snatched away from victorious Russia a part of her spoils, and put back under the yoke of the Sultan Eastern Roumelia, fated to be freed eight years later with the concurrence of Great Britain, and a part of Armenia, condemned to become the cockpit of Turkish homicidal fury!

When a nation- a just, generous, conscientious nation—has such a record, when she remembers years and years of unhallowed quarrels against Russia on behalf of the unspeakable Turk, she may very well pause before throwing herself into a new struggle with her ancient rival on account of a total reversal of sides. A little thought, a little sincerity, a little disinterestedness are amply sufficient to show that, within bounds, England and Russia are getting on the same ground; that the one has forsworn her foolish Turcomania and the prejudices of Stratford de Redcliffe, while the other has given up the brutal simplicity of the method of conquest and dismemberment; and that both have never been more ready for an agreement. It would be superfluous to lay stress on the supreme gravity of the moment; everybody knows that, now or never, the Concert of Europe is to solve peacefully the Eastern Question, and that, if it fails, as seems too possible, it will have tolled the knell of many things besides the peace of Eastern Europe. Everybody feels more or less darkly that England and Russia have perhaps more than any other two Powers the ball at their feet, and that it rests chiefly with them to make the European Concert a byword and a mockery, or to initiate with its first work a fair era of good-will and progress among the nations.

IV

It is a popular saying that empires, exactly the same as private individuals, are drawn close together by common ill-wills or enmities as much as or even more than by common friendships. Nothing is less in my mind than to lay a gross, misleading emphasis on facts of which the true import dwells chiefly in delicate shades. It would be a notorious exaggeration to speak of the antagonism of Russia and Germany just at the time when William the Second, notwithstanding the rope which so inopportunely whipped his eye, is going in state to return to Nicolas the Second his visit of last year. However, we have only to read the Bismarckian press in Germany to measure the extent of the cooling between the two nations since the time when the old Chancellor knew how to bind Russia to his system, while chaining Austria to the wheels of his triumphal car. Between the two great neighbouring Emperors there is a mutual diffidence, a growing coldness, a little tempered down by the long habit of dynastic intimacy, but ready to go down to the freezing point under the blighting influence of temper and psychological peculiarities. The relations of Russia and Germany have known hitherto three distinct

phases: first, the honeymoon of the Drei-Kaiser alliance; then the scarcely less idyllic period of the double ménage, when Bismarck, that Don Juan, supplemented the lawful homely bonds of Austrian matrimony by a regular flirt with Petersburg; now the half-veiled bitterness of the Franco-Russian understanding.

During all this time, England, faithful to the Palmerstonian system, has remained—or, ought we to say has fancied she remained?outside any international connection in her splendid isolation. The Cabinet of St. James's professes a perfect hate for Continental encumbrances and eventual engagements. Lord Derby as well as Lord Granville, Lord Rosebery or Lord Kimberley as well as Lord Salisbury, have remained shy before the seducements of the Western States. They have seen the Triple Alliance rise, grow, become the all-spreading upas-tree of Europe, lose something of its glory and begin to scatter some of its leaves. They have seen France and Russia, conscious of their loneliness, stretch out their hands and mutually seize them. It was a very flattering prospect to remain free, equally distant from both systems, with a perfect right to consort, according to the wants of the day, with the one or the other. Only it was-it is a dream.

At first, perhaps, England was able to keep aloof, to drive back successfully the advances of the leading partners in the other firms. Just now things have altered. Germany, or rather, since Germany is bodily in a man, William the Second, seems to pursue towards England the policy of a disappointed lover. Nobody has forgotten the sudden flash of his telegram to President Kruger. Since that time there have been hot and cold fits. The official and officious press of the Fatherland has been sometimes unduly hostile, sometimes threateningly friendly, nearly always coarse and uncourteous. It has been more and more obvious that Germany-or at any rate her imperial master-feels that the drift of the fates, between both countries, makes more and more for a rivalry, evidently not to be decided without the arbitrament of arms. The greatness of the British Empire, as set off by the Jubilee, importunes and plagues to death the soul of the modern Cæsar. He, too, wants a world-wide empire. He, too, wants a navy such as that which made such a splendid appearance in the roads of Portsmouth. He wants colonies. He wants a Germany beyond the sea as there is a Britain beyond the sea. Such day-dreams fill his mind. Even his internal policy is for the largest part determined by those loose, grand projects. When a statesman agrees to help or to pretend to help these undertakings, he may have been in his youth a Social Democrat, and in his ripeness that more hateful politician, a Liberal; he becomes, as Herr von Miquel, the favourite coadjutor, the chosen minister of William the Second. When, on the contrary, he shows some coldness, some diffidence, he is immediately out of favour, as the Prince of Hohenlohe.

All that must give some food for reflection to the minds of English statesmen or publicists. If it is true that between Germany and Britain the final struggle is but a matter of time; if between the two countries, notwithstanding the relations of blood and the dynastical bonds, good observers discern something not very different from the state of mind in France and Prussia during the four years which separated Sadowa from Sedan, it is evident that every lover of his country will look with new eyes on the question, no longer a merely theoretical one, of the alliances of England. Where is the man who, following with some care the slow development of the Eastern crisis, and the cumbrous working of that heavy machine, the European Concert, has not noted that the two poles were occupied by Germany and England; that, notwithstanding sweet words and polite forms, there was no love lost between their public men and their diplomats; no agreement—not even always the agreement to differ peaceablybetween their leading statesmen, ministers, or sovereigns, and that, in fact, without the constant, well-meaning mediation of third parties, they would have left the common ground and taken each her own path? If such is the case when Europe is resolved to remain at one and to astonish the world by her unanimity, it is easy to guess what will be the state of things at the first encounter of a new difficulty.

My readers have perhaps noted with some surprise that, hitherto, I have carefully abstained from mixing up France with that question of the English alliances. In truth, as I have already had occasion to speak my mind in this Review on the relations of France and England, I have purposely tried to look at this problem on every side but the French one. It seems to me that if the suitableness and, much more, the necessity of a Russo-English entente were made good to the satisfaction of the public mind, there would be much less difficulty in trying the same demonstration with France. After all, in this case, the movement has been proved by walking:' a cordiale entente between Waterloo and Sedan has been one of the facts of modern history. Such a precedent is not wholly to be disdained.

I know it is the custom to look down upon the period when the Peels, the Aberdeens, the Russells, the Derbys and the Palmerstons held out their hands loyally and had them locked in the peaceful grasp of the Molé, the Thiers, the Guizot, the Drouyn de Lhuys and the Walewski themselves. However, we must not forget that it was the time when our fathers did great things without boasting, knew how to unite freedom and empire without attitudinising imperially, and how to lead Europe in the path of progress.

Doubtless, the thing is no more, and there must have been a cause for the change. But let us for the present only remember that a Franco-English friendship has been possible and that both countries have not exactly had to lament its fostering. If there is nothing to prevent a mutual understanding between Russia and

England, what should hinder France from making a third in the arrangement? It is only necessary for those who in England dream such perfectly reasonable dreams not to forget that it is absolutely of no avail to try a flirtation with Russia without France. The coupling of France and Russia is one of the few steady, fixed points of the present state of things. Subject to this there is nothing at all against the attempt of an entente à trois. In fact, I dare to say the true inwardness of the Franco-Russian friendship makes such a completion necessary.

At first, perhaps, it was possible to mistake more or less unwillingly the real character of that understanding, and to see in it a kind of war-engine. One of the weaknesses of this contrivance was that, even among its best friends, it was erroneously taken for an instrument of revenge. Time and experience have made away with this mistake. It has been more and more obviously proved that the Franco-Russian alliance is an alliance, not of war, but of peace; not of revenge, but of equilibrium; that its end is to make Europe again a reality, to give a counterpoise to the too preponderating power of Germany and her confederates; to put the security of the world on a broader and steadier basis than the goodwill of a leading potentate. That such is the object of the Franco-Russian alliance has been sufficiently removed from doubt by its results. It is a fact that, during the last three years, while the Eastern crisis unfolded its interminable coils, France and Russia have been by their mutual understanding, by their spirit of conciliation, the true honest brokers of the European Concert. France, after all, in so doing, is acting in strict conformity to her genius, to her interests, and to her history. In the East, she has always known how to be the friend of the Turk and the guardian of the Christians. She wants the maintenance of the integrity of the Ottoman Empire, insomuch as it means the absolute exclusion of all egoistical and untimely attempts on the estate of the Sick Man, something like a self-denying ordinance. At the same time, she has no other wish than the gradual enfranchisement of the Christian nationalities, the constitution of native States subject only to the preservation of the peace. Everywhere she is animated by such feelings.

Truly, it cannot be very difficult to find a way to the goodwill of a nation so chastened by the lessons of misfortune. Of course there are on the broad surface of the earth many points where the interests of England and France may clash. I make bold, however, to say that not even in Egypt are these divergencies above the reach of a wellmeaning diplomacy. The hour is come to look in the face all these small difficulties and to make a choice between two ways. I have tried to show the drift of events between Germany and England, the gradual estrangement, the nearly unavoidable conflict of the future. I must not pass in silence over the counterpart of this antagonism; I

mean the so striking, so oft-renewed, so newly emphasised advances and offers of goodwill the German Emperor is making all the while to France.

Nobody ignores the immense, the nearly insuperable difficulty which prevents the prompt acceptance of these flattering attentions. Between France and Germany there is not only the memory of the war, a ditch full of blood: there is the cry, the bitter cry of children brutally taken from their mother; there is the unconquerable protest of Alsace and Lorraine, that flesh of our flesh, that bone of our bone, against the cruel abuse of the law of the stronger. I believe from the bottom of my heart that, for a long time yet, a statesman in France who should deliberately accept the friendship of Germany and make gratuitous love to the Emperor would be buried under public contempt. However time flows; the years go by; the generations come and go. Circumstances may arise where France, where the Franco-Russian couple, would feel obliged to strike a bargain with the German tempter. For England this prospect is worthy of a moment of reflection. It is useless to entertain self-deception. Just now England has or seems to have three ways open to her. She may either remain as she is, an erratic body, wandering through the paths of other constellations; or she may make a fourth in the Triple Alliance and follow suit to Germany, the leading State in this league; or she may contract with France and Russia one of those mariages de raison which are perhaps never perfectly delightful, according to La Rochefoucauld, but to which diplomacy, in allowing the happy consorts to be three, gives a kind of additional zest. Only she must choose quickly. It is already too easy to see that the Sibyl does not intend to leave her offers a long time open or to renew them without some reduction.

FRANCIS DE PRESSENSÉ.