THE SPECTRE IN THE SPIKE-HELMET.
THE Tory Press in London, baffled in its desire to defend Turkey by force of arms and show how Lord Beacons- ;field could manage a great war, is- endeavoming, to keep up alarm and excitement by hints of some vast plot, as yet secret, which is afoot on the Continent. The war, it declares, was a planned war, desired and fomented by states- men outside Russia, in order that they might have an oppor- tunity during its progress of "redistributing power throughout the world." The situation has long been intolerable to many Powers. France is discontented, Clermany apprehensive, Atus- tria divided, Italy menaced by the Ultramontane world, and all of them weighed dowu With costly and oppressive arma- ments, which, as their rulers know, they must shortly either employ or reduce-. Consequently, they are all engaged in or
alarmed by some plot or other which time will shortly develop, but which made it necessary that Russia should "get up" rebellion in Bulgaria, and stimulate Servia to an action she would not have taken of herself. This plot is the justification of Lord Beaconsfield's policy, and will, when it explodes, be the opprobrium of the simple-minded people who think the war against Turkey is a war against oppressors on behalf of the oppressed. Bismarck, in fact, though he is not mentioned, is at the bottom of it all, and England must there- fore support Lord Beaconsfield, and "the policy" the declared object of which is defence of British interests by defiances to Russia.
This statement, which will read to many cool-headed people like an account of some diplomatic Attache's dream after too much white wine, is really the substance of a grave and tem- perately-written article in the Pall Mall Gazette, a journal which for some time past has reflected the ideas of the Premier and the warlike section of the Cabinet with singular accuracy and force, giving them, too, we suspect, very often a definite- ness and an energy which they do not in themselves possess. Wild, therefore, as the argument seems, it is worth an answer, more especially as one of its principal assumptions is obviously true, and another in all human probability precisely accurate. Nobody at all acquainted with the state of Europe can doubt its profound and extremely dangerous unrest, the existence in many States of a distrust and uneasiness, a sense of danger to come which would make a successful war seem a less misfor- tune than continuous apprehension. The reality or unreality of that apprehension is of no consequence, provided it exists, and its existence no competent observer will deny. And we at least do not doubt, have never doubted for one moment, that Prince Bismarck views the great enterprise forced by the Russian people on their Emperor with secret delight, seeing in it grounds for hoping that Russia will either be occupied for a decade in digesting conquests of no importance to Ger- many—which does not care one straw about the "Valley of the Euphrates," except as a field for antiquarian discovery—or will be so strained by tedious campaigning as to be out of general politics for some time to come. And we should be inclined to add, though this is more a suspicion than an argu- ment, that he would be well pleased if Russia, by forcing a war with England, or if England by forcing a war with Russia, increased to an indefinite degree the exhaustive strain upon the latter Power. Russia reduced to her position in 1856, and England thoroughly occupied, would exactly suit Prince Bismarck, who would then be relieved of his grand patriotic dread that France and Russia may join hands across Germany, and might even see his way to demand the disarmament of France, or to absorb another State, giving him ships, colonies, and commerce at a blow. It is to us, we confess, nearly incredible that Prince Bismarck should want, in addition to the Alsace-Lorrainers, the Poles, the Catholic Germans, the Danes of Schleswig, and the Socialists, to include four mil- lions more of irreconcilably hostile persons within the circle of a half-cemented Empire ; but still, we will not put the chance that he, and the family he serves, may be momentarily demented by a dreamy ambition, out of the calculation. So far we admit that the alarmists have some case, but what we cannot see is their resulting proposition that Russia is playing a great secret game, and that England can only be made safe by fighting, or at all events by threatening to fight, Russia. Setting apart the irresistible evidence that the Russian Emperor was forced into war against his own will and in spite of his own determination, what conceivable interest can - Russia have in realising Prince Bismarck's supposed designs ? How will it strengthen Russia that he should invade France, or gain by any means whatever controlling authority in Holland ? Or rather, to put the difficulty still more plainly, what conceivable acquisition could compensate Russia for any serious aggrandisement of Germany, whether through the extinction of France or the acquisition of maritime provinces on the Atlantic ? It certainly is not an Asiatic gain. Not to talk about Armenia, all Western Asia laid at her feet would not compensate Russia for the creation of a danger at her gates so imminent and so immense. All Western Asia could not protect Moscow, and Moscow would be more nearly in the grip of the Hohenzollerns, so strengthened, than Paris or Vienna is now. The Turkish Peninsula might be a bribe that would stagger far-sighted politicians, but Bismarck cannot give what all Germans would refuse, and even the Pall Mall Gazette, with all its belief in the Spectre in a spike-helmet, acknowledges that the Valley of the Danube will never be surrendered to the Northern Slays. What bribe, then, can have so tempted Russia, that in order to help Prince Bismarck's far-reaching plans she should have elaborated a scheme for tempting Turks to commit atrocities which, but for the pre- Bence of an American diplomatist in Constantinople, an American perhaps of all human beings the least likely to be in Russian pay, would never have impressed Europe at all We wish to write temperately, for the matter is far too grave for rhetoric, but surely this suggestion can arise only from a very frenzy of suspicion worthy only of a French Radical, or of some Foreign Committeeman in an English Northern town. And then, whether Russia is Machiavellian or not—and we take ft she is very like other Powers, permanently devoted to her own interests, but liable to gusts of better emotion—how in the world is the plot to be embarrassed by Lord Beaconsfield's "policy," or any policy which involves a needless war between Great Britain and Russia Surely if the sus- picion about Prince Bismarck is correct, if he really is subtle as Jesuit and unscrupulous as a Turkish Pasha, if he is preparing to extinguish France, or absorb Holland, or recognise P. Kruger as Sovereign of South Africa, or fling any other grenade into the British magazine, the true policy of this country is not to embarrass itself with a second Power, but to keep ourselves strong and ready, to cultivate alliance with France—terribly worried by a fear that we shall fight Russia, her future ally—to possess our souls in calmness, and to keep our powder dry. Of all mad counsels ever offered, that of fighting Russia in order to preserve France from invasion or Holland from absorption is the very maddest. It is the very counsel which Prince Bismarck, if he holds the ideas attributed to him by alarmists, would give a finger to see accepted, and which Count Munster would recommend to Lord Derby, with the most sardonic of smiles at our insular stupidity.
We need not say we do not believe one word of all this deep-laid design. That Prince Bismarck is pleased that Russia should be at war with anybody is natural, and that he would be still more pleased if she were at war with England or Austria, or both, is possible, and that he may contemplate some- how or other giving her a very dangerous blow in certain con- tingencies, is conceivable, although to the last degree unlikely.
And he may, very likely he does, wish that France were weaker, or that all Germans were under the Empire, or that Germany possessed the Delta of the Rhine, which would so splendidly round off her dominion upon the western side. But that he is planning to get any of these things just now, or will plan while Great Britain is unoccupied and in possession of her resources, we utterly decline to believe. Germany with Russia fully occupied is in no danger from anybody more for- midable than Herr Bebel, and except under pressure of imme- diate and visible danger, any grand invasion involves too heavy a risk, if not for Prince Bismarck's audacity, then for the common-sense of the Hohenzollerns and the German people, who are factors, though alarmists forget it, in the calculation. If Prince Bismarck attacked Austria, he would have to face certainly France also, and probably a coalition—that is, would have to go through a great war, in order to see his master's Catholic subjects doubled in numbers and in influence, and his Polish enemies strengthened by all the Czechs. If he attacked France without a reason, for mere purposes of aggres- sion, the Hapsburgs would have their chance of vengeance at last, and Great Britain would be unanimous in supporting any Government which intervened. And if he threatened Holland, he would assail France and England in their most immediate and vital interests, at the very point of all others in Europe where they could most directly and easily defend them. Just imagine Marshal von Moltke, with France, England, and possibly Austria to fight, selecting a swamp with an Atlantic coast-line as the exact place to fight them on to the best advantage! The whole thing is a dream, scarcely worthy, but for the sort of electric suspicion with which the air is full, and which seems to affect even cool heads as oxygen affects even strong men, of any serious discussion. Prince Bismarck, we may rely on it, is not displeased to see Russia occupying herself, and has perhaps facilitated her occupation by guarantees against interference from the flank ; but to suppose that the German nation, because it is relieved from pressure, because invasion is postponed for years, because it is safer than it has been since 1860, is about to risk the lives of its children, and weight itself again with a national debt, in order to stake once more its position as the first Power in the world, is to credit it with an amount of simple-mindedness which we, though we do not believe in Jesuits or Princes who send bluebottles to butchers' shops, are utterly unable to accept. The Germans times seem to think, but at all events they are neither blood- drinkers nor fools, their rulers are statesmen, their people are soldiers who have to bear the toil of campaigns, and their Princes have no taste for gambling with their kingdoms in the pooL If they were all those things, that would be one more argument for not fighting Russia, but for relieving her of half the burden of her enterprise, and bringing it to a quick close, by occupying Constantinople and submitting the redistribution of Turkey to a European Congress.
But the Pall Mall Gazette may say, 'This is not the plot of which we are thinking. The Spectator, with its normal stu- pidity, has entirely failed to fathom the subtlety of the design against which it is our duty to warn the people of this country, misled, as they are, by Mr. Gladstone and other middle-class sentimentalists.' Very good ; then say clearly what the for- midable plot is. When the " interests " of England are in such danger that first-class campaigns ought not to be shirked, when, indeed, the "redistribution of power throughout the world" is in question, the time for secrecy is passed, and a patriotic journal, which admits every day that its country is slightly stupid, can have no duty superior to that of revealing the abyss upon which the British Empire, very comfortable, though considerably perplexed, is, on the theory, now standing.
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