THE FEEBLENESS OF THE " CONCERT OF EUROPE."
AMBASSADORS smile when anyone speaks to them of " moral pressure," but it is still true that the " Concert of Europe " has lost of late years that support of universal opinion which it would retain if it possessed a little more of the confidence of the European community. The title remains the expression of an immense force, the only one to which, in grave crises, the nations can appeal. They would, too, be willing to appeal, for nothing is so much wanted just now as an international tribunal with force behind it sufficient to make its decrees valid. " Conferences " like that of the Hague are felt to be too academic, for supposing one country to conquer another it will matter but little that the rules of the " Conference " have been disregarded. The victor will plead necessity, and ask in some polite but cynical variety of the contemptuous phrase—" What anyone is going to do about it ?" No one would ask that question if the Concert were in motion, and it might be as efficient as any Supreme Court were it not that its authority is destroyed by a weakness from within. Each separate nation believes that the decision of the Court will not be regulated either by justice or even general expediency, but will be deflected to suit the private interests or fears of the great Powers which form the effective parts of the tribunal. At this very moment, for instance, humanity is outraged in three cases about the facts of which there is no dispute, in which there is a strong temptation to think the Concert could, if it acted at once, secure redress, but in which it is nearly certain that redress will not be secured, or will be so temporary as to be slightly ridiculous. In Morocco, the hostility of dark men to white men has broken out in massacres which have compelled the use of the Irresistible weapons of science to secure, by a large expenditure of Mussulman life, a temporary and local lull. The town of Casa Blanca has been punished by a bombardment for a murderous outrage on its European residents, and may for some short period abstain from a repetition of such sanguinary scenes. But, as we all know, real security, either for life or property, has not been obtained. In seven or eight other cities the same outrages may be repeated, or if they are not, the justifiable fear of them will exercise a paralysing effect upon quiet and pros- perity. Now, even if we admit to the full the right of the coloured races to independence, this is the kind of crime which Europe ought to be able to put down. The Europeans murdered were entirely guiltless, for the native Government had given them permission to continue their engineering work, which was the provocation, and of the Moors destroyed by the bombardment probably one half were unconcerned in the massacre. Shells do not clearly recognise differences of sex or age, yet it may be taken as certain that no permanent remedy will be provided. The statesmen who compose the " Concert " have so little confidence in one another that they are not likely to permit the Tribunal to act effectually. They think that if France acts she will keep Morocco, and so be aggrandised (an absurd assump- tion, for she will be compelled to lock up a heavy division of her army in garrisoning the new territory). If Germany acts, they believe she will monopolise the trade of Morocco, and if England acts, they fancy she will keep Tangier, and with it the control of the entrance to the Mediterranean. No promises made by the respective Governments will avail to dissipate these apprehensions, for the secret belief on all sides is that such promises do not avail, and ought not to avail, when public opinion demands that they be broken or evaded. The alternative method of action, the substitution of a really strong Sultan of the native dynasty for the present incompetent trifler is not even discussed, for, although it could be secured by steady pressure at Fez, such a device might make Morocco strong, and so terminate what are believed to be the secret hopes of all concerned. It would be, it is thought, like paying into court a sum of money which everybody hoped to steal.
The Macedonian case is even worse, because remedy can be more easily obtained. The misery of Macedonia, the utter want of security for life, property, and female honour is almost without a parallel within the European area, and it could all be stopped at once either by appoint- ing a Prince of Macedonia with a compensation in tribute to Constantinople, or by the much better plan—provided only that another Baron Kallay were available—of allowing Austria to occupy the province, and govern it for twenty years in the civilizing way in which she is governing Bosnia. But either of these schemes might end in destroying the hopes of Russia, of Greece, of Bulgaria, and of those who dream of a confederation of the Balkans, and therefore the misery of millions is to continue. The Concert is to tell its agents to be a little more energetic, which, as they are all manoeuvring against each other, they will not be. And there is a third case so gross that it unites all British Parliamentary parties, the case of the Congo Free State, where a great population has been surrendered by Europe to what is really legalised dacoity attended by unusual circumstances of cruelty in order that the lessees of the King of the Belgians and of the Congo Free State may make extravagant profits. The Concert in this case could deliver the people of the Congo by simply decreeing that the Monarch to whom their destinies were entrusted had failed to fulfil the understood compact of the trust, but every member of the Concert—except, perhaps, France, which claims the right of preemption—would resist that solution in fear that Great Britain might some day add the State to the already overburdensome area of its vast coloured dominion.
It may be argued that this feeble result is unavoidable, or at any rate would not be avoided by any improvement in European opinion. But in the first case it should be publicly acknowledged that the Concert as an instrument for good has proved a disheartening failure, and the statesmen should cease to shelter themselves—as even Sir Edward Grey occasionally seems tempted to do—by appealing to an abstraction which they know will not help them, and in the second case the statement is not true. If Europe at large or the peoples of the other great States were only as anxious as the people of this country are to remedy the injustice and misery under which the black folk of the Congo suffer, the remedy would be found at once without any war or any derogation to " the monarchical principle," which cannot justify the selling of a great mass of subjects to make a profit for individuals. It would, for example, be impossible to resist a resolution by every Parliament in Europe that the condition of the Congo State was disgraceful to Christianity and fatal to the just reputation of the diplomatic services. It is quite easy to exaggerate the effective force of public opinion, but quite as easy to minimise it till it becomes merely an excuse for tolerating all the great remediable abuses which still discredit the diplomacy of the civilised States, and like so many other facts around us suggest that we are all living under a regime of inferior and conscienceless men. Surely it must be possible for the rulers of the European Concert to devise a plan by which, without making a breach of the peace too probable, they might secure on occasion that broad tranquillity without which there is no certainty even of the continuance of peace. The dangers raised by the question of Morocco may yet wrap Europe in flames. Those created by the atrocities in Macedonia may end in war throughout the Near East, while those involved in the cruelties of the Congo may one day help to produce a massacre of all white men by all negroes who, in the Congo at least, are outraged by the men who ought to be their protectors beyond what even the lowest human nature can endure without revenge. The old Five Powers were better than the Concert, for they did put down the Slave Trade, and in that way gave a great blow to slavery itself. Yet slavery did not concern them except from that moral point of view which the members of the Concert now seem unable to recognise or denounce as sentimental.
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