But

potence and would then begin to claim, as in Crete, the credit of what it did its best to defeat. everything depends on the nation showing a united front, and this again can only be done by Conservatives and Liberals appearing side by side at meetings which cannot be prevented, but may be made of the greatest service to the Government.

CHAPTER IV.

TIMID COUNSELS.

It seems to be thought in some quarters in this country-Madame Novikoff has done her best to propagate the same view in Russia and Francethat Lord Salisbury's record on the Eastern question has placed him in a peculiarly disadvantageous position for coming to an agreement with Russia at this moment. I hope in a following chapter to prove, on the contrary, that Russia is under deep obligations to Lord Salisbury. But let me begin by explaining as clearly as I can the policy which I venture to recommend for public meetings and elsewhere. It is to assure Lord Salisbury that he has the whole nation at his back in any measure which he may take for the effectual protection of the Armenians, and for delivering England from all further complicity in the policy of futile remonstrance and criminal inaction, which has already sacrificed the lives of some 100,000 innocent men, women, and children, massacred in cold blood; and will, probably, if persevered in, result in a general massacre of Christians all over Turkey. If the

40 Advice of Sir Charles Dilke

Concert of the Powers agree to act with Lord Salisbury in putting an end without delay to a state of things which has already covered Christendom with infamy, well and good. If not, then perish the Concert of the Powers! At this moment shiploads of Armenians are being deported before the eyes of the Ambassadors to be drowned at sea or massacred in some obscure corner of Anatolia. And the Ambassadors do nothing to stay the hand of the assassin. And then we are told, forsooth! by some weak-kneed and invertebrate politicians that England must only bewail her impotence and sit wringing her feeble hands in the Concert of Europe. Can she not at least leave the Concert, shaking the dust of her garments against its guilty complicity in the stupendous crimes of a red-handed murderer, whose continued impunity emboldens him to meditate and organise further excesses? Time was when the slave and the oppressed plucked up hope from the ashes of despair wherever the flag of England was seen waving. Is this great nation, with its glorious history, fallen so low that it has no longer the courage to defend with its own right arm its own honour and treaty obligations, without stooping, 'in bondman's key with bated breath and whisp'ring humbleness,' to ask leave of some foreign potentate?

I am not surprised that such advice should be given by Sir Charles Dilke. Her Majesty's Government, it seems, refused to shape their

naval policy by his sage advice, and so 'the weakness' of the strongest fleet that ever sailed the seas has now reduced England to impotence! If Sir Charles Dilke had commanded the British fleet at Trafalgar he would have counted the enemy's ships through his telescope, and, finding them to outnumber his own, would have run away. Whenever Nelson saw the enemy's ships he made for them without counting the odds, and beat them. I have followed the various phases of the Eastern question with at least as much care as Sir Charles Dilke, and I do not hesitate to say that 'his remembrance of the fickleness of public opinion' on the Bulgarian question is only a reminiscence of his own fickleness. Then as now he veered about with the superficial eddies that babbled over the shallows of public opinion, but was never in touch with the nation's pulse, and has thus remained ignorant to this hour of the outburst of sympathy for the oppressed which went on increasing in volume till it achieved its purpose. There was no fickleness and no reaction, as I have already shown.

But I am more than surprised that the leader of the Liberal party should follow Sir Charles Dilke's example. Lord Rosebery 'is not prepared to assume the position of the Executive, and to attempt to direct the Government of the country.' Yet he does not hesitate to lay down a policy for the Government as a

42

Prince Lobanoff's Declaration

condition of his support, but which imposes no sort of responsibility on himself. 'Separate action,' on the part of England, 'would involve a European war.' Why? Because of the declaration of Russia, in August 1895, that she would oppose separate action on the part of any Powers.' But the circumstances of August 1895 are not the circumstances of September 1896. Much has happened since then which may well modify the policy of Russia. Moreover, Russia never made the declaration which Lord Rosebery's lapse of memory has imputed to her. In answer to the British Ambassador's inquiry whether Russia would be willing to employ force against the Sultan, Prince Lobanoff replied that the employment of force was personally repugnant to the Emperor.' And being pressed to say what Russia thought as to the employment of force by other Powers, Lobanoff said that the employment of force by any one of the Powers would be equally distasteful to the Russian Government.' That is a very different thing from saying that Russia 'would oppose the employment of force by any of the Powers. There might then have been some lingering hope that the Sultan might be made to see the peril of further massacres, and agree to a modus vivendi for the Armenians. There is no such hope now. I do not believe that Russia would oppose coercion in the present dangerous crisis, when a spark may fire the magazine, if she were