48

Mr. Gladstone's Intervention

1876 a great meeting was held in the Guildhall, under the presidency of a Tory Lord Mayor, one of the leading speakers being the Right Hon. J. G. Hubbard, one of the Conservative Members for the City. Lord Salisbury was invited to attend, and, while pleading his official position as Minister for India to excuse his absence, he expressed his hearty sympathy with the agitation. His son has just expressed his sympathy with the present agitation in language as strong as Mr. Gladstone's, and his hope that other countries will imitate it. Conservatives have everything to gain, and nothing to lose, by participating in the agitation; and I would especially implore the Conservative Press to welcome Mr. Gladstone's intervention in a friendly spirit. He has been most reluctant to emerge from his privacy, and one of his reasons for hesitancy has been his anxiety to say nothing that could in the least embarrass Lord Salisbury or wear the appearance of forcing a policy on him. The condition of the political atmosphere is at this moment very electrical, and an attack on Mr. Gladstone from the Ministerial side would be pretty certain to cause an explosion. Let there be hearty co-operation now, and let the keynote be a resolution to support Lord Salisbury in his righteous endeavours to obtain reparation and protection for the Armenians without prescribing for him any specific method of procedure.

Continued Inaction Intolerable

49

Let him have a free hand whether he shall act with or without the Concert of Europe. I see no reason, however, why speakers should not express their own individual opinions on alternative plans.

The one thing which meetings will not tolerate is a recommendation to sit with folded arms and do nothing. That, I am sure, is not the policy of Lord Salisbury. I do not doubt at all that he feels as keenly as any of us the pain and shame of the callousness of the other Powers, and that he is doing his best to realise in action the universal desire of the country. The agitation is intended to reinforce his diplomacy, and will unquestionably do so.

I shall presently show that Lord Salisbury is peculiarly well qualified at this moment to settle the Armenian question-qualified by his ability, his comprehensive knowledge of the subject, his genuine sympathy with the Christian population of Turkey, and--not least-by his antecedents.

CHAPTER V.

POLICY OF AUSTRIA.

BEFORE I enter on the interesting subject of Lord Salisbury's record on the Eastern question I must make one more effort to make plain, as I understand it-and I have more than average means of knowing-the aim and purport of the agitation. There is no desire to dictate any policy to Lord Salisbury. Nobody urges him to make war or do anything in particular. But the country wishes foreign Powers to know that if Lord Salisbury, in despair of persuading the other Powers to secure reparation and justice for the Armenians, decides to act alone, he will have the whole nation behind him. It is the worst possible policy to tell foreign Powers that in no case will Great Britain act alone. It is just the way to paralyse Lord Salisbury's diplomacy and to encourage the Sultan to go on with his massacres. And it is not true. The country will act if Lord Salisbury think it necessary; and Lord Salisbury himself cannot possibly tell whether circumstances may not arise any day which might force him to act alone. As we

have no desire to force his hand, still less have we any wish to fetter his discretion. Let him have a free hand to act with or without the other Powers in carrying out the policy of the nation, which is doubtless his own-namely, to deliver England from all complicity in the tacit assent of the other Powers to the Sultan's deliberate purpose to exterminate the Armenians. The agitation has already compelled the Press of Vienna to change its tone of menace and bluster towards this country to one of supplication. But there is no indication of any change of policy. The Standard-to whose ability and honourable conduct in this matter I wish to pay my small tribute of gratitude-gratefully accepts the following passage in a Vienna paper as English policy in a nut-shell' :-'So long as the present Government is at the head of affairs in England, abhorrence of Turkish rule, though wellfounded enough, will not be allowed to conjure up the spectre of European war.' I am sure the Standard does not realise the hideous significance of that passage. Let it read it again in the light of the following facts. On the 13th of last December the British Ambassador at Constantinople informed Lord Salisbury by telegraph that

A moderate estimate put the loss of life at 30,000. The survivors are in a state of absolute destitution, and in many places they are forced to become Musulmans. The charge against Armenians

52

Count Goluchowski on

of having been the first to offer provocation cannot be sustained. Non-Armenian Christians were spared, and the comparatively few Turks who fell were killed in self-defence.

Four days later the British Ambassador at Vienna handed a copy of this telegram to Count Goluchowski, and begged him to read it carefully.

Count Goluchowski did so, and observed that the description is doubtless true enough, and very impressive; but that, as he had already stated, there is nothing to be done but to wait and see if the Sultan will be able to carry out his promises and restore order. Every kind of admonition had been given to him, and his Excellency did not see what more could be said to him than has already been repeatedly urged. Intervention of any other kind must inevitably result in the further disaggregation of the Ottoman Empire. But, if Count Goluchowski rightly understands the situation, this is the last thing that the Powers desire. . . . He must therefore maintain that, lamentable as the condition of affairs in Anatolia undoubtedly is, there is nothing whatever to be done but to give the Sultan the opportunity of doing what he has engaged to do. The prospect is not a hopeful

one.

...

A fortnight later the Austrian Minister received news of more horrors, and again unbosomed himself to the British Ambassador.

His Excellency went on to deplore that, beyond making representations [to the Sultan] the Powers can do nothing for the Armenians, of whom several thousands may be computed to have perished by violence; while the rigours of winter, bringing famine, want of shelter and warmth-in fact, destitution in its most