10 OCTOBER 1885, Page 6

LORD SALISBURY'S FOREIGN POLICY.

E:need not say that me welcome Lord Salisbury's state- :meat of his policy in Eastern Europe with unqualified geasure ; but for the Premier to state that policy and then talk of consistency is to try human patience a little too far. He -.may-be :personally consistent for what we know, for the secret of his inner mind is difficult to read, and we have not forgotten his Mission in Constantinople ; but as chief of a party-he is not consistent. The Tory policy for years has been to:maintain Turkey at all hazards, and under any storm of reprobation, as an essential ally in the chronic struggle against Russia. It was with this object that Lord Beaconsfield :went to Berlin. It was -on this ground that he boasted of his -success in .saving thirty thousand square miles and two :millions of subjects " to the .Sultan." It was on this ground thatdire-clauses giving Thessalyto Greece were not pressed till ithe Liberal Ministry came -in. It was onthis ground that when -.(isprus wastaken:that:absurd guarantee wasgiven to the Porte. There is not a Tory speaker who -has not-abused Mr. Gladstone for ayears for." deserting, our ancient ally the Sultan." There is scarcely a Tory journal-which even now does not point to the:dislike of Constantinople as the grand sin of Liberal foreign palieyould talk of Turkish zig.hts as if the Turks were any- thing but an army:encamped on plains rendered desolate by their:presence, and abuse the "pestilent little States" of the 'Balkan :for daring to think that the Sultan and his Pashas ought:to be sent:baok to Asia. If the Tories have a policy, it -iittoprotect the Turk ; and mow that Lord Salisbury throws the :evil old despotism loser,he says he is consistent. If words (have any meaning, the ,told Europe at Newport that England desired to resist --Ramie:, but not to protect Turkey ; that if Bulgaria was not -Russian, 'Bulgaria might be united ; that the treaties which protect Turkey are not to be kept as against the populations; that he :welcomed .rather than hated. the rising nationalities. Listen to:his -own words :— (:`)Orrr: objectinfdealiog withithose-new nationalities of the Balkan was.tbat therabonld bettrueandasialnationalities. It was the policy oftBurepe —it was ineeitable-result of the progress of events—that *hen there was a homogeneous Christian population subject to the rule firth's" Porte,-that homogeneous-Christian population would, by its own "progressive-tenderneies, by- its-own -innate character, necessarily before lonerce itself from 'that subjection, and it was an operation of that kind:which-the.Berlin Tr.a*ysanctionad. But it was essential that the cations which grow.up should represent the real character, and grow-by the natural-laws of the community to which they belong. I ninat speak vrithstll tcourtesy, and I am anxious that not a word that -oan give offence -should.eseape my lips ; but remember that when the Botlin Treaty was •signed -these :provinces were occupied by a can- tqattring army. Also ,remember that if Eastern Ronmelia had then been handed over to Bulgaria to form a part of a united State, its fhture political growth would not have been that which the character and history of the inhabitants would necessarily and naturally cause. Itwrould have been that'which would arise from the influence of a eanquaring army -which 'was still bivouacked in its midst. That conquering army has retired; -seven years have passed away ; a separate, distinct, and *genuine national character has been formed ; and although I do not deny that I think it would have been 'more-fortunate for Europe -and for the Eastern Roumelians them- selves that this *event -should not have happened, still I utterly tletty*that the provisions • of the Berlin Treaty have been desti- tute of the highest beneficent effects. I say that if these two

• Bulgarirte are in the future to develop the strength, charac- ter, • and idioayncraoy of a nation, it will be due to the care -which-Europe exereisee ever their cradle, and I may also say that it

amt.:absolately without precedent in the history of treaties that after a few years some modification should take place in their pro- visions. I remember the Treaty of Paris, which provided for the separation of the two Rournanias; but I think that before the Treaty of -1Paris -had -been -signed 'two years they were united. Again, • the Treaty of ?Vienna provided for the union of the Netherlands and Belgium ; but before -fifteen years had elapsed they were separ- ated. Treaties do not ,affect .to over-rule the general impulses of roptdations. What they do affect is to protect those impulses from buing controlled by force, by armies which may be able to -give a daegernes turn -to the mabustal development of the people over *hem for the 'moment they.ehance to rule. Our policy, I need not -tell iyou,-iit to 'uphold She Duthie,' -Empire whenever it can be .genuinely and 'healthily turpheld ; -but whenever its rule i8 proved by events to be-inconsistent-with:the welfare of populations, then to-strive 'ttrehnisicandloateratrostreelfmextitieting nationalities who shalt make a•getnikte- and inspoutant.eontvibution- to the future ,freedom -and inde- pendence of Europe." The wise and noble words we have italicised in the Times' report of the Newport speech ring the death-knell of the Turkish Empire in Europe ; they are uttered by a Tory Premier, and then we are told there is no inconsistency. There is not an inch of that Empire in which Turkish rule is not " incon- sistent with the welfare of -the populations ;" and Macedonia and Epirus, Roumelia and the Isles of the Mediterranean, have, under this speech, precisely the same right to freedom -audt-to English support as Bulgaria lad,—nay, on Lord Salisbury's principles, they have more, for Russia-is not even hoping to sway them. What she wants is her road to Constantinopleand -the open sea, not millions of Greeks and Grecised Slays to inarease her population. In what does Lord Salisbury's policy differ from Mr. Gladstone's ? Only in thie,—that, as Mr. Gladstone 'em- bodied his in rough 'English, and told the Pashas to go back to Asia "bag and baggage," his policy stuck in the popular remembrance, stuck -so deeply that Tories have always been throwing in his teeth words-which, now that Lord Salisbury has uttered their exact equivalents, they will 'probably ancept with hearty cordiality.

Now that Lord Salisbury has spoken, we may be permitted to hope also, perhaps, for another change in the Tory -tone. Men, we are aware, habitually hate States -and nationalities for no reason that they can explain, but of all the unreasoning hatreds ever developed that -borne by most English 'Tories towards the "pestilent petty States of the Balkans" is the most unreasonable. Petty States are not bad in themselves. Europe would be a wilderness filled with warring savages, and North America would-be a hunting-field, but for the "petty States" of Judea and Attica, neither of them equal in extent, population,: or visible power to modern Holland, Belgium, or Servia. Nor are they necessarily devoid of the principle of growth. The "petty State" of Macedonia mastered Western Asia ; the "petty State" of Latium gave laws to the world ; the "petty State" of Brandenburg is dominant at -this hour in the councils of civilised mankind. No State could be smaller than Savoy ; yet what does Italy not owe to its " pestilent " Princes, always intent, like King Milan, -on getting something?'Nov is Switzerland large,-which has given an example that dissolves 'tyrannies, and serves, solely by force of the respect it -inspires, to keep the great States of Western Europe from a direct collision of boundaries. As for the States of the Balkan,,they have performed, -and -are performing, the greatest of political services done in this modern world ; are regaining for civilisation that Eastern Empire which the Turks blotted out in blood. It is due to the courage, the political sense, and the terrible sufferings of Roumania, Servia, Greece, and Bulgaria that Eastern Europe is again becoming free, and orderly, and wealthy,,withont that awful collision between the Slav and the German -which might- have ended in the Turk becoming superior in-force to both. They have borne the brunt of a century of resistance. It is their villages which have been burnt, their -cities which have been ravaged, their populations which have -been decimated in the heroic struggle which must soon be crowned with victory. No Great Power save Russia has expended a man on their behalf ; and-she, in Tory judgment at all events, has fought for her own hand. 'Mr. Gladstone once said, in one of his less inspired moments, that this was -not the case with Bulgaria, and that as she had not fought for freedom, she must pay for it ; but was not Battik, which suffered worse things than Jerusalem, a Bulgarian town Europe ought to be full of honour for these "petty States," which even now are working, and spending, and enduring in the general cause of civilisation as well -as in their own. Do our contemporaries imagine that Servians like being shelled by Turkish artillery that they pour to -the national standard ; or that Greeks like bankruptcy and the chance of occupation that they mobilise their Army ; or that Macedonians do not feel when they, still slaves of a wild soldiery, consent to postpone the inevitable insurrection? Or is-it the secondary object of these States— the "equilibrium in the Balkans "—which seems to them so.bad ? The quiet Servian gentleman who uttered that sentenee, and who is about as like a ferocious agitator as Lord Granville is, has been the subject. of unbounded ridicule ; yet what-did he say? Just what every 'European statesman-said for -a century and a half, that to avoid a general military rule by one Power, it was essential that neighbouring States should be tolerably equal in strength. We do not-believe very much in-the "-balance of power," thinking that a. substitute for it can be-found in alliances and in the federal principle, and hoping,- rattrerfeebly we own, that superior power in a single 'State might be-used

to lead, and not to dominate ; but to advocate a balance of power is surely no mark of silliness. We fail to understand all this contempt for rising nationalities while still in the gristle, and would fain hope that it arises mainly from an intolerance akin to that which grown men have for hobby- dehoys, in whose progress, nevertheless, they secretly delight. If that is so; Lord Salisbury's declaration may have the useful effect of teaching a lesson in international courtesy which certainly is sadly required. Boys who have started in life for themselves under difficult circumstances must bear a good deal of comment during their struggles ; but they do not love the men who, because they are a little too youthful, call them "pestilent whippersnappers."