Ottoman domination. They affirm that it is necessary, by the
admission of almost all experts, for this country to occupy Egypt, and that consequently it is necessary for this country to defend Constantinople, or if that is too difficult, to seize and hold Gallipoli, and so prevent Russia from emerging into the Mediterranean. Egypt, they say, would be an unsafe possession for this country if Russia could at any moment send a powerful fleet out of the Black Sea, through the Bosphorus, the Sea of Marmora, and the Dardanelles, to cut across our route to India, and perhaps to close the mouth of the Canal, Ottoman domination. They affirm that it is necessary, by the admission of almost all experts, for this country to occupy Egypt, and that consequently it is necessary for this country to defend Constantinople, or if that is too difficult, to seize and hold Gallipoli, and so prevent Russia from emerging into the Mediterranean. Egypt, they say, would be an unsafe possession for this country if Russia could at any moment send a powerful fleet out of the Black Sea, through the Bosphorus, the Sea of Marmora, and the Dardanelles, to cut across our route to India, and perhaps to close the mouth of the Canal, Upon this question of Egypt, the Spectator has for years, before this present struggle, and during the present struggle, held the same language—namely, that the sove- reignty of Egypt is indispensable to any maritime and European Power which intends to govern India without unendurable exactions or a conscription as savage as that of Egypt now is. General Todleben might as well allow Suleiman Pasha to hold the Danube with ironclads, from Behove to its mouth, as we allow any great Power a dominant influence over the Isthmus of Suez. We have consistently and, as too many of our most respected Liberal friends assure us, cynically maintained this proposition ; and the Pall Mall Gazette, in ironically congratulating the Spectator on its late perception that Great Britain has interests, is guilty either of gross carelessness or of grave misrepresentation. But we utterly deny what we perceive with surprise that even the Standard loudly affirms, viz., that the possession of Egypt in any way creates a necessity for the defence of Constantinople. On the contrary, it helps to remove even the appearance of such a necessity. The ownership of Constantinople matters to us only because we are not yet in full possession of any one route to India at once secure and direct. Such a route once secured, the Russians themselves—to put what we believe an impossible case—might make Constanti- nople their capital, without in the least affecting British interests. They would be in exactly the position in which the French are now. That is, if they choose to declare war on England, they could interrupt our directest route to India. Nothing in the geographical position of France prevents Marshal MacMahon from sending a fleet from Toulon to seize our Indian steamers, stop our trans- ports, and shut up our only road to the Suez Canal. He could do this from an incomparable base, and with the support of a fleet twice as strong as that of Russia. The reasons why he does not do it are,—first, that he would get nothing by it ; secondly, that his fleet would be sunk ; and thirdly, that the consequent war would be most disastrous to his country. Those are precisely the reasons which would prevent Russia from making, with such inferior means, a precisely similar attempt. If we are to "defend Constanti- nople," lest Russia should attack our Indian fleets, we ought for the same reason to seize Toulon, lest France should attack our Indian fleets from that much more for- midable position. To say that France will not attack us is no answer to the dilemma. Tested by the Ipind of evidence which is thought sufficient in the Russian case, the chance of French attack is an exceedingly strong one. She has in her possession of Cochin a direct "interest" in free communica- tion with Southern Asia through Egypt and. the Canal. She has a traditionary belief that Egypt ought, by right of Napoleon's conquest, to be her own possession. She not only "looks towards" India, but she fought us for the posses- sion of India, and very nearly won, much more nearly than readers of Macaulay's Essays think, and actually at this moment holds settlements there, one of which gives her free entrance to Southern India, while the other is within twenty-two miles of Calcutta, and could at any moment stop the passage of the Hooghly. We verily believe that if Russia, essen- tially a poor State, overloaded with profitless provinces stretch- ing up to the Pole, were to possess Pondicherry and eliandernagore, now possessed by a Power twice as rich and great, society in London would go mad with panic and indig- nation. There is no earthly reason why we should not be as friendly with Russia as with France; but assuming the Tories' Own point of view—and it is curious to see how Tories hate the only Tory Power left in Europe—Russia can no more mbure us than France can. If she attacks our route, we must destroy her fleets, shut up her commerce, and make her ports uninhabitable, just as we did by EGYPT AND CONSTANTINOPLE. France in the old war. If we cannot do this —if, that is, HE pro-Turkish papers have devised a new formula, which we cannot in extremity keep the command of the sea, we can- in support nominally of "British interests," but really of I world. But our difficulty in keeping that command is in no way increased by Russian possession of Constantinople, any more than it is increased by the French possession of Toulon and Marseilles. The advice to commence a great war, a war, it may be, as the Telegraph frankly confesses, with three Empires, in order to avoid a situation in which we are already placed, strikes us as positively childish, as childish as the advice to expend a British Army in restoring Armenia to subjection, when we can, at a tenth of the cost, by liberating Egypt, render Armenia as unimportant to us as Formosa. There are plenty of reasons which can be alleged against the occupation of Egypt, but the necessity of defending Con- stantinople against the Russians is certainly not one of them. If we want a Gibraltar in the East, which we doubt, Gallipoli is the place for it ; and provided the occupation takes place with a distinct understanding that the Black Sea shall be free, except to a Power with whom we are actually at war, we should have no particular objection to own that very defensible peninsula. It would cost a good deal of money, and bring conscription a little nearer ; but if the people like to spend their savings that way, that is their affair.; while universal military service on the Swiss plan will one day be found inevitable. But the de- fence of fOlonstantinople would be undertaken in Turkish interests alone, would serve no other end whatever, and ought if Egypt is occupied to be resisted to the utmost. Our " interest" is Cairo, not Constantinople, and to Cairo we ought to go, in spite of the sentimental objection that this is not the moment for depriving the Sultan of a province. We understand and even respect that objection, but it is one which it is the duty of the Tory journals and not of the Spectator to remove. Our position from the beginning has been that England ought to assist Russia in terminating the dominion of the Ottoman caste, as a proved injury to the world at large, and we have no more reluctance to terminate it in Egypt than in Bosnia, or Armenia, or Constantinople. We have exactly as much moral right to the Valley of the Nile as we have to New Zealand or Tasmania,—that is, our possession of it, though injurious to a few individuals, would be for the benefit of the inhabitants, of civilisation, and of the great permanent interests of humanity.
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