TOPICS OF THE DAY.
COUNT GOLUCHOWSKI.
AUSTRIA has found a man,—that would seem to be the inevitable and most important deduction from the Mersina incident, which will be seen by and by to have greatly modified the European situation. Ever since the appointment of Count Goluchowski as Chancellor of the Empire the Austrian Foreign Office has been express- ing its discontent with the progress of affairs in Constan- tinople, with the blindness of the Sultan, and with the threat to the peace of Europe involved in the maladminis- tration of the Turkish Empire. It has even been hinted that Europe may have been wrong in allowing the Armenians to be so nearly exterminated. This discontent became deeper as the Sultan became more inflated with his successes against Greece, and more convinced that no single Power would venture, acting alone, to apply to him the only form of argument which he respects. The Austrian Government found itself disregarded at Con- stantinople, Abd-ul-Hamid, who remembers the way in which Bosnia was absorbed by the Hapsburgs without their striking a blow, being delighted to subject Vienna to his method of snubbing, which consists in meeting every request from a Power he dislikes with a series of indefinite delays. His Majesty in such cases refuses nothing, but also he concedes nothing, except in words. The aggravation was the greater because the Sultan con- stantly yielded to Russia, which has a special weapon to wield in her unpaid Indemnity, and affected the most effusive devotion to the German Emperor, who in his eagerness to obtain commercial advantages for his subjects has taken the side of the Turks through- out the Cretan and Greek affairs. Count Goluchowski, therefore, resolved to put an end to a position which threatened to make all future progress difficult for Austria; and having resolved, and convinced his master, he acted with decision and vigour. During an interview between the two Emperors a compromise was effected with Russia, based, as Austrian diplomatists say, on a resolve to keep Turkey standing, but based, as we believe, on an arrangement for partition which will become operative if ever Abd-ul-Hamid provokes either St. Peters- burg or Vienna beyond endurance. And then, this great negotiation effected, the Chancellor awaited an oppor- tunity to show that Austria had by no means sunk into a negligeable quantity. The Austrian Consul at Mersina protected the Agent for the Austrian Lloyds at that port, who had been sentenced to deportation for enabling some Armenians to escape by giving them passages to Europe at rates on his line of steamers. The Sultan, delighted at an onortunity of at once snubbing an Austrian and displaying his hatred for Armenians, ordered the Agent to be violently arrested and turned out of the country. The order was, of course, obeyed with circumstances of special insult ; and Count Goluchowski's opportunity had arrived. Instead of entering upon an interminable negotiation which would have ended in nothing, he sent two powerful warships to Mersina—a considerable port, with ten thousand inhabitants—and directed Baron Calice at Con- stantinople to inform the Sultan that if by a specified hour on October 18th he had not granted full redress for the outrage, and paid up a railway debt which had been evaded for months, Mersina would be shelled. The money demanded was no less than X250,000, and the redress was to be of the most public character, the Governor of the province being dismissed, the Governor of the city discharged, and the Austrian flag publicly saluted with every military ceremony. The Sultan was stunned. He had not dreamed that a single Power would dare to enforce demands against him by peremptory action, and he at first showed symptoms of a desire to avoid compliance with the Austrian ultimatum. He found, however, that the German Emperor could not help him against Austria ; he heard that Baron Calice was actually packing up for departure ; and he perceived at once—for be is a great diplomatist—that if shells actually fell in Mersina, he would either be compelled to declare war—which would be the beginning of the end—or to submit patiently to an affront which would drive his Army, already discontented with the terms of peace, frantic with rage and humiliation. All Asia, indeed, would know that Mersina had been shelled, and that he had not ventured to reply, and all the new prestige of the Kbalifate, which has exalted the hopes of Mussulmans even in Central Asia, would be dissipated at once. There is no concealing the sound of falling shells. Abd-ul- Hamid, therefore, yielded, the offending Governors were dismissed, though their violence had been sanctioned from the Palace, the salute was fired, and, bitterest pill of all, a quarter of a million sterling which it was not intended to pay, except after infinite delays, was ordered to be paid' at once. The Sultan, who has been greatly puffed up by- his " conquests," though, as he is a shrewd man, not quite- so much as his people have been, shrinks back into his position before the war, that of a Sovereign whom Europe endures, but who cannot resist by force any reasonable demand which a first-class Power is prepared to support with shot and shell.
The change in Constantinople will be great, for they understand force there. A thing which was extremely doubtful is now certain, that the Sultan is not only afraid of the mass of strength embodied in the Concert, which any Power in the world, even America, might reasonably dread, but that he is not prepared to declare war on a single first-class State. Rather than fight any of the great Five he will even part with money actually in his Treasury. The Ambassadors will mark that fact with a certain delight, for they have been greatly irritated by their repeated defeats, and every demand will now be pressed upon Yildiz Kiosk with a new and startling energy. The ascendancy of Europe is revived in the place where, of all places, it is necessary that it should be felt, and though reforms are impossible in Turkey, it may be possible so to employ the newly revived authority as to prevent new attacks on civilisation, or any fresh resistance to the enfranchisement of Crete. The Sultan may be able to veto the appointment of Colonel Schaeffer as Governor-General, for the Luxemburg Colonel, though an excellent candidate, is nobody in international eyes ; but he will not be able to veto the German Prince who it is believed to be certain will be the ultimate choice, and who will be just as independent in his action as Alexander of Bulgaria or the Hohenzollern Prince who reigns at Bucharest. The change, however, in Constantinople is as nothing to the change in Vienna. The risk encountered was very great, for the chances were at least equal that the Sultan would stand firm ; and if he had stood firm, the partition of Turkey, that cloud in the horizon of diplomatists, would have been within measurable distance ; but Count Goluchowski dared run it, and it comes, there- fore, to this, that one of the greatest military States on the Continent has found a Minister who dare rely on her resources, and has the will and the nerve to use them. Those resources, especially in men, are enormous ; and if Count Goluchowski dare employ them, and can be relied on to make his action as strong as his words, his master becomes at once as great a factor in the Euro. pean system as the German Emperor or Nicholas II. That is a change which ought to be welcomed in this country, for though Austria is too immobile, she has fora century been friendly to Great Britain, and has no interests anywhere in the world that are at variance with our own. Moreover, we hold it to be a cardinal doctrine of policy that it is easier to deal with a strong man than with a feeble one in a great position. Count Goluchowski must be a strong man, for he has disregarded the internal com- plications of the Empire, he has not asked for orders from Berlin, and he has, when he had a clear case, risked a great war rather than give way. Granting even what we believe to be the case, though it is so strenuously denied, that the Hapsburgs and Romanoffs have come to a definite arrangement as to the future of the Balkans, and that this made the Austrian Chancellor's task easier, still he has known how to avail himself of that advantage, and to derive from it a fresh energy and a new decision. Above all, he has known, what so few Ministers nowadays know, when to bring talk to an end, and at the right psycho- logical moment to resort to force. He may be merely his master's agent — for the Emperor Francis Joseph remains still something of an enigma—but it looks very much as if Austria, for the first time in this century, had found a great man to be her Minister ; and Austria with a great man at her head is one of the most powerful of States.
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