now turn round upon it and declare it valueless. We took it as value, and as value we have now to abide by it in the present argument.

The case then stands briefly thus.

We are entitled to demand of the Sultan the immediate fulfilment, under his treaty with us, of his engagements, and to treat his noncompliance as, under the law of nations, other breaches of treaty are, or may be, dealt with.

We have in the face of the world bound ourselves to secure good government for Armenia and for Asiatic Turkey.

And for thus binding ourselves we have received what we have declared to be valuable consideration in a virtual addition to the territory of the Empire.

And all this we have done, not in concert with Europe, but by our own sole action, on our own sole responsibility.

However we may desire and strive to obtain the co-operation of others, is it possible for us to lay down this doctrine: England may give for herself the most solemn pledges in the most binding shape, but she now claims the right of referring it to some other person or persons, State or States, not consulted or concerned in her act, to determine whether she shall endeavour to the utmost of her ability to fulfil them?

If this doctrine is really to be adopted, I would respectfully propose that the old word 'honour' should be effaced from our dictionaries, and dropped from our language.

W. E. GLADSTONE.

The Editor of THE NINETEENTH CENTURY cannot undertake to return unaccepted MSS.

THE

NINETEENTH
CENTURY

No. CCXXXVII-NOVEMBER 1896

ENGLAND AND

THE CONTINENTAL ALLIANCES

I Do not intend to write here about the well-thrashed and hackneyed theme of the visit of the Tsar to France. This last stage of an historical tour has been studied under all its aspects and discussed perhaps even usque ad nauseam in its most immediate features. What I want is to take it, with its universally admitted consequences, as the departure for a short inquiry into the relations of the great Powers between themselves, with a special view to the case of England.

The public opinion of the outer world, as mirrored in its press, has gone through three different stages concerning the mutual understanding of which this visit is both the solemn affirmation and the tightening. There was first the phasis of unbelief pure and simple, though more or less affected. It was-not yet so very long ago-the fashion to jeer and scoff unmercifully at those poor credulous Frenchmen about their pretended friendship with the Russian autocrat. No article about the international condition of Europe was judged good without a jesting parallel between the solid, strong, silent mass of the Triple Alliance and the fanciful, noisy, blustering phantasm of the dual understanding.

When facts became decidedly too unmanageable for this comfortable scepticism, public men and public writers betook themselves to the second point of view. We entered upon the stage of compassion for poor gulled France. It was ironically asked what advantage the Government of the Republic flattered itself with the hope of gaining

from a friendship where all the profits were for Russia. It was currently said that France had given to the Tsar the key both of her heart and of her money-chest, and had to be satisfied with a return in monkey's currency. It was pointed out that everywhere, in the far East, in the Levant, in the Balkans, Russia had received an accession of strength and prestige, while nowhere, neither in Egypt nor on her eastern frontier, had France yet got back the smallest assistance.

Well, this shower of sympathy not unmixed with some cynical Schadenfreude is for the present come to an end. We hear now quite another song. People are not content to acknowledge the reality, the strength, the mutual cordiality, and the reciprocal beneficence of the Franco-Russian understanding: they must fain exaggerate the power, and by the same token the perilousness, of this new international constellation. Assuredly, it is a good and a reasonable thing to silence once for all these cavillers, who foolishly make it their wisdom to look for spots in the sun or blemishes in a gift horse, and who have sadly and sapiently shaken their heads because a certain word was not pronounced where a certain thing was established and put beyond all doubt before the whole world. However, the proceeding is a little too gross when, for instance, the Cologne Gazette expatiates at length on the dangerous omnipotence of the new Duplice as contrasted with the old innocuous and safe Triplice, and insinuates, in glaring contradiction to its own avowals during the meeting itself, that thoughts of the Revanche received a deplorable impulse and found a frequent expression during the imperial visit.

These tactics of the German officious press, though singularly unscrupulous, are not, after all, particularly dangerous. It is enough, in order to confute them, either to appeal to their own acknowledgments in their unguarded and therefore more truthful moments, or to call to witness any unprejudiced spectator of these memorable days. For is it not beyond doubt that during this short but epochmaking stay there occurred not only a political pact of the first rank, but at the same time a great soul-stirring moral event? We must dare to say it: the people of France, in their unreasoning impulse, have known how to solve with the utmost simplicity the difficulties and to avoid the perils of this reception. Republicans they were and they are, and they have perfectly understood how to make themselves hoarse by clamouring 'Vive l'Empereur!' without shaking the foundations of the Republic. They knew how to distinguish between home and foreign policy. This ignorant and fickle democracy knew how to follow the example of a Richelieu allying himself in Germany with those Protestants he was crushing in France, or of a Cromwell meeting halfway the friendship of the French King, that is to say of the first cousin of the proscribed Pretender. These masses-the men in the streets-knew how to

redeem the innumerable mistakes of the Protocol, and how to make good by the innate dignity of nobodies the errors of the vulgar somebodies or busy bodies of the official world. While they enjoyed to the full the feeling of reconquered security, of France's place in the world recovered, they have not compromised by a gesture or by a clamour the peaceful character of this visit, and they have held in the leash the unfeigned feelings or the factitious passions of so-called patriotism.

In short (I beg pardon of the arbitri elegantiarum and universal doctors of the German press), it has been a great and beautiful spectacle -and, what is more, without the blemish of imprudent and foolish mishaps. Both parties--Tsar and people-have brought to bear the same goodwill, the same unshaken love of peace, the same unassailable consciousness of right and of strength upon this solemn promulgation and outburst of the Franco-Russian understanding. Even bad faith, which alone has dared to misrepresent these unmistakable displays and to slander their meaning, has borne an unwilling witness to their real value. If there is henceforth a fact solidly settled among the data of European politics, it is that France and Russia have tied a love-knot between themselves, and formed for the nonce an indissoluble league. Henceforth politicians have to take into account. this dualism. If not precisely a brand-new contrivance, at any rate it. is sufficiently new in its official acknowledgment, and chiefly in the tightening of its bonds, to introduce a.novel element into international politics.

It has even appeared as if this coming up of the Duplice had already occasioned some searchings of heart among the members of the Triplice. Not only is poor, nearly bankrupt Italy unmercifully held up to her heavy undertakings, and casting longing eyes towards a more natural and less expensive relation with her nearest neighbour, no longer delivered up beforehand to the first assaulting whim of Germany. Other more or less premonitory crackings have been heard. In a portion, at any rate, of the German press, chiefly that which takes its cue from the unforgetting and unforgiving hermit of Fried-richsruh, advances-not even very self-respectful ones-have been made to the Tsar. The friendship of Russia has been depicted as immeasurably more valuable to Germany than the unattainable goodwill of England, or even than the easily gained intimacy of Austria -in fact, as the corner-stone of the true policy of the young Empire.

However, significant and worthy of all attention as are these symptoms, it would be wrong to put upon them too large or too immediate a meaning. The triple alliance is yet, for good or for evil, a great, stubborn, immutable fact, and with it we must deal as with one of the primary data of the international situation. Just now two great systems of states are facing each other in the political heavens. The era when numerous erratic bodies wandered isolated through space, crossing and recrossing their ways, is definitively gone. Eng

land alone remains, between two constellations following each its own path, a solitary comet. Naturally the drawing near and moving together of all these stars of the first rank have created both new attractions and new repulsions-in a word, have totally altered the state, not only of the bodies subject to these new relations, but of the others too.

England, then, finds herself under the necessity of a political selfexamination. It will be well for her, first of all, to clear her vision and to see things as they are. High-sounding formulas, burdens of songs for the use of the music hall, all the self-deceiving paraphernalia of a pinchbeck jingoism, are to be shunned more than in the past. For instance, splendid isolation' is neither more nor less than one of those hollow, resounding, dangerous phrases such as: 'L'Empire c'est la paix,' or 'masterly inactivity,' or 'Peace with honour,' with which people let themselves be deluded.

If it were even 'proud aloofness,' that is to say, if it connotated a real attitude of abstaining, non-intervention, and solitary security, it might pass muster. But the truth is that this so-called 'splendid isolation' means, not the refusal of all compromising, troublesome engagements, not the holding aloof from all entangling meddlesomeness, but purely and simply successive and contradictory flirtings. Its true name ought to be the semi-detached policy.' Now, this plan does not seem to bring better results in diplomacy than it does when a builder scatters on a whole estate the sorry suburban monster of semi-detached villas. It is a policy of make-believe, of self-deceit, and it ends by discontenting everybody.

The history of the present year of grace bears sufficient witness to this melancholy truth. From the Transvaal to Zanzibar it has been a sequence of cross purposes, of self-contradicting undertakings, of half-matured designs. Begun by a violent explosion of anger against the German Emperor, of which the coarse polemics of the German press did not fail to fan the flames, it seemed to set towards an understanding with France, the first-fruits of which were the regulation of the Mekong and Siamese difficulty. Suddenly the policy of Lord Salisbury veered from point to point: French friendship was thrown overboard, German favour was ardently sought for; Italy was taken in tow, a little against the grain on account of her African disaster; and Egypt, the touchstone of Anglo-French relations and of the value put by the Cabinet of St. James on its word, was once more an object of quarrel between the two great liberal countries of the West.

However, it was not yet the end. Once more the pendulum swung back. The Zanzibar succession has been much less the cause than the pretext of a new war-whoop of the German press. Little by little the paper-war has widened its ground, the heavy ordnance has begun fire. The Times and the Cologne Gazette, not to name the smaller