the Territorial Status Quo'

13

us exaggerate the importance of the combination to which I have referred. It aims at upholding the territorial status quo in Turkey. It does not follow that it would oppose action which virtually would have the same aim by coercing the Sultan into such conduct as is most likely to prolong the existence of the Ottoman Empire.

CHAPTER II.

WHAT ENGLAND CAN DO.

I SHOULD like to preface the observations which follow with an expression of my opinion that Lord Rosebery's own views and feelings on the Armenian question were much sounder than the deplorable policy pursued by his Government. What occult influence overcame his own better judgment I know not. Why did his Government persistently, almost rudely, refuse to publish its own Consuls' reports from Armenia, thus forcing enterprising journalists to ferret out and publish horrors of which the Government had evidence locked up in the pigeon-holes of the Foreign Office? Lord Beaconsfield's Government at least published the facts, even in the darkest days of the Bulgarian agitation, except in one instance, where Lord Derby suppressed some Consular reports and a despatch from Sir Henry Elliot charging the Sultan with allowing his officials in Bosnia to perpetrate 'horrors,' including impalements, which, says the Consul's report, ‘are matters of almost daily occurrence here.' Why did Lord Rosebery's Government

Coercion the only effective Policy

15

almost force the Sultan to appoint a Turkish Commission to inquire into the truth of the reports sent by British Consuls from Armenia? Did they think the Sultan's creatures more trustworthy than their own Consuls? And why, after wasting six months of precious time, did their protracted deliberations result in the elaboration of a scheme of reforms for Armenia which was, in plain language, an imposture? A Liberal Government will be in office some day again, and may possibly have to deal with some other phase of the Eastern question. Let it take warning from the disastrous failure of the last Liberal Government, and understand that the only rational policy is prompt coercion. No Sultan has ever yielded, or ever will yield, or ever can yield, to any other argument in the case of reforms which would violate the unchangeable theocratic law of the Turkish Empire by putting the non-Musulman subjects of the Sultan on a footing of equality with the Musulmans. Do nothing, or use the only effective argument-coercion. Let the Powers, or any one of them, with the acquiescence of the rest, or even of a majority, formulate a plan, offer it to the Sultan with a plain intimation that its rejection will be followed by coercion, and success is certain. But mere argument, representations,' 'admonitions'-anything short of Do it or I'll make you '-might just as well be addressed to the unhearing winds. Any

reform which lacks European control is of necessity an imposture, and no Sultan will accept European control without coercion. Therefore I repeat my formula: Leave it all alone, or use the only effective weapon.

Let us now see whether anything really effective can be done to prevent the Sultan from carrying out his policy of exterminating the Armenians. According to my information, which I believe to be good, Prince Lobanoff and Count Goluchowski at their recent interview in Vienna mutually pledged each other to uphold the Turkish Empire to the best of their ability, but without making any provision for safeguarding the rights of the Sultan's Christian subjects. Germany has joined this combination to hand over some millions of Christians for an indefinite time to the tender mercies of Ottoman thraldom. I believe that France has not joined yet, and I trust that she will refuse to fix so dark a stain on her historical escutcheon. But let us include her in the proTurkish league, for the sake of argument. Italy, which has behaved right nobly all through the Armenian troubles, has nothing to do with the fatal policy of leaving things alone, and she would certainly sympathise with any action on behalf of the Armenians by England; but I will not assume her active co-operation. What, then, could England do alone to put an end to the pandemonium to which the arch-criminal of Yildiz Kiosk has reduced his empire? There

England's Treaty Rights

17

are various alternatives, and I will begin with the most formidable and drastic. We have a treaty with the Sultan which gives us, I believe, a right to insist on reforms in his Asiatic possessions. In the Cyprus Convention England acquired a right to insist on satisfactory arrangements for reforms as an indispensable part' of the Convention. In a despatch from M. Waddington to the French Ambassador in London, dated July 21, 1878, the French Government admitted that by the Cyprus Convention England had acquired a right to intervene henceforth actively in the administration of all the territories of Asia subject to Ottoman jurisdiction.' I am not aware that any other Power has protested against or disputed the right which France has thus so explicitly admitted. The right was tacitly allowed by the Berlin Congress, to which the Cyprus Convention was made known, though not formally communicated.

We have thus unquestionably a separate treaty right to insist' on the Sultan carrying out his engagements under the Cyprus Convention. But Great Britain has an additional right, in common with the other Powers, in the 61st Article of the Treaty of Berlin. On June 11, 1880, an Identic Note was presented to the Sultan by the Ambassadors of the Great Powers, calling his attention to the fact that he had done 'nothing' to fulfil his obligations. The British

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