Prince Lobanoff his own Interpreter 213

Did Lord Derby then mean that he would oppose by force any separate action on the part of Russia? Let Lord Derby answer for himself. Reporting an interview with the Turkish Ambassador, Lord Derby says:

I had informed him that, although her Majesty's Government did not themselves meditate or threaten the employment of active measures of coercion in the event of the proposals of the Conference being refused by the Porte, yet that Turkey must not look to England for assistance or protection if that refusal resulted in a war with other countries.

Perhaps we shall find that Prince Lobanoff also has supplied us with a clue to the right understanding of the language on which Lord Rosebery has rested his case. Such a clue I find in a despatch from Sir Philip Currie, dated August 29, 1895, and in a despatch from the British Ambassador at St. Petersburg, dated August 28, 1895. Lord Salisbury saw at once that the scheme of reforms which he inherited from his predecessor was not only useless, standing alone, but mischievous in addition. He proposed, therefore, that instead of an international Commission sitting at Constantinople, a Commission of Surveillance should be sent to Armenia, composed in the manner described in Sir Philip Currie's despatch :

The Sublime Porte have received a telegram from their Ambassador at St. Petersburg stating that Prince Lobanoff informed him on the 27th inst. that Russia accepted England's proposal to appoint a Commission

214 Prince Lobanoff his own Interpreter

of Surveillance, consisting of three Europeans [representing Russia, France, and England] and four Turks, under the Treaty of Berlin. Prince Lobanoff had said this was the smallest concession which he should make to your lordship's demands, and that unless he did so England and Turkey would be left alone face to face.

On the previous day the British Ambassador at St. Petersburg sent a despatch in which he reports a conversation from Prince Lobanoff, from which I make the following quotation. On hearing of Russia's acceptance of Lord Salisbury's proposal, the Turkish Ambassador hastened to ask if it was true.

Husny Pasha had become much perturbed on hearing that this was the case, and had expressed his surprise and regret that the Russian Government had adopted such a course. Prince Lobanoff had replied that there was nothing surprising in the matter, as the action now taken was entirely justified by the Treaty of Berlin, and the Turkish Government had only themselves to blame for not having introduced reforms earlier. They had, he believed, been led to hope that the recent change of Government in England might have brought about a modification of the views of Her Majesty's Government, and that your lordship would be less inclined to press the demands of the Ambassadors on the Porte. In this, however, the Turkish Government had been mistaken, and in his Excellency's opinion the demands which had been put forward were the minimum which your lordship, in view of the state of public opinion in England, could accept. Prince Lobanoff said that it was rather hard that Husny Pasha should reproach him after the line he had taken in attempting to moderate the action of Her Majesty's Government, who at one time seemed on the

point of taking isolated action in the matter, which he feared might have led to great complications and, indeed, have reopened the whole Eastern question.

Here, then, we have it on Prince Lobanoff's own authority that the alternative of his accepting the minimum of Lord Salisbury's demands was 'isolated action' on the part of England in which 'England and Turkey would be left alone face to face.'* This was a fortnight after the mild remarks of Prince Lobanoff out of which Lord Rosebery has conjured up a vision of war, ruin, and massacre that would transcend twenty Floddens, and that angel of death who appeared, or was said to appear, in Edinburgh before Flodden, would appear in every hamlet, every village, every town in the United Kingdom to summon your sons or brothers, the flower of your youth and manhood, to lose their lives in this European conflagration.' This is telling rhetoric, addressed by an ex-Prime Minister and Foreign Secretary to an audience entirely ignorant of the facts; but it is unsubstantial as 'the gossamers that idle in the wanton summer air' when confronted with the evidence out of which the rhetoric is spun.

So much, then, for the appeal to Prince Lobanoff. The dead Chancellor has interpreted his own language, and his interpretation is precisely the reverse of Lord Rosebery's. The truth is that Prince Lobanoff's attitude on the

* Turkey, No. 1 (1896), pp. 135-137.

216 Prince Lobanoff's attitude Explained

Armenian question was determined by the management of that question by Lord Rosebery's Government. In order to understand the Prince's point of view, and do justice to it, we ought to have a clear idea of the negotiations which preceded the fall of the Rosebery Cabinet. This I shall now endeavour to offer to the reader with as much conciseness as may be consistent with an accurate presentation of the facts.

CHAPTER XVII.

A BAD BEGINNING.

JUST before Lord Salisbury went out of office in 1892 he published a Blue-book on Armenia which proved beyond all doubt that the Sultan had been then for more than a year carefully organising a massacre of the Armenians. After encouraging the Kurds and Musulmans in general to harass the Christians in their property, their lives, their religion, and their honour, apparently for the purpose of goading them into some indiscretion which would give him an excuse before Europe for raising the cry of sedition and 'diminishing the population '—to quote the Turkish euphemism for massacre-he formed the Kurds into a cavalry force of 30,000, gave them his own name, the 'Hamidiè,' and set over them as officers the greatest ruffians to be found in Asia Minor. A certain Hussein Agha had been for some time Mudir of Patnoss in Armenia. The crimes of this man were notorious both for their number and for their brutality. A dry catalogue of them fills more than a folio page of a Blue-book, and in sending the black list to Lord Salisbury the British Ambassador described