LETTERS TO THE EDITOR.
THERE IS NO WAR PARTY.
(TO THE EDITOR OF THE " SPECTATOR:
Sin,-1 am glad to see that the Pall Mall Gazette, the Daily Telegraph, and my new little friend, the Week, have exposed the wickedness of the calumny that there is a war party in England at this moment. You, Sir, are among the chief authors of that calumny ; you share the guilt of it with the Times, Mr. Bright, and other infatuated enemies of this country. And all of you are per- fectly inexcusable. Not only is there no war party in England now, but there never was such a party in England, or anywhere else. It is stupid as well as wicked to say, for example, that men like Frederick the Great or Napoleon I. were the heads of such a faction. Frederick did not want war ; he wanted Silesia. If, as Macaulay says, the whole world instantly sprang to arms, that was the fault, not of Frederick, but of Maria Theresa, who would fight, instead of turning her cheek to the smiter. Nor is it true, Sir, that the Great Napoleon ever wanted war. What he wanted was unexampled glory and boundless power. What he wanted was a consul of France in every foreign capital and a French Cmsar in Paris. What he wanted was provincial thrones for his brothers and the Imperial crown for himself. What be wanted was peace— a Roman peace—amid which the world would bow to him as Imperator. That was all he wanted. If universal war was the consequence, his plans were so far deranged by the obstinacy of kings who would defend their power, and of peoples who would fight for their liberties.
We champions of British interests, Sir, do but follow in the footsteps of the Great Napoleon. We are not a war party ; we are, like him, on the side of peace. But we believe that Turkey and England must stand or fall together. We believe that if Kars remains a Russian town there will be a mutiny in India and an invasion of Kent. We believe that if Erzeroum is placed under a Russian Governor, the Czar will make a railway along the Euphrates Valley, despatch 300,000 men to the Persian Gulf, and send them across the Indian Ocean to Bombay in flat- bottomed boats. We believe that from Erzeronm he will make another railway through the Syrian desert, which will enable him to seize the Suez Canal, and transfer the English carrying trade to his own greedy merchants. We believe that if he prevents the Turks from murdering Bulgarian men and outraging Bulgarian women the Ottoman Empire will go to pieces, and that the shock of its ruin would shake England to her foundations. We believe that if he goes to Constantinople he will stay there, build a tremendous fleet, reduce England to a fourth-rate Power, and for ever prevent the Turkish bondholders from getting a fraction of their money. We believe, as Mr. Borthwick beautifully pointed out, that the Turks are the landed aristocracy of Turkey, that they have a pre- scriptive right of centuries to their power of massacring the Chris- tians, and thus that the overthrow of the Porte would set an example which would dangerously affect the position of our own aristocracy, and even of our own Church. We believe, in fact,
that Russia is playing the game of the Liberation Society ; and hence the reason that all the Dissenters are on her side. Yes, Sir, we believe that in order to keep up this great, glorious, Christian England, we must give the Turks a right to " larrup their own niggers " in the shape of white Bulgarians and Greeks, to ruin the richest provinces in the world, to goad the most patient of races into revolt, to make Constantinople the paradise of sensual Pashas, and Bulgaria a hell upon earth.
It is quite true that to maintain so providential an arrangement,, we should land one army at Gallipoli and another at Constanti- nople. It is quite true that all Europe would then fly to arms, that we should be in front of the greatest war the world has seen since the morrow of the French Revolution, that the struggle might easily cost us 200,000 men and three hundred millions sterling, and that we might come out of the fight with a conscrip- tion among the institutions of England. All that is quite -trim, but still we don't want war. We want merely to save Turkey, for- the sake of England. We are no more in favour of war than Napo- leon was when he set out for Moscow. Let Russia only forego the- fruits of her great victories and her terrible sacrifices, let her withdraw her armies across the Danube, let Constantinople again become the paradise of swindlers, let Achmet Agha be allowed to wear his decorations in peace, and there will be no war. To quotethe sublime language of the Daily Telegraph, my master in style, our conduct has been a "steadfast, unresting advocacy-of a policy of manhood, honour, justice, and mercy."—I am, Sir, &C.,.
A TRUE-BLUE Bwirorr.
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