years

Comment is needless. We need only remember that the king whose aggressions on the rights of a worthier neighbour are here recorded is the king who wears every crown that he does wear by the grace of Jellachich of Croatia and of Nicolas of Russia. Two hundred back the Pole saved Vienna from the Turk; the debt was paid in the seizure of Gallicia one hundred years later, in the stamping out of the last liberties of Cracow in our own time. So Francis Joseph, placed on his Hungarian throne by the help of Slaves within and without his dominions, has become so enamoured of the fascination of Ogredom as to lend himself to every plot of Ogre spite against men of Slavonic race anywhere. Yet there may be a good side to all this. In doings of this kind we may perhaps see the beginning of the end. In the events of the present year some sharpsighted eyes have seen the first steps of a process by which the great imposture, the sham Cæsardom, may at last be split in pieces. They have seen the first dawning of a time when the last stage of the reunion of Germany and of Italy may be accomplished, and when the Slave of the Danube and the Hadriatic coast may dwell safely in his own land, with neither Turk nor Magyar to bow down to. Three years ago it is not too much to say that the empire of Stephen Dushan lay open before the King of Croatia, Slavonia, and Dalmatia. Instead of grasping the prize which he might have grasped with honour, he has turned back to be a petty persecutor of the race to which he owes his crowns. Some day, perhaps before long, the men of that race within and without his dominions may know how to deal with such a backslider.

We are tempted to ask, Can the conduct of any European power be baser in this whole matter than the conduct of Austria, or Hungary, or whatever it is, towards Montenegro? The answer has to be given that even in the lowest depth there is a lower depth, and that Austrian baseness towards Montenegro is outdone by the baseness, we trust not of England, but of the representatives of England, towards both free and enslaved Greece. We need hardly tell the tale in full; it has been told in three memorable writings in The Times,' the two letters

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signed An Epirote,' and a third letter from a correspondent at Paris.* This last paper is of special importance, as its author is clearly one who is behind the scenes. He knows and tells all the facts, but, at the same time, he seems not to have the slightest notion of the moral infamy of the doings which he records. But even from such accounts of matters as are allowed to find their way into blue books, it is clear that, in their dealings with free and enslaved Greece, the representatives of England, to the wrong, insolence, and brutality of their Magyar colleague, added a deliberate treachery with which the Magyar himself cannot be charged. The Ogre is the open enemy of Montenegro; he shows his teeth and claws through the whole business; he cannot be charged with deluding and entrapping Montenegro with false promises. But the new law of honour,' as taught in the school of Lord Beaconsfield, and of late accepted by his noble pupil, is consistent with a deliberate pledging of faith and its deliberate breach. No doubt Lord Beaconsfield was cunning enough so to word his promises as not to pledge himself to any definite obligation such as, in a case between private men, could have been brought against him in a court of law. But he did pledge himself, through his two successive Foreign Secretaries, and also through Mr. Cross, in a way which, among gentlemen, among Christians, among honest men of any class or creed, would be looked on as morally binding. The case is this: Free Greece received certain offers from Russia on condition of joining in the war. She was persuaded by those who spoke in the name of England to abstain from joining in the war by promises which amounted to a distinct understanding that she should lose. nothing by trusting herself to England rather than to Russia. Thus much is known to all the world; how much more went on in the way of court intrigues which are not written in blue books we can only guess, but it is not hard to guess. It is at least certain that when, in last February, the intolerable oppression of the Turks in enslaved Greece at last caused the troops of free Greece to go to the help of their brethren, those troops were recalled at the urgent interposition of France and England. In the emphatic words of the Paris correspondent of The Times,'

quest of the French and English Governments There is no doubt that the peremptory rewas accompanied, if not by promises, at least by moral engagements, which afforded Greece

The Times,' August 5, 12, 23, 1878.

Every one who knows the facts, every one who has read the blue books or the three letters in The Times,' must come to the conclusion that the English Government virtually promised to free Greece the annexation of Thessaly, Epeiros, and Crete. It was perfectly well known that those were the immediate demands of free Greece, and the promise to support those demands was made in terms which, we fully admit, were not legally binding, but which no gentleman, no honest man, would think of shirking. Two extracts are enough. The letters of the Epirote in The Times' will supply a good many more, even to those who may not care to go through the whole series in the blue books.

In the blue book which contains the cor

respondence and protocols relating to the Congress of Berlin, at the very beginning we find Mr. Cross's letter to the plenipotentiaries, in which he says:

Of

Several governments not signatories of the Treaty of Paris will apply for admission to a portion at least of the sittings of Congress, in order that their case may be stated by their own agents on those portions of the Treaty of San Stefano which deeply concern them. these Greece is bound by the closest ties to some of the populations with whose future condition the treaty deals, and on this account appears to have the most indisputable claim to such a privilege. You will urge this claim of Greece on behalf of her Majesty's Government at the opening of the Congress, and will make every effort to procure the concession of it in a large and liberal degree.

The next document is a despatch from the Marquess of Salisbury to Lord Odo Russell, dated June 8th. Here we read :—

The demand of Russia to be exclusively consulted as to the administrative institutions of Bulgaria, Thessaly, Epirus, Crete, and other provinces of Turkey in Europe, cannot be accepted by the other Powers, and will probably not be maintained in argument. The claims which will undoubtedly be advanced by the government of Greece in reference to some of these provinces will receive the careful consideration of her Majesty' plenipotentiaries, and, I doubt not, of the representatives of the other Powers.

Here is no distinct promise that the English plenipotentiaries will support the claims of free Greece to the annexation of any part of enslaved Greece. But there is a promise that the representative of free Greece shall be admitted to urge those claims, and that those claims shall receive the most favourable consideration. The Paris correspondent of The Times' bears witness to the general

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that free Greece was going to receive, if not all that she asked, at least some very considerable extension of territory. The feeling at home we all know. For a moment England seemed unanimous. The Tory papers seemed as zealous for Greece as the Liberal papers. So, when the Congress met, no one was more eager than Lord Salisbury for the admission of the representative of Greece, and that as the representative, not only of free, but of enslaved Greece. The Slaves, he argued, had powerful representatives in the plenipotentiaries of Russia; the Greeks had none. adds:

He then

It is to be feared that fresh agitations may arise among that people, so profoundly devoted to its faith and its nationality, which will have acquired the conviction that Europe has abandoned it, and has left it under the dominion of a race from which its sympathies are entirely estranged.'*

M. Desprez then makes the following proposal :

The Congress invites the government of his Hellenic Majesty to name a representative, who shall be admitted to give expression to the observations of Greece when the question of determining the future of the provinces discussion, and who may be summoned into bordering on the kingdom shall come up for tiaries shall deem this advisable. † the Congress itself whenever the plenipoten

But the words of the French proposal did not go far enough for the Hellenic zeal of Lord Salisbury. For border provinces of the kingdom of Greece,' he proposed to substitute the words, Greek provinces,' explaining that he wished to give the Greek representative an opportunity of discussing the affairs of Macedonia, Thrace, and Crete

he ought to have added a good deal more -as well as those of Epeiros and Thessaly. How much was felt to be implied in all these expressions is shown by the dogged opposition of the representative of the Turk. The Greek hireling, paid to speak against his own people, regretted to find in the proposed text the words, "the lot of the provinces." He clearly thought that something real was going to be done for the Greek nation. But presently a change comes. On June 29th the Greek representatives are heard. They ask for the annexation of Epeiros, Thessaly, and Crete, as all that for the moment can be done for Greece.' These are the claims which Lord Salisbury had engaged to take into careful

*Protocols, p. 22.

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+ Ibid, p. 23. Ibid. p. 36.

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Lord Salisbury, calling to mind the question he put at the last meeting, proposes to decide whether the representatives of Roumania shall be heard by the Congress. In the opinion of his excellency, the High Assembly, after having listened to the delegates of a nation which demands foreign provinces, would act fairly in listening to the representatives of a country which seeks to retain territories which belong to it.'*

Things are indeed changed. Provinces which a few days before Lord Salisbury was anxious that Europe should acknowledge as Greek are now ruled to be foreign to Greece. Nor does it appear that, during the rest of the Congress, Lord Salisbury said anything more about Greek matters. Greece was, during the rest of the Conference, left to be seen to by Lord Beaconsfield. On July the 5th, a proposal was made by France and Italy, by which, under the diplomatic formula of a rectification of frontier,' a small part of enslaved Greece, a scrap of Thessaly and a scrap of Epeiros, were to be set free from the Turk and added to the Greek kingdom. The proposal, like all such half measures, was open to the standing objection Why liberate the bondmen between Othrys and Pêneios, and leave the bondmen between Pêneios and Olympos still in their bondage? As an instalment of right, as a concession to freedom, the proposal was wretchedly imperfect; still it was a step in the right direction; it was a gain as far as it went. That the Greek tool of the Turk stood up again to argue against the deliver

ance of his brethren was a matter of course :

it is for that kind of service that he takes the Turk's blood-money. But, after all that had gone before, one would hardly have expected that a representative of Enghave expected that a representative of England, even though that representative was Lord Beaconsfield, would have arisen to sneer rather than to argue against the small boon for which France and Italy pleaded. The Greek Government,' was entirely mistaken as to the views of Europe.' He stood up to say, in the teeth of the general belief, not of Greece, but of Europe, in the teeth of everything that can be found in the blue books, that England caused to be conveyed to Athens the advice not to count on territorial aggrandizement.' He whose bidding

Yet so it was.

he ventured to say,

* Protocols, p. 135.

beguiled, free Greece to withdraw her armies, while the Turk still went on robbing and slaying in the lands thus left without protection, dared to say that the Turk had listened to the voice of England, but that Greece had not. After such statements as these uttered in the face of Europe, it was a small matter when Lord Beaconsfield, busily engaged, like the rest of the Congress, in the partition of the Turkish dominions, with his own little private scheme of partition ready in his pocket, went on to protest against partition in favour of Greece, and against the name of partition being applied to anything that the Congress did. These glaring untruths, this open and shameless

breach of faith, are, in Lord Beaconsfield's code, consistent with national 'honour.' The old Hebrew morality had a blessing for him who swore to his neighbour and disappointed him, though it were to his own hin

drance.

The new Hebrew morality deems it honourable to swear to one's neighbour and to disappoint him, even though nothing is gained by the breach of faith except the mere sport of seeing him disappointed.

And after all, what was the proposal? The Turk was to be called on by the Congress to consent to the liberation of a small Lord Salisbury, part of enslaved Greece. eating his own words, ventured to call ento that moment he had fully recognized the slaved Greece' foreign' to free Greece. Up Greek character of Thessaly and Epeiros, and of lands further from the present Greek ly and Epeiros. On the ground of their frontier of the Greek kingdom than ThessaGreek character, he had earnestly pleaded that the representatives of free Greece should Greek character, he had earnestly pleaded be allowed to speak for them. Now he had suddenly found out that those lands were not Greek, but foreign' to Greece. The Turk has not been slow to take advantage of the hint. As might have been looked for, he has not answered to the call of Europe. He still keeps his prey in his clutches, he sends fresh hordes of savages to hold it tighter, and sends back an insolent defiance to the bidding of Europe. Diplomatists are again busy over this new difficulty,' this new complication. To them it doubtless is a difficulty: it is hard to anfrom a purely diplomatic standing-point. swer the Turk's cunningly devised fable

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*The clerk, or attaché, or whatever it is, who notion of translating, except to put the same does these things into English seems to have no word in the English which he finds in the French. He here translates invité by invited,' a word which in its English use is much less strong.

to diplomatists. But if Cyprus has gained somewhat, think of the doom of another Greek island; think of heroic and unhappy Crete, betrayed now again, for the third time, to her merciless enemy. The sufferings, the endurance, the patriotic devotion, the military successes, of the brave people of that illustrious island have been so clearly shown forth before the eyes of men that they have no mercy to look for from the friends of the Turk. In the eyes of one who still proclaims that it is his business to prop up the Turk, to hinder the partition of his dominions, Cretan patriotism must indeed be a crime. To the shame of the six Powers, to the special shame of the representatives of England, not one word was spoken for the valiant islanders. They are left to the mercy of the Turk, with no better guaranty than some paper sham called

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an

organic law.' A better specimen of peace with honour,' in the new sense of those words, could not be found than the betrayal, by Lord Beaconsfield and Lord Salisbury, of those valiant islanders. Dark as is the whole story of their shame, when we come to the doom of Crete, we have reached the blackest of its chapters. There is likely to be as little peace in the state in which Crete is left as there is honour in leaving it in such a state. But it is the same everywhere. Lord Beaconsfield, in the act of betraying Greece, declared that the business of the Congress was to strengthen an ancient empire, which it considers essential to the maintenance of peace.' 1* A state of general war and tumults seems to be what Lord Beaconsfield understands by peace. It is at least all that the Congress has as yet brought about. Bosnia, Albania, Thessaly, Thrace, bear witness to the singular way in which the representatives of Europe have striven to win the blessing of the peacemaker. Never will there be peace in these parts, never will honour be found there, till that ancient empire,' whose existence hinders peace, whose maintenance is the foulest dishonour, is still allowed to bear sway over any spot of Christian earth. We may quote the words of the renegade who, since the writing of this article begun, has fallen by the swords of the barbarians to whom he had joined himself. Hearken to Mahomet Ali, once a Christian man by the name of Julius Detroit :—

In order that the labours of the Congress may constitute a durable work of peace and concord, would it not be well to avoid, except in cases of absolute necessity, placing people of different religion and race under the rule of a foreign people?

* Protocols, p. 197.

These words, though spoken by a hireling of the Turk, do in themselves go to the very root of the matter. For spaces of time varying from sixty to five hundred and twenty years, the people of South-eastern Europe have been placed under the rule of men of different race and religion to themselves, under the rule of the invading horde of Othman. Till they are set free from that barbarous rule, no durable work of peace and concord can be wrought in those lands. Till that work is done, the opposite work to that which Lord Beaconsfield proposes to himself, neither peace nor honour can be won in the affairs of South-eastern Europe. When another Congress speaks the word for the final rending of the oppressor's yoke, then the last word of Europe on the Eastern question' may have been spoken. Till then we must look for more last words.'

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After the plethora of books upon Turkey and Cyprus, it was but natural that the time of Greece should come. Mr. Sergeant's work is not that of a traveller; it comes to us with higher claims. It is a combination of the historical, the economic, and the political. If it has not the vivid picturesqueness of a narrative by a Stanley or a Burnaby (due to a keenness of observation of peoples and of scenery), it is of greater importance in many essential respects. There is no other work which can be compared with Mr. Sergeant's for the comknown as the Greek question.' The author prehensiveness with which it states what is manifests very decided sympathies on behalf of the Greeks, but on the whole his narrative is written with great fairness and moderation, and with a general absence of party heat. Yet he constructs the strongest and clearest impeachment of the policy of her Majesty's Government towards Greece that we have yet literature upon the Eastern Question, even There are few readers of the daily amongst the supporters of Lord Beaconsfield, who would venture to affirm that Greece has received altogether fair treatment in the recent has been buoyed up for years with expectaresettlement of South-eastern Europe. tions that appeared on the point of settlement at the time of the assembling of the Berlin Congress. But the plenipotentiaries have separated, each bearing away some trophy in the shape of territorial spoil, while the realization of the hopes of Greece has been post

seen.

She