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 LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 
 
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THREE PEACE CONGRESSES 
 
 OF THE 
 
 NINETEENTH CENTURY 
 
 BY 
 
 CHARLES DOWNER HAZEN 
 
 WILLIAM ROSCOE THAYER 
 
 ROBERT HOWARD LORD 
 
 CLAIMANTS TO 
 CONSTANTINOPLE 
 
 BY 
 
 ARCHIBALD CARY COOLIDGE 
 
 CAMBRIDGE 
 HARVARD UNIVERSITY PRESS 
 
 LONDON: HUMPHREY MILFORD 
 Oxford University Press 
 
 1917 
 
-33 3 ^3 
 J5 
 
 COPYRIGHT, 1917 
 HARVARD UNIVERSITY PRESS 
 
 APR 20 1917 
 
 ©3I.A4G2115 
 
THE CONGRESS OF VIENNA 
 
PREFACE 
 
 THE essays included in this volume were 
 written at the request of the programme 
 committee of the American Historical Association. 
 They were presented at the annual meeting held 
 in Cincinnati during the closing days of 1916. 
 One session was devoted to the " Great Peace 
 Congresses of the Nineteenth Century " — Vienna, 
 Paris, and Berlin — and with these three of the 
 essays deal. Another session was given to the 
 history of " Mediaeval and Modern Constanti- 
 nople," and the fourth essay discusses the subject 
 from the point of view of the geographical position 
 of the city and the historic claims which successive 
 national states have made upon it. 
 
 The fall of 1916 may one day be chiefly remem- 
 bered as the time when rumors of a coming peace 
 first became something more than disguised expres- 
 sions of the desire for the end of a terrible tragedy. 
 Any attempt to forecast the terms still seemed 
 futile, because it was certain that these would be 
 defined by the sword or by the last fifty million 
 pounds sterling. There were subjects, however, 
 connected with the peace which the historian 
 
iv PREFACE 
 
 might consider with advantage. It was probable 
 that when peace should come, whether within a 
 few weeks or after many months of waiting, the 
 details of the settlement would have to be worked 
 out in a conference or congress. Quite naturally 
 students of history turned to the records of the 
 Congress of Vienna, the Congress of Paris, and the 
 Congress of Berlin, with questions like these: 
 How have such peace congresses been organized ? 
 Who were the outstanding personalities ? Were 
 the conclusions the result of real conferences or of 
 secret understandings, or, again, of the skilful 
 manoeuvres of master diplomats ? 
 
 The aim of the session was not to discuss specific 
 decisions of any one of the three congresses, 
 although the settlements effected by the Congress 
 of Paris, and yet more those made by the Congress 
 of Berlin, are closely related to the events that led 
 to the present war, and although some of the ques- 
 tions raised on these occasions must be answered 
 afresh in the next peace congress. In examining 
 the mode of action of such congresses, the study of 
 the Congress of Vienna is quite as pertinent as the 
 study of its successors. Indeed, the difficulties 
 which confronted the negotiators at Vienna seem 
 altogether akin to those which will probably 
 trouble the new congress, unless peace should be 
 made on the basis of a clear return to the status quo 
 
PREFACE v 
 
 ante. In 1814, as now, all the great and several of 
 the minor European powers were involved, and 
 the interests of allied states were in serious conflict. 
 And yet a study of the characteristics of all three 
 congresses will give us a clearer image of the 
 physiognomy of such bodies. 
 
 It is to history also that we must turn for the 
 background of the problem of Constantinople, the 
 most important single question to which the war 
 must furnish an answer. This lends special inter- 
 est to the essay which shows the various forms 
 the answer has taken since the Middle Ages, as 
 the racial tides have ebbed and flowed and as 
 boundary lines have been drawn and obliterated. 
 The more such elements are considered the more 
 baffling the question becomes. This point receives 
 new emphasis from the fact that certain statesmen 
 are now trying to accomplish what their prede- 
 cessors moved heaven and earth to prevent. 
 
 Henry Eldridge Bourne. 
 
THE CONGRESS OF VIENNA 
 
 By CHARLES DOWNER HAZEN 
 
 T SHALL not attempt in this paper to appraise 
 ** once more the Congress of Vienna, to discuss 
 anew the merits of the questions that came before 
 it or the merits of its solutions. I shall merely 
 attempt, in accordance with the suggestion of the 
 Committee on Programme, to describe the manner 
 in which the Congress approached its problems, 
 the way in which it handled its business, its mode 
 of organization, its methods of work, the machinery 
 it employed in the discharge of its highly compli- 
 cated task, which was the liquidation of Europe 
 after a period of unexampled wars. 
 
 The Congress that met in Vienna in the fall of 
 1814 was composed of the most illustrious person- 
 ages in Europe, with one significant exception, that 
 of the Man of Elba, who was not invited or ex- 
 pected and yet whose animating personality was 
 the direct cause of this mobilization of the world's 
 celebrities. Such a personnel craved diversion, and 
 the amusements of this Congress have become 
 legendary and have been embalmed in epigram. 
 Every day had its review, its hunt, its sleighing 
 party, its dinners, its gala performances at the 
 theatres, its routs and balls and masquerades. The 
 Prince de Ligne's epigram about the Congress 
 
4 THE CONGRESS OF VIENNA 
 
 which could dance but not advance every one will 
 recall. " The emperors dance," wrote another, 
 "the kings dance, Metternich dances, Castlereagh 
 dances. Only the Prince de Talleyrand does not 
 dance," having a club foot. " He plays whist." 
 The work of the Congress was repeatedly and 
 seriously interrupted by this riot of pleasure. The 
 Prince de Ligne, dying in the midst of all this 
 revelry, was fully conscious of the social utility of 
 the demise of so distinguished a person as himself 
 and said gaily, in the authentic spirit of the Old 
 Regime: " I am preparing for the members of the 
 Congress a new amusement; the obsequies of a 
 Field Marshal, a Cavalier of the Golden Fleece." 
 Many have died that the state might live. It 
 was reserved for the Prince to find a new use for 
 adversity, a new fillip for satiety. 
 
 But what was to be the relationship of this glit- 
 tering gathering, issued as it were from the chaste 
 pages of the Almanack de Gotha, to the business 
 in hand ? That business was the distribution of the 
 spoils of victory, the rending of Napoleon's mantle, 
 his coat of many colors. The task was the redraw- 
 ing of the political map of Europe. To be able to 
 understand the mode of operations of the Congress 
 of Vienna we must keep in mind three or four facts 
 of the situation. One was the great prominence of 
 the four allies, the allies of Chaumont, who had 
 constituted the essential body of the Great Coali- 
 tion before which Napoleon had been forced to 
 strike arms. These were the Four of whom every- 
 one was to speak for many months, Russia, Prus- 
 
THE CONGRESS OF VIENNA 5 
 
 sia, Austria, and England. Was their role to be as 
 great in the diplomatic tournament of Vienna as it 
 had been on the battle fields of Europe ? 
 
 Another fact to be remembered is this, that the 
 Congress of Vienna was not a peace congress. 
 Peace had been concluded before ever that Con- 
 gress met. Peace was the work of the Treaty of 
 Paris of May 30, 1814. That treaty was, however, 
 signed, not by four Powers, but by eight. For in 
 addition to the four already mentioned the peace of 
 Paris was signed by Sweden, Spain, Portugal, and 
 France. That treaty settled some things and 
 merely outlined the settlement of others. Its thirty- 
 second article provided for a future congress to pass 
 upon the many items of unfinished business which 
 the treaty, necessarily concluded in haste, could 
 not determine. Article XXXII reads as follows: 
 "All the powers engaged on either side- in the pres- 
 ent war shall, within the space of two months, 
 send plenipotentiaries to Vienna to settle at a gen- 
 eral Congress the arrangements which are to 
 complete the provisions of the present treaty." 
 
 This was the only official call the Congress of 
 Vienna ever had. Did it mean that the future of 
 Europe was to be determined, not by the Four, 
 nor yet by the Eight who were signatories of the 
 Treaty of Paris and who were issuing the call, but 
 by collective Europe, that is by the plenipoten- 
 tiaries of all the powers engaged in the Napoleonic 
 wars, which were many more than four or eight ? 
 Was Europe to be regulated by a narrow concert, 
 or by a broader concert, or by a broader one still by 
 
6 THE CONGRESS OF VIENNA 
 
 the admission to full rights of participation of all 
 the states that had shared in the late war ? Nobody 
 knew — unless it was the Four. The matter was 
 open for conjecture. No further summons was 
 issued, no more detailed statement was ever sent 
 forth as to the composition of the Congress, as to its 
 organization, or its mode of procedure. A general 
 rendezvous had been given for two months hence 
 at Vienna. That was the sole and the highly insuffi- 
 cient preparation for this momentous meeting. 
 
 What, therefore, was not settled before the con- 
 vening of the Congress would have to be deter- 
 mined after it convened. 
 
 What happened was enlightening, if not gen- 
 erally pleasing. Although the Congress had been 
 postponed during the summer until the first of 
 October in order to enable the Tsar to visit Russia, 
 the plenipotentiaries of the four allied nations 
 arrived in Vienna toward the middle of September, 
 and from the sixteenth onward they held meetings 
 with each other. On the twenty-second they 
 decided upon the general method of procedure at 
 the Congress. A commission consisting of the 
 representatives of the Four, and of France and 
 Spain in addition, was to prepare the work on all 
 matters of general European concern; and a com- 
 mission of five leading German states, Austria, 
 Prussia, Wiirtemberg, Baden, and Hanover, and 
 excluding Saxony, was to prepare the proposed 
 federal constitution for Germany. The Four also 
 signed a protocol to the effect that they intended 
 to settle among themselves the distribution of the *> 
 
THE CONGRESS OF VIENNA 7 
 
 Polisbj Gejrmanj.jn^Jialij^teCT 
 by Napoleon and compjjsi ng t hirty-t wo mil lions 
 of people, tEemain business in fact of the Congress; 
 that only after having agreed among themselves 
 would they communicate their decisions to France 
 and Spain, and only then would they listen to any 
 suggestions or objections from those two. 
 
 It is to be noted that thus not only were two of 
 the eight signers of the Treaty of Paris, Portugal 
 and Sweden, eliminated forthwith from participa- 
 tion in the chief work of the Congress which they 
 had joined in calling, that not only were two others 
 of its signatories, France and Spain, assigned to a 
 very humble role, but that all the other powers of 
 Europe were to be entirely ignored. 
 
 Such was the beginning of the organization, such 
 the initial step in procedure of the Congress of 
 Vienna. The vast and varied diplomatic nebulae 
 that floated over the blue Danube were concen- 
 trating into four bright, particular stars, with two 
 dead, cold moons as satellites which were to be 
 allowed to receive a little reflected light in the 
 course of their gyrations. This simplified cosmog- 
 ony would at least be satisfactory to its creators. 
 Whether it would be so to all the other star dust 
 scattered through the firmament remained to be 
 seen. Doubt on this point was quite permissible. 
 
 Such was the situation, known, however, only to 
 the Four, when Talleyrand reached Vienna, on Sep- 
 tember 24. He suspected, long before he knew, 
 that the allies would seek to prevent France from 
 sitting in the meetings that were to decide the 
 
8 THE CONGRESS OF VIENNA 
 
 weighty matters of the day. But he had no notion 
 of acquiescing in any such arrangement. As he 
 himself expressed it, he was " both able and knew 
 how to sit." But how to make the lordly tetrarchy 
 admit him to the room and give him a seat was a 
 problem. His treatment of it was a masterpiece of 
 diplomatic art. 
 
 As the opening of the Congress had been publicly 
 announced for October first, it was considered 
 necessary to convoke the signers of the Treaty of 
 Paris, who had said in that treaty that there would 
 be a Congress. Metternich accordingly invited 
 them to meet at his house on September 30. But 
 he invited, not the Eight who had signed the 
 Treaty, but only six of them, leaving out Portugal 
 and Sweden. This preparatory meeting was quite 
 sensational and had its influence upon the course of 
 the Congress. Talleyrand needed all his aplomb 
 (and he had it all) . No sooner was he seated — 
 and he took particular pains to take a good seat 
 near the head of the table — than he supported a 
 protest which Portugal had just sent in against the 
 failure to ask her to the conference, she being one 
 of the signers of the Treaty of Paris. The Swedish 
 plenipotentiary had not yet arrived in Vienna and 
 was therefore not in a position to protest. 
 
 After giving this slight scratch, Talleyrand 
 rested. ' The object of today's conference," said 
 Lord Castlereagh, addressing Talleyrand, "is to 
 make you acquainted with what the four Courts 
 have done since we have been here." Then, ad- 
 dressing Metternich, Castlereagh said: " You have 
 
THE CONGRESS OF VIENNA 9 
 
 the protocol." " M. de Metternich then handed 
 me a paper," writes Talleyrand to Louis XVIII, 
 " signed by him, Count Nesselrode, Lord Castle- 
 reagh, and Prince Hardenberg." In this protocol 
 the word 'allies' occurred in every paragraph. 
 " I pointed out the word, and said that the use of 
 it placed me under the necessity of asking where 
 we were, whether we were still at Chaumont or at 
 Laon, whether peace had not been made, whether 
 there was any quarrel, and with whom." * "Allies," 
 continued Talleyrand, "allies against whom? Not 
 against Napoleon ? He is on the island of Elba. 
 Surely not against the king of France? He is a 
 guarantor of the duration of the peace. Gentlemen, 
 let us speak frankly. If there are still Allied Powers 
 then I am an intruder here." 2 
 
 They answered that they did not insist upon the 
 word, that they had only employed it for brevity's 
 sake. On which Talleyrand impressed upon them 
 that, however valuable brevity might be, it ought 
 not to be purchased at the expense of accuracy. 
 He added that anything that had been done be- 
 tween May 30, when by the Treaty of Paris the 
 Congress had been announced, and October first, 
 when it ought to meet, was foreign to him and did 
 not exist for him. 
 
 The blighting breath of this caustic criticism 
 withered the flowering protocol and any other 
 
 1 Pallain, The Correspondence of Talleyrand and Louis XV III 
 (authorized American ed., 1881), Letter of October 4, 1814. 
 
 2 Sorel, L'Europe et la Revolution Franqaise, pt. viii (5th ed., 1904), 
 p. 385. 
 
10 THE CONGRESS OF VIENNA 
 
 arrangements that the Four might have concluded 
 between the two terminal dates. The answer of 
 the plenipotentiaries was, says Talleyrand, " that 
 they cared so little for the paper in question, that 
 they asked nothing better than to withdraw it . . . 
 M. de Metternich laid it aside, and there was no 
 more about it." 
 
 After having abandoned this document, the Four 
 produced another, providing that, if France and 
 Spain should agree with them, then two committees 
 should be appointed to consider and determine 
 the subjects before the Congress, and that after 
 the committees had completed their tasks the 
 Congress should then be assembled for the first 
 time and the whole submitted to its sanction. 
 
 The purpose and obvious effect of this plan was 
 to render the Four masters of the Congress. France 
 and Spain would never be more than two to four, 
 even if they were agreed on everything. Talley- 
 rand immediately expressed his opinion, to the 
 effect that the idea of arranging everything before 
 convening the Congress was a novel one to him, 
 that they proposed to finish where he had thought 
 it necessary to begin, that probably the power 
 which it was proposed to confer upon the Six could 
 not be given to them except by the Congress as a 
 whole ; and he asked why the Congress could not 
 be assembled at once, what were the difficulties in 
 the way, a question that led to a general and some- 
 what testy conversation. Talleyrand was sup- 
 ported throughout by Labrador, the representative 
 of Spain. 
 
THE CONGRESS OF VIENNA 11 
 
 After this conversation a two days' adjournment 
 was taken. ' The intervention of Talleyrand and 
 of Labrador," wrote Friedrich Gentz in his diary, 
 " has frightfully deranged our plans. They have 
 protested against the form we have adopted. They 
 lectured us well for two hours. It was a scene that 
 I shall never forget." * 
 
 Having annoyed his fellow diplomatists suffi- 
 ciently in the famous conference, Talleyrand pro- 
 ceeded to annoy them still more by sending to each 
 of the five on the following day a formal note to the 
 effect that in his opinion the eight powers which 
 had signed the Treaty of Paris were competent to 
 prepare the preliminary programme of the Congress 
 and to suggest to it the committees that it would 
 be desirable to have, but that their competence did 
 not extend any further; "that not being the Con- 
 gress, but only a portion of the Congress, to attri- 
 bute to themselves a power which could only 
 belong to the entire Congress would be a usurpa- 
 tion; . . . that the difficulty which attended the 
 meeting of the Congress was not of a nature to 
 diminish with time;" that, in short, "the Eight 
 Powers should address themselves without delay 
 to the preliminary questions to be decided by the 
 Congress, so that it might be promptly called 
 together, and those questions submitted to it." 2 
 
 The plenipotentiaries of the Four at once fell 
 upon Talleyrand with reproaches for having sent 
 the note to them. They would have preferred 
 
 1 Gentz, Tagebiicher, i, p. 312. 
 
 2 Pallain, Letter of October 4, 1814. 
 
12 THE CONGRESS OF VIENNA 
 
 that the conference should be one of conversations 
 merely, of which no trace would remain. They 
 criticized especially his giving a formal and official 
 character to the proceedings of the session by 
 signing the note. Moreover, a note requires an 
 answer. 
 
 To these criticisms " I replied," says the bland 
 ex-bishop, " that, as they wrote and signed 
 amongst themselves, I thought that I too must 
 write and sign. I concluded from this that my 
 note had embarrassed them not a little." 
 
 His conclusion was correct. 
 
 On October ^; there was another conference with 
 Metternich, at which Metternich asked Talleyrand 
 to withdraw his note, and insinuated once more 
 that everything ought to be regulated by the Four. 
 " I replied that I could not. ' Then we must 
 answer you,' said M. de Metternich to me. ' If 
 you will kindly do so,' I replied. 'I should,' he 
 resumed, 'be of opinion that we ought to settle 
 our affairs by ourselves, meaning by us the Four 
 Courts.' I answered unhesitatingly, 'If you take 
 the question that way, I am altogether your man; 
 I am quite ready, and ask nothing better.' 'What 
 do you mean?' said he. 'This; it is very simple,' 
 I replied : ' I shall take no more part in your con- 
 ferences ; I shall be nothing here but a member of 
 the Congress, and I shall wait until it is opened.' 
 . . . 'How can the Congress be assembled,' said M. 
 de Metternich, 'when nothing is ready to lay before 
 it?' 'Well, then,' I replied, to show that I did not 
 wish to make difficulties, and was prepared to agree 
 
THE CONGRESS OF VIENNA 13 
 
 to anything that did not clash with the principles 
 from which I could not depart, 'since nothing is 
 ready as yet for the opening of the Congress . . . 
 let it be put off for a fortnight or three weeks. I 
 consent to that, but on two conditions : one is that 
 you summon it for a fixed day; the other is that 
 in the note of convocation you lay down the rule 
 for admission to it." x 
 
 A few days later Gentz, Metternich's right-hand 
 man, succeeded in composing a draft convoking 
 the Congress for November 1. This draft was in 
 most respects similar to that which Talleyrand 
 had suggested. The representatives of the Six 
 Powers met on October 8, at Metternich's house, 
 to consider it. Talleyrand accepted Gentz's plan 
 for the opening of the Congress, and also the idea 
 of preparatory conferences to be held before the 
 opening — since he was now sure of admission him- 
 self and since now the Four renounced the right to 
 settle everything among themselves alone. But 
 he demanded that at the point where it was 
 stated that the opening of the Congress should 
 occur November 1, the following words should be 
 added: "and shall then be conducted in conform- 
 ity with the principles of public law." This pro- 
 position aroused a tempest which shows us the 
 spirit in which these men of the Congress ap- 
 proached their work. " At these words," wrote 
 Talleyrand, " a tumult of which it is difficult to 
 form an idea arose. Prince Hardenberg, standing 
 up, with his clenched hands on the table in an 
 
 1 Pallain, Letter of October 9, 1814. 
 
14 THE CONGRESS OF VIENNA 
 
 almost threatening attitude, and shouting, as those 
 who are afflicted with deafness so often do, said, in 
 stuttering agitation, ' No, sir, public law is a use- 
 less phrase. Why say that we shall act according 
 to public law ? That goes without saying.' I 
 replied: ' If it goes without saying, it will go even 
 better, if said.' M. Humboldt exclaimed: ' What 
 has public law to do here?' 'This,' I answered: 
 ' that it sends you here,' " by which Talleyrand 
 delicately referred to the fact that if it had not 
 been for what remained of respect for public law 
 Prussia would have been completely effaced from 
 the map of Europe at Tilsit. 1 
 
 After this conference neither the Six nor the 
 Eight met for some time. The Four were trying, 
 not in formal meetings, but by negotiation with 
 each other, to arrange the division of Poland and 
 Saxony, the thorniest crux of all the affairs that 
 would have to be settled. But instead of attaining 
 a solution, they only found their relations becoming 
 more and more suspicious and strained. Even the 
 sole committee which had thus far been instituted, 
 that for preparing a constitution for Germany, a 
 committee, as we have seen, appointed by the Four, 
 broke up after a few sessions because of a split 
 among its members over this all-determining ques- 
 tion. The representatives of Bavaria and Wlir- 
 temberg declined to have anything to do with the 
 committee until the preservation of Saxony was 
 assured. As a result no more sessions of the Ger- 
 
 1 Pallain, Letter of October 9, 1814; Broglie, MSmoires du Prince 
 de Talleyrand, ii, pp. 341-347. 
 
THE CONGRESS OF VIENNA 15 
 
 man Committee were held for five months, and 
 when they were finally resumed it was under very 
 changed conditions. 
 
 The Congress was having notable difficulty in 
 getting under way. It was drifting and drifting 
 toward rocks. Everyone was apprehensive. Was 
 Europe about to be duped once more ? To reas- 
 sure her it was necessary, whether they wished it 
 or not, for the Powers to adopt some definite mode 
 of procedure for the Congress. All that had been 
 done thus far had been to extract from the Six a 
 manifesto convoking it and a promise that, when 
 convened, it should act in accordance with public 
 law. Meanwhile November was steadily approach- 
 ing, when, according to announcement, the Con- 
 gress was to be opened. On October 30, the 
 representatives of the Eight met at Metternich's 
 house. They elected Metternich president and 
 Gentz secretary, and they chose by lot a committee 
 on credentials, consisting of the representatives of 
 England, Russia, and Prussia. On November 1, 
 a public declaration was made that the Committee 
 on Credentials would meet on November 3, and 
 that after the completion of its work the Commit- 
 tee of the Eight would formulate proposals for the 
 further progress of the Congress. 
 
 But November came and went, as did six other 
 successive months, and the Congress was not 
 opened. In fact it was never opened. In fact 
 there was no Congress — there was simply a col- 
 lection of negotiators of every grade, resident for 
 the time being in the city of Vienna. There was 
 
16 THE CONGRESS OF VIENNA 
 
 never any verification of credentials, never any 
 official and authoritative list of members. The 
 members of this imaginary Congress never met 
 together in the same room. When historians speak 
 of Metternich as president of the Congress of 
 Vienna and Gentz as its secretary, they use lan- 
 guage inaccurately. They were president and 
 secretary of the Committee of the Eight Powers 
 which had signed the Treaty of Paris, nothing 
 more. No plenary session was ever held. 
 
 Yet the work for which these men had come 
 together was gradually accomplished. They did 
 not assemble day after day and deliberate upon 
 the many problems pressing for solution. Indeed, 
 as has been said, they never once assembled. But 
 during these months from September to June a 
 very large number of treaties were made between 
 the various states, and these were brought together 
 in their essential features.in the Final Act of June 9, 
 which was hurriedly patched together a few days 
 before the battle of Waterloo. Everything was 
 arranged outside, in the intimate interviews of 
 sovereigns and diplomats, and in the special com- 
 mittees that were in one way and another gradually 
 appointed. 
 
 Of organization, then, according to the modern 
 idea of an international assembly, there was, in the 
 case of the Congress of Vienna, strictly speaking, 
 no trace. There was nothing in its method of dis- 
 cussing and settling questions that differentiated 
 its procedure from ordinary diplomatic negotia- 
 tions between nations, except the proximity of the 
 
THE CONGRESS OF VIENNA 17 
 
 negotiators. At one of the sessions of the Eight 
 Powers, Metternich declared that the Congress 
 "was not a congress; that its opening was not, 
 properly speaking, an opening at all; that the 
 commissions were not commissions; that in the 
 assembly of the powers at Vienna the only advan- 
 tage they had to note was that of a Europe with- 
 out distances." 1 
 
 The negotiations carried on at Vienna by this 
 Europe from which distance had been eliminated 
 were long and exceedingly complicated. In the 
 course of them we encounter meetings of the Four, 
 of the Six, of the Eight. But the really dominating 
 group was neither of these but was the Committee 
 of the Five. In other words, the Four who had 
 wished and intended to do everything without 
 France found that they were unable to do anything 
 without her. They were obliged in the end, al- 
 though most reluctantly, to admit her formally 
 even to their sessions on the Saxon-Polish ques- 
 tions. Even after these were settled the Committee 
 of the Five absorbed all important matters, and 
 was, in the words of Friedrich Gentz, till the last 
 moment " the real and only Congress." And the 
 reason was that there were five Great Powers 
 in Europe and no more. The map of Europe was 
 redrawn by them because they had the men and 
 the resources, in other words, force. As for the 
 rest, the minor and secondary powers, they were 
 nowhere, they flitted ineffectually in the dismal, 
 dreary, outer limbo of the neglected. 
 
 1 Memoirs of Talleyrand (English translation, 1891-92), ii, p. 295. 
 
18 THE CONGRESS OF VIENNA 
 
 When on June 9, 1815, the plenipotentiaries of 
 the Eight Powers, signatories of the Treaty of 
 Paris, were convened for the purpose of formally 
 approving the Final Act of the Congress, Labrador, 
 the Spanish representative, refused to sign, giving 
 as his reasons that only a small proportion of the 
 subjects dealt with in the Final Act had ever been 
 reported in the sittings of the Committee of the 
 Eight, and that a fraction of these Powers ought 
 not to be permitted to settle the affairs of all 
 Europe, merely summoning the rest to accord or 
 refuse their signatures. This was practically the 
 same idea as that of Hans von Gagern, represent- 
 ing the Netherlands, who, expressing his dissatis- 
 faction with the decision concerning that country, 
 and being informed by Wellington that it had been 
 made by 'the Great Powers,' retorted that "of 
 this newly invented term, 'the Great Powers,' he 
 knew neither the precise import nor the intention." 
 If this was Gagern's condition, it behooved him, as 
 a practical diplomat, involved in the high intrigu- 
 ing of the European stage, speedily to learn the 
 new terminology. For the Congress of Vienna, by 
 its conduct and procedure, proved, beyond the 
 possibility of doubt or cavil, that the settlement of 
 the affairs of Europe belonged to the Great Powers, 
 and that the other states had only to decide 
 whether they would accept such settlement or not. 
 And if they would not, what of it ? was manifestly 
 the thought in the mind of the predominating 
 pentarchy. 
 
THE CONGRESS OF VIENNA 19 
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 
 Kluber, J. L., ed. Aden des Wiener Congresses. 2d ed. 
 
 Erlangen, 1817-35. 8 vols, and supplement. 
 British and Foreign State Papers. 
 Angeberg, Comte d' [pseud, for L. Chodzko]. Le 
 
 Congres de Vienne. Paris, 1864. 2 vols. 
 Castlereagh, R. Stewart, Lord. Memoirs and Corre- 
 spondence. London, 1848-53. 12 vols. 
 Gentz, F. von. Tagebucher. Leipzig, 1873-74. 4 vols. 
 La Garde-Chambonas, Comte A. de. Souvenirs du 
 
 Congres de Vienne. Paris, 1901. Also in English 
 
 translation. 
 Metternich-Winneburg, C. W. N. L., Prince. Me- 
 
 moires. Paris, 1880-84. 8 vols. Also in English 
 
 translation. 
 Miinster, G. H., Count. Politische Skizzen uber die 
 
 Lage Europas 1814-67. Leipzig, 1867. Also in 
 
 English translation. 
 Pallain, G. Correspondance inedite de Talleyrand et du 
 
 roi Louis XVIII. Paris, 1881. Also in English trans- 
 lation. 
 Talleyrand-Perigord, C. M. de, Prince de Benevent. 
 
 Memoires. Paris, 1891-92. 5 vols. Also in English 
 
 translation. 
 Wellington, Field Marshal the Duke of. Dispatches. 
 
 London, 1837-39. 12 vols. 
 See also the accounts in Thiers, Sorel, Hausser {Deutsche 
 
 Geschichte), and Bernhardi (Geschichte Russlands). 
 
THE CONGRESS OF PARIS 
 
THE CONGRESS OF PARIS 
 
 By WILLIAM ROSCOE THAYER 
 
 THE watchword of the Congress of Vienna was 
 ' legitimacy.' The envoys of the Powers 
 labored first to punish France, whom they regarded 
 as the hotbed of revolution, the enemy of mankind 
 and the cause of the wars which had devastated 
 Europe for over twenty years. They deprived her 
 of her territorial conquests, put a ban on the Bona- 
 partes, recalled the Bourbon king, Louis XVIII, 
 and trusted to the natural numbing quality of re- 
 action to enervate, and so to undo, the spirit of 
 liberty which caused the Revolution. The spirit 
 with which they intended to replace it, not only 
 in France but throughout the world, was that of 
 legitimacy — a mouth-filling word whose meaning 
 varied according to the greed of those who used it. 
 In theory, it required that governments and dy- 
 nasties should be restored to their condition before 
 the Revolution. In practice, however, the large 
 Powers helped themselves to such parts of the 
 small states as they coveted: thus, Prussia got 
 half of Saxony, Austria took northern Italy and 
 Illyria; Russia annexed the grand duchy of War- 
 saw. But when once the spoils had been assigned 
 and assimilated, the spirit of legitimacy, like a 
 fixative spray, held together the members of the 
 revived old regime. 
 
24 THE CONGRESS OF PARIS 
 
 Restoration, they called this process, and many 
 of the monarchs and their ministers, and the privi- 
 leged classes with whose interests their own were 
 interlocked, sincerely believed that the old could 
 be restored, and that, with vigilance, it could be 
 protected indefinitely against change, especially 
 against any maniacal outburst such as had fol- 
 lowed the French groping towards liberty and 
 social justice in 1789. This creed the diplomats 
 at Vienna wrote for exhausted Europe; and they 
 added postscripts to it in the second Treaty of Paris 
 and in the mystical pact of the Holy Alliance. 
 
 Forty years passed, before the masters of Europe 
 assembled in another congress to frame another 
 international agreement: for in spite of the prin- 
 ciple of legitimacy, in spite also of reaction 
 carried to almost incredible excesses, change had 
 crept in and undermined the European system 
 which Metternich constructed at Vienna. The 
 revolutions of 1848 exploded — one might sup- 
 pose forever — the delusion that any human com- 
 pact or institution can escape the action of change, 
 that is, of evolution. 
 
 The immediate origin of the Congress of 1856 
 was the Crimean War — a venture entered upon 
 by France and England to protect Turkey from 
 the encroachments of Russia. To keep Russia out 
 of the Mediterranean had been for a long time the 
 pet monomania of English statesmen, and they 
 were glad enough to find in the French emperor, 
 Napoleon III, an ally who would fight their battles 
 with them. The direct interests of France did not 
 
THE CONGRESS OF PARIS 25 
 
 call her to make war in behalf of the Sultan and of 
 England, but the purposes of Napoleon 111 did. 
 He — the product of revolution, the embodied 
 denial of legitimacy — could have no better 
 sponsor among the legitimate governments of 
 Europe than the British government and Queen 
 Victoria. Her personal character was so highly 
 respected, that approval by her would have sufficed 
 to disinfect, and to restore to decent society, even 
 so great a rascal as Victor Hugo and King lake 
 regarded Louis Napoleon. Besides the very evi- 
 dent desirability of appearing as the accepted ally 
 of England as a means of personal rehabilitation, 
 the French emperor had other reasons for embark- 
 ing on the Crimean War. A Napoleon must main- 
 tain the military prestige of the Great Napoleon. 
 The uncle had failed to defeat Russia; the putative 
 nephew would therefore win all the greater 
 renown if he succeeded where his uncle failed. 
 England had sworn eternal hostility to the Great 
 Napoleon, and through her invincible tenacity, 
 having supported coalition after coalition against 
 him for twenty years, she had crushed him at 
 Waterloo. For Napoleon HI to use England as a 
 tool for humbling Russia, would be in a sense to 
 overcome England. 
 
 The Anglo-French allies invaded the Crimea in 
 September, 1854, they fought the battles of the 
 Alma, Balaklava, and Inkerman that autumn, and 
 invested Sebastopol. During the winter they died 
 like flies of disease, and they succeeded in taking 
 Sebastopol only on September 8, 1855. Then 
 
26 THE CONGRESS OF PARIS 
 
 Napoleon was ready to stop. The adventure had 
 cost far more than he expected, his people were 
 murmuring, and he knew that further prestige must 
 be bought at higher rates. England — or, at least, 
 Queen Victoria and the Court — on the other 
 hand, desired to go on. The campaign had brought 
 Britain so little glory that they wished for an 
 opportunity to redeem British reputation. 
 
 France, however, and some of the neutral powers 
 were determined on peace. Austria, who had 
 refused to join the allies in their offensive war, 
 nevertheless had favored them rather than Russia, 
 and she drew up — with France's connivance — 
 an ultimatum proposing to Russia that a peace 
 congress should be held. The 'Four Points' of 
 the ultimatum referred (1) to the Danubian prin- 
 cipalities and Russian protectorate. (2) To the 
 freedom of the Danube. (3) To the neutralization 
 of the Black Sea. (4) To the rights and protection 
 of the Christian subjects of the Porte. 1 Russia 
 consented — reluctantly; England agreed — still 
 more reluctantly. 
 
 The parties to the Congress fixed on Paris for 
 its place and February 25, 1856, for its opening. 
 A strong pro-Russian sentiment prevailed there, 
 even among high French officials, but as Lord 
 Clarendon, the British foreign secretary, wrote 
 the queen, it would greatly aid them to have Lord 
 Cowley, the British ambassador to France, on the 
 spot, and the French emperor, on whom the Eng- 
 lish must rely, within easy reach. Clarendon 
 
 1 Text in Gourdon, Congres de Paris, pp. 344-346. 
 
THE CONGRESS OF PARIS 27 
 
 rightly foresaw that the emperor would exert a 
 controlling influence over the proceedings. 
 
 To be on the ground early, Clarendon arrived in 
 Paris on February 17 — but the Russians had pre- 
 ceded him — and that evening he dined at the 
 Tuileries. He made it his business to control the 
 controller of the Congress. The emperor listened 
 sympathetically, professed the utmost concern and 
 desire that the Anglo-French alliance should not 
 be broken, and spoke with true French gallantry 
 of the charming letter the queen had sent him. A 
 few days' orientation, however, convinced Claren- 
 don that the emperor stood almost alone, the mass 
 of opinion among French politicians and publicists, 
 of the Bourse and of the Court, being rather in 
 favor of treating the Russians gently. 
 
 On the appointed day the members of the Con- 
 gress met at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. They 
 came in their street clothes; Cavour and Villa- 
 marina were first — punctual to the minute. The 
 others soon followed and assembled in the Hall of 
 the Ambassadors, where full length portraits of 
 Napoleon III and Empress Eugenie looked down 
 on them from the walls, and a bust of Napoleon I, 
 as of the genius of the place, seemed to preside from 
 one of the mantelpieces. At the great round table, 
 covered with green velvet, were placed twelve arm- 
 chairs, and nearby stood an oblong table for the 
 secretary. In adjoining rooms, the envoys could 
 take coffee or tea, or could walk about and smoke, 
 or otherwise enjoy a respite from the strain of 
 business. 
 
28 THE CONGRESS OF PARIS 
 
 On motion of Count Buol, Count Walewski, the 
 French foreign minister, was unanimously chosen 
 president of the Congress — an obviously proper 
 choice, since the Congress was to sit in the French 
 capital. On Walewski's suggestion, Count Bene- 
 detti served as general secretary and protocolist. 
 Having pledged themselves to absolute secrecy, 
 the envoys arranged to meet every other day, 
 usually in the afternoon, 1 and they accepted the 
 protocol of the 'Four Points,' signed at Vienna on 
 February 1, as the basis of their discussion. Their 
 first important act was to conclude an armistice, 
 to last until March 31, or during the sitting of the 
 Congress. 
 
 To obviate sensitiveness over precedence, the 
 envoys sat round the green table in the alphabetical 
 order in French 2 of the countries they represented. 
 In 1856, they were a distinguished group of men, al- 
 though few of them are now remembered, and only 
 one ranks among the world's master statesmen. 
 
 The president, Count Alexander Colonna Walew- 
 ski, was the illegitimate son of Napoleon I and of 
 the Polish Countess Walewska. Like other Napo- 
 leonids, he emerged from obscurity when Louis 
 Napoleon became president, and rose by rapid 
 promotion from small diplomatic posts to be 
 ambassador at London. Having negotiated the 
 alliance between England and France, he returned 
 
 1 This schedule was not carried out. Sometimes, the meetings 
 came every day; sometimes, two or three days intervened. 
 
 2 Autriche, France, Grande Bretagne, Russie, Sardaigne (Pied- 
 mont), Turquie. 
 
THE CONGRESS OF PARIS 29 
 
 to Paris to be minister of foreign affairs. He 
 carried on an underhand policy, conflicting with 
 that of the emperor; but when brought to book, 
 he did the emperor's bidding. At the Congress, 
 he posed as the arbiter of the French decision, but 
 he fooled nobody. A mediocre man, like most of 
 the accomplices of the coup d'etat, he had the art 
 of getting on, and like them he was popularly 
 believed to use his official knowledge in speculating 
 on the stock market — a suspicion which the 
 historian will find it as easy to believe as it is hard 
 to verify. 
 
 Baron Bourqueney, Walewski's colleague, had 
 been ambassador at Vienna since 1853. As he be- 
 longed to the old nobility, the upstart Emperor 
 repaid his loyalty by pushing him to the front. So 
 far as appears, however, he possessed only mediocre 
 talents as a diplomat; and his infatuation for 
 Hapsburg policies and for Viennese society caused 
 him to be called 'more Austrian than the Aus- 
 trians.' 
 
 England, on the other hand, sent two really 
 strong representatives. First, George William 
 Villiers, the fourth Earl of Clarendon, foreign 
 secretary, experienced in diplomacy, on most 
 occasions clear-headed and far-seeing, lacking only 
 the gift of party command in order to reach the 
 premiership, but fully equal, as it seems to me, to 
 Palmerston and Lord John Russell in his mastery 
 of international relations. The grand manner, 
 which he came by naturally, added impressiveness 
 to his personal intercourse. He was easily the fore- 
 
30 THE CONGRESS OF PARIS 
 
 most envoy at the Congress, which he attended 
 unwillingly, as he believed that the terms to be won 
 could not possibly satisfy the English. " The nego- 
 tiations," he wrote Henry Reeve, " must be the 
 grave of the negotiators' reputation." 
 
 His second, Lord Cowley, was also a British 
 thoroughbred, the nephew of the Duke of Welling- 
 ton. Having begun his diplomatic career at the 
 age of twenty, he had reached the crowning posi- 
 tion — the Paris embassy — in 1852, and had won 
 the emperor's esteem, if not his confidence: for 
 nobody dares say in whom Napoleon III really 
 confided. 
 
 Of the Austrians, Count Buol-Schauenstein, 
 premier and minister of foreign affairs, was a typ- 
 ical Teuton, arrogant, mannerless, and haughty, 
 who knew so little of human nature that he sup- 
 posed that other men are conciliated by cuffs and 
 condescension. Bismarck, who knew him, summed 
 him up in a sentence: " If I could be as great for a 
 single hour as Buol thinks he is all the time, I 
 should establish my glory forever before God and 
 man." Although Austria had played an inglorious, 
 if not discreditable, part during the Crimean War, 
 satisfying neither Russia nor the allies, Buol acted 
 as if the Congress existed simply to advance Aus- 
 trian interests. " To listen to Buol," Orloff 
 remarked to Cavour, " you would suppose that 
 the Austrians had taken Sebastopol." In addition 
 to his offensive haughtiness, his reputation for 
 slyness and insincerity made him the least popular 
 of the members of the Congress. 
 
THE CONGRESS OF PARIS 31 
 
 His companion, Count Alexander Hiibner, Aus- 
 tria's ambassador at Paris, was more than a 
 routine diplomat, but in no sense a great person- 
 age. He was careful, tenacious, correct, and very 
 official, and although he did not lose his temper — 
 as Buol sometimes did — he took little pains to 
 disguise the fact that he represented 'the highest 
 Court in the world.' 
 
 The Russian chief was Count Orloff, the oldest 
 of all the plenipotentiaries, a soldier who had 
 served in the Napoleonic wars. The jovial mem- 
 ber of the Congress, he professed to know nothing 
 about diplomacy, but only what Russia wanted, 
 and he indulged constantly in pleasantries. He 
 played to perfection the role of old soldier as it 
 was then conceived, being bluff, hearty, naif, 
 but possibly his openness and his outspokenness 
 served as a blind to a nature much more subtle 
 than some of his colleagues divined. Baron 
 Brunnow, his second, had been trained in the 
 Russian bureaucracy. He provided the prece- 
 dents and statistics to support the mighty Orloff's 
 decisions. 
 
 The Piedmontese envoys kept themselves in the 
 background. Cavour, the Piedmontese prime 
 minister, watched every move, in the hope that it 
 might lead to some benefit for oppressed Italy. He 
 spoke little at the sittings; but he worked inces- 
 santly out of the Congress to win over to Italy the 
 sympathy of the great world, political, diplomatic 
 and social. His associate, Count Villamarina, 
 proved himself a wide-awake assistant. 
 
32 THE CONGRESS OF PARIS 
 
 Of the Turkish envoys, Aali Pasha, the grand 
 vizier, was a man of thorough Occidental training, 
 while Mehemed Djemil Bey, the Turkish ambas- 
 sador at Paris, knew from experience the ways of 
 the Western Powers. Both were competent prac- 
 titioners of that Oriental brand of statecraft, in 
 which their Christian competitors had long be- 
 lieved, whether justly or not, the craft predom- 
 inated. It is interesting to note that in the 
 concourse of great aristocrats the Turkish grand 
 vizier was the only self-made man. He was born a 
 poor plebeian. 
 
 Such was the group of cabinet Jupiters who faced 
 each other during nearly seven weeks around Wa- 
 lewski's green table and decided the fate of Europe. 
 We may sum up their cross-purposes briefly thus. 
 England and Austria strove to cage Russia, in order 
 to keep her from controlling the Black Sea, or 
 encroaching on Turkey, or imperilling Constanti- 
 nople. France, having emerged from the cage in 
 which the Congress of Vienna locked her, nominally 
 sided with England, but Walewski and most of the 
 French court wished to let Russia off easy. Austria 
 coveted territory on the Lower Danube and desired 
 conditions which would spread her influence in the 
 Balkans. Piedmont would have liked to see the 
 Danubian principalities, Wallachia and Moldavia, 
 united, and given to the Duke of Modena, thereby 
 securing the annexation of Modena to Piedmont: 
 but Cavour wisely refrained from pushing any such 
 claim, lest it might justify the suspicion that Pied- 
 mont had entered the Crimean War in order to 
 
THE CONGRESS OF PARIS 33 
 
 aggrandize herself. Turkey needed only to sit still, 
 while her friends worked for her: their interests 
 and hers coincided in essentials. 
 
 The protocols of the sessions are as dispassionate 
 as a laundry list. To understand the real conflict 
 between the envoys, we must turn to private 
 memoranda. Those men, who look so dignified in 
 their high collars, black stocks, and English frill of 
 side-wiskers, knew that they were fighting for the 
 future of their respective countries. They left 
 nothing undone which might help them to win. 
 Not policies merely, but the temperaments of the 
 negotiators influenced the proceedings. On one 
 occasion, when Walewski asked a question which 
 Buol did not relish the latter " grew hot all over 
 and went off like a fusee." Walewski, in truth, was 
 the surprise, not to say butt, of the Congress. After 
 he had uttered some unusually startling impro- 
 priety, if his back was turned, Benedetti, the 
 demure secretary, " raised his eyes to heaven, held 
 his head in his hands, shrugged his shoulders and 
 uttered discreet sighs." " Then," continues Hiib- 
 ner, "a smile went round the table, while our presi- 
 dent, without perceiving the ill-repressed hilarity of 
 the audience, continued to lose his way in phrases 
 empty, or compromising to the cause he was 
 pleading." 
 
 The fiercest personal clashes, however, occurred 
 when the envoys let themselves go in the meetings 
 of the small committees or in the private interviews 
 where much of the real business of the Congress 
 was settled. Intrigue, persuasion, eavesdropping, 
 
34 THE CONGRESS OF PARIS 
 
 went on at the breakfasts and dinners, at the balls, 
 plays, and receptions, in the drawing-rooms and 
 even in the boudoirs. For the female lobbyist — 
 some duchess, perhaps, or some adventuress under 
 the protection of a high personage — played a 
 recognized part in the political manoeuvres of the 
 Second Empire. The emperor himself received in 
 his cabinet a constant stream of aggrieved or sup- 
 pliant envoys, whom he treated with tact, as he 
 wished them all to convey to their governments the 
 impression of his power and his good- will. 
 
 Thus on March 22, Walewski caused the British 
 plenipotentiaries to be shown into one room, the 
 Russians into another, and the Prussians into a 
 third, while he himself passed from one to another. 
 " Clarendon and Cowley at last withdrew, pro- 
 testing that they could take no further part in such 
 a travesty." The next day Clarendon had an 
 audience with the Emperor, " who was much dis- 
 composed, and undertook to make Walewski 
 understand that he must act in concert with the 
 British plenipotentiaries. Business went on far 
 better after this." 
 
 In spite of Buol's airs, and Walewski's official 
 primacy, Clarendon seems to have been the domi- 
 nant figure in the Congress. No one consorted 
 with him more assiduously or to better pur- 
 pose than Cavour. The British grandee hardly 
 understood that while he sat stroking his chin and 
 listened to the startling suggestions of the little 
 man from Turin, he was actually being probed, and 
 at the same time inoculated with Italian ideals. 
 
THE CONGRESS OF PARIS 35 
 
 Two events diversified the routine of the Con- 
 gress. On March 16, Palm Sunday, Empress 
 Eugenie gave birth to the Prince Imperial. Two 
 days later, the Congress, with the diplomatic 
 corps and other bodies, called at the Tuileries to 
 congratulate the emperor. : ' We filed past the 
 cradle of the child, who has beautiful blue eyes," 
 writes Hiibner. ' The grand cordon of the Legion 
 of Honor was thrown over his coverlid." 
 
 That same day (March 18) the Prussian dele- 
 gates entered the Congress. They had been ex- 
 cluded at first because Prussia had remained neu- 
 tral during the Crimean War, thereby cutting 
 herself off from the right to take part in the discus- 
 sion of peace terms by the belligerents. She was 
 suspected of being more than friendly to Russia, 
 and, as the antagonist of Austria in the Germanic 
 Confederation, it was assumed that she would 
 badger her rival as much as possible. When, how- 
 ever, the Congress proceeded to revise the treaty 
 of 1841, which concerned the protection of the 
 Black Sea, Prussia, as a signatory to that treaty, 
 was invited to attend. She sent as her envoys 
 Baron Otto Manteuffel, president of the Prussian 
 ministry, a bureaucrat of the pre-Bismarckian era, 
 who had helped to strangle the efforts of the 
 Liberals in 1848. His strength lay in details of 
 administration. His colleague, Count Maximilian 
 Hatzfeldt, was another excellent representative of 
 the Prussian bureaucracy. Having served in the 
 Prussian embassy at Paris, and married a French- 
 woman, the daughter of Marshal Castellane, he 
 
36 THE CONGRESS OF PARIS 
 
 was fitted to supply Manteuffel's lack of acquaint- 
 ance with the personnel of the Parisian world and 
 with the local atmosphere. 
 
 The Prussian envoys entered the Hall of the 
 Ambassadors amid a profound silence. The Con- 
 gress had just had a sharp altercation, because 
 Walewski insisted that they should be counted as 
 being present from the opening. Walewski's pur- 
 pose is not quite clear, unless his motive was by 
 this cheap and sly method to please Prussia. 
 Clarendon, however, uttered an irrevocable No; 
 Cowley backed him up; the other members ac- 
 quiesced; and 'those gentlemen' were admitted 
 on the understanding that they should express no 
 opinion on the questions decided or to be decided. 1 
 The coming of the Prussians rather increased the 
 irritation which a month of discussion had pro- 
 duced. " Everybody is on edge," Hiibner records 
 on March 20. " It is time to sign." 
 
 Berlin has never been a school for manners. A 
 barbarian survival in the Prussian strain renders 
 that people not only backward in urbanity them- 
 selves, but also blind to its usefulness in others. 
 They take it to be a sign of weakness. Their ideal 
 Prussian negotiator was Brennus, who cut discus- 
 sion short by throwing his sword into the scales. 
 Manteuffel and Hatzfeldt, true to their stock, tried 
 to bully their way through the Congress; but being 
 met by men whom they could not browbeat, they 
 threatened to quit and go home. Thereupon 
 Cowley, on behalf of the English, French, and 
 
 1 This accounts for the two protocols of March 18. 
 
THE CONGRESS OF PARIS 37 
 
 Austrian members, gave them their ultimatum, 
 which, says Hiibner, " they accepted with very 
 good grace." 
 
 So the last fortnight wore fretfully away. On 
 Saturday, March 29, the draft of the treaty was 
 read. The next day, Quasimodo Sunday, all the 
 plenipotentiaries, in court costume, came to the 
 Ministry of Foreign Affairs at noon. Walewski 
 was a little late, as his wife had been confined 
 during the preceding night. M. Feuillet des 
 Conches, head of the protocol office, handed each 
 chief envoy a copy of the treaty; then, while M. 
 Feuillet read, the envoys followed to see that all 
 was correct. That done, a feather, plucked from 
 a black eagle in the Jardin des Plantes, was used 
 as a quill to sign with. There being twenty-eight 
 documents, however, requiring three hundred and 
 ninety-two signatures, ordinary pens were soon 
 substituted for the eagle's quill, which was pre- 
 sented to Empress Eugenie. At half past one, the 
 treaty was signed and a messenger hurried with 
 the news to the emperor. Soon a salvo of a hun- 
 dred and one guns boomed from the Hotel des 
 Invalides. Clarendon proposed that the pleni- 
 potentiaries should pay their respects to the 
 emperor, and as the procession of court carriages 
 drove through the Rue de Rivoli to the Tuileries, 
 crowds thronged the route. "Everybody greeted 
 us with effusion," writes Hiibner, "and many 
 persons, men and women, shed tears of joy." 
 
 That afternoon Lord Clarendon wrote Queen 
 Victoria: " Your Majesty may feel satisfied with 
 
38 THE CONGRESS OF PARIS 
 
 the position now occupied by England — six weeks 
 ago it was a painful position here, everybody was 
 against us, our motives were suspected, and our 
 policy was denounced; but the universal feeling 
 now is that we are the only country able and ready, 
 and willing, if necessary, to continue the war; that 
 we might have prevented peace, but that having 
 announced our readiness to make peace on honour- 
 able terms we have honestly and unselfishly acted 
 up to our word. It is well known, too, that the 
 conditions on which peace is made would have been 
 different if England had not been firm, and every- 
 body is, of course, glad even here that peace should 
 not have brought dishonour to France." 
 
 Clarendon did not write boastfully. That the 
 negotiations turned out so well, from England's 
 point of view, was due largely to him. He told 
 Greville that " he had been able to accomplish his 
 task by being ready to incur responsibility at home, 
 and by being able to act unfettered, and taking on 
 himself to disregard any instructions or recommend- 
 ations from home that he did not approve of." 
 The queen wished to reward him by making him a 
 marquis, but he declined. His wife agreed with 
 him. " I would not change the fine historical and 
 much-loved name of Earl of Clarendon," she writes 
 in her journal, " for all the marquisates in the 
 world." 
 
 Although the treaty was signed, the Congress 
 continued to sit for a fortnight longer, in order to 
 dispose of several outstanding subjects which did 
 not properly come within the scope of the treaty. 
 
THE CONGRESS OF PARIS 39 
 
 This later business, as events proved, had much 
 significance. 
 
 On April 8 came the most spectacular session of 
 all, in which, during a discussion of the general 
 state of Europe, Clarendon attacked the out- 
 rageous Papal government, and proposed that it 
 should be secularized. " No! no! " shouted Buol 
 and Hiibner. Walewski, under instructions from 
 the emperor, attacked the monstrous regime of 
 Ferdinand II — ' Bomba ' — at Naples. Then 
 Cavour, in a speech sober in form and impassioned 
 in substance, spoke for Italy, warning the Congress 
 that there would never be real peace in Europe 
 until the wrongs of the Italians were redressed. For 
 the first time at any official gathering of European 
 statesmen, Italy as a potential nation was cham- 
 pioned. The Austrians protested: they replied 
 sarcastically to their opponents, and tried to have 
 all mention of this discussion expunged from the 
 protocol. But the other plenipotentiaries voted 
 for its inclusion. There the record stands, to mark 
 the foreshadowing of a new epoch in European 
 political combinations and a great moment in 
 Cavour's career. 
 
 Before adjourning, Walewski urged that they 
 should emulate other congresses by adopting a 
 declaration which should constitute a notable pro- 
 gress in international law. '' The Congress of 
 Westphalia," he said, " consecrated liberty of con- 
 science; the Congress of Vienna, the abolition of 
 the negro slave trade and the free navigation of 
 rivers." He suggested that they should lay down 
 
40 THE CONGRESS OF PARIS 
 
 the bases of a uniform maritime law in time of war. 
 His suggestion was followed, and resulted in the 
 Declaration of Paris, which contained four articles. 
 " 1. Privateering is and remains abolished. 2. 
 The neutral flag covers enemy goods, with the 
 exception of contraband of war. 3. Neutral goods, 
 except contraband of war, are not liable to capture 
 under an enemy flag. 4. Blockades, to be binding, 
 must be effective — that is, maintained by a force 
 really sufficient to prevent access to the enemy's 
 coast." l 
 
 On April 18 the Congress was dissolved, having 
 achieved its first purpose — peace — but only a 
 fragile peace. This Congress, like that of Vienna, 
 registered the views of the governing body in 
 Europe; that body was despotic. Austria, Russia, 
 and Turkey were absolute monarchies; so was 
 Prussia, despite its pretense of constitutionalism. 
 France was in the control of a despot who used any 
 prop at hand to keep him in an upright position. 
 England and Piedmont were liberal, but in both 
 the upper classes shaped the national destiny. The 
 time was, and is, far off when the monarchies of 
 Continental Europe should be administered for 
 and by their people. 
 
 Napoleon would have liked the Congress to 
 revoke the ban on his family; but he was shrewd 
 enough not to push the matter. The Congress sat 
 at Paris, under his auspices as host: what better 
 proof could be produced that in fact the doctrine of 
 legitimacy had lapsed, the Bonapartes were re- 
 habilitated, and France restored to her high estate ? 
 
 1 Protocol of April 16, 1856. 
 
THE CONGRESS OF PARIS 41 
 
 In this sketch I have not attempted to analyze 
 or discuss the terms fought for by the Western 
 Powers and resisted by the Russians : for my pur- 
 pose is simply to describe the personnel of the Con- 
 gress and its method of procedure, with such 
 touches interspersed as may vivify it for a reader 
 today. Even Bismarck admitted some years later 
 that Russia had been unjustly dealt with, and he 
 uttered no minatory protest when, during the 
 Franco-Prussian War, she denounced that section 
 of the Treaty which limited her naval equipment 
 in the Black Sea. 
 
 In conclusion, I borrow a final extract from 
 Hiibner's journal, to which I have often referred, 
 both on account of its intrinsic interest and be- 
 cause, so far as I am aware, it has never appeared 
 in an English translation. 
 
 " Lord Clarendon," he writes, " is the type of 
 the English diplomat of the Palmerston school. He 
 is always conscious of the power of Britain, does not 
 hesitate to call things by their proper name, and 
 flares up in earnest at any obstacle he finds in his 
 path. He has knocked poor Walewski about in 
 fine fashion. . . . 
 
 " I always like to do justice to adversaries. But 
 Cavour has displeased me. In the Congress he 
 exerted himself to appear modest. Only in the 
 sitting of April 8, when Walewski, in spite of him, 
 saw fit to throw the firebrand of Italy's affairs 
 among the plenipotentiaries, he found courage 
 — with the knowledge, if not with the approbation 
 of the emperor — to attack Austria openly, whom 
 
42 THE CONGRESS OF PARIS 
 
 he never ceased to attack secretly outside the con- 
 ferences. The fact is that the Tuileries and the 
 Palais Royal were the true theatre of his activity 
 during the continuance of the Congress. Strongly 
 upheld by Prince Napoleon [Plon-Plon], secretly 
 undermined by Walewski, he could not always be 
 satisfied with the emperor, who vacillated forever 
 between his good and evil instincts, between his 
 desire to cause himself to be accepted by the sover- 
 eigns and his fear of compromising himself with 
 the [revolutionary] sect. I am assured that he 
 made life hard for Piedmont's prime minister, and 
 that the latter quitted Paris displeased and full of 
 vexation. His person lacks distinction. One feels, 
 one sees, one recognizes in him the conspirator." 
 
 John Morley, writing fifty years later, remarked 
 that the only persons who showed far-sighted cal- 
 culation in the Crimean business were Cavour and 
 the Turk. 
 
THE CONGRESS OF PARIS 43 
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 
 Jasmund, J. von, ed. Aktenstiicke zur orientalischen 
 Frage. Berlin, 1855-59. 3 vols. 
 
 British and Foreign State Papers. 
 
 Diplomatic Study on the Crimean War. (Russian official 
 publication.) London, 1882. 2 vols. 
 
 Angeberg, Comte d' [pseud, for L. Chodzko]. Le Traite 
 de Paris du 30 mars 1856. 2 e ed. Paris, 1877. 
 
 Drouyn de Lhuys, E. " Les neutres pendant la guerre 
 d'Orient." In Seances el Travaux de VAcademie des 
 Sciences Morales et Politiques, lxxxv (1868), pp. 5-41. 
 
 Friedjung, H. Der Krimkrieg und die osterreichische 
 Politik. Stuttgart, 1907. 
 
 Geffcken, F. H. Zur Geschichte des orientalischen 
 Krieges. Berlin, 1881. 
 
 Gourdon, E. Histoire du Congres de Paris. Paris, 1857. 
 
 Greville, C. C. F. A Journal of the Reign of Queen 
 Victoria from 1852 to 1860. London, 1887. 2 vols. 
 
 Greville, H. W. Leaves from the Diary of Henry Grev- 
 ille. Second Series. London, 1884. 
 
 HiAbner, Count Joseph Alexander von. Neuf ansde souve- 
 nirs d' un Ambassadeur d' Autriche a Paris. Paris, 1904. 
 2 vols. 
 
 Martin, Sir T. Life of His Royal Highness the Prince 
 Consort. London, 1875-80. 5 vols. 
 
 Maxwell, Sir H. E. Life and Letters of George William 
 Frederick, Fourth Earl of Clarendon. London, 1913. 
 2 vols. 
 
 Thayer, W. R. Life and Times of Cavour. Boston 
 and New York, 1911. 2 vols. 
 
44 THE CONGRESS OF PARIS 
 
 Le Traite de Paris du 30 mars etudie dans ses causes et 
 
 ses effets. Paris, 1856. 
 The Letters of Queen Victoria. London, 1907. 3 vols. 
 Walpole, Sir S. The History of Twenty -Five Years, 
 
 1856-1880. London, 1904-08. 4 vols. 
 See also the accounts in Pierre de la Gorce and Emile 
 
 Ollivier. 
 
THE CONGRESS OF BERLIN 
 
THE CONGRESS OF BERLIN 
 
 By ROBERT HOWARD LORD 
 
 AMONG the great historic assemblies of its 
 kind, the Congress of Berlin had the most 
 restricted sphere of action. Unlike the Congress 
 of Vienna, it undertook no general reconstruction 
 of Europe; even more than the Congress of Paris, 
 it held itself — officially, at least — to the con- 
 sideration of one clearly defined group of questions. 
 But if the issues in 1878 were fewer, they were, per- 
 haps, more complex and difficult than on these 
 former occasions. The Congress of Berlin was 
 called to regulate the thorniest and most dangerous 
 question in the whole range of European politics — 
 the Eastern Question; and that at the end of the 
 worst cataclysm which that question had yet pro- 
 duced. Its task was the more delicate because, 
 unlike the preceding congresses, it was not con- 
 voked at the close of a general European war, 
 which left one or more of the great Powers defeated 
 and begging for peace, and the rest of them ex- 
 hausted by their exertions and therefore inclined 
 to compromise* In 1878 the only one of the great 
 Powers that nad just been at war, emerged from 
 the contest flushed with triumph; the other great 
 Powers appeared at the Congress with their 
 strength fresh and unimpaired, and several of 
 
48 THE CONGRESS OF BERLIN 
 
 them were armed and in no mood for tame sub- 
 mission. (The Congress of Berlin was called, there- 
 of ore, not so much to end one war as to avert 
 { another^ (Its office was to dictate terms to the 
 victors rather than to the vanquished. It is notable 
 as the only occasion in the nineteenth century 
 when the Concert of the Powers has been strong 
 enough to bring a victorious belligerent to the bar 
 of Europe and oblige him to submit the results of 
 his victory to the judgment and revision of a con- 
 gressX As an affirmation of the solidarity of Europe, 
 of the principle that important changes in Europe 
 are matters of European concern and not to be 
 effected without the sanction of Europe, the Con- 
 gress of Berlin is a unique and striking phenomenon. 
 (But as a demonstration that the councils of united 
 Europe are inspired with wisdom, justice, or even 
 common sense, the events of 1878 are not so grati- 
 fying. Even more than its predecessors, the 
 Congress of Berlin has left a dubious reputationj 
 On the one hand, its work has been lauded as the 
 wisest diplomatic transaction of modern times; 
 but, on the other hand, it has been said that " no 
 diplomatic performance has ever resulted in such 
 general dissatisfaction." 
 
 (As everyone knows, the meeting of the Congress 
 of Berlin was the result of the Russo-Turkish war 
 of 1877 and of the ensuing diplomatic intervention 
 of the other Powers. Russia had undertaken that 
 war in the name of justice and humanity, in the 
 spirit of a crusade. After the Bosnian revolt and 
 the massacres in Bulgaria, after the Concert of 
 
 ! 
 
THE CONGRESS OF BERLIN 49 
 
 Europe had failed pitifully in its effort to obtain 
 from the Turks, by diplomatic means, serious 
 reforms and guarantees against further outrages 
 in the future, Russia alone had had the courage 
 to draw the sword in order to end an intolerable 
 situation. Her enterprise might fairly be called 
 the most just and necessary war undertaken in 
 Europe in the nineteenth century. At the close of , 
 the struggle, while announcing that the other 
 Powers should have a voice in the final resettle- 
 ment of the Balkans, Russia felt herself entitled — 
 and, indeed, obliged — to impose a preliminary 
 treaty of peace upon her prostrate adversary. It 
 is difficult to see how she could have done other- 
 wise. For, since the main cause of the war had 
 been the persistent refusal of the Porte to defer to 
 the will of Europe, it was impossible to terminate 
 hostilities without securing binding guarantees 
 that in the impending negotiations for a final 
 settlement the will of Europe would not again be 
 thwarted by the obstinacy of the Turks. It is 
 true that some objections may be raised to the 
 precise terms of the treaty. The boundaries of the 
 new Bulgaria, while conforming in the main to the 
 best ethnographic information then available, 
 were too extensive. The treatment of Rumania 
 was somewhat ungenerous. The provisions with 
 regard to the western half of the Balkan Peninsula 
 could not have lasted long; indeed, they were not 
 intended to, but Russia was precluded from at- 
 tempting a permanent settlement in that half of 
 the peninsula by regard for the wishes of Austria. 
 
50 THE CONGRESS OF BERLIN 
 
 But, allowing for the circumstances of the moment 
 and the avowedly provisional character of the 
 instrument, one may accept without too much 
 qualification the recent dictum of an English writer 
 that " the Treaty of San Stefano was the wisest 
 measure ever prepared for the pacification of the 
 Balkan Peninsula." Had the other Powers been 
 actuated only by disinterestedness, moderation, 
 and foresight, they would then have assembled in 
 congress resolved, at the least, to confirm the 
 essential arrangements of San Stefano, to stipulate 
 analogous arrangements for the western half of the 
 peninsula, and to provide for the collective guard- 
 ianship of Europe over the organization and free 
 development of the liberated nations, j 
 
 Even before the Treaty of San Stefano — before 
 the outbreak of the war, in fact — Russia had 
 repeatedly promised that the definitive settlement 
 of all questions of general European interest arising 
 out of the war should be effected with the partici- 
 pation of all the Powers. When Austria, in Feb- 
 ruary, 1878, proposed that this participation should 
 take the form of a conference, the Tsar readily 
 assented. Soon afterwards it was agreed that in 
 order to lend greater solemnity to the proceedings, 
 the assembly should be raised to the dignity of a 
 congress; all the Powers were to be represented by 
 their leading ministers; and the place of meeting 
 was fixed at Berlin, as the seat of a government 
 assumed to be disinterested and impartial. 
 
 But it was impossible to go into the Congress 
 without a preliminary agreement among the 
 
THE CONGRESS OF BERLIN 51 
 
 Powers as to the basis and nature of the work to be 
 done there. Although the assumption has recently 
 been made in some quarters that a peace congress 
 may work effectively without any understanding in 
 advance as to the fundamental questions at issue, 
 still everyone familiar with politics knows that 
 public and formal discussions cannot be conducted 
 with any hope of a successful outcome, unless an 
 agreement on the chief questions has previously 
 been arrived at. History shows that conferences 
 and congresses have almost invariably met for the 
 purpose of registering decisions the substance of 
 which has been agreed upon beforehand. 
 
 /in 1878 the meeting of the Congress was very 
 nearly prevented by the difficulties that arose in the 
 way of such a preliminary understanding. The 
 fundamental question was whether the task of the 
 future Congress should be to confirm and complete 
 the solution of the Eastern Question outlined at 
 San Stefano, or whether it should undertake to 
 tear up that treaty and to ' annihilate the results 
 of the war.' The latter course would doubtless 
 have suited the wishes of England and Austria. 
 For, unfortunately, the British government was 
 still obsessed with the traditional chimaera of main- 
 taining the independence and integrity of Tur- 
 key, not, indeed, for love of the Turks, but because 
 the vital needs of the British empire were sup- 
 posed to require it. The court of Vienna was eager 
 to make acquisitions without having done anything 
 to deserve them, and also ambitious to substitute 
 itself for Russia as the dominant Power in the Bal- 
 
52 THE CONGRESS OF BERLIN 
 
 kans. Hence for three months the meeting of the 
 Congress was postponed, and the peace of Europe 
 seemed to tremble in the balance, while England, 
 Austria, and Russia were diplomatically fencing, 
 trying each other out to see how far each would go 
 in defence of his particular standpoint. How 
 serious the danger of war was, it is difficult to 
 estimate, for undoubtedly there was a good deal of 
 'bluffing' on all sides. At any rate, it was Russia 
 who first showed signs of weakening. Exhausted 
 by the unexpectedly arduous struggle she had just 
 undergone, ill-prepared to risk a new war in which 
 she would presumably have found England, Aus- 
 tria, Turkey, and Rumania arrayed against her, 
 disappointed, too, in the hope of receiving any 
 effective support from Germany — despite the 
 assurances of undying gratitude and unstinted 
 devotion which Bismarck and his master had so 
 often lavished upon the Tsar — Russia at length 
 turned to her principal opponent, England, with 
 the offer to sacrifice a large part of the Treaty of 
 San Stefano. The outcome of the negotiation was 
 the three secret Anglo-Russian conventions, signed 
 at London on May 30, which contained the most 
 important features of the later Treaty of Berlin. 
 It was to the credit of both sides that each had 
 made large concessions: it was not so creditable, 
 however, that they sought to keep their agree- 
 ments from the knowledge of the other cabinets 
 (save Germany). If it was essential to the success 
 of the Congress that the two states principally 
 interested should come to a working agreement in 
 
THE CONGRESS OF BERLIN 53 
 
 advance, it was at least highly desirable that the 
 discussions of the Congress should not be turned 
 into a farce, and the other Powers led into grave 
 miscalculations or suspicions, by sham debates 
 over questions already clandestinely decided/^ 
 
 But this did not exhaust the precautions of Lord 
 Beaconsfield's secret diplomacy. As a corrective 
 to the concessions just made to Russia, the London 
 cabinet pushed through the secret Convention of 
 Constantinople (June 4), which provided for a per- 
 petual Anglo-Turkish alliance for the defence of 
 the Asiatic possessions of the Porte, assigned to 
 England the island of Cyprus as an immediate 
 reward for her future services, and bound the 
 Sultan, in agreement with England, to make the 
 necessary reforms in his Asiatic provinces. 
 
 On June 6 another secret convention was con- 
 cluded between Great Britain and Austria, by 
 which the latter promised to support England at 
 the Congress in the Bulgarian question, while 
 England, in return, agreed to uphold any proposi- 
 tion Austria might make with regard to Bosnia and 
 the Herzegovina. The court of Vienna had also 
 taken its precautions in other quarters. It had 
 made sure that neither France nor Russia would 
 oppose its designs upon these two provinces; and 
 as for Bismarck, if he did not originally suggest this 
 acquisition to Austria, at least, for two years back, 
 he had never ceased to urge her to seize these 
 provinces without ceremony. 
 
 The main obstacles having been cleared away 
 by this extraordinary series of ententes and con- 
 
54 THE CONGRESS OF BERLIN 
 
 ventions, early in June Bismarck sent out to the 
 Powers who had signed the Treaty of Paris the 
 invitation to meet in congress to submit the work 
 of San Stefano to free discussion and the necessary 
 revision. Prance had already laid down the con- 
 dition, which had been accepted by the other 
 Powers, that the Congress should take up only 
 those questions which arose directly and naturally 
 out of the late war. The object of this reservation, 
 of course, was to exclude from discussion questions 
 regarding certain outlying provinces of Turkey, 
 such as Egypt, Syria, or Tunis, whose status 
 France did not desire to see altered at that time. 
 
 The Congress met at Berlin on June 13. None 
 of its predecessors, not even the Congress of 
 Vienna, had brought together a more illustrious 
 company of statesmen. Turkey, indeed, was 
 unfortunate in her spokesmen — "a Greek, a 
 renegade, and an imbecile," Bismarck rudely 
 characterized them — but it made little difference, 
 for they had been summoned to the Congress only 
 to sign away provinces. M. Waddington and 
 Count Corti, the first plenipotentiaries of France 
 and Italy respectively, earned general respect and 
 confidence by their reasonableness, tact, and a 
 perhaps undiplomatic honesty. A much more 
 important role was reserved for Count Andrassy, 
 the Austrian foreign minister: a striking figure 
 with his scarlet uniform, his sparkling black eyes, 
 hair curling about his face, upturned mustache, 
 and the general appearance of a gay hussar; but 
 also an eloquent speaker, a clever tactician, and 
 
THE CONGRESS OF BERLIN 55 
 
 a master of the more occult arts of diplomacy. The 
 leading antagonists in the impending battles, how- 
 ever, were the representatives of Russia and Eng- 
 land. The first plenipotentiary of Russia was 
 the octogenarian chancellor, Prince Gorchakov — 
 bent, thin, so feeble that he had to be carried into 
 the hall of sessions, but still preserving the courage 
 and dexterity, the exquisite grace and distinction, 
 the command of polished and sonorous phrases, 
 the high-flown and somewhat theatrical eloquence, 
 to which he owed his great reputation. The hardest 
 part of the work of the Russian mission naturally 
 devolved upon the second plenipotentiary, Count 
 Shuvalov, a handsome, brilliant, and immensely 
 active diplomatist, whose conciliatory spirit and 
 readiness to make concessions were largely respon- 
 sible for the success of the Congress. On the 
 English side, Lord Salisbury played much the same 
 role as Shuvalov: Lord Beaconsfield was the 
 worthy counterpart of Gorchakov. 'Dizzy' was, 
 indeed, the stormy petrel of this Congress. If he 
 did not, as Pwich prophesied, arrive at Berlin with 
 a large military escort, keep an ironclad on the 
 Spree, attend the Congress with cocked hat, a 
 brass band, and revolvers, enter singing " We 
 don't want to fight, but by Jingo if we do," draw 
 caricatures of the emperor of Russia on the blot- 
 ting-paper, and wave the Union Jack continually 
 over the head of the president; at least he pro- 
 vided most of the sensations of the Congress: he 
 assumed from the start a defiant, irritating, and 
 uncompromising tone, threatened that if he did 
 
56 THE CONGRESS OF BERLIN 
 
 not get what he wanted, he would go home, and 
 kept the assembly down to the last in constant 
 uneasiness lest he should stagger them by some 
 new and unexpected theatrical stroke. 
 
 But the dominating figure at the Congress was 
 Bismarck, its president. Guiding the discussions 
 with rare skill and tact and with a certain good- 
 humored but compelling brusqueness, holding in 
 his hands the threads of all the secret negotiations 
 that went on behind the scenes, he did, to a large 
 extent, earn the beatitude of the peacemakers 
 and his chosen title of ' the honest broker ' by his 
 constant efforts to mediate, to reconcile opposing 
 standpoints, and to ensure the success of the Con- 
 gress. On the other hand, it must be said that 
 owing to his extreme impatience to finish quickly, 
 an impatience largely justified by the shattered 
 state of his health — he himself has related that 
 he was obliged to drink a jug of port before every 
 session, in order to keep up at all — he insisted on 
 hastening matters too precipitately. He drove the 
 Congress along by strokes of the whip, as the brow- 
 beaten Turks related. Doubtless a slower proced- 
 ure would have led to a less superficial settlement. 
 Moreover, it was not to the advantage of the 
 Congress that the man who, above all others, con- 
 trolled its decisions, was a statesman who regarded 
 the 'interests of Europe' as a mere empty phrase; 
 who viewed the Christian races whose fate was to 
 be settled, not only with supreme indifference but 
 with unconcealed contempt; who took no interest 
 in the Eastern Question whatever, except in so far 
 
THE CONGRESS OF BERLIN 57 
 
 as it affected the mutual relations of the great 
 Powers ; and who therefore strove to exclude every 
 question which did not aifect those relations, as 
 an idle waste of time. At all events, Bismarck held 
 such a position at this Congress as can be paral- 
 lelled, perhaps, only by that of Metternich at the 
 Congress of Vienna. Not without reason he is said 
 to have jested: " Le Congres, c'est moi." 
 
 In its external settings, the Congress had little 
 of the splendor or the exuberant social life that had 
 distinguished or distracted its predecessors. It 
 might have been said that this prosaic Congress 
 " marche mais ne danse pas." There were, indeed, 
 scarcely any social diversions, except for a few 
 formal receptions at court and some entertain- 
 ments at the various embassies. Rumors circu- 
 lated that the city council of Berlin, after much 
 consideration and reconsideration of the weighty 
 subject, might perhaps be induced to contemplate 
 the possibility of inviting the assembly to a 
 luncheon in the grand hall of the Rathaus; but 
 in these high hopes the Congress was disappointed. 
 
 While in 1814-15 thousands of persons of every 
 description had flocked to Vienna to ' see the Con- 
 gress,' the assembly of 1878 passed off almost 
 unnoticed by the Berliners; and the only visitors 
 who came, apart from the tribe of ' special corre- 
 spondents,' were the representatives of the down- 
 trodden or the newly emancipated races of the East 
 and the agents of various other deserving ' causes.' 
 Among the latter one may note the delegates of the 
 Alliance Israelite, who had come to plead the cause 
 
58 THE CONGRESS OF BERLIN 
 
 of their oppressed kinsmen in the Balkans, and to 
 whose exertions the so-called 'Liberty of Con- 
 science ' articles in the Treaty of Berlin were 
 largely due. A committee of the Peace Society also 
 appeared to lay before the Congress the question of 
 international arbitration. Bismarck decorously 
 promised to bring their petition to the attention of 
 the high assembly — and, of course, nothing more 
 was heard of the matter. As the London Times 
 commented, " the presence of the delegates of the 
 Peace Society at Berlin must have had something 
 of the effect of a Quaker deputation in the midst of 
 Choctaws or Iroquois accoutred for the war- 
 path." It is scarcely necessary to add that the 
 Congress did nothing whatever to meet the hopes 
 voiced in some quarters that it would take up the 
 cause of Poland, discuss the problem of Socialism, 
 or take the first step towards the reduction of 
 armaments. For it was characteristic of this Con- 
 gress that, in contrast to the two preceding ones 
 and in deference to its president, it carefully 
 avoided every larger issue, every humanitarian 
 question, any attempt at. building up the law of 
 nations. The age of force had arrived, and the 
 Iron Chancellor did not believe in ' European 
 interests.' 
 
 Although the most elementary rules of justice 
 would seem to have required that the representa- 
 tives of those Christian states whose vital interests 
 were at stake should participate in the Congress 
 with at least deliberative voice, nevertheless that 
 privilege was denied to them. The delegates of 
 
THE CONGRESS OF BERLIN 59 
 
 Serbia and Montenegro were not even allowed to 
 enter the assembly to state their case. The Greek 
 and Rumanian envoys were privileged to set forth 
 their national aspirations briefly before the Con- 
 gress; but it was understood that they were to be 
 " entendus, mais pas ecoutes," and it is recorded 
 that while the Greeks were pleading the cause of 
 their country, " Beaconsfield, Salisbury, and Wad- 
 dington slept the sleep of the just." The great 
 Powers did not intend to allow their deliberations 
 to be embarrassed by the presence, the prayers, or 
 the remonstrances of the small states. 
 
 Precisely what went on behind the so rigidly 
 barred doors of this august conclave, it is difficult 
 to know. The sources at hand — the cut-and-dried 
 protocol, the memoirs and letters of the diplomats 
 present, the guesses of the newspapers — do not 
 permit us to follow in detail the inner history of the 
 Congress of Berlin. At all events, we probably 
 know the general course of things. 
 
 The Treaty of San Stefano served as the basis of 
 the discussions. All the more contentious ques- 
 tions were settled outside the Congress at private 
 meetings — usually meetings between the pleni- 
 potentiaries of England, Russia, and Austria, with 
 whom Bismarck kept in close touch. Ordinarily 
 the formal sessions of the Congress served chiefly 
 to register and sanction what had been decided 
 upon outside. Hence many of the great oratorical 
 contests recorded in the protocol were only sham 
 battles; Lord Beaconsfield's 'magnificent fight' 
 before the Congress on the Batum question was 
 
60 THE CONGRESS OF BERLIN 
 
 mainly histrionic; and some sessions may be 
 described as elaborately staged comedies of which 
 the plot had been fixed in advance, the roles as- 
 signed and rehearsed, and practically every epi- 
 sode agreed upon by general consent beforehand. 
 Often, however, the assembly got out of control, 
 and the waves of debate ran high. When Lord 
 Beaconsfield arose to " defy somebody," when 
 Shuvalov discharged a Parthian shaft, or when 
 Prince Gorchakov flung his paper-knife upon the 
 table and angrily gathered up his papers as if to 
 leave the room, then Bismarck had to exert all his 
 powers to pour oil on the waters. If worst came 
 to worst, he summoned up his last reserves by 
 declaring himself thirsty and inviting assembled 
 Europe to adjourn for an hour to sample the 
 contents of his famous buffet. 
 
 The hardest battles, of course, were fought in the 
 private conferences referred to above. Although 
 the chief questions that were to come before the 
 Congress had been decided in advance by the 
 Anglo-Russian conventions, still various second- 
 ary problems — such as the limits and the organ- 
 ization of the two Bulgarias — afforded material 
 for violent contests, and, indeed, very nearly led to 
 the break-up of the Congress. 
 
 Although the story has sometimes been denied, 
 I think there is ample reason to believe that at a 
 critical moment — about the twentieth of June — 
 Lord Beaconsfield presented his demands to the 
 Russians in the form of an ultimatum, and then 
 ordered a special train to Calais, intending to go 
 
THE CONGRESS OF BERLIN 61 
 
 home, dissolve the Congress, and risk a war, in 
 case, as he assumed, his terms were not accepted 
 by the twenty-second. And this was not by way 
 of 'bluffing,' as is commonly said, but in earnest, 
 and in accordance with an agreement previously 
 made with the Queen. Bismarck, learning of the 
 special train, and realizing the gravity of the 
 situation, intervened and persuaded the Russians 
 to yield. The Congress was saved, but it is painful 
 to reflect that the peace of Europe was thus endan- 
 gered merely in order to win for the Sultan the 
 right of keeping garrisons in Eastern Rumelia and 
 fortifying the passes of the Balkans, two privileges 
 of which the Turks were never to make any use and 
 which were not worth the paper on which they were 
 written. This was what the London newspapers 
 called a "glorious success," "which deprived Russia 
 of the greater part of the results of the war "; a 
 case of " Russian insinuating eloquence encounter- 
 ing the firm force of English resolve." Doubtless 
 it was a famous victory. 
 
 If the Congress weathered this crisis and some 
 lesser ones, it was because most of the Powers were 
 sincerely anxious for peace. Europe was wearied 
 of the incessant wars of the past generation, and in 
 this respect, if in no other, the assembly admirably 
 reflected the wishes of the public. But keeping peace 
 meant that the Congress had to proceed by what 
 the newspapers called 'courageous compromises,' 
 i. e., bargains in which the rights of the various 
 races of the East were regularly sacrificed to the 
 ambitions or the alleged interests of the great 
 
62 THE CONGRESS OF BERLIN 
 
 Powers. In the midst of these sordid transactions, 
 considerations of principle, justice, and consistency 
 were lost from sight. Although the expediency 
 of reconstructing the map of the Balkans along 
 national lines was admitted by everyone when it 
 suited his purpose, still that principle had to 
 give way whenever 'political' or 'strategic' or 
 * commercial ' interests of the great Powers could 
 be adduced against it. Lord Beaconsfield and 
 Count Andrassy insisted on splitting the Bulgarian 
 nation into three parts in order to ensure the exist- 
 ence of a strong Turkey. The same statesmen then 
 tore away from the Porte three provinces (Cyprus, 
 Bosnia, and the Herzegovina) which the Peace of 
 San Stef ano had left to it, with the brazen explana- 
 tion that they hoped thereby to strengthen Turkey 
 by assisting her to "concentrate and condense" 
 her resources. But when the Greeks presented 
 themselves with the request that they too might 
 be allowed to help in this new method of invigorat- 
 ing Turkey, Lord Beaconsfield informed them that 
 they had utterly mistaken the purpose of the Con- 
 gress : they seemed to imagine that it was to parti- 
 tion the Ottoman empire, while nothing was 
 further from the thoughts of the high assembly. 
 In short, the principles invoked varied incessantly 
 with the needs of the moment. At this Congress, 
 as at earlier ones, it was the interests of the great 
 Powers that took precedence over every other 
 consideration. 
 
 Apart from the transactions later embodied in 
 the Treaty of Berlin, the diplomatists found time 
 
THE CONGRESS OF BERLIN 63 
 
 for many other bargains and confidential agree- 
 ments of a more or less formal nature. Thus, for 
 instance, on July 10, after Count Andrassy had 
 pointed his pistol at the head of Serbia and in- 
 formed her that unless she agreed to his terms she 
 should get nothing whatever from the Congress, 
 the Serbian envoy at Berlin signed a convention 
 with Austria, which was intended virtually to place 
 the railway and tariff system of the little princi- 
 pality under the control of its great neighbor. On 
 July 13 the versatile Austrian minister signed two 
 more secret agreements, the one with Turkey, the 
 other with Russia: both related to Bosnia and 
 Novibazar, and the one practically nullified or 
 abrogated the other. 
 
 In the last days of the Congress, after the publi- 
 cation of the Cyprus Convention had directed the 
 excited attention of the diplomats to the Mediter- 
 ranean situation, numerous confidential discussions 
 took place with regard to the fate of the outlying 
 dependencies of Turkey in that region. In order 
 to calm Waddington's indignation over the seizure 
 of Cyprus, Beaconsfield and Salisbury informed 
 him that France might do whatever she pleased 
 with Tunis : England would not oppose her. Bis- 
 marck is said to have seconded this suggestion to 
 the French, while at the same time he was offering 
 this same Tunis to the Italians. Salisbury, on the 
 other hand, appears to have tried to divert Italian 
 ambition to Tripoli. We also hear of an informal 
 Anglo-French agreement to preserve the status quo 
 in Egypt and Syria, despite Bismarck's exhorta- 
 
64 THE CONGRESS OF BERLIN 
 
 tions to the British to appropriate Egypt for them- 
 selves. It is curious, but not surprising, to see 
 the German chancellor, who was then so osten- 
 tatiously engaged in saving the peace of Europe, 
 also exerting himself so busily to sow seeds of dis- 
 cord for the future. He declared later that it was 
 to Germany's interest that France and Italy should 
 fall out over Tunis; and he is said to have proph- 
 esied that Egypt would be for France and Eng- 
 land what Sleswick-Holstein had been for Austria 
 and Prussia. These 'conversations' have a con- 
 siderable importance, for here, for the first time, 
 it appears, the impending partition of North Africa 
 was clearly outlined and widely discussed. The 
 Congress of Berlin thus forms a landmark in the 
 history, not only of the Eastern Question, but also 
 of the colonial expansion of Europe. 
 
 The treaty which crowned the labors of the Con- 
 gress was signed on July 13. It would be super- 
 fluous to enumerate here the provisions of the 
 Treaty of Berlin: but it may not be out of place to 
 consider briefly, in the light of that treaty, how far 
 the Congress had proved adequate to its task. 
 
 In the numerous and sometimes extravagant 
 eulogies that have been showered upon this assem- 
 bly, its claims to the gratitude of the world are 
 usually based upon the following arguments. (1) 
 The Congress averted a disastrous European war. 
 (2) By sanctioning the independence of Rumania, 
 Serbia, and Montenegro, and the autonomy of Bul- 
 garia, and by according appropriate extensions of 
 territory to all the Christian Balkan states, the 
 
THE CONGRESS OF BERLIN 65 
 
 Congress gave recognition to the principle of na- 
 tionality as none of its predecessors had done; it 
 satisfied the essential interests of all the states and 
 races of the peninsula, and opened up a bright new 
 era in their history. (3) Forsaking the traditions 
 of most previous treaties, the Congress embodied 
 in the public law of Europe the principle that the 
 Sultan was under pledge to the great Powers in re- 
 spect to the good government of all the dominions 
 that remained to him. (4) By imposing the prin- 
 ciple of complete religious freedom and religious 
 equality upon the Balkan states, the assembly per- 
 formed a great act of justice, and earned the title of 
 ' the Liberty of Conscience Congress.' 
 
 All of this is in a measure true, but for a correct^ 
 appreciation of the Congress it is necessary to point 
 out that nearly all the commendable provisions of 
 the Treaty of Berlin come straight from the Treaty 
 of San Stefano. The diplomats at Berlin improved 
 upon the Russian treaty in only two important re- 
 spects: (1) in securing for all the Powers, instead 
 of for Russia alone, the right of watching over, and 
 assisting in, the execution of the new arrangements 
 in the Balkans; (2) in imposing, with greater em- 
 phasis and with stronger guarantees, the principle 
 of religious liberty. With regard to the latter point, 
 however, the Congress was probably actuated less 
 by zeal for religious freedom than by deference to 
 the Jewish bankers, whom the statesmen at Berlin 
 could not afford to defy. There was a newspaper 
 story that Bismarck agreed to work for religious 
 liberty at the Congress on condition that the Berlin 
 
66 THE CONGRESS OF BERLIN 
 
 Jews agreed to support the Conservative candi- 
 dates at the impending elections; and whether the 
 story is true or false, nothing would have been more 
 characteristic of the statesman who recognized 
 nojprinciples,' but only 'interests,' in politics. 
 
 (Apart from these two restrictions, all the good 
 things in the Treaty of Berlin were simply the con- 
 firmation, grudgingly and reluctantly given, of the 
 provisions of San Stefano. This 'great deliverance 
 of the Balkan Christians ' was the work of Russia, 
 and of Russia alone, and the Congress merely sanc- 
 tioned so much of it as for very shame it dared not 
 refuse. With the exceptions already noticed, 
 
 a wherever the Congress altered or supplemented the 
 work of San Stefano, it only made matters worse. 
 The dismemberment of Bulgaria^ Lord Beacons- 
 field's naive belief that he could keep this sundered 
 nation apart by the childish device of calling 
 Southern Bulgaria ' Eastern Rumelia ' ; the hybrid, 
 artificial, and " ingeniously inexpedient " organiza- 
 tion given to this latter province; the confining of 
 Greece to such narrow limits that that kingdom 
 could only remain " a centre, not of national devel- 
 opment, but of national conspiracies " ; the ignoring 
 of the desires of the Serb race for national unity; 
 the bestowal upon Austria of Bosnia and the Herze- 
 govina, with the results so familiar to us today; 
 finally, the restoration of nearly half of what it had 
 lost to a government which was admittedly the 
 disgrace of Europe, and in whose will or ability to 
 reform no one could any longer seriously believe: 
 such are some examples of the wisdom, justice, and 
 
THE CONGRESS OF BERLIN 67 
 
 foresight with which the diplomats at Berlin dis- 
 charged their mission. 
 
 (And all this was the more lamentable because it 
 couH so easily have been avoided. At that time 
 the proper solution of the Eastern Question, at 
 least with regard to the Balkan peninsula, was 
 already clear to all reasonable and unprejudiced 
 men. That solution was, of course, the organiza- 
 tion of the peninsula (Constantinople excepted) 
 into independent Christian states, with the demarc- 
 ation of frontiers based as far as possible upon the 
 nationality of the populatiojj) As a French publi- 
 cist wrote not long after, this inevitable solution 
 might have been accelerated or definitively estab- 
 lished at the moment of the Treaty of San Stefano. 
 " Turkey, prostrate at that time, submitted to 
 everything; she accepted the Russian treaty, 
 which freed the Slavs from the Danube to the 
 Aegean; Europe might have intervened to com- 
 plete the work of liberation begun by . . . Russia. 
 Europe did intervene, but only in order to place the 
 results already gained in question, to postpone to a 
 distant and uncertain epoch the solution which 
 might have been effected then without delay and 
 without difficulties." 
 
 (VVhy did the Congress of Berlin make such bad 
 work of it ? Because the Powers who controlled 
 the Congress were callous to suffering and blood- 
 shed, and indifferent to the rights and aspirations 
 of the lesser nations, when these things interfered 
 with what they considered their interests i Because 
 these Powers held artificial and inflated concep- 
 
68 THE CONGRESS OF BERLIN 
 
 tions of what their interests demanded. Because 
 Count Andrassy imagined that the security of Aus- 
 tria required the dismemberment of the Serb race; 
 and Lord Beaconsfield imagined that the security 
 of India depended on the dismemberment of the 
 Bulgarian race and upon England's upholding the 
 worst government in Europe. Because morbid 
 fears and groundless suspicions and sheer jingoism 
 precluded certain Powers from any understanding 
 of Russia's standpoint and Russia's splendid work; 
 so that Lord Beaconsfield would refer to the cru- 
 sade of liberation which Russia had just completed 
 only as " that fatal and disastrous war," while the 
 British Tory press could see in it nothing but " self- 
 ish ambition," " lawless cupidity," and " barbaric 
 lust of conquest," and British journals gloated that 
 " it was well to teach the Autocrat of all the Rus- 
 sias and the Bashkirs that he cannot pursue his 
 conquering career unchecked, in the fashion of a 
 Genghis Khan or a Timur Leng." \Li a word, the 
 great fault of the Congress of Berlin, as of so many 
 congresses in the past, was the failure to recognize 
 that the peace of Europe is not ensured nor the 
 interests of any Power permanently served by 
 creating unnatural, unjust, and intolerable con- 
 ditions ;\the failure to recognize that even in inter- 
 national politics justice is, in the long run, the 
 surest foundation of states and nations. 
 
THE CONGRESS OF BERLIN 69 
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 
 Parliamentary Payers, 1878. Turkey, Nos. 39 and 44. ' 
 Avril, A. d'. Negotiations relatives au Traite de Berlin. 
 
 Paris, 1886. 
 Bismarck, Otto, Fiirst von. Gedanken und Erinnerung- 
 
 en. Stuttgart, 1898. 2 vols. Also in English 
 
 translation. 
 Biowitz, H. de. Memoirs of M. de Blowitz. New York, 
 
 1903. 
 dimming, A. N. " The Secret History of the Treaty of 
 
 Berlin." In Nineteenth Century, lviii (1905), pp. 83- 
 
 90. 
 Georgevitch, V. " La Serbie au Congres de Berlin." In 
 
 Revue dliistoire diplomatique, v (1891) pp. 483-552. 
 Hanotaux, G. Histoire de la France contemporaine. 
 
 Paris, 1903-05. 4 vols. Also in English translation. 
 Hohenlohe-Schillingsfurst, Chlodwig, Fiirst zu. Denk- 
 
 wurdigkeiten. Stuttgart, 1907. 2 vols. Also in 
 
 English translation. 
 Moiiy, C. de. Souvenirs et causeries d'un diplomate. 
 
 Paris, 1909. 
 Newton, Lord. Lord Lyons. London, 1913. 2 vols. 
 Raschdau, L. " Die Botschafterkonferenz in Kon- 
 
 stantinopel und der russisch-turkische Krieg." In 
 
 Deutsche Rundschau, cxli (1909), pp. 361-379. 
 Wertheimer, E. von. Graf Julius Andrdssy. Stutt- 
 gart, 1910-13. 3 vols. 
 See also the accounts in Walpole and Chiala (Pagine di 
 
 storia contemporanea.) 
 
CLAIMANTS TO CONSTANTINOPLE 
 
CLAIMANTS TO CONSTANTINOPLE 
 
 By ARCHIBALD CARY COOLIDGE 
 
 T^EW people would deny that among the ques- 
 * tions pending in the terrible balance of the pres- 
 ent war, the future status of Constantinople and 
 of the Straits that give access to it is one of the 
 most important. This was not so apparent in the 
 early days of the struggle, but the entry of the 
 Turks into the conflict and the ill-fated expedition 
 against Gallipoli, as well as the events that have 
 happened in the rest of the Balkan Peninsula, have 
 once more awakened the interest of the world in 
 the old and ever recurring Eastern Question. We 
 now know officially what had indeed been inti- 
 mated before, that Russia has been promised by 
 her allies, as part of the fruits of victory, the pos- 
 session of the city which has so long excited the 
 ambitions of her statesmen and the dreams of her 
 people. 
 
 Countless writers have described the unequalled 
 situation of Constantinople at the meeting place of 
 two continents, with its splendid inner harbor, the 
 Golden Horn, and with the Sea of Marmora as a 
 lake of its own which can be closed to any foe by 
 whoever holds possession of the Straits, the famous 
 Bosphorus and Dardanelles. Napoleon I declared 
 that Constantinople was in itself worth half an 
 
 73 
 
74 CLAIMANTS TO CONSTANTINOPLE 
 
 empire. But obvious as the advantages of the 
 situation are, they have not told equally at all 
 periods of history. In the Greek and Roman 
 world, the old town of Byzantium did not hold a 
 particularly notable place. For centuries it was 
 inferior to the neighboring inland cities of Nicaea 
 and Nicomedia. Constantinople itself since its 
 founding in 330 has always been the capital of an 
 empire and usually of a considerable one, but it has 
 been affected not only by the fortunes of the state 
 to which it has belonged, but by events and in- 
 fluences of a more general nature. It benefited in 
 the seventh century from the closing of the Red 
 Sea route by the Arabs, which stimulated the over- 
 land trade from Central Asia and from the Persian 
 Gulf across Asia Minor. It also gained by the 
 Christianization of Russia and the resulting in- 
 creased intercourse with northeastern Europe. On 
 the other hand, the renewal of direct relations 
 between western Europe and Egypt and the East 
 after the Crusades was disastrous to it, as it was 
 thus left to one side of the main routes of travel; 
 and it suffered another blow to its prosperity from 
 the Tartar conquest of Russia in the thirteenth cen- 
 tury. The imperial city, when the Turks became 
 masters of it in 1453, presented but a shadow of its 
 former greatness. Since that day, as the capital of 
 the Ottoman empire, it has shared in the fortunes 
 of that empire, waxing with its rise and waning 
 with its decline. But, though Constantinople has 
 derived little benefit as yet from the enormous 
 development in the last century and a half of the 
 
CLAIMANTS TO CONSTANTINOPLE 75 
 
 lands about the Black Sea, its political and military 
 importance has grown ever greater, for it holds the 
 outlets to their sea-going commerce; and as the 
 junction where that commerce crosses the new 
 overland line from Hamburg to the Persian Gulf, 
 it bids fair to become more important still. 
 
 Since Emperor Constantine, not far from sixteen 
 hundred years ago, founded the city that bears his 
 name, it has been besieged some fourteen times by 
 foreign foes and threatened on many other oc- 
 casions. In all these years, it has been captured by 
 them only twice: once by the Latin Crusaders in 
 1204, after a feeble and inefficient defence, and 
 again in 1453, after a glorious resistance against 
 overwhelming forces in perhaps the most famous 
 siege in history. During the first half of its exist- 
 ence as the Turkish capital, it was the headquart- 
 ers of a growing empire which threatened its 
 neighbors, not one which was threatened by them; 
 in the second half, it has been the capital of a state 
 which has continually lost territory and one whose 
 partition has often been discussed. The work of 
 the Rumanian historian, T. G. Djuvara, Cent pro- 
 jets de Portage de la Turquie (Paris, 1914) gives an 
 idea of how many heirs have been suggested to the 
 possessions of the sick man of Europe, and how 
 Constantinople has been assigned on paper to all 
 sorts of different powers, including France, Venice, 
 and the Pope. Once more, and perhaps not for the 
 last time, the question of its future has been raised. 
 As might be expected, a number of solutions have 
 been recommended and the conflict of interests 
 
76 CLAIMANTS TO CONSTANTINOPLE 
 
 between the different claimants is acute. Let us 
 consider briefly who these claimants are and on 
 what grounds their claims may be said to rest. 
 
 We note, to begin with, that the question of the 
 wishes of the inhabitants themselves can hardly be 
 taken into serious consideration. At almost every 
 stage of its history, Constantinople has been a 
 cosmopolitan city, and this has never been truer 
 than since it has been under the Ottoman empire. 
 We have no real statistics as to the ethnical com- 
 position of its population at the present moment. 
 Not only the events of the war but those of the few 
 years previous have influenced the proportion of 
 the different elements. We can only say that 
 recently the town has had a population of perhaps 
 800,000 to 1,000,000, of whom some 400,000 were 
 Turks, 150,000 or so Greeks, about as many Ar- 
 menians, nearly 50,000 Jews, and the remainder a 
 mixture belonging to all sorts of other nationalities 
 both European and Asiatic. The inhabitants of 
 the surrounding country on the European side are, 
 or recently were, many of them Greeks; on the 
 Asiatic side, the Turks have predominated. 
 
 The first and at the present outlook not the most 
 unlikely solution of the question of Constantinople, 
 at least for the time being, is that the Turks should 
 remain as before the owners and the masters of the 
 city and of the Straits. There are certain advan- 
 tages to this. Beati possidentes is usually the easiest 
 way out of any territorial dispute, especially when 
 compromise is impossible between other conflicting 
 and more radical proposals. The Turks will never 
 
CLAIMANTS TO CONSTANTINOPLE 77 
 
 again be a serious menace to the Christian world or 
 to any considerable portion of it, nor will they even 
 be a power of the first rank. It will always be pos- 
 sible, therefore, to put pressure on them and to 
 keep them in tolerable order. With all their faults, 
 they have been a ruling race, and — though opinions 
 differ on this point — some authorities claim that 
 they are more fitted to deal equitably with the 
 mixed population under their control than the vari- 
 ous other elements of that population would be to 
 deal with one another if any one of them should 
 obtain the supremacy. At any rate the Turks have 
 the rights of an undisputed possession of more than 
 four centuries and a half, and though these rights 
 are regarded by the allies as forfeited, they cannot 
 be overlooked except after complete victory. 
 
 A solution that has been suggested many times 
 and still has advocates in western Europe, is that 
 Constantinople and a small extent of territory on 
 each side of the Straits should be made a free state, 
 with the proper mixture of self-government and of 
 control by the Powers. This idea is at first sight 
 attractive. It seems fair to every one and in har- 
 mony with the most enlightened principles. The 
 picture of a neutral, thriving, commercial empo- 
 rium where all the elements live in concord and 
 none enjoys special privileges, where the great 
 nations of the world are deeply interested but none 
 desires to dominate, where the Straits which have 
 been the scene of so much history and the cause of 
 so much bloodshed will henceforth be unfortified 
 and wide open to the peaceful trade of mankind, is 
 
78 CLAIMANTS TO CONSTANTINOPLE 
 
 one that appeals to the imagination. The difficulty 
 is that it is too imaginative. Modern democratic 
 government is not so successful that we can easily 
 conceive of the elements that compose the present 
 population of Constantinople administering all 
 their own affairs. Still less can they be entrusted 
 with the management of the vast interests of others. 
 It is not that they lack intelligence — many of 
 them belong to highly intelligent races — but with 
 their religious and national feuds, their age-long 
 hatreds and rival aspirations, with the demoralizing 
 effects of centuries of servitude, and their total 
 lack of previous political training and of civic 
 standards, they will need firm control, at least for 
 some time to come. This control must be that 
 of the Powers. 
 
 But here experience does not justify optimism. 
 International control of any kind is a difficult 
 and delicate matter at best. The men who have 
 to exercise it come from foreign states and are 
 almost certain to be suspicious of one another, for 
 they serve two masters. Each of them represents 
 a nation, whose interests, rather than those of the 
 people he is supposed to look after, are likely to be 
 his first care. We may admit that there are a few 
 examples of reasonably successful international 
 control. The most notable of these perhaps is that 
 of the navigation of the Danube; but though that 
 affects important political as well as commercial 
 interests, it is far less complex and difficult than 
 the regulation of the Straits, which also concerns 
 the actual administration of a considerable and 
 
CLAIMANTS TO CONSTANTINOPLE 79 
 
 very varied population. Condoniinions of even 
 two powers have difficulty enough in working 
 smoothly — witness the experience of England and 
 France in Egypt — combinations of several are 
 likely to become more unworkable with the acces- 
 sion of each fresh member. In neither the Far 
 nor the Near East has the concert of the Powers 
 been sufficiently successful to make us sanguine 
 about its efficiency as a permanent institution of 
 government where important conflicting interests 
 are involved. Constantinople under such a regime 
 would be an ideal hotbed for intrigue of every kind 
 between rival financial interests, rival nationalities, 
 and representatives of rival great powers, and prob- 
 ably a scene of widespread corruption. At the 
 best, there would be much likelihood of adminis- 
 trative stagnation, for where many jealous interests 
 are involved, it is easier to block progress than to 
 introduce reforms, however desirable. We must 
 remember also that international law has not yet 
 reached the stage when any great power, where its 
 vital interests are concerned, regards the decision 
 of the majority of the others as binding upon itself. 
 Russia, for instance, could hardly let any mixed 
 government at Constantinople pass even police 
 rules which she regarded as a real hindrance to her 
 Black Sea trade. 
 
 Another point, whose difficulty is not sufficiently 
 appreciated by those who favor a free city of Con- 
 stantinople and free commerce for all through the 
 unfortified Straits, is the distinction between times 
 of peace and times of war. In times of peace it is 
 
80 CLAIMANTS TO CONSTANTINOPLE 
 
 practically certain in any event that commerce will 
 be but little hampered and that there will be no 
 discrimination of tolls. Whether the Straits are 
 fortified or not does not matter, but in time of war 
 it does matter, and matter a great deal. LTnforti- 
 fied straits could easily be seized by a quick stroke 
 at the outset of hostilities. In a war between Rus- 
 sia and another power, there might be a tremendous 
 temptation to both parties to make a dash for the 
 Straits, enough of which might conceivably be 
 occupied and held by a small force of men, with a 
 combination of barbed wire and floating mines, to 
 seal up the whole Russian trade in the Black Sea on 
 the one hand, or, on the other, to close all entrance 
 and render nugatory any maritime preponderance 
 on the part of her enemies. It would, indeed, be 
 hard to imagine Russia respecting the letter of the 
 law under such circumstances and equally hard to 
 blame her seriously for not doing so. To be sure, 
 such proceedings might be forbidden by interna- 
 tional compact and come under the ban of a league 
 to enforce peace, and in return the Straits might be 
 closed by international agreement in war time to 
 the fleets of all nations, but could Russia regard 
 such an agreement as an adequate protection to her 
 commerce and ports ? The immense damage that 
 could be inflicted upon her in a few days would be a 
 temptation to an enemy that might well outweigh 
 the value of any international intervention against 
 the transgressor. To take a similar case, do we in 
 the United States feel that an international guaran- 
 tee would be sufficient to secure the Panama Canal 
 
CLAIMANTS TO CONSTANTINOPLE 81 
 
 against Japanese attack if we should have war with 
 Japan ? The peril for Russia in an unfortified Bos- 
 phorus and Dardanelles would be equally great, 
 treaties to the contrary notwithstanding. Or 
 again, how much protection would the neutrality 
 of the Suez Canal and its legal accessibility to all 
 nations even in war time, guaranteed as they are by 
 treaties, furnish to a German U-boat that should be 
 found there tomorrow ? 
 
 If the Turks have the rights of the actual pos- 
 sessors of Constantinople, the strongest historical 
 claim is that of the Greeks. Ancient Byzantium 
 was a Greek settlement, and Constantinople itself 
 from the time it was founded was for over eleven 
 hundred years a Greek city. Even under Turkish 
 rule the Greeks have been the largest element in 
 the very considerable Christian population, and the 
 hope of regaining the town that was so long theirs 
 has never been quite abandoned by them. The 
 national awakening that led to the War of Greek 
 Independence was not a movement merely to free 
 ancient classical Greece, but rather one for the 
 resuscitation of the Byzantine empire. The first 
 actual insurrection took place, not in Greece, but 
 in Rumania, where, strangely enough, the small 
 number of Greeks hoped, however vainly, for the 
 support of the rest of the population. After the 
 War of Independence had come to an end and 
 Greece proper had been freed, the majority of the 
 Greek people were, to their bitter disappointment, 
 left still subject to Turkish rule. But the Greeks 
 are a highly imaginative and sentimental people; 
 
82 CLAIMANTS TO CONSTANTINOPLE 
 
 second only to their pride in the glories of the past 
 is their hope of a brilliant future. ' The Great 
 Idea,' as it was called, was still strong in the breasts 
 of the Greeks both within and without the king- 
 dom till late in the nineteenth century. This dream 
 meant a new Byzantine state with a Greek Con- 
 stantinople, which state should include, as it had 
 in the past, various foreign elements contentedly 
 living under Greek rule and superior civilization. 
 
 In the course of the nineteenth century, the 
 growth of the consciousness of the other Balkan 
 nationalities, and especially of the Bulgarians, old 
 enemies of the Greeks, made the fulfillment of 
 ' the Great Idea ' ever less and less probable; 
 though even now it is not entirely abandoned, at 
 least as far as Constantinople is concerned. When 
 the present king of the Hellenes came to the throne, 
 it was suggested that he should take the title of 
 Constantine XIII, thus proclaiming himself the 
 successor of Constantine XII, the ill-fated prince 
 who died heroically when the Byzantine empire 
 fell. The Greeks, too, resented the intimation, 
 said to have been given them at one time during the 
 present war, that their troops even as allies could 
 not be allowed to approach Constantinople. Never 
 indeed has the fulfilment of ' the Great Idea ' 
 looked less likely than at the present moment. It 
 should be remembered, however, that if Constan- 
 tinople becomes a free state, Greek is likely to be 
 its official language and the one spoken by the 
 majority of the population, especially if, as we may 
 expect, many of the Turks and other Mohammed- 
 
CLAIMANTS TO CONSTANTINOPLE 83 
 
 ans leave. The world, therefore, may after all see 
 Constantinople again in the hands, not of Greece, 
 but of Greeks. 
 
 Their ancient foes, the Bulgarians, have no his- 
 torical claim on the city, much as they have 
 desired to obtain possession of it at times in the past. 
 Twice they have besieged it — in the ninth cen- 
 tury, when they made their first appearance in the 
 Balkan Peninsula, and again in the tenth, when 
 they were at the height of their power. But if they 
 have no historical claim, they have an excellent 
 geographical reason for desiring the place. Now 
 that Bulgaria has shores on both the Black Sea and 
 the Aegean, the northern coasts of the Straits and 
 of the Sea of Marmora seem a bit cut out of the 
 Bulgarian coastline and spoiling its continuity. 
 Constantinople would be a magnificent acquisition 
 for the Bulgarians, and though but few of them are 
 to be found there at present, in time they could 
 doubtless colonize it and make it in every way an 
 integral part of their possessions, realizing at last 
 the dreams of a thousand years ago. This possi- 
 bility naturally appeals to them, and we may well 
 believe that their statesmen cherish hopes of the 
 sort, though hardly for the immediate future. In 
 the war of 1912, for a moment it seemed as if the 
 Bulgarians after their decisive victories over the 
 Turks might enter the imperial city in triumph. 
 Had they done so, they would have hoped to 
 remain. It is still a question whether it was Turk- 
 ish resistance at Chataldja or pressure on the part 
 of Russia that put an end to the Bulgarian advance. 
 
84 CLAIMANTS TO CONSTANTINOPLE 
 
 In 1915 the news, or the suspicion, that France and 
 England had consented to the occupation of Con- 
 stantinople by Russia as a result of the present war, 
 provoked much feeling in Bulgaria, and was doubt- 
 less one of the motives that influenced her to throw 
 in her lot with the Central Powers. As matters now 
 stand, next to the Turks the Bulgarians would prob- 
 ably be the German candidates for its possession. 
 
 Serbia has been too far away to have been a real 
 aspirant for the succession, even if some Serbian 
 patriots have dreamed of a southern Slav state, 
 that is to say, a predominately Serbian one that 
 should extend to the Straits. The Serbians them- 
 selves have never penetrated thus far. Their great- 
 est sovereign, Stephen Dushan, at the time of his 
 death in 1355 was preparing for a campaign against 
 Constantinople, and Serbians and some western 
 writers have declared that but for his decease the 
 history of the East would have been changed and 
 the Turks would have been driven out of Europe. 
 Such assertions are easier to make than to prove. 
 
 The Russian claims to Constantinople are nu- 
 merous and weighty. They are both sentimental 
 and practical, they are based on historical tradi- 
 tions, on the national sentiment and aspirations of 
 the Russian people and on geographical, political, 
 and economic reasons of ever growing importance. 
 
 To begin with the sentimental reasons, we must 
 remember that as soon as the Russian state was 
 constituted, and even sooner, the Russians began 
 to look to the south. Descending the rivers that 
 flowed into the Black Sea, they attacked the 
 
CLAIMANTS TO CONSTANTINOPLE 85 
 
 Greeks more or less seriously again and again. One 
 of their rulers in the tenth century was so pleased 
 with the lands he had conquered in the Balkan 
 Peninsula, that he proposed making them his head- 
 quarters and residence for the future. This design 
 he was forced to give up only after hard fighting 
 with one of the ablest of the Byzantine emperors, 
 who did not relish having such a formidable neigh- 
 bor so near his capital. It was from Constanti- 
 nople that Russia got her religion, and with her 
 religion many of her clergy, for a considerable 
 period, also her introduction into civilization and 
 all her earlier culture. To the Russian world, Con- 
 stantinople long had an importance the same in 
 kind, if not in degree, that Rome had for western 
 Christendom. When the Byzantine empire fell, 
 the Russians found themselves the last independent 
 people in Europe belonging to the Greek — to them 
 the only orthodox — church. All their brethren in 
 the faith were then under the rule of foreigners, 
 either heretics or infidels. No wonder that the le- 
 gend grew up that as Constantinople had been the 
 second Rome on the Bosphorus, so Moscow was the 
 third, the legitimate successor to the two elder capi- 
 tals of the world. The princes of Moscow, as might 
 be expected, favored this idea. One of them, Ivan 
 the Great, not only adopted the Byzantine double- 
 headed eagle for his coat of arms, which has re- 
 mained that of Russia till today, but he married a 
 Greek princess, the niece of the last Byzantine 
 emperor. Since that time, the desire to reerect the 
 cross on the ancient cathedral, now the Mosque of 
 
86 CLAIMANTS TO CONSTANTINOPLE 
 
 St. Sofia, has been a Russian aspiration which has 
 varied in intensity at different periods, but which 
 in the course of the ages has grown stronger rather 
 than weaker. For the Russian people every Turk- 
 ish war has been a crusade. In the cosmopolitan 
 days of the eighteenth century, the Empress 
 Catherine II might plan a revived Byzantine 
 empire provided her grandson should rule over it, 
 but in these more nationalistic ones, the thought 
 that Russia shall some day succeed the Turk on 
 the shores of the Bosphorus has become a part of 
 the popular creed. In this respect, Russian rulers 
 and statesmen have lagged behind rather than led 
 public opinion. They have seen the difficulties 
 that were involved in an aggressive policy, and some 
 of them have doubted the advantages to be obtained 
 from a realization of the national aims. 1 
 
 But apart from sentimental considerations, rea- 
 sons of the most practical nature have pointed out 
 with increasing force to the statesmen of Petrograd 
 the importance of the Straits. Peter the Great 
 began his extraordinary career by an attempt to get 
 a footing on waters leading to the Black Sea. By 
 his capture of Azov he succeeded for the moment; 
 but he was obliged to surrender his prize after his 
 unsuccessful war with Turkey a few years later. It 
 was not until the reign of Catherine II that the 
 Russians were able to establish themselves on these 
 
 1 Prince Bismarck was convinced, or at least more than once 
 declared, that the possession of Constantinople would weaken rather 
 than strengthen the Russian empire. It is true that he made the 
 same sort of an observation in regard to the German possession of 
 Helgoland. 
 
CLAIMANTS TO CONSTANTINOPLE 87 
 
 coveted coasts. They proceeded at once to build a 
 fleet, but as it had to meet enemies who could get 
 help from outside while it could not, it seldom had 
 an undisputed supremacy, a fact that has often 
 hampered the Russians in their Turkish campaigns. 
 Conversely, under the existing international regu- 
 lations regarding the Straits, they were unable to 
 send their Black Sea fleet to the Far East during 
 their conflict with Japan. 
 
 Meanwhile, in the course of the last century and 
 a half, southern Russia has undergone as complete 
 a transformation as our own West. The wild 
 steppes, the former home of the Tartar and of the 
 Cossack, have become some of the chief wheat pro- 
 ducing lands in the world. Many towns have 
 grown up, and there is now a large and in some 
 places even a dense population. The city of 
 Odessa alone has over 600,000 inhabitants. All 
 the rivers of southern Russia empty into the Black 
 Sea, except the Volga, which is connected with it 
 by a railway and some day may h>e by a canal. The 
 whole foreign trade of this region, the immense 
 Russian export of wheat, as well as that of oil and 
 of other products from the region of the Caucasus, 
 reaches the western world by sea only by passing 
 through Turkish waters in passages controlled by 
 Turkish guns. The more the vast country has been 
 developed, the more Russian commerce has grown, 
 the greater have been the inconveniences and dis- 
 advantages of having its outlet at the mercy of the 
 politics of the Ottoman empire. It has been even 
 more serious than a foreign owned Panama Canal 
 
88 CLAIMANTS TO CONSTANTINOPLE 
 
 would be to the United States. The Turks tem- 
 porarily closed the Straits at the time of the war 
 between Italy and Tripoli and again during the 
 Balkan wars, and again in 1914 before they actually 
 joined with the Central Powers, each time causing 
 heavy losses to Russian commerce. At this mo- 
 ment, when France and England are having diffi- 
 culty in finding sufficient grain to meet their urgent 
 wants, there are huge quantities of Russian wheat 
 locked up in the Black Sea and doomed to remain 
 so until peace is once more restored or the Turks 
 are driven from Constantinople. The object les- 
 son to Russia of the importance of the control of 
 the Straits is drastic. Mere freedom will not be 
 enough for her; as long as she is not able actually 
 to close what she regards more and more as the 
 door of her house, so long will she have to keep up a 
 fleet in the Black Sea and to spend millions on the 
 fortification of her harbors against possible attack 
 by an enemy with a navy superior to her own, and 
 yet be in danger of having her door hermetically 
 sealed from outside at any time. To sum up then: 
 from almost every point of view, the control, that 
 is to say the possession, of these passages is of 
 transcendent importance to Russia, and this her 
 allies have realized, and have promised that if they 
 are victorious she shall receive it. 
 
 The concern of Germany, not only of Austria but 
 of all southern Germany, in the question of the 
 Straits, was long due almost entirely to the fact 
 that the Danube, the upper half of which is Ger- 
 man, empties into the Black Sea. As the trade of 
 
CLAIMANTS TO CONSTANTINOPLE 89 
 
 this splendid navigable river has increased and as 
 the populations along its banks have grown and 
 developed, the Black Sea and the passages leading 
 into it have come to mean more and more to Aus- 
 tria and Germany. At various times in the past 
 Austria has had thoughts of extending her territory 
 to the eastward by the annexation of Rumania and 
 thus becoming directly a Black Sea power, but she 
 has made no serious attempt to carry out such a 
 policy. She has, however, especially since the days 
 of the Crimean War, regarded herself as a state 
 with interests which must be consulted in Black 
 Sea questions, including those of the Straits. 
 
 Modern Germany at first showed little interest 
 in the politics of the Near East. Bismarck's views 
 on the subject are well known. It is only since the 
 accession of the present emperor that the policy of 
 peaceful penetration of the Ottoman empire has 
 been followed, at first on a small scale, later with 
 ever increasing energy, breadth of vision, and 
 realization of its importance. Germany has thus 
 succeeded to the place, formerly held by England 
 and France, of protector of the Ottoman em- 
 pire against the encroachments of Russia. She 
 has proclaimed herself the one great power that 
 has never taken Turkish territory and never had 
 designs on any, whose only aim has been close eco- 
 nomic relations equally favorable to both parties. 
 For twenty years before the outbreak of the present 
 war, German influence at Constantinople was be- 
 coming more and more the dominant one, politic- 
 ally as well as commercially. Since about the 
 
90 CLAIMANTS TO CONSTANTINOPLE 
 
 beginning of the present century, the most inter- 
 esting and picturesque feature of the German plan 
 of action has been the Bagdad railway, the main line 
 of which, according to latest reports, is nearly com- 
 pleted. Starting at Constantinople, it should in 
 time not only connect Central Europe with Bagdad, 
 but should extend down to the Persian Gulf, with 
 branches towards Persia and India to the east, and 
 towards Syria and Egypt to the west. Unwelcome 
 as this enterprise has been to Germany's rivals, it 
 has been a fine conception, perfectly legitimate in 
 itself, and we can understand the increasing inter- 
 est that it has excited in Germany. 
 
 The events of the present war have much height- 
 ened this interest. The Germans have now lost 
 almost the whole of their colonies, and it is doubt- 
 ful whether they will regain them. On the other 
 hand, their policy and arms in the Near East have 
 so far been generally successful. 1 These two sets of 
 facts have reacted on German feeling. The Ger- 
 mans have seen the fragility of their colonial 
 dominion and their inability to defend it against 
 England, but they believe that in this day of world 
 empires every great state needs a large mass of ter- 
 ritory at its own disposal, to furnish it with raw 
 material for its industries, with a field for the em- 
 ployment of its capital, and a population to buy its 
 manufactures. They now dream of a unified 
 Central Europe and Western Asia, an area whose 
 different parts shall be under different but closely 
 allied governments, and shall constitute an eco- 
 
 1 Written before the fall of Bagdad. 
 
CLAIMANTS TO CONSTANTINOPLE 91 
 
 nomic unity, with well on to two hundred million 
 inhabitants and vast and varied resources, extend- 
 ing from the North Sea to the Persian Gulf. To 
 many Germans this seems the one chance to assure 
 themselves of their place in the sun, to give them- 
 selves the room that they need for the unhampered 
 development of their energies and abilities, to 
 secure permanently among the world powers the 
 position to which by their achievement in peace 
 and war they are legitimately entitled. 
 
 Whatever may be said for or against this vision, 
 it is evident that in its realization Constantinople 
 plays a part of the first importance. The train 
 from Berlin to Bagdad must pass through or near 
 Constantinople, and at this point it will cross the 
 great stream of the Black Sea trade, a meeting 
 place that should be one of the chief commercial 
 stations in the world. Thus the question of who 
 shall control the station and the highways of pas- 
 sage north and south, east and west, becomes more 
 critical than ever. We can see that if Russia should 
 get possession of them the project of a German 
 union from the North Sea to the Persian Gulf would 
 be shattered beyond repair. On the other hand, a 
 German Constantinople, or a Turkish one directed 
 and controlled by Germany, would prove a barrier 
 to Russian aspirations more formidable than that 
 of the Turks at the height of their power. The sea- 
 going commerce of southern Russia, the Caucasus, 
 and Central Asia would pass through German 
 waters, through gates that could be opened or 
 closed at any time according to the good will of 
 
92 CLAIMANTS TO CONSTANTINOPLE 
 
 the Germans. Thus the fulfilment of either the 
 Russian or the German dream can only be achieved 
 by the ruin of the other. 
 
 This would seem to drive us back to some other 
 solution if we hope for a compromise of any kind. 
 We may imagine what would be the rivalry be- 
 tween the German and the Russian agents in a free 
 city. It has been suggested in the past that, small 
 as the disputed territory is, it should be divided. 
 For instance, Napoleon I, as a last concession to his 
 ally, Tsar Alexander I, was willing that Constanti- 
 nople and the Bosphorus should go to the Russians, 
 provided that France might hold the Dardanelles. 
 This the Russians refused. From their point of 
 view, although the possession of the Bosphorus 
 would enable them to defend the Black Sea better 
 than they can today, its exit would be closed just as 
 effectually by a foe holding the Dardanelles alone 
 as by one that held both passages. Rather than 
 have a great state establish itself there, they pre- 
 ferred and would prefer the present weak holder for 
 the whole region, and Germany has the same feel- 
 ing with respect to Russia to an even greater 
 degree. Other divisions have been suggested: for 
 instance, that some one state should hold the 
 European side and another the Asiatic side of 
 the passage, and even that Constantinople itself 
 should be divided between the different claimants. 
 Perhaps the next proposition will be that the 
 Russians shall have Constantinople and the 
 Straits, and the German railway shall go under 
 them somewhere by a tunnel. 
 
CLAIMANTS TO CONSTANTINOPLE 93 
 
 Be all this as it may, we can see that the problem 
 is one that can never be solved in a manner agree- 
 able to all parties concerned. We can look at it 
 from many points of view and feel some sympathy 
 with the most diverse aspirations. At the present 
 moment the predominant feature in the situation 
 is a very new thing in the hoary Eastern Question, 
 the clash between the interests and we may say the 
 legitimate ambitions of Russia and Germany, a 
 clash where both sides have much at stake, where 
 a compromise will be difficult to reach and to main- 
 tain, and where a complete victory for either means 
 a blow of great severity to its antagonist. Never 
 in all its long history, save perhaps when it fell 
 into the hands of the Turks in 1453, has the fate 
 of Constantinople meant more to the world than 
 it does in the present struggle. 
 
PRINTED AT 
 
 THE HARVARD UNIVERSITY PRESS 
 
 CAMBRIDGE, MASS., V. 8. A. 
 
 JAN 161548 
 
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