LORD SALISBURY'S DESPATCH.
THE Pall Mall Gazette of Tuesday adopted Lord Salisbury's Despatch as one of its own leading articles, whence we may infer that in the opinion of that journal the Government has at last become a tardy convert to its own impassioned views of the War and the Peace. The Pall Mall is righr. As a leading article of that journal Lord Salisbury's Despatch would have been in place. As an official manifesto of the British Government it is a fatal blunder. Even the Pall Mall never wrote better than Lord Salisbury ; and though it has often written much more wildly, the sub- stance of its view is identical with his. In the first part of his Despatch, Lord Salisbury justifies the last blunder of Lord Derby in refusing to enter the Congress without receiving a pledge from Russia that she regarded every article of the Preliminary the stipulations thereof, unless with the consent of the con- and the best guarantees for it. What Prince Ghika tracting Powers, by means of an amicable arrangement.' It is reported is thus stated :—" Prince Gortschakoff declared to impossible for her Majesty's Government, without violating the our Agent that notwithstanding our clamouring both at -spirit of this Declaration, t* acquiesce in the withdrawal from home and abroad, the Russian decision was irrevocable ; the cognisance of the Powers, of Articles in the new Treaty that she would not bring this question before the which are modifications of existing Treaty engagements, and Congress, and that if another Power wished to do so, she inconsistent with them." Now, Russia had never asked her would not be a party to it ; that it was with us that she wished Majesty's Government toacquiescein anythingof the kind. On the to treat ; that if she could not succeed in making us give in, contrary, Russia has told our Government categorically, as Lord she would take Bessarabia from us by force ; that if we made Salisbury himself recites, " that questions bearing on European an armed resistance, it would be fatal for Roumania." That interests would be concerted with European Powers." And is all very " tall" and very despotic talk indeed, no doubt. But after saying this, the Russian Government repeatedly assured it is one thing to hector Roumania, and quite another the British Government that each Government would form its to hector a Congress of European Powers ; and no one own estimate of what was a matter for Europe to decide, knows the difference better than Prince Gortschakoff. though each Government must, of course, also have the liberty To say that " he would not be a party " to the step to decide, for itself, what it did not deem to be such a question. of bringing the Bessarabian cession before the Congress is Indeed, Russia assured the Austrian Government that it was very vague language, and is totally different from saying that "the Congress which would decide what are the Articles of he would decline the discussion. As for all the other threats, the Preliminaries of Peace which affect the interests of they are most discreditable to Russia, but they make it a thou- Europe, and that all the points which were found to he of sand times more desirable than ever that the Congress should European interest would be submitted to its deliberations, meet, should discuss most carefully the clause of the Treaty and could not be considered as valid until they obtain givingindependencetoRoumania,and should consider guarantees the assent of all the Powers." Now, a pledge of this for that independence, whatever may become of the intrinsi- kind given to Austria, is, as regards the Congress itself, cally not very important Bessarabian question. There was quite as final as such a pledge given to Great Britain. nothing in this correspondence to deter England from entering
And if this statement to Austria, made apparently on the the Congress. There was a good deal to make her still more 13th or 14th of March, were more completely satisfactory anxious for it. Austria and Germany, as we well know, re- in tone than any statement made at the same time to gard the independence of Roumania as a matter of infinitely
England, is it not possible that England has got herself more importance to their own particular interests, than we to thank for the difference in tone ? There is an obvious can do. And a consultation on Roumanian affairs would and grave change in the tone of Lord Derby's despatches have been by far the safest remedy for this dangerous brag of between February 7th and March 8th,.7—a great gap which at Prince Gortschakoff's. If Austria saw in all this no bar to the present is not filled up in the correspondence by any inter- meeting of the Congress, why did England ?
mediate communications,—and the tone of Lord Derby after But much the most serious part of the Despatch is Lord March 8th is much more exacting and imperious than his tone Salisbury's attack on the substantive terms of the Treaty a month earlier. What we know is, that both to Great of Peace. If we are to take his Despatch in its natural Britain and to the other Powers, Russia had admitted repeat- sense, in the sense in which it will be read by nine edly that matters affected by European Treaties must be readers in every ten, Great Britain is dissatisfied not so discussed and settled by the European Powers in concert ; much with certain details of that Treaty, as with the that to Austria she had even admitted, as late appar- whole result of the war, and instead of, as heretofore, holding rently as March 13th, that the Congress ought to determine by certain "British interests," of the importance of which for itself what these matters were ; and that to England this country gave early notice to Russia, now complains that she had fully admitted the right of each Power to form everything which the war has done is injurious to Europe and its own judgment on this matter, only reserving to herself the peace of the world, and ought to be in some way or other the right to refuse any discussion, if she were unable to —the only real way being, of course, a new war—undone again.
agree that the matter brought forward really concerned Not, of course, that Lord Salisbury distinctly threatens war, European engagements. This being so, it seems to us the but that his onslaught on the results of the war is so thorough-
greatest blunder in policy which statesmen ever made, to going and so severe, that it, in fact, presents Great Britain
act, as they obviously have done, on the private information as virtually demanding that Russia shall give up by Treaty all furnished to them by the Roumanian Agents at St. Petersburg she has effected by war. Even the absurd Armenian scare, and Vienna as to the violent temper which Russia was display- so effectively exposed by Lord Salisbury himself, is revived ; ing in connection with the Bessarabian question,—a violence —indeed, nothing is left out of Lord Salisbury's Despatch due almost certainly to the superstitious importance at- which has been urged against the weakening of the Ottoman
tached by the Czar to the recovery of that bit of Russian Empire, since the war first loomed upon us. Now what every territory of which Russia was deprived in 1856. It is sensible man who reads this Despatch will say at once, is this,— clear enough that Prince Gortschakoff, in speaking to Prince It is the kind of despatch which might very reasonably have Treaty of Peace as a proper subject for the discussion of the Ghika, has attempted to inspire a more yielding temper Congress. And in the last part of his Despatch he assails in in Roumania, by indulging in a kind of language which is the most trenchant manner the substance of the Treaty of at once =courteous and despotic. After receiving from Peace itself, and, with only a few faint diplomatic reser- Roumania military aid of the most valuable, not to say essen- vations, intimates that the whole effect of that Treaty is tial kind, the Czar is now willing to treat her almost dangerous to the peace of Europe and a menace to the as the dust under his feet, in order to gain his own special interests of England. No one can read the Despatch with- end. This is conduct as foolish as it is intemperate. It out coming to the conclusion that the writer of it would stimulates, and justly stimulates, the jealousy which is felt not be satisfied without revisions of the Treaty which would by every constitutional State of any wider spread of Russian in effect undo the whole results of the war, and that the real influence, and it vastly increases the estrangement between the reason why a quarrel was picked on a technical point of no independent Slavonic States, whether north or south of the great importance was that England had made up her mind not Danube, and the great Slavonic Empire itself. For our parts, we to go into Congress without imposing terms involving so com- have never felt in the least disposed to favour Russian political plete a retreat of Russia from her present position, that it methods, and if she were practically to attempt to occupy seemed better to test preliminarily the humility of Russia, by Roumania in the high-handed and despotic fashion suggested by peremptorily demanding proof of a submissive and deferential Prince Gortschakoff toPrince Ghika, we believe that the whole of
state of mind. Great Britain, Liberal as well as Tory, would be unanimous in Lord Salisbury's attempt to justify the refusal of England the desire to defeat her purposes, even by war. But the extracts to enter the Congress without obtaining a preliminary engage- from the statements of the Roumanian agents which Lord ment on the part of Russia that she submitted the whole Salisbury has published, though they show in how hectoring Treaty with Turkey for discussion, so far as the other Powers and despotic a mood Prince Gortschakoff could address the thought fit to discuss it, is not a successful attempt. He says : agent of Roumania, do not in the least bear out the —" By the Declaration annexed to the first Protocol of the statement that he intended to decline the discussion Conference, held in London in 1871, the Plenipotentiaries of of the Bessarabian question in Congress, and do show the Great Powers, including Russia, recognised ' that it is an most powerfully the very great need of discussing in essential principle of the law of nations that no Power can Congress that question, and indeed a much more important liberate itself from the engagements of a Treaty, nor modify question,—the question of the independence of Roumania,
the stipulations thereof, unless with the consent of the con- and the best guarantees for it. What Prince Ghika tracting Powers, by means of an amicable arrangement.' It is reported is thus stated :—" Prince Gortschakoff declared to impossible for her Majesty's Government, without violating the our Agent that notwithstanding our clamouring both at -spirit of this Declaration, t* acquiesce in the withdrawal from home and abroad, the Russian decision was irrevocable ; the cognisance of the Powers, of Articles in the new Treaty that she would not bring this question before the which are modifications of existing Treaty engagements, and Congress, and that if another Power wished to do so, she inconsistent with them." Now, Russia had never asked her would not be a party to it ; that it was with us that she wished Majesty's Government toacquiescein anythingof the kind. On the to treat ; that if she could not succeed in making us give in, contrary, Russia has told our Government categorically, as Lord she would take Bessarabia from us by force ; that if we made Salisbury himself recites, " that questions bearing on European an armed resistance, it would be fatal for Roumania." That interests would be concerted with European Powers." And is all very " tall" and very despotic talk indeed, no doubt. But after saying this, the Russian Government repeatedly assured it is one thing to hector Roumania, and quite another the British Government that each Government would form its to hector a Congress of European Powers ; and no one own estimate of what was a matter for Europe to decide, knows the difference better than Prince Gortschakoff. though each Government must, of course, also have the liberty To say that " he would not be a party " to the step to decide, for itself, what it did not deem to be such a question. of bringing the Bessarabian cession before the Congress is Indeed, Russia assured the Austrian Government that it was very vague language, and is totally different from saying that "the Congress which would decide what are the Articles of he would decline the discussion. As for all the other threats, the Preliminaries of Peace which affect the interests of they are most discreditable to Russia, but they make it a thou- Europe, and that all the points which were found to he of sand times more desirable than ever that the Congress should European interest would be submitted to its deliberations, meet, should discuss most carefully the clause of the Treaty and could not be considered as valid until they obtain givingindependencetoRoumania,and should consider guarantees the assent of all the Powers." Now, a pledge of this for that independence, whatever may become of the intrinsi- kind given to Austria, is, as regards the Congress itself, cally not very important Bessarabian question. There was quite as final as such a pledge given to Great Britain. nothing in this correspondence to deter England from entering been written nine months ago by any advocate of a Turkish alliance who was bent on pointing out by anticipation the fright- ful results to Europe of Russian victory,—the frightful results, in fact, of the concession of those terms which, as we then knew, Russia, if successful, was bent on exacting. We knew in June last that something very like this Treaty would be the result of a great Russian victory. We knew almost exactly what was in- tended in relation to Bulgaria. We knew what was intended in relation to Bessarabia ; we knew what was intended in relation to Batoum. We had all the chief features of the results of Russian victory sketched out for us by anticipation. And we took the information quite cheerfully, not to say cordially. But now, when the blood has been poured out and the result achieved, and Russia asks formally what she told us she was about to ask, we make the most savage onslaught on her terms, and ask in effect that she shall give up, in deference to non-combatants who have made no sacrifice, the fruits of her great campaign. At least, if this be not Lord Salisbury's meaning, we do not know what meaning his Despatch has. He treats it as a great danger to Europe, that "a strong Slav State will be created, under the auspices and control of Russia." He treats it as a great danger b Europe, that the general effect of the Article concerning Epirus and Thessaly " will be to increase the power of the Russian Empire in the countries and on the shores where a Greek population predominates, not only to the prejudice of that nation, but also of erery country having interests in the East of the Mediterranean Sea." Could the hostile animus of the Despatch be more strongly expressed than in these last words which we have italicised ? But worst of all, he treats the weakening of Turkey as in itself the most serious result of the Treaty ; and yet it was obviouly the result at which the Government had the least reason to feel surprised. As a rule, when a country is so beaten in war as to surrender at discretion, it must be very much weakened ; nor did Russia ever conceal for a moment that this was the main object of the war. Yet Lord Salisbury complains of " the territorial severance from Constantinople of the Greek, Albanian, and Slavonic provinces which are still left under the- Government of the Porte," as depriving "the Porte of the political strength which might have arisen from their possession." And he presses this point home :—" It cannot be otherwise than a matter of extreme solicitude to this country, that the Govern- ment to which this jurisdiction " [the jurisdiction of the Straits] "belongs should be so closely pressed by the political outposts of a greatly superior Power, that its independent action, and even existence, is almost impossible. These results arise not so much from the language of any single article in the Treaty, as from the operation of the instrument as a whole. A discussion limited to Articles selected by one Power in the Congress would be an illusory remedy for the dangers to English interests, and to the permanent peace of Europe, which would result from the state of things which the Treaty proposes to establish,"—which means, if it means any- thing at all, that what we should have had- to do in the Congress, if the Congress had met, and shall have to do now in some other way, will be to undo the Treaty as a whole, and reduce Russia at least., to the position in South-Eastern Europe in which she was before the war began. Well, all that can be said in answer to that is, that it comes a great deal too late. It should have been said, if at all, when it was still possible to wage war in conjunction with Turkey in her full strength as an ally. And when said now, it can mean nothing less than that we propose, either by argument or by force, so to press Russia back as to take from her all the prestige as well as most of the moral and physical advantages of the war. As it will not be easy to do this by argument, we suppose it must be done by force, or else all this powerful writing will remain a mere monument of England's loud talk and little meaning.
And thus it comes about that Lord Salisbury, who at Con- stantinople was the chief ally of Russia, becomes almost within the year the chief exponent of the party which wishes to punish her for doing what he formerly seemed so grateful to her for threatening to do ;—and this, only because in the course of doing it she has naturally and justly enough earned the power and prestige which accrue to those who take upon themselVes the duties neglected by the rest of the world. That such a Despatch should be written at all, is a calamity for England. That it should have been written by Lord Salisbury, is a calamity for himself. It will record to all time the lamentable vacillations and tergiversation of one who, but a few months ago, bid fair 'to earn a great claim to the gratitude of the world.
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