Russia accepted the latter alternative, and the Congress of Berlin was the result. This Congress could have freed all the subject peoples and solved the Eastern question, but again civilized Europe threw away the opportunity. At this Congress England, in the person of Disraeli, became the Sultan’s advocate, and again the Sultan came out victorious. Certain territories he lost, it is true, but Constantinople was left in his hands and a great area of the Balkans and the larger part of Asia Minor. As for the Armenians, the Syrians, the Greeks, and the Macedonians, the world once more accepted from Turkey promises of reform. Thus Gladstone and the most enlightened opinion in England lost their battle, and British authority again became the instrument for preserving that “terrible oppression, that multitudinous crime which we call the Ottoman Empire.”
Had it not been for the Congress of Berlin it is possible that we should never have had the world war. The treaty let Austria into Bosnia and Herzegovina and so laid the basis for the ultimatum of July 22, 1914. It failed to settle the fate of Macedonia, and so made inevitable the Balkan wars. By leaving Turkey an independent sovereignty, with its capital on the Bosphorus, it made possible the intrigues of Germany for a great Oriental empire. No wonder Gladstone denounced it as an “insane covenant” and “the most deplorable chapter in our foreign policy since the peace of 1815.”
“The plenipotentiaries,” he said, “have spoken in the terms of Metternich rather than those of Canning.... It was their part to take the side of liberty—as a matter of fact, they took the side of servitude.”
The greatest sufferers, as always, were the Christian populations. The Sultan treated his promises of 1878 precisely as he had treated those of 1856. It was after this treaty, indeed, that Abdul Hamid adopted his systematic plan of solving the Armenian problem by massacring all the Armenians. The condition of the subject peoples became worse as years went on, until finally, in 1915, we had the most terrible persecutions in history.
The Russian terror, if it ever was a terror, has disappeared. England no longer fears a Russia stationed at Constantinople and threatening her Indian Empire. The once mighty giant now lies a hopelessly crippled invalid, utterly incapable of aggressive action against any nation. What her fate will be no one knows. What is certain, however, is that the old Czaristic empire, constantly bent on military aggression, has disappeared for ever. When we look upon Russia to-day and then think of the terror which she inspired in the hearts of British statesmen forty and sixty-two years ago the contrast is almost pitiful and grotesque. The nation that succeeded Russia as an ambitious heir to the Sultan’s dominions, Germany, is now almost as powerless.
Moreover, the British conscience has changed since the days of the Crimean and Russo-Turkish wars. The old-time attitude, which insisted on regarding these problems from the standpoint of fancied national interest, is every day giving place to a more humanitarian policy. Gladstone’s idea of “public right as the governing idea of European politics” is more and more gaining the upper hand. The ideals in foreign policy represented by Cobden and Bright are the ideals that now control British public opinion. There are still plenty of reactionaries in England and Europe that might like to settle the Ottoman problem in the old discredited way, but they do not govern British public life at the present crisis. The England that will deal with the Ottoman Empire in 1919 is the England of Lloyd George, not the England of Palmerston and Disraeli.
For the first time, therefore, the world approaches the problem of the Ottoman Empire, the greatest blight in modern civilization, with an absolutely free hand. The decision will inform us, more eloquently than any other detail in the settlement, precisely what forces have won in this war. We shall learn from it whether we have really entered upon a new epoch; whether, as we hope, mediæval history has ended and modern history has begun.
If Constantinople is left to the Turk; if the Greeks, the Syrians, the Armenians, the Arabs and the Jews are not freed from the most revolting tyranny that history has ever known, we shall understand that the sacrifices of the last four years have been in vain, and that the much-discussed new ideals in the government of the world are the merest cant. Thus the United States has an immediate interest in the solution of this problem. The hints reaching this country that another effort may be made to prop up the Turk are not pleasing to us. We did not enter this war to set up new balances of power, to promote the interests of concessionaries, to make new partitions of territory, to satisfy the imperialistic ambitions of contending European powers, but to lend our support to that new international conscience that seeks to reorganize the world on the basis of justice and popular rights. The settlement of the Eastern question will teach us to what extent our efforts have succeeded.
If this mistake of propping up the Sultan’s empire is not to be made again, either that empire must be divided among the great powers—a solution which is not to be considered for reasons which it is hardly necessary to explain—or one of these great powers must undertake its administration as a mandatory. The great powers in question are the United States, Great Britain, France, Italy, and Japan. Of these only the first two are capable of assuming this duty. Lord Curzon has told me personally that for political and economic reasons Great Britain cannot assume the Ottoman mandate. Lloyd George has said essentially the same thing. And Stéphane Lauzanne, who speaks in a semi-official capacity for France, said, in an interview, Nov. 1, with a correspondent of the Times:
“In the offer of a mandate to her, America should see more than the selfish desire of Europe to involve her in European affairs. It is true she fears to be the centre of intrigues and difficulties. She fears distant complications. However, the question is nobler and higher than that. America is an admirable reservoir of energy. She holds the secret of that which is best in our modern life—to build largely and to build quickly. She has youth; she has power; she has wealth; she has that which she calls efficiency. We in Europe are old, poor, enfeebled, divided. It would be prodigiously interesting if America, after she has given us of her power, of her money and her material, should give us also an example.