experiment of legislative independence lasted from 1782 
 to 1800. It was very far from being a success. Perhaps the 
 conditions under which it was tried precluded the possibility. 
 The failure to settle the Catholic question ; the suspicions' 
 aroused by Pitt's honourable and courageous effort to give 
 Ireland complete commercial equality with England ; the 
 hopes aroused by the appointment of Lord Fitzwilliam and 
 the dismay caused by his sudden recall ; the excitement 
 engendered by contemporary events in France ; the treason- 
 able negotiations of the ' United Irishmen ' with the French 
 Republic ; the repeated attempts on the part of the French 
 Directory to land troops in Ireland and to sustain an Irish 
 
 Q 2 
 
2^8 THE EUROPEAN COMMONWEALTH 
 
 rebellion against England ; the outbreak and collapse of the 
 rebellion; the measures taken to stamp out its embers: all 
 these things would have rendered the success of Grattan's 
 experiment exceedingly dubious even had the constitution 
 which goes by his name been a monument of political wisdom 
 and ingenuity. As a fact, it was precisely the reverse. It 
 could hardly have lived in a calm sea ; in the storms which it 
 encountered it was certain to founder. The technical short- 
 comings of the constitutional experiment initiated in 1782 
 have been well summarized by the late Lord Chancellor Ball : 
 
 ' Under the constitution of 1782 there was no provision for 
 the case of disagreement in policy between the Parliaments of 
 Great Britain and Ireland. They were equal and co-ordinate, 
 without any paramount authority being provided to overrule 
 or reconcile them. . . . The two Parliaments might adopt 
 different views as to commerce, foreign policy, treaties, and 
 other relations with foreign powers. The controversies likely 
 to arise in connexion with these subjects and the injurious 
 consequences to be apprehended from them were very clearly 
 foreseen by the Duke of Portland in 1782, and he proposed to 
 retain for Great Britain a supreme control in matters of the 
 most importance. . . . Nothing, however, could have been less 
 in accordance with the views and aims of the Irish patriotic 
 party than suggestions of this character.' 
 
 In this summary one important point is, however, omitted : 
 the position of the Irish Executive. The Executive continued 
 to be practically vested in the hands of the Lord-Lieutenant, 
 his Chief Secretary, and the Lord Chancellor, and these 
 officials took their orders not from the Irish Parliament but 
 from the English Cabinet by whose chief they were appointed. 
 This constitutional flaw would probably have proved fatal to 
 the success of the Grattan experiment, even had circumstances 
 been far more propitious than in fact they were. 
 
 The admitted failure of the constitutional experiment in 
 Ireland, coinciding as it did with a serious crisis in the external 
 relations of Great Britain, drove Pitt to the expedient of a 
 legislative union. That union was at first bitterly opposed 
 by a large section of the Irish people; but the owners of 
 the boroughs which were deprived of representation were 
 generously compensated ; the Catholics were induced to 
 
THE PROBLEM OF POLAND 229 
 
 acquiesce by a promise of complete emancipation ; and the 
 industrial community received a quid pro quo in the removal 
 of all restrictions upon Irish trade. The Protestants were the 
 most difficult party to deal with, but they could not ignore the 
 argument that Union afforded the only chance of preserving 
 the Church of the ascendancy party. Many of the trans- 
 actions incidental to the Union have an unsavoury flavour ; 
 but the charges of ' force and fraud * levelled against Pitt 
 have been grossly exaggerated, and so stout a Home Ruler 
 as Mr. (now Lord) Bryce was fain to admit that substantial 
 arguments could be adduced in favour of the Union.^ 
 
 By itself, however, the Union was a torso. Its only chance 
 of success lay, as Pitt perceived, in a prompt acknowledge- 
 ment of the Catholic claims, and in passing a comprehensive 
 measure for dealing with the grievance of tithes. The preju- 
 dices of a half-insane monarch defeated the benevolent wisdom 
 of the minister, and Pitt, amid the wreck of his Irish policy, 
 resigned office. 
 
 Twenty-nine years later, Daniel O'Connell extorted from the 
 fears of Peel and Wellington what Pitt would have conceded 
 to the claims of justice. Spontaneously offered in 1800, Catholic 
 Emancipation, especially if accompanied by concurrent endow- 
 ment, might have added a union of hearts to the union of 
 Parliaments. Conceded as a preferable alternative to civil 
 war, after thirty years of suicidal procrastination, the healing 
 measure could not heal. Such ameliorative properties as it 
 might still have possessed were dissipated by the concomitant 
 legislation. The Emancipation Act was immediately followed 
 by an Act disfranchising about 174,000 county electors out of 
 a total of 200,000. These 405". freeholders, created by the 
 landlords for their own purposes, could no longer be trusted to 
 vote in accordance with instructions. 
 
 Then nature came to the assistance of the English legisla- 
 ture. Population, artificially stimulated by landlords, by priests, 
 and by potatoes, at last justified Malthus by outstripping the 
 means of subsistence. A considerable proportion of the over- 
 
 ^ Cf. Two Centuries of Irish History^ p. xxv. 
 
230 THE EUROPEAN COMMONWEALTH 
 
 grown Irish population had long been on the verge of starva- 
 tion ; it succumbed to the disaster of 1846. 
 
 The Great Famine is the most important single event in the 
 economic and social annals of modern Ireland. Its significance 
 may, however, be summarized in a sentence. When George III 
 ascended the throne there were about two and a half million 
 people in Ireland ; at Queen Victoria's accession there were 
 eight millions ; at her death there were four and a half. Of the 
 eight millions living in 1846, four, it is estimated, depended for 
 subsistence upon Raleigh's 'lazy root'. The root suddenly 
 gave out. Between 1846 and 1851 over a million people 
 emigrated from Ireland, and nearly a million, despite the 
 utmost efforts of the government and people of Great B.ritain, 
 died at home. A further million emigrated in the decade 
 1 85 1 and 1 861. The emigration conferred a twofold benefit 
 upon Ireland. It relieved hopeless congestion and it succoured 
 those who remained. It is -estimated that in the seventeen 
 years following the famine ;^i3,ooo,ooo was sent home from 
 the United States. But the famine affected not only the 
 peasants but the landlords of Ireland. Fully one-third of 
 the landlords were hopelessly ruined, with nothing before 
 them but the cold comfort of the Encumbered Estates Court. 
 This court, set up in 1849, initiated an agrarian revolution, the 
 final stages of which were reached in the Land Purchase Acts 
 associated with the names of Ashbourne and Wyndham. 
 
 This agrarian revolution is not only of great intrinsic signifi- 
 cance ; it affords also a striking contrast to the agrarian policy 
 pursued by Prussia in Poland. On both grounds it demands 
 something more than a passing reference. 
 
 Celtic Ireland had never been really feudalized. The tribal 
 system survived, as we have seen, well into the seventeenth 
 century, and was only broken up by the plantation policy of 
 the early Stuarts and Cromwell. The new ' proprietors ' were 
 mostly Protestants ; but, contrary to intention, the native tribal 
 owners, Catholics to a man, remained upon the soil as ' tenants '. 
 These tenants continued to cherish the tradition that they were 
 at least part-owners of the soil they tilled ; and the growth of 
 a tenant-right custom, notably in Ulster, encouraged the idea. 
 
THE PROBLEM OF POLAND 231 
 
 The change in the proprietorship of the land, necessitated by 
 the ruin of the old landlords, and facilitated by the Encum- 
 bered Estates Act, embittered the relations between tenants 
 and landlords ; for the latter were ' new men ' who had pur- 
 chased the land on a commercial basis for commercial 
 purposes. 
 
 Agrarian discontent was intensified by the Repeal move- 
 ment initiated by O'Connell ; by the agitation against tithes, 
 and not least by the fiasco of the ' Young Ireland ' rebellion 
 in 1848. Sir Robert Peel had recognized the urgency of the 
 land question when he came into power in 1841, and had 
 appointed a strong Commission under the chairmanship of 
 Lord Devon to ' inquire into the Law and Practice in respect 
 to the occupation of land in Ireland '. The Devon Commission 
 reported in 1845, and a bill was introduced to give the tenant 
 compensation for unexhausted improvements. But it met with 
 strong opposition, and before it could be reintroduced with 
 promised amendments the Peel ministry fell. Not until i860 
 did an English ministry find time to return to a question which 
 was in reality the core of the Irish problem. In that year 
 Mr. Cardwell, one of the most capable of Peel's disciples, 
 attempted to apply Free Trade principles to Irish land tenure. 
 The Act, though well intentioned, was a dead failure. In 1870 
 Mr. Gladstone passed an Act which was intended to put a stop 
 to capricious evictions ; to give the force of law to the Ulster 
 custom of tenant-right wherever such custom was recognizable ; 
 to secure to an outgoing tenant compensation for unexhausted 
 improvements ; and to facilitate the purchase of holdings by 
 cultivators. The last object was dear to the heart of Mr. Bright, 
 who knew much more about the Irish land-system than his 
 chief, and the clauses intended to effect it were known by his 
 name. The purchase scheme was, however, clogged with con- 
 ditions so complicated as to render it practically inoperative, 
 and the Act, as a whole, did little to solve the land-problem. 
 Then came the period in Ireland, as in England, of agricultural 
 depression. Tenants got into arrears with their rents ; evictions 
 took place on a large scale ; Parnell launched the Land League ; 
 outrages multiplied, and in 1881 Gladstone again tried his hand 
 
232 THE EUROPEAN COMMONWEALTH 
 
 at the land question. The Act of that year was based upon 
 the * three F's ' — free sale, fixity of tenure, and fair rents to be 
 determined by a land court. It was drafted in defiance of the 
 best Irish opinion, and attempted to do the right thing in 
 the wrong way. Lord Morley of Blackburn described it as 
 * a charter of liberation ' for the Irish peasant. As a fact, the 
 principle of dual ownership which the Act of 1881 was intended 
 to sanctify and perpetuate was fundamentally unsound, and 
 until that principle was frankly abandoned no real progress 
 towards a solution of the problem could be made. 
 
 The Unionist party, on coming into office in 1885, imme- 
 diately adopted the principle of land-purchase; and Lord 
 Ashbourne's Act, enlarged and elaborated by the Acts of 
 1888 and 1 891, has gone far to transfer the ownership of the 
 soil of Ireland from big landlords to cultivating owners. Not 
 less than two-thirds of the Irish tenant farmers are now, or 
 will shortly become, the owners of the soil they till. At last, 
 therefore, the most difficult and the most intimate of all Irish 
 problems is in a fair way towards a satisfactory and permanent 
 solution. 
 
 It will presently be seen how the agrarian policy pursued by 
 the Prussian government in Poland compares with that of the 
 British government in Ireland. The land question is, however, 
 only one of a sheaf of questions which in the aggregate consti- 
 tute the Irish problem. Ecclesiastical, educational, and consti- 
 tutional questions have demanded, and received, hardly less 
 attention at the hands of the Imperial Legislature. 
 
 From the days of Queen Elizabeth to those of Queen 
 Victoria the religious question loomed large on the horizon 
 of Irish politics and baffled the statesmanship of England. 
 Down to the sixteenth century Ireland was less ultramontane 
 in its Catholicism than England ; but the clumsy efforts of the 
 Tudor statesmen to impose Protestantism upon a country 
 utterly unprepared for it served to convert the mass of the 
 Irish people into zealous * Papists '. The peasantry clung to 
 their traditional creed as they clung to their ancestral soil, 
 partly out of sheer affection, but partly in opposition to their 
 English rulers. If the rebellions of the sixteenth century were 
 
THE PROBLEM OF POLAND 2,^^ 
 
 essentially political and agrarian, those of the seventeenth 
 century were primarily religious. The growth of Puritanism 
 in England naturally alarmed the Irish Catholics, and the 
 loyalty which they displayed to Charles I, Charles II, and 
 above all to James II, was largely inspired by dread of 
 English Protestantism. The * Orange ' policy initiated by the 
 victories of William III — the penal laws, the proscriptions, 
 the proselytizing, and the bribes held out to converts from 
 Catholicism — did little to wean from their faith the mass of 
 the Irish peasants. Gradually the rigours of the Penal Code 
 were relaxed, but the Act of 1829 came, as we have seen, too 
 late to conciliate the Irish Catholics. The grievance of tithes 
 still remained unremedied, and Protestants still held a position 
 of ascendancy. The former grievance was removed by the 
 Tithes Commutation Act of 1838 ; while the Protestant 
 ascendancy was finally destroyed by the Disestablishment Act 
 of 1869. 
 
 Meanwhile great efforts had been made to improve Irish 
 education. The foundations of a national system of elementary 
 education were laid by Lord Stanley (afterwards Lord Derby) 
 in 1 83 1, but though the shell of Stanley's system remained 
 the whole spirit of its administration was altered. Stanley 
 contemplated a * mixed' system. The Irish Catholics are and 
 always have been wedded to the denominational principle, 
 and popular prejudice, here as elsewhere, proved far too 
 strong for legislative intention or even for administrative 
 action. English doctrinaires might attempt to divorce religion 
 from education : the Irish people were determined to com- 
 bine them ; and combined in Ireland they are. The good 
 work begun by Stanley was carried on by Peel, who in 1844 
 increased the grant for elementary education, and in 1845, 
 notwithstanding violent opposition, succeeded in carrying a 
 measure of endowment for the Roman Catholic Seminary 
 of Maynooth. In the same year he established the three 
 Queen's Colleges in Cork, Galway, and Belfast. The inten- 
 tion was that these colleges should be strictly ' undenomi- 
 national ', but again a legislative enactment was defeated by 
 popular pressure steadily applied. The 'godless colleges' 
 
a34 THE EUROPEAN COMMONWEALTH 
 
 did not solve the problem of higher education in Ireland, 
 and Mr. Gladstone, in 1873, made^a courageous but unsuc- 
 cessful effort to solve it. A much less pretentious but 
 singularly adroit scheme was carried, almost unnoticed, by 
 Disraeli in 1879. Disraeli's Act, though modest in appear- 
 ance, contained the germ of a great concession to the Irish 
 Catholics. A still greater concession was made by Mr. Birrell, 
 but the results are still doubtful. 
 
 There remained the constitutional problem. Whether, as 
 Lord Rosebery suggests, the legislative union might have 
 solved it had Pitt's intentions been carried out, who can tell ? 
 The fact remains that whereas the working of the Scottish 
 Union very soon dissipated the suspicions with which the 
 measure had, on both sides of the Tweed, been originally 
 regarded, the Irish Union served only to inaugurate a period 
 of more or less persistent agitation. That agitation has not 
 been entirely quenched by the settlement either of the eccle- 
 siastical or of the agrarian problem. Whether the Home 
 Rule Act, now on the statute book but not yet in operation, 
 is destined to solve the problem is more than doubtful. 
 
 No fair-minded critic can, however, deny that, for at least 
 a century, the British people have been making sincere if 
 somewhat blundering and belated efforts to find a solvent, 
 or a series of solvents, for the problems with which Ireland 
 has presented them. That it was not always so is a thesis 
 which might be maintained with some plausibility. But the 
 advice of one of the greatest of Irishmen may, in this con- 
 nexion, be recorded and adopted. ' I have always held ', 
 writes Sir Horace Plunkett, 'that to foster resentment in 
 respect of these old wrongs is as stupid as was the policy 
 which gave them birth ; and, even if it were possible to 
 distribute the blame among our ancestors, I am sure we 
 should do ourselves much harm, and no living soul any good, 
 in the reckoning. In my view, Anglo-Irish history is a thing 
 for Englishmen to remember, for Irishmen to forget.' It is 
 finely said. One Englishman has in the foregoing pages 
 endeavoured to recall, for the information of critics, both 
 English and foreign, some salient facts in the story of Anglo- 
 
THE PROBLEM OF POLAND 2,^5 
 
 Irish relations. His own conviction is that the recital suggests, 
 on the part of England, not deliberate malignity, still less 
 persistent brutality, but much characteristic unimaginative- 
 ness, some crass stupidity, and, above all, a curiously pervasive 
 irony. 
 
 'There have been divers good plots devised, and wise 
 counsels cast already about reformation of that realm ; but 
 they say it is the fatal destiny of that land that no purposes 
 whatsoever which are meant for her good will prosper or 
 take good effect ; which, whether it proceed from the very 
 genius of the soil, or influence of the stars, or that Almighty 
 God hath not yet appointed the time of her reformation, or 
 that He reserveth her in this unquiet state still for some 
 secret scourge, which shall by her come into England, it is 
 hard to be known, but yet much to be feared.' 
 
 Thus wrote Edmund Spenser, himself one of the colonists 
 of Munster, in 1596. His words are as suggestive at the 
 beginning of the twentieth century as they were at the end of 
 the sixteenth. 
 
 To return to the question with which we started. How far 
 does English policy in Ireland supply an appropriate ti^ qtioque 
 to Prussians who seek to vindicate their own treatment of 
 Poland? 
 
 The earlier relations between Prussia and Poland were 
 examined in the last chapter. The acquisitions of Prussia in 
 the three Partitions of 1772, 1793, and 1795; the dismember- 
 ment of the Prussian Kingdom by Napoleon at Tilsit ; the 
 formation, largely at the expense of Prussian Poland, of the 
 Grand Duchy of Warsaw — these matters call for no further 
 commentary. A word, however, must be said as to the treat- 
 ment of the Polish question at the Congress of Vienna. The 
 Tsar Alexander was, in 18 15, master of the situation, and 
 turned it, as we saw, with great adroitness to the advantage of 
 Russia. Prussia was obliged to acquiesce in the establishment 
 of the ' Congress Kingdom ' — virtually Napoleon's Grand 
 Duchy of Warsaw — under the rule of the Tsar, and thus to 
 relinquish the greater part of the acquisitions secured by her 
 in the second and third Partitions. She managed, however, to 
 retain not only her share of the Partition of 1772, but in 
 
236 THE EUROPEAN COMMONWEALTH 
 
 addition Posen and Gnesen and the great fortresses of Thorn 
 and Danzig. 
 
 Thanks mainly, as we have seen, to Lord Castlereagh 
 there was inserted in the Fmal Act of the Congress a stipula- 
 tion which was intended to secure to all the Poles some 
 measure of autonomy. The Treaty of Vienna, concluded 
 (May 3, 1 815) between Russia and Prussia, further guaranteed 
 the economic unity of Poland. Article 28 of that Treaty 
 ran : 
 
 * In order to promote agriculture as much as possible 
 in all parts of ancient Poland, to encourage the Industry 
 of its inhabitants and to ensure their prosperity, the two High 
 Contracting Parties have agreed that . . . the most unlimited 
 circulation for the future and for ever of all articles of growth 
 and industry shall be permitted throughout their Polish 
 provinces (as it existed in 1772).'^ 
 
 Finally, as regards Prussian Poland (with which alone we 
 are now concerned), we have the rescript addressed by King 
 Frederick William III to his subjects in the Grand Duchy of 
 Posen on May 15, 1815 : 
 
 ' You are incorporated ', it ran, * in my monarchy, but you 
 need not, therefore, renounce your nationality. You will 
 enjoy all the advantages of the constitution which I mean to 
 grant to my loyal subjects, and you will receive like the other 
 provinces of my kingdom a provisional constitution. Your 
 religion shall be respected and its ministers shall receive an 
 endowment suitable to their status. Your personal rights and 
 your property shall be placed under the protection of laws 
 which you will yourselves, in future, have a share in making. 
 The use of your language shall be permitted, equally with 
 German, at public meetings, and you will, each according to 
 his capacity, be eligible for official posts in the Grand 
 Duchy.' 2 
 
 The sequel will show how far these premisses have been 
 fulfilled. 
 
 For the first fifteen years after the Congress of Vienna, the 
 Prussian Poles had little to complain of. Frederick William III 
 manifested, during that period, a real desire to conciliate them. 
 
 * Hertslet, Map of Europe by Treaty , i. 113. 
 
 "^ Gesetzsam7nlungfiir die Konigl. preiissisch. StaateUy 1 81 5, p. 47; ap. 
 Moysset, p. 5. 
 
THE PROBLEM OF POLAND 2237 
 
 Prince Antony Radziwill, a great Polish nobleman, was nomi- 
 nated to the Vice-royalty of the Grand Duchy of Posen ; 
 Zerboni di Sposetti, also a friend to the Poles, became the 
 first Oberprasident of the new province ; a large share in 
 local administration was left to the native aristocracy ; the 
 liberal policy of Stein and Hardenberg, by which the serfs of 
 Brandenburg and Prussia had been converted into peasant 
 proprietors, was extended to Posen in 1833, and by 1837 no 
 less than 21,334 peasant freeholds had been created.^ Finally, 
 in 1824, a local legislature or Diet was established in Posen. 
 
 A sinister change was, however, observable after 1830. The 
 French revolution of that year aroused considerable excite- 
 ment in Germany. There were outbreaks in Gottingen, in 
 Cassel, in Dresden, in Leipzig, and in Brunswick, and not 
 a little ferment in the liberal south, but neither Prussia 
 nor Austria felt the repercussion. Nevertheless, Metternich 
 dangled the red spectre of revolution before the eyes of 
 Frederick WiUiam III and induced him to embark upon 
 a reactionary policy. Another cause contributed to awaken 
 alarm. In November 1830 a revolution broke out in the 
 Congress Kingdom, and, although there was no actual insurrec- 
 tion in Prussian Poland, some i2,coo Prussian Poles went to 
 the assistance of their brethren in the kingdom. Their action 
 was, needless to say, in no way countenanced by the King of 
 Prussia. On the contrary, the attitude of Frederick William III 
 was of considerable assistance to the Tsar, and, according to 
 the most recent historian of Germany, ' contributed directly 
 to the recovery of Warsaw by the Russians '. ^ 
 
 The consequences of the abortive rising of 1830 were hardly 
 less grave for the Prussian Poles than for those under the rule 
 of Russia. The Vice-royalty — the most conspicuous emblem 
 of the quasi-independence hitherto enjoyed by Posen — was 
 abolished ; and Zerboni was superseded as Oberprasident by 
 Eduard Heinrich von Flotwell, who was sent to Posen to 
 carry out a policy of thorough Prussianization. Flotwell lost 
 no time in getting to work, and for ten years (1830-41) he 
 
 ^ Phillips, Poland^ p. 182. 
 
 ' Sir A. W. Ward, History of Germany^ p. 232. 
 
238 THE EUROPEAN COMMONWEALTH 
 
 ruled his province with a rod of iron. The native nobles 
 were deprived of all share in local administration ; the 
 bureaucratic methods dear to the Brandenburger were on all 
 sides introduced ; convents and monasteries were suppressed 
 and their property secularized ; heavily encumbered properties 
 were bought on a large scale by the Government, and a 
 deliberate policy of expropriation was initiated. 
 
 The accession of Frederick William IV (1840) brought 
 some relief to the Prussian Poles ; but the concessions 
 announced at the beginning of the new reign did not survive 
 the upheaval of 1848. The spirit of 1848, with its appeal to the 
 national principle, could not leave the Poles unmoved. The 
 outbreak of the March revolution in Berlin gave the signal for 
 an insurrectionary movement in Posen. A ' national ' army 
 of iJ5,coo men was organized ; a provisional Government was 
 set up, and a formal demand was made for the fulfilment of 
 the pledges embodied in the Vienna Act and specifically 
 reiterated by Frederick William HI. 
 
 The Polish cause evoked a good deal of sympathy among 
 the German Liberals and even in Prussia itself. Nor is this 
 remarkable in view of the fact that Poles were in the fore- 
 front of the battle for political liberty in many parts of 
 Germany, and indeed of other countries. The influence of 
 the Poles of the dispersion upon the movement of 1848, as 
 Mr. H. A. L. Fisher has pointed out, has been curiously 
 ignored. They were to be 'found in the Saxon riots of '48 ; 
 in the Berlin barricades ; in the struggle for the Republic in 
 Baden ; in the Italian and Hungarian wars of liberation. . . . 
 Homeless and fearless, schooled in war and made reckless 
 by calamity, they have been the nerve of revolution wherever 
 they have been scattered by the winds of misfortune.' ' 
 
 This being so, it can occasion little surprise that the Prussian 
 authorities should have hastened to repress the insurrectionary 
 movement in Posen — still less that Bismarck should from the 
 very outset of his career have regarded Poland with a jealous 
 eye. ' No one can doubt that an independent Poland would 
 be the irreconcilable enemy of Prussia, and would remain so 
 
 * The Republican Tradition in Europe ^ by H. A. L. Fisher, p. 213. 
 
THE PROBLEM OF POLAND 239 
 
 until they had conquered the mouth of the Vistula and every 
 Polish-speaking village in West and East Prussia, Posnania, 
 and Silesia.' Thus wrote Bismarck as far back as 1848. His 
 conviction was not weakened by the abortive insurrection 
 which broke out in the kingdom in 1863. * The Polish 
 Question', said Bismarck in that year to Sir Andrew 
 Buchanan, ' is a matter of life and death to us.' The help 
 afforded by Bismarck to Russia during the Polish insurrection 
 of 1863 laid the foundation of his whole diplomatic edifice. 
 Not only was it a ' matter of life and death ' to Bismarck that 
 the Russian Poles should be suppressed ; it was not less 
 important that Russia should be laid under an obligation 
 to Prussia. The fruits of the friendship then established were 
 gathered in Schleswig-Holstein, at Sadowa, and at Sedan. 
 
 Not until those fruits were safely garnered had Bismarck 
 leisure to deal with the Prussian Poles. His Polish policy 
 wears more than one aspect. One is suggested by a story 
 told by M. Moysset. A Polish grande dame, visiting a sick 
 peasant, was amazed to find hanging side by side upon the 
 wall the portraits of Pope Leo XHI, Kosciuszko, and Bismarck. 
 * Is Bismarck ', she asked, * held in equal honour in your house 
 with the Holy Father and our national hero ? ' ' Certainly,' 
 was the reply, ' for that is the great man who has revealed 
 to me, a poor peasant, that I have indeed a Polish fatherland.' ^ 
 To Bismarck, more perhaps than to any other single man, 
 the Prussian Pole owes the realization of the fact that the 
 Poles possess a real national unity, a real national identity. 
 
 How did Bismarck succeed in evoking that sentiment? 
 It was evoked by persistent persecution. The attack was 
 first directed against the religion and the education of the 
 Poles. ' The necessity for starting the Kulturkampf was 
 imposed upon me', Bismarck himself confessed mhis Recollec- 
 tions, ' by the Polish side of the question.' ^ His ultimate aim 
 was to Prussianize and to Protestantize the soul of Poland. He 
 began, therefore, with the schools. A law of March 11, 1872, 
 
 ^ Op. cit., p. 30. 
 
 ^ Cf. Martin, op. cit., p. 171. * La question polonaise, c'est le cultur- 
 kampf qui, sous une forme nouvelle, se survit depuis vingt-cinq ans.' 
 
240 THE EUROPEAN COMMONWEALTH 
 
 took away the inspection of schools from the clergy and 
 placed it in the hands of government officials. In 1873 the 
 German language was made the exclusive medium for secular 
 instruction, and even for religious instruction, when the pupils 
 were sufficiently advanced to understand it. Two years later 
 attempts were made, though without success, to prevent the 
 use of the native tongue at public meetings. But the curious 
 combination of nationalism and ultramontanism proved too 
 strong even for Bismarck. ' We will not go to Canossa ', he 
 had boastfully announced, ' either in the flesh or in the spirit.' 
 Pope Leo XIH was no Hildebrand; yet in the end Bismarck 
 found himself in the neighbourhood of Canossa, though by 
 a circuitous route ; and a compromise was effected. The 
 agreement with the Papacy brought no advantage to the 
 Poles. On the contrary, it enabled Bismarck to take further 
 steps towards the Germanization of the Polish children. After 
 Bismarck's fall the pressure was relaxed owing to Caprivi's 
 need for the support of the Polish parliamentary party in 
 carrying the Army Bills. But the relaxation was only tem- 
 porary. The formation, in 1894, of the Deutscher Ostmarken- 
 Verein announced the initiation of a fresh attempt to 
 Germanize the Eastern marches of the Empire. Association 
 has, however, been countered by association. The use of the 
 Polish tongue, so far from being abandoned, has ominously 
 increased. Polish names are more than ever conspicuous on 
 the sign-boards of the shops. Even the children have been 
 driven into revolt. In 1902 the members of the Prussian 
 Landtag learnt to their disgust that Polish children had 
 been cruelly flogged for refusing to say the Lord's Prayer in 
 German. In 1906 German was reintroduced as the medium 
 for religious instruction ; as a result, 400,000 children went 
 *on strike'. The attempt to capture the schools in the 
 interests of ' Germanization * has proved, therefore, not merely 
 a failure, but a ridiculous failure. In marked contrast to 
 Prussian policy in Poland we may recall the fact that the 
 British government pays considerable sums for the teaching 
 of the Irish language, and even bribes Irishmen with State 
 scholarships and prizes to learn that language. 
 
THE PROBLEM OF POLAND 241 
 
 Economic experiments in Poland have met with no better 
 success than educational. Since the year 1886 Prussia has 
 expended some ;^6o,ooo,ooo in an attempt to plant Germans 
 on the soil of Poland ; nearly 1,000,000 acres of land have 
 been acquired, and about 450 new villages have been built. 
 But if the effort of the Germanizers has been prodigious, it 
 has been more than countered by that of the Poles. The 
 latter met the policy of colonization by a policy of association. 
 The work of the Ansiedehings-Kommission was more than 
 matched by that of the Polish Agricultural Unions, Land 
 Banks, and Credit Societies. There were, before the War, in 
 Polish Prussia nearly 300 credit institutions, disposing of a 
 capital of 498,631,000 fr. derived solely from Polish sources, 
 belonging absolutely to the Poles, and directed by them, 
 according to the high authority of Mr. Geoffrey Drage, with 
 real skill. ' The Poles ', writes Mr. Drage, * have thus realized 
 one of the most efficacious means of defence against the attacks 
 by which their life as a nation is threatened. The loan banks, 
 trade associations, &c. which have sprung up in Posen and 
 West Prussia since i860 are instruments of the national 
 policy . . . and are gradually becoming, if they are not already, 
 the leading political power.' ^ Precisely parallel have been 
 the results of the agrarian policy so sedulously pursued by 
 Bismarck and his successors. The intrusion of the Govern- 
 ment into the Estate-market sent up the price of land so 
 rapidly that between 1900 and 191 2 it nearly doubled ; ^ some 
 Poles took advantage of the artificially-inflated price to sell 
 out and invest the proceeds either in trade or in land else- 
 where ; but most of the land was purchased from Germans 
 who were anxious to escape from an ineligible neighbourhood ; 
 with the final result that there are said to be more Polish land- 
 owners to-day than when Bismarck embarked on the ' planta- 
 tion ' policy in 1886. In West Prussia and Posnania 32,283 
 farms comprising 299,941 hectares passed between 1896 and 
 
 ^ Drage, Pre- War Statistics of Poland and Lithuaniay p. 70. Cf. also 
 Bernhard, Das Polnische Geineinwesen im Preussischen Staat, 191 o, 
 p. 154. 
 
 2 ' A hectare obtained by the medium of the Peasants' Bank cost m 
 1900, 388 fr., and in 191 2, 757 fr.' — Drage, op, cit.y p. 29. 
 
 2120 R 
 
242 THE EUROPEAN COMMONWEALTH 
 
 1 91 2 from German hands to Polish, while the number of farms 
 passing from Poles to Germans was only 16,105, comprising 
 200,253 hectares — showing a balance in favour of the Poles of 
 over 16,000 holdings and nearly 100,000 hectares.^ Well 
 might a Pole declare : ' C'est un vaudeville historique ' ; not 
 without reason did the Polish peasant put Bismarck side by 
 side with Kosciuszko and the Pope. The result is a triumph 
 for moral as against material forces. As M. Martin had 
 admirably put it : 
 
 ' C'est en Pologne surtout que la question sociale est une 
 question morale. Ainsi s'explique, mieux que par les secrets 
 d'une organisation savante, mais fortuite, et a laquelle les 
 Allemands peuvent opposer d'autres forces efficaces, la defaite 
 de I'argent prussien par le patriotisme polonais.' ^ 
 
 'We shall be masters of Poland', said Count Raczynski 
 in 1 848, ' when we are better educated, and richer than 
 the Germans.' Starting from that maxim, the Poles, as 
 Mr. Drage has shown, 'have set themselves, first by the 
 Marcinkowski and kindred societies, to educate a professional 
 and commercial class which has ousted both Germans and 
 Jews completely, and secondly by a network of co-operative 
 societies to obtain control of the commercial and agricultural 
 resources of the country, so that when political supremacy 
 comes it will not be the first but the last step to indepen- 
 dence.' ^ 
 
 It is not easy perhaps for an Englishman to judge impartially 
 the policy pursued by his own countrymen in Ireland or by 
 the Prussians in Poland. But an attempt has been made in 
 the foregoing pages to set forth the facts in the spirit not of 
 an advocate but of an historian. The facts may be allowed 
 to speak for themselves. English gold has been poured out 
 in order to transform the Irish tenants into occupying owners 
 and thus root them permanently in their native soil ; Prussian 
 gold has been lavishly expended in a futile effort to expropriate 
 the Polish landowners and to plant Germans in their place. 
 England during the last hundred years has been making tardy 
 
 * Drage, op. at., p. 31. ^ Op. cit.^ p. 193. =• Op. at., p. 82. 
 
 J 
 
THE PROBLEM OF POLAND 243 
 
 amends for the blunders of the past by admitting Irish Catholics 
 to full civil rights ; by endowing Catholic seminaries ; by 
 establishing a Catholic University ; by disestablishing and 
 disendowing the Church of the ascendancy. Prussia has 
 been engaged in a Kulturkampf which in its origin was 
 admittedly aimed at the Catholics of Poland. That Kidtur- 
 kampf, as Mr. Drage has truly said, * was the beginning of the 
 stern schooling . . . which has left the Prussian Poles the 
 soundest economic Polish unit ', which has fitted the ' Prussian 
 Poles to lead their fellow countrymen', and has prepared 
 German Poland to * form the nucleus of a new Government '} 
 Similarly, in regard to education, the English government has 
 subsidized the teaching of Irish in Irish schools ; the govern- 
 ment of Prussia has done all in its power to eradicate the use 
 of the native Polish tongue. 
 
 That England's past record in Ireland is clean no candid 
 student will affirm ; but the attempt to find a parallel with 
 Prussian policy in Poland must, to be successful, involve remote 
 historical research. There was ' plantation ' in the seventeenth 
 century; there was persecution and proscription in the 
 eighteenth ; but the nineteenth has been in the main devoted, 
 sometimes with lack of tact though never of goodwill, to the 
 task of atonement and reparation. 
 
 So far Prussia has not even pretended that she means to 
 embark upon a similar policy in Poland. The failure of 
 Bismarckian ruthlessness has never been acknowledged. The 
 Kaiser has not announced any reversal of his Polish policy. 
 All that the proclamation of November .5, 1916, did was to 
 promise some undefined form of independence to Russian 
 Poland under a German monarch. The status of Prussian 
 Poland remains unchanged. ^ 
 
 1 op. cil., p. 5. 
 
 R % 
 
AU S T R I 
 
 BALKAN STATES 
 
 English Miles 
 
 <^VRUSSIA 
 
 Jajssyy 
 
 X V.BESSARABIA 
 
 y 
 
 » »> Greece- « 
 
 Ced&d to BulOaria by the. TrextJty 
 of London May 30^/913, netrocexfed 
 to Turkey Sept. 29*^' 1913. 
 State- frontiers ——■■■.— ——■i»» 
 Old " 
 
CHAPTER XI 
 
 THE PROBLEM OF THE NEAR EAST 
 
 A Preliminary Survey 
 
 ' Des qu'il y eut des Turcs en Europe, il y eut ime question d'Orient, et 
 des que la Russie fut une puissance europeenne, elle pretendit resoudre 
 cette question h son profit.'— Albert Sorel. 
 
 ' Amongst the great problems of our age none is more fitted to occupy 
 the thoughts, not only of the professional statesman but of every keen- 
 sighted individual who takes an interest in politics, than the so-called 
 Eastern Question. It is the pivot upon which the general politics of 
 the century now drawing to an end are turning, and it will be so for the 
 coming century also. ... It is not a question which has disturbed the 
 peace of Europe only yesterday : it is not even a production of this 
 century. It has exercised a powerful influence upon the course of the 
 world's history for above 500 years.' — J. J. I. VON Dollinger. 
 
 The words of Dr. von Dollinger, quoted above, were written 
 at the close of the nineteenth century. They state, on the one 
 hand, an indisputable fact ; on the other, they contain a remark- 
 able prediction which is already in process of fulfilment. 
 The present War is destined, we would fain hope, to untie 
 many historical knots ; to solve many political problems ; 
 to determine for all time many questions which for years past 
 have baffled the skill of statesmen and diplomatists. Some 
 critics may be tempted to suggest that the soldiers and sailors, 
 if unhampered by politics and diplomacy, would have cut the 
 knots long ago, and they are entitled to point to the effective 
 intervention of Codrington at Navarino. But this is a paren- 
 thesis which it is unnecessary to pursue. Certain it is that 
 among the difficulties which remain to be solved there is none 
 more intricate and tangled, and none the solution of which is 
 more eagerly or more confidently anticipated, than the Problem 
 of the Near East. 
 
 From time immemorial Europe has been confronted with 
 an * Eastern Question '. In its essence the problem is un- 
 
:24^ THE EUROPEAN COMMONWEALTH 
 
 changing. It has arisen from the clash in the lands of South- 
 Eastern Europe between the habits, ideas, and preconceptions 
 of the West and those of the East. But, although one in 
 essence, the problem has assumed different aspects at different 
 periods. In the dawn of authentic history it is represented 
 by the contest between the Greeks and the Persians, the heroic 
 struggle enshrined in the memory of Marathon, Thermopylae, 
 and Salamis. To the Roman the * Eastern Question ' centred 
 in his duel with the great Hellenistic monarchies. In the early 
 Middle Ages the problem was represented by the struggle 
 between the forces of Islam and those of Christianity. That 
 struggle reached its climax, for the time being, in the great 
 battle of Tours (7^2). The chivalry of Western Europe 
 renewed the contest, some centuries later, in the Crusades. 
 The motives which inspired that movement were curiously 
 mixed, but essentially they afforded a further manifestation of 
 the secular rivalry between Cross and Crescent ; a contest 
 between Crusaders and Infidels for possession of the lands 
 hallowed to every Christian, by their association with the life 
 of Christ on earth. 
 
 With none of these earlier manifestations of an immemorial 
 antithesis is this chapter concerned. Its main purpose is to 
 sketch in broad outline the historical evolution of a problem 
 which has baffled the ingenuity of European diplomatists, in 
 a general sense, for more than five hundred years, more 
 specifically and insistently for about a century. In the voca- 
 bulary of English diplomacy the Eastern Question was not 
 included until the period of the Greek War of Independence 
 (1821-9), though the phrase is said to be traceable at least as 
 far back as the battle of Lepanto (157 1). A definition of the 
 ' Question ', at once authoritative and satisfactory, is hard to 
 come by. Lord Morley, obviously appreciating the difficulty, 
 once spoke of it, with characteristic felicity, as ' that shifting, 
 intractable, and interwoven tangle of conflicting interests, rival 
 peoples, and antagonistic faiths that is veiled under the easy 
 name of the Eastern Question'. A brilliant French writer, 
 M. Edouard Driault, has defined it as ' Le probleme de la ruine 
 de la puissance politique de ITslam'. But this definition seems 
 
THE PROBLEM OF THE NEAR EAST 247 
 
 unnecessarily broad. Dr. Miller, with more precision, has 
 explained it thus : * The Near Eastern Question may be 
 defined as the problem of filling up the vacuum created by 
 the gradual disappearance of the Turkish Empire from 
 Europe.' But though this definition is unexceptionable as 
 far as it goes, our purpose seems to demand something at 
 once more explicit and more explanatory. Putting aside the 
 many difficult problems connected with the position of Otto- 
 man power in Asia and Africa, the ' Eastern Question ' may 
 be taken, for the purpose of the present survey, to include : 
 
 First and primarily: The part played by the Ottoman 
 Turks in the history of Europe since they first crossed the 
 Hellespont in the middle of the fourteenth century ; 
 
 Secondly: The position of the loosely designated Balkan 
 States, which, like Greece, Serbia, Bulgaria, and Roumania, 
 have gradually re-emerged as the waters of the Ottoman flood 
 have subsided ; or, like Montenegro, were never really sub- 
 merged ; or, like Bosnia, the Herzegovina, Transylvania, and 
 the Bukovina, have been annexed by the Habsburgs ; 
 
 Thirdly : The problem of the Black Sea ; egress from it, 
 ingress to it ; the command of the Bosphorus and the 
 Dardanelles, and, above all, the capital problem as to the 
 possession of Constantinople ; 
 
 Fourthly : The position of Russia in Europe ; her natural 
 impulse towards the Mediterranean ; her repeated attempts 
 to secure a permanent access thereto by the narrow straits ; 
 her relation to her co-religionists under the sway of the Sultan, 
 more particularly to those of her own Slavonic nationality ; 
 
 Fifthly: The position of the Habsburg Empire, and in 
 particular its anxiety for access to the Aegean, and its rela- 
 tions, on the one hand, with the Southern Slavs in the 
 annexed provinces of Dalmatia, Bosnia, and the Herzegovina, 
 as well as in the adjacent kingdoms of Serbia and Montenegro ; 
 and, on the other hand, with the Roumans of Transylvania and 
 the Bukovina ; and 
 
 Finally : The attitude of the European Powers in general, 
 and England in particular, towards all or any of the questions 
 enumerated above. 
 
24« THE EUROPEAN COMMONWEALTH 
 
 The primary factor in the problem is, then, the presence, 
 embedded in the living flesh of Europe, of an alien substance. 
 That substance is the Ottoman Turk. Akin to the European 
 family neither in creed, in race, in language, in social customs, 
 nor in political aptitudes and traditions, the Ottomans have 
 for more than five hundred years presented to the other 
 European Powers a problem, now tragic, now comic, now 
 bordering on burlesque, but always baffling and paradoxical. 
 How to deal with this alien substance has been, for centuries, 
 the essence and core of the Problem of the Near East. 
 
 Many contradictory attributes have been predicated of the 
 Ottoman Turks. They have been delineated by friends and 
 foes respectively as among the most amiable, and unquestion- 
 ably the most detestable of mankind ; but on one point all 
 observers are agreed. The Turk never changes. What he 
 was when he first effected a lodgement upon European soil, 
 that he remains to-day. Essentially the Ottoman Turk has 
 been from first to last a fighting man, a herdsman, and a 
 nomad. ' In the perpetual struggle ', writes one, ' between the 
 herdsman and the tiller of the soil, which has been waged 
 from remote ages on the continents of Europe and Asia, the 
 advance of the Ottomans was a decisive victory for the children 
 of the steppes. This feature of their conquest is of no less 
 fundamental importance than its victory for Islam.' * The 
 Turks ', writes another, * never outgrew their ancestral character 
 of predacious nomads ; they take much and give little.' 
 
 Thus, to close observers, the Turks have always given the 
 impression of transitoriness ; of being strangers and sojourners 
 in a land that is not their own. * Here ', they have seemed to 
 say, * we have no abiding city.' * A band of nomadic warriors 
 we are here to-day ; we shall be gone to-morrow.' 
 
 But the sense of temporary occupation was not inconsistent 
 'with a rigid conservatism as long as the occupation might last. 
 And in nothing have the Ottomans shown themselves more 
 conservative than in fulfilment of the obligations which they 
 inherited from their predecessors. No sooner were they 
 masters of the imperial city than they made it plain to the 
 world that they regarded themselves as the legitimate heirs of 
 
THE PROBLEM OF THE NEAR EAST 249 
 
 the Byzantine Empire. No Greek could have exhibited more 
 zeal than Sultan Mohammed in resisting the encroachments, 
 whether territorial or ecclesiastical, of the Latins. Venetians, 
 Genoese, and Franks were alike made to realize that the Turk 
 was at least as Greek as his predecessor in title. Most clearly 
 was this manifested in his dealings with the Orthodox Church. 
 In every way that Church was encouraged to look to the Sultan 
 as its protector against the pretensions of the rival Rome. Thus 
 the Patriarch became in effect the Pope of the Eastern Church. 
 He was invested, indeed, with extraordinary privileges. After 
 the conquest, as before, he was permitted to summon periodical 
 synods, to hold ecclesiastical courts, and to enforce the sentences 
 of the courts with spiritual penalties.^ 
 
 Nor was the favour shown to the Greeks confined to 
 ecclesiastics. On the contrary, the Sultans developed among 
 the Greek laymen a sort of administrative aristocracy. Known 
 as Phanariots from the Phanar, the particular quarter which 
 they inhabited in Constantinople, these shrewd and service- 
 able Greeks were utilized by the Turks for the performance of 
 duties for which the conquerors had neither liking nor apti- 
 tude. The Turk is curiously devoid of that sense which the 
 ancient Greeks described as political. He desires neither to 
 govern nor to be governed. He is a military not a ' political 
 animal '. To conquer and to enjoy in ease the fruits of con- 
 quest has always been his ideal of life. With the dull details 
 of administration he has never cared to concern himself. That 
 was the work of ' slaves ', and as a fact, though none but a 
 Moslem could in theory aspire to the highest administrative 
 posts, the actual work of administration was confided to the 
 Phanariots. Whether this practice, in the long run, contributed 
 either to the well-being of Christianity in the dominions of the 
 Porte, or to the better government of the Greek population, 
 is a moot point. Here it must suffice to say that while the 
 Higher Clergy of the Orthodox Church became almost wholly 
 dependent upon the State, the parish priests laboured with 
 extraordinary devotion to keep alive among their flocks the 
 flame of nationality even more perhaps than the tenets of 
 ^ Hutton, Constantinople,'^. 156. 
 
250 THE EUROPEAN COMMONWEALTH 
 
 Orthodoxy. To their efforts, maintained with remarkable 
 perseverance throughout a period of four and a half centuries, 
 the success of the Greek revival, in the early nineteenth 
 century, was largely due. 
 
 The attitude of the Ottomans towards the Greek Christians 
 was inspired by a mixture of motives. It was due partly 
 to an innate sense of toleration, and still more perhaps to 
 invincible indolence. In view of the hideous massacres perpe- 
 trated by Abdul Hamid it is not easy to insist that religious 
 toleration is one of the cardinal virtues of the Turk. Yet the 
 fact is incontestable.^ Although the Ottoman State was essen- 
 tially theocratic in theory and in structure, although the sole 
 basis of political classification was ecclesiastical,^ the Turk was 
 one of the least intolerant of rulers. He was also one of the 
 most indolent. So long as his material necessities were 
 supplied by his subjects the precise methods of local govern- 
 ment and administration were matters of indifference to him. 
 This had its good and its bad side. It left the conquered 
 peoples very much at the mercy of petty tyrants, but where 
 the local circumstances were unfavourable to local tyrannies 
 it left the people very much to themselves. Hence that 
 considerable measure of local autonomy which has frequently 
 been noted as one of the many contradictory features of 
 Ottoman government in Europe, and which largely contri- 
 .buted, when the time came, to the resuscitation of national 
 self-consciousness among the conquered peoples. 
 
 The traits already delineated may perhaps account for 
 another marked characteristic of Ottoman history. Whether 
 it be due to pride or to indolence, to spiritual exclusiveness 
 or political indifference, the fact remains that the Turks have 
 neither absorbed nor been absorbed by the conquered peoples ; 
 still less have they permitted any assimilation among the 
 conquered peoples. Mr. Freeman put this point, with charac- 
 teristic emphasis, many years ago : 
 
 ^ Cf. a recent writer : * The Osmanlis were the first nation in modern 
 history to lay down the principle of religious freedom as the corner-stone 
 in the building up of their nation.' Gibbons, o/f. a/., and cf. an interesting 
 note on the Armenian massacres, p. 74. 
 
 '^ The Ottoman government took no account of 'nationalities'. If a 
 Turkish subject was not a Moslem, he was a * Greek '. 
 
THE PROBLEM OF THE NEAR EAST 351 
 
 ' The Turks, though they have been in some parts of Turkey 
 for five hundred years, have still never become the people of 
 the land, nor have they in any way become one with the people 
 of the land. They still remain as they were when they first 
 came in, a people of strangers bearing rule over the people of 
 the land, but in every way distinct from them.' 
 
 The original Ottoman invaders were relatively few in num- 
 bers, and throughout the centuries they have continued to be 
 ' numerically inferior to the aggregate of their subjects '. But 
 for two facts it is almost certain that like the Teuton invaders 
 of Gaul they would have been absorbed by the people whom 
 they conquered. The Teuton conquerors of Gaul were pagans, 
 the Turks, on the contrary, brought with them a highly 
 developed creed which virtually forbade assimilation. Under 
 the strict injunctions of the Koran the infidel must either 
 embrace Islamism, or suffer death, or purchase, by the pay- 
 ment of a tribute, a right to the enjoyment of life and property. 
 Only in Albania was there any general acceptance of the 
 Moslem creed among the masses of the population. In 
 Bosnia, and in a less degree in Bulgaria, the larger landowners 
 purchased immunity by conversion ; but, generally speaking, 
 the third of the alternatives enjoined by the Koran was the 
 one actually adopted. Christianity consequently survived in 
 most parts of the Turkish Empire. And the Turk shrewdly 
 turned its survival to his own advantage. The second pertinent 
 consideration is that the conquered peoples were hopelessly 
 divided amongst themselves. Before the coming of the Turk 
 the Bulgarians had been constantly at the throats of the 
 Serbians, and both at those of the Greeks. This antagonism 
 the Turk set himself sedulously to inflame, and with con- 
 spicuous success. As a close and discriminating observer has 
 justly said: 'they have always done and still do all in their 
 power to prevent the obliteration of racial, linguistic, and 
 religious differences,' with the result that 'they have per- 
 petuated and preserved, as in a museum, the strange medley 
 which existed in South-Eastern Europe during the last years 
 of the Byzantine Empire '.^ 
 
 * Eliot, Turkey in Europe^ p. 16. Cf. Rambaud, 3.^.HisL Gencfale, iv. 
 751 : ' L'assimilation, Tabsorption de run des deux elements par I'autre, 
 
252 THE EUROPEAN COMMONWEALTH 
 
 If the Turk was not, in the Aristotelian sense, a ' political 
 animal ', still less was he an ' economic man '. He adhered 
 faithfully to his primitive nomadic instincts. There is a pro- 
 verbial saying in the East : where the Turk plants his foot the 
 grass never grows again. To a nomad it is a matter of 
 indifference whether it does or not. He is a herdsman, not 
 a tiller of the soil. Agriculture and commerce are alike 
 beneath his notice, except, of course, as a source of revenue. 
 Here, as in the lower ranks of the administrative hierarchy, 
 the Greek could be pre-eminently useful to his new sovereign. 
 Consequently the city Greeks in Constantinople, for example, 
 and Salonika and Athens, were protected by a substantial 
 tariff against foreign competition. In the sixteenth century 
 the expulsion of the Moors from Grenada led to a consider- 
 able influx of Moors and Spanish Jews into Salonika, where 
 they still predominate, and even into Constantinople. In them 
 and also in the Armenians the Greek traders found powerful 
 competitors, both in finance and commerce. For the governing 
 Turks these matters had no interest except in so far as they 
 affected the contributions to the imperial treasury. So long 
 as that was full it mattered nothing to them who were the 
 contributors, or whence their wealth was derived. 
 
 Such were some of the outstanding characteristics of the 
 people who in the middle of the fifteenth century crossed 
 from the southern to the northern shore of the Hellespont, 
 and effected upon European soil that encampment from which 
 they are not yet completely dislodged. 
 
 We may now trace, in brief outline, the main stages by 
 which the rule of the Ottomans was established in Europe, 
 and explain the reasons for its initial success and its subse- 
 quent decadence. 
 
 The origins of the Turkish tribe, subsequently known as the 
 Osmanlis or Ottomans, are shrouded in baffling obscurity. But 
 the Ottomans emerge into the realm of tolerably authentic 
 history in the thirteenth century. Some two centuries earlier 
 
 ^tait impossible gr^ce k Topposition du Koran k I'^vangile, du croissant k 
 la croix. Plus d'une fois les Osmanlis ayant conscience de leur inferiority 
 numdrique s'inquiet^rent de cette situation grosse de perils pour I'avenir 
 de leur puissance.' 
 
THE PROBLEM OF THE NEAR EAST 2^^ 
 
 the Seljukian Turks had established a great Empire in Asia 
 Minor with its capital at Nicaea. By assuming the designa- 
 tion of Sultans of Roum, these Seljuk potentates flung down 
 a challenge to the lords of the new Rome on the Bosphorus, 
 and of this challenge the crusading movement was a direct 
 consequence. From Nicaea the Seljuks were driven back to 
 Iconium, which may yet become the capital of their Ottoman 
 cousins. The latter, driven from their original home in the 
 Farther East by the pressure of the Moguls, settled in Anatolia, 
 under the protection of the Seljuks, in the early years of the 
 thirteenth century. Under Osman or Othman (1388-1326),^ 
 these migrant herdsmen gradually supplanted their protectors 
 as the dominant power in the hinterland of Asia Minor. Under 
 Othman's son Orkhan (1326-59) a notable advance was regis- 
 tered. Broussa, Nicaea, Nicomedia, and the greater part of 
 the Byzantine Empire in Asia fell into the hands of the 
 Othmans, and in 1345 their help was invoked by the rival 
 Emperors who were fighting for possession of the pitiful 
 remnant of the Eastern Empire. Orkhan went to the assis- 
 tance of the Emperor John Cantacuzenos in 1345, and was 
 rewarded by the hand of Theodora, daughter of Cantacuzenos 
 and granddaughter of the Bulgarian Tsar. This marriage 
 may be regarded as the first step towards the establishment of 
 an Ottoman- Byzantine Empire in Europe. In 1349 Orkhan's 
 assistance* was again invoked by his father-in-law, to help in 
 repelling the attacks of the Serbians, now at the zenith of 
 their power, upon Macedonia. Orkhan's response was suspi- 
 ciously prompt, and again a large body of Ottoman warriors 
 feasted their eyes with a vision of the promised land. 
 
 Thus far the Ottoman horsemen, once their mission was 
 accomplished, had duly withdrawn to their home on the Asiatic 
 shore. But we are now on the eve of one of the cardinal 
 events in world-history. That event was, in one sense, the 
 natural sequel to those which immediately preceded it ; 
 nevertheless it stands out as marking the definite opening of 
 a new chapter. In 1353 Cantacuzenos once more appealed for 
 
 ^ From him the tribe, destined to fame as the conquerors of Constan- 
 tinople and inheritors of the Byzantine Empire, took their name. 
 
254 THE EUROPEAN COMMONWEALTH 
 
 the help of the Ottoman Sultan against the Serbians : accord- 
 ingly, Orkhan sent over his son Suleiman Pasha, by whose aid 
 the Serbians were defeated at Demotika, and the Greeks 
 recaptured the Thracian capital Adrianople. In acknowledge- 
 ment of these signal services Suleiman Pasha received the 
 fortress of Tzympe, and there the Ottomans effected their 
 first lodgement on European soil. Much to the chagrin of the 
 rival emperors, Gallipoli fell before the Ottomans' assault in 
 the following year (1354), and a few years later Demotika also 
 was taken. By this time the breach between Orkhan and his 
 father-in-law was complete, and henceforward the Osmanli 
 horsemen fought in Europe no longer as auxiliaries but as 
 principals. The grip which they had now got upon the 
 European shore of the Dardanelles was never afterwards 
 relaxed. 
 
 Before proceeding to glance at the wonderful achievements 
 of the Ottomans in Europe it may be desirable to see some- 
 thing of the condition of the lands over which they were 
 destined to bear rule. 
 
 The Greek Empire was, as we have hinted, in the last stage 
 of emasculate decay. Territorially, it had shrunk to the 
 narrowest limits, little wider, in fact, than those, to which the 
 Ottoman Empire in Europe is reduced to-day. The Empire 
 of Trebizond represented the remnant of its possessions in 
 Asia, while in Europe, apart from Constantinople and Thrace, 
 it held only the Macedonian coast with the city of Salonika 
 and the Eastern Peloponnesus. Hungary, Transylvania, 
 Wallachia, Croatia, and Bosnia owned the sway of Lewis the 
 Great ; the Serbian Empire stretched from Belgrade to the 
 Gulf of Corinth, from the Adriatic to the Aegean; Bulgaria 
 held what we know as Bulgaria proper and Eastern Roumelia ; 
 Dalmatia, Corfu, Crete, and Euboea were in the hands of 
 Venice ; the Knights of St. John were in possession of 
 Rhodes ; while the Franks still held the Kingdom of Cyprus, 
 the Principality of Achaia, the Duchies of Athens, Naxos, and 
 Cephalonia, not to speak of many of the Aegean islands. 
 Little, therefore, was left to the successors of the Caesars in 
 Constantinople. 
 
THE PROBLEM OF THE NEAR EAST 255 
 
 When the Romans had first made themselves masters of 
 South-Eastern Europe they had found three great races in 
 possession: the lUyrians, the Thracians, and the Hellenes. The 
 Illyrians, who established the kingdom of Epirus in the fourth 
 century B.C., were represented in the thirteenth century, as 
 they are still, by the mountaineers of Albania. The Thracians, 
 dominant during the Macedonian supremacy, mingled with 
 Trojan's colonists in Dacia to form the people represented by 
 the modern Roumanians. But neither of these aboriginal 
 races would perhaps have preserved, through the ages, their 
 identity but for the existence of the third race, the Greeks. 
 It was the Greeks who, by their superiority to their Roman 
 conquerors in all the elements of civilization, prevented the 
 absorption of the other races by the Romans, and so con- 
 tributed to that survival of separate nationalities which, from 
 that day to this, has constituted one oif the special peculiarities 
 of Balkan politics. Of the Illyrians in Albania it need only 
 be said that they have successfully resisted absorption by the 
 Turks as they had previously resisted similar efforts on the 
 part of Romans, Byzantines, and Slavs. 
 
 The Thracians in the Danubian Principalities have played 
 a more important part in Balkan history. As regards 
 Roumania, that history is largely the outcome of geography. 
 Just as Hungarians represent a great Magyar wedge thrust in 
 between the Northern and the Southern Slavs, so do the 
 Roumanians represent a Latin wedge, distinct and aloof from 
 all their immediate neighbours, though not devoid, especially 
 in language, of many traces of Slav influences. Towards the 
 close of the third century {circ. A.D. 271) the Emperor Aurelian 
 was compelled by Barbarian inroads to abandon his distant 
 colony and to withdraw the Roman legions, and for nearly 
 a thousand years, reckoning to the Tartar invasion of 124I) 
 Dacia was nothing but a highway for successive tides of 
 Barbarian invaders, Goths, Huns, Lombards, Avars, and Slavs. 
 The Daco-Romans themselves were completely submerged. 
 
 But though submerged they were not dissipated. The 
 southern portion of what is now Roumania emerged, towards 
 the close of the thirteenth century, as the Principality of 
 
Q.^:fi THE EUROPEAN COMMONWEALTH 
 
 Wallachia (or Muntenia, i. e. mountain-land) ; the northern, 
 a century later, came to be known as the Principality of 
 Moldavia. Both principalities were founded by immigrant 
 Rouman nobles from Transylvania, and, as a consequence, 
 Roumania has always been distinguished from the other 
 Balkan provinces by the survival of a powerful native aristo- 
 cracy. In Serbia the nobles were exterminated ; in Bosnia 
 they saved their property by the surrender of their faith ; in 
 Roumania alone did they retain both. 
 
 Such was the position of the Danubian principalities when 
 the Ottomans began their career of conquest in South-Eastern 
 Europe. The principalities had never been in a position, like 
 their neighbours to the south and west of them, to aspire to 
 a dominant place in Balkan politics. Nor were they, like those 
 neighbours, exposed to the first and full fury of the Ottoman 
 attack. 
 
 The attack was irresistible, and within two hundred years 
 almost the whole of the varied and widely distributed dominions 
 enumerated in the foregoing paragraphs — to say nothing of 
 extra-European lands — had been swept into the net of the 
 Ottoman Empire. Adrianople was snatched from the feeble 
 hands of the Byzantine Emperor in 1361, and thenceforward 
 until 1453 ^^s the European capital of the Turkish Emir. The 
 Bulgarians had to surrender Philippolis in 1363, Sophia in 1382, 
 while the destruction of Tirnovo in 1393 marked the extinction, 
 for nearly five hundred years, of Bulgarian independence. 
 Meanwhile, a crushing defeat had been inflicted upon a great 
 Slavonic combination. The historic battle fought upon the 
 plain of Kossovo (1389) meant more than the overthrow of the 
 Serbian Empire : it meant the political effacement, for many 
 long years, of the Southern Slavs.^ By this time, however, 
 Christendom was awakening to the gravity of the Ottoman 
 peril. Still greater was the alarm when in 1396 Sigismond 
 of Hungary, at the head of a Western Crusade, was over- 
 thrown in the battle of Nicopolis. But the seat of Empire 
 
 ^ Serbia was at once reduced to the position of a tributary principality, 
 and was annexed to the Ottoman Empire in 1459. Bosnia was annexed 
 in 1465. 
 
THE PROBLEM OF THE NEAR EAST 257 
 
 was still untaken, and in the early years of the fifteenth 
 century it seemed not impossible that the final disaster might 
 yet be averted, that Constantine's city might yet be saved 
 from the grip of the Moslem. 
 
 The attention of the Turkish conquerors was temporarily 
 averted from Constantinople, first by the advance of Timur the 
 Tartar — the famous Tamerlane — and a little later by the 
 brilliant exploits of George.Castriotes, better known as Iskender 
 Bey or Scanderbeg, and better still as 'the Dragon of Albania'. 
 For nearly a quarter of a century Scanderbeg carried on 
 guerrilla warfare against the Turks ; in 1461 the independence 
 of Albania was acknowledged and the ' Dragon ' was recog- 
 nized as lord of Albania and Thessaly.^ But the onward rush 
 of Ottoman waters was not really arrested by this memorable 
 episode. In 1453 *^^ Imperial city fell before the assault of 
 Mohammed, and the Greek Empire was at an end. 
 
 Whether regard be paid to historical sentiment or to political, 
 economic, intellectual, and spiritual consequences, the capture 
 of Constantinople by the Ottomans must assuredly be counted 
 as one of the most significant events in the history of the world. 
 The final extinction of the older Roman Empire ; the b locking *? 
 of the ancient paths of commerce ;^ the diversion of trade, and, / 
 withtradepef-political importance from the Mediterranean 
 lands ; the discovery of America and the Cape route to the 
 East ; the emergence of England from the economic sloth and 
 obscurity of the Middle Ages ; the new birth of humanism ; 
 the impulse to religious questionings ; the development of 
 national polities and national Churches — all these results and 
 others may be attributed indirectly and many of them directly 
 to the Turkish conquest of the city of Constantine. 
 
 For two hundred and fifty years after the capture of 
 Constantinople the Turks continued to be a terror to Europe. 
 For many years they waged successful wars with Venice and 
 with Hungary; early in the sixteenth century they extended 
 
 1 After Scanderbeg's death (1457) Albania was annexed to the Ottoman 
 Empire. 
 
 ^ The subsequent conquest of Syria and Egypt blocked the Southern, 
 as that of Constantinople had blocked the Northern routes. 
 
 2120 S 
 
25« THE EUROPEAN COMMONWEALTH 
 
 their sway over Syria, Egypt, Arabia, and northern Mesopo- 
 tamia ; Rhodes was captured in 15^12, and Hungary, except 
 for a narrow strip left to the Habsburgs, was annexed to their 
 Empire as the Pashalik of Buda (1526) ; the Roumans of 
 Transylvania, Moldavia, and Wallachia were reduced to vassal- 
 dom. Turkish power reached its zenith during the reign of 
 Suleiman * the Magnificent* (1520-66). The Turkish ' Emirs ' 
 had long ago exchanged the title for that of Sultan, and to the 
 Sultanate Suleiman's predecessor had added the Caliphate. 
 Successor to the Prophet ; spiritual father of the whole 
 Moslem world ; Suleiman ruled as temporal lord from Buda 
 to Basra, from the Danube to the Persian Gulf 
 
 * On the north [says Fin lay] their frontiers were guarded 
 against the Poles by the fortress of Kamenietz, and against 
 the Russians by the walls of Azof; while to the south the 
 rock of Aden secured their authority over the southern coast 
 of Arabia, invested them with power in the Indian Ocean, 
 and gave them the complete command of the Red Sea. To the 
 east, the Sultan ruled the shores of the Caspian, from the 
 Kour to the Tenek ; and his dominions stretched westward 
 along the southern coast of the Mediterranean, where the 
 farthest limits of the regency of Algiers, beyond Oran, meet 
 the frontiers of the empire of Morocco. By rapid steps the 
 Ottomans completed the conquest of the Seljouk sultans in 
 Asia Minor, of the Mamlouk sultans of Syria and Egypt, 
 of the fierce corsairs of Northern Africa, expelled the Venetians 
 from Cyprus, Crete, and the Archipelago, and drove the 
 knights of St. John of Jerusalem from the Levant, to find 
 a shelter at Malta. It was no vain boast of the Ottoman 
 Sultan that he was the master of many kingdoms, the ruler of 
 three continents and the lord of two seas.' 
 
 The achievement was indeed stupendous, but its brilliance 
 was evanescent. The seeds of decay were already germinating 
 even amid the splendours of the reign of Suleiman. The 
 astonishing success of the Ottoman invaders was due partly 
 to conditions external to themselves, partly to their own 
 characteristics and institutions. The irrecoverable decrepitude 
 of the Greek Empire ; the proverbial lack of political cohesion 
 among the Slav peoples ; the jealousy and antagonism of the 
 Christian Powers ; the high military prowess and shrewd 
 statesmanship of many of the earlier Sultans — all these things 
 
 J 
 
THE PROBLEM OF THE NEAR EAST 259 
 
 contributed to the amazing rapidity with which the Ottomans 
 overran South-Eastern Europe. But unquestionably the most 
 potent instrument of conquest was forged in the institution of 
 Christian child-tribute, the formation of the famous Corps of 
 Janissaries. 
 
 After the middle of the sixteenth century, however, the 
 Janissaries lost some of their original characteristics. In 1566 
 members of the Corps were permitted to marry, and in time to 
 enrol their sons. They began, therefore, to look with jealousy 
 upon the admission of the tribute-children, and before the end 
 of the seventeenth century the tribute ceased to be levied. 
 Corruption, meanwhile, was eating into the vitals of Ottoman 
 government, both in the capital and in the provinces. Worse 
 still, the soldiers of the Crescent continued to fight, but no 
 longer to conquer. The only permanent conquests effected 
 by the Turk after 1566 were those of Cyprus and Crete. 
 Ceasing to advance, the Turkish power rapidly receded. 
 Success in arms was essential to vigour of domestic administra- 
 tion, and both depended upon the personal qualities of the 
 rulers. 
 
 After Suleiman there was hardly one man of mark among 
 the Sultans until the accession of Mahmud the Second in 
 1808. When absolutism ceases to be efficient, decadence is 
 necessarily rapid. In the case of the Turks it was temporarily 
 arrested by the emergence of a remarkable Albanian family, 
 the Kiuprilis, who supplied the Porte with a succession of 
 Viziers during the latter half of the seventeenth century. In 
 the first half of the century the Thirty Years' War had given 
 the Ottomans a magnificent chance of destroying the last 
 bulwark of Western Christendom. The earlier Sultans would 
 never have missed it ; but Othman the Second, Mustapha the 
 First, and Ibrahim were not the men to seize it, and Amurath 
 the Fourth was otherwise occupied. Such a chance never 
 recurs. In 1683 the Vizier Kara Mustapha carried the 
 victorious arms of Turkey to the very gates of Vienna ; 
 but the Habsburgs were saved by John Sobieski of Poland, 
 and in the last year of the century they inflicted a series of 
 crushing defeats upon the Turk. 
 
 S a 
 
26o THE EUROPEAN COMMONWEALTH 
 
 The tide had clearly turned. The naval defeat at Lepanto 
 (1571) was, perhaps, a premature indication; after Monte- 
 cuculi's victory at St. Gothard (1664), and Prince Eugene's at 
 Zenta (1697), men could no longer doubt it. The diplomatic 
 system was also crumbling. Louis the Fourteenth followed 
 as best he could the evil example of Francis the First ; but 
 alliance with the Kiuprilis was not the same thing as friend- 
 ship with Suleiman ; the Turk was too hopelessly decadent to 
 be an efifective factor in French diplomacy. The Venetian 
 conquest of the Morea, the resounding victories of the 
 HabsburgSj above all the entrance of Russia on the stage 
 of European politics, announced the opening of a new chapter 
 in the history of the Eastern Question. 
 
 Ever since the early years of the eighteenth century Europe 
 has been haunted by the apprehension of the consequences 
 likely to ensue upon the demise of the ' sick man ', and the 
 subsequent disposition of his heritage. For nearly two 
 hundred years it was assumed that the inheritance would 
 devolve upon one or more of the Great Powers. That the 
 submerged nationalities of the Balkan peninsula would ever 
 again be in a position to exercise any decisive influence upon 
 the destinies of the lands they still peopled was an idea too 
 remote from actualities to engage even the passing attention 
 of diplomacy. From the days of Alberoni a long succession 
 of ingenious diplomatists have been wont to find. amusement 
 in schemes for the partition of the Ottoman Empire, but none 
 of these schemes paid any heed to the claims of the indigenous 
 inhabitants. It would, indeed, have been remarkable if they 
 had ; for from the fifteenth century to the nineteenth nothing 
 was heard and little was known of Bulgar, Slav, or Greek. 
 The problem of the Near East concerned not the peoples of 
 the Balkans, but the Powers of Europe, and among the Powers 
 primarily Russia. 
 
 In its second phase (170:^-1820) the Eastern Question might 
 indeed be defined as the Relations of Russia and Turkey. 
 The Habsburgs were frequently on the stage, but rarely in 
 the leading role, and the part they played became more and i 
 
THE PROBLEM OF THE NEAR EAST 261 
 
 more definitely subsidiary as the eighteenth century advanced. 
 From the days of Peter the Great to those of Alexander I 
 Europe, not indeed without spasmodic protests from France, 
 acquiesced in the assumption that Russia might fairly claim 
 a preponderant interest in the settlement of the Eastern 
 Question. This acquiescence seems to a later generation the 
 more remarkable in view of the fact that Russia herself had 
 so lately made her entrance upon the stage of European 
 politics. Perhaps, however, this fact in itself explains the 
 acquiescence. Russia was already pushing towards the Black 
 Sea before Western Europe recognized her existence. 
 
 By the conquest of Azov (1696) Peter the Great ' opened 
 a window to the South'. It was closed again as a result of 
 the capitulation of the Pruth (17 11); but the set-back was 
 temporary, and by the Treaty of Belgrade (1739) Azov was 
 restored in permanence to Russia. 
 
 The occupation of Azov was the first breach in the continuity 
 of Ottoman territory round the shores of the Black Sea. 
 Hitherto that sea had been a Turkish lake. But though 
 Russia now touched its shores, no firm grip upon it was 
 obtained until the war which was ended by the Treaty of 
 Kutchuck-Kainardji (1774). 
 
 Of all the many treaties concluded between Russia and 
 Turkey that was the most momentous. The Turkish frontier 
 on the north-east was driven back to the Boug ; the Tartars 
 to the east of that river were declared independent of the 
 Porte, except in ecclesiastical affairs ; important points on the 
 seaboard passed to Russia, and the latter obtained the right of 
 free commercial navigation in the Black Sea. More than 
 this : the Danubian principalities and the islands of the Aegean 
 Archipelago were restored to the Porte, only on condition of 
 better government, and Russia reserved to herself the right 
 of remonstrance if that condition was not observed. Most 
 significant of all : Russia stipulated for certain privileges to be 
 accorded to the Christian subjects of the Porte. To say that 
 thenceforward Russia was the ' protector ' of the Greek Chris- 
 tians in the Balkan Peninsula would be technically unwarrant- 
 able ; but certain it is that the ground was prepared for the 
 
262 THE EUROPEAN COMMONWEALTH 
 
 assertion of claims which in 1854 occasioned the Crimean 
 War. 
 
 The Treaty of Kainardji was the first of many milestones 
 marking the journey of the Romanoffs towards the Bosphorus. 
 Jassy (1792) was the next; Bucharest followed (18 12), and 
 then came (1829) the famous Treaty of Adrianople. But 
 before that milestone was reached new factors in the problem 
 were beginning to make their presence felt. 
 
 France had never been unmindful of her interests in the 
 Eastern Mediterranean. By the capitulations of 1535 Francis I 
 had obtained from Suleiman the Magnificent considerable 
 trading privileges in Egypt. D'Argenson, in 1738, published 
 an elaborate plan for the construction of a canal through the 
 Isthmus of Suez, and for restoring, by the enterprise of French 
 traders and the efforts of French administrators, political order 
 and commercial prosperity in Egypt. In the negotiations 
 between Catherine II and the Emperor Joseph for the parti- 
 tion of the Ottoman dominions the interests of France were 
 recognized by the assignment of Egypt and Syria to the 
 French monarch. 
 
 But it was Napoleon who first directed the attention of 
 the French people to the high significance of the problem of 
 the Near East. The acquisition of the Ionian Isles ; the 
 expedition to Egypt and Syria ; the grandiose schemes for an 
 attack on British India ; the agreement with the Tsar Alexander 
 for a partition of the Ottoman Empire — all combined to stir 
 the imagination alike of traders and diplomatists in France. 
 
 And not in France only. If Napoleon was a great educator 
 of the French, hardly less was he an educator of the English. 
 For some two hundred years English merchants had been 
 keenly alive to the commercial value of the Levant. The 
 politicians, however, were curiously but characteristically tardy 
 in awakening to the fact that the development of events in 
 the Ottoman Empire possessed any political significance for 
 England. The statesmen of the eighteenth century observed 
 with equal unconcern the decrepitude of the Turks and the 
 advance of the Russians. The younger Pitt was the first and 
 only one among them who displayed any interest in what, 
 
THE PROBLEM OF THE NEAR EAST 0,6^ 
 
 to his successors in Downing Street, became known as the 
 Eastern Question. With a prescience peculiar to himself he 
 perceived that England was supremely concerned in the 
 ultimate solution of that problem. His earliest diplomatic 
 achievement, the Triple Alliance of 1788, was designed largely, 
 though not exclusively, to circumscribe Russian ambitions in 
 the Near East. But his apprehensions were not shared by 
 his contemporaries. Few English statesmen have commanded 
 the confidence and the ear of the House of Commons as Pitt 
 commanded them. Yet even Pitt failed to arouse attention 
 to this subject, and when in 1790 he proposed a naval 
 demonstration against Russia he suffered one of the few 
 checks in his triumphant parliamentary career. The enemies 
 of England were less slow to perceive where her vital interests 
 lay. ' Really to conquer England ', said Napoleon, ' we must 
 make ourselves masters of Egypt.' 
 
 Hence the importance attached by General Bonaparte, at 
 the very outset of his political career, to the acquisition of the 
 Ionian Isles. Corfu, Zante, and Cephalonia were, he declared 
 in 1797, more important for France than the whole of Italy. 
 They were the stepping-stones to Egypt ; Egypt was a stage 
 on the high road to India. Hardly a generation had elapsed 
 since Clive, strenuously seconded by the elder Pitt, had 
 turned the French out of India. To Egypt, therefore, the 
 thoughts of Frenchmen naturally turned, not only as afford- 
 ing a guarantee for the maintenance of French commercial 
 interests in the Near East, but as a means of threatening 
 the position so recently acquired by England in the Farther 
 East. These ideas constantly recur in the reports of French 
 ambassadors, and Talleyrand, on taking office, found, as he 
 tells us, his official portfolio bulging with schemes for the 
 conquest of Egypt.^ Napoleon, therefore, in this as in other 
 things, was merely the heir and executor of the traditions 
 of the ancien rigime. He brought, however, to the execution 
 of these schemes a vigour which, of late years, the old 
 monarchy had conspicuously lacked. But even Napoleon was 
 only partially successful in arousing the attention of the 
 ^ C. de Freycinet, La Question (TEgypte, p. 2. 
 
264 THE EUROPEAN COMMONWEALTH 
 
 English people to the importance of the Eastern Mediter- 
 ranean. The decrepitude of the Turk, the advance of Russia, 
 the ambitions of France were regarded as the accentuation 
 of a problem that was local rather than European. 
 
 Not until the events which followed upon the insurrection 
 of the Greeks in 1821 did the English Foreign Office, still less 
 did the English public, begin to take a sustained interest in 
 the development of events in South- Eastern Europe. 
 
 The Greek revolution was indeed sufficiently startling 
 to arrest the attention even of the careless. For over 
 four hundred years the peoples of the peninsula had 
 been entirely submerged beneath the Turkish flood: the 
 mountaineers of Montenegro never acknowledged the lordship 
 of Stamboul ; no government can cope successfully with the 
 irrepressible Albanians; the Roumans in the Danubian 
 principalities always retained, except in the eighteenth 
 century, a considerable measure of autonomy, but of the Greek 
 * nation ', of the Southern Slavs, or of the Bulgarians there is 
 no real political record from the end of the fourteenth century 
 to the nineteenth. Yet the tradition of former greatness 
 survived : nourished among the Serbian peasants by ballads 
 and folk-literature ; among the Greeks by persistence of 
 language and the memories of Hellenic culture ; among all 
 the subject peoples by the devoted labours of their parish 
 priests. While the Ottoman Empire was at its zenith 
 the lot of the conquered peoples was far from being un- 
 endurable. So long as the Sultans were provided with 
 child-tribute and with ample revenue they did not worry 
 about the details of local administration. Thus the peasants 
 of Serbia, the territorial aristocracy of Bosnia, the Bulgarian 
 towns, and the Greek merchants enjoyed a considerable 
 measure of local autonomy. With the decay of Ottoman 
 efficiency things got worse for the provinces. Individual 
 Greeks and even other provincials might and did play a 
 prominent part in central administration, but as the military 
 discipline slackened, as government became more corrupt, as 
 Turkish arms encountered reverses and the borders of the 
 empire began to contract, the subject races were exposed to 
 
THE PROBLEM OF THE NEAR EAST 265 
 
 grievous oppression. In the eighteenth century hope revived. 
 The Southern Slavs began to look to Austria ; the Bulgarians 
 to Russia for deliverance from the Turkish yoke. The Treaty 
 of Kainardji, as we have seen, gave some promise of protection 
 to all the Orthodox Christians. The Greek mariners had 
 long been conspicuous for efficiency ; the Greek merchants 
 were making money ; the Greek language regained something 
 of its primitive purity, a taste for classical literature revived. 
 But not until the nineteenth century is any real political 
 movement discernible. To this movement the French Revolu- 
 tion may have contributed. At any rate, it is certain that 
 after the Revolution ideas of liberty and even of nationality 
 began to penetrate the Balkan Peninsula. Memories of a 
 sometime greatness, sedulously preserved throughout the ages, 
 once more stirred the hearts of Slavs and Greeks. The work- 
 ings of the new spirit are first perceptible among the Serbians. 
 A rising, directed in the first instance not against the Porte 
 but against the insubordinate Janissaries in Serbia, was 
 initiated in 1804 by a peasant leader, George Petrovich, 
 better known as Kara George. Appeals for protection 
 addressed successively to Austria and Russia were declined, 
 but by the Treaty of Bucharest the Turks agreed to leave to 
 the Serbs ' the management of their internal affairs '. A year 
 later the country was reconquered by Mahmud the Second, 
 but in 181 7 was again in revolt, this time under the leadership 
 of Kara George's rival, Milosh Obrenovich. The latter extorted 
 from the Sultan a certain measure of local autonomy, but not 
 until after the Treaty of Adrianople (1839) did Serbia enjoy 
 anything approaching to real self-government. 
 
 To return to the Greek insurrection. In March 1821 
 Prince Alexander Hypsilanti raised the standard of insurrec- 
 tion in Moldavia ; but the Roumanian peasants were suspicious 
 of the Greeks; the Tsar Alexander, on whose sympathy 
 Hypsilanti had confidently counted, frowned upon the enter- 
 prise, and the rising ignominiously collapsed. Far different 
 was the fate of the insurrection in the Morea and in the 
 Aegean islands. There, too, there were bitter internal feuds, 
 
266 THE EUROPEAN COMMONWEALTH 
 
 and the history of the movement offers, in Mr. Gladstone's 
 words, 'a chequered picture of patriotism and corruption, 
 desperate valour and weak irresolution, honour and treachery'. 
 Nevertheless, the Greek rising is, for three reasons, profoundly 
 significant. It marks, in the first place, the real beginning 
 of the new * nationality ' movement in the Ottoman Empire ; 
 secondly, it evoked enthusiastic sympathy in Europe, and 
 particularly in Western Europe ; and, thirdly, it revealed for 
 the first time a feeling of rivalry, if not of antagonism, between 
 Russia and Great Britain in Eastern Europe. As far as 
 England is concerned, the Greek insurrection inaugurated an 
 * Eastern Question '. 
 
 Hitherto, the Eastern Question had meant the growth or 
 decline of Ottoman power ; a struggle between Turks on the 
 one hand and Austrians or Venetians on the other. More 
 lately it had centred in the rivalry between the Sultan and the 
 Tsar. Henceforward it was recognized, primarily through the 
 action of Russia and the newly aroused sympathies of England, 
 as an international question. The more cautious and the more 
 disinterested of European statesmen have persistently sought 
 to * isolate ' the politics of the Near East. They have almost 
 consistently failed. The Greek insurrection struck a new 
 note. It refused to be isolated. The Tsar Alexander, though 
 deaf to Hypsilanti's appeal, had his own quarrel with Sultan 
 Mahmud. There was therefore an obvious probability that 
 two quarrels, distinct in their origin, would be confused, and 
 that the Tsar would take advantage of the Greek insurrection 
 to settle his own account with the Sultan. 
 
 To avoid this confusion of issues was the primary object of 
 English diplomacy. Castlereagh and Canning were fully alive 
 to the significance of the Hellenic movement, alike in its 
 primary aspect and in its secondary reaction upon the 
 general diplomatic situation. And behind the statesmen 
 there was for the first time in England a strong public 
 opinion in favour of determined action in the Near East. 
 The sentiment to which Byron and other Phil- Hellenist 
 enthusiasts appealed with such effect was a curious compound 
 of classicism, liberalism, and nationalism. A people who 
 
THE PROBLEM OF THE NEAR EAST 267 
 
 claimed affinity with the citizens of the States of ancient 
 Hellas ; a people who were struggling for political freedom ; 
 who relied upon the inspiring though elusive sentiment of 
 nationality, made an irresistible appeal to the educated classes 
 in England. Canning was in complete accord with the feelings 
 of his countrymen. But he perceived, as few of them could, 
 that the situation, unless dexterously handled, might open out 
 new and dangerous developments. Consequently, he spared 
 no efforts to induce the Sultan to come to terms with the 
 insurgent Greeks lest a worse thing should befall him at the 
 hands of Russia. 
 
 The Porte was, as usual, deaf to good advice, and Canning 
 then endeavoured, not without success, to secure an under- 
 standing with Russia, and to co-operate cordially with her 
 and with France in a settlement of the affairs of South-Eastern 
 Europe. That co-operation, in itself a phenomenon of high 
 diplomatic significance, was in a fair way of achieving its 
 object when Canning's premature death (1827) deprived the 
 new and promising machinery of its mainspring. Owing to 
 untimely scruples of the Duke of Wellington England lost all 
 the fruits of the astute and far-seeing diplomacy of Canning; 
 the effectiveness of the Concert of Europe was destroyed, and 
 Russia was left free to deal as she would with the Porte 
 and to dictate the terms of a Treaty, which, by the Duke's 
 own admission, ' sounded the death-knell of the Ottoman 
 Empire in Europe '. But although the Treaty of Adrianople 
 represented a brilliant success for Russian policy at Con- 
 stantinople, Great Britain was able to exercise a decisive 
 influence on the settlement of the Hellenic question. By 
 the Treaty of London (1832) Greece was established as an 
 independent kingdom, under the protection of Great Britain, 
 Russia, and France. 
 
 The tale of the Sultan's embarrassments was not completed 
 by the Treaties of Adrianople and London. The independence 
 of Greece had not only made a serious inroad upon the 
 integrity of the Ottoman Empire in Europe, but had pre- 
 cipitated a disastrous conflict with Russia. Worse still, the 
 effort to avert the disruption of his Empire had induced the 
 
368 THE EUROPEAN COMMONWEALTH 
 
 Sultan to seek the assistance of an over-mighty vassal. If there 
 is anything in politics more dangerous than to confer a favour 
 it is to accept one. Mehemet Ali, the brilliant Albanian 
 adventurer, who had made himself Pasha of Egypt, would, 
 but for the intervention of the Powers, have restored Greece 
 to the Sultan. The island of Crete seemed to the vassal an 
 inadequate reward for the service rendered to his Suzerain. 
 Nor was the revelation of Ottoman weakness and incompetence 
 lost upon him. He began to aspire to an independent rule 
 in Egypt ; to the pashalik of Syria ; perhaps to the lordship of 
 Constantinople itself. The attempt to realize these ambitions 
 kept Europe in a state of almost continuous apprehension 
 and unrest for ten years (i 831-41), and opened another 
 chapter in the development of the Eastern Question. 
 
 To save himself from Mehemet Ali, the Sultan appealed to 
 the Powers. Russia alone responded to the appeal, and as 
 a reward for her services imposed upon the Porte the 
 humiliating Treaty of Unkiar-Skelessi (1833). By the terms 
 of that Treaty Russia became virtually mistress of the 
 Bosphorus and the Dardanelles. The Tsar bound himself 
 to render unlimited assistance to the Porte by land and sea, 
 and in return the Sultan undertook to close the Straits to 
 the ships of war of all nations, while permitting free egress 
 to the Russian fleet. To all intents and purposes the Sultan 
 had become the vassal of the Tsar. 
 
 Thus far England, as a whole, had betrayed little or no 
 jealousy of Russian advance towards the Mediterranean. 
 Canning, though not unfriendly to Russia, had indeed re- 
 pudiated, and with success, her claim to an exclusive or 
 even a preponderant influence over Turkey. By the Treaty 
 of Unkiar-Skelessi that claim was virtually admitted. Russia 
 had established a military protectorate over the European 
 dominions of the Sultan. 
 
 The Treaty of Unkiar-Skelessi inaugurates yet another 
 phase in the evolution of the Eastern Question. From that 
 time down to the Treaty of Berlin (1878), the primary factor 
 in the problem is found in the increasing mistrust and 
 antagonism between Great Britain and Russia. Lord 
 
THE PROBLEM OF THE NEAR EAST 269 
 
 Palmerston, inheriting the diplomatic traditions of Pitt and 
 Canning, deeply resented the establishment of a Russian 
 protectorate over Turkey, and determined that, at the first 
 opportunity, the Treaty in which it was embodied should 
 be torn up. Torn up it was by the Treaties of London 
 (1840 and 1 841), under which the collective protectorate of 
 the Western Powers was substituted for the exclusive pro- 
 tectorate of Russia. After 1841 the Russian claim was never 
 successfully reasserted. 
 
 That Great Britain had a vital interest in the development 
 of events in South-Eastern P^urope was frankly acknowledged 
 by Russia, and the Tsar Nicholas I made two distinct efforts 
 to come to terms with Great Britain. The first was made in 
 the course of the Tsar's visit to the Court of St. James's in 
 1844; the second occurred on the eve of the Crimean War, 
 when the Tsar made specific though informal proposals 
 to Sir Hamilton Seymour, then British Ambassador at 
 St. Petersburg. Neither attempt bore fruit. The overtures 
 were based upon the aj^sumption that the dissolution of the 
 Ottoman Empire was imminent, and that it was the duty, 
 as well as the obvious interest, of the Powers most closely 
 concerned to come to an understanding as to the disposition 
 of the estate. British statesmen refused to admit the accuracy 
 of the Tsar's diagnosis, and questioned the propriety of the 
 treatment prescribed. The 'sick man' had still, in their 
 opinion, a fair chance of recovery, and to arrange, before 
 his demise, for a partition of his inheritance seemed to them 
 beyond the bounds of diplomatic decency. Lord Palmerston, 
 in particular, was at once profoundly mistrustful of the 
 designs of Russia, and singularly hopeful as to the possibilities 
 of redemption for the Ottoman Empire. The advances of 
 the Tsar were therefore rather curtly declined. 
 
 However distasteful the Tsar's proposals may have been to 
 the moral sense or the political prejudices of British states- 
 men, it cannot be denied that they were of high intrinsic 
 significance. Had they found general acceptance — an ex- 
 travagant assumption — the Crimean War would never have 
 been fought ; Russia would have become virtually supreme 
 
270 THE EUROPEAN COMMONWEALTH 
 
 in the Balkans and over the Straits, while England would 
 have established herself in Egypt and Crete. The refusal 
 of the Aberdeen Cabinet even to consider such suggestions 
 formed one of the proximate causes of the Crimean War. 
 
 That war, for good or evil, registered a definite set-back to 
 the policy of Russia in the Near East. It has, indeed, become 
 fashionable to assume that, at any rate as regards the British 
 Empire, the war was a blunder if not a crime. How far that 
 assumption is correct is still an open question. But the 
 Crimean War did at any rate give the Sultan an oppor- 
 tunity to put his house in order, had he desired to do so. 
 For twenty years he was relieved of all anxiety on the side 
 of Russia. The event proved that the Sultan's zeal for 
 reform was in direct ratio to his anxiety for self-preservation. 
 To relieve him from the one was to remove the only incentive 
 to the other. Consequently, his achievements in the direction 
 of internal reform fell far short of his professions. 
 
 Little or nothing was done to ameliorate the lot of the 
 subject populations, and in the third quarter of the nineteenth 
 century those populations began to take matters into their 
 own hands. Crete, the ' Great Greek Island ', had been 
 indeed in a state of perpetual revolt ever since, in 1840, it 
 had been replaced under the direct government of the Sultan. 
 In 1875 the unrest spread to the peninsula. It was first 
 manifested among the mountaineers of the Herzegovina ; 
 thence it spread to their kinsmen in Bosnia and Serbia and 
 Montenegro. The insurrection among the Southern Slavs 
 in the West found an echo among the Bulgars in the East. 
 The Sultan then let loose his Bashi-Bazouks among the 
 Bulgarian peasantry, and all Europe was made to ring with 
 the tale of the atrocities which ensued. The Powers could 
 not stand aside and let the Turk work his will upon his 
 Christian subjects, but mutual jealousy prevented joint action, 
 and in 1877 Russia was compelled to act alone. 
 
 An arduous but decisive campaign brought her within 
 striking distance of Constantinople, and enabled her to 
 dictate to the Porte the Treaty of San Stephano. The terms 
 of that famous Treaty were highly displeasing, not only to 
 
THE PROBLEM OF THE NEAR EAST 371 
 
 Austria and Great Britain, but to the Greeks and Serbians, 
 whose ambitions in Macedonia were frustrated by the creation 
 of a Greater Bulgaria. Great Britain therefore demanded 
 that the Treaty should be submitted to a European Congress. 
 Russia, after considerable demur, assented. Bismarck under- 
 took to act as the ' honest broker ' between the parties, and 
 terms were ultimately arranged under his presidency at 
 Berlin. The Treaty of Berlin (1878) ushers in yet another 
 phase in the evolution of. the Eastern Question. 
 
 The Treaty of Berlin is generally regarded as a great land- 
 mark in the history of the Eastern Question. In some 
 respects it is ; but its most important features were not 
 those with which its authors were best pleased, or most 
 concerned. They were preoccupied by the relations between 
 the Sultan and the Tsar, and by the interest of Europe in 
 defining those relations. The enduring significance of the 
 treaty is to be found elsewhere : not in the remnant of the 
 Ottoman Empire snatched from the brink of destruction by 
 Lord Beaconsfield, but in the new nations which were arising 
 upon the ruins of that empire — nations which may look back 
 to the 13th of July, 1878, if not as their birthday, at least 
 as the date on which their charters of emancipation were 
 signed and sealed. 
 
 Long before 1878 it had become clear that the ultimate 
 solution of an historic problem could not be reached in 
 disregard of the aspirations and claims of the indigenous 
 inhabitants of the Balkan peninsula. The Slavs and Bulgars 
 were indeed only in one degree more indigenous than the 
 Turks themselves. Roumans, Albanians, and Greeks might 
 claim by a more ancient title. But all alike had been estab- 
 lished in the lands they still continue to inhabit at any rate 
 many years before the advent of the alien Asiatic power. 
 For centuries, however, all, save the hillsmen of Albania 
 and the Black Mountain, had been more or less completely 
 submerged under the Ottoman flood. When the tide turned 
 and the flood gave signs of receding, the ancient nationalities 
 again emerged. The rebirth of Greece, Roumania, Serbia, 
 and Bulgaria represents in itself one of the most remarkable 
 
272 THE EUROPEAN COMMONWEALTH 
 
 and one of the most characteristic movements in the political 
 history of the nineteenth century. Incidentally it introduced 
 an entirely new factor, and one of the highest significance, 
 into the already complex problem of the Near East. The 
 principle of nationality is itself confessedly elusive. But 
 whatever may be its essential ingredients we must admit 
 that the principle has asserted itself with peculiar force in 
 the Balkan peninsula. Nor have the peoples of Western 
 Europe been slow to manifest their sympathy with this 
 new and interesting development. The official attitude of 
 Great Britain during the critical years 1875-8 might seem 
 to have committed the English people to the cause of reaction 
 and Turkish misgovernment. Whatever may have been the 
 motives which inspired the policy of Lord Beaconsfield it 
 is far from certain that, in effect, it did actually obstruct 
 the development of the Balkan nationalities. Two of them, 
 at any rate, have reason to cherish the memory of the states- 
 man who tore up the Treaty of San Stephano. Had that 
 Treaty been allowed to stand, both Greece and Serbia 
 would have had to renounce their ambitions in Macedonia, 
 while the enormous accessions of territory which it secured 
 for Bulgaria might ultimately have proved, even to her, 
 a doubtful political advantage. 
 
 Since 1878 the new nations of the Balkans have found 
 their political feet. For their independence they are indebted 
 to no single Power ; they are under no exclusive protection ; 
 each is free to shape its own political destiny in consonance 
 with its peculiar genius. 
 
 Many difficult problems remain. The German-Magyar 
 alliance for the suppression of the Southern Slavs and 
 the retention of the Roumanian populations of Tran- 
 sylvania and Bukovina ; the Albanian fiasco now patent to 
 the world ; the jealousy between Serbian and Bulgarian, and 
 between Bulgarian and Greek ; the unfulfilled ambitions of 
 Roumania ; the partially realized hopes of Greece ; the 
 existence of an Italy still unredeemed ; above all, the sur- 
 vival of a remnant of the Ottoman Empire, still entrenched, 
 however precariously, in the ancient capital with its incom- 
 
 ^a/Sm^iditk^iiiuL^i^t 
 
THE PROBLEM OF THE NEAR EAST it>, 
 
 parable position and its ineffaceable prestige — these are 
 problems, the solution of which will demand the most delicate 
 diplomacy and the highest statesmanship. 
 
 But these problems, difficult and important as they are, 
 seem, for the moment, to be overshadowed by another, the 
 discussion of which will form the subject of the next chapter. 
 
CHAPTER XII 
 
 THE PROBLEM OF THE NEAR EAST (II): 
 A NEW FACTOR 
 
 ' Ce qui modifie revolution de la question d'Orient, ce qui bouleverse 
 compl^tement les donn^es du probleme et par consequent sa solution 
 possible, c'est la position nouvelle prise par I'AUemagne dans I'Empire 
 ottoman. . . . Hier, I'influence de I'empereur allemand k Constantinople 
 n'etait rien, aujourd'hui elle est tout ; silencieusement ou avec eclat, elle 
 joue un role preponderant dans tout ce qui se fait en Turquie.' — Andre 
 Cheradame (1903). 
 
 * I never take the trouble even to open the mail-bag from Constantinople.' 
 ' The whole of the Balkans is not worth the bones of a single Pomeranian 
 grenadier.' — Prince Bismarck. 
 
 * The 300,000,000 Mohammedans who, dwelling dispersed throughout 
 the East, reverence in H.M. the Sultan Abdul Hamid their Khalif, may 
 rest assured that at all times the German Emperor will be their friend.' — 
 Speech of the German Emperor at Damascus in 1898. 
 
 The Eastern Question, like the Irish Question, assumes 
 different shapes at different times. Now it is the Turks ; now 
 it is Russia ; now Greece, and now Macedonia. But down to 
 the last decade of the nineteenth century no one ever imagined 
 that the primary factor in the problem would ever be supplied 
 by Germany. In 1889, however, the far-sighted might have 
 perceived a new portent in the Eastern sky. On November i 
 of that year the German Imperial yacht, the Hohenzollern^ 
 steamed through the Dardanelles with the Emperor William 
 and his Empress on board. They were on their way to pay 
 their first ceremonial visit to a European capital and a European 
 sovereign.^ The capital selected for this distinguished honour 
 was Constantinople ; the ruler was the Sultan Abdul Hamid. 
 
 It was precisely seven hundred years, as the German colony 
 in Constantinople reminded their sovereign, since a German 
 
 * The Emperor and Empress had recently attended the marriage at 
 Athens of the present King and Queen of Greece. 
 
THE PROBLEM OF THE NEAR EAST 275 
 
 emperor had first set foot in the imperial city. But Frederick 
 Barbarossa had come sword in hand ; the Emperor William 
 came as the apostle of peace ; as the harbinger of economic 
 penetration ; almost in the guise of a commercial traveller. 
 The reception accorded to him in Constantinople was in every 
 way worthy of a unique occasion ; he and his Empress were the 
 recipients not only of the grossest flattery but of superb and 
 costly gifts. But such attentions were not bestowed without 
 the hope of reward. Sultan Abdul Hamid was one of the 
 shrewdest diplomatists that ever ruled the Ottoman Empire. 
 He was well aware that the State visit of the Emperor and 
 Empress to Constantinople meant the introduction of a new 
 factor into an immemorial problem. ' The East is waiting for 
 a man.' So spake the Emperor William ten years later. His 
 advent was foreshadowed in 1889. Rarely has a ceremonial 
 visit been productive of consequences more important. 
 
 The ostentatious advances thus made by the Emperor 
 William to Abdul Hamid marked an entirely new departure 
 in Hohenzollern policy. From the death of Frederick the 
 Great until the advent of Bismarck Berlin took its cue, as 
 regards the politics of the Near East for the most part, from 
 Vienna. During the first ten years of his official career Bismarck 
 was far too much occupied in fighting Denmark, Austria, the 
 Germanic Confederation, and France to pay much heed to the 
 Eastern Question, even had the question been acute. But, as 
 a fact, the years between 1861 and 1871 coincided with one of 
 the rare periods of its comparative quiescence. Yet Bismarck 
 lost no opportunity of turning the Near East to account as a 
 convenient arena in which to reward the services of friends or 
 to assuage the disappointment of temporary opponents without 
 expense to Prussian pockets or detriment to Prussian interests. 
 Consequently he deliberately encouraged the Drang nach 
 Osteite which, from 1 866 onwards, became a marked feature of 
 Habsburg policy. Venice had been promised to Italy as the 
 price of her assistance in the Seven Weeks' War, but Istria 
 and Dalmatia were, with Bismarck's cordial concurrence, 
 retained by the Habsburgs. Thus did the Prussian Chancellor 
 conciliate a temporary enemy and a potential ally. 
 
 T Q, 
 
276 THE EUROPEAN COMMONWEALTH 
 
 Four years later he took the opportunity of rewarding the 
 services of a constant friend. The Black Sea clauses of the 
 Treaty of Paris were, in 1870, torn up in favour of Russia. 
 That transaction was not, of course, inspired entirely by 
 benevolence towards Russia. Bismarck's supreme object was 
 to keep Russia at arm's length from France, and, what was at 
 the moment more important, from England. Nothing was 
 more likely to conduce to this end than to encourage the pre- 
 tensions of Russia in the Near East, and, indeed, the Farther 
 East. The Black Sea served his purpose in 1870; the 
 
 * Penjdeh incident' was similarly utilized in 1885. 
 
 Another critical situation arose in 1877. Since 1872 the 
 Dreikaiserbtmd had formed the pivot of Bismarck's foreign 
 policy. But the interests of two out of the three Emperors were 
 now in sharp conflict in the Balkans. It is true that in July 1876 
 the Emperors of Russia and Austria had met at Reichstadt, 
 and that the Emperor Francis Joseph had agreed to give the 
 Tsar a free hand in the Balkans on condition that Bosnia and 
 the Herzegovina were guaranteed to Austria. But by 1878 
 Russia was in occupation of Bulgaria and Roumella, and in 
 less complaisant mood than in 1876 ; an immense impulse had 
 been given to the idea of Pan-Slavism by recent events ; the 
 Southern Slavs were beginning to dream of the possibility of 
 a Jugo-Slav Empire in the west of the peninsula. Bosnia and 
 Herzegovina might easily slip, under the new circumstances, 
 from Austria's grip; the Drang nach Osten might receive a 
 serious set-back ; the road to the Aegean might be finally 
 barred ; even access to the Adriatic might be endangered. 
 Thus Bismarck had virtually to choose between his two friends. 
 At the Berlin Congress he played, as we saw, the role of the 
 
 * honest broker'. For aught he cared Russia might go to 
 Constantinople, a move which would have the advantage of 
 embroiling her with England ; but Austria must have Bosnia 
 and the Herzegovina. Austria got them, and the road to 
 Salonika was kept open. 
 
 Apart from any sinister design on the part of a * Mittel- 
 Europa ' party in Germany or Austria-Hungary there was a 
 great deal to be said for the arrangement. Not least from the 
 
THE PROBLEM OF THE NEAR EAST 277 
 
 English point of view. To the England of 1878 Russia was 
 the enemy, Pan-Slavism the bugbear. An Austrian wedge 
 thrust into the heart of the Balkan peoples, now rising to the 
 dignity of nationhood under Russian protection, was, as Lord 
 Beaconsfield thought, distinctly advantageous to equilibrium 
 in the Near East. To the fate of the Balkan nationalities 
 Lord Beaconsfield was indifferent. Even from a selfish point 
 of view it is now possible to view the matter in a clearer light. 
 We can perceive that ' the occupation of Bosnia and Herze- 
 govina . . . was the prelude to the attempted strangulation of 
 Serbian nationality ' ; ^ and we can see also that the strangu- 
 lation of that nationality was an essential preliminary to the 
 realization of Central European ambitions in the Balkan 
 Peninsula. 
 
 In the future of the Christian subjects of the Ottoman 
 Empire Bismarck took as little interest as Lord Beaconsfield. 
 It is said that on the morrow of the signature of the Treaty of 
 Berlin Bismarck sent for the Turkish representatives and said : 
 ' Well, gentlemen, you ought to be very much pleased ; we 
 have secured you a respite of twenty years ; you have got that 
 period of grace in which to put your house in order. It is 
 probably the last chance the Ottoman Empire will get, and of 
 one thing I'm pretty sure— you won't take it.' The story may 
 be apocryphal, but it accords well enough with Bismarck's 
 sardonic humour. 
 
 Prince Gortchakoff never forgave his pupil for the rupture 
 of the Dreikaiserbund. Russia and Germany drifted farther 
 apart; and in 1882 Bismarck formed a fresh diplomatic com- 
 bination. Italy joined Germany and Austria in the Triple 
 Alliance ; and, a year later, the Hohenzollern King of Roumania 
 was introduced into the firm as ' a sleeping partner '. The 
 ' Battenberger ', who reigned at Sofia, was no favourite at 
 Berlin, but the election of a ' Coburger ' to the Bulgarian 
 throne in 1887 decidedly strengthened Teutonic influence in 
 the Balkans. 
 
 Bismarck, however, to the end of his career, regarded Balkan 
 politics as outside the immediate sphere of Berlin. Ten years 
 ^ Professor Ch. Andler, Pan-Germanism— 2, brilliant summary. 
 
!Z7S THE EUROPEAN COMMONWEALTH 
 
 he had devoted to the task of creating a united Germany under 
 the hegemony of Prussia. The next twenty were given to the 
 consolidation of the position he had acquired. But Bismarck's 
 course was nearly run. In 1888 the direction of German 
 policy passed into other hands. Like his great-great-uncle, 
 George HI, the young Emperor William mounted his throne 
 determined * to be king '. In the English executive there was 
 no room for both George III and the elder Pitt ; Pitt had to 
 go. In the higher command of German politics there was no 
 room for William II and Bismarck ; the pilot was soon dropped. 
 
 The young Emperor was by no means alone in his anxiety 
 to initiate a new departure in the Near East. The visit to 
 Constantinople in 1889 was the first overt intimation to the 
 diplomatic world of the breach between the young Emperor 
 and his veteran Chancellor. The mission of Bismarck was, 
 in the eyes of the younger generation, already accomplished. 
 The past belonged to him, the future to the emperor. * Bis- 
 marck ', wrote one of the younger school, * merely led us to 
 the threshold of German regeneration.' ^ 
 
 The man who more than any one else persuaded the Kaiser 
 to the new enterprise, and in particular to the effusive demon- 
 stration of 1889, was Count Hatzfeld, who had been German 
 ambassador to the Sublime Porte in the early 'eighties. Count 
 Hatzfeld was quick to perceive, during his residence in Turkey, 
 that there was a vacancy at Constantinople. From the days 
 of Suleiman the Magnificent down to the first Napoleonic 
 Empire, France, as we have seen, occupied a unique position 
 at Constantinople. From the beginning of the nineteenth 
 century that position was threatened by England, and from the 
 days of Canning to those of Beaconsfield England was a 
 fairly constant and successful suitor for the beaux yeux of the 
 Sultan. England's popularity at Constantinople did not long 
 survive the conclusion of the Cyprus Convention (1878). It was 
 further impaired by Mr. Gladstone's return to power in 1880. 
 Mr. Gladstone was the recognized friend not of the Turks 
 but of the ' subject peoples ' ; and his accession to oflfice was 
 signalized by the rectification of the Greek frontier at the 
 
 * F. Lange, Reines Deufschtum, p. 210 (quoted by Andler, op. cit,, p. 23). 
 
THE PROBLEM OF THE NEAR EAST 279 
 
 expense of the Porte in 1 881. The occupation of Egypt (1882) 
 was the final blow to a traditional friendship. 
 
 The vacancy thus created at Constantinople the young 
 German Emperor determined to fill. The way had been pre- 
 pared for his advent in characteristic Prussian fashion. Von 
 Moltke had been sent on a mission to Constantinople as far 
 back as 1841, and had formed and expressed very clear views 
 on the situation he found there. Forty years later a military 
 mission was dispatched from Berlin to avert, if possible, the 
 disruption which Moltke had prophesied. The head of the 
 mission was the great soldier-scholar who, in 19 16, laid down 
 his life in the Caucasus. Twelve long years did Baron von der 
 Goltz devote to the task of reorganizing the Turkish army, 
 and the results of his teaching were brilliantly demonstrated in 
 the brief but decisive war with Greece in 1897. In the wake of 
 Prussian soldiers went German traders and German financiers. 
 A branch of the Deutsche Bank of Berlin was established 
 in Constantinople, while German commercial travellers pene- 
 trated into every corner of the Ottoman Empire. The con- 
 temporary situation was thus diagnosed by a brilliant French 
 journalist : ' Dans ce combat commercial TAllemagne poursuit 
 I'offensive, I'Angleterre reste sur la defensive et la France 
 commence a capituler.' The same writer further suggests 
 reasons for the phenomenal success of the German traders ; 
 even ambassadors do not deem it beneath their dignity to 
 assist by diplomatic influence the humblest as well as the 
 greatest commercial enterprises ; consular agents abroad keep 
 the manufacturers at home constantly and precisely informed 
 as to demands of customers, and above all the German manu- 
 facturer is adaptable and teachable. Instead of attempting to 
 force upon the consumer something which he does not want — 
 ' I'article demode ' — he supplies him with the exact article 
 which he does want. And what the Eastern generally does 
 want to-day is something cheap and nasty. The result may 
 be learnt from a conversation with a typical Turk recorded by 
 the same writer : 
 
 ' Mon grand-pere a achete sa sacoche a un Fran9ais ; il I'a 
 payee deux livres ; elle etait en cuir. Mon pere I'a achetee 
 
!zSo THE EUROPEAN COMMONWEALTH 
 
 a un Anglais ; il I'a payee une livre ; elle etait en toile ciree. 
 Moi, je I'ai achetee a un Allemand ; je I'ai payee deux medji- 
 dies (huit francs) ; elle est en carton verni.' ^ 
 
 If German diplomatists have not disdained to act as com- 
 mercial agents they have only followed a still more exalted 
 example. The commercial aspect of the question did not 
 escape the shrewd eyes of the Emperor in 1889. 
 
 The second visit paid by the Emperor to the Sultan, in 
 1898, was even more productive in this respect. But the 
 promotion of the commercial interests of Germany was not 
 its primary object. The moment was chosen with incompar- 
 able felicity. No crowned head ever stood more desperately 
 in need of a friend of unimpeachable respectability than did 
 Abdul Hamid in the year 1898. 
 
 For the last four years Christendom had been resounding 
 with the cries of the Armenian Christians, butchered in their 
 thousands to make a Sultan's holiday. The story of the 
 Armenian massacres has been told by many competent pens. 
 Pamphlets, articles in contemporary reviews, political speeches, 
 and substantial volumes go to make up a vast literature on 
 the subject.^ Not the least impressive account is that which 
 is to be found in the papers presented to Parliament in 1895 
 and 1896.^ Stripped of all exaggeration and rhetoric, the 
 story is one of the most horrible, and, for the Christian 
 nations, the most humiliating in the long history of the 
 Eastern Question. Some parts of the story are still obviously 
 incomplete ; much of it is obscure ; the whole of it is diffi- 
 cult and confusing. But the points essential to our present 
 purpose emerge with terrible distinctness. 
 
 The Armenian Church is the oldest of all the national 
 churches, having been founded by St. Gregory the Illuminator 
 in the third century. It is not in communion with the 
 
 * Gaulis, La Ruine dUm Empire, p. 143. 
 
 2 Cf., e.g., LordBryce, Transcaucasia (1896); E. M. Bliss, Turkey and 
 the Armenian Atrocities (1896) ; W. E. Gladstone, The Armenian Ques- 
 tion (1905); H. F. B. Lynch, Armenia: Travels and Studies, 2 vols. 
 (1901) ; Saint-Martin, MStnoire historique et g^ographique sur VArtninie 
 (Paris, 1 8 18). 
 
 ' Under the head of Turkey, 
 
THE PROBLEM OF THE NEAR EAST a8i 
 
 Orthodox Greek Church ; its appeals, therefore, have always 
 left the Russians cold ; and only since the abandonment 
 of the monophysite heresy in the fifteenth century has 
 a portion of the Armenian Church been accepted as 
 * Catholic '. Armenia itself is an ill-defined geographical area 
 lying between the Caspian, the Black Sea, the Caucasus, 
 and Kurdistan, partitioned between the Empires of Russia, 
 Turkey, and Persia. But while * Armenia ' has no official 
 geographical existence in the gazetteer of the Ottoman 
 Empire, the Armenians have been for centuries among the 
 most important sections of Turkish society. * To the Alba- 
 nians the sword ; to the Armenians belongs the pen.' The 
 familiar proverb indicates with sufficient accuracy their char- 
 acteristic place and function. These ' Christian Jews ', as 
 they have been called, are apt, above all other subjects of the 
 Sultan, in all that pertains to money and finance. Bankers, 
 financiers, and merchants in the higher grades of society ; 
 money-changers and hucksters in the lower, they have per- 
 formed a useful function in the Ottoman Empire, and many 
 of them have amassed large fortunes. Wealth acquired by 
 finance has, it would seem, in Turkey as elsewhere, a pecu- 
 liarly exasperating effect upon those who do not share it, and 
 the Armenian Christians have always excited a considerable 
 amount of odium even in the cosmopolitan society of Con- 
 stantinople. Still, it is only within the last quarter of a 
 century that their lot has been rendered unbearable. 
 
 Three reasons must be held mainly responsible for the 
 peculiar ferocity with which the Armenians were assailed by 
 Abdul Hamid : the unrest among hitherto docile subjects 
 caused by the nationalist movements in Bosnia, Serbia, and 
 Bulgaria ; the intervention of the European Powers ; and, not 
 least, the palpable jealousies and dissensions by which the 
 Powers were mutually distracted. The primary motive which 
 animated Abdul Hamid was not fanaticism but fear. Greeks, 
 Roumanians, Serbians, and Bulgarians ; one after another they 
 had asserted their independence, and the Ottoman Empire 
 was reduced to a mere shadow of its former self. That these 
 events had caused unrest among the Armenians, even though 
 
2S!Z THE EUROPEAN COMMONWEALTH 
 
 Armenia was not, like Roumania or Bulgaria, a geographical 
 entity, it would be idle to deny. Abdul Hamid was terrified. 
 He was also irritated. The Powers had interested them- 
 selves in the lot of the Armenians. Article LXI of the 
 Treaty of Berlin ran as follows : 
 
 ' The Sublime Porte undertakes to carry out, without further 
 delay, the improvements and reforms demanded by local 
 requirements in the provinces inhabited by the Armenians, 
 and to guarantee their security against the Circassians and 
 Kurds. 
 
 ' It will periodically make known the steps taken to this 
 effect to the Powers, who will superintend their application.' 
 
 If the Powers in general were disposed to interfere, Great 
 Britain, in particular, had imposed a special obligation upon 
 the Sultan, and had herself assumed a peculiar responsibility. 
 The first Article of the Cyprus Convention contained, it 
 will be remembered, a promise, a condition, and a territorial 
 deposit : 
 
 ' If, it ran, 'Batoum, Ardahan, Kars, or any of them shall 
 be retained by Russia, and if any attempt shall be made at 
 any future time by Russia to take possession of any further 
 territories of his Imperial Majesty the Sultan in Asia, as 
 fixed by the Definitive Treaty of Peace, England engages to 
 join his Imperial Majesty the Sultan in defending them by 
 force of arms. 
 
 *In return. His Imperial Majesty the Sultan promises to 
 England to introduce necessary reforms, to be agreed upon 
 later between the two Powers, into the government, and for 
 the protection, of the Christian and other subjects of the 
 Porte in these territories ; and in order to enable England 
 to make necessary provision for executing her engagement, 
 His Imperial Majesty the Sultan further consents to assign 
 the Island of Cyprus to be occupied and administered by 
 England.' 
 
 From 1878 onwards the Sultan lived, therefore, under the 
 perpetual apprehension of intervention, while his Armenian 
 subjects could repose in the comfortable assurance that they 
 were under the special protection of their fellow Christians 
 throughout the world. Gradually, however, it dawned upon 
 the shrewd Sultan that the apprehension was groundless, while 
 
THE PROBLEM OF THE NEAR EAST 283 
 
 the miserable Armenians were soon to discover that the 
 assurance was not worth the paper upon which it was written. 
 
 If the Sultan was frightened, so also was the Tsar, Alex- 
 ander HI. The Nihilist spectre was always before his eyes. 
 His father, the emancipator of the serfs, had fallen a victim 
 to a Nihilist conspiracy in 1881. Nihilism had shown itself 
 among the Turkish Armenians, and had led to an outbreak, 
 easily suppressed, in 1885. Bulgaria, too, had proved a 
 terrible disappointment to Russia. After being called into 
 being by the Tsar it was manifesting its independence in 
 most disquieting fashion. Instead of opening the way for 
 Russia to Constantinople, Bulgaria, with unaccountable for- 
 getfulness of past favours, was actually closing it. * We don't 
 want an Armenian Bulgaria,' said the Russian Chancellor, 
 Prince Lobanofif. If the road to Constantinople were closed, 
 all the more reason for keeping open the roads to Bagdad 
 and Teheran. Nothing could be more inconvenient to the 
 Tsar than a ' nationality ' movement in Armenia. The Tsar's 
 disposition was well known at Constantinople, and the Sultan 
 soon drew the inference that, if he chose to work his will 
 upon the Armenians, he had little to fear from St. Petersburg. 
 He had much less to fear from Berlin ; while Paris and 
 London were kept apart by Egypt. 
 
 Here, then, was an opportunity; nor was it neglected. 
 The Powers should be taught the imprudence of intervening 
 between an Ottoman Sultan and his rightful subjects ; the 
 Armenians should learn — or the remnant of them who escaped 
 extermination — that they had better trust to the tender 
 mercies of their own sovereign than confide in the assurances 
 of the European Concert. Abdul Hamid's crafty calculations 
 were precisely fulfilled. In the year 1893 there seems to 
 have been some recrudescence, among the Armenians, of the 
 revolutionary propaganda which had been suppressed in 1885. 
 The Kurds, half-publicans, half-police, wholly irregulars, were 
 encouraged to extort more and more taxes from the Arme- 
 nian highlanders. The Armenians forcibly, and in some cases 
 effectually, resisted their demands. Supported by Turkish 
 regulars, the Kurds were then bidden to stamp out the insur- 
 
284 THE EUROPEAN COMMONWEALTH 
 
 rection in blood. They carried out their orders to the letter. 
 Whole villages were wiped out ; the cry of the victims rose 
 to heaven ; the Powers looked on in impotence ; the * red 
 Sultan ' was gleeful, but his appetite for blood was even yet 
 unsated. 
 
 In August 1896 the interest of the scene shifted from 
 Armenia to Constantinople. On the 26th the Armenians of 
 the capital, frenzied by the appeals of their brethren in 
 Armenia, and despairing of help from the Powers, rose in 
 rebellion, and attacked and captured the Ottoman Bank in 
 Galata. Something desperate must be done to make the 
 world listen. But the recoil upon their own heads was 
 immediate and terrible. Within the next twenty-four hours 
 6,000 Armenians were bludgeoned to death in the streets of 
 the capital. But though the aggregate was appalling the 
 Sultan was precise and discriminating in his methods. Only 
 Gregorian Armenians were butchered ; hardly a Catholic 
 was touched.^ In Constantinople the Armenians were the 
 aggressors; the Turks were plainly within their rights in 
 suppressing armed insurrection ; the Powers could only, as 
 before, look on ; but they did not feel disposed to effusive 
 cordiality. The Sultan's hand reeked with the blood of the 
 Armenians. No respectable sovereign could grasp it without 
 loss of self-respect. That consideration did not deter the 
 German Emperor. The more socially isolated the Sultan 
 the greater his gratitude for a mark of disinterested friendship. 
 
 In the midst of the massacres it was forthcoming. On the 
 Sultan's birthday, in 1896, there arrived a present from 
 Berlin. It was carefully selected to demonstrate the intimacy 
 of the relations which subsisted between the two Courts, 
 almost, one might say, the two families; its intrinsic value 
 was small, but the moral consolation which it brought to the 
 recipient must have been inestimable : it consisted of a signed 
 photograph of the emperor and empress surrounded by 
 their sons. That was in 1896. In 1897 came the Turco- 
 Greek War. The success of von der Goltz's pupils in Thessaly 
 
 ' Eliot, oj), cit.^ p. 411. 
 
THE PROBLEM OF THE NEAR EAST 285 
 
 afforded a natural excuse for a congratulatory visit on the 
 part of von der Goltz's master to Constantinople. 
 
 In 1898 the visit was paid ; but it was not confined to the 
 Bosphorus. From Constantinople the German Emperor, 
 accompanied by the Empress, went on to the Holy Land. 
 
 The pilgrimage, which was personally conducted by 
 Messrs. Thomas Cook & Co.,^ extended from Jaffa to Jeru- 
 salem, and from Jerusalem back to Damascus. The avowed 
 purpose of the emperor's visit to the Holy Land was the 
 inauguration of a Protestant Church at Jerusalem. Down to 
 1886 the Protestant bishop in Palestine was appointed in turn 
 by England and by Prussia, though the bishop was under 
 the jurisdiction of the See of Canterbury. The German 
 Protestants have, however, shown remarkable activity in 
 mission work in Palestine, and the emperor's visit was in- 
 tended primarily to set the seal of imperial approval upon 
 these activities and to mark the emancipation of the German 
 mission from Anglican control. But the German Emperor 
 is lord not only of Protestants but of Catholics. To the 
 Catholics also in the Holy Land he gave proof, therefore, 
 of his special favour. Nor must the Moslems be ignored. 
 True, he could not count many Moslems among his own 
 subjects as yet. But who knew what the future might have 
 in store ? At Jerusalem Protestants and Catholics had claimed 
 attention. But the emperor, as M. Gaulis wittily observed, 
 varied his parts as quickly as he changed his uniforms. At 
 Damascus he was an under-study for the Khalif, and the 
 Mohammedans got their turn. Of all the emperor's speeches 
 that which he delivered at Damascus, just before quitting 
 the Holy Land, on November 8, 1898, was perhaps the most 
 sensational. It contained these words : ' His Majesty the 
 Sultan Abdul Hamid, and the three hundred million Mo- 
 hammedans who reverence him as Khalif, may rest assured 
 
 * ' Des caisses, des malles, des sacs poitant I'inscription " Voyage de 
 S.M. I'empereur d'Allemagne a Jerusalem ; Thos. Cook & Co." Deux 
 royautes dans une phrase. Celle de Cook est incontestes en Palestine.' 
 — Gaulis, in whose work, La Ruine (Vun Empire^ pp. 156-242, will be 
 found an entertaining and illuminating account by an eye-witness of the 
 Kaiser's pilgrimage. 
 
2^6 THE EUROPEAN COMMONWEALTH 
 
 that at all times the German Emperor will be their friend.* 
 Well might those who listened to this audacious utterance 
 hold their breath. Was it intoxication or cool calculation? 
 
 ' Ceux qui ont vu, comme moi,' writes M. Gaulis, ' le pelerin 
 et son cortege dans leurs trois avatars successifs : protestant, 
 cathoHque et musulman, restent un peu abasourdis sur le 
 rivage. Quel est le sens de cette grande habilete qui, voulant 
 faire a chacun sa part, jette un defi aux passions religieuses 
 de rOrient? L'Allemagne, nous le savons bien, est venue 
 tard dans la politique orientale. Comme toutes les places 
 y etaient prises elle a juge qu'elles etaient toutes bonnes a 
 prendre. Elle s'est mise alors a jouer le role d'essayiste, 
 tatant le terrain de tous les cotes, guettant toutes les proies 
 et ouvrant la succession des vivants avec une audace souvent 
 heureuse. Mais ce n'est plus de Taudace, c'est de la candeur, 
 tant le jeu en est transparent, lorsqu^elle ofifre dans la meme 
 quinzaine un hommage a Jesus-Christ et un autre a Saladin, 
 un sanctuaire a I'Eglise evangelique et un autre au pape.' 
 
 But if Frenchmen marvelled at the audacity of the per- 
 formance, other reflections occurred to the applauding Germans. 
 Among those who were present at the banquet at Damascus 
 was Dr. Friedrich Naumann, the author of a work which has 
 to-day made his name famous throughout the world.^ Side 
 by side with the impressions of the French publicist it is in- 
 structive to read those of the German philosopher. Dr. Nau- 
 mann discerned in the emperor's speech a secret calculation 
 of 'grave and remote possibilities'. 
 
 (i) 'It is possible that the Caliph of Constantinople may 
 fall into the hands of the Russians. Then there would 
 perhaps be an Arab Caliph, at Damascus or elsewhere, and 
 it would be advantageous to be known not only as the friend 
 of the Sultan, but as the friend of all Mahometans. The 
 title might give the German Emperor a measure of political 
 power, which might be used to counteract a Russophil 
 Ottoman policy, 
 
 (2) ' It is possible that the world war will break out before 
 the disintegration of the Ottoman Empire. Then the Caliph 
 of Constantinople would once more uplift the Standard of 
 a Holy War. The Sick Man would raise himself for the last 
 time to shout to Egypt, the Soudan, P2ast Africa, Persia, 
 
 ^ Mitteleuropa, by Friedrich Naumann (Berlin, 191 5 ; Eng. trans., 
 London, 1916). 
 
THE PROBLEM OF THE NEAR EAST 1^87 
 
 Afghanistan, and India " War against England ". . . . It is 
 not unimportant to know who will support him on his bed 
 when he rises to utter this cry.' 
 
 But the Kaiser had not undertaken a personal mission to 
 the Near East merely to patronize the disciples of various 
 creeds in the Holy Land ; nor even to congratulate his friend 
 Abdul Hamid upon a partial extermination of the Armenians. 
 His sojourn at Constantinople coincided with the concession 
 of the port of Haidar-Pasha to the * German Company of 
 Anatolian Railways '. 
 
 That concession was supremely significant. German diplo- 
 macy in the Near East has been from first to last largely 
 * railway-diplomacy ', and not its least important field has been 
 Asia Minor and Mesopotamia. The idea of directing German 
 capital and German emigration towards these regions was of 
 long standing. The distinguished economist, Roscher, sug- 
 gested as far back as 1848 that Asia Minor would be the 
 natural share of Germany in any partition of the Ottoman 
 Empire. After 1870 the idea became more prevalent and 
 more precisely defined. In 1880 a commercial society was 
 founded in Berlin, with a capital of fifty million marks, to 
 promote the ' penetration' of Asia Minor. Kiepert, the prince 
 of cartographers, was employed systematically to survey the 
 country. About 1886 Dr. Anton Sprenger, the orientalist, and 
 other savants called attention to the favourable opening for 
 German colonization in these regions. 
 
 'The East is the only territory in the world which has not 
 passed under the control of one of the ambitious nations of 
 the globe. Yet it offers the most magnificent field for coloni- 
 zation, and if Germany does not allow this opportunity to 
 escape her, if she seizes this domain before the Cossacks lay 
 hands upon it, she will have secured the best share in the 
 partition of the earth. The German Emperor would have the 
 destinies of Nearer Asia in his power if some hundreds of 
 thousands of armed colonists were cultivating these splendid 
 plains ; he might and would be the guardian of peace for all 
 Asia.' 1 
 
 ^ Quoted by Andler, op. cit., p. 40. A. Sprenger, Babylonien das 
 reichste Land in der Vorzeit und das lohnendste Kolonisationsfeld fur 
 die Gegenwart (1886). 
 
288 THE EUROPEAN COMMONWEALTH 
 
 Ten years later the Pan-German League published a 
 brochure with the suggestive title : Germany's Claim to the 
 Titrkish hiJieritance, and in the editorial manifesto wrote as 
 follows : 
 
 * As soon as events shall have brought about the dissolution 
 of Turkey, no power will make any serious objections if the 
 German Empire claims her share of it. This is her right as 
 a World-Power, and she needs such a share far more than the 
 other Great Powers because of the hundreds of thousands of 
 her subjects who emigrate, and whose nationality and economic 
 subsistence she must preserve.' ^ 
 
 The field in Asia Minor was open to them alike for com- 
 mercial penetration and railway construction. But it was not 
 for lack of warning on the part of clear-sighted Englishmen. 
 The question of establishing a steam route to the Persian Gulf 
 and India by way of Mesopotamia had been again and again 
 raised in this country. In the early 'forties the fashionable 
 idea was the establishment of steam navigation up the 
 Euphrates; in 1856 a private company did actually obtain a 
 concession from the Porte for the construction of a line of 
 railway from the mouth of the Syrian Orontes to Koweit, but 
 the scheme was insufficiently supported and never materialized ; 
 a committee of the House of Commons reported favourably 
 upon a similar scheme in 1872, but the report was coldly re- 
 ceived in Parliament ; finally, an abortive Euphrates Valley 
 Association was formed in 1879 under the presidency of the 
 Duke of Sutherland. But after 1880 attention in this country 
 was concentrated upon Egypt and the Canal route ; naturally, 
 but in so far as it excluded consideration of the alternative 
 possibilities of Asia Minor and Mesopotamia, with very 
 questionable wisdom.^ 
 
 England's indifference was Germany's opportunity. In 1880 
 an Anglo-Greek syndicate had obtained from the Porte certain 
 rights for railway construction in Asia Minor; in 1888 all 
 these rights were transferred on much more favourable terms 
 
 * Quoted by Andler, op. at., p. 38. See also Cheradame, La Question • 
 d^ Orient, pp. 5-7. 
 
 ^ Cf. a most informing article by Mr. D. G. Hogarth, National Review, 
 vol. xxxix, pp. 462-73, or Quarterly Review for Oct. 191 7. 
 
THE PROBLEM OF THE NEAR EAST 1^89 
 
 to the Deutsche Bank of Berlin and the Wih'ttembergische 
 Vereinsbank of Stuttgart, and in 1889 the Ottoman Company 
 of Anatolian Railways was promoted under the same auspices. 
 Further concessions were obtained between that time and 1902, 
 and in the latter year the convention for the construction of a 
 railway from Constantinople to Bagdad was finally concluded. 
 This railway it need hardly be said was only one link in a 
 much longer chain stretching from Hamburg to Vienna, and 
 thence by way of Buda-Pesth, Belgrade, and Nish to Constanti- 
 nople, with an ultimate extension from Bagdad to Basra. 
 Thus would Berlin be connected by virtually continuous rail 
 with the Persian Gulf. 
 
 It was, and remains, a great conception worthy of a scientific 
 and systematic people. Should it materialize it will turn the 
 flank of the great Sea-Empire, just as, in the fifteenth century, 
 Portugal, by the discovery of the Cape route to India, turned 
 the flank of the Ottoman Turks. 
 
 That a line should be constructed from the Bosphorus to 
 the Persian Gulf is in the political and social interests of one 
 of the richest regions of the world ; it is in .the economic 
 interests of mankind. But there are alternative routes from 
 Western Europe to Constantinople. Not all these routes are 
 controlled from Berlin or even from Vienna.^ Which of them 
 will ultimately be selected ? The answer to this question is 
 one of the many which depend upon the issue of the present 
 War. 
 
 For the first twenty years of his reign all went well with 
 the policy of the Kaiser in the Near East. But everything 
 depended upon the personal friendship of the Sultan Abdul 
 Hamid, and upon the stability of his throne. In 1908 his 
 throne was threatened ; in 1909 it was overturned. The 
 triumph of the Young Turk revolution imposed a serious check 
 upon German policy ; but, to the amazement of European 
 diplomacy, the check proved to be only temporary. Enver 
 Pasha quickly succeeded to the place in the circle of imperial 
 
 ^ Cf., for instance, Sir Arthur Evans's exceedingly interesting suggestion 
 of a route via Milan and the Save valley to Constantinople {The Adriatic 
 Slavs and the Overla7id Route to Constantinople). 
 
 2120 U 
 
290 THE EUROPEAN COMMONWEALTH 
 
 friendship vacated by his deposed master. Bulgaria finally 
 declared her independence. Bosnia and the Herzegovina were 
 definitely annexed by Austria. 
 
 Russia, as the patron of the Southern Slavs, naturally pro- 
 tested ; but Russia was not at the moment prepared to accept 
 the challenge of the 'knight in shining armour' at Berlin, and 
 so Mitteletiropa took a very important step towards the 
 Aegean. 
 
 Few Englishmen were at the time sufficiently alive to the 
 significance of the events of 1908-9. But we have recently 
 learnt from the Memories of Lord Redesdale that their signifi- 
 cance did not escape the vigilant notice of King Edward. Lord 
 Redesdale happened to be at Balmoral when the news of the 
 Austrian annexations in the Balkans reached the King. ' No 
 one who was there can forget ', he says, ' how terribly he was 
 upset. Never did I see him so moved. . . . Every word that he 
 uttered that day has come true.' ^ It is not too much to say 
 that the Great War of I9i4was implicit in the events of 1908. 
 
 It now seemed as if one thing and one thing only could inter- 
 pose a final and effective barrier between the Central Empires 
 and their ambitions in the Near East — a real union between 
 the Balkan States. In the autumn of 191^1 that miracle was 
 temporarily achieved and the first Balkan War ensued (Octo- 
 ber-December 191 2). The Allied arms achieved a remarkable 
 triumphs. * Within the brief space of one month ', writes 
 M. Gueshoff, * the Balkan League demolished the Ottoman 
 Empire, four tiny countries with a population of some 10,000,000 
 souls defeating a great Power whose inhabitants numbered 
 25,000,000.' But the victory was too rapid and too complete. 
 Not even the statesmanship of M. Venizelos, backed by that 
 of M. Gueshoff, could, in the face of jarring interests in Mace- 
 donia, hold the Balkan League together. The collapse of the 
 Turk was from that point of view inconveniently and indeed 
 disastrously rapid. The union of the Balkan States might 
 have been less transitory if victory over the Turk had been 
 
 * i. 178-9. Cf. also The Recollections (ii. 277) of John Viscount Morley, 
 who was Minister in attendance at the time and formed a similar opinion 
 of the knowledge and shrewdness of King Edward VII. 
 
THE PROBLEM OF THE NEAR EAST 291 
 
 more difficult to achieve. As it was, Greece, Serbia, and 
 Bulgaria, having humbled the Ottoman Empire to the dust, 
 took to quarrelling among themselves over spoils which were 
 unexpectedly large. 
 
 This was Germany's opportunity and she used it with 
 singular adroitness. The first step was, in the name of an 
 autonomous Albania, to prohibit Serbia's access to the Adriatic. 
 Serbia, deprived of her natural compensation, was consequently 
 thrust southwards towards the Aegean. By the original treaty 
 of partition with Bulgaria (February, 19 12) the latter was to 
 have everything to the east of the Rhodope mountains and the 
 river Struma ; Serbia was to have the territory to the north 
 and west of the Shar mountains ; the intermediate zone was to 
 be divided between them, and Russia was to act as arbitrator. 
 But Serbia, driven from the Adriatic, now asked for the 
 Vardar valley. The Bulgarians, it was urged, had unex- 
 pectedly got Thrace, including Adrianople, and could afford, 
 therefore, to be generous on the side of Macedonia. But it was 
 not Thrace, but Macedonia, that Bulgaria had set out to win. 
 She now found herself deprived of Monastir by Serbia, and of 
 Salonika and nearly all the Macedonian coast by Greece. 
 Before the end of June 1913 the allies of 1912 were at each 
 other's throats. Bulgaria's attack upon her allies was, on the 
 admission of M. Gueshofif, ' a criminal act '. It was fitly 
 punished. After a month's fighting Bulgaria, thanks not a 
 little to the timely intervention of Roumania, was brought to 
 her knees. Even more complete than the defeat of Bulgaria 
 was the diplomatic victory of Austro-Germany, and on 
 August 9, 1913, the Treaty of Bucharest was signed. 
 
 For the conclusion of peace at Bucharest one Power in 
 Europe took special credit to itself. No sooner was it signed 
 than the Emperor William telegraphed to his cousin, King 
 Carol of Roumania, his hearty congratulations upon the 
 successful issue of his 'wise and truly statesmanlike policy'. 
 ' I rejoice ', he added, ' at our mutual co-operation in the cause 
 of peace.' Shortly afterwards King Constantine of Greece 
 received at Potsdam, from the emperor's own hands, the baton 
 of a Field Marshal in the Prussian army. 
 
 u 2 
 
292 THE EUROPEAN COMMONWEALTH 
 
 If the Kaiser had been active in the cause of peace his 
 august ally at Vienna had done his utmost to enlarge the area 
 of war. On August 9, 19 13, the day before the signature 
 of peace, Austria-Hungary communicated to Italy and to 
 Germany ' her intention of taking action against Serbia, and 
 defined such action as defensive, hoping to bring into operation 
 the casus foederis of the Triple Alliance 'J Italy refused to 
 recognize the proposed aggression of Austria-Hungary against 
 Serbia as a casus foederis. Germany also exercised a restrain- 
 ing influence upon her ally, and the attack was consequently 
 postponed ; but only for eleven months. Germany was not 
 quite ready : on November 22, however, M. Jules Cambon, the 
 French ambassador at Berlin, reported that the German 
 Emperor had ceased to be * the champion of peace against the 
 warlike tendencies of certain parties in Germany, and had 
 come to think that war with France was inevitable '.^ 
 
 France, therefore, would have to be fought ; but the eyes of 
 the German Powers, and more particularly of Austria-Hungary, 
 were fixed not upon the west but upon the south-east. 
 
 Serbia had committed two unpardonable crimes : she had 
 strengthened the barrier between Austria-Hungary and 
 Salonika ; and she had enormously enhanced her own prestige 
 as the representative of Jugo-Slav aspirations. Serbia, there- 
 fore, must be annihilated. 
 
 But Serbia did not stand alone. By her side were Greece 
 and Roumania. The association of these three Balkan States 
 appeared to be peculiarly menacing to the Habsburg Empire. 
 Greece, firmly planted in Salonika, was a fatal obstacle to the 
 hopes so long cherished by Austria. The prestige acquired 
 by Serbia undoubtedly tended to create unrest among the 
 Slavonic peoples still subject to the Dual Monarchy. And if 
 Jugo-Slav enthusiasm threatened the integrity of the Dual 
 Monarchy upon one side, the ambitions of a Greater Roumania 
 threatened it upon another. The visit of the Tsar Nicholas to 
 
 * Telegram from the Marquis di San Giuliano to Signor Giolitti : quoted 
 by the latter in the Italian Chamber, Dec. 5, 1914 {Collected Diplomatic 
 Documents^ p. 401). 
 
 * Collected Diplo7natic Docttments, p. 142. 
 
THE PROBLEM OF THE NEAR EAST 293 
 
 Constanza in the spring of 1914 was interpreted in Vienna as 
 a recognition of this fact, and as an indication of a rapproche- 
 ment between St. Petersburg and Bucharest. 
 
 If, therefore, the menace presented to ' Central Europe ' by 
 the first Balkan League had been effectually dissipated, the 
 menace of a second Balkan League remained. One crumb of 
 consolation the second war had, however, brought to the 
 German Powers : the vitality and power of recuperation mani- 
 fested by the Ottoman Turk. So long as the Turks remained 
 in Constantinople there was no reason for despair. The key 
 of German policy was to be found upon the shores of the 
 Bosphorus. 
 
 Constantinople and Salonika were then the dual objectives 
 of Austro-German ambition. Across the path to both of them 
 lay Belgrade. At all hazards the Power which commanded 
 Belgrade must be crushed. 
 
 On June 12, 191 4, the German Emperor, accompanied by 
 Grand Admiral von Tirpitz, visited the Archduke Franz 
 Ferdinand and his wife, the Duchess of Hohenberg, at their 
 castle of Konopisht in Bohemia. What passed between the 
 august visitor and his hosts must be matter for conjecture. 
 A responsible writer has, however, given currency to a story 
 that the object of the Emperor William's visit was to provide 
 an inheritance for the two sons of the Duchess of Hohenberg, 
 and at the same time to arrange for the eventual absorption of 
 the German lands of the House of Habsburg into the German 
 Empire.^ The Archduke Franz Ferdinand was heir to the 
 Dual Monarchy, but his marriage was morganatic, and his 
 children were portionless. Both he and his wife were the 
 objects of incessant intrigue alike at Vienna and at Buda-Pesth, 
 where the archduke was credited with pro-Slav sympathies. 
 
 On June 38 the archduke and his wife were assassinated in 
 the streets of the Bosnian capital, Serajevo. None of the usual 
 precautions for the safety of royal visitors had been taken. 
 The assassin though not a Serbian subject was a Serb, but by 
 whom was he employed ? No steps were taken to punish 
 
 * Cf. The Pact of Konopisht, by H. Wickham Steed, Nineteenth Ce?itury 
 and After, February, 1916, but other stories are current. 
 
294 THE EUROPEAN COMMONWEALTH 
 
 those who had so grossly neglected the duty of guarding the 
 archduke's person, though the canaille of Serajevo were let 
 loose among the Serbs, while the Austrian police stood idly 
 by. The satisfaction which prevailed in certain quarters in 
 Vienna and Buda-Pesth was hardly concealed. Nevertheless, 
 the Serbians were to be chastised for a dastardly crime planned 
 in Belgrade/ and accordingly, on July 23, the Austro- 
 Hungarian Government addressed to Serbia an ultimatum 
 which has become historic. 
 
 Forty-eight hours only were permitted for a reply to the 
 ultimatum which was communicated, together with an ex- 
 planatory memorandum, to the Powers, on July 24. Diplo- 
 macy, therefore, had only twenty-four hours in which to 
 work. The Serbian Government did its utmost to avert 
 the war, plainly pre-determined by the German Powers. It 
 replied promptly, accepting eight out of the ten principal 
 points and not actually rejecting the other two. No sub- 
 mission could have been more complete and even abject. 
 To complete the evidence of Serbia's conciliatory attitude it 
 is only necessary to recall the fact that she ofYered to submit 
 the whole question at issue between the two Governments, 
 either to the Hague Tribunal or to the Great Powers which 
 took part in the drawing up of the declaration made by the 
 Serbian Government on the i8th (31st) March, 1909.^ But 
 nothing could avail to avert war. The German Powers were 
 ready and they had struck. 
 
 From the mass of the diplomatic correspondence two almost 
 casual though not insignificant remarks may be unearthed. 
 On July 25, Sir Rennel Rodd, British ambassador at Rome, 
 telegraphed to Sir Edward Grey : * There is reliable informa- 
 tion that Austria intends to seize the Salonika Railway.'^ 
 On the 29th, the British charge d'affaires at Constantinople 
 
 ^ The Serbian Government challenged proof, never afforded, of its 
 connivance in the crime. It also pointed out that it had previously 
 offered to arrest the assassins, but the Austrian Government had depre- 
 cated the precautionary step. 
 
 ^ British Diplomatic Correspondence, No. 39, 1914 {Collected Documents ^ 
 
 P- 30- 
 ^ Idem, No. 19. 
 
THE PROBLEM OF THE NEAR EAST 295 
 
 telegraphed : ' I understand that the designs of Austria may 
 extend considerably beyond the Sandjak and a punitive 
 occupation of Serbian territory. I gathered this from 
 a remark let fall by the Austrian ambassador here, who 
 spoke of the deplorable economic situation of Salonika under 
 Greek administration, and of the assistance on which the 
 Austrian army could count from Mussulman population dis- 
 contented with Serbian rule.' ^ 
 
 The old and the new Rome were equally awake to the fact 
 that Austria was looking beyond Serbia to Salonika. 
 
 Austria declared war upon Serbia on July 28 ; Germany 
 declared war upon Russia on August i, and upon France on 
 August 3 ; Germany invaded Belgium on August 4, and on 
 the same day Great Britain declared war on Germany. 
 
 Once more the problem of the Near East, still unsolved, 
 apparently insoluble, had involved the world in war. 
 
 ^ Idem, No. 82. 
 
CHAPTER XIII 
 
 THE PROBLEM OF THE NEAR EAST: 
 (III) THE LATEST PHASE 
 
 * The War might have begun from various causes and on many pretexts 
 on the part of Germany, but as a matter of fact it began by reason of 
 the Eastern Question being re-opened.' — Paul Milyoukov. 
 
 * The War comes from the East ; the War is waged for the East ; the 
 War will be decided in the East.'— Ernst Jackh in Deutsche Politik^ 
 Dec. 22, 1916. (Quoted in The New Europe^ Feb. 8, 1917.) 
 
 Of the two texts prefixed to this chapter, the first comes 
 from the pen of one of the greatest of Russian statesmen ; 
 the second from that of an eminent German publicist. 
 Whether the present War will be decided on the battle-fields 
 of the West or of the East is a question on which the present 
 writer is not competent to form, nor even to express, an 
 opinion; but it is difficult in the light of recent events to 
 question the soundness of the conclusions at which Dr. Jackh 
 and the late Foreign Secretary of Russia have severally 
 arrived. The origins of the War are already becoming a matter 
 of academic interest ; its full significance is not yet unfolded : 
 but every month that has passed since August 19 14 has 
 tended to establish the conclusion maintained by M. Andre 
 Cheradame and other students of Near Eastern politics, that 
 the clue to the riddle of Hohenzollern ambitions must be 
 sought, and will be found, in the Balkan Peninsula and in 
 the regions of which Belgrade and Constantinople hold the 
 keys. 
 
 In the two preceding chapters an attempt has been made 
 to analyse some of the chief factors in the immemorial but 
 kaleidoscopic problem of the Near East. The situation in 
 the East changes, however, with such baffling and bewildering 
 rapidity from year to year, from month to month, almost 
 from day to day, that it may serve a useful purpose to 
 
THE PROBLEM OF THE NEAR EAST 297 
 
 indicate, with necessary reserve and brevity, the most recent 
 phase which has revealed itself in the evolution of an historic 
 problem. 
 
 Of all the factors in the problem that which has recently 
 undergone the most momentous modification is, unquestion- 
 ably, the Russian. The historical commentator who essays 
 to pass judgement upon contemporary events may well take 
 warning from the example of the greatest of his craft. 
 Burke's Reflections tipon the French RevohUion was published 
 within eighteen months of the meeting of the States-General ; 
 long before the work of the Constituent Assembly was com- 
 pleted ; long before the fall of the Monarchy and the estab- 
 lishment of the Republic. Instinct with the genius of a 
 great political philosopher ; packed with reflections of perma- 
 nent validity ; containing, moreover, some of the most remark- 
 able and sagacious predictions ever hazarded by a commen- 
 tator upon political affairs, the treatise was manifestly lacking 
 in detailed knowledge of the remoter causes which had pro- 
 duced the outbreak so deeply deplored and so passionately 
 denounced by the author. Burke was biased, too, in his 
 political judgements by over-sensitiveness towards the un- 
 happy fate of individuals. As Tom Paine said : ' he pitied the 
 plumage but forgot the dying bird'. A commentator upon 
 recent events in Russia is apt to fall into a similar error : in 
 justifiable indignation at the conduct of the revolutionary 
 leaders ; in bitter appreciation of the lamentable results of 
 their follies and crimes, to lose a sense of historical and 
 political perspective. This I take to be the meaning of the 
 mordant criticism passed upon Burke by Tom Paine ; and it 
 is easy to repeat Burke's immediate error, without the com- 
 pensating advantages derivable from his permanent reflections. 
 
 . Nevertheless, the historian may, without risk, presume to 
 appraise the immediate results of the repercussion of the 
 Russian revolution, the defeat of her armies, the ineptitude 
 of her diplomacy, and the shameless betrayal of her allies, 
 upon the situation in the Near PZast. 
 
 P Those results are manifest. Russian history has gone back 
 two hundred and fifty years. The patient labours of Peter 
 
298 THE EUROPEAN COMMONWEALTH 
 
 the Great and Catherine H, to say nothing of those of the 
 first Alexander and the first Nicholas, have gone for naught. 
 The crowned protector of the Greek Christians has lost his 
 crown. The head of the Slav family of nations has been 
 driven into exile : the ' little father ' of the Russians has been 
 foully murdered by his own subjects. The windows opened 
 by Peter and Catherine upon the Baltic and the Black Sea 
 have been closed. Russia is as completely cut off from all 
 access to European waters (save by the north) as she was in 
 the middle of the seventeenth century. The fruits of a long 
 series of successful treaties concluded between Russia and the 
 Porte — Kutchuck-Kainardji, Jassy, Bucharest, Adrianople, and 
 Unkiar Skelessi — have been at a stroke cancelled. The 
 influence of Russia at Constantinople, gradually acquired, 
 partly by successful war, partly by patient diplomacy, no 
 longer counts. The Black Sea, down to 1774 a Turkish lake, 
 then (except between 1856 and 187 1) a Russian lake, is now, 
 to all intents and purposes, a German lake. 
 
 ' The Black Sea like the Danube will ', writes a German 
 publicist, 'be free from Russian, French, and English inter- 
 ference ; Russia will no longer touch its coast and disturb 
 the East in the service of England and France. The Black 
 Sea will be entirely encircled by the Quadruple Alliance — to 
 the largest extent by Turkey ; secondly by Bulgaria (both of 
 them allies of Germany) ; further by the Ukraine and by 
 Transcaucasia (both of them protectorates of Germany), and 
 between them by Roumania (Germany's converted ally).' ^ 
 
 If we accept this analysis as accurate, it is scarcely an 
 exaggeration to say that the Black Sea has become a German 
 lake. The Caspian may be made to subserve German pur- 
 poses hardly less effectively. 
 
 These are broad generalities. The situation deserves to be 
 examined in something more of detail. There can no longer 
 be any obscurity as to the governing motive by which the 
 action of Germany in 19 14 was inspired. The chastisement, 
 indeed the annihilation, of Serbia was not merely the occasion 
 but the fundamental cause of the war. An independent 
 Serbia, still more a Serbia fortified by the adhesion of its 
 
 * Herr Jackh {Deutsche Politik, quoted in The Times, April 27, 1918). 
 
THE PROBLEM OF THE NEAR P:AST 299 
 
 co-nationals and expanded into Jugo-Slavia, barred the path 
 of Habsburg ambitions towards Salonika, and blocked Ger- 
 many's access to Constantinople. Belgrade held the key to 
 the position, and the key must be in German pockets. Only 
 the Jugo-Slavs stood between the Central Empires and the 
 realization of their dream of a Miiteletiropa, stretching from 
 Hamburg to Constantinople, and opening to the Power which 
 dominated Constantinople almost boundless potentialities of 
 penetration and expansion in the Middle-East. But behind 
 the Jugo-Slavs stood Russia ; Russia therefore must, as a 
 military power, be destroyed. That object has been, at least 
 temporarily, achieved : Russia has ceased to count, and indeed, 
 for the time being, to exist. Serbia had already been anni- 
 hilated ; Turkey and Bulgaria are the obsequious vassals of 
 Germany. Two other Balkan Powers remained. On the two 
 flanks of Germany advancing towards Constantinople lay 
 Roumania and Greece. The dynastic leanings of King Con- 
 stantine combined with the inept diplomacy of the Entente 
 Powers to remove any danger to Germany from the side of 
 Greece for nearly three years after the outbreak of the War. 
 In 19 14 Greece could boast a statesman who, in courage and 
 clear-sightedness, was second to none in Europe, and whose 
 loyalty to the Allies was equalled only by his devotion to 
 the interests of his own country. The eminent qualities of 
 M. Venizelos were rendered of no avail by the pro- German 
 sympathies of his sovereign and by the irresolute and incom- 
 prehensible policy of the Allies. By their mishandling of the 
 Greek question — such is the main contention of a recent 
 PYench critic ^ — the Allies not only compromised gravely the 
 interests of Greece itself, but they precipitated the destruction 
 of Serbia ; they paralysed the action, at a most critical 
 moment, of Roumania ; they did much to ensure the imme- 
 diate hegemony of Bulgaria in the Balkans ; and, above all, 
 they contributed, through Bulgarian hegemony, to the success 
 of German arms and German diplomacy in the Near East. 
 It is a powerful indictment, nor can it be lightly brushed 
 aside. Candour compels the admission that we know as yet 
 ^ Monsieur A. Gauvin, U Affaire grecque (Paris, 1917). 
 
30O THE EUROPEAN COMMONWEALTH 
 
 only the case for the prosecution. Time must elapse before 
 the archives of the Chancelleries can yield their secrets to 
 the historical investigator. When all is known much may be 
 forgiven to the diplomatists of the Entente. But the mere 
 recital of the known events does, in the meantime, appear to 
 substantiate 2l prima facie charge of weakness, vacillation, and 
 ineptitude. As to the obstacles which impeded the diplomacy 
 of the Allies at Athens, we may not even hazard a conjecture. 
 The results, however, are disastrously clear. We put heart 
 into our enemies and discouraged our friends. In the quarrel 
 between King Constantine and Venizelos we had no right to 
 interfere ; but the king's violation of the Hellenic Constitution 
 not only gave to the Protecting Powers, under the Treaty of 
 1863, a clear opportunity; it imposed upon them a definite 
 duty. They missed the one and evaded the other. Messages 
 from Berlin exhorted King Constantine to hold on until the 
 German armies had driven the Allies into the sea. Conse- 
 quently the king was always playing for time ; the procrasti- 
 nations of the Allies allowed him to gain it. Meanwhile, the 
 attitude of his partisans in Athens towards the Allies grew 
 daily more insolent until, at the beginning of December 1916, 
 it culminated in the attack upon the small Franco-British force 
 which Admiral de Fourmet, wisely or, as more think, un- 
 wisely, landed at the Piraeus. 
 
 After that humiliating episode there was, for a time, some 
 improvement in the formal relations between Constantine and 
 the Protecting Powers. An apology for the outrage of 
 December 1-2 was tendered and accepted, and Constantine 
 withdrew the Greek army from Thessaly, where it obviously 
 threatened the security of the allied force in Salonika. 
 Essentially, however, the situation was an impossible one. 
 Greece was rent in twain. The authority of Venizelos was 
 firmly established in Salonika ; at Athens the king's position 
 was apparently unassailable. 
 
 Then there occurred two events of profound and far-reach- 
 ing significance. On March 13, 1917, the revolution broke out 
 in Russia ; on April 6 the United States of America entered 
 the War on the side of the Allies. The repercussion of these 
 
THE PROBLEM OF THE NEAR EAST 301 
 
 events was felt throughout the world and not least powerfully 
 in South-Eastern Europe. On May i a Congress representa- 
 tive of the Hellenic colonies met in Paris, passed a resolution 
 in favour of the establishment of a Republic in Greece, and 
 called upon the Protecting Powers, Great Britain, France, and 
 Russia, to facilitate the summoning of a Constituent Assembly 
 in Athens, and to recognize the Republic which such an 
 Assembly would assuredly proclaim. A few days later the 
 ^ National Government ' at Salonika demanded the immediate 
 deposition of King Constantiiie. 
 
 At last the Allies made up their minds to tardy but energetic 
 action. On June 11 King Constantine was required to abdicate 
 in favour of his second son Alexander, and on the following 
 day he was deported with the queen and crown prince to 
 Switzerland. The young King Alexander, after a futile 
 manifestation of independence, was taught his constitutional 
 position ; he was required to dismiss M. Zaimis and to recall 
 M. Venizelos, under whose strong, sagacious, and statesman- 
 like guidance Greece has once again regained her unity. A 
 few days after the return of Venizelos to Athens the Hel- 
 lenic Kingdom broke off relations with the Central Empires 
 (June 37, 1917), and definitely took its place in the Grand 
 Alliance. 
 
 Whether, and if so how far, the stiffening attitude of the 
 Western Powers towards Constantine was attributable to the 
 overthrow of the Tsardom ; how far, to a fresh infusion of 
 democratic fervour supplied by the adhesion of the United 
 States, are questions which it is natural to ask, but impossible, 
 as yet, to answer. This much, however, is certain. These 
 events, so momentous and so nearly simultaneous, could not 
 fail to have affected profoundly both the diplomatic and the 
 military situation. 
 
 With the terms of the peace imposed by Germany upon the 
 Russian Bolsheviks this chapter is not concerned : nor with 
 the * independence ' of Finland ; the annexation of the Baltic 
 provinces ; and the restoration of a mutilated Poland. The 
 Treaty dictated to the Ukraine on February 9, 191 8, touches 
 very closely the problem of the Near East ; the Treaty of 
 
303 THE EUROPEAN COMMONWEALTH 
 
 Bucharest which Roumania was compelled to sign on May 7 
 is, in the same connexion, even more significant. 
 
 The Treaty with the Ukraine possesses a fivefold signifi- 
 cance : it detaches from Russia one of the richest provinces of 
 the Empire ; it establishes over the Ukraine what is in effect 
 a German protectorate ; it so defines the boundaries of the 
 Protectorate as to defeat the Nationalist aspirations of the 
 Poles ; it gives Germany a commanding position on the Black 
 Sea, and it places the vast industrial and agricultural resources 
 of a country rich in both at the disposal of the Central Allies 
 and in particular of Germany. That the peasants of the 
 Ukraine, warlike and independent, will allow themselves to be 
 exploited in perpetuity either in a political or in an economic 
 sense by their German task-masters is, in the highest degree, 
 improbable. German methods of administration are not likely 
 in the long run to prove more popular in the Ukraine than in 
 German South- West or East Africa ; but if there were the 
 least chance that the terms accepted in the recent Treaty would 
 be adhered to, they would secure to Germany compensations 
 for many disappointments incurred elsewhere. 
 
 From the Ukraine we may pass to Roumania. The lot of 
 Roumania is indeed a pitiable one. In Roumania public 
 opinion was, on the first outbreak of the War, sharply divided. 
 The sympathies of King Carol drew him, not unnaturally, 
 towards his Hohenzollern kinsmen ; his old friend and confi- 
 dant, Demetrius Sturdza, was inclined strongly in the same 
 direction. The monarchy of Roumania is, however, ' limited ' 
 to a degree not realized elsewhere in the Balkans. Had it not 
 been genuinely ' constitutional', Roumania would, in 1914, have 
 been committed to co-operation with the Central Empires. Nor 
 was her choice between the alternatives open to her quite 
 obviously dictated by her interests. The Habsburgs, it is true, 
 kept a tight grip upon the Roumanians of Transylvania and the 
 Bukovina ; but, on the other hand, Russia showed no disposition 
 to surrender Bessarabia. Roumania might well hesitate as to 
 her true policy. But in October 19 14 death removed the two 
 strongest German partisans in Roumania : Demetrius Sturdza 
 and King Carol himself. Nevertheless, for nearly two years the 
 
THE PROBLEM OF THE NEAR EAST 303 
 
 neutrality formally declared by Roumania at the beginning of 
 the War was scrupulously maintained. It was confidently hoped 
 by the Entente Powers that it would end in the spring of 1915. 
 Between Roumania and Italy there have long been intimate 
 relations, founded perhaps upon racial, certainly upon cultural 
 and political affinities. It was expected, therefore, that Italy's 
 entrance into the War would be quickly followed by that of 
 Roumania. But not until August 191 6 was the expectation 
 fulfilled. In this hesitation on the part of Roumania Monsieur 
 Gauvin finds, more suo, yet another confirmation of the inepti- 
 tude of allied diplomacy. It may be so. But the sequel 
 proved that Roumania was not without good reasons for 
 hesitation. A transient success in Transylvania was all that 
 she achieved by intervention. Mackensen invaded the Dobrudja 
 from the south in September, and before the end of October 
 captured the rising sea-port of Constanza. Falkenhayn ad- 
 vancing from the west joined hands with Mackensen at the 
 end of November, and on December 6 the German armies 
 entered Bucharest. They remained in occupation of Roumanian 
 territory up to the line of the Sereth throughout the year 191 7, 
 and gathered from the conquered land a rich harvest of grain. 
 Into Moldavia, whither the Roumanian Government had retired, 
 the Central Empires made no attempt to penetrate, being 
 content to await events. Nor was it long before their patience 
 was rewarded. 
 
 The military collapse of Russia sealed the fate of Roumania. 
 King Ferdinand's Government had, it is true, attributed their 
 military disasters in the autumn of 1916 to the supineness, or 
 something worse, of their Russian ally. Be that as it may, 
 Russia's withdrawal from the War put Roumania at the mercy 
 of the Central Empires. With Serbia annihilated, Bulgaria 
 triumphant, and the narrow straits still in the custody of the 
 Ottoman Turks, no succour could reach her from any of the 
 Entente Powers save Russia. Perforce, therefore, Roumania 
 was compelled to concur in the suspension of hostilities to 
 which the Russian Bolsheviks and the Central Empires agreed, 
 in December 19 17. Nevertheless, she announced that though 
 she agreed to suspend hostilities she would not enter into 
 
304 THE EUROPEAN COMMONWEALTH 
 
 peace negotiations. But the logic of events proved irresistible. 
 On February 9 the Central Empires concluded peace with the 
 Central Rada of the Ukraine, one of that * series of entities 
 which ', in Herr von Kiihlniann's words, * have partly attained 
 full national status and are partly developing towards that 
 end '.^ That peace has not been recognized by the Western 
 Powers. To recognize it would mean the repudiation and 
 amputation of another ' entity ', now in the grip of the Central 
 Empires, Poland. But the lack of such recognition does not 
 disconcert Germany. The occupation of Odessa and Sebastopol 
 is a substantial set-off against the sentimental claims of incipient 
 nationalities. 
 
 More significant is the protest issued from Paris by the 
 Roumanians in exile against the Treaty of Bucharest (May 23). 
 That the terms of the Treaty, definitively concluded at 
 Bucharest on May 7, should be humiliating to the pride and 
 deeply prejudicial to the material interests of Roumania was 
 under the circumstances inevitable. A large proportion of her 
 territory was in the actual occupation of the enemy ; on one 
 flank was Germany's new vassal State, the Ukraine ; on the 
 other Germany's devoted but dependent ally, King Ferdinand 
 of Bulgaria. Consequently Roumania, deserted and indeed 
 actually attacked by Russia, cut off from all possible means of 
 succour from her Western Allies, had no alternative but to 
 accept the terms imposed upon her by the Central Empires. 
 Those terms are the terms of a conqueror sans phrase ; they 
 embody in its extremest form the principle of vae victis. 
 Bulgaria has already regained all that she lost of the Dobrudja 
 in 1913, with a considerable additional slice — in fact up to 
 Trajan's wall ; the rest of that province is to be held for the 
 present by the Central Allies in condontiniinn. If Bulgaria 
 behaves well ; if she pays her debts to Germany and makes 
 the required territorial concessions to Germany's ally the 
 Ottoman Sultan, she is eventually to acquire the remainder of 
 the Dobrudja, with the exception of a corner of the Danube 
 delta. This is left to Roumania, who is to retain also com- 
 mercial access to the Black Sea via Constanza. Bulgaria, 
 * Speech in the Reichstag, June 25, 1918. 
 
THE PROBLEM OF THE NEAR EAST 305 
 
 meanwhile, must stand on her hind legs until her German 
 master throws the rest of the biscuits to her. Austria-Hungary, 
 disdaining ' territorial annexations ', obtains, nevertheless, a 
 substantial * frontier rectification ' demanded by strategical 
 considerations, a rectification which will bring her to the foot- 
 hills on the eastern and southern slopes of the Carpathians, 
 whence she will have Roumania completely at her mercy. 
 The economic resources of Roumania, and in particular her 
 surplus supplies of grain and oil, are to be at the disposal 
 of her conquerors, who are further to enjoy rights of mili- 
 tary transport through Moldavia and Bessarabia to Odessa. 
 By thus providing a corridor to Odessa and Constanza re- 
 spectively Germany will command two of the most im- 
 portant ports on the Black Sea and will secure alternative 
 routes to the Middle East. - Roumania ', as Herr von Kiihl- 
 mann lately pointed out, ' is of great importance for us 
 [Germans] as a thoroughfare to the Black Sea and the East 
 in general.' Consequently the interests of Danube shippings 
 * have been very much considered in the Treaty '. Moreover, 
 the railway questions have been ' adjusted in the most com- 
 prehensive way ', notably by the leasing of the Czernavoda- 
 Constanza railway to a German industrial company for a long 
 term, and in addition * an exclusive right of laying cables on 
 the Roumanian coast has been acquired until 1950'. Thus, as 
 von Kuhlmann complacently remarks, Germany has ' secured 
 the possibilities of increased use of the Danube route, unre- 
 stricted traffic on the railways, and assured through cable and 
 telegraphic communication', not to mention 'the necessary 
 guarantees both for securing the fundamental conditions of our 
 commercial intercourse for long years to come, and for making 
 sure that the country (Roumania) shall deliver such cereals 
 and other natural products and oil production as it is in a 
 position to give '. Other provisions of the Treaty of Bucharest 
 secure to the Central Empires pretexts for perpetual inter- 
 ference in the internal concerns of what remains of the indepen- 
 dent Kingdom of Roumania and the means of playing off race 
 against race and creed against creed. 
 
 In view of the cruel terms imposed by this Treaty upon 
 
 2120 X 
 
3o5 THE EUROPEAN COMMONWEALTH 
 
 Roumania it is pathetic to recall the high hopes with which 
 she entered the War two years ago. The hour of her 
 destiny, as she believed, had struck. At last she was about 
 to achieve the ethnographical unity of the Rouman race. 
 ' To-day it is given us to assure unshakably that in its fullness 
 the work momentarily realized by Michael the Brave — the 
 union of the Roumanians on both sides the Carpathians.' Such 
 was King Ferdinand's call to his people on August 27, 19 16. 
 To-day Roumania, like Serbia, and with less hope than Serbia 
 of succour from the Western Powers, lies crushed beneath the 
 heel of a pitiless conqueror. 
 
 Disastrous to Roumania, destructive of her economic and 
 political independence, deeply humiliating to her pride, the 
 Treaty of Bucharest possesses an even deeper and wider signifi- 
 cance. It is proclaimed and accepted in Germany as ' a model 
 of the peace to be imposed upon all our enemies'. Those 
 enemies will neglect that warning only at their peril. Almost 
 incredible in its insolence, it is, nevertheless, seriously meant. 
 In such measure as Germany has meted out to Roumania will 
 she mete out to all who similarly fall into her power. In 
 August 1 916 Roumania, taking her courage in both hands, 
 reached a momentous decision. Like her Italian kinsmen 
 in 1855 she put her fate to the touch ; and the words of 
 Mr. Bratianu uttered in December 1917 recall the famous speech 
 delivered by Cavour under widely different circumstances in 
 1856 : 'Whatever our sufferings are to-day ... we have in- 
 troduced Roumania's just cause to the conscience of Europe.' 
 The Western Allies will not be so base as to ignore the 
 introduction. 
 
 Meanwhile, Germany and her allies remain, on paper at least, 
 dominant in South-Eastern Europe. But there are certain 
 features in the situation which deserve notice and which, if 
 closely examined, may serve to correct a first impression. The 
 first is that the interests of Germany may not impossibly be 
 found to clash with those of her subordinate allies. A clear 
 hint of such a conflict was conveyed in von Kiihlmann's recent 
 speech in the Reichstag (June 24). The disappearance of the 
 Tsar's Government gave rise, as he justly remarked, ' to a whole 
 
 i 
 
THE PROBLEM OF THE NEAR EAST 307 
 
 series of questions in the Caucasus '. One of these was the 
 sphere of influence to be assigned respectively to the Germans 
 and the Turks. The Porte obtained a promise in the Brest- 
 Litovsk Treaty that it should recover the districts which it had 
 lost in 1877-8 to the Russians. But the Porte, having got 
 much, resolved to get more. The Turkish army, ' for reasons 
 of safety, pushed the left wing of its advancing army fairly 
 wide into regions which indubitably, according to the Brest- 
 Litovsk Treaty, could not come into question for permanent 
 occupation by Turkey '. The language is restrained, but not 
 on that account the less significant. Meanwhile, the Turkish 
 advance in the Caucasus has, we are informed, * been stopped ', 
 while General von Kriess has been dispatched on a diplomatic 
 mission to Tiflis, in order to obtain a satisfactory insight into 
 the situation in Georgia itself and the ' very confused situation 
 in the Caucasus '. We can conjecture how the confusion, now 
 that the Turkish advance in the Caucasus has been arrested, 
 will be exploited in the interests of Germany. 
 
 The relations of Germany and the Porte arc, then, some- 
 what uneasy in the Caucasus. Much more difficult are the 
 relations between Turkey and Bulgaria in the Balkans. The 
 Tsar Ferdinand is by no means content with that portion of 
 the iDobrudja which, as we have seen, has been already assigned 
 to him under the last Treaty of Bucharest. He wants the 
 whole of that much-disputed province. But he is not to get 
 it until he has satisfied the Porte in Thrace. This, it would 
 seem, he is not disposed to do. He wants, in fact, both to eat 
 his cake and have it : to get the whole of the Dobrudja as 
 well as Greek Macedonia without making any concessions to 
 the Porte in regard to the Adrianople district. While the 
 Russian army was in the field, still more when Roumania 
 joined the Entente, Germany had little difficulty in dealing 
 with her vassals in the Balkans. With Russia and Roumania 
 both /tors de combat, the respective claims of Bulgaria and 
 Turkey begin to wear a less reconcilable aspect. 
 
 At the same time, Constantinople itself has, owing to the 
 course of events, become less indispensable to the satisfaction 
 of German ambitions. In the original scheme for the conduct 
 
 X 1 
 
3o8 THE EUROPEAN COMMONWEALTH 
 
 of the War the alliance with the Turks was pivotal. By means 
 of his alliance with the Khalif and Sultan, the Kaiser hoped to 
 cut the line of communications between Great Britain and her 
 Eastern Empire. From the Bosphorus he could threaten 
 Egypt and the Canal. Constantinople was all-important as a 
 station on the trunk-line between Bremen and Basra. Just as 
 in the fifteenth century the Sea-Powers of Western Europe 
 turned the flank of the Ottoman Turks by the discovery of the 
 Cape Route to India, so in the twentieth should Germany 
 turn the flank of the Mistress of the Seas by the construction 
 and development of the Bagdad railway. 
 
 The scheme has miscarried at both points. The steady 
 advance from the shores of the Canal into Palestine has, it 
 may be hoped, dissipated all immediate danger on the side 
 of Egypt ; Sir Stanley Maude's brilliant campaign in Meso- 
 potamia, culminating in the retaking of Kut and the capture 
 of Bagdad, has shattered the dream — a dream which had 
 already to a large extent materialized — of an all-German 
 route from Hamburg, via Bagdad, to the Persian Gulf. If, 
 despite the defection of Russia, the British position in Meso- 
 potamia be strengthened or even maintained, one of the 
 objects, perhaps the leading object, which induced Germany 
 to plunge the world into war, will have been decisively 
 defeated. No words can indeed adequately measure the debt 
 which the British Empire owes to the labours of General 
 Allenby and General Maude and the gallant troops they have 
 been privileged to command. 
 
 Yet the admission must be made that the menace to the 
 world-power of Britain has been not so much frustrated as 
 diverted. The terms of the treaties imposed by the Central 
 Powers upon Russia, the Ukraine, and Roumania, open out 
 to German ambition fresh and unexpected possibilities. No 
 student of Near-Eastern politics could have been blind to the 
 schemes skilfully and persistently pursued by Germany in 
 Asia Minor and Mesopotamia during the last twenty years. 
 But who could have foreseen that, at the very moment when 
 the German advance in this direction had been blocked by 
 the success of British arms, the folly and pusillanimity of an 
 
 I 
 
THE PROBLEM OF THE NEAR EAST 309 
 
 ally would offer to Germany alternative routes to the Far 
 East ? It cannot be pretended that Berlin to Bokhara is 
 quite so attractive a project as Berlin to Basra. The Trans- 
 Caspian line is neither so direct nor so convenient as the 
 Bagdadbahn ; but it must be confessed that it is in the last 
 degree exasperating to the opponents of Germany that as 
 soon as the earlier and superior project had been defeated 
 a very tolerable second string should have been provided. 
 Nor must it be forgotten that the route, via Kieff and Baku, 
 runs through a country which is exceptionally rich in grain, 
 oil, and minerals. Important commercially, the route is not 
 less important strategically. One of the stations on the 
 trunk road to Bokhara is Merv, whence a branch line runs to 
 the frontier of Afghanistan. The menace implied in the 
 mention of these names cannot prudently be ignored ; though 
 it may be admitted that a line of communication depending 
 for its continuity upon the goodwill of Poles, Cossacks, and 
 Armenians, to say nothing of the trans-Caspian provinces, can 
 hardly be described as comfortably secure. 
 
 A second alternative route to the East captured the imagina- 
 tion of certain German Chauvinists in the early part of the 
 present year (1918). The catch-word 'Berlin-Tokyo' tem- 
 porarily superseded the older 'Bremen-Basra'. But a dis- 
 cussion of the ideas involved in the phrase need not detain 
 us. The remarkable development of the Czecho-Slovak move- 
 ment in Siberia ; the readiness of Japan to intervene with an 
 effective force, and the landing of British troops at Vladi- 
 vostock, all give reason to hope that the Berlin-Tokyo alterna- 
 tive will not long remain open to German ambitions. We 
 must, however, expect that the denial of alternatives will 
 impel Germany to concentrate all her efforts upon the realiza- 
 tion of the dream which lured her into the present War. Until 
 that dream has been finally dissipated there can be no real 
 peace. M. Andre Cheradame was not mistaken when he said: 
 * Le plan pangermaniste constitue la raison unique de la 
 guerre. II est, en efifet, la cause a la fois de sa naissance et 
 de sa prolongation jusqu'a la victoire des Allies indispensable 
 ci la liberte du monde.' The collapse of Russia, the treachery 
 
3IO THE EUROPEAN COMMONWEALTH 
 
 or simplicity which induced the Bolshevik leaders to enter 
 upon the negotiations which issued in the Treaty of Brest- 
 Litovsk, the disintegration of the Empire of the Romanoffs, 
 may tempt Germany to seize a less intrinsically attractive but 
 more immediately practicable alternative to the scheme as 
 originally planned ; but, whatever the means adopted, Germany 
 will not forgo the supreme end for which she drew the sword 
 — domination in the Near and Middle East. 
 
 Dr. Naumann has recently defined, with some precision, 
 the lines upon which, if the issue rests with her, Germany will 
 proceed in the settlement of the Balkan problem : the Otto- 
 man Turk is to be secured by Germany in possession of 
 Constantinople and his former dominions in Asia, and Germany 
 is *to remain the friend of our friends both in Syria and 
 Mesopotamia * ; Roumania is to surrender all hope of recover- 
 ing any part of the Dobrudja, and to find compensation— of 
 course at the expense of Russia— in Bessarabia ; Austria- 
 Hungary and Bulgaria are to come to an agreement in regard 
 to Serbia ; the whole eastern coast of the Adriatic is to 
 remain within the sphere of Austria-Hungary, which is further 
 to control the future Trieste-Serajevo-Scutari-Valona-Ochrida- 
 Athens railway, while Salonika and Monastir would fall within 
 the Bulgarian sphere ; Greece, * in view of her unsatisfactory 
 attitude ' in this War, is to be compelled to renounce Mace- 
 donia and Salonika, but is to be permitted to extend her 
 Adriatic coast-line ; finally, the hegemony of the Balkans is 
 to be vested in Bulgaria, and * Germany will rejoice in the 
 strength of her ally '.^ 
 
 The scheme for the reconstruction of the Balkans drafted 
 by Dr. Naumann is eminently characteristic of German methods 
 and principles. Of only one consideration is account taken : 
 the convenience of Germany and her allies. Principles of 
 nationality ; affinity of race ; community of traditions — all 
 these are ignored. Vae victis. The loser must pay. Many 
 embarrassing complications are thereby avoided ; but the 
 acceptance of the principle involves a corollary. The fight 
 must be fought to a finish ; no one can afford to be the loser. 
 ^ Die Hilfe^ quoted in New Europe^ August 8, 191 8, p. 96. 
 
 i 
 
THE PROBLEM OF THE NEAR EAST 311 
 
 If might is right, only the sword can decide the issue. For 
 peace by negotiation there is no room. Gratitude is due, 
 therefore, to Dr. Naumann for the explicitness with which 
 he has defined the solution which Germany may be expected 
 to offer for the immemorial, yet ever-changing, problem of the 
 Near East. 
 
 Not upon these lines will a permanent solution be reached. 
 If the principles solemnly proclaimed by the Allies are to 
 prevail ; if the new map of Europe is so drawn as to respect 
 them, the Balkan lands will be divided among the Balkan 
 peoples. But the geographical distribution of those peoples 
 is so complex, the ethnographical demarcation is so disputable, 
 that the mere enunciation of the nationality principle will not 
 suffice for a satisfactory settlement. Greeks, Bulgars, Alba- 
 nians, Roumanians, and Southern Slavs will have to learn to 
 live side by side in the Balkan Peninsula on terms if not of 
 precise mathematical equality, at least of mutual forbearance 
 and goodwill. 
 
 Not otherwise can there be peace for them or for Europe 
 at large. Ever since the advent of the Turk the Balkans 
 have been one of the main battle-grounds of Europe. For at 
 least a century the Balkans have been the storm-centre of 
 European politics. The struggle for Hellenic independence ; 
 the ambition of Mehemet Ali ; the rivalry of Russia and Great 
 Britain at Constantinople ; the jealousies of Great Britain 
 and France in Egypt ; the inclusion of the Jugo-Slavs in 
 the heterogeneous Empire of the Habsburgs ; the determina- 
 tion of the HohenzoUern to extend Pan-German domination 
 from Berlin to Basra — these have been among the chief causes 
 of unrest in Europe from the overthrow of Napoleon to the 
 outbreak of the European War. In an unsolved Eastern 
 Question the origin of that War is to be found. For that 
 secular problem the Peace must propound a solution. Should 
 it fail to do so, the Near East will in the future, as in the 
 past, afford a nidus for international rivalries, furnish occasions 
 for recurring strife, provide a rich soil for the propagation of 
 international rivalries, and produce an abundant harvest of 
 litigation and of war. 
 
I 
 
CHAPTER XIV 
 
 THE PROBLEM OF THE ADRIATIC 
 
 Italy, Austria, and the Southern Slavs 
 
 * The question of the Adriatic is a universal question, and it is no 
 exaggeration to say that the future of the world may, to a very large 
 extent, depend upon its solution.'— E. Denis. 
 
 In Western ears, and particularly in those of Englishmen 
 too little accustomed to the analysis of diplomatic problems, 
 the claim put forward in the above sentence may appear 
 to be extravagant and even fanciful. Yet it will not be 
 denied that among the problems which the present War 
 has forced prominently to the front there is none more 
 perplexing and none more intrinsically interesting than that 
 which concerns the future of the Adriatic and the cities 
 and provinces which fringe its coasts. Nor is there any in 
 regard to which, for reasons which will presently appear, 
 the position of Great Britain is more delicate. That being 
 so, it might seem that the best service which an Englishman 
 can, in this case, render to his country and its allies is to 
 hold his peace. If the self-denying ordinance were universally 
 respected that might be so. As a fact it is far otherwise. 
 
 On behalf of one, if not both the parties who are more 
 immediately interested in the solution of this question, an 
 active propaganda has for some time past been carried on 
 in this country. Expression is frequently given to extreme 
 views on one side and the other. A passionate appeal is 
 made, now to history, now to ethnography, now to geography, 
 now to the imperious claims of economic interest, now to 
 those of strategical security. The question is, however, one 
 on which it is eminently desirable that the people of this 
 country should have accurate and dispassionate information. 
 It may not, therefore, be amiss that one who is not conscious 
 
314 THE EUROPEAN COMMONWEALTH 
 
 of bias in favour of either of the two chief claimants, should 
 endeavour to set forth the facts of a complicated situation 
 as simply and succinctly as the circumstances of the case 
 permit. Such is the purpose of the pages that follow. 
 
 The difficulty of the task is accentuated by the fact that 
 in order to arrive at a fair verdict it will be necessary to 
 assign comparative values to elements which are not really 
 comparable and to weigh considerations for which there is 
 no common scale : considerations of race, of historical tradi- 
 tion, of numbers, of national security, of economic interest. 
 Should the investigation lead to a somewhat halting con- 
 clusion, this initial fact should in fairness be borne in mind. 
 
 In the Adriatic problem there seem to be three primary 
 elements : 
 
 (i) The position and claims of Italy, which less than half 
 a century ago realized her national identity and attained the 
 goal of national unity. That unity, it is contended, must be 
 still incomplete so long as large Italian populations remain 
 under an alien yoke, and so long as provinces and cities 
 which are manifestly Italian in origin and culture remain 
 unredeemed. 
 
 (ii) The position of the Southern Slavs who are inspired 
 with a growing sense of national self-consciousness but are 
 as yet very far from having attained to political unity. 
 Their claim is that the time has come for the fulfilment 
 of their aspirations, and they demand such access to the 
 Adriatic littoral as will assure their national future in an 
 economic, strategical, and geographical sense. 
 
 (iii) The position of the central empires of Germany and 
 Austria-Hungary. With them it is not a question of satisfy- 
 ing sentiments of race or nationality. Their claims to a place 
 on the Adriatic are frankly utilitarian : it is demanded in 
 the interests of commerce and strategy, and they are in 
 possession. 
 
 To these three primary elements we may add a fourth 
 and secondary element. It has become fashionable to assume 
 that the principle of a Balance of Power, the theory of 
 a European equilibrium, belongs to a relatively remote and 
 
THE PROBLEM i^OF THE ADRIATIC 315 
 
 entirely benighted period when diplomacy subserved dynastic 
 interests, when the claims of democracy were ignored, and 
 before there was any idea of remodelling the map of Europe 
 in deference to the elusive principle of nationality. Never- 
 theless, it will not be denied that it is very obviously of the 
 first importance to Europe at large, and in particular to those 
 Western Powers which, like England, have vital interests 
 in the Mediterranean, that there should be such an adjust- 
 ment of these conflicting claims as may secure prolonged, 
 if not permanent; repose in South-Eastern Europe. 
 
 Such being the parties to the suit, we must next attempt 
 to ascertain where their claims do actually conflict, and 
 where their interests appear to be intrinsically incompatible. 
 The principal areas of conflict are: (i) The Trentino or 
 Southern Tyrol ^ ; (ii) the city and district of Trieste, with 
 which we may conveniently group the district of Gori^ia- 
 Gradisca; (iii) Istria, with the important naval dockyard 
 of Pola ; (iv) Croatia-Slavonia, with the commercial port of 
 Fiume ; (v) Dalmatia, the mainland coast and the archi- 
 pelago ; (vi) Albania ; and (vii) the Serbian hinterland, in- 
 cluding the existing kingdom of Serbia and the States, 
 such as Bosnia and the Herzegovina, and perhaps Monte- 
 negro; which it is hoped to include in the Greater Serbia 
 of the future. At present this Serbian Group touches the 
 Adriatic only through Montenegro, with its port of Antivari. 
 Of the whole of these contested areas, except part of Serbia, 
 Montenegro, and Albania, the Dual Monarchy is at present 
 in possession. 
 
 Before proceeding to discuss the claims put forward by 
 the several parties to all or any of these areas it may be 
 convenient to interject a few words as to the origin of the 
 Adriatic problem. In one sense the problem dates back to 
 the dawn of authentic history, but in its modern shape it 
 did not become acute until about half a century ago. Its 
 genesis may be traced, on the one hand, to the unification 
 of Italy under the House of Savoy, and in particular to the 
 
 ^ The Trentino is not geographically an Adriatic province, but politically 
 it forms part, as will presently appear, of the Adriatic problem. 
 
3i6 THE EUROPEAN COMMONWEALTH 
 
 expulsion of the Habsbiirgs from Venetia, or rather from 
 that part of Venetia which Hes on the west of the Adriatic ; 
 and on the other to the break-up of the Ottoman Empire, 
 and the re-emergence of the Balkan nationalities which for 
 five hundred years had lain inert and dumb under the Turkish 
 yoke. This re-emergence began with the Serbian insurrection 
 of 1804, but it did not seriously affect the Adriatic problem 
 until the Balkan War of 191 3-13. 
 
 In 1866 there happened two events of supreme significance 
 in the history of the Habsburgs, to be followed in 1867 by 
 a third. Bismarck, who entered upon his political career, as 
 he has himself told us, with * feelings of admiration, nay 
 almost of religious reverence^ for the policy of Austria ', had 
 by 1862 come to the conclusion that Austria was devoting 
 all her thought and energy to one end : to thwart the progress 
 of Prussia, and to make the machinery of the Bund subserve 
 that object. He decided, therefore, that at the first oppor- 
 tunity the Bmid must be dissolved and that Austria must 
 be expelled from the new Germany which was to come into 
 existence under the hegemony of Prussia. The decisive 
 struggle between Austria and Prussia came, as we have seen, 
 in 1866, and culminated in the Prussian victory at Sadowa 
 (Koniggratz). To make the assurance of victory doubly sure 
 Bismarck had in April 1866 concluded a treaty with Victor 
 Emmanuel of Italy. The latter had, with some magnanimity, 
 given Austria the first chance, and had offered to assist 
 Austria against Prussia, in return for the cession of Venetia. 
 The Emperor Francis Joseph not unnaturally refused the 
 proffered terms, but the refusal cost him dear. Bismarck's 
 terms were accepted by Italy, and in the Seven Weeks' War 
 Italy fought on the side of Prussia. 
 
 The sequel was characteristic. The new frontier of Italy 
 was drawn with a most niggardly hand. The assistance 
 rendered by the Italian forces on land and sea during the 
 Seven Weeks' War was not indeed such as to entitle her 
 to an ounce more than the promised pound of .flesh. And 
 Bismarck, though true to the letter of his bond, took good 
 care that the weight was not exceeded. On the contrary, 
 
THE PROBLEM OF THE ADRIATIC 317 
 
 * Venetia ' was interpreted in the narrowest possible sense. 
 The northern frontier of Italy was defined in such a way 
 as to deprive Italy of a compact mass of 370,000 Italians, 
 to exclude the industrial products of these Italian people 
 from their natural market in north Italy, and to thrust 
 into the heart of an Italian province the military outpost 
 of an unfriendly neighbour. From the boundary definition 
 of 1866 has arisen the Trentino problem of to-day. 
 
 But that was not the only, nor, from our present standpoint, 
 the most important, feature of the readjustment of 1866. 
 
 Italian though the Trentini are in race, in language, and 
 in sympathies, the Trentino had never formed part of the 
 kingdom of Italy, except for five years (1809-14), when it was 
 annexed to his Italian kingdom by Napoleon. Nor was 
 it ever politically united to Venetia except during the 
 periods 1 797-1805 and 3815-66, when Venice itself was 
 under Habsburg rule. The same is true of Trieste. But it 
 was otherwise with the Venetian provinces to the east of 
 the Adriatic, Istria and Dalmatia, which Austria also retained 
 in 1866. For four centuries at least the Venetian Republic 
 had been dominant on the eastern coast of the Adriatic, and 
 ardent Italians to-day base their claims upon an even earlier 
 title. But be that as it may, a great opportunity was lost 
 by Italy in 1866. Had Venice been wrung from Austria 
 by Italy's strong' right arm, instead of being accepted from 
 Bismarck as the price of a diplomatic bargain, and in spite 
 of a dubious success on land and a disastrous defeat at sea, 
 there might be no Adriatic problem to-day. 
 
 To the details of that problem we may now turn. Let it 
 be borne in mind that the essence of the problem is in 
 the first place a contest between Italy and Austria-Hungary 
 for the recovery or acquisition by the former of ' unredeemed 
 Italy', and, secondly, that it raises the question as to the 
 equitable adjustment of the conflicting claims of ' Italia 
 Irredenta' on the one hand and 'Serbia Irredenta' on the 
 other. 
 
 The Trentino or Southern Tyrol presents a problem which 
 is comparatively easy of solution. To no power in Europe — 
 
31 8 THE EUROPEAN COMMONWEALTH 
 
 great or small — is its possession vital except to Italy. For 
 Austria- Hungary it signifies nothing save a strategic outpost, 
 a strongly entrenched camp barring access to roads which 
 Italy has no desire to tread except for the purpose of acquiring 
 the camp itself. To Italy, therefore, it would afford a defensive 
 frontier ; to Austria it has no meaning except for purposes of 
 offence. Military and political considerations would alike seem 
 to point, therefore, to the transference of the Trentino from 
 Austria to Italy. Economic considerations are at least 
 equally insistent in a similar sense. The Trentino is geo- 
 graphically * nothing but a prolongation of the valley of 
 Venetia andLombardy; all its gates are open towards Italy '.^ 
 In a geographical sense they are ; but the gates which Nature 
 left open man presumed to shut. Between the Trentino 
 and Italy there is an almost impassable barrier of forts and 
 custom-houses. Thus the Italians of the Southern Tyrol 
 have, by most sinister fortune, been industrially ruined in 
 consequence of the triumph of the national movement in Italy. 
 The completion of Italian unity, involving, of course, the 
 acquisition of Lombardy and Venetia from Austria, has brought 
 commercial disaster upon the toiling peasants of the high 
 valleys of the Trentino. The new customs-frontier, demarcated 
 in a completely arbitrary and artificial fashion in 1866, has cut 
 off the Italians to the north of it from their natural markets 
 in the valley of the Po. The Trentino, writes Signor Gayda, 
 
 * had a most flourishing silk industry which in 1866 gave 
 employment to ten thousand workers : the little white town of 
 Rovereto alone consumed in its world-famous silk-mills not 
 only the whole product of cocoons in the Trentino, but also a 
 part of that of Venetia and Lombardy. The tiiiy town of 
 Ala had eleven velvet factories. In the valleys of the Sarca 
 and the Chiese there were many glassworks. A small and 
 mountainous country, the Trentino, with these resources, 
 exploited by the willing labour of its simple people, was well on 
 the road to progress. In i866, however,. . . it lost at once its 
 
 * Cf. Virginio Gayda, Modern Austria^ pp. 15, 16. References to 
 Signor Gayda's work will be to the English edition lately published 
 by Mr. Fisher Unwin, price \os. dd. net. Prefixed to this edition is 
 a newly written section on 'Italia Irredenta', which puts the Italian 
 case temperately and strongly. 
 
THE PROBLEM OF THE ADRIATIC 319 
 
 natural market and Its centres of supply. A distant province 
 on the periphery of the Empire, cut off from all the great 
 internal centres of Austria, it could not make up for its sudden 
 losses. It was a plant cut off from its roots. And it is dying. 
 Its silk-mills can no longer import cocoons or export silken 
 fabrics, and they are being closed. . . The paper-mills, the iron- 
 and glass-works are disappearing. . . Isolated, forced back 
 upon itself, the Trentino had to transform itself from an 
 industrial country into an agricultural Alpine land. This 
 meant the ruin of the whole population.' ^ 
 
 This would, indeed, seem to be the object of its present 
 rulers ; and it cannot be denied that the means they employ 
 are nicely calculated to attain the desired end. Its superb 
 water-power is allowed to run to waste ; the construction of 
 roads and railways, though urgently demanded by the people, 
 is prohibited ; the rich pastures are generally inadequately 
 stocked, and are sometimes even derelict ; in brief, the country 
 is being subjected by its Austrian rulers to systematic economic 
 strangulation. 
 
 Is this mere stupidity or deliberate policy ? The persecu- 
 tion to which the Trentini have, in recent years, been 
 exposed at every turn by the Austrian officials would seem 
 to suggest the latter alternative. At the same time it 
 explains the eagerness of the inhabitants to escape from 
 a regime so entirely unsympathetic, -and to be allowed 
 politically to rejoin their brethren in the valley of the Po. 
 A reunion would involve very little dislocation to Austrian 
 administration, and still less to Austrian inhabitants in the 
 district. Apart from the military and official class, the latter 
 are quite negligible in numbers, amounting to less than 5,000 
 out of a population of 385,000. Ethnographically, therefore, 
 Italy can advance a very strong claim to the Trentino. 
 A distinguished American publicist has lately raised the 
 question whether the union of the Trentini with Italy is 
 really demanded in the interests either of Italy or of Europe 
 at large any more ' than would be the union with Italy of 
 the Italian Cantons of the Swiss Confederation '.^ To this 
 
 ^ Op, cit.^ p. 20. 
 
 2 H. A. Gibbons's New Map of FAirope^ p. 11 7- 
 
320 THE EUROPEAN COMMONWEALTH 
 
 question there are several answers, each tolerably conclusive. 
 The Swiss Italians form a component part of a truly federal 
 State; the Tyrolese Italians do not. The former are at no 
 economic disadvantage as compared with their Swiss fellow 
 subjects ; the latter suffer from grievous disabilities. The 
 former desire no change; the latter will never be satisfied 
 with things as they are. 
 
 It may be admitted that on historical grounds the Italian 
 claim is not particularly strong. Under the Carolingian 
 Empire Trent was included in the Venetian March or Duchy 
 of Friuli, but for the greater part of the Middle Ages the 
 Bishopric of Trent formed an independent ecclesiastical 
 principality under the Holy Roman Emperor, and maintained 
 that status until the great secularization of 1803, when it was 
 definitely annexed to Austria. After Napoleon's victory over 
 Austria at Austerlitz the new Charlemagne tossed theTyrol,and 
 with it the Trentino, to his client King of Bavaria, but five years 
 later, as we have seen, he detached it from Bavaria and annexed 
 it to his own kingdom of Italy. The latter broke up after 
 Napoleon's abdication, and the Trentino went back, along with 
 Lombardy and Venetia, to Austria. Still, even though the 
 modern Kingdom of Italy can make a somewhat slender case 
 on historical grounds, the ethnographic and economic reasons 
 in favour of the reunion of the Trentino with Venetia are 
 overwhelming. Nor, so far as I am aware, is there in any 
 quarter, except at Vienna, any disposition to impede an 
 arrangement so ardently desired by both the parties imme- 
 diately concerned, and offering indisputable economic advan- 
 tages. Even Germany professed her willingness to satisfy 
 the wishes of Italy in this matter. * Without a drop of blood 
 flowing, and without the life of a single Italian being 
 endangered, Italy could have secured the . . . territory in the 
 Tyrol and on the Isonzo as far as the Italian speech is heard.' 
 So said Dr. von Bethmann-Hollweg in a recent speech in the 
 Reichstag. Nor is there any reason to suppose that in this 
 respect the German ex-Chancellor overstated the price which 
 Germany was prepared to make Austria pay in order to avert 
 the threatened rupture of the Triple Alliance. 
 
THE PROBLEM OF THE ADRIATIC 321 
 
 Dr. von Bethmann-Hollweg further asserted that in the 
 same easy fashion Italy could have obtained ' satisfaction of the 
 national aspirations in Trieste '. The expression used by the 
 German ex-Chancellor is not free from ambiguity; but there 
 is no ambiguity as to Italian ambitions in regard to Trieste. 
 The city and district are claimed as Italian by right of culture, 
 of historical tradition, and of population. As to the validity 
 of the last claim there can be no question ; in the city itself 
 the Italians contribute 200,000 out of the total population of 
 250,000. That Trieste is culturally Latin and not either 
 Teutonic or Slavonic will be disputed by no one. The 
 historical claim is not quite so indisputable. Signor Gayda 
 does not indeed hesitate to make it. Trieste, he affirms, ' has 
 a proud Italian past : it goes back to Roman times when it 
 formed, with all Istria, a single province together with Venetia. 
 When Rome fell ... its history as a free municipality . . . 
 remained brilliantly Latin.' 
 
 But, historically, the Austrian claims cannot be disregarded. 
 Trieste commended itself to the Duke of Austria in the 
 fourteenth century, and, except during the Napoleonic regime, 
 the Dukes of Austria have been suzerains, if not sovereigns, over 
 Trieste from that day to this. Curiously enough, it was never 
 absorbed into the Venetian Republic, by whose territory it 
 was encompassed. 
 
 The Austrian claim does not, however, rest upon history 
 alone. The commercial importance of this great Adriatic port, 
 not to Austria only, but to all Southern Germany, is manifest. 
 The head-quarters of the Austrian Lloyd and other important 
 companies, it has a shipping trade amounting to nearly 
 5,000,000 tons per annum, and among the commercial ports 
 of the Mediterranean it holds the fifth place. But if Trieste is 
 important to Austria and the German States, so, as Dr. Seton 
 Watson has pertinently observed, is the Germanic hinterland 
 to Trieste. To incorporate Trieste for tariff purposes into 
 the Kingdom of Italy would, he contends, ' mean the speedy 
 economic ruin of a great and flourishing commercial centre'.^ 
 
 Dr. Seton Watson is well known as an ardent champion of 
 ^ T/ie Balkans^ Italy, and the Adriatic, P- 5^. 
 
 2120 Y 
 
322 THE EUROPEAN COMMONWEALTH 
 
 the Southern Slavs, and he may therefore be suspected of 
 something more than indifference towards the aspirations 
 of Italian irredentism. But to Trieste the Jugoslavs advance 
 no claims, and Dr. Watson's argument, proceeding from a keen 
 critic of Habsburg rule, is all the more entitled to respect. 
 If we may assume the overthrow of Habsburg power in the 
 Adriatic, it is unthinkable that Trieste should be permitted to 
 break the continuity of Italian territory round the northern 
 and north-eastern shores of the Adriatic. But if Trieste 
 should incur the economic fate predicted by Dr. Seton Watson 
 it would be good neither for Italy nor for the people of 
 Trieste. Under the Emperor Charles VI Trieste was in 17 19 
 constituted an open port, and so continued until the outbreak 
 of the French Revolution. Is there any reason why, under 
 Italian suzerainty, it should not revert to that condition ? 
 
 A similar solution might perhaps be adopted in the case of 
 the port of Fiume. The latter stands to the Hungarian 
 kingdom in precisely the same relation as that subsisting 
 between Trieste and the Austrian Duchy. The Magyars 
 possessed themselves of Croatia-Slavonia in the eleventh 
 century, and except for very brief interludes have never 
 relaxed their hold. Fiume depends commercially upon the 
 hinterland of Croatia-Slavonia and Hungary as Trieste does 
 upon Austria and South Germany. But in population Fiume, 
 like most of the coast towns, is predominantly Italian, though 
 the Latins do not greatly outnumber the Slavs.^ Croatia- 
 Slavonia as a whole is insistently demanded for the Greater 
 Serbia which is to be, but Dr. Seton Watson gives proof of 
 a judicial mind in proposing that Fiume should become a free 
 port under Serbian as Trieste under Italian suzerainty. 
 Whether this solution will be acceptable to or accepted by 
 the Italian irredentists is more than doubtful. 
 
 The negotiations which took place between Russia and 
 Italy in the spring of 1915 throw some light upon the 
 controversy and emphasize the doubt I have ventured to 
 express. In April Russia proposed to Italy the formation 
 
 ^ 23,000 Italians as against 19,000 Slavs. Dr. Watson gives the Italians 
 25,000 in Fiume. 
 
THE PROBLEM OF THE ADRIATIC 323 
 
 of two Slav States upon the Adriatic. Serbia was to be 
 united with Bosnia and the Herzegovina, and to have the 
 Dalmatian coast from the Narenta to Montenegro. To the 
 north of this Greater Serbia there was to be an independent 
 Croatia-Slavonia, enlarged by the acquisition of the Slavonic 
 portions of Carniola and the greater part of Dalmatia, with 
 Agram for a capital, and Fiume, Zara, and Sebenico as its 
 chief ports on the Adriatic. Italy was to get Trieste with 
 Venetia, Giulia or Western Istria, including the port of Pola. 
 To these terms Italy emphatically objected. That the 
 Greater Serbia should have ample commercial access to the 
 Adriatic coast was frankly conceded by Italy, but strategically 
 the Adriatic was to become once again what in the days of 
 Venetian greatness it had virtually been, an Italian lake. Thus, 
 in its issue of April 19, 19 15, the Giornale d' Italia wrote: 
 
 'Neither a fort, nor a gun, nor a submarine that is not 
 Italian ought to be in the Adriatic. Otherwise the present 
 most difficult military situation in the Adriatic will be per- 
 petuated, and will inevitably grow worse with time.' 
 
 Fiume then may possibly be a bone of contention between 
 two races who are now happily allied not only with each 
 other but with ourselves. Our own part in the matter will 
 demand consideration later on. 
 
 The question of Istria should not prove difficult of ad- 
 justment, assuming, of course, the decisive defeat of the 
 Austro-German allies. To the latter Istria is of immense 
 strategical importance by reason of the port of Pola, the 
 Portsmouth of the Adriatic, and the only great naval base 
 which the Austrian Empire commands. Austria, however, 
 will command it no longer if Italy emerges victorious from the 
 present War. Nor, indeed, is Austria's title to it strong either 
 on historical or ethnographic grounds. The western coast 
 of Istria was in the possession of Venice for centuries prior 
 to the Treaty of Campo-Formio (1797), when with Venice / 
 itself it passed, by arrangement with General Bonaparte, to 
 Austria. From Venice it was never divorced until 1866. 
 Along the western coast Italians still form the overwhelming 
 majority of the population,^ and Pola is unmistakably Italian. 
 
 ^ Some authorities put the Italian population as high as 80 per cent. 
 
 Y 2 
 
324 THE EUROPEAN COMMONWEALTH 
 
 To this coast, therefore, Italy has an indisputably claim if 
 nationality is to be the dominating principle of the great 
 settlement. But the same principle which assigns Pola and 
 the west coast of Istria to Italy will decree that the interior 
 and the eastern part of the peninsula shall be united to the 
 enlarged Croatia. Nor will geography forbid the banns. 
 
 The real crux of the Adriatic problem is reached when 
 we pass from the Istrian peninsula to the Dalmatian coast 
 and the Dahnatian archipelago. Here it is necessary to 
 tread warily, if one would avoid pitfalls, historical, ethno- 
 graphical, and political. Into the remoter history of these 
 lands it is unnecessary to pry. It may, however, be said 
 in passing that the modern Italian kingdom claims to be 
 the successor in title not merely to the Venetian Republic 
 but to the Roman Empire. But this claim is not likely to 
 affect the ultimate verdict. It is common ground that for 
 many centuries the sea power of the Venetian commonwealth 
 dominated the Adriatic, and that despite many fluctuations 
 of fortune Venice has left an ineffaceable mark upon the 
 maritime cities of the Dalmatian coast and upon the islands 
 with which it is fringed. Nor should it be forgotten that 
 owing to the curiously contrasted configuration of the two 
 coasts it was and is the possession of the eastern shore 
 which gives the command of the sea. On the western shore 
 there is no first-rate harbour between Brindisi and Venice, 
 and except perhaps at Bari and Ancona no possibility of 
 making one. The opposite coast from Trieste to Valona is 
 one long succession of natural harbours : at Pola, Sebenico, 
 and Cattaro the Austrians have already got important naval 
 works, and potential bases exist at half a dozen more points. 
 This fact would be in itself sufficient to explain the anxiety 
 of modern Italy to redeem its Venetian inheritance. Senti- 
 ment, however, reinforces the dictates of expediency. One 
 needs perhaps to have Italian blood in one's veins to realize 
 the intensity of the feelings which animate the Italians of 
 the kingdom towards the Italian colonies on the opposite 
 coast. It is true that the Italians form to-day a relatively 
 insignificant minority in most of the Dalmatian towns except 
 
THE PROBLEM OF THE ADRIATIC 325 
 
 Zara, but this does not affect Italian sentiments. No one 
 can set foot in any of these cities — Pola, Fiume, Zara, Spalatro, 
 Ragusa, Cattaro — without becoming conscious of the per- 
 vasiveness of the Italian tradition. 
 
 The Italian claims on this part of the Adriatic have been 
 semi-officially formulated as follows : (i) The Dalmatian 
 mainland from Zara to the Montenegrin frontier with the 
 naval bases of Sebenico and Cattaro, and (ii) the whole of 
 the Dalmatian archipelago, including, of course, the important 
 island of Lissa. Professor Cippico, himself a native of Zara, 
 has recently advanced a similar claim with passionate 
 earnestness. 
 
 ' Men of every party in Italy are resolved ', he writes, 
 'to-day that Italy's national geographical and strategical 
 unity should finally be accomplished. Without restoring 
 her position in Dalmatia and Istria it is universally felt 
 Italy would perpetuate her present conditions of unrest and 
 insecurity in the Adriatic, when her actual frontiers from 
 Venice down to Brindisi and Santa Maria di Leuca, are in- 
 defensible and purely artificial, when every town and village 
 on the opposite shore is a harmonic imitation and continu- 
 ation in the architecture, as well as in the language and 
 costumes, of Venice. Dalmatia and Istria have never, neither 
 in geography nor in history, belonged to the Balkans.' ^ 
 
 The claim, it will be perceived, is based upon the plea 
 of strategical necessity, but not less upon those of geography 
 and historical and cultural tradition. What do the Southern 
 Slavs and their friends and apologists in this country say to 
 the Italian claim ? 
 
 They begin by denying its historical validity. ' Dalmatia ', 
 says Dr. Seton Watson, roundly and bluntly, * is Slav and 
 has been so for over a thousand years. . . . Dalmatia has 
 
 always led the van of the Jugoslav movement Italy has 
 
 no ethnographic claim whatever to Dalmatia.' He is fain 
 to admit that the Venetian Republic established its way 
 along the coast as far back as the fifteenth century ; but 
 he contends that ' its influence was in the main confined to 
 establishing poiiits d'appui or strategic outposts for the fleet 
 
 ^ Fortnightly Review y August, 191 5, p. 3C0. 
 
326 THE EUROPEAN COMMONWEALTH 
 
 and or the safety of its trade, now against the Turks, now 
 against the notorious pirates who infested the innumerable 
 islets and creeks of that intricate coast.' In support of his 
 contention he appeals to ItaHan patriots like Mazzini and 
 Niccolo Tommaseo. ' I do not believe ', wrote the latter, 
 himself a native of Sebenico, ' that Dalmatia could ever 
 form an appendage to Italy. . . . Future destiny intends her 
 to be the friend of Italy, but not her subject.' ^ It should 
 be noted that these words, like those of Cavour, quoted below, 
 were written before Austria had been driven out of Venice, 
 before Italy had attained the goal of national unity, and 
 before, therefore, she had developed to the full that sense 
 of national self-consciousness by which her people are 
 dominated to-day. Nevertheless, it cannot be denied that the 
 Jugoslavs have a strong case, least of all by Englishmen, 
 who are supremely anxious that the Adriatic problem should 
 be solved in such a way as at once to satisfy the claims of 
 historical justice and political expediency, and at the same 
 time to provide the basis for a cordial and, if it may be, 
 a permanent friendship between two peoples whom she desires 
 to retain as friends and as allies. In Dalmatia the Slavs 
 contribute ninety-six per cent, of the population. That they 
 should possess the whole of the hinterland, to the west of 
 the mountain barrier formed by the Carso, the Velebit, and 
 the Dinaric Alps, is freely acknowledged even by the most 
 extreme champions of the Italian cause. But if the Jugo- 
 slavia of the future is to be anything more than a third-rate 
 power that concession is obviously insufficient. The Greater 
 Serbia must have ample and assured access to the Adriatic 
 coast. Had it not been for Austrian intervention Serbia 
 would have secured that access after the first Balkan war, 
 and in that event the second Balkan war might never have 
 been fought, and Bulgaria might not be at the throats of 
 Serbia and Greece to-day. With consummate adroitness did 
 
 ^ Op^ cit., pp. 6l seq. Dr. Watson might also have invoked the still 
 higher authority of Cavour. * 1 am not unaware*, wrote Cavour in i860, 
 'that in the towns along the [Dalmatian] coast there are centres of 
 population which are Italian by race and aspirations. But. in the country 
 the inhabitants are ail of the Slav race.' 
 
 A 
 
THE PROBLEM OF THE ADRIATIC 327 
 
 Austro-German diplomacy attain the twofold object of heading 
 Serbia off from the Adriatic, and thus thrusting her into 
 sharp conflict with Bulgaria on her eastern frontier. It will 
 be the special and urgent task of English diplomacy to 
 frustrate any similar attempt to sow discord between Italy 
 and Serbia. 
 
 One danger Italy has herself anticipated and averted. 
 There can be no doubt that before the outbreak of the present 
 War Germany was turning her thoughts towards the requi- 
 sition of Valona as a naval base in the Adriatic, or that 
 her insistence upon the creation of an autonomous Albania, 
 under a German Prince, was a step towards the realization 
 of her hopes. The timely seizure of Valona, so soon after 
 the outbreak of hostilities, was not the least significant sign 
 of Italy's approaching withdrawal from the Triple Alliance 
 and not the least definite announcement of her resolve to 
 keep in her own pocket the keys of the Adriatic. But 
 Italy has not confined her activities in Albania to the naval 
 occupation of Valona. For some years past her economic 
 and cultural penetration of Albania has been proceeding apace. 
 In Valona itself, in Scutari and Durazzo, Italian schools, 
 Italian banks and Italian newspapers, afford some among 
 many indications of the interest which Albania possesses 
 alike for the Italian Government and for the Italian people.^ 
 
 No activity on the part of Italy can, however, dispose of 
 the equally insistent and the equally intelligible claims of the 
 Southern Slavs. In 1912 Serbia would have been satisfied 
 with a commercial outlet to the Adriatic. Her claim to such 
 an outlet neither has been nor is denied by Italy. But in 
 1912 it was only a question of dividing the spoils of the 
 Ottoman Empire. It is the hope and expectation of the 
 Jugoslavs that at the next great settlement Austro- Hungary 
 will be in the melting-pot. Should that hope be realized, 
 it is obvious that an Albanian port would no longer satisfy the 
 legitimate aspirations of the Greater Serbia. Such a concession 
 would be ridiculously inadequate as a recompense for all 
 the sacrifices she has made and the sufferings she has under- 
 ^ Cf. M. Charles Vellay, La Question de I'Adriatique, pp. 14 seq. 
 
3^8 THE EUROPEAN COMMONWEALTH 
 
 gone. What is the extent of the claims now made on its 
 behalf? 
 
 ' Southern Slav unity ', writes Dr. Wilson, ' means the union 
 of the triune kingdom of Croatia-Slavonia-Dalmatia, of 
 the Eastern or Slav portion of I stria, of the Slovene territory 
 of Southern Austria (in Carniola, Carinthia, and Styria), and 
 of Western or Serb section of the Banat, with the existing 
 kingdoms of Serbia and Montenegro, in a single Southern 
 Slav state — the new Jugoslavia. Geographically it involves 
 the acquisition of the river frontier of the Drave and the 
 Mur on the north ; the protection of Belgrade by a fair 
 partition of the Banat between Serbia and Roumania ; the 
 discovery of a reasonable line separating Italian and Southern 
 Slav territory on the west . . . and on the south the union of 
 Montenegro and Serbia.' ^ 
 
 Such is the fundamental claim. It is beyond the scope 
 of the present chapter to inquire how the aspirations of the 
 Jugoslavs are to be translated into fact : whether the satis- 
 faction of the nationality principle will make a unitarian state, 
 or whether (as is more probable) the Southern Slavs will be 
 content with some form of federalism. It may be assumed 
 that there is an understanding between Serbia on the one 
 hand, and Montenegro and Croatia-Slavonia upon the other. 
 For the moment we are concerned only with the point at 
 which the claims of Serbia Irredenta appear to conflict with 
 those of Italia Irredenta, in Dalmatia. 
 
 If the extremists on either side are allowed to have their 
 heads, it would seem to be inevitable that the assumed 
 expulsion of Austro-Hungary from the Adriatic should be 
 followed by an internecine struggle between Italy and Serbia. 
 To those in England and elsewhere who are in cordial 
 sympathy alike with the Italians and the Southern Slavs 
 such a sequel to the present struggle is unthinkable. 
 
 To the Italians we Englishtnen are bound in ties of tra- 
 ditional friendship. As long ago as 1848 Lord Palmerston 
 favoured the withdrawal of Austria from north Italy, and 
 the union of Italy from the Alps to the Adriatic under the 
 House of Savoy. In the intensely critical period between 
 the armistice of Villafranca (July 8, 1859) and the annexation 
 * Op.cit.f pp. 40. 41. 
 
THE PROBLEM OF THE ADRIATIC 329 
 
 of the two Sicilies to the north Itahan kingdom (November 
 i860) the cause of Italian unity had no more cordial advocate 
 than Great Britain. It is indeed questionable whether Italy- 
 had any other friend among the Powers. Napoleon III 
 would certainly have prevented Garibaldi crossing from Sicily 
 to the mainland in i860, if England would have joined in the 
 scheme. Every other chancery in Europe regarded Victor 
 Emmanuel with suspicion and denounced Garibaldi as 
 a brigand. The attitude of England caused dismay among 
 the European diplomatists. But the service which she 
 rendered at this supreme crisis to the cause of Italian unity 
 was fully appreciated at the time in Italy, and has never 
 since been forgotten. Thus in his message to King George 
 on May 25, 1915, King Victor Emmanuel II happily referred 
 to ' the ancient traditional friendship between the Italian and 
 English peoples'. 
 
 The memory of that friendship has not faded from the 
 minds of either people. On both sides there is a cordial 
 hope that it may be renewed and cemented by comradeship 
 in arms.^ But it seems desirable to recall the attitude of 
 England towards the Italian Risorgimento at a moment 
 when we may be called upon to undertake the difficult and 
 ungrateful task of arbitrating between friends. 
 
 The sympathy extended in this country towards the 
 national aspirations of the Jugoslavs is more recent but not 
 less cordial. If, indeed, the problem of the Balkan nationali- 
 ties may be regarded as a unit, our interest in it must be 
 dated back to the Hellenic revival of 1821. The Greek cause 
 had no more enthusiastic advocates than those it found in 
 England. Only recently, however, has popular sympathy 
 been actively aroused in this country on behalf of a Greater 
 Serbia. Not that* this fact should cause any particular 
 surprise. It is sufficient to refer to the speeches delivered 
 and the articles indited after the delivery of the Austrian 
 ultimatum to Serbia on July 23, 1915. Tke vast majority of 
 those speeches and articles betray little appreciation of the 
 
 ^ This essay was published, in substance, in the Nineteenth Century 
 a7id After iox December 1915. 
 
330 THE EUROPEAN COMMONWEALTH 
 
 peculiar significance to be attached to these new manifestations 
 of the trend of Austrian diplomacy, still less of the supremely 
 important role which it must fall to Serbia to play in a general 
 European War. Even so late as July 30, 191.^, an historian of 
 high distinction, with special knowledge of modern European 
 history, wrote to the present writer expressing his astonish- 
 ment that ' it should be supposed that we are anxious to 
 plunge into war for the beaux yeux of Serbian pig-dealers with 
 swelled heads '. That his brusque words expressed the views 
 current at that date among many Englishmen can hardly 
 be questioned. Recent events have opened our eyes to the 
 fact that the little Serbian nation have, with heroic endurance 
 and self-sacrifice, barred the path of Mitteleuropa to the East. 
 They have, it is true, fought primarily for their own national 
 existence; they have also fought the battle of the whole 
 Southern-Slavonic race, but they have fought not less certainly 
 in the interests of the Western allies, and most of all in those 
 of the British Empire. 
 
 This fact gives them a claim which no words can ade- 
 quately measure not only to all the military assistance we 
 can immediately afford, but to every possible consideration 
 in the final re-settlement of the map of the Near East. The 
 Habsburgs have always played with consummate adroitness 
 and no inconsiderable success the game of dividing their 
 enemies. The problem which we have to solve is how to 
 unite our friends. It is a piece of rare good fortune for our 
 opponents that the aspirations of Italia Irredenta and Serbia 
 Irredenta should come into conflict in the Adriatic, that 
 Bulgarian and Serbian ambitions should clash in Macedonia, 
 that Roumanian interests should be at variance, in the east 
 of the peninsula, both with those of Russia and Bulgaria, 
 and that the Greek Irredentists should be profoundly jealous 
 and suspicious of all other parties. But the obvious interest 
 and policy of our enemies ought to render clearer and easier 
 the recognition of our own. If theirs is to exacerbate 
 differences, ours must be to appease and it possible to reconcile 
 them. 
 
 How is this to be done in the case of the Adriatic ? The 
 
THE PROBLEM OF THE ADRIATIC 331 
 
 Jugoslavs recognize two claims on the part of Italy on the 
 eastern coast : the cultural and the strategic. 
 
 ' No sane Jugoslav', v^rites Dr. Watson, ' dreams of ousting 
 Italian culture (from Dalmatia) as a spiritual force. . . . What 
 they resent and will resist t«) the death is any attempt to 
 employ that culture as the tool of Italianization, or as an 
 excuse for imposing another alien yoke upon the Slav popula- 
 tion. But otherwise they can be relied upon to offer adequate 
 guarantees for the survival and proper treatment of the Italian 
 minorities, and for complete linguistic liberty in their schools 
 and in local cultural institutions.' ^ 
 
 Nor will they be niggardly in their recognition of Italy's right 
 to exclusive naval supremacy in the Adriatic and to possession 
 of the keys which shall safeguard it. Thus Sir Arthur Evans, 
 who writes with peculiar authority and responsibility, has put 
 it upon record that, as far as the Jugoslavs are concerned, 
 Italy's claim will not be questioned to the Trentino or the 
 Valley of the Isonzo (with which, of course, the Southern Slavs 
 are not concerned), nor to Trieste, to western Istria with Pola, 
 nor to Valona.^ To these he is prepared to add ' as a supreme 
 concession ' the island of Lissa, which may be regarded as the 
 key of the inner Adriatic, and in English hands proved its 
 great value as a naval base during the latter years of the 
 Napoleonic wars (1808-15). He would further be prepared 
 to offer an additional guarantee to Italy in the shape of the 
 dismantling of the fortifications at Sebenico and Cattaro and 
 the perpetual neutralization of the Dalmatian coasts. Finally, 
 it is understood that Italy may have the little island of 
 Lussiapiccolo which ' covers the back of Pola and commands 
 the entrance to the Quarnero and to the port of Fiume '. ^ 
 The proffered concessions are certainly, from the Jugoslavia 
 standpoint, on a generous scale, though it seems difficult to rate 
 very highly the value of Dr. Watson's assurance that ' the new 
 Jugoslavia will not merely have no navy, but no spare capital 
 to invest in one '. For the moment this is indisputably true, 
 and for some considerable time to come it is likely to remain 
 so. But Italy, looking to a more distant future, may well 
 
 ^ Op. clL, p. 69. 2 Manchester Guardian, May 13, 191 5. 
 
 ^ Seton Watson, op. cit., p. 71. 
 
33'2' THE EUROPEAN COMMONWEALTH 
 
 ask: How long? Secure in possession of all the essential 
 naval keys of the Adriatic — Venice, Trieste, Pola, Lussiapiccolo, 
 Lissa, Valona, and Brindisi — Italy will, however, be well 
 advised not to press for an answer to a legitimate question. 
 Apart from this point, will the concessions offered by 
 Sir Arthur Evans and Dr. Watson satisfy the Italians ? 
 
 Signor Virginio Gayda insists that the anti-Italian feelings 
 of the Dalmatian Slavs have been fostered and indeed created 
 by the machinations of the politicians at Vienna and Buda- 
 Pesth. But he acknowledges their existence, and he admits 
 that ' the Italian people must come to terms with the Slavs : 
 they must not do violence to their national aspirations, their 
 economic liberty. But it is', he adds, 'a question of restoring 
 a just balance and the natural harmony between Italians and 
 Slavs which existed before 1866, before the Austrian Govern- 
 ment's new policy ' (pp. 44-5). 
 
 Half a century ago Mazzini eloquently pleaded for a restora- 
 tion of that ' natural harmony', and based his plea upon the 
 grounds alike of morality and of expediency : 
 
 * The true aim of Italian international existence/ he wrote 
 in 1 87 1, 'the most direct path to her future greatness, lies 
 higher up, there where the most vital European problem is 
 fermenting to-day ; in brotherhood with that vast element 
 whose mission is to infuse a new spirit in the community of 
 nations, or, if allowed by an improvident diffidence to go 
 astray, to trouble it with long wars and grave dangers ; it lies 
 in an alliance with the family of Slavs. The Eastern limits 
 of Italy were laid down in Dante's words : 
 
 ' a Pola presso del Quarnaro, 
 
 che Italia chiude e i suoi termini bagna 
 (* " To Pola near the Quarnaro, which encloses Italy and 
 washes her confines"). 
 
 * Istria is ours. But from Fiume onward down the eastern 
 coast of the Adriatic to the river Boiano on the borders of 
 Albania there stretches a zone in which, amid the relics of our 
 colonies, the Slav element predominates. This zone of the 
 Adriatic shore includes Cattaro, Dalmatia, and the Montene- 
 grin region. In conquering for the Slavs of Montenegro the 
 outlet which they need at Cattaro, and for the Slavs of 
 Dalmatia the principal towns of the eastern shore, thus assist- 
 ing the resuscitation of the Illyrian Slavs, Italy would be the 
 
THE PROBLEM OF THE ADRIATIC 333 
 
 first among nations to acquire the right of affection, of 
 inspiration, and of economic advantages with the entire Slav 
 family.' 
 
 Towards this accommodation both Italy and the representa- 
 tives of Jugoslavia would seem, as an Italian publicist^ has 
 recently pointed out, to be veering to-day. There has lately 
 been formed an Italo-Jugoslav Committee which has sug- 
 gested the following basis of an understanding between the 
 two peoples : 
 
 * I. An engagement on the part of the Italians and of the 
 Jugoslavs to fight unremittingly in concert for the liberation 
 of the Latin and Slav peoples of Austria-Hungary from the 
 German-Magyar domination and from subjection to the house 
 of Habsburg. 
 
 ' 1. Italians engage to support the movement of the Serbs, 
 Croats, and Slovenes for the constitution of a united and 
 independent national State. 
 
 ' 3. Recognition on the part of the Italians of the right of 
 Jugoslavia to Dalmatia, and recognition on the part of the 
 Jugoslavs of the right of Italy to union with Gorizia (il 
 Goriziano), Trieste, and Istria to Monte Maggiore. and such of 
 the Foranean Isles of the Dalmatian archipelago as are indis- 
 pensable for the defence of the Italian coast. 
 
 ' 4. Reciprocal guarantees assuring freedom of culture and 
 judicial equality to the Italian or Slav minorities remaining in 
 the Italian or Jugoslav territories ; the towns of Fiume and 
 Zara to be constituted free cities with their own statutes. 
 
 ' 5. Integrity of Albania. 
 
 ' 6. All technical questions relating to territorial delimitations, 
 judicial guarantees, and railroad and customs stipulations 
 which cannot be settled directly by treaty between the two 
 Governments concerned to be taken to arbitration.' ^ 
 
 Clearly tending in the same direction is the resolution 
 embodied in the ' Pact of Rome ', a document which was 
 drawn up at a conference held in Rome in April 1918, and 
 attended by * the recognized spokesmen of the subject nation- 
 alities of the Central Empires assembled in solemn council 
 
 ^ Pietro Silva, Professor of History in the Livorno Naval Academy, in 
 The New Europe^ vol. vi, No. 78, pp. 401 seq. 
 
 ^ Cp. op. cit.^ p. 405, vvh^e reference is also made to an exposition of 
 this programme to be found in an Italian work published in March 
 1918, La Qiiestione deW Adrlaiico, by C. Maranelli and G. Savelmini 
 (Florence, 1918). 
 
334 THE EUROPEAN COMMONWEALTH 
 
 in the capitol'. The conference, though obviously unofficial, 
 was officially welcomed by Signor Orlando, the Italian Prime 
 Minister, who, according to a document lately^ issued by 
 the Italian Information Bureau in London, is said to have 
 ' endorsed this work of the new diplomacy of the people '. 
 
 The pertinent portion of this * Pact of Rome ' runs as 
 follows : 
 
 * The representatives of the Italian nation and of the Jugo- 
 slav nation agree in particular as follows : 
 
 ' I. — In the relations between the Italian nation and the 
 nation of the Serbs, Croatians, and Slovenes — known also 
 under the name of the Jugoslav nation — the representatives 
 of the two peoples recognize that the unity and independence 
 of the Jugoslav nation is a vital interest of Italy, just as the 
 completion of Italian national unity is a vital interest of 
 the Jugoslav nation. For this reason the representatives of 
 the two peoples undertake to do all that may lie in their 
 power so that both during the War and at the time of con- 
 cluding peace these final ends of the two nations may be 
 completely reached. 
 
 ' II. — They declare that the liberation of the Adriatic Sea 
 and its defence against the present or eventual enemy is 
 a vital interest of the two peoples. 
 
 ' HI. — They undertake also to settle amicably and in the 
 interests of the future good and sincere relations between 
 the two peoples, the various territorial controversies on the 
 basis of the principle of nationality and of the right of nations 
 to decide their own fate, in such a manner as not to injure 
 the vital interests of the two nations as they will be defined 
 at the moment of concluding peace. 
 
 ' IV. — Groups of one nation which will have to be included 
 within the boundaries of another will be guaranteed the right 
 to the respect of their language, their culture, and their moral 
 and economic interests.' 
 
 Opinions may differ as to the precise degree of significance 
 which ought to be attached to covenants concluded by the 
 representatives of the ' New Diplomacy ', but it is at least 
 as easy to underrate as to overrate it. All the available 
 evidence would appear to support the contention of those 
 who discern the dawn of a new era iji the relations of Italy 
 and the Jugoslavs. Certain it is that the temper of Italy, 
 though not less decided in the assertion of its own just 
 
 ^ 1918. 
 
THE PROBLEM OF THE ADRIATIC c^^^s 
 
 claims, is to-day (1918) more open than it was in 1915 to 
 an appreciation of the claims put forward by its allies. 
 
 Meanwhile there has been and there can be no obscurity 
 as to the attitude and the office of Great Britain. Bound 
 as she is by the ties of ancient friendship to Italy, and at 
 the same time deeply involved in gratitude and by her 
 professed principles to the Jugoslavia of the future, it must 
 be her part, by every possible means within her power, to 
 assist the restoration of that 'just balance ' and ' natural harmony' 
 between Italians and Slavs which can alone solve the problem 
 of the Adriatic. 
 
 For Great Britain and for the Allies in general it is a testing 
 problem. We have constantly and with complete sincerity 
 affirmed that between us and our enemies there is at stake 
 a moral issue. We have invoked the principles of freedom, 
 of justice, of nationality. No redrafting of the map of Europe 
 can, we believe, be satisfactory in itself, or reasonably en- 
 during, which does not defer to these principles, which fails 
 to take account of the racial affinities, the historical traditions, 
 the religious beliefs, the economic requirements, and the 
 natural geographical definitions of the peoples who are 
 primarily concerned. But difficulties inevitably arise when, 
 as in the case of the Adriatic, one or more of these principles 
 are mutually irreconcilable, and it is accentuated when there 
 appears to be a conflict of principle, or even of interest, 
 between two peoples who are united in the bonds of friend- 
 ship and alliance each with the other and both with ourselves. 
 
 In the foregoing pages the problem of the Adriatic has 
 been discussed almost exclusively in reference to the position 
 and claims of Italy and of the Jugoslavs. There are, as 
 was hinted, other elements in the problem. The continued 
 possession of Trieste, Pola, and in a less degree of Fiume, 
 is of vital importance to the Central Empires. None of 
 these ports will be surrendered without a tremendous 
 struggle, and except in the event of a complete victory 
 achieved in the field by the Allies. Nor must it be forgotten 
 that if the Allies are in a position to wrest from Austria- 
 Hungary the possession of, or even to compel her to forgo 
 
33^ THE EUROPEAN COMMONWEALTH 
 
 exclusive control over, these places, they will also be strong 
 enough to make Germany relinquish her grip upon Con- 
 stantinople, and to restore to Serbia the key of the gate 
 to the Near East. This presupposes /a victoire intSgrale^ 
 just as the whole discussion demonstrates the unity of the 
 problem with which the Allies are confronted. Victory on 
 one front means victory on all ; failure in one section of 
 the world battle-field means failure in all ; the battle must 
 be won as a whole ; the problem, if solved at all, will be 
 solved in its integrity. 
 
 None the less it is important to remind ourselves that even 
 that section of the single problem which we designate as 
 the Adriatic Question is many-sided. It concerns not Italy 
 and Jugoslavia and the Central Empires alone. Greece too 
 is vitally concerned in its solution, and France and Great 
 Britain hardly more remotely. We have already noted, in 
 another connexion, the importance attached by General 
 Bonaparte, as he then was, to the possession of the Ionian 
 Isles. From the very outset of his career he saw the details 
 of the whole picture in precise perspective. He saw the 
 Ionian Isles in relation to the conquest of Egypt, and Egypt 
 he regarded as an essential asset in his world contest with 
 England. At a later stage of the Napoleonic wars we our- 
 selves learnt to appreciate the strategical value of the island 
 of Lissa. If, at the very beginning of the nineteenth century, 
 when the meaning of India was but dimly realized, when 
 Australasia meant to English ears a solitary convict settle- 
 ment on the shores of Botany Bay, the Mediterranean could 
 be regarded as among the nerve centres of the British Empire, 
 how much more in the second decade of the twentieth ? 
 
 To develop these hints would, however, carry us beyond 
 the limits of this chapter. They are dropped in its concluding 
 sentences lest any should be disposed to regard the problem 
 of the Adriatic as a matter merely of local concern to the 
 countries which fringe its shores, instead of being, as it is, 
 an essential factor in a much larger whole ; lest we should 
 look upon its satisfactory solution as a side issue in the uni- 
 versal conflict. In this war there are in truth no side issues. 
 A world problem must be solved by a world war. 
 
CHAPTER XV , 
 
 EPILOGUE 
 
 Projects of Peace : the Holy Alliance and the 
 Concert of Europe 
 
 ' The Holy Alliance set the tradition of that feeling of common interests 
 among nations the growth of which is the strongest factor making for 
 peace. It gave a new sanction to international law. . . . Last, but not 
 least, it set the precedent for that Concert of Europe to which the world 
 owes more than sometimes, in its more impatient moments, it has been 
 willing to allow.'— W. ALISON PHILLIPS. 
 
 ' Unless mankind learns from this war to avoid war the struggle will 
 have been in vain. Over Humanity will loom the menace of destruction. 
 ... If the world cannot organize against war, if war must go on, then the 
 nations can protect themselves henceforth only by using whatever destruc- 
 tive agencies they can invent, till the resources and inventions of science 
 end by destroying the Humanity they were meant to serve.'— ViSCOUNT 
 Grey of Fallodon. 
 
 ' What we seek is the reign of law based upon the consent of the 
 governed, and sustained by the organized opinion of mankind.' — WOOD- 
 Row Wilson. 
 
 This book has been mainly concerned with problems of 
 international politics ; with the relations of State with State ; 
 and of each State to the larger Polity of which it forms a unit. 
 The problems with which it has dealt have this much in 
 common : they are the product of political conditions which 
 have only subsisted for about four centuries ; many of them 
 are of much more recent origin, but all presuppose the con- 
 tinuance, in some form or another, of the existing international 
 organization. 
 
 But the permanence of the present Polity has not passed 
 unchallenged. ' Man ', according to a proverbial aphorism, is 
 said to be ' a fighting animal '. According to a much higher 
 authority he is said to be * by nature destined for membership 
 
 2120 Z 
 
33^ THE EUROPEAN COMMONWEALTH 
 
 in a community ' — a * political animal '. The highest authority 
 declares him to be 'made in the image of God'. Are the 
 several attributes mutually compatible? It is at least worthy 
 of notice that after each successive manifestation of man's 
 fighting propensities on the great scale an attempt has been 
 made to devise a method by which these propensities, so far as 
 they issue in organized warfare, may be restrained, and by which 
 the organizing authority, the Sovereign State, may itself be 
 induced or compelled to forgo something of that Sovereignty 
 whose wand can transmute the sordid crimes of piracy and 
 murder into the high and ennobling virtues of patriotism and 
 self-sacrifice. It is true that a small section of well-meaning 
 but confused thinkers have been unable to draw a distinction 
 between the taking of human life in pursuance of a private 
 feud and the same act performed under superior orders in 
 organized war ; but such doctrines have not prevailed against 
 the common sense of civilized mankind. Murder is murder; 
 war is war. Nevertheless, the horrors of war, ever deepen- 
 ing with the advance of knowledge, with the increasing 
 command of man over the forces of nature, and perpetrated on 
 a scale more and more colossal in each successive war, have 
 profoundly impressed themselves upon the conscience of man- 
 kind, and have stimulated the quest for some method of 
 collective control over the unrestricted will of independent 
 nations, for some means by which the chances of a recurrence 
 of war may in the future be minimized if not avoided. 
 
 Of the innumerable projects for the organization of peace 
 which emerged 'from the great wars of the seventeenth, 
 eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries, only one reached the 
 point of embodiment in a definite and accepted scheme. It is 
 the one associated, too often in ignorant derision, with the 
 name of the Tsar Alexander I. Passing reference has already 
 been made to the * Holy Alliance ', but the fact that it repre- 
 sents the only practical attempt ever made to apply the 
 principles of Christianity to the regulation of international 
 politics may justify more detailed examination of the genesis, 
 the development, and the failure of a remarkable experiment. 
 
 On September 26, 1815, agreat review of the Allied troops, 
 
EPILOGUE 339 
 
 English, Russians, Aiistrians, and Prussians, was held near 
 Chalons. The Tsar Alexander took the opportunity to pro- 
 claim to the world and commend to his allies a project which 
 had long lain near his own heart and which had recently taken 
 definite shape in the signature of a Treaty (September 14), to 
 which he gave the name of The Holy Alliance. 
 
 We may briefly recall the situation. The Allied armies 
 were for the second time in occupation of the French capital. 
 The dramatic episode of the * Hundred Days ' had reached its 
 climax at Waterloo ; Napoleon was a prisoner in English 
 custody, and the Sovereigns and Governments of Europe were 
 engaged upon the difficult and delicate task of arranging the 
 terms of what they hoped might be a durable peace for Europe 
 and for France. For nearly a quarter of a century, with very 
 brief interludes, Europe had been at war. There had been 
 fighting in France, in the Netherlands, in Italy, in Germany, 
 in Portugal and Spain, in Russia, in Egypt, in India, in South 
 Africa, in North America, and on every sea. The European 
 States-system was in ruins ; houses, fields, and cities were laid 
 waste ; a whole generation of the peoples of Europe had 
 groaned under the horrors of perpetual war, under the economic 
 privations they were compelled to suffer, under the burdens, 
 military and financial, which were laid upon them. No states- 
 man whose heart was not utterly cold and hard could look 
 without profound emotion upon their sufferings and sacrifices. 
 
 The heart of the Tsar Alexander was soft and impression- 
 able. A mind disposed to mysticism, a conscience seared 
 with the memory of a terrible crime,^ had lately come under 
 the influence of strong evangelical teaching. With the idealist 
 aspirations of the Polish Prince Czartoryski, his most confi- 
 dential counsellor, the Tsar had long been in sympathy ; to 
 these were now added the persuasive arguments of Madame 
 de Kriidener, and the time seemed propitious for a bold 
 experiment. 
 
 Then, as now, the prevailing mood was an exalted one ; then, 
 
 ^ The Tsar Paul was murdered in 1801, and that Alexander was privy 
 to the plot against him is certain. 'This ineffaceable blot', says Czartoryski, 
 ' attached itself like a canker to his conscience.* 
 
 Z 1 
 
340 THE EUROPEAN COMMONWEALTH 
 
 as now, there was a serious appeal for the * mobiHzation of 
 spiritual forces ' ; then, as now, it was believed that an oppor- 
 tunity, not likely to recur, had opened for putting international 
 relations upon a more satisfactory basis. It was, indeed, only 
 natural that men who had just emerged from the horrors of 
 a prolonged war should cast about for the means of securing 
 a lasting peace. 
 
 To the Tsar and to Frederick William HI of Prussia it was 
 not less natural to base their hopes upon the * sublime truths 
 which the holy religion of our Saviour teaches '. Together 
 with the Emperor of Austria they solemnly declared 
 
 * that the present Act [the Act of the Holy Alliance] ^ has no 
 other object than to publish, in the face of the whole world, 
 their fixed resolution ... to take for their sole guide the 
 precepts of that Holy Religion — namely, the precepts of 
 Justice, Christian Charity, and Peace — which, far from being 
 applicable only to private concerns, must have an immediate 
 influence upon the counsels of Princes and guide all their 
 steps. . . '. Conformably to the words of the Holy Scriptures 
 . . . the three monarchs will remain united by the bonds of a 
 . true and indissoluble fraternity.' 
 
 They further undertook to ' consider themselves all as members 
 
 of one and the same Christian nation ' ; they exhorted their 
 
 several peoples ' to strengthen themselves more and more in 
 
 the principles and exercise of the duties which the Divine 
 
 Saviour has taught to mankind ' ; and they assured all Powers 
 
 avowing similar principles that they would be received * with 
 
 equal ardour and affection into this Holy Alliance '. 
 
 y (> V / -^1^^^ ^y contemporary statesmen and by later critics the 
 
 Holy Alliance and its founder have been very hardly judged. 
 
 Metternich, until he perceived its latent possibilities, looked 
 
 ^ ^^^r' ; upon the whole thing with cynical contempt, and described it 
 
 ^ "^ vP ^^'^ loud-sounding nothing *. Castlereagh, to whose critical 
 
 ^>y^ «^ intellect enthusiasm was unintelligible, described the Act as a I 
 
 W ' piece of sublime mysticism and nonsense ', and questioned the 
 
 vr* sanity of its author. Canning was more suspicious of his 
 
 sincerity. 
 
 Nor was the attitude of contemporary statesmen unnatural. 
 
 ^ For full text cf. Hertslet's Map of Europe by Treaty. 
 
EPILOGUE 341 
 
 The recent record of the Tsar Alexander could not fail to 
 inspire mistrust ; his alliance with Prussia ; his sudden volte- 
 face and his partnership in the Napoleonic conspiracy of Tilsit ; 
 his breach with France and the espousal of the national cause 
 in Germany ; his extreme sensibility to external influences : 
 now Czartoryski's, now Napoleon's, now Stein's, now Madame 
 de Kriidener's — all this seemed to argue instability of character 
 if not something worse. Nor was the language of the * Act ' 
 such as to commend itself to diplomatists ; it spake in a tongue 
 to which they were unaccustomed and which they could not 
 understand. Was such language intended merely to check 
 ambitions exceptionally crafty and far-reaching ? The Castle- 
 reaghs and Cannings might well have been excused for think- 
 ing so. And if contemporaries were justified in regarding 
 it with suspicion, still more intelligible is the condemnation 
 of later commentators. Corruptio optimi pessima. The 
 historian looks back upon a rapid declension from exalted 
 principles ; a cynical perversion of sublime truths ; Metter- 
 nich's complete capture of the mind of Alexander ; his skilful 
 adaptation of the machinery of the alliance to the suppression 
 of popular movements ; the maintenance of tyranny in Naples ; 
 the destruction of liberty in Lombardy ; the failure to conciliate 
 the Poles ; the perfect orgy of reaction into which one Bourbon 
 ally plunged the Two Sicilies, and another Bourbon ally plunged 
 Spain.^ 
 
 Yet, there is no reason to doubt that at the moment when 
 he promulgated the Act of the Holy Alliance the Tsar was as 
 completely sincere as a man of such mixed motives and un- 
 stable will was capable of being. Nor were the ideas embodied 
 in the Act of the Holy Alliance the result of a recent inspiration. 
 The Tsar's tutor had been one Cesar de La Harpe, an ardent 
 disciple of Rousseau. Through him Alexander had become 
 acquainted with Rousseau's criticism of the peace project of 
 the Abbe de Saint-Pierre. That project, so Rousseau had 
 argued, was childish, * without a Henri the Fourth or a Sully 
 to carry it out '. In the fullness of time the seed sown by 
 
 1 The alliance was joined by Louis XVIII of France, and by the 
 Bourbon Kings of Spain and the Two Sicilies. 
 
34!^ THE EUROPEAN COMMONWEALTH 
 
 La Harpe germinated in the mind of Alexander. It was he, 
 Alexander Tsar of all the Russias, who was destined by 
 Providence to fulfil the Design of Henri the Fourth, to put 
 into practice the principles enunciated by the Abbe de Saint- 
 Pierre. His friend and confidant Czartoryski should be another 
 Sully. 
 
 In 1804 negotiations were in progress for the formation of 
 the third coalition against Napoleon, and in order to cement 
 the alliance the Tsar dispatched his friend Nikolai Nikolaievich 
 Novosiltsov as a special envoy to England. The envoy's 
 instructions ^ contain the germ of the Holy Alliance and de- 
 mand close attention. The Tsar's aim was declared to be to 
 fix on firm and lasting foundations the future peace of Europe. 
 
 * It seems to me [he wrote] that this great aim cannot be 
 looked upon as attained until, on the one hand, the nations 
 have been attached to their Governments, by making these 
 incapable of acting save in the greatest interest of the people 
 subject to them, and on the other the relations of States to 
 each other have been fixed on more precise rules and such as 
 it is to their mutual interest to respect. . . . Nothing would 
 prevent at the conclusion of peace a treaty being arranged 
 which would become the basis of the reciprocal relations of the 
 European States. It is no question of realizing the dream of 
 perpetual peace, but one could attain at least to some of its 
 results if, at the conclusion of the general War, one could 
 establish on clear, precise principles the prescriptions of the 
 rights of nations. Why could one not submit to it the positive 
 rights of nations, assure the privilege of neutrality, insert the 
 obligation of never beginning war until all the resources which 
 the mediation of a third party could offer have been exhausted, 
 until the grievances have by this means been brought to light, 
 and an effort to remove them has been made ? On principles 
 such as these one could proceed to a general pacification and 
 give birth to a league of which the stipulations would form, so 
 to speak, a new code of the law of nations, which, sanctioned 
 by the greater part of the nations of Europe, would, without 
 difficulty, become the immutable rule of the Cabinets, while 
 those who should try to infringe it would risk bringing upon 
 themselves the forces of the new union.' 
 
 In the speech with which the King opened Parliament 
 
 ^ Printed in full in Czartoryski's Memoirs', long extracts and full analysis 
 will be found in Phillips, op. cit., pp. 32 sq., from which I quote. 
 
EPILOGUE 343 
 
 (January 15, 1805) cordial reference was made to the Emperor 
 of Russia, ' who has given the strongest proofs of the wise and 
 dignified sentiments with which he is animated, and of the 
 warm interest which he takes in the safety and independence 
 of Europe '. 
 
 Four days later (January 19) Pitt made a confidential reply 
 to the Note presented to him by Novosiltsov. He first ex- 
 pressed satisfaction that the sentiments of Russia coincided so 
 exactly with those of Great Britain, and emphasized his wish 
 to 'form the closest union with the Emperor' to secure the 
 safety of Europe. He then defined with precision the objects 
 to be kept in view : (i) To reduce France to the limits of 
 179a; (2) to provide for the * tranquillity and happiness' of 
 the territories thus recovered from France, and to ' establish 
 a barrier against the future projects of aggrandizement of that 
 Power '. Finally, having discussed in detail the territorial re- 
 adjustments necessary to attain these ends, and particularly to 
 secure the future peace of Europe, he concluded : ' It appears 
 necessary that there should be concluded, at the period of a 
 general pacification, a general treaty, by which the European 
 Powers should mutually guarantee each other's possessions. 
 Such a treaty would lay the foundation in Europe of a system 
 of public right, and would contribute as much as seems possible 
 to repress future enterprises directed against the general tran- 
 quillity; and, above all, to render abortive every project of 
 aggrandizement similar to those which have produced all the 
 disasters of Europe since the calamitous era of the French 
 Revolution.' ^ 
 
 To the ideas adumbrated in the instructions to Novosiltsov 
 the Tsar Alexander remained constant during the years that 
 followed. He recurs to them in the preamble to the Treaty 
 of Kalisch concluded between Russia and Prussia on the eve 
 of the War of Liberation (February 28, 1813): 'In leading 
 his victorious troops beyond his own borders the first idea 
 of H.M. the Emperor of all the Russias was to . . . fulfil the 
 
 1 The full text of this document, described by Alison as 'the most 
 remarkable state-paper in the whole Revolutionary war ', is printed in his 
 History of Europe^ vol. vi, Appendix A, p. 667. 
 
344 THE EUROPEAN COMMONWEALTH 
 
 destinies on which depend the happiness and repose of the 
 peoples exhausted by so much unrest and so many sacrifices. 
 The time will come when treaties shall be more than truces, 
 when it will again be possible for them to be observed with 
 that religious faith, that sacred inviolability, on which depends 
 the reputation, the strength, and the preservation of Empires.' 
 Nearly a year later, when the liberation of Germany had been 
 successfully achieved and the Tsar with his allies was about 
 to cross the Rhine, the same principle was reaffirmed, and the 
 Tsar declared his fixed resolve to place all the nations * under 
 the safeguard of a general alliance '. Finally, in Paris, when 
 the text of the Holy Alliance had been actually drafted, the 
 Tsar wrote to Madame de Kriidener : ' I want the Emperor 
 of Austria and the King of Prussia to join me in this act of 
 adoration in order that the world may see us, like the Magi 
 of the East, recognizing the authority of God our Saviour. 
 You will unite with me in prayer to God that He will dispose 
 the hearts of my allies to sign.' As M. Malet pertinently 
 writes : ' Croire que I'alliance fut fondee pour restreindre les 
 droits des peuples, et favoriser I'absolutisme, c'etait calomnier. 
 les intentions les plus pures des souverains/ ^ 
 
 What was the attitude of the British Government towards 
 the project of the Tsar ? In the Holy Alliance England had 
 no formal part. The Prince-Regent, not being a sovereign, 
 was technically ineligible for membership, but he wrote to 
 , his ' brothers ' to express his cordial assent to the sublime 
 principles enunciated by the Tsar. But it is at this point 
 necessary to distinguish clearly between the Holy Alliaiice 
 proper (September 14, 1815) and the Quadruple Treaty^ con- 
 cluded on November do, 1815, between Great Britain, Austria, 
 Prussia, and Russia. For the Quadruple Treaty, Castlereagh 
 was primarily responsible. As it is frequently confounded 
 with the more famous but much less important Treaty of 
 September, it is important to scrutinize closely its genesis and 
 its provisions. 
 
 In December 18 13 Castlereagh went out in person to the 
 Allied Headquarters to represent the British Government. 
 ^ Ap. Lavisse et Rambaud, Histoire GMhale^ x, p. 67. 
 
EPILOGUE 345 
 
 His instructions, conceived in the spirit of Pitt's memorandum 
 quoted above, define in the most explicit terms the attitude 
 which Great Britain was to assume ; and conclude with the 
 following paragraph : ' The Treaty of Alliance is not to termi- 
 nate with the War, but is to contain defensive engagements, 
 with mutual obligations to support the Power attacked by 
 France with a certain extent of stipulated succours. The 
 casus foederis is to be an attack by France on the European 
 dominions of any one of the contracting parties.' ^ 
 
 Nothing could be more clear-cut or precise. This paragraph 
 was the basic principle of the Treaty of Chaumont (March i, 
 1 8 14), and of the Treaty of Vienna (March 25, 1815). It 
 reappears in the Quadruple Treaty of November ijo. Therein 
 the signatory Powers solemnly renewed their adherence to the 
 Treaties of Chaumont and Vienna, they mutually guaranteed 
 the Second Treaty of Paris, and finally, in order to 
 
 * facilitate and secure the execution of the present Treaty and 
 to consolidate the connections which at the present moment 
 so closely unite the four Sovereigns for the happiness of the 
 world,' they agreed to ' renew their meetings at fixed periods 
 . . . for^the purpose of consulting upon their common interests 
 and for the consideration of the measures which at each of 
 these periods shall be considered the most salutary for the 
 repose and prosperity of nations and for the maintenance of 
 the peace of Europe \^ 
 
 Such were the principal stipulations of the famous treaty 
 which really laid the foundation of that ' Concert of Europe ' 
 which governed the international relations of the European 
 States until 1822, and which exercised a considerable though 
 diminishing influence upon them for a still longer period. 
 
 With the general principle of a European Concert one must 
 needs sympathize profoundly; and not less with the heroic 
 attempt to embody the principle in a workable and effective 
 scheme. But it is undeniable that the scheme, unless carefully 
 worked and vigilantly watched, might, under the guise of 
 promoting international peace, and even in pursuance of a 
 serious endeavour to promote it, gravely menace the cause of 
 
 ^ Phillips, p. 67. 
 
 * For full text cf. Hertslet, Map of Europe by Treaty^ i. 372-5. 
 
34<5 THE EUROPEAN COMMONWEALTH 
 
 political liberty in individual States. Lord Castlereagh was 
 from the first keenly alive to the danger which lurked in the 
 specious proposals of the Tsar. This is manifest from the 
 circular-letter which, in December 1H15, he addressed to the 
 British representatives at foreign Courts : ' In the present 
 state of Europe it is the province of Great Britain to turn the 
 confidence she has inspired to the account of peace ^ by exercising 
 a conciliatory influence upon the Powers rather than put her- 
 self at the head of any combination of Courts to keep others 
 in check.' ^ 
 
 How did Alexander's project in practice work? The 
 answer to this question possesses an interest which is much 
 more than merely academic or historical. During the seven 
 years which followed the overthrow of Napoleon at Waterloo, 
 a definite and formal attempt was made to control the inter- 
 national relations of the .European States by a system of 
 periodical Congresses." The first of these Congresses met at 
 Aix-la-Chapelle in September 181 8. 
 
 The Sovereigns of Russia, Austria, and Prussia were present 
 injperson. Among the accredited diplomatists were Castlereagh 
 and Wellington, Metternich from Austria, Hardenberg and 
 Bernstorff from Prussia, Nesselrode and Capo D'Istria from 
 Russia. The Due de Richelieu, Prime Minister of France, 
 was also admitted in order that he might submit to the august 
 allies an earnest plea that France might be forthwith relieved 
 from the humiliation and expense of maintaining the army 
 of occupation. The consideration of this question was indeed 
 the primary purpose of the Congress. The Treaty of Paris 
 had provided that ' the military occupation of France might 
 cease at the end of three years ' if the Allies approved. The 
 decision really rested with the Duke of Wellington, and the 
 Duke advised that the ' army of occupation might, without 
 danger to P'rance herself and to the peace of Europe, be 
 withdrawn '. The Congress accepted his advice ; France, 
 
 * Cf. Castlereagh Correspondence^ xi. 105. 
 
 * For details of this experiment reference may be made to the Cambridge 
 Modem History^ vol. x, c. i ; to Lavisse et Rambaud, op. cit., x, c. ii ; or 
 to the present writer's England since Waterlooy Bk. i, c. iii. 
 
 1 
 
EPILOGUE 347 
 
 backed by the great financial houses of Baring and Hope, 
 entered into renewed engagements for the payment of the 
 unh'quidated claims of the Allies, and by the end of the year 
 not a single foreign soldier was encamped upon the soil of 
 France. At the same time France was formally readmitted 
 to the polite society of Europe, and thus the Quadruple 
 Alliance of 1815 was converted into the ' Moral Pentarchy' 
 of 181 8. But when the Treaty of November 1815 was 
 renewed it was not renewed in its original form. Experience 
 had already suggested to the cautious mind of Castlereagh 
 certain modifications. The three years which had elapsed 
 since 18 15 had tended to confirm the suspicions of the British 
 Government. It had become manifest that Metternich was 
 bent upon exploiting the Concert of Europe in the interests 
 of repression and reaction. Founded to maintain international 
 peace, the Concert was to be utilized ' as a sort of European 
 police for the suppression of liberal movements'. The re- 
 actionary movement was already making rapid progress in 
 France, in Germany, in Italy, and above all in Spain. . The 
 machinery of the European Concert might prove very useful 
 both in furthering the cause of reaction and, by timely inter- 
 vention, in quelling any incipient insurrections which the 
 reactionary policy of the restored Sovereigns might provoke. 
 As Regards France, all the Allies were in complete accord, 
 and agreed by a secret Protocol to confer ' on the most 
 effectual means of arresting the fatal effects of a new revolu- 
 tionary convulsion with which France may be threatened '.^ 
 But to any general extension of the principle of inter- 
 vention in the domestic concerns of independent States the 
 English Government presented an adamantine front. Even 
 in pre-Reform days an English Cabinet had a wholesome fear 
 of Parliament. ' We must recollect,' as Lord Liverpool wrote 
 to Castlereagh, ' and ought to make our allies feel, that the 
 general and European discussion of these questions will be in 
 the British Parliament.' It was no easy task to make this 
 clearly understood at Aix-la-Chapelle, and there is a touch 
 of humour in Castlereagh's retort that the Tsar Alexander, 
 ^ Wellington, Snpp. Despatches^ xii. 835-7. 
 
348 THE EUROPEAN COMMONWEALTH 
 
 * having only passed one day in a Polish Parliament, has no 
 very clear notion of what can be hazarded in a British House 
 of Commons '. 
 
 The general result of the Congress of Aix-la-Chapelle 
 was a renewal of the Alliance of 1815 in more general 
 terms. The allied Sovereigns expressed ' their invariable 
 resolution never to depart either among themselves or in 
 their relations with other States from the strictest observa- 
 tion of the principles of the right of nations '. In a Protocol 
 of the same date (November 15, 1818) it was specifically laid 
 down that the * government by Congresses' was not to be 
 systematized. If circumstances should arise which rendered 
 a meeting desirable, it was, of course, to be held, but the 
 doctrine that the Great Powers were to exercise a perpetual 
 and continuous surveillance over the domestic affairs of their 
 smaller neighbours or of each other was, thanks mainly to 
 Castlereagh, definitely and firmly repudiated. Castlereagh's 
 caution demanded even more than this, and at his instance 
 it was further provided that in the case of meetings called 
 to consider the affairs of any of the smaller States ' they shall 
 only take place in pursuance of a formal invitation on the 
 part of such of those States as the said affairs may concern, 
 and under the express reservation of their right of direct 
 participation therein'. No paper securities for the indepen- 
 dence of the small States could have been more precise, and 
 it was no fault of Castlereagh's if, in the event, they proved 
 insufficient. It was at one time the fashion to allege against 
 Castlereagh a disposition to ' tie England to the tail of the 
 Holy Alliance ' ; and the fashion is not wholly obsolete. No 
 accusation could be more demonstrably unfair. That Castle- 
 reagh adhered to the * Concert' is true; to have broken it 
 up would, in view of the circumstances of the time, have been 
 
 * a crime against the civilization of Europe '. That danger 
 lurked in the experiment no one knew better than Castlereagh, 
 and no one was at so much pains to avert that danger and to 
 restrain the operations of the Alliance within well-defined and 
 salutary limits. So soon as it transgressed them Great Britain 
 broke away. That time was not long in coming. 
 
EPILOGUE 349 
 
 In no country in Europe had the shock of reaction after 
 1 815 been felt so violently as in Spain. Ferdinand VII, of 
 all the Spanish Bourbons the most contemptible, had been 
 welcomed back to the throne with limitless enthusiasm. But 
 not even Spanish loyalty was proof against the combination 
 of weakness and cruelty which he displayed. By 1820 his 
 popularity was exhausted ; the flag of insurrection was unfurled 
 at Cadiz, and from an orgy of reaction the Spaniards charac- 
 teristically plunged into an orgy of revolution. From Spain 
 the revolutionary infection spread to Portugal and Naples. 
 Alexander of Russia was burning to throw a Russian army 
 into the Peninsula ; Metternich was determined to restore 
 order in Southern Italy. Both hoped to obtain for their 
 several enterprises the sanction of the allied Powers. In 
 regard to Naples, Austria had by treaty a certain right of 
 interference ; in regard to Spain, Alexander had no rights 
 save such as could be deduced from the principles accepted 
 at Aix-la-Chapelle. Castlereagh was determined that the 
 latter should not be perverted to that end. As regards 
 Russian intervention in Spain he was successful, but against 
 his wishes a Conference to consider the whole situation nnet 
 at Troppau (Oct. 30, 1820). 
 
 At Troppau the Tsar met Metternich and made his complete 
 renunciation. 'To-day', he said, 'I deplore all that I have 
 said and done between the years i8i4and 1818.' The sur- 
 render to Metternich was unconditional. Once more the 
 Muscovite leopard changed his skin. The lessons in liberalism 
 imbibed from La Harpe, from Stein, from Czartoryski, from 
 Capo DTstria, were in an instant forgotten ; the Tsar was now 
 the determined opponent of all progressive movements, the 
 sworn ally, the abject slave of Metternich. Such was the 
 temperament of this well-meaning but shallow and impres- 
 sionable Sovereign. 
 
 In strong contrast to the volatile temper of the Tsar was 
 the calm and consistent attitude of Castlereagh. Lord Stewart, 
 the British Ambassador at Vienna, was sent to Troppau with 
 a 'watching brief, but in the proceedings of the Congress 
 Great Britain declined to take any formal part. Her policy, 
 
350 THE EUROPEAN COMMONWEALTH 
 
 as defined by Lord Castlereagh, was from first to last un- 
 equivocal and consistent. If Austrian interests were threat- 
 ened by events in Italy, Austria might intervene to pro- 
 tect them, provided that 'she engages in this undertaking 
 with no views of aggrandizement' and that 'her plans are 
 limited to objects of self-defence'.^ But_to_anything in the 
 nature of concerted action on the part of the Pentarchy 
 Castlereagh was unalterably .opposed. Not that he was in 
 any sense a friend to revolution. His primary, if not his sole, 
 consideration was the maintenance of the peace of Europe, 
 and that peace was, in his judgement, less likely to be 
 jeopardized by domestic revolution than by the armed inter- 
 vention of the Great Powers. To any concerted intervention 
 in Italy or Spain Castlereagh was now, as always, inflexibly 
 opposed, and the refusal of England to assent to it virtually 
 broke ^p the * Moral Pentarchy ' established at Aix-la- 
 Chapelle. But the original Holy Allies went on their way 
 unheeding; and on November 19, 1820, the three Eastern 
 Powers promulgated the Protocol of Troppau. 
 
 This document contained a startling revelation of the funda- 
 m^tal doctrines of the Holy Alliance, according to the revised 
 version. 
 
 ' States [it declared] which have undergone a change of 
 government due to revolution, the result of which threatens 
 other States, ipso facto cease to be members of the European 
 Alliance, and remain excluded from it until their situation 
 gives guarantee for legal order and stability. ... If, owing to 
 such alterations, immediate danger threatens other States, the 
 Powers bind themselves by peaceful means, or, if need be, 
 by arms, to bring back the guilty State into the bosom of 
 the Great Alliance.' 
 
 The precise terms of this declaration are, in view of pro- 
 posals which are again commanding a considerable measure 
 of popular approval, worthy of close attention. It contains 
 a naked avowal of the principle of intervention, sustained, of 
 course, by the loftiest principles. There is to be a tribunal^ 
 else how can a State be adjudged ' guilty'? And the tribunal 
 
 * Castlereagh to Stewart, September 16, 1^20. -Castlereagh Cotrcspon- 
 dence^ xii. 311. 
 
EPILOGUE 351 
 
 is to possess a sanction. Its decrees arc to be enforced by 
 a European police. The Allies were straightforward and 
 logical. They did not shrink from the consequences of their 
 principles. They were under no illusion as to the sufficiency 
 of * moral * sanctions, or the efficacy of an ' international public 
 opinion '. They saw whither they were going. 
 
 So did Castlereagh. The Allied Sovereigns, conscious of 
 the susceptibilities which the Declaration of Troppau would 
 be likely to arouse, more particularly in England, issued 
 (December 8, 1820) an explanatory circular. They asserted 
 that * the Powers have exercised an undeniable right in con- 
 certing together upon means of safety against those States in 
 which the overthrow of a Government caused by revolution 
 could only be considered as a dangerous example, which 
 could only result in a hostile attitude against constitutional 
 and legitimate Governments ', and they expressed a confident 
 hope that * the good will of all right-minded men will no 
 doubt follow the allied Courts in the noble arena in which 
 they are about to enter '.^ The Government of Great Britain 
 was not allured by the prospect of the 'noble arena', and 
 very emphatically declined to make itself a party to the 
 measures which would be * in direct repugnance to the funda- 
 mental laws of this country'. Castlereagh admitted the 
 individual right of Austria to interfere in Naples, but he 
 denounced the principles enunciated at Troppau on the ground 
 that they 
 
 * would inevitably sanction ... a much more extensive inter- 
 ference in the internal transactions of States than can be 
 reconcilable either with the general interest or with the effi- 
 cient authority and dignity of independent Sovereigns'. 
 
 But Metternich went on his way. The Conference adjourned 
 from Troppau to Laibach, a small town in Austrian Carniola ; 
 to Laibach Ferdinand of Naples was summoned to give an 
 account, at the judgement-seat of the Holy Allies, of his 
 dealings with his turbulent subjects. Sentence was duly 
 delivered, and Austria, as the executive of the European 
 
 ^ The text of this important memorandum and the reply of the British 
 Government will be found in Hertslet, op. ciL, pp. 65959. 
 
35'^ THE EUROPEAN COMMONWEALTH 
 
 police, was entrusted with the congenial task of restoring 
 order in Southern Italy. Fifty thousand white-coats were 
 marched into Naples ; stern vengeance was executed upon all 
 who had taken part in the constitutional movement ; the 
 principles of legitimacy were triumphantly asserted, and a 
 regime was re-established in Naples, which was subsequently 
 described by Mr. Gladstone as * an outrage upon religion, upon 
 civilization, upon humanity, and upon decency'. Chastened and 
 purified * the guilty State was brought back into the bosom 
 of the Great Alliance '. 
 
 These were the proceedings which evoked the famous 
 protest from Lord Castlereagh formally repudiating the 
 principles of the Holy Alliance and defining with precision 
 the attitude of his own country. ' England ', he wrote, ' stands 
 pledged to uphold the territorial arrangements established at 
 the Congress of Vienna. . . . But with the internal affairs of 
 each separate State we have nothing to do. We could neither 
 share in nor approve, though we might not feel called upon 
 to resist, the intervention of one ally to put down internal 
 disturbances in the dominions of another. We have never 
 committed ourselves to any such principle as that, and we 
 must as a general rule protest against it.' 
 
 ' We might not feel called upon to resist.' So Castlereagh ; 
 but not so Canning, who in 1822 succeeded to the place 
 vacated by Castlereagh's unhappy death. Where Castlereagh 
 protested, Canning, with less logical consistency but with 
 more practical effect, vigorously acted. It is ridiculous to 
 seek, as so many historical critics have sought, to discover 
 a revolution in English foreign policy in i8ii2. There was 
 no revolution ; there was in principle not even a deviation. 
 Canning adopted without modification not merely the prin- 
 ciples of Castlereagh : he actually adopted as his own the 
 written instructions which his predecessor had prepared for 
 his own guidance at the Congress of Verona. But^in the 
 method of application there was a vast difference between 
 the two men : Castlereagh protested against the Holy Alli- 
 ance ; Canning broke it. 
 
 At the Congress^ Verona — the last of the series — Great 
 
EPILOGUE 353 
 
 Britain was represented by the Duke of Wellington. Through 
 his mouth Canning bluntly told the Powers that, while * there 
 was no sympathy and would be none between England and 
 revolutionists and Jacobins ', England would insist upon ' the 
 right of nations to set up over themselves whatever form ot 
 government they thought best, and to be left free to manage 
 their own affairs so long as they left other nations to manage 
 t;heirs '. Further : theJDuke was instructed, in the event of 
 a resolution of joint action in Spain, ' come what might, to 
 refuse the King's consent to become a party to it, even if 
 the dissolution of the Alliance should be the result of the 
 refusal '. 
 
 The obnoxious resolution was, as Canning had foreseen, 
 adopted ; England abruptly refused assent ; and her refusal 
 virtually broke up the Alliance. From that moment the 
 Concert was at an end. The Duke of Wellington's protest 
 sufficed to stop the project of joint intervention in Spain. He 
 failed, however, to avert the individual intervention of France. 
 But Canning was ready with his counterstroke. * I sought ', 
 he said, ' materials of compensation in another hemisphere. 
 ... I resolved that if France had Spain it should not be Spain 
 with the Indies. I called the New World into existence to 
 redress the balance of the Old.' The language may be a trifle 
 magniloquent ; but the fact which it emphasized was of unde- 
 niable significance. On January i, 1825, the Powers were 
 informed that Great Britain had recognized the independence 
 of ' those countries of America which appear to have established 
 their separation from Spain '. 
 
 The League of Autocrats was not to be permitted to extend 
 its influence over the New World. The interests of England 
 forbade it. And for Canning that was 'enough. To him the 
 consideration of English interests had always been paramount. 
 Even in his anti-Jacobin days he had shown profound con- 
 tempt for those invertebrate cosmopolitans w^ho, under the 
 guise of universal philanthropy, love to vilify their own 
 countrymen. But it is not given to every one with equal 
 felicity and vigour to 
 
 Lash the vile impostures from the land. 
 
 2120 A a 
 
354 THE EUROPEAN COMMONWEALTH 
 
 As in the following lines from the New Morality : 
 
 First, stern Philanthropy — not she who dries 
 The orphan's tears, and wipes the widow's eyes ; 
 
 But French philanthropy, whose boundless mind 
 
 Glows with the general love of all mankind — 
 
 Philanthropy, beneath whose baneful sway 
 
 Each patriot passion sinks, and dies away. 
 
 Taught in her school to imbibe her mawkish strain, 
 
 Condorcet filtered through the dregs of Paine; 
 
 Each pert adept disowns a Briton's part, 
 
 And plucks the name of England from his heart. 
 
 What ! Shall a name, a word, a sound control 
 The aspiring thought, and cramp the expansive soul? 
 Shall one half-peopled island's rocky round 
 A love that glows for all creation bound? 
 
 No — through the extended globe his feelings run, 
 As broad and general as the unbounded sun ! 
 No narrow bigot he — his reasoned view — 
 Thy interests, England, ranks with thine, Peru ! 
 
 A sturdy patriot of the world alone, 
 The friend of every country but his own. 
 
 Canning's youthful sentiments do not differ widely from 
 that expressed in his famous speech at Plymouth in 1823 : 
 * I hope I have as friendly a disposition towards the other 
 nations of the earth as any one who vaunts his philanthropy 
 most highly, but I am contented to confess that in the conduct 
 of political affairs the grand object of my contemplation is 
 the interest of England. Not, gentlemen, that the interest 
 of England is an interest which stands isolated and alone. 
 The situation which she holds forbids an exclusive selfishness. 
 Her prosperity must contribute to the prosperity of surround- 
 ing nations, and her stability to the safety of the world.' But 
 to do this it was essential that England should * move steadily 
 on in her own orbit '. With such independence the whole 
 system of alliances inaugurated at Chaumont was inconsistent. 
 Canning was determined to rid himself of the entanglement. 
 In her own orbit England, consequently, moved, in relation 
 
EPILOGUE s^s 
 
 to all the difficult questions which arose in Greece, in Portugal, 
 in Old and New Spain. 
 
 The Tsar Alexander, Metternich,, and Frederick William 
 the Third continued to act in concert for some years longer, 
 though the accord was severely strained by the outbreak of 
 the Greek insurrection and the subsequent development of 
 events in Eastern Europe. But in 1825 Alexander died, and 
 was succeeded by his brother Nicholas. The new Tsar was 
 a man of very different temper from his predecessor. In his 
 case there was no need to scratch the Russ before you found 
 the Tartar. Of fine presence and genial manners, Nicholas was 
 a pure autocrat. To him Realpolitik meant more than mysti- 
 cism. With his accession Alexander's experiment collapsed ; 
 the Holy Alliance was to all intents and purposes at an 
 end. 
 
 As an experiment in the organization of peace the Holy 
 Alliance was, it must be confessed, an irreparable failure. 
 None the less the history of the experiment would seem to be 
 pregnant with instruction for the statesmen and the peoples of 
 our own day. It is important, therefore, to probe the reasons 
 for its failure. 
 
 One reason commonly suggested may be dismissed at once. 
 It is true that the Holy Alliance rapidly degenerated into a 
 league of autocrats. But autocracy was not of the essence of 
 the experiment ; nor was it the cause of its failure. Nor may 
 we ascribe that failure to the character of the founder of the 
 alliance. Alexander was no hypocrite. His character revealed 
 a curious but not uncommon blend of shrewd ambition and 
 spiritual exaltation, but there is no reason to doubt that he 
 was, in 18 15, sincerely anxious to inaugurate a regime of peace 
 and righteousness among the States which made up the 
 European Polity. He believed, and under the circumstances 
 not unreasonably, that this end could be best attained by a 
 league of Sovereigns pledged to conduct internal affairs accord- 
 ing to the plain precepts of the Gospel of Christ. 
 
 Nor again can the failure be attributed to the chill caution 
 of Castlereagh, to the 'Jacobinism' of Canning, or to the 
 
 A a a 
 
356 THE EUROPEAN COMMONWEALTH 
 
 insular selfishness characteristic at all times, according to 
 hostile critics, of the country they successively represented in 
 the councils of Europe. It is true that Castlereagh watched 
 the development of Alexander's scheme with a jealous regard 
 to the liberty and independence of the smaller States ; it is 
 true that Canning was resolved, in view of the clear indications 
 that the Holy Allies were bent upon the suppression of liberal- 
 ism in Europe, that England should ' move steadily on in her 
 own orbit ', affording, as she moved, every encouragement to the 
 development of free institutions, and to the emergence of 
 young nations untrammelled by the yoke of alien despotisms, 
 and unhampered by connexion with European Powers, too 
 distant or too lethargic or too effete to secure to them the 
 compensating advantages of ordered government and intelligent 
 administration ; but it is not true that either Castlereagh or 
 Canning frustrated an experiment which retained any trace of 
 its pristine purity of intention or held out any hope of fulfill- 
 ing a useful purpose in the future. For the real reasons for 
 the breakdown of the European Concert we must look deeper. 
 A fundamental reason is to be found in the unsatisfactory 
 character of the after-war settlement effected by the diplo- 
 matists at Vienna. Justice must precede peace. Nothing could 
 be more vain than the attempt to form a League of Peace 
 except upon the basis of an international and territorial settle- 
 ment which gives reasonable satisfaction to all parties, or at 
 least to all whom it is intended to include in the League. No 
 settlement can give perfect satisfaction, and the more extrava- 
 gant criticisms directed against the statesmen of 1815 have 
 been largely discounted by the more responsible critics. 
 Charges of sheer malevolence and wilful perversity cannot be 
 sustained. The Metternichs and Nesselrodes and Talleyrands 
 did not discern the forces destined in the near future to 
 dominate the fortunes of States and peoples. They were not, 
 perhaps, quick even to apprehend the things that belonged to 
 their own peace. But they sincerely desired to effect a settle- 
 ment which should secure to an exhausted world a period of 
 repose and recuperation after the turmoil and upheaval of the 
 last quarter of a century. Such measure of success as they 
 
EPILOGUE 357 
 
 attained was eminently partial and temporary. The settle- 
 ment which emerged from the Congress of Vienna was based 
 upon the ideas and principles which had inspired govern- 
 ments and had regulated the international relations of States 
 during the eighteenth century. Of these perhaps the two most 
 potent were the interests of ruling families and the theory of 
 the balance of power, though a desire for commercial outlets 
 and an ambition to dominate the new world of the Far West 
 and the old world of the Far East were not without their 
 influence in determining the relations of the Powers of Western 
 Europe. Not untiLtJie .close_xiL..tlie--eighteenth century was 
 modern liberalism begotten by the revolutions in North) 
 Anierica and in France. Not until the dawn of the nineteenth i 
 did the nascent principle of nationality begin really to emerge 
 as a formative factor in the life of States. The settlement of 
 1815 ignored, if it did not defy, both principles. But neither 
 waited long for its revenge. 
 
 Before fifteen years had passed there was hardly a State 
 which had not had experience of the consequences of an 
 attempt to repress the new leaven of political liberty so 
 potently working among the peoples of Europe. Where the 
 reaction of 18 15 had been most violent, as in Spain and Italy, 
 the new leaven worked, as we have seen, not towards reform 
 but towards revolution, and in 1830 a signal was hoisted in 
 Paris which evoked a response of one kind or another in most 
 of the smaller capitals in Europe. 
 
 Even more serious were the uprisings of 1848. Not only 
 because they were on a larger scale, but because they raised 
 larger issues. In 1830 the peoples responded to the cry of 
 political liberty, in 1848 they invoked the principle of nation- 
 ality. It was, naturally, in the composite empire of the 
 Habsburgs that the crisis of 1848 was most acutely felt. 
 Czechs, Magyars, Slovaks, and Italians, all began to lisp the 
 lesson of self-determination, and when that lesson is completely 
 learnt the Austrian Empire will cease to be. But neither in 
 the Habsburg dominions nor elsewhere did the risings of 1848 
 attain ultimate success. The Republic set up in France did 
 not maintain itself much longer than those of Vienna and 
 
S5^ THE EUROPEAN COMMONWEALTH 
 
 Rome. By a curious irony, the coiip d''Stat which re-established 
 the Empire in France ultimately brought emancipation to 
 Italy. For the moment, however, the Habsburg yoke was 
 riveted afresh upon the Italian provinces ; revolution collapsed 
 in Bohemia and Austria, and Hungary was, with the help of 
 Russia, reconquered. The year of revolution did little for the 
 cause of liberty in Germany and nothing for that of national 
 unity. Yet the seeds of liberalism and nationality were 
 germinating. They had not been uprooted by the reactionary 
 settlement of 1815, nor washed away by the revolutionary 
 flood of 1 848. Their continued vitality must be accounted the 
 first reason for the failure of a Peace ppejeetr which ignored 
 their existence. 
 
 A second, though subsidiary reason is to be found in the 
 character of Metternich, and in the influence which he was, in 
 increasing degree, able to exert over the unstable though not 
 ungenerous nature of the Tsar Alexander. The mystical in 
 Alexander genuinely longed for the reign of righteousness and 
 peace ; but the autocrat was terrified by the manifestations of 
 a revolutionary temper in so many of the States which were 
 embraced in the ' bosom of the Great Alliance '. Upon these 
 fears Metternich worked with consummate adroitness and 
 complete success. The Tsar, responding to Metternich's 
 monitions, just as at any earlier stage he had responded to 
 those of La Harpe and Capo D'Istria, cast the slough of liberal- 
 ism and emerged as the reactionary. Frederick William III 
 was as putty in the hands of his masterful confederates, and 
 thus the Tsar's change of temper was quickly reflected in the 
 policy of the Alliance. The aspirations of Paris degenerated 
 into the repressive doctrines of Troppau ; and if Metternich 
 burned to suppress revolution in Southern Italy, the Tsar 
 showed equal ardour in the same sacred crusade in Spain. 
 
 Upon this rock the Holy Alliance ultimately foundered. 
 The dilemma was not unreal. Could revolution be regarded 
 as a mere matter of domestic concern to the individual State ? 
 Had France been able or willing to confine the operation of 
 the new doctrines proclaimed in 1789 within her own frontiers? 
 Had she not, in the name of Liberty and Fraternity, declared 
 
EPILOGUE 359 
 
 war by the propagandist decrees issued in the autumn of 1792 
 upon every existing Government in Europe whether the form 
 of the Governments were Uberal or autocratic? After such an 
 experience was it possible to deny that the results of revolution 
 in one State might menace the stability of government in other 
 States ? If by its own deliberate act one State forfeited its 
 place in the League of Nations, was it not incumbent upon the 
 allied Powers to bring back the guilty State, by peaceful 
 means, ' into the bosom of the Great Alliance ' ? And * if 
 peaceful means should fail ', what then ? Was there to be no 
 * sanction ' behind the decrees of the august international 
 tribunal ? Must there not be, in the last resort, recourse to 
 arms ? If such recourse were prohibited would not the futility 
 of the League stand self-confessed ? 
 
 These were and are obstinate questionings. They penetrate 
 to the heart of the difficulties which confronted the Holy 
 Alliance, and which must confront any attempt to erect now or 
 in the future any super-national authority. Lord Castlereagh 
 categorically refused to admit the right of intervention. Revo- 
 lution was a matter of purely domestic concern. ' With the 
 internal affairs of each separate State we have nothing to do.' 
 The dogma laid down by Castlereagh has been accepted in 
 terms by every liberal-minded statesman in Europe from that 
 day to this ; to it was assigned a foremost place in the sacred 
 canon of English diplomacy. But his immediate successors 
 in Whitehall found the distinction which Castlereagh drew 
 difficult to maintain. Even by Canning, still more by Palmer- 
 ston, the principle of non-intervention was more honoured in 
 the breach than in the observance. Where does the province 
 of ' internal affairs ' end and that of ' external affairs * begin ? 
 
 The question must be pressed, for it is obvious that a doctrine 
 which can be maintained against a League of Kings must hold 
 equally good against a League of Nations. Is the principle 
 laid down at Troppau to be affirmed or denied? Are the 
 leagued democracies to bind themselves to bring back a * guilty 
 State ' ' by peaceful means or, if need be, by arms ' into the 
 bosom of the League of Peace ? The new league, if it comes 
 into being, is to be a league not of autocrats but of free nations. 
 
360 THE EUROPEAN COMMONWEALTH 
 
 * Democracy' is to be a qualification, it would seem, of 
 membership. Unless such a test is imposed and enforced, one 
 of the chief obstacles which the Holy Alliance encountered is 
 only too likely to be found in the path of the League of 
 Nations. In the Concert of 1815 a limited monarchy, like 
 England, had a place beside autocracies like Russia and 
 Austria. With what result ? That as soon as a really difficult 
 and testing question arose at Troppau, the Concert ceased to 
 be harmonious, and the individual players played each their 
 own tune. But even if it be made a condition of membership 
 that each constituent State shall enjoy democratic institutions, 
 that all shall be in respect of government eiusdem generis, it is 
 not certain that the new league will be able to avoid the rock 
 upon which the old league made shipwreck. 
 
 Assume that a monarchical coup d^itat is successfully carried 
 out in one of the constituent States, and that the results of it 
 are, in the opinion of the General Council of the League, such as 
 to threaten the security or independence of another State, or 
 even to menace the stability of the established European 
 polity. Will, it not be incumbent upon the executive of the 
 League to declare the State, whose government has been 
 revolutionized in an absolutist direction, excommunicate ? 
 Will not the League be called upon to bring back the ' guilty 
 State ' into the bosom of the League of Nations ? But if so, 
 what is to become of the accepted principle of non-intervention? 
 Is the doctrine of Metternich to prevail against that of Castle- 
 reagh ? And if it does, is there not a serious danger that the 
 League of Peace will founder upon the self-same rock which 
 proved fatal to the high hopes and laudable endeavours of the 
 Tsar Alexander and his Holy Allies ? 
 
 The foundering of the ship was not essentially due to the 
 fact that it was manned by autocrats. That is a point which 
 cannot be too often or too strongly emphasized. Autocracy, 
 let it be repeated, was not of the essence of the experiment ; 
 it was an accident of the times in which it was tried. The 
 rocks upon which the vessel foundered would have rendered 
 the navigation difficult whether the vessel had been manned 
 by autocrats or by democrats. It is assumed that in any 
 
EPILOGUE 361 
 
 future voyage it will be manned by democrats ; but thus far 
 nothing has been said as to the structure of the vessel itself. 
 
 Many architects have already been at work upon the plans. 
 To examine them in all their variations of detail would be 
 impossible. We may take as typical of many the programme 
 put forward by the League of Nations Society, 
 
 The programme is as follows : 
 
 1. That a Treaty shall be made as soon as possible whereby 
 as many States as are willing shall form a League binding 
 themselves to use peaceful methods for dealing with all dis- 
 putes arising among them. 
 
 2. That such methods shall be as follows : 
 
 (a) All disputes arising out of questions of International 
 Law or the interpretation of Treaties shall be re- 
 ferred to the Hague Court of Arbitration, or some 
 other judicial tribunal, whose decisions shall be 
 final and shall be carried into effect by the parties 
 concerned. 
 
 {b) All other disputes shall be referred to and investi- 
 gated and reported upon by a Council of Inquiry 
 and Conciliation : the Council to be representative 
 of the States which form the League. 
 
 3. That the States which are members of the League shall 
 unite in any action necessary for ensuring that every member 
 shall abide by the terms of the Treaty ; and in particular shall 
 jointly use forthwith both their economic and military forces 
 against any one of their number that goes to war, or commits 
 acts of hostility against another before any question arising 
 shall be submitted as provided in the foregoing Articles. 
 
 4. That the States which are members of the League shall 
 make provision for mutual defence, diplomatic, economic, or 
 military, in the event of any of them being attacked by a 
 State, not a member of the League, which refuses to submit 
 the case to an appropriate Tribunal or Council. 
 
 5. That conferences between the members of the League 
 shall be held from time to time to consider international 
 matters of a general character, and to formulate and codify 
 rules of international law, which, unless some member shall 
 signify its dissent within a stated period, shall hereafter 
 govern in the decisions of the Judicial Tribunal mentioned in 
 Article % {a). 
 
362 THE EUROPEAN COMMONWEALTH 
 
 6. That any civilized State desiring to join the League shall 
 be admitted to membership. 
 
 The League, it will be noted, is to rest upon a mutual con- 
 tract. The memorandum agreed upon by the Inter-allied 
 Labour and Socialist Conference puts the point thus : ' By a 
 solemn agreement all the States and peoples consulted shall 
 pledge themselves to submit every issue between two or more 
 of them to arbitration.' It will not escape notice that ' Labour' 
 is willing to accept the principle of compulsory arbitration in 
 international disputes, despite the fact that it has consistently 
 refused to admit it in reference to industrial disputes at home. 
 Yet, as compared with the former, the issues raised by the 
 latter are relatively simple. But let this contradiction pass. 
 Thus far the League of Nations does but extend the principle 
 of general treaties of arbitration, such as that concluded 
 between Great Britain and France in 1904, or that concluded 
 by the United States with France and Great Britain in the 
 autumn of 19 14. Such treaties, it need not be said, possess 
 a significance which far transcends the ad hoc arbitrations by 
 which during the last hundred years an increasing number of 
 disputes have been successfully terminated. 
 
 A second feature of the scheme is the provision of an inter- 
 national or super-national tribunal, endowed with very ample 
 jurisdiction. This is no light matter, and it is one in regard to 
 which we must needs move with the utmost circumspection. 
 The wise words of an eminent jurist, the late Lord Parker, 
 should, in this connexion, be laid to heart : ' Legal tribunals 
 for the administration of international law . . . must be left, 
 in my opinion, to grow out of that sense of mutual obligation 
 which is beginning to exist amongst nations. If we attack 
 that part of the problem at first I have very serious fears that 
 the whole structure which we are trying to build may fall 
 about our ears. ... It is a very serious matter to ask great 
 nations in the present day to agree beforehand to submit 
 disputes of whatever nature to the arbitrament of a tribunal 
 consisting of representatives of some two dozen or three dozen 
 States, many of whom may be directly interested in casting 
 their votes on this side or on that.' ^ Reference to the pro- 
 * Official Report^ House of Lords ^ vol. xxix. 13. 504. 
 
EPILOGUE 363 
 
 gramme of the League of Nations Society will show that the 
 Society approaches the problem somewhat more confidently. 
 In the second article, international disputes are divided into 
 two categories, (i) Those which are described as 'justiciable', 
 i.e. *all disputes arising out of questions of International Law 
 or the interpretation of Treaties ' ; in fact, those which are of a 
 kind amenable to a process of law. These are to be referred to 
 'the Hague Court of Arbitration, or some other judicial tribunal, 
 whose decisions shall be final '. (ii) All other disputes, such as 
 disputes arising from conflicts of honour or interest. Such 
 disputes cannot be decided by a judicial tribunal for the simple 
 reason that there is no law applicable to them, nor can there be. 
 It is proposed, therefore, that these should be referred to a 
 Council of Inquiry and Conciliation, composed of representa- 
 tives of the States which form the League. It will be observed 
 that in regard to the former category, justiciable disputes, the 
 principle of compulsory arbitration is to be applied ; in regard 
 to the latter, the principle of conciliation, each State being left 
 free in the last resort to accept or refuse the recommendation 
 of the Council. 
 
 Two questions, at this point, obtrude themselves. First : is 
 * International Law ' in a sufficiently developed state to form 
 the basis for the decisions of a judicial tribunal, with power to 
 enforce its judgements upon all litigants amenable to its juris- 
 diction? Secondly, is the distinction between 'justiciable' 
 and ' non-justiciable ' disputes so real and important as is 
 commonly assumed ? 
 
 In regard to the first, there is undeniable force in the con- 
 tention of Lord Parker that 'such communal life as exists 
 among nations is based and must be based upon customary 
 rules of conduct ', and that these customary rules are the 
 resultant of a long process of social evolution, the stages of 
 which cannot be hurried. The zealous advocates of a League 
 of Nations are in some danger, as he pertinently points out, of 
 devoting their attention to the details of the superstructure 
 withoufhaving made sure of the stability of the foundations, 
 forgetful of the fact that ' every sound system of municipal 
 law, with its tribunals and its organized police, is a creation 
 
364 THE EUROPEAN COMMONWEALTH 
 
 of historical growth, having its roots in the far past. It is 
 supported, in reality, not so much by organized force as by 
 that sense of mutual obligation and respect for the rights of 
 others which lies at the root of, and forms the foundation of, 
 those settled rules of conduct among individuals which alone 
 make law and order possible in the community.' ^ This was 
 not said by Lord Parker nor is it quoted here with any view 
 of prejudging the possibility of the formation of an inter- 
 national polity. Quite otherwise. It was said and is here 
 quoted as a warning to those who would hurry the pace, with 
 the probable result of attaining, in the long run, less speed. 
 International Law is itself in an inchoate condition at present ; 
 until it is more amply developed it would not be easy for a 
 judicial tribunal to interpret its rules, nor would it be easy to 
 secure obedience to its decrees. 
 
 Even more difficult, however, is the question as to the 
 settlement of disputes which are admittedly non-justiciable. 
 In regard to these there is no question of the imposition of a 
 Decree ; the utmost that is hoped for is the acceptance of a 
 Report. But is the distinction between justiciable and non- 
 justiciable disputes quite so broad and clear as the League of 
 Nations Society's programme suggests ? Jurists are familiar 
 with the history of the growth of equitable jurisdiction. The 
 English Court of Chancery affords an admirable illustration of 
 the manner in which the maxims of equity glide almost im- 
 perceptibly into rules of law. Non -justiciable disputes were 
 precisely those which could not be determined in the ordinary 
 courts of law, and which fell, therefore, within the less rigid 
 jurisdiction of the Chancellor, the keeper of the King's con- 
 science. The multiplication of these equity cases compelled, 
 in due course, the erection of a separate court, with special 
 rules of procedure, and the rules, according to which justice 
 was administered in the Chancery Courts, hardened in time 
 into a system of law not less precise than that which governed 
 the decisions of the ordinary courts of law. Is it not con- 
 ceivable that if an International Council be established along- 
 side an International Tribunal, something of the same sort 
 ^ Lords' Report, op. cit., pp. 499, 5CX). 
 
EPILOGUE 365 
 
 should happen, and that non -justiciable cases should in in- 
 creasing numbers pass into the other category ? 
 
 But in either case there remains the question of the * sanction*, 
 the means by which, if enforceable, the award is to be enforced. 
 Ubi ius ibi remedium is a well-known maxim of English law. 
 It must apply to international not less than to municipal law. 
 To set up a tribunal without devising a sanction would, it is 
 generally agreed, be futile. * Behind law ', as Mr. Balfour has 
 well said, ' there must be power. It is good that the accepted 
 practices of warfare should become ever more humane. It is 
 good that before peace is broken the would-be belligerents 
 should be compelled to discuss their differences in some con- 
 gress of the nations. It is good that the security of the smaller 
 States should be fenced round with peculiar care. But all the 
 precautions are mere scraps of paper unless they can be 
 enforced.' But how } With the raising of that question 
 unanimity is at an end. Is the basis of the sanction to be force, 
 an international police force ? Or economic, an attempt to 
 bring back the guilty State into the bosom of the League by 
 means of a commercial boycott ? Or merely moral, a species 
 of international Coventry ? 
 
 On this point, and not only on this, a sharp difference of 
 opinion has revealed itself between the adherents of the English 
 League of Nations Society and the American League to En- 
 force Peace. The proposals of the latter contemplate the 
 ultimate employment of force, but they would merely bind the 
 leagued States to employ the military and economic forces of 
 the League against a recalcitrant member who made war upon 
 another member, w2V//<?f// having previously submitted the matter 
 in dispute to the appointed Tribunal or Council as the case 
 might be. The English League would go further, and insist 
 that members should be required to pledge themselves to 
 enforce in justiciable cases, the judgement of the Court. And 
 logic would seem, in this matter, to lie with the proposals of 
 the English Society ; for if one State may with impunity, or 
 at least without the certainty of punishment, break away, why 
 not two or three or four ? In which case we should find our- 
 selves in the presence of two hostile and armed camps. It is 
 
366 THE EUROPEAN COMMONWEALTH 
 
 only fair, however, to add that the American Society relies 
 upon the fact that the twelve months provided for the hearing 
 of a justiciable case would almost invariably give time for 
 friendly offices on both sides to prevail, and that, in conse- 
 quence, armed conflict would, in fact, be avoided. On another 
 point which has given rise to a difference of opinion the logical 
 advantage would seem to lie with the English disputants. 
 The English League would bind all members to resist by force 
 the aggression of an outsider upon a member of the League ; 
 the American League would not. But the absence of such an 
 obligation would seem to offer to an aggressively minded 
 Power an irresistible temptation to remain outside the ranks 
 of the League. ^ It will then *, as an acute critic has pointed 
 out, ' be free to attack at a minute's notice without incurring 
 the certainty of having to fight all the members of the League ; 
 whereas, if it is inside the League, it must at least give its 
 intended victim a year's notice or, in the alternative, fight the 
 whole League.' ^ 
 
 So much for the interpretation and administration of the law 
 of the nations. But the existence of law implies a law-making 
 body. What provisions do the programmes under examination 
 contain for such a body? In both cases the provision is 
 somewhat halting. The germs of an embryo legislature may 
 perhaps be discovered in the fourth article of the American 
 Society which, as will be seen, is totidem verbis embodied in 
 the programme of the English Society. It runs as follows : 
 ' Conferences between the signatory Powers shall be held, from 
 time to time, to formulate and codify rules of international 
 law, which, unless some signatory shall signify its dissent within 
 a stated period, shall govern in the decisions of the Judicial 
 Tribunal mentioned in Article I.' The mention of an inter- 
 national legislature is scrupulously avoided. No such scruple 
 assailed the Inter-allied Labour and Socialist Conference. 
 Boldly and with incontrovertible logic it proclaims the necessity 
 * to form an International Legislature in which the repre- 
 sentatives of every civilized State would have their allotted 
 
 * The Use of Force by the League, by A. Williams, M.P., L. of N. S. 
 Publications, No. 15, p. ii. 
 
EPILOGUE 367 
 
 share, and energetically to push forward, step by step, the 
 development of international legislation agreed to by, and 
 definitely binding upon, the several States '.^ The only chance 
 of escape for the timid or the recalcitrant would seem to be to 
 accept the status of an uncivilized State. In essence there 
 would not perhaps be much difference between the * confi- 
 dence ' desiderated by the League, and the Legislature almost 
 truculently demanded by the Inter-allied Socialists, but as 
 regards boldness, lucidity, and uncompromising logic, honours 
 rest with the latter. 
 
 Other questions which emerge from recent discussions must 
 receive more scant notice than their intrinsic importance de- 
 mands. There is the problem, for instance, of Sovereignty. 
 Any effective League of Nations must necessarily curtail 
 national sovereignty. Kant perceived and faced the difficulty 
 more than a century ago ; nor did he shrink from the logical 
 conclusion. ' There can be, according to reason, no other way 
 of advancing from the lawless conditions which war implies 
 than by States yielding up their savage lawless freedom, just 
 as individuals have done, and yielding to the coercion of law.' 
 He argues, in effect, that among States, as among individuals, 
 the larger and truer liberty can be secured only by a curtail- 
 ment of that lawless licence which he declared to be *the 
 negation of civilization and the brutal degradation of hu- 
 manity *. To imagine that there can be a League of Nations 
 without some curtailment of national sovereignty is not only 
 to nourish an immediate delusion but to lay up for the future 
 inevitable disappointment. 
 
 More disputable is the question as to disarmament. Is 
 some measure of disarmament to be regarded either as an 
 indispensable preliminary or an inseparable adjunct to the 
 formation of a League of Nations? On this point there is 
 considerable divergence of opinion among the advocates of 
 a League, but by none of them, it would appear, is immediate 
 and complete disarmament deemed feasible. Even the Inter- 
 allied Socialists contemplate the perpetuation of armed forces 
 ' for self-defence and for such action as the League of Nations 
 ^ Memorandum on War Aims^ p. 8. 
 
368 THE EUROPEAN COMMONWEALTH 
 
 may ask them to take in defence of international right ', 
 though they hold that the * League of Nations, in order to 
 prepare for the concerted abolition of compulsory military 
 service in all countries, must first take steps for the prohibition 
 of fresh armaments on land and sea, and for the common 
 limitation of the existing armaments by which all the peoples 
 are already overburdened '. The House of Lords sounded 
 a somewhat less dogmatic note on the subject than the 
 Socialist Conference. Lord Parmoor, perhaps the most un- 
 compromising advocate of a League, declared it to be univer- 
 sally recognized that ' there must be some system of relative 
 disarmament in order that a League of Peace may be effected '. 
 Lord Lansdowne, on the other hand, is opposed to the idea 
 of making disarmament a condition precedent to the formation 
 of a League, partly, by reason of the difficulty of * rationing ' 
 the different members of the League in reference to men, 
 guns, ships, submarines, and mines ; partly because, in his 
 view, to insist upon precedent or even concurrent disarmament 
 would be to put the cart before the horse. Let peace among 
 the nations be assured, and disarmament would automatically 
 ensue ; but until peace is assured it would be folly to expect 
 the nations to disarm. Those who hold that armaments are, 
 in themselves, to be counted among the more potent causes 
 of war will doubtless dissent from this reasoning ; but it may 
 be taken, nevertheless, to represent the sober judgement of 
 men of affairs, and it will be well to take account of it in any 
 serious discussion of the subject. 
 
 That discussion must proceed. Men will not be content, 
 and should not be content, after the prolonged agony of the 
 last four years, to acquiesce in the re-establishment of an 
 international system which, if it did- not produce, at least 
 permitted, the cataclysm in which mankind has been involved. 
 Through the long agony men have been sustained by the 
 hope that the issue of this war may be a lasting peace ; that 
 they are, in fact, waging a war to end war. Whether that 
 hope can be realized it is impossible to say ; but this much 
 is certain, that there will be a serious effort to organize peace. 
 If the need for such an organization cried aloud to the 
 
EPILOGUE ' 369 
 
 autocracies of 1815, it will cry much louder in the ears of 
 the democracies by whom this present conflict has been 
 waged, and in whose hands the destinies of the world will lie 
 when peace is happily restored. 
 
 Nor is the desire for peace confined to the allied demo- 
 cracies. It is shared by our enemies. The issue between us 
 is not as to the end, but as to the means. Both sets of com- 
 batants look forward to the healing of the nations, but as to 
 the method of treatment they are poles asunder. * After 
 bloody victories the world will be healed by being Ger- 
 manized.' Thus did Lamprecht summarize the German ideal 
 of world-peace in 1914. It must be peace by the German 
 sword : the world cannot be at rest until Dante's dream of 
 a universal empire is realized by the genius of the Hohen- 
 zollern. Far different is the ideal for which we strive. The 
 German dilemma presents no difficulty to us. We desire 
 neither Weltmacht for ourselves nor Niedergang for any 
 people that will live at peace with us. Our ideal is that of 
 a Commonwealth of Free Nations, self-governing as regards 
 internal affairs, but united in a free commonwealth for the 
 advancement of ideas common to all. 
 
 Such a commonwealth, we do well to remind ourselves, does 
 in fact already exist. Under the Sovereignty of the British 
 Crown there is in being a Commonwealth of Free Nations. 
 The British Empire is in truth, as General Smuts has justly 
 said, * the only successful experiment in international govern- 
 ment that has ever been made '. That experiment has, more- 
 over, this vital quality : it has in it the element of growth. 
 It has proceeded thus far by an evolutionary process ; and 
 the process is not exhausted. Another branch of the same 
 family has tried a similar though distinct experiment under 
 somewhat different conditions. The United States of America 
 have solved, in their own way, the problem of union without 
 unity. The next and most obvious step towards a League 
 of Free Nations would seem to be a closer union between 
 two branches of a race which, but for blunders of statesman- 
 ship, might never have been divided. Other steps may follow 
 in due course ; but the ascent will not be devoid of difficulty, 
 
 2120 B b 
 
370 THE EUROPEAN COMMONWEALTH 
 
 and even of danger ; each step, therefore, should be made 
 good before the next is taken. Progress should be without 
 rest ; but reaction and disappointment are certain to ensue 
 from undue haste. The assault delivered by Germany upon 
 a world mostly unsuspecting and almost wholly unprepared 
 has called into being an embryonic League of Free Nations. 
 It will be the task of prudent statesmanship gradually to 
 transform a League into a Commonwealth ; a temporary 
 alliance into an organic Polity, endowed with the organs 
 appropriate to the higher stage of political development, with 
 a Legislature, an Executive, and a Judiciary. But to attempt 
 to include in such a Commonwealth States which are in very 
 different stages of political growth is only to court the failure 
 which inevitably overtook the League of Autocrats. The 
 Holy Alliance foundered on the rock of intervention ; it was 
 wrecked in the endeavour to bring back guilty States into the 
 bosom of the Great Alliance. Similar experiments will escape 
 similar disaster only if membership in the League is, in the 
 first instance, confined to States reasonably equal in power, 
 not disparate in government, inheriting similar traditions, and 
 inspired by common ideals. To attempt more is to risk all. 
 
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