After this unexpected victory the “Jingoes” pressed the Government to follow it up. To please them the Fleet was ordered to Constantinople, but to soothe Lord Derby he was permitted to explain that it went there merely to protect British residents who were alarmed by the prevailing anarchy. The Turks, enraged at what they deemed their betrayal by Lord Beaconsfield and Mr. Layard, churlishly refused to grant a firman opening the Straits to the Fleet. Prince Gortschakoff said, that as the protection of Europeans from anarchy was a duty which Russia and England ought to undertake in common for the sake of Humanity, Russia would now, as a matter of course, occupy the fortified lines that covered Constantinople, and, if need be, the city itself. It was a pretty “situation” in the high comedy of diplomacy, in which Lord Beaconsfield was, for the moment, outwitted and outmanœuvred. He lowered the point of his foil with good temper and good grace, but when he effected a compromise with Gortschakoff there was wailing and gnashing of teeth in the Temple of “Jingo.” And yet Lord Beaconsfield may be forgiven much, on account of the dexterity with which he extricated the country from a position which rendered war with Russia, and the immediate expulsion of the last remnant of the Ottoman race to Asia, a dead certainty. He, or Lord Derby in his name, promised Gortschakoff not to occupy Gallipoli nor the lines of Bulair, if Russia would promise not to land troops on the European shore of the Dardanelles. This compromise was accepted by Russia, with the additional proviso that neither Power was free to occupy the Asiatic side of the Straits.
After the Government obtained the Vote of Six Millions, they began to spend the money as quickly as possible in the arsenals, for the strangest part of their policy was, that their Army and Navy Estimates were essentially peace estimates. Meantime, everybody was speculating as to what terms of peace were being forced on Turkey, and the War Party were busy spreading abroad the most alarming rumours about the exactions of Russia. The veil of secrecy in which the negotiations were wrapped excited the suspicion of the people, who, it must be remembered, were kept in ignorance of the fact that the Russian Government had frankly told Lord Derby the conditions on which they would make peace. There was thus a distinct oscillation of public feeling towards the “Jingoes.” The Treaty of Peace was signed at San Stefano on the 3rd of March. Nineteen days afterwards the full text of this Treaty, by which, as Prince Bismarck told General Grant, “Ignatieff had swallowed more than Russia could digest,” was printed in the English newspapers. At first, the War Party collapsed. It was clear that the Russians had not touched British interests, and that to offer to fight on behalf of Turkey after she was annihilated as a fighting Power, and had signed a Treaty of Peace, was a palpable absurdity. Some other basis for a policy had thus to be discovered, and it was soon found. The ghastly phantom of “the public law of Europe” was conjured up from the Crimean Museum of diplomatic antiquities. It was said that England was bound to defend that law against the Treaty of San Stefano which had violated it, by upsetting the Treaty of Paris as modified in 1871 by the Powers. Austria also took a line that again inspired the War Party with false hopes. The Treaty of San Stefano had not arranged for an Austrian occupation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, as a counterpoise to a Bulgaria under Russian influence. Austria therefore began to arm. At the instance of Germany, however, she invited all the Powers to meet in Congress and endeavour to harmonise the Treaty of San Stefano with the general interests of Europe. As Lord Derby was blamed, somewhat unjustly, for the failure of the project of a Congress, it may be well to state precisely his attitude to it. Unfortunately for himself he deemed it desirable to conceal his real objection to the scheme, which was this: he held that more harm than good results from a discussion among rival Powers on their competing interests in any Congress, unless they shall have arrived beforehand at a complete agreement as to the concessions which they will give and take.
RUSSO-TURKISH WAR: MAP SHOWING POSITION OF RUSSIAN AND TURKISH LINES OUTSIDE OF CONSTANTINOPLE, AND OF THE BRITISH FLEET.
Lord Derby’s idea evidently was to delay the Congress till the Powers were so far agreed that their meeting would be virtually one to register foregone conclusions. Lord Beaconsfield and the War Party, on the other hand, knew that their only hope lay in preventing the Congress from meeting. Up to a certain point Lord Derby and Lord Beaconsfield could, therefore, hold common ground. But as Lord Derby’s policy of obstructive procrastination destroyed the popularity of the project before it had brought about such an agreement among the Powers as would render the Congress innocuous, even in his eyes, it was easy for Lord Beaconsfield to take some warlike step that would get rid of Lord Derby and the Congress also. Hence throughout the period of diplomatic conflict that followed we find Lord Derby allowed to object to the Congress, first because Greece was not to be represented, and lastly because the Russians did not distinctly promise to submit the whole Treaty of San Stefano to it. The dispute finally centred round this last point. Out of England nobody at the time could understand Lord Derby’s objection. He seemed, from beginning to end, either to be quibbling about words and phrases, or trying to force Russia to enter the Congress with less liberty of action and on a lower status of dignity and independence than the other Powers. Before England accepted the Congress he wrote to Sir Henry Elliot, saying that she would not enter it unless he distinctly understood that “every article in the Treaty between Russia and Turkey will be placed before the Congress, not necessarily for acceptance, but in order that it may be ascertained what articles require acceptance or concurrence by the several Powers, and what do not.” Russia had already admitted that at the Congress each of the Powers “would have full liberty of appreciation and action” as regards the Treaty of San Stefano, and on the 9th of April Prince Gortschakoff’s Circular Note further stated that “in claiming the same right for Russia we can only reiterate the same declaration.” Lord Beaconsfield, on the 8th of April, complained, in the House of Lords, that the phrase “liberty of appreciation and action” was involved in classical ambiguity. “Delphi herself,” said he, with a provoking sneer at the Russian Chancellor, “could hardly have been more perplexing and august.” Yet, on the 27th of March, Count Schouvaloff wrote to Lord Derby as follows: “The liberty of appreciation and action which Russia thinks it right to reserve to herself at the Congress the Imperial Cabinet defines in the following manner. It leaves to the other Powers the liberty of raising such questions at the Congress as they may think it fit to discuss, and reserves to itself the liberty of accepting or not accepting the discussion of those questions.”[127] Russia had communicated the Treaty in its entirety to all the Powers. She had expressly and explicitly informed Austria, who had summoned the Congress, that she admitted the competence of that body to overhaul every clause of the Treaty in European interests—a fact of which Lord Derby was well aware. Austria and the Continental Powers were satisfied that Russia had sufficiently recognised the competence of the Congress. England alone denied this, and pressed for a declaration which would have technically left all the Powers except Russia free not only to decide what affected their individual interests, but free to decide what affected those of Russia also. Lord Derby’s demand seemed as if meant to put the Russian Government, behind which stood a great and irritable army, flushed with victory, in the position of a criminal at the bar of Europe, and to force from her an admission that on certain vital points she pledged herself to bow to the decision of the Congress, though no other Power was to be put under a similar obligation.[128] Whilst this pedantic controversy was going on the “Jingoes” beat the war-drum with so much sound and fury that Lord Beaconsfield was misled into the idea that they were strong outside London. On the 26th of March the Cabinet accordingly resolved to call out the Reserves, to summon a contingent of native troops from India, to seize Cyprus, and land an army at a port in Syria. Lord Derby was not much alarmed about the order to call out the Reserves, but to seize one portion of the Turkish Empire, and land an army on another, without a declaration of war, was to his mind an act of piracy. Moreover, it would have instantly led to the catastrophe which he had made every sacrifice to avoid—the Russian occupation of Constantinople.
At this crisis Lord Derby saved his country from the direst calamity—a war between England and Russia, in which victory could bring no other gain to England than the privilege of restoring the liberated Turkish provinces to barbarism, and in which, since India had been put down by Lord Beaconsfield as one of the stakes in his game, defeat would have meant the loss of her Asiatic and Colonial Empire. Lord Derby resigned, and the panic caused by his withdrawal from the Cabinet compelled Lord Beaconsfield to abandon the filibustering expedition to Cyprus and Syria, and confine himself to those steps which did not make war inevitable. Russia, who was strengthening her own forces, could not object to England calling out her Reserves. As for the summons to the Indian troops, it would have been harmless, but for a circumstance not known at the time. It gave Prince Gortschakoff an opportunity for carrying out a diabolically malignant scheme of vengeance. He considered himself free to ignore the arrangement by which Russia was bound not to interfere in the “neutral zone” between her Asiatic Empire and the Indian frontier. Russian troops were accordingly ordered to move towards the Oxus for the invasion of India. Russian agents hastened in advance to the frontier to brew trouble for England in Afghanistan. Nay, so swift and secret were these counter-strokes, that even after the dispute between Russia and England in Europe had been settled, Russia was unable to undo the mischief she had wrought in Asia. England was dragged into the costly agony of another Afghan War, and it may therefore be said that the luxury of bringing the native troops to Europe in 1878 not only permanently disorganised the finances of India, but cost the country hecatombs of lives and £20,000,000 of money in 1879-80. Though the step was at first popular, the nation in time began to appreciate the grave political and fiscal objections which could be urged unanswerably against the employment of Indian troops out of Asia, or out of that portion of Eastern Africa which is practically Asiatic.
But when Lord Derby resigned it was not known that Indian troops were to be brought to Cyprus and landed in Syria, and the Ministerial explanations were so couched as to make it appear that he left the Government merely because the Reserves were called out. His real reasons could not be given at the moment, and he had to submit to a tirade of abuse from Tory speakers and writers unparalleled in its ferocity. Even his personal character was attacked by abominable slanders. Violence and virulence are the outward and visible signs of decaying power in a political Party. These evil qualities had, however, never been displayed to a greater extent by the Tories since the wars of the Protectionists and the Peelites in 1852, when a band of the former one day after dinner at the Carlton Club explored the drawing-room in order to “fling Mr. Gladstone out of the window.”[129] Yet it is curious to observe that Lord Beaconsfield and his followers were forced by events to adopt the policy and even the method of their slandered colleague. They floundered deeper and deeper every day into a quagmire of difficulties, till they actually made a secret arrangement with Russia as to the points in the Treaty of San Stefano, about which, however much they might wage a sham fight in the coming Congress, neither Power would go to war.
In fact it is now evident that of the statesmen who figured in the controversy at this crisis, Lord Derby is the one who emerges from it with least damage to his reputation. Alike in his strength and weakness, in his resolute determination to spend neither British blood nor British treasure for the sake of Turkey, and in his lack of red-hot enthusiasm for the cause of Slavic