TWO LESSONS OF THE MORIER INCIDENT.
THERE are two broad lessons to be learned from the history of the Morier incident. One is, that the character of Prince Bismarck is not softening but hardening with age, and that his -faults continue seriously to diminish the immense value of his capacities to his country. Of all those faults, the greatest is the violence of his dislike to all who rival him, or oppose him, or thwart him, even though the thwarting be accidental, or occurs in the course of acknowledged duty. This defect has throughout embarrassed his internal administration, for it has disinclined strong men to act under him, has prevented his founding a school of statesmen, and has left him, when approaching old age, surrounded with clerks instead of colleagues. But for the accident that his son inherits some of his capacities, Germany would be without a man capable from experience as well as powers of carrying on successfully the 'work which the Prince has not as yet completed. His immense blunder in declaring war on the Papacy, and trying, so to speak, if he could not shell a ghost into submission, was due to himself alone, for his master never liked the Culturkampf, and it was a perfect illustration of the grand want in his powerful nature. He lacks tolerance for opponents. It is coming out again in this attack on Sir Robert Morier, which is no more a Press attack than it is an attack by the birds of the air. Any German editor who ventured without the Chancellor's consent to say or pub- lish one-half of what has been published and said, would in a week be laid by the heels in prison, and perhaps, like the unlucky Dr. Geffcken, kept there for ninety days to await trial. The attack must come from the Chancellor ; and though its motives are still a mystery, its results are palpably disastrous to German interests. 'Whether Prince Bismarck dislikes Sir Robert Morier personally, or is deter- mined to break his influence in St. Petersburg, or merely wages war on him in continuance of his inexplicable cam- paign against all who influenced the late Emperor, remains his secret; but he is striking at him in the fierce way in which he strikes at foes, and with a disregard of consequences which in a statesman of his rank excites a kind of amaze- ment. Suppose even that he is right, which as regards the charge of treachery is impossible, look at the waste of resources for no end. There is not a diplomatist in Europe whom the attack does not irritate and alarm ; not a states- man who does not feel as if he were dealing with a man upon whose action he could not calculate, who cared nothing for results, and who might at any moment spring a mine upon the friendliest Power. At this very juncture, Prince Bismarck, besides asking the " benevolence " of the English Foreign Office towards his general foreign policy, desires something very like a co-partnership in action upon the African coast. His son, in a public speech, admits this, actually going the length of using the phrase that German and English interests are " married " in East Africa. Lord Salisbury is quite willing to accept the co-partnership, has even agreed to carry it out, but is impeded and hampered by a suspicion among his own party as well as _Liberals, that the Prince is only simulating friendship, and, to speak plainly, is making a cat's-paw of him. This suspicion alienates half the journals friendly to the Government, produces constant interpellations in Parliament, and is so deep and strong in the religious world, that but for the general wish of all sensible Englishmen to live in friend- ship with Germany, Lord Salisbury might be compelled to decline any proposal for joint action. And this is the very moment chosen for an outbreak which is regarded all over England as a perfectly unjustified affront. "What on earth makes the Chancellor so rude ?" was the question asked of us by a passionate admirer both of him and his policy, and it exactly expresses both the depth and the kind of the annoyance felt. That annoyance is not due to the charge itself, which, however serious, is a matter to be settled by evidence—including, of courseothe evidence of character —but to the tone and temper towards England betrayed in making it. There is not only no friendliness in that tone, but no respect, and the English people, though curiously tolerant of mere discourtesy—witness their treat- ment of the Sack-vile incident—have not the slightest notion of being browbeaten. That makes them not only sullen, but suspicious. Just imagine how Cavour, the only man of this half-century who stood on Prince Bismarck's level, would have treated Sir Robert Morier's application —even if it ought to have gone through Sir E. Malet- with what pleasant readiness he -would have intimated his wish for the publication of Marshal Bazaine's denial, with what polished courtesy he would, have expressed his regret that Sir Robert's statement, "so excusably and inevitably full of feeling, had left him in greater perplexity than ever !"
It is a most 'regrettable affair, because of the Chan- cellor's method ; and its second lesson is, that the profes- sional doctrines of the older diplomatists are ehown by the new circumstances of the world to have been more right than ever. They held that external polish of language was essential to their profession ; that gentlemanliness of bearing not only became a nation, but was required of it; and that a certain punctiliousness of courtesy, carried even to the verge of finieking—as it was when Lord Palmerston rebuked Count Walewski for using the word ‘‘ war," instead of the more diplomatic "serious consequences "- mollified and facilitated the intercourse of nations. Men smiled at what they thought a mere professional prejudice ; but the diplomatists were right then, and are more right now, when everything must be laid before a multitude ten times as sensitive as any Foreign Secretary or King. The latter may pardon a rough method, because he knows it is part of the idiosyncrasy of his great opponent, or may even be pleased with it, as enabling him to show himself to the diplo- matic world panoplied in the armour of courtesy ; but the multitude understands nothing except what is patent, and asks, like our friend quoted above, why the foreign assailant cannot be commonly civil. Urbanity is the first protection of diplomacy against the misunderstandings of the mob, and its suspicious habit of reading into despatches some- thing intended to be derogatory to its own dignity. The uneducated never understand that professionals can spar without quarrelling, and more mischief is done by a brusque sentence to be read by Englishmen, Frenchmen, or Americans, than by twenty despatches over which a Foreign Secretary puckers his brows. As diplomatists are human, the only way to prevent the writing of such sentences is to enforce profes- sional rules, always the last rules to be broken, and so make it almost an instinct with all who pen despatches, to avoid brusquerie as they would avoid boorishness in a Sovereign's presence. We only wish the same rule could in international questions be enforced upon the Press. The boorishness in which some journalists delight is almost as provocative as the brusquerie of Foreign 'Ministers, and but that the masses do not yet read foreign papers, would constantly threaten the continuance of international amity. Unfortunately, such a change is almost too much to hope for. Independent news- papers-too often think it patriotic to give point and ex- pression to the inarticulate irritation of the masses ; while dependent newspapers, in -Germany and France at all events, esteem it their function to print all the ill-tempered insinuations which the Minister, as a gentleman, puts away from him. Even Prince Bismarck, with all his roughness of speech, is incapable of hinting, as one of his editors has done, that Sir Robert Morier must have forged Marshal Bazaine's letter, or it would be written in better French !
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