THE TALK OF INTERVENTION, T HE kind of people who will
not act when action might be effective, are generally the readiest to make-believe that they wish to act when action can be .of no possible use. We are grateful to Lord Derby for knocking on the head, with a little of that lucid good-sense which he can always command when it is desirable to find a reason. for keeping quiet, the feeble and fussy talk of our leading journal during the last week about intervention, Lord Derby sees what these head- shakers over the horrors of this bloody war do not see,—that intervention now would mean a great deal more responsibility, a great deal more risk, a great deal more firmness, a great deal more exertion of positive strength, than it would have meant at the time of the Conference, when intervention was really feasible, and might have secured another long interval of rest. But there are never wanting people who, the moment they have succeeded in staving off the necessity for decisive action, begin to lament over the consequence of their own indecision, —not in the least recognising it as the consequence of that indecision,—and to make as though they would like to meddle at the most dangerous moment in the very affair from which, when they had real power to influence the result, they withdrew themselves in dread and dismay. Last January, if the neutral Powers had chosen to sup- port Russia firmly, they might not only have dic- tated terms to Turkey, but have avoided any change con- ducing directly to Russian aggrandisement. It was deter- mined by all the neutral Powers, and by none of them with so much peremptoriness as was displayed by England, that no assistance should be given to Russia in settling the Eastern Question at that time, when a concert of Europe, with a determined threat of force behind it, would have prevented all this bloodshed, and secured for the Christian subjects of Turkey at least a measure of pro- tection against the Government which should be their guardian, and is their worst foe. But as it was deter- mined in the new year that this peaceful intervention should not take place, it is worse than trifling to seize, of all moments, the moment when intervention is most hopeless, —and if even it could be pressed, would involve more force and peril and cost than at any other period since the war began,—to maunder about it. At the present time, neither of the two great combatants has got suf- ficiently the better or sufficiently the worse of the fray, to render it possible that intervention could be permitted with due regard even to the feeling of its own subjects. What would the infuriated Mussulmans, who have been called out to fight in the name of the Prophet, say to a peace patched up while the Russians were still in the occupation of a Turkish province and a Turkish fortress, and had suffered no defeat from their arms ? What would the subjects of the Czar say if, after calling on the Russian peasantry to shed their blood on behalf of their injured Bulgarian brethren, he were, at the invitation of States which have professed their absolute resolve not to risk anything in the matter, to retire from the contest, not only without solving the problem he had sat himself to solve, but without even strenuously using the help he had called forth, without success, without defeat, without triumph, and without disaster ? Such a course would be far more impossible to Russia than it was to hold back from the declaration of war in April, and that, as we all know, was itself impossible. To tell a great people that their blood has been poured out actually for nothing, and yet. that they have not been do- feated,—that they have not gained their end, and not lost it, but that they are to give it up because the battle has been fierce, is a proposal which a newspaper, of course, may calmly put forth,—since the first idea which occurs to hesitating readers is that something should be done to stop the struggle,—but which the ruler of either of the combatant nations would not even look at. Lord Derby is talking very obvious sense indeed when he says, "I don't think that the present moment is favourable for the interposition of third parties in the interests of peace." Why, you might just as well have tried to intervene in the Franco-German war after the battle of Mirth. Indeed, when once the deadly appeal to force has been made, it is not even desirable te try and make a truce till there is something of moral convic- tion on both sides that the struggle is virtually ended. After that, even if the worse cause triumphs, there is at least a period of paralysis and resignation, which makes arrange- ments more or less permanent possible. But with the pas- sions of both sides fully inflamed, and no decisive result obtained, no result which might not be construed in opposite senses on the opposite sides, intervention even if, per imp ossibile,, it could succeed, would only succeed in restoring a state of suspense, and not a state of even provisional calm.
The truth is that these febrile and feeble suggestions of intervention are made, not beeause there is any sense in them, at the present moment, but because shocked bystanders like to hear a word uttered which contains something soothing for their nerves. The Press of a free country is quite as often animated by the wish to give a plausible ap- pearance to notions which every one is earnestly but hope- lessly entertaining, as by the wish to throw any light on the duties of the country. Half a million of people pro- bably go about their business with a sense of less discom- fort, because the Times has suggested in its leader "proposals. of mediation." You might just as well, it is true, talk of Russia and Turkey tossing up for Bulgaria, for anything that, at a time like this, mediation can mean. If, as Lord Derby says, any neutral just now were to go in seriously for pulling these combatants out of the ditch," the immense probability is that that neutral would be pulled into it. But of course, when 'proposals of mediation' are talked of, nothing earnest is really meant. The phrase is a sedative for English sym- pathies, not a stimulus for English wills. We English are not, and perhaps never have been, eager to hear unreal panegyrics on ourselves ; we do not care to hear ourselves " cracked up " ; rather do we like to hear the most effective exposure of our imbecilities; but there are more modest little make-believes of our Press, which we thoroughly enjoy, and perhaps nothing more than any collection of phrases which gives us at one and the same time the assurance that we shall be out of the conflict, and yet that in some mysterious manner we are exercising what people are pleased to call a moral influence' in settling its issues, And that is precisely the effect which the suggestion of mediation always brings. with it. Mediation both looks influential and sounds safe. It satisfies the slightly-troubled humanity of those who study the numbers of the killed and wounded on both sides, and it raises no kind of anxiety for ourselves. But that is just the reason why we object to such hollow talk. If we are to leave this stern struggle to others, let us realise clearly that we are doing so ; that we are sacri- ficing nothing and intend to sacrifice nothing, for the wel- fare of the miserable subjects of the Turks,—that we are sacrificing nothing, and intend to sacrifice nothing, for the curb- ing of what is supposed to be the insatiable ambition of Russia. As for any such interposition as Lord Derby, though he sensibly and heartily repudiates it for the present, appears to foreshadow for the future, it is, we suspect, a rubbishy kind of thing. If indeed at any time we should be prepared to make war rather than allow a particular issue, then it would mean something. But as that is not now probable,—as it would seem that what- ever we recommend we shall back up only by words,—our mediation is never likely to be of any importance ; and for our own parts, we do not very well know why we gloat over the possibility of it, as if it would earn us the blessing pro- nounced on the peace-makers. No peace is likely to be really made by any Power in Europe which has not the slightest in- tention of risking anything for the making of that peace. Treaties which we sign, while we are explaining that we mean nothing by them, never yet made a peace, though they may have been the excuses put forward by Powers that were not ready to go to war, for not going to war,
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