Lord Lyons to Lord Granville.
Paris, Oct. 4, 1880.
Barthélemy St. Hilaire's answer about the Greek Frontier does not look as if we should receive any energetic help from France towards obtaining the settlement of that or any other question in the East. The answer was all ready cut and dried, and the declaration as to France sticking to the Concert, but not taking any initiative, had been made before to my colleagues. A more experienced diplomatist would have acknowledged more elaborately your courtesy in offering to communicate first with France, before addressing the other cabinets on the Greek Frontier affair.
The fact is that the present Cabinet is still more frightened than the last by the disapproval which has been manifested by all parties in France of even the little that has already been done. With regard to this, M. St. Hilaire made a remark to me yesterday which seems to be true enough. France, he said, has quite recovered her financial strength, and in great measure her military strength, but the moral of the people is not yet relevé. They are horribly afraid of another war and consequently utterly averse from anything like a risky or energetic policy. Another popular sentiment, which is extremely inconvenient just now, is the feeling that France made the Crimean War pour les beaux yeux de l'Angleterre and had better not repeat the experiment. Altogether I am afraid France will be a trouble, not a help to us, and I am a good deal put out about it.
Barthélemy St. Hilaire talked to me a long time about Gambetta, with whom he described himself as very intimate. He described Gambetta as having a naturally generous nature, as being somewhat impulsive and incautious, but at the same time somewhat 'Genoese.' He said that if I took opportunities of associating with him, I should find his character an interesting study. The study will not be a new one to me, and I am not sure that too apparent an intimacy between me and Gambetta would be viewed without jealousy.
M. Jules Ferry, the new Prime Minister, was no more amenable than his colleague.
Lord Lyons to Lord Granville.
Paris, Oct. 8, 1880.
As to the French agreeing to the Smyrna proposal, I cannot prognosticate favourably. I had a long conversation yesterday with Jules Ferry, the Prime Minister. I seemed to make some impression by urging that to break up the European Concert now would be to keep the questions open, with all their inconveniences and all their dangers, for an indefinite time. He also admitted the many advantages of the Smyrna plan, and was quite unable to suggest any other course of action so likely to bring the Sultan to reason without inconvenient consequences. But he perpetually reverted to the argument that it would be going too near war to be admissible under the French Constitution, and that the Chambers on that account would call the Ministers severely to task. The argument from the Constitution seems to me almost absurd, but it is constantly used already in the press, and will no doubt be used hereafter in the Chambers. The fact is that Jules Ferry and his colleagues are horribly afraid of the effect which they believe any action on their part would produce on public opinion and on the Chamber.
I have seen B. St. Hilaire this afternoon. I went over with him the same ground I had gone over with Jules Ferry yesterday, but with much the same result. He told me that the question had been discussed in the Cabinet this morning and was to be discussed in another Cabinet to-morrow. Perhaps they would not like to stay out in the cold if Germany and Austria came in, but I am afraid they will certainly not say 'yes,' though they may say 'no' before those Powers have given their answer. They seem to argue from the delay of the German Government, that Bismarck is against the proposal. Orloff, my Russian colleague, tells me that he is strongly urging the French to agree. Beust and Radowitz (the German) talk as if they themselves thought well of the Smyrna plan, but say they have heard nothing from their Governments.
I spoke to B. St. Hilaire about your reasons for communicating first with him about the Greek Question, and he sent with effusion the message of thanks which he ought to have sent at first.
Choiseul is applying with vigour the épuration system to the Foreign Office and the Diplomatic Service. He seems to have dismissed some very good men in both. Des Michels is one of his victims, and to-day he has decapitated the head of the Commercial Department.
I think it better not to communicate at present the draft instructions to the Admiral. They would, I think, be seized upon as arguments that the occupation of Smyrna would be an act of war.
Her Majesty's Government were in effect in a very bad mess. The Smyrna proposal had received no real support from any Power. Bismarck had announced that the so-called Eastern Question was not worth the bones of a Pomeranian Grenadier, and nothing was to be expected from him. The same thing applied to Austria; neither Italy nor Russia were to be relied upon, and France was unwilling and unenterprising. No wonder that Lord Granville felt singularly uncomfortable: the Concert of Europe, as he expressed it, had 'gone to the devil,' no one was going to help him, and unless within a few days the Turks yielded, the British Government would be confronted with the alternatives of seizing Smyrna single handed or of confessing defeat and abandoning the contest. Lord Granville himself was in favour of the latter course, as being logical, and the natural consequence of the action of the other Powers, who would neither agree to the English proposals nor propose anything themselves. Mr. Gladstone, on the other hand, was apparently all for going on and acting as the mandatory of Europe, and as he usually got his way, it is possible that this dangerous course might have been adopted; but in the very nick of time, just at the moment when the situation looked to be at its worst, the Sultan suddenly gave way and announced that Dulcigno should be handed over to the Montenegrins. What brought about this sudden decision has always remained more or less of a mystery, but there is no proof that the proposed seizure of Smyrna (which would have probably inconvenienced European interests quite as much as the Sultan) was the deciding factor. According to the late Lord Goschen, who was in as good a position to know the real facts as any one else, the sudden surrender of the Sultan was caused by a Havas Agency telegram from Paris; but the contents of this communication have never been divulged, and Lord Goschen himself never ascertained what they were. The surrender of Dulcigno, which took place in November, terminated the crisis and enabled the Gladstone Government to claim a striking if lucky success for their own particular sample of spirited Foreign Policy.