THE SERIOUS AND THE LIGHT-MINDED FOREIGN POLICY.
THE Standard has usually kept its head even during the wildest gyrations of the Tory counsels, but when it said on Tuesday, in writing on Mr. Gladstone's and Mr. Forster's speeches, "we look and listen in vain for any indication of a serious spirit of criticism in any section of the Opposition," we think it must have been indulging in some hardly intelligible practical joke on the understandings of its readers. Whatever may be said of Mr. Gladstone's and Mr. Forster's criticisms of the new policy, no intelligent man would deny them both the credit of being not only serious, but grave and earnest in the highest degree. The want of seriousness is to be found else- where. It is clearly want of seriousness to contend, as the Daily Telegraph and the Standard both contend, that we are entering on no really new obligation at all in consequence of the convention to defend Turkey in Asia ; that all we have done is to resume, under more advantageous conditions, the obligation under which we were placed by the Treaties of 1856 and 1871 to guarantee Turkey against attack. Either such a contention means that as those engagements were not fulfilled, the new engagement which we have entered into to defend Asiatic Turkey against attack, may be left just as un- fulfilled as before, in which case we are basely deceiving Turkey, and endeavouring to frighten Russia by a policy of brag ; or if that be not what our contemporaries mean,—and of course, it cannot be what they mean,—we are undertaking something very different indeed from what we undertook in 1856,—not to join the other great Powers of Europe in guar- anteeing the integrity and independence of Turkey, but single- handed to defend Asiatic Turkey against Russian aggression. That is a very different species of obligation indeed, and as such Lord Beaconsfield announced it. He said that joint obliga- tions had proved so open to dispute and confusion, that he thought the simpler course of undertaking the defence of Turkey in Asia, alone, the better ; and of course, if it is better and simpler, it is because it means more, and is less open to misunderstanding. And a simple and direct obligation under- taken by a single Power is clearly a vastly more important thing, and a vastly more responsible thing, than a complicated obligation undertaken in conjunction with a number of other Powers. The obligation will be brought much more obviously home to us, and the duty which falls upon us under that obligation will be much vaster, than could have been the case under the old Treaties. Now this Mr. Gladstone and Mr. Forster recognise in the most serious way. They see what we are engaging to do ; and they ask, in the most straight- forward way, whether we have the means of doing it. Nor does either of them think that we have those means. Mr. Forster is as serious as a statesman can be when he says that if we are engaging in earnest to defend Asiatic Turkey against Russia for an indefinite future, our first duty will be to adopt the policy of a military conscription without which we shall not have the means of doing anything of the kind. A more " serious " remark could hardly be made, nor could it 'lave been made in a more earnest spirit than that in which Mr. Forster made it. "We shall have to choose between con- scription and an enormous Sepoy army. The country at first will not choose conscription, but I believe you will have to come to it, for you will want conscription to watch your large Oriental armies. I would rather have it at once, bad as it would be, than I would see England cease to be a European Power and become an Asiatic Power, relying for her Continental and European policy upon a large Oriental and dependent army." Surely nothing can well be more " serious " than that. And equally serious was Mr. Forster's other remark as to the only condition on which such a policy would be tolerable. "I know very well that John Bull thinks he can do anything, but there is one thing that he certainly cannot do. He cannot give Turkey in Asia good government through the Turkish Pashas ; if, therefore, we are to govern Turkey well, that good govern- ment will and must end in annexation." So far as regards seriousness of criticism, that strikes us as far more serious, and far more weighty than an attempt to maintain such absolute nonsense as that the Anglo-Turkish Convention is nothing but a resumption under more favourable conditions of the Treaties of 1856 and 1871. It is precisely such a contention as that on which the criticism at once suggests itself that it is not "serious."
And again, how much more serious are Mr. Gladstone's and Mr. Forster's interpretations of the Anglo-Turkish Conven- tion than that strange interpretation put upon it by the Times, in the endeavour to soothe English susceptibilities as to the burden imposed. "We have undertaken," says the Times," a strictly conditional guarantee, and the condition is expressed both on the face of the guarantee and in the official explana- tions which have accompanied it. That condition is not that England shall introduce good government into Turkey, but that the Sultan shall introduce such necessary reforms as shall be agreed upon in consultation with England. We shall be responsible for the advice we offer. We shall also be responsible- for pressing such advice with due vigour and persistency. But we shall not be responsible for its refusal. That responsibility,with all the consequences it must entail, rests with the Sultan and his . Ministers But if he fails to fulfil his part of the engagement, if our advice is rejected, or proves ineffectual, if the Turkish Empire be really so utterly rotten as its bitterest enemies proclaim, what follows I Simply that our experiment will have failed, and we revert to the position in which we should have been, had it never been made,"—including, we suppose, the restoration of Cyprus? Clearly this is not " serious " criticism on the Anglo-Turkish Convention. It is a very clever attempt to get rid of its obvious significance,—because, in the event which has all the precedents and all the probabilities on its side, the event of the Turkish Government refusing reforms, we shall have nothing incumbent on us except to restore Cyprus and go in peace. But it is obvious that this is not what the British Government intended, when it directed Sir Austin Layard to conclude this convention. "The only provision," wrote Lord Salisbury, " which can furnish a substantial security
for the stability of Ottoman rule in Asiatic Turkey is an engagement on the part of a Power strong enough to fulfil it, that any further encroachments by Russia upon Turkish territory in Asia will be prevented by force of arms. Such an undertaking, if given fully and unreservedly, will prevent the occurrence of the contingency which would bring it into,- operation, and will at the same time give to the populations of the Asiatic provinces the requisite confidence that Turkish rule in Asia is not destined to a speedy fall." No doubt Lord: Salisbury goes on to condition for administrative reform, and demands" formal assurances " of the intention to reform, before giving the guarantee ; but the whole drift of the despatch, and the only coherent account of the arrangement, is that England, by way of repayment for her guarantee,—which she gives on her own account, of course, and not on Turkey's account,—is to be rewarded by obtaining the right of enforcing such administra- tive reforms in Turkey as may render her guarantee tolerable. If it does not mean this, if it means only that if Turkey will' but turn over a new leaf in Asia—in regard to which she is to be quite a free agent—England will defend her, and if not, not,, then the whole Convention is worth about as much, for its( avowed purpose of supplementing the Treaty of Berlin, as the paper on which it is written. To make a great flourish of trumpets about a defensive alliance concluded on the condition that it is to take effect only if with a fair die you throw six a dozen times running, would hardly be held "serious." Yet if it is indeed meant that Turkey is to be left quite free to reform her administration or not,—that would be a favourable repre. sentation of the nature of the contingency on which the alliance depends. Russia, at all events, will not be much more alarmed by a contingent alliance of that kind, than by an alliance pro- mised -for the Greek Kalends. To reform away the Pashas with the consent of the Pashas is simply impossible. To reform them away without their consent, requires a Sultan of very much abler mind and stronger nerve than either the present, or any we are likely to have. If the Anglo-Turkish Conven- tion is to be good, it must be carried out by Great Britain not with the consent of the Sultan as an independent Power, but so as to compel his assent as a dependent Power. And this at present the Prime Minister repudiates, and the Times repu- diates on his behalf. It seems to us, then, that all the " serious " criticism comes from the Liberal side, and all the unreal and unmeaning criticism from the would-be friends of the Convention. If the Anglo-Turkish Convention is to be explained away, it will be explained away by its friends, and not by its opponents. On another point, it is the Liberal criticism which is" serious," and the Conservative which is unreal,—the point of form. Mr. Gladstone pointed out with his usual vigour on Saturday that if this policy had been seriously meant, the English people should have been made parties to the bargain. The Treaty of Berlin, to which the assent of the nation is tolerably certain, is not yet ratified. It is left to Parliament to veto it, if it will, be- cause Parliament is quite sure not to wish to veto it. But the Anglo-Turkish Convention, which imposes on the nation far more dubious and far more onerous obligations, to which their formal consent would have made them a responsible party, was not only concluded, but ratified long before its mere existence was known to the people. "You have undertaken," says, Mr. Gladstone, "to be responsible for the good government of what is, perhaps, the worst-governed country in the whole world,— namely, the Turkish territory in Asia, from the Dardanelles to the Persian Gulf, from the Mediterranean to the coasts of Persia ; and all this without your consent, without your know- ledge, has been promised to be done at your expense, by your treasure, by your blood, by the blood of your children, who may be called upon to serve her Majesty in the Army." Is not that criticism in earnest Is it conceivable that such a bargain as this should be seriously struck, without the slightest effort to interest in it the people who are the real contracting parties, without any effort to make them understand what they are, en- gaging to do, and to bring them up to the level of the great re- solve that is asked of them ? To our minds, nothing can be more grotesque than to charge the Liberal statesmen's criticism on this new policy with want of seriousness. Every objection they have made goes to the very heart of the matter,—to the -question of the reality of the resolve, of the adequacy of our power, and of the means which might perhaps make that power approach the standard required. It is the Conservative criticism of the new policy which is not serious,—which represents our obligations as not seriously incurred,—which whittles away the extent of them by bringing to the front impossible conditions, —which seeks to turn the new engagement into a happy-go- lucky Bill, drawn upon the future, and one, moreover, which it may soon become impossible to redeem.
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