The Sultan's Character

203

The withdrawal of the British Ambassador would reduce our Consuls in Asia Minor to

commercial functions.' What other purpose have they served during this reign of terror? Have they prevented a single massacre? Not one, zealous and brave as they have shown themselves. The Consular delegates with the infamous Turkish Commission did infinite harm, and no good whatever. Lord Rosebery's argument betrays, for a man of his intelligence, a singular lack of appreciation of the Oriental character, and of the Sultan's character in particular. He is a man whose cowardice is equal to his cruelty; and suspiciousness, which is innate in the Oriental character, is aggravated in Abdul Hamid by his abject fears. The unknown is full of vague terror for him. Like a beast of prey, he would suspect a trap in so strange an experience as a breach of diplomatic intercourse, and would fear a blow in some unexpected quarter. Every movement of the British fleet would make him tremble. While England remains in the European Concert he feels safe. He regards her as a wild elephant surrounded and kept in order by five tame ones. And unparalleled success has inspired him with such confidence in his own cunning that, while he has a British Ambassador: at Constantinople and a Turkish Ambassador in London, he believes he can go on befooling John Bull ad libitum. Leave him severely alone, and the probability is that his uncertainty as to what

204

Suppression of Consular Reports

England may do, coupled with the impossibility of getting any information, would influence him more than all the 'strenuous' diplomatic pressure, multiplied tenfold, to which alone Lord Rosebery trusts.

But our Consuls, adds Lord Rosebery, are 'the only channels through which trustworthy information as to the condition of the Armenians has reached the outer world.' That is an unlucky argument for Lord Rosebery to use, for he took care while in office, first as Foreign Secretary, and then as Prime Minister, that not a ray of information should reach the outer world from the reports of our Consuls in Asia Minor. Appeals, urgent and repeated, were made in the Press and in the House of Commons for the publication of the Consular reports; but every appeal was met either with silence or with a curt and peremptory refusal. That argument may

therefore, I think, be dismissed.

Lord Rosebery's last objection to the withdrawal of our Ambassador from the Porte is that it would be a great affront offered by one empire to another.' An affront offered by Great Britain to Abdul Hamid! Are the susceptibilities of that personage to be the measure of our duties? Or is Lord Rosebery afraid that Abdul Hamid would declare war upon us?

I think I have now shown that neither Mr. Gladstone nor any other responsible person among sympathisers with the Armenians has proposed or suggested any kind of action that

Unfairness to Mr. Gladstone

205

could by remote possibility provoke a European war; while, on the other hand, Lord Rosebery himself has been till now an advocate of solitary action on the part of England of a more unqualified and unguarded sort than any policy that can be inferred from Mr. Gladstone's speech. Surely the least that Mr. Gladstone had a right under the circumstances to expect from his successor and erstwhile intimate friend was that he should have conferred with him before accusing him of recommending a policy which might lead a Minister into conduct criminal to his country and his trust.' And was it fair, without a word of inquiry, to make Mr. Gladstone responsible for Lord Rosebery's resignation of the Liberal leadership? Where was Mr. Gladstone's offence? In speaking at all? Lord Rosebery can hardly have meant to suggest that in retiring from political life Mr. Gladstone became bound to remain for ever silent on all questions of public interest. Did Mr. Gladstone attack Lord Rosebery's policy? On the contrary, he abstained from any criticism whatever upon it, and the policy which he shadowed in outline is far less obnoxious to the reproach of separate action than that which Lord Rosebery himself suggested to the Government a year ago from his responsible place of leader of the Opposition. Besides, as leader of the Opposition, Lord Rosebery was not responsible for Mr. Gladstone's speech. If anyone had a right to complain of Mr. Gladstone's intervention, it was Lord Salisbury.

206 Why did Lord Rosebery Resign?

But Lord Salisbury has made no complaint; nor is there any reason to suppose that he has regarded Mr. Gladstone's speech this year at Liverpool, or last year at Chester, as injurious to his diplomacy. He knows at least that both were intended to have a contrary effect. Or is Lord Rosebery's grievance to be found in the fact that Mr. Gladstone has rallied the Liberal party behind Lord Salisbury, and thus given him a position of political strength such as few Prime Ministers have enjoyed in this country? Under Mr. Gladstone's inspiration the nation has given Lord Salisbury the powers of a dictator in this question-powers so great that he could shed off colleague after colleague who should venture to oppose him, and be all the stronger for the riddance. It is a unique position, and involves a unique responsibility. Yet it ought not to be a grievance to Lord Rosebery, since he declared at Colchester that his policy was Lord Salisbury's policy. In short, after looking at the question all round, I fail to find in Mr. Gladstone's speech any justification for Lord Rosebery's resignation and subsequent onslaught on Mr. Gladstone's intervention. That he found the leadership of his party intolerable to him on other grounds he took no pains to conceal; and to my humble thinking his position would now be infinitely stronger if he had placed his resignation on its true cause, instead of making Mr. Gladstone the scapegoat of other offenders.

CHAPTER XVI.

ALLEGED COMBINATION AGAINST ENGLAND.

LET us now examine the grounds of the alleged combination against England. Lord Rosebery said at Edinburgh that there was a fixed and resolute agreement on the part of the Great Powers of Europe-of all, or nearly all of them to resist by force any single-handed intervention by England in the affairs of the East.' Again, There is no doubt a certain concord that reigns over the aspect of Europe at this moment. But that concord is chiefly directed, not in your favour, but against you.' At the Eighty Club, on the 3rd of last March, Lord Rosebery said: 'On August 13 Lord Salisbury had a telegram from St. Petersburg, saying that under no circumstances would Russia allow or countenance any vigorous action on this question of Armenia.' In a letter dated September 17, Lord Rosebery speaks of the declaration of Russia in August 1895, that she would oppose separate action on the part of any Powers'; which he explains in a letter of September 26 to mean the declaration of Prince Lobanoff, recorded in the despatch of