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How did Disraeli diagnose Russia’s legitimate aspirations? He certainly neither ignored nor condemned them, but he distinguished between aspirations legitimate and illegitimate. Speaking in 1871, after Russia had violated and Mr. Gladstone had torn up the Black Sea Clause, Disraeli criticised the course which the Ministry had pursued.
“... Russia has a policy, as every great power has a policy, and she has as much right to have a policy as Germany or England. I believe the policy of Russia, taking a general view of it, to have been a legitimate policy, though it may have been inevitably a disturbing policy. When you have a great country in the centre of Europe, with an immense territory, with a numerous and yet, as compared with its colossal area, a sparse population, producing human food to any extent, in addition to certain most valuable raw materials, it is quite clear that a people so situated, practically without any seaboard, would never rest until it had found its way to the coast, and could have a mode of communicating easily with other nations, and exchanging its products with them. Well, for two hundred years Russia has pursued that policy; it has been a legitimate though disturbing policy. It has cost Sweden provinces, and it has cost Turkey provinces. But no wise statesman could help feeling that it was a legitimate policy—a policy which it was impossible to resist, and one which the general verdict of the world recognised—that Russia should find her way to the sea-coast. She has completely accomplished it. She has admirable seaports; she can communicate with every part of the world, and she has profited accordingly.
“But at the end of the last century she advanced a new view. It was not a national policy; it was invented by the then ruler of Russia—a woman, a stranger, and an usurper—and that policy was that she must have the capital of the Turkish Empire. That was not a legitimate, that was a disturbing policy. It was a policy like the French desire to have the Rhine—false in principle. She had no moral claim to Constantinople; she did not represent the races to which it once belonged; she had no political necessity to go there, because she already had two capitals. Therefore it was not a legitimate but a disturbing policy. As the illegitimate desire of France to have the Rhine has led to the prostration of France, so the illegitimate desire of Russia to have Constantinople led to the prostration of Russia....”
The means used by Disraeli for preserving the peace of Europe and protecting our Eastern Empire were, in the rough, on the lines I have tried to shadow. First of all, refusing to allow the creation of an unwieldy and anarchic province of discordant races which could not become a coherent nation, he reduced the Bulgaria designed under the San Stefano arrangement by two-thirds, created Eastern Roumelia, with a framed constitution, south of the Balkans, and yielded the rest to Turkey. By this measure not only was Bulgaria prevented from being bulky and hybrid, but the Macedonian Greeks (preponderant over Slavs and Serbs) were saved from absorption. Turkey was delimited in Europe by the natural fastnesses of the Balkans—one that even in his youth Disraeli marked as the real frontier. Turkey was pledged to reform her administration, while the signatories also guaranteed her from Russian aggression. Both Russia and Turkey, therefore—and, indeed, all Europe—knew that England was in earnest about her Indian Empire. Turkey’s position was ascertained, so was Russia’s. Russia was propitiated by Bessarabia, Kars, Ardahan, and Batoum; Turkey, gratified by the retention of the great portion of what was to have been Bulgaria’s, by the retention of Bayazid, by the great region of Erzeroum, and of the valley of Alashkerd.
Further, Cyprus fell to the lot of England as a post “of arms,” a strategical, a coasting and a coaling port of high value for our Indian Empire, commanding as it does the high-route which leads to the Euphrates Valley, and useful besides for Egypt. He had noted this island on his youthful trip in the East as most opportune for the purpose.[128]
Disraeli’s whole purview, in these arrangements, apart from the defence of Great Britain, was to ensure a feasible government under the watch of the European concert. This intention is well expressed by the late Master of Balliol, writing in 1877: “... I want to see the higher civilisation of Europe combining against the lower and offering something like a paternal government to ... the East. But then there is such a danger of taking away the government which they have and substituting only chaos. This might be avoided if the European Powers would jointly take up their cause....”
I may be allowed to recall, in relation to some of these matters, a few of Disraeli’s immediate after-utterances. They are too often neglected.
As regards the English guarantee of the Porte against Russian offence, attained by the Convention of Constantinople which supplemented the treaty, he observed—
“... Suppose now ... the settlement of Europe had not included the Convention of Constantinople and the occupation of the isle of Cyprus, ... what might ... have occurred? In ten, fifteen, or twenty years, the power and resources of Russia having revived, some quarrel would again have occurred, Bulgarian or otherwise, and in all probability the armies of Russia would have been assailing the Ottoman dominions, both in Europe and Asia; and enveloping and inclosing the city of Constantinople, and its all-powerful position. Well, what would be the probable conduct under these circumstances of the Government ... whatever party might be in power? I fear there might be hesitation for a time—a want of decision, a want of firmness; but no one doubts that ultimately England would have said, ‘This will never do; we must prevent the conquest of Asia Minor; we must interfere in this matter and arrest the course of Russia....’ Well, then, that being the case, I say it is extremely important that this country should take a step beforehand which should indicate what the policy of England would be.... The responsibilities of England are practically diminished by the course we have taken.... One of the results of my attending the Congress of Berlin has been to prove, what I always suspected to be an absolute fact, that neither the Crimean, nor this horrible devastating war which has just terminated, would have taken place if England had spoken with the necessary firmness. Russia had complaints to make against this country; that neither in the case of the Crimean War, nor on this occasion—and I don’t shrink from my share of the responsibility in this matter—was the voice of England so clear and decided as to exercise a due share in the guidance of European opinion.” Without such finality the treaty could only have been patchwork. “That was not the idea of public duty entertained by my noble friend and myself. We thought the time had come when we should take steps which would produce some order out of the anarchy chaos that had so long prevailed. We asked ourselves was it absolutely a necessity that the fairest provinces of the world should be the most devastated and the most ill-used, and for this reason, that there is no security for life and property so long as that country is in perpetual fear of invasion and aggression.... I hold that we have laid the foundation of a state of affairs which may open a new continent to the civilisation of Europe, and that the welfare of the world, and the wealth of the world, may be increased by availing ourselves of that tranquillity and order which the more intimate connection of that country with England will now produce....” And, added the late Lord Salisbury, “We were striving to pick up the thread—the broken thread—of England’s old imperial position.”