COUNT GOLUCHOWSKI'S SPEECH.
THE speech delivered by the Austrian Chancellor, Count Goluchowski, on Tuesday, has hardly attracted in this country the attention it deserves. It is most unusual for an Austrian Minister to step outside the stately forms to which his Court still rigidly adheres, and make a speech almost as " frank" as if he had been am Englishman or Prince Bismarck. He must have been moved by some strong impulse ; and as the Austrian Emperor can set a million of soldiers in motion by decree, it is worth while to consider what that impulse probably was. The speech, moreover, contains at least three state- ments of vital interest for Englishmen. In the first place, we gather, not only from its actual words but from its whole tenor, that in the belief of the Emperor Francis Joseph, who must know a good deal, the Emperor Nicholas II. intends, in Europe, and for the present, to pursue his father's policy and preserve the general peace. He insists in all directions on the maintenance of the status quo, and the avoidance of occasions of collision by general inaction. It was with this motive that he for- bade all attempts to coerce the Sultan in regard to Armenia, and with this motive that ho has recently applied strong though private pressure to the Court of Athens to hold the Greeks well in hand as regards the troubles in Crete. Whatever he means in the Far East the Czar means inaction in Europe, so much so that Count Goluchowski ventures to declare that the Austrian position in the Balkans is satisfactory, to hint that Servia must behave herself or consequences may ensue, and even to ridicule the Prince of Bulgaria for basking, as he recently said he did, " in the rays of the Eastern sun." That utterance from such a quarter is very significant indeed, and would greatly cheer all Europe but that Europe is thirsting for a peace which shall be a little less like an armed truce, a little less wasteful both of energy and money.
Next Count Goluchowski throws a partly unexpected light on the Armenian question, in words which critics of Lord Salisbury will do well to note. He declares, almost in so many words, that war for the Armenians was at one moment imminent, that Great Britain intended to go forward alone, that Russia insisted on the maintenance of the status quo, and that Austria, " choosing the least of two evils," for she entirely admitted the " pitiable plight" of the Armenians, combined with Russia to support the same policy. Her decision was conveyed to London, and " the collision was averted," Lord Salisbury being evidently unable, though the Chancellor in his courtesy does not say this, to oppose the will of Russia, France, and the Triple Alliance all at once, more espe- cially upon a subject which involved the risk, nay, more than the risk, of commencing the dreaded European war. Great Britain, in fact, would have had to rely upon Italy alone, or upon Italy and Greece, that is, to do all her financial work and most of her fighting work by herself, with the certainty that if she smashed the Sultan the Continental Powers would interfere in all subsequent arrangements. We may remain uncertain, and do remain uncertain, whether, if the British fleet at Salonica had occupied that great port, and so hold Macedonia as a material guarantee for decency at Con- stantinople, the Austrian Government would in the end have shrunk back ; but Count Goluchowski evidently said she would, and the responsibility placed upon Lord &die- eery was thereby rendered term le. We m Ly say, or Radicals may say, that the Premier still ought to have gone forward, but neither we nor the Radicals would have been responsible for such an order, and the opinion of the people would have been at best doubtful. They might have gone forward with a rush, content to risk everything in a cause so clear and so full of appeal to their best sympathies, but they might also have thought, as the British Cabinet clearly did think, that the situation de- prived them of free-will, and therefore ended their responsibility even for a race which indirectly they had guaranteed. We should not declare war on Mars if all conceivable crimes were committed there and were patent to our vision. That defence for Lord Salisbury will, we fancy, be considered sufficient by most statesmen, and particularly by those of the Continent who are not, like us, exempted by the sea from the chance of invasion, and who know that to mobilise whole peoples they must have a reason to assign which those peoples agree to think sufficient. A voluntary army likes its work qua work, a conscript army does not ; that is a constant and a most material difference. Nor, though we say it with reluct- ance, do we believe that our own people would have run more than a certain amount of risk for the Armenians. They would have done a great deal, but to run a risk of fighting four-fifths of Europe—they would not have liked the man who, even for such a cause, had placed them in so dangerous a position.
And lastly, it is clear from Count Goluchowski's speech that he regards the policy of the Sultan as the dark cloud in the horizon. He would never otherwise have uttered words so full of menace to Turkey, words which, we repeat, for it is part of their gravity, were not uttered by an Englishman or a Prince Bismarck who used frankness as a weapon, but by an Austrian statesman who has observed etiquettes all his life, who respects formulas, and who knows quite well that no Sovereign likes another Sovereign to be personally attacked. The Austrian Court, it is true, is not, and for a generation has not been, friendly to the Turks. The Magyars were for a time, perhaps still are, for they sympathise with any ruling caste pressed by increasing masses down below ; but the Hapsburgs fought Janissaries for two hundred years, they have ambitions which include a partition of Turkey, and they took Bosnia and Herzegovina in a way which showed that they regarded Turkey as a derelict Empire unprotected by the usual customs of international dealing. Still, the Austrian Chancellor would not have said, unless provoked by a sense of danger, that Turkey was a dying Empire, that the Sultan must alter his conduct if he wished to be safe, that there must be no repetition of the Armenian massacres in Crete, that Europe would insist on the revival of the Convention of Halepa, which, though worthless in reality while a Turkish garrison remains in the island, did nominally guarantee to Cretans a kind of autonomy. He evidently, in fact, smells danger in Crete, danger of a kind which he does not like, danger which might shatter that policy of inaction and of the status quo upon which he relies for the maintenance of peace. That is a noteworthy utterance, based, as we believe, upon a clear conception of the facts. The Powers have in their indifference, or selfishness, or love of peace, allowed the Sultan such a free hand in massacre that he thinks he can kill any Christians he likes, and that is erroneous. He can only kill such Christians as the Greek Church thinks heretical. Outside that line the Powers will interfere. It is possible that, with infinite pains, M. Nelidoff and M. Cambon together may make his Majesty understand the dis- tinction, and then the only question will be if his garrisons understand it too. For we take it to be proved that although the Sultan, when in earnest, is always obeyed by his troops, he is not always obeyed when it is believed that his wishes and his orders are not precisely the same. And that is now always the case when his orders are that Christians shall be protected. The Sultan, for example, in conversation with the British Minister declares that he does not approve of forcible con- versions, but all the same if Armenians who have been forcibly converted venture to relapse, they will be dealt with under the Sacred Law, that is, will be put to violent and painful deaths. In plain English, it is perfectly possible, and Count Goluchowski in- tended to intimate as much, that in the excited condition of Turkish feeling—excited, it must be remembered, because the Sultan is believed by his people to favour massacre—an anti-Christian outbreak may occur so violent in kind and £0 dangerous in locality that rather than not punish it Europe will run the risk of extinguish- ing the Turkish Empire. That is a statement which, made as it is, though in more decorous language, by the Chan- cellor of the Austrian Monarchy, deserves at least as much attention as a speech upon the poverty of Guy's Hospital, or upon the possible evil working of the twenty-seventh clause in the Education Bill. Warnings of European danger may not mean much in the mouths of political philosophers, but they necessarily mean a good deal when uttered by a Chancellor whom the Austrian Emperor can only have picked for his place because he could be relied on to say nothing upon which he did. not mean to act.
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