THE MARINA, LARNACA, CYPRUS.
nationality, Lord Derby’s diplomacy was the diplomacy of the British people in their saner moments, when they were not under the spell of passion or partisanship. His blunders—the rejection of the Berlin Memorandum and the refusal to give an executive character to the decisions of the Constantinople Conference—had at all events wrought no evil to England or the world, unless it were an evil to hasten the destruction of Ottoman tyranny in Europe, and the deliverance of Bulgaria from barbarism.[130] As for his successes, they are now obvious. His shrewd appreciation of British interests, and his firmness, candour, courtesy, and lucidity in defining them at the outset of the struggle between the belligerents, made it easy for Russia to avoid a collision with England. That he fell short of his opportunity in neglecting to establish British influence in Egypt was a mistake excusable in a minister whose leader, like a character in one of his own novels, “had but one idea in Foreign
SALONICA.
Policy, and that was wrong”—the “maintenance of the integrity of the Ottoman Empire.” But the net result of Lord Derby’s administration was that he kept the country out of war, and out of enfeebling and disreputable alliances. He thrust a peace policy on bellicose colleagues. Even when they broke from his control he still forced them back to the paths of peace by inflicting on them the penalty of his resignation. In quitting them he left them as his legacy the secret of going into the Congress, and bringing back from it “Peace with Honour.”
Mr. Gladstone, in a famous speech at Oxford, said, on the 30th of January, that he had devoted his life, during the past year, to counteract the Machiavelian designs of Lord Beaconsfield. Mr. Gladstone, however, never appeared to less advantage than when he made that statement. It was not Lord Beaconsfield but Lord Derby who was the master-mind of the Cabinet during 1877-78, and who moulded its diplomacy and controlled its action in Foreign Affairs. That Mr. Gladstone strengthened Lord Derby’s hands by rendering a war for the sake of Turkey unpopular is true; but that he weakened them by seeming to advocate a military alliance with Holy Russia for a crusade against Islam, is true also.