DANGEROUS DREAMS IN FOREIGN POLICY. T HE Pall Mall Gazette has
been opening its columns to one of those dangerous and ingenious men who dream gigantic schemes for remodelling our whole foreign policy, and relieving ourselves in an instant and by one short sharp cut of the knife from the thousand ties and ligaments which bind us to the European system,—bonds and fetters that a great historical past has thrown upon us. The chief point made by the Pall Mall Gazette dreamer— who, it should be said in passing, wields a very able though not a very instructed pen—has to do with the Mediterranean. He has noticed the many sources of weakness which are to be found in our position as a Mediterranean Power, and has jumped to the conclusion that we ought therefore to abandon the Mediterranean. He points out that our presence in the Mediterranean not only exasperates Russia and inclines her to revenge herself by threatening India, but embroils us with France, who considers that we are strong there in order to help the Triple Alliance. • It is useless, he suggests, to say that we remain in the Mediterranean because it is our highway to India, because we should never dare to risk our trans- ports oc our ironclads in a ditch like the Canal. War must mean the abandonment of the Canal route. But though we could not use the Mediterranean as a highway to India during war, our presence there would, in war time, mean a lock-up of many valuable troops. Egypt, Malta, and Cyprus would each be a source of weak- ness. We should have to send troops and ships, badly needed elsewhere, merely to relieve and revictual them, while all the time we should be sending our Indian reliefs round by the Cape or by the Canadian Pacific. Should the Mediterranean then be treated as a negligeable quantity ? asks the dreamer of the Pall Mall Gazette. "By no means," he replies ; " I regard it as a bad site for a British fortress, but—an excellent place for a Continental prison. providence has endowed the Mediterranean with two relatively very narrow outlets. These are the Straits of Gibraltar and, since the opening of the Suez Canal, the Red Sea. It ought not to be, and I believe in the opinion of experts it is not, impossible to close the Mediterranean hermetically without keeping a single war-ship, in its waters from the Straits to the Dardanelles or from Suez to Trieste. To abandon the Mediterranean would involve the evacuation of Egypt, and the voluntary surrender of Malta and Cyprus. Our retirement from Egypt might be made the basis of an arrangement with France, by which we should acquire a protectorate over Madagascar, which would be essential to us in our new position. France would be free to develop her Colonial expan- sion in Egypt and in Northern Africa generally." With all opposition on our? art to the advance of Russia e upon Constantino l withdrawn, and the absorption, if she wishes and Constantinople effect it, of the Balkan Penin- wsuelaa,teesvtermy possible causeof friction between the two thinks the dreamer c Powers of the world would, more likely than not, take and co-operation in Asia would, bits and bats of our e. the place of rivalry. The be disposed of as follows,—Cyprus Empire in the Mediterranean would o lows,—Cyprus would be given back to the Turks ; Malta would be handed over to the Pope as his peeulium. At the same time we should take Tangier and Morocco—the dreamer does not seem to per- ceive that even with the rest of the world quiescent, this would be a tough job ; but let that pass. The objects gained by this remaking of the map of Europe are thus succinctly stated :—" (1) Its adoption would liberate the troops now engaged in the occupation of Egypt and the garrisons of Malta and Cyprus. (2) It would enable us to move our naval forces where they would be of the greatest service. (3) It would remove all the difficulties which at present cause friction between England and France, and nearly all of a similar character between England and Russia. (4) It would withdraw us once and for all from all temptation to enter into embarassing entanglements and dubious alliances, moral or actual ; and (5) lastly and incidentally, it would settle several awkward problems in which the rest of Europe are more interested than we are, and it would go a long way to lay to rest the wearisome ghost of Irish disaffection,"—i.e., the Pope would be so pleased with Malta, that he would sit heavily on Irish discontent.
That is a very pretty scheme, no doubt, and till it has been thought out in detail has a certain false air of prudence and statesmanship. As a matter of fact, it in as crack-brained a, proposal as was ever made. To put it shortly, it is asking England to strike up "the invitation to the powder magazine." In plain language, it is a pro- posal to strike a match among a heap of gun-cotton. There would be no surer way of laying all Europe by the ears than by doing what the dreamer proposes. He admits it himself.. Listen to him on his own scheme. " It might mean the destruction of Austria. That is the affair of Austria. It might involve the bankruptcy and ultimate ruin of Italy. That is the business of Italy. It might in the long-run enable France to turn the tables on Germany, and take that revenge for which she has.„ae_long 7.71 i.-7.4:13ritly waited. That again concerns Germany and not us. Our proclaimed withdrawal from all practical interest in Con- tinental politics may be the signal for that European con- flict so long dreaded and so often postponed. Again, I say the responsibility for such a catastrophe would not be ours. There is no reason to believe that Providence has singled out this country to act as the policeman of Europe. If the inhabitants of the Continent choose to convert their respective countries into cockpits to decide who is entitled to the hegemony of Europe, upon their heads and not upon ours be the blood." Nothing could be more mis- chievous than this way of talking about war. It sup- poses that as long as we kept out of a great European war it would not affect us. As a matter of fact, the waste and the injury to trade effected by a great war would have the most disastrous results on this country. All the European nations are either our debtors or our customers, or both, and what banker and shopkeeper com- bined cares to see his debtors and customers going to. ruin ? Besides, we should be doing a frightful moral wrong in throwing down our Mediterranean possessions as apples of discord. As one of the great European Powers, we have assumed, by Treaty and otherwise, a. great number of moral obligations towards the rest of Europe, and we should be committing a monstrous breach of duty in abandoning or neglecting these. We have an implied general duty to take no active step which will endanger the general peace or interfere with the statue gm. But even on the mere ground of personal safety, and in purely English interests, it can be shown that it would be most foolish to stir up the European caldron as the dreamer proposes. In the first place, the abandonment of the Mediterranean would greatly injure our sea-power, and so would injure us as a nation. We owe our present position to our sea-power, but that power means in no small measure our potential ability to act against the coasts of our neighbours. If we were to abandon the Mediterranean, we should abandon half our power to exercise an influence on France and Spain, and all our power as regards Turkey, Austria, Italy, and Greece. The fact that we have a naval base in the centre of the Mediterranean, enormously increases our sea-power, and so our power as a. nation. The dreamer entirely fails to see this, and seems to think that because we have no special and immediate objects in the Mediterranean,—because, that is, we do not want to conquer anything there, we need not trouble about it. That is a very crude way of looking at things. We must maintain ourselves in the Mediterranean because our influence rests on our sea-power as a whole, and because sea-power with the part of the Mediterranean omitted is of little or no value,—it is sea-power which does not count with half the States of Europe. There is another fatal defect in the dreamer's scheme,—a defect as fatal as that of the destruction of our sea-power. He does not understand that the proposal to hold Tangier as well as Gibraltar, and so permanently to seal up the Mediterranean, would league all Europe against us. Rightly or wrongly, not a. single Power would endure to think that the ,keys of the middle sea had been handed over to England. The first nation which said, "This power is too great to be given to any single State, and we call on the rest of Europe to join us in freeing the civilised world from the tyranny of these selfish islanders," would meet with an instant response. With England at Tangier as well as Gibraltar, it would take very little to produce a crusade for the emancipation of Europe. We have dwelt so long upon, and given such prominence to, the dreamer's schemes, not because we think them of any intrinsic importance, but in order to point out how dangerous all such abstract proposals are. Democracies are specially prone to be taken by dreams,—witness the success of Mr. Blaine, whose head was always full of " wild-cat " projects in the region of Foreign Affairs—and there is therefore a special reason for dealing with them at a time when the English democracy is beginning to feel its power in matters of Foreign policy. The truth is that you cannot manage international affairs on abstract prin- ciples. In theory, it might be wise to cut ourselves free here and there and everywhere from foreign complications. In practice, the only safe way of conducting our relations with the rest of the world is to move cautiously and slowly. The wise Foreign Minister is he who feels his way, and is content if he can keep out of immediate mischief. Those who study -Foreign Affairs soon realise that the only safe principle is that which lawyers always recommend to Trustees,—quieta non movere. The position of England may be compared to that of a heavy barge floating in a harbour along with a number of other craft of different sorts and sizes, all tossing about in the swell. The English barge lies between several other vessels, and to prevent damage, her crew hold her lightly up against this neighbour and push ber steadily but firmly off from that. At first sight, it looks as if the best thing would be to make a desperate effort and shove her off clear of the hulls of the other vessels, not caring what happened to them as long as she got free. The experienced sailor knows, however, that this plan would not really pay. It would probably end in a smash, and even if she got free for a moment, the tide might in a very short time bring the whole flotilla down on her again, and squeeze her flat between them and the quay. The safest plan is for the crew to keep their heads and ward off each special danger as it arises, using however every good opportunity to get into a, safer position, and working gradually clear of any dangerous or badly handled craft. Possibly, if the wind were to fall, and the harbour were to grow quite calm again, it might be possible to get clean away, but while the swell is high and all is confusion, the only thing is to hold on and trust to luck and good management. It is no good to complain that the people who centuries ago got us into the middle of a, crowd of boats were fools, and to point to the safe and isolated position occupied by our brother's boat—that which flies the stars and stripes. Very possibly we ought never to have got into the crowd, and probably the Americans are better off than we as regards position, but this would not make it any less rash to fight our way out in a hurry. The fact is, we occupy a position which is the result of a whole chain of historical events, which cannot be undone, and we must learn to make the best of it, not try to pretend that we are not in a tight place and can get free by merely wishing to do so. It will be an evil day for the nation when we let some dreamer get to the helm and inaugurate some large and magnificent scheme for getting rid of all our difficulties. The man who tries that will soon make ducks and drakes of the Empire, and ruin his country. No greater calamity could possibly happen to us than the accession to power of a man with a mission to put our foreign policy to rights. The only safe way is to hold on, and as each question arises, to let the action of the nation be guided by common-sense, by a just regard of the rights of other nations, and by a clear understanding of our true interests. We shall rightly try to loosen and disentangle the bonds in which we are involved, by gentle and patient means ; but we shall be mad if we try either to burst them asunder by main force, or to cut them with a knife. The policy of selfish aggression, or of trying to dominate Europe were hardly less mad. We would as soon see a new Carteret at the Foreign Office—the man who yearned to knock the heads of the European Kings together in order to secure the predominance of England —as a man determined to free us in a twelvemonth from all our responsibilities, and let us stand alone and un- trammelled by international relations.
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