l »,t>l WI WB B«M«M»Otti M» l HOT»l| | M^ t«»5,'»y5-a«i;^AA«SVSiat*i:;ai IM' mm'- ■ &^WV>W-i ■■■,•■'. .-■ BOOK 909.82. M349 c. 1 MARRIOTT # EUROPE AND BEYOND 3 T153 DOEObObO fl EUROPE AND BEYOND WORKS BY THE SAME AUTHOR The Makers of Modern Italy George Canning and his Times Lord Falkland and his Times The Remaking of Modern Europe Second Chambers English Political Institutions England since Waterloo (being Vol. vii. of Oman's History of England) The English Land System The Evolution of Prussia (with C. Grant Robertson) The Eastern Question English History in Shakspeare The European Commonwealth The Right to Work Syndicalism : Political and Economic EUROPE AND BEYOND A PRELIMINARY SURVEY OF WORLD- 2' POLITICS IN THE LAST HALF-CENTURY 1870-1920 1 (t -s BY J, A. R. MARRIOTT HONORARY FELLOW, FORMERLY FELLOW AND LECTURER, OF WORCESTER COLLEGE, OXFORD ; M.P. FOR OXFORD WITH EIGHT MAPS NEW YORK E. P. BUTTON AND COMPANY PUBLISHERS PREFACE THIS book is intended as a sequel to my earlier volume on The RemaJcing of Modem Europe (1789- ;:so 1871), first published in 1909/ and has been written in ^ response to requests for a continuation of that narrative. fr I must, however, beg my readers to remember that I offer it only as a preliminary survey of a large tract of country. S^ The last half-century has not yet fallen into perspective, ^ and the time for writing the history of it has not, therefore, in my judgment arrived. But as those who control our s,. educational destinies appear to think otherwise, and as ^ there is a natural and legitimate curiosity among many ^ students of foreign affairs to know something of the days immediately preceding our own — a knowledge not always easily attainable — I have reduced to a reasonably brief ^" and mainly (though not strictly) consecutive narrative V the substance of studies on which I have long been engaged. ^ In various chapters of this book I have not scrupled to J^^" Hft " whole paragraphs from previously pubUshed works g^ of my own : notably from The Evolution of Prussia — ^ written in conjunction with my friend and former col- league. Principal C. Grant Robertson (Clarendon Press, 1915) ; The Eastern Questi(m (Clarendon Press, 1917), ^ The European Commonwealth (Clarendon Press, 1919), — J^ all these by kind permission of the Delegates of the r-4 1 Methuen & Co. TweHth Edition, 1920. '^ V vi EUROPE AND BEYOND Clarendon Press ; and England since Waterloo (Methuen & Co., 1913; Fourth Edition, 1920). The substance of Chapter VII. appeared as an article in The Edinburgh Review for April 1919, and some paragraphs of Chapter XIV. originally appeared in articles contributed by me to The Fortnightly Review. For permission to reprint them I have to thank the proprietors and editors of these Reviews. My indebtedness to other writers, and particularly to the accomplished historians and publicists of France, is, I think, sufficiently indicated and acknowledged in the short bibliographies which I have suffixed to each chapter. These bibliographies will, I hope, be found useful alike by teachers in universities and schools, and by those general readers whose wants I have tried to keep in mind, not less than those of professed students of history. The work has been written amid many distractions unfavourable to literary concentration, and probably contains some errors, despite all efforts to eliminate them. Should my readers discover them I shall be grateful for corrections. J. A. R. MARRIOTT House of Commons Library 25^/i May 1921 CONTENTS CHAPTER I PAGK Introductory : The New Era ..... 1 CHAPTER II The New Germany and the New France (1871-75) . . 24 CHAPTER III The Eastern Question (1875-98) . . . . .46 CHAPTER IV The Ascendancy of Germany (1879-90). The Triple Alliance. The German Empire in Africa . . . .69 CHAPTER V The Egyptian Problem (1875-99) . . . .91 CHAPTER VI The Expansion of Russia : The Franco-Russian Alliance (1890-98) . . . . . . .103 CHAPTER VII The United States of America as a Would-Power (1898-1916) 124 CHAPTER VIII The English in South Africa (1871-1902) . . .143 viii EUROPE AND BEYOND CHAPTER IX PAOB West and East (1839-1907) . . . . .164 CHAPTER X The Diplomatic Revolution (1890-1911) . . .189 CHAPTER XI The Problem of the Near East (1888-1911) . . .215 CHAPTER XII The Balkan League and the Balkan Wars (1912-13) . 280 CHAPTER XIII The World-War (1914-18) 257 CHAPTER XIV The World Settlement (1919-20) . . . .300 Index ........ 327 LIST OF MAPS FACING PAGE Central and South-Eastern Europe, 1871 . . .1 The Nile ........ 91 From England since Waterloo, by J. A. R. Marriott. Methuen & Co. Ltd. Africa. Political Divisions, 1893 .... 143 The Far East. Political Divisions after the Russo- Japanese War . . . . . . .164 Central and South-Eastern Europe, 1921 . . . 300 The Adriatic and the Balkans ..... 310 From European Commonwealth, by J. A. R. Marriott. Clarendon Press, Oxford Africa. Political Divisions, 1921 .... 314 The Pacific Islands ...... 317 CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE OF LEADING EVENTS 1870. Franco -German War. The Vatican Council. 1871. Establishment of new Geiman Empire^William I. proclaimed German Emperor at Versailles (Jan. 18). Italian capital transferred to Rome : completion of Italian unity. Paris Commune (Mar. 18 to May 2). Treaty of Frankfort (May 10). Basutoland annexed to Cape Colony. Gricpialand West, British Dependency. 1872. Geneva Court of Arbitration. The Dreikaiserhund (Sept.). The KuUurka)iipf in Prussia. 1873. Russian conquest of lOiiva. Ashanti War begins. Death of Napoleon III. (.Jan. 9). German occupation of France ends (Sept.). 1875. Establishment of the Third Republic in France. Franco-German crisis (April to May). England purchases Suez Canal shares. Proclamation of Queen Victoria as Empress of India. Balkan risings. 1876. Berlin Memorandum. Serbia and Montenegro declare war on Turkey (July). Revolution at Constantinople. Bulgarian atrocities. Annexation of the Transvaal. 1877. Russo-Turkish War. 1878. Pope Leo XIII. succeeds Pius IX. Treaty of San Stephano (Mar. 3). Congress and Treaty of Berlin (June and July). Cyprus Convention. Afghan War. 1879. Dual Alliance (Germany and Austria-Hungary) (Oct. 7). Zulu War. 1880. Boer War. Russian Nihilism — Assassination of Alexander II. (Mar. 13). 1881. Restoration of Transvaal Republic. French Protectorate in Tunis. FaU of Gambetta Ministry in France. 1882. British occupation of Egypt. xii EUROPE AND BEYOND 1882. Triple Alliance (renewed 1887, 1891, 1902, 1912). Foundation of Die Deutsche Kolonial-Oesellschaft. 1883. Revolt of the Soudan. 1884. Grordon at Khartoum : his death (1885). FaU of Ferry Ministry (April). Germans in Africa. Conference of Berlin : partition of Africa. Battle of Omdurman (Oct. 13). Germany in the Pacific. Treaty of Skiernewice (Reinsurance Treaty). 1885. Italian colony at Massowah. England and Russia in Central Asia : Penjdeh incident. Annexation of Burmah. Fall of Gladstone Ministry (June). Eastern Roumelia joins Bulgaria — War between Bulgaria and Serbia. 1886. Boulanger, Minister of War (Jan. 7). Royal Niger Company. Transvaal goldfields. Alexander of Battenberg kidnapped in Bulgaria. 1887. Italian defeat at Massowah. Renewal of the Triple Alliance. Ferdinand of Saxe-Coburg elected Prince of Bulgaria. The " Schnaebele Incident" (April 20). Boulanger plot fails (Oct.). 1888. British East Africa Company. Death of Emperor William I. (Mar. 9). Reign of Frederick (Mar. 9 to June 15). Accession of William II. (June 15). British Protectorate over North Borneo and Sarawak. 1890. Fall of Bismarck (Mar. 20). Anglo-Grerman agreement (July 1). Heligoland ceded to Grermany. French Protectorate over Madagascar recognised. British Protectorate over Zanzibar recognised. Anglo -French treaty about Central Africa. 1891. Franco -Russian rapprochement French fleet at Kronstadt. Anglo-Portuguese Agreement about Zambesi territories. 1892. Meeting of Czar Alexander III. and the Kaiser at Kiel. 1893. Matabele War. Russian squadron visits Toulon. 1894. Death of Alexander III. — Accession of Nicholas II. Armenian atrocities (and 1896). Uganda Protectorate. Chino -Japanese War. 1895. Treaty of Shimonoseki. Japan acquires Port Arthur. ..^^^^ Opening of Kiel Canal. Franco-Russian AUiance. Cecil Rhodes, Premier of Cape Colony. Venezuela boundary difficulty. CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE OF LEADING EVENTS xiii 1895. Jameson raid into the Transvaal (Dec. 28). •4896. Kaiser's telegram to Kruger. Defeat of Italians at Adowa. Czar and Czarina visit Paris and London. 1897. Kitchener begins reconquest of the Soudan. Crete proclaims union with Greece. Graeco -Turkish War. 1898. The Fashoda crisis. The Kaiser visits Constantinople and Jerusalem. Spanish-American War. The Philippines and Hawaii annexed by U.S.A. Delcasse, Foreign Minister of France. Germany occupies Kiaochow. Russia occupies Port Arthur. England occupies Wei-Hai-Wei. Death of Bismarck (July 30). First Hague Conference. 1899. Anglo -French agreement about Africa. Outbreak of South African War. British reverses in South Africa. Boxer rising in China. 1900. European intervention in China. Lord Roberts and Lord Kitchener in South Africa. British victories against the Boers. 1901. Death of Queen Victoria (Jan. 22). 1902. Anglo-Italian agreement about North Africa. Opening of Trans-Siberian Railway (begun 1891). Russo -Persian Convention. Anglo -Japanese Treaty (renewed 1905). Peace of Vereeniging. 1903. Miirsteg agreement about Macedonia. 1904. Anglo-French Entente. Russo-Japanese War. 1905. Surrender of Port Arthur (Jan. 1). Treaty of Portsmouth. The Kaiser at Tangier. Dismissal of M. Delcasse. Separation of Norway from Sweden. Revolutionary movement in Russia — " Bloody Sunday " (Jan. 22) in St. Petersjburg. 1906. The First Duma (May 10). France and Morocco. Algeciras Conference (Jan. 15 to April 7). Macedonian " Committee of Union and Progress " (transferred to Salonika from Greneva). 1907. Second Hague Conference. Anglo-Russian Convention — Triple Entente. The Second Duma in Russia (Mar. 5). Third Duma (Nov. 14). 1908. Portuguese Revolution. Young Turk Revolution at Constantinople (July). Policy of Baron von Aerenthal (1906-12). XIV EUROPE AND BEYOND 1908. Tsar Ferdinand proclaims Bulgaria independent (Oct. 6). Annexation of Bosnia and tlie Herzegovina (Oct. 7). Crete declares itself united with Greece (Oct. 12). 1909. Counter-revolution at Constantinople (April). Deposition of Sultan Abdul Hamid (April). Armenian massacres (April.) 1910. Union of South Africa. Venizelos, Prime Minister of Greece (Oct.). 1911. Morocco troubles — The Panther at Agadir. Agadir crisis, Italy declares war on Turkey (Sept. 29). 1912. Rising in Albania. Treaty between Serbia and Bulgaria (Mar. 1.3). Treaty between Greece and Bulgaria (May 10). Montenegro declares war on Turkey (Oct. 8). Treaty of Lausanne (Italy and Turkey) (Oct. 18). War between Turkey and the Balkan League (Oct. to Dec). Armistice (Dec. 3). London Conferences (Dec). 1913. Enver Bey's cowp d'^t at Constantinople (Jan. 23). Balkan War renewed (Feb.). Albanian autonomy. Treaty of London (May 30) ends War of Balkan League. Balkan War of Partition (June to July). Intervention of Roumania (July). Treaty of Bucharest (Aug. 10). 1914. June 12. Visit of Kaiser and Von Tirpitz to Archduke Franz Ferdinand at Konopisht. 23. Kiel Canal reopened. 28. Franz Ferdinand shot at Serajevo. July 23. Austro-Hungarian note to Serbia. 28. Austria declares war on Serbia. Aug. 1. Germany declares war on Russia; on France (Aug. 3) ; on Belgium (Aug. 4). 4. Great Britain declares war on Grermany ; on Turkey (Nov. 5). 5. Austria-Hungary declares war on Russia. 12. Great Britain and France declare war on Austria- Hungary. 15. FaU of Liege. 16. British Army landed in France. 23. Japan declares war on Germany. Sept. 5 First Battle of the Marne begins. Oct. 9. Fall of Antwerp. 20. First Battle of Ypres begins. Nov. 5. Great Britain declares war on Turkey. Dec. 8. Sir D. Sturdee's victory off the Falklands 1915. Feb. 18. U-boat blockade of England. 25. Naval attack on Dardanelles. April 25. Allies land in Gallipoli. May 7. Lusitania torpedoed. 23. Italy declares war on Austria. CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE OF LEADING EVENTS xv 1915. July 9. Botha conquers South- West Africa. Landing at Suvla Bay. AUied landing at Salonika. Austro-Germans occupy Belgrade. Bulgaria at war with Serbia. Withdrawal from GaUipoH. 1916. Feb. 18. Cameroons conquered. Battle of Verdun begins. Rebellion in Ireland. Fall of Kut-el-Amara. Battle of Jutland. Lord Kitchener lost at sea. 1. Somme battle begins. Roumania enters the war. Mr. Lloyd George succeeds Mr. Asquith as Premier. French victory at Verdun. President Wilson's Peace Note. 1917 Feb. 1. Unrestricted U-boat war begins. Revolution in Russia. America declares war on Germany. Bolshevist regime in Russia. 1918. Feb. 9. Treaty of Brest-Litovsk. German offensive in the West begun ; renewed May 27 ; re-begun June 15. General Foch allied Generalissimo. Allied counter-attack. Hindenburg line broken. Bulgaria surrenders ; King Ferdinand abdicates (Oct. 4). Versailles Conference opens. Austria surrenders. Bavarian Republic proclaimed. Berlin Revolution ; the Kaiser abdicates. Armistice terms accepted. 15. Masaryk elected President of Czecho-Slovak Republic. 17. Hungary proclaims a republic. [919. Jan. 12. Meeting of Peace Conference at Paris (First Plenary Session, Jan. 18). 12. Independence of Poland and Czecho -Slovakia recog- nised. 25. Appointment of League of Nations Commission : two for each great Power, five in all for the small Powers. Feb. 11. Ebert elected President of Germany. April 28. Covenant of League of Nations adopted and published. May 7. Peace Treaty presented to German delegates at Trianon Palace Hotel. 7. Treaty between England, France, and U.S.A. announced : Mandates for ex-German colonies announced. June 2. Ti'iune Kingdom of Jugo-Slavia recognised by England and France (already by Germany). July 9. Aug. 6. Oct. 5. 9. 14. Dec. 19. Feb. 18. 21. April 24. 29. May 31. .June 5. July 1. Aug. 27. Dec. 7. 15. 20. Feb. 1. Mar. 12. April 6. Nov. 8. Feb. 9. Mar. 21. April 14. July 18. Sept. 27. 29. Nov. 1. 4. 7. 9. 11. xvi EUROPE AND BEYOND 1919. June 28. Peace Treaty with Germany signed at Versailles. 28. Anglo -French- American Alliance signed. 28. Polish Treaty signed. July 10. President Wilson lays Treaty before Senate. 10. President Ebert ratifies Peace Treaty. 31. New Grerman Constitution adopted. Sept. 10. Austrian Peace Treaty signed at Versailles. 10. Treaty with the Serb-Croat-Slovene State signed at Saint-Germain-en-Laye. 12. Union of South Africa accepts Mandate for German South-West Africa. Oct. 7. Peace Treaty ratified by Italy ; by King George V. (Oct. 10) ; by President Poincar6 (Oct. 12). Nov. 19. U.S. Senate fails to ratify Treaty. 27. Peace Treaty with Bulgaria signed at Neuilly. Dec. 9. Anglo-French-American Memorandum to Italy on Adriatic question. 10. Roumania signs Austrian Treaty. 1920. Jan. 10. Protocol of Peace Treaty signed at Paris — War ended between Allies and Germany. 16. First Meeting of Council of League of Nations at Paris. 17. M. Paul Deschanel elected President of French Republic. June 4. Hungarian Treaty signed. Aug. 16. Turkish Treaty signed at Sevres. Nov. 12. Treaty of Rapallo (Italy and Jugo-Slavia) signed. Central^ South- Eastern Europe 1871 A. ALsoLce L. Lorraine B. Bes^arcLbLcL D,I)obrujijoL M.Montenegro 1^.V.^ajd>isWe EUROPE AND BEYOND CHAPTER I INTRODUCTORY The New Era Yea ; this is a new age ; a new world, — Bismarck. The cardinal fact of geography in the twentieth century is the shorten- ing of distances and the shrinkage of the globe .... The result is that problems which a century ago or even fifty years ago were exclusively European now concern the whole world. — J. C. Smuts. THE fashion of the day demands that History The should be divided into periods and studied as a Jj^^fJ^jf^ succession of epochs ; and the practice has a great deal to History recommend it. By this method, attention is drawn to the essential truth, that History is not a mere aggregation of disconnected facts nor a series of interesting but isolated dramatic episodes, but that it is an organic whole to which each great period in world-history has made its appropriate and indispensable contribution. " All epochs," as Turgot justly observed, " are fastened together by a sequence of causes and effects linking the present condition of the world to all the conditions that have preceded it. The human race, observed from its beginning, seems in the eye of the philosopher to be one vast whole, which, like each individual in it, has its infancy and growth. No great change comes without having its causes in preceding centuries, and it is the true object of History to observe in coimection with each epoch those secret dispositions of events which prepare the way for great changes, as EUROPE AND BEYOND 1 well as the momentous conjunctions which more especially bring them to pass." The words of the philosopher-statesman of the ancien regime would seem to suggest the spirit in which the study of any particular period should be approached. In the larger movements of History there is nothing accidental, nothing casual, nothing which cannot be distinguished either as cause or as efiect. " The present," said Leibnitz, " is the creation of the past, and is big with the future." These words contain a profound truth. It is the primary function of tlie Historian to seek in the myriad phenomena of human society the operation of law, and to endeavour to discern in the distracting multi- plicity of details the essential unities which underlie them. Thus, and thus only, can the study of History be redeemed from the charges of triviality and barrenness, which are sometimes alleged against it, and be brought into line with the scientific spirit which has infused and dominated all the higher studies of our time. The Period Docs the histoiy of the last half -century afford a basis 1870-1920 fQp g^(.]^ treatment ? Can this period be truly described as a distinct epoch in world-history ? If so, what are its essential and outstanding features ? What is the precise contribution which it lias made to the sum of the ages ? To attempt an answer to these questions would seem to be the appropriate function of an introductory study, and such a study is ail that can be attempted in the following pages. The Water- The year 1870-71, with which this narrative opens. Nineteenth fomis bcyoud dispute One of the great watersheds of Century Modern History. In the 'sevcmties of the nineteenth century a prolonged process of historical evolution reached its climax. Between 1815-71 many Nation- States came to the birth, and the map of Europe was transfigured. This transfiguration was, in the main, the resultant of two forces, seemingly antagonistic, but in effect not infrequently convergent : the force, on the one hand, of disintegration ; on the other, of a fresh integration. One obvious illustration of this process is afforded by the INTRODUCTORY 3 decay and disruption of the Ottoman Empire. That Empire was itself a wholly artificial product. It repre- sented an alien mass superimposed upon vital elements, which, though submerged for centuries, were never wholly destroyed. The collapse of the Ottoman Empire per- Nation- mitted the submerged nationalities to re-emerge and take making their place as independent Nation- States in the European polity. In 1821 the Greeks raised the standard of revolt, and after a period of many vicissitudes the Kingdom of the Hellenes was finally established by the Treaty of London, 1832, and placed under the protection of Great Britain, France, and Russia. British statesmanship was also responsible, in large measure, for the birth of the modern kingdom of Belgium. The attempt made by the diplomatists of Vienna to set up a powerful middle kingdom by the union of the Spanish or Austrian Netherlands and the United Provinces had broken down ; the Belgian people asserted their independence, and that independence was guaranteed by the Treaty of London, 1839. A third Nation- State came into being as a result of the Crimean War. By the Treaty of Paris, 1856, the Principalities of Moldavia and Walla chia virtually obtained their inde- pendence ; but as separate States. So Europe decreed; the Roumanian people, however, had other views ; they took the matter into their own hands, and, powerfully aided by the good ofiices of Napoleon III., they formally proclaimed the union of the two Roumanian principalities in 1861, and achieved final independence by the Treaty of Berlin (1878). In the same Treaty, two other Balkan States, Serbia and Bulgaria, found their formal charter of emanci- pation, though the independence of the former had been virtually achieved in 1867, while the latter did not finally throw ofi the suzerainty of the Sultan until 1908. Meanwhile, two of the great powers had simultaneously Unification attained the goal of national unity. The Franco-German ^^ ?TY"^ War, 1870-71, put the coping-stone upon the work of ^"' *^ Bismarck in Germany, and upon that of Mazzini, Cavour, Garibaldi, and Victor Emmanuel in Italy. The German attack upon France compelled Napoleon III. to withdraw EUROPE AND BEYOND 1 the French garrison from Rome and enabled Victor Emmanuel to transfer his capital from Florence to the city, which was unmistakably indicated as the capital of a united Italy. The German victories in France enabled Bismarck to transform the North-German confederation into the new German Empire and to persuade the German State south of the Main (except German- Austria) to come into it. Thus was the unity of Italy and of Germany at last achieved, and the doctrine of Nationalism triumphantly vindicated. The Nor was the triumph of the doctrine confined to Europe. British Nation-States have come into being under the aegis of the weSth'of British Crown in North America, in South Africa, and in Nations the Pacific. The Canadian Dominion, the Commonwealth of Australia, the Union of South Africa, and New Zealand, are not the less Nation-States because they are, and ardently desire to remain, constituent parts of the British Commonwealth. The South American republics have attained to the dignity of statehood in independence of the European States to which they owed their birth. The The making of Nation-States may thus be regarded as Advent of the characteristic work of the nineteenth century, and state,^*'''''" more particularly of the period between 1815 and 1878. Fifteenth That work proceeded under the domination of two forces, NineSnth ^oth of which received a decided impulse from the first French Revolution and indirectly and undesignedly from the Napoleonic Conquests : the idea of nationahty and the principle of Hberty. Yet, as regards nation-building, the nineteenth century merely placed the coping-stone upon an edifice which had been in gradual course of erection ever since the last years of the fifteenth century. The main process of European history during the four centuries that closed in 1870-78 may be scientifically described as the evolution of the States -system, or alternatively as the triumph of Nationahsm. The emergence of the Nation- State was greatly facihtated, if not actually caused, by the The break up of the Mediaeval Empire and by the decadence of Empire and ^^le oecumenical authority of the Papacy. The old Roman ^^^^^ Empire had embodied the principle of unity and centralisa- INTRODUCTORY 5 tion. On its fall in the fifth century it bequeathed to man- kind the idea of a World-State and a universal Church, but the immediate result of the overthrow of the Roman Empire was World-anarchy. From that anarchy, Europe was eventually rescued by two institutions both in out- ward form majestic and imposing, and one in fact powerful and pervasive : the Holy Roman Empire and the Holy Cathohc Church. Pope and Caesar occupied, not always to their mutual comfort, a joint throne ; but as an oecumenical force the Pope proved himself by far the stronger of the two. The revived Roman Empire, itself the creature of the Papacy, became inseparably associated with the German kingship, and as Western Europe began to dispose itself in more or less homogeneous States, the Empire lost whatever of international or supranational position it had enjoyed. Still, throughout the greater part of what we loosely term the " Middle Ages " Western Europe maintained a quasi-unity under the dual authority of Empire and Papacy. These two institutions, which in theory represented but The two aspects of one body, were, in practice, always rivals ^aSa^^^ and not infrequently foes. As their authority, gravely ism impaired by protracted conflict, gradually dechned, a new type of political formation began to emerge, the Sovereign Nation-State. England and Hungary were among the first of modern European nations to attain to pohtical self -consciousness. France, thanks in the main to the centrahsing poHcy, steadily pursued, of a succession of remarkable kings, reahsed her national unity towards the end of the fifteenth century. The Spanish kingdoms were at last united under a single ruler in the early years of the sixteenth century. The United Provinces of the Nether- lands threw off their allegiance to the Spanish Crown and attained to the dignity of independent statehood before the same century closed, and " Austria," as distinct from the Empire to which it gave an Emperor, may be said in fact though not in theory to have emerged about the same time. Portugal regained its independent national existence in 1640 : Prussia entered the charmed circle of 6 EUROPE AND BEYOND kingdoms in 1701, and was thereafter accepted as a " Power." Russia, as a united nation and a European Power, also dates from the early years of the eighteenth century. This book is concerned primarily with European history. How difficult, nay impossible, it is, during the period covered by this volume, to observe the limitation will presently appear. It may not, therefore, be irrelevant to notice that the eighteenth century, infertile as regards nation-making in the old world, gave birth to a new Nation-State which sprang from the loins of England on the other side of the Atlantic. Having renounced their allegiance to the Motherland in 1776, the thirteen colonies first entered into a loose confederation between themselves, and subsequently attained to the status of a federal Nation- State by an acceptance of the Constitution of 1788. The catalogic summary now completed mil at least suffice to estabhsh the truth that the 'seventies of the last century witnessed the consummation of a world movement of profound significance and form a conspicuous watershed in European pohtics. At last, after a process which, as we have seen, extended over four centuries, Europe was exhaustively parcelled out into some sixteen or seventeen Sovereign States, broadly corresponding to the main divisions of races. Some of these States had in process of formation absorbed various ahen nationalities, and re- tained in restless and reluctant subjection peoples who had no affinities to the ruhng race. Some, hke the Empire of the Habsburgs, possessed no racial unity, and though rightly designated States, had no claim to be included in the catalogue of Nations. Others, hke France and Great Britain, had by union of races evolved a new nationahty. But whatever the particular road by which they had travelled, the States of Europe at length attained a common goal, and the European pohty came to consist of a congeries of Sovereign Nation- States nominally equal in status and acknowledging no common superior. Neither the demarcation of Nation-States nor the striv- ing for power (Macht-streben) among these self-conscious INTRODUCTORY 7 units has, however, completely exhausted the best energy and thought of Europe during the last four centuries. Hardly was the dominance of the idea of the Sovereign State established before men began to perceive its incon- venient and indeed disastrous consequences. There was no longer in Europe any Supreme Court of Appeal ; European society was dissolved into its constituent atoms. From the development of nationahsm there naturally proceeded inter-nationahsm : inter-national trade, inter-national intema- diplomacy, above all, inter-national war. The cruel ^j^L"*^ persistence of inter-national war led in time to a feehng after the possibihty of inter-national law. Where was mankind to find a path of escape from conditions which even in the seventeenth century seemed to the finer minds to be intolerable ? Two paths, and two only, appeared to open out. On the one hand, the re-estabhsh- ment of a world-sovereignty ; on the other, the common acceptance of a system of law equally binding on all nations. From the seventeenth century to the twentieth these tw^o ideas have struggled for ascendancy. The one looking back with regret to the lost unity of the Middle Ages ; the other looking forward to a Federation of States, or possibly to a League of Peoples. Certain of the finer minds naturally looked back. " The thing which at Miinster and Osnabriick (the settlement effected by the Peace of Westphaha in 1648) stereotyped itself in the w^orld's history was," writes Father William Barry, "the world's catastrophe, the break up of Christendom." ^ That a Roman Cathohc divine should regard the Protestant Reformation as responsible for the dissipation of European harmony and the inauguration of European anarchy is not surprising. More surprising is it to find an essentially modern philosopher in accord with the mediaevaUst : — " There w^as a time," writes Mr. Lowes Dickinson, " when the whole civilised world of the West lay at peace under a single ruler ; when the idea of separate Sovereign States alw^ays at war or in armed peace would have seemed as monstrous and absurd as it now seems inevit- 1 The World's Debate, p. 17. 8 EUROPE AND BEYOND able, and that great achievement of the Roman Empire left, when it sank, a sunset glow over the turmoil of the Middle Ages. Never would a mediaeval churchman or statesman have admitted that the independence of States was an ideal. It was an obstinate tendency strugghng into existence against all the preconceptions and beliefs of the time. One Church, one Empire, was the ideal of Charlemagne, of Otto, of Barbarossa, of Hildebrand, of Thomas Aquinas, of Dante. The forces struggling against that ideal were the enemy to be defeated. They won. And thought, always parasitic on action, endorsed the victory. So that now there is hardly a philosopher or historian who does not urge that the sovereignty of in- dependent States is the last word of poHtical fact, poHtical wisdom." 1 lutema- Thomas Hobbes of Malmesbury sought escape from a tionaiLaw g^^te of society in which war was perpetual and the Hfe of the individual "was nasty, brutish, and short." He found it in the conclusion of a social compact issuing in the autocracy of the Sovereign, the great Leviathan. While Hobbes found a way of escape from intolerable domestic disorder in a social contract, others were looking for a means of ending international anarchy by the accept- ance of a system of international law. Hugo Grotius, the great Dutch jurist, published his famous work, de Jure Belli et Pads, in 1625. Oppressed by the recent memory of the wars of Religion in France and Germany ; of the bloody contest between the United Netherlands and Spain ; confronted by the desolation wrought by the Thirty Years War in Germany, Grotius might well come to the conclusion that the break up of the mediaeval unities had dissolved Europe in perpetual anarchy. Grotius was the real founder of the science of International Law, and his work has had a profound influence upon the thought and indeed upon the practice of modern Europe. Projects Some years before Grotius made his famous attempt of Peace ^^ establish a system of International Law on the basis of the jus naturcB, Henry IV. of France, or rather his 1 G. L. Dickinson : After the War, pp. 20, 21. INTRODUCTORY 9 minister, Sully, had drafted his Great Design. In this also we have striking evidence of the anxiety of thoughtful men to discover a way of escape from the prevailing anarchy and strife. Henry IV. conceived of Western Europe as a peaceful confederacy of free States. The affairs of this Federal Commonwealth were to be admin- istered by a perpetual Senate, renewable every three years, and presided over by the Emperor. This Senate was to consist of sixty-four Plenipotentiaries, representing the component States, and was to be competent to decide all disputes arising between the several Powers and to determine any questions of common import. Neither Grotius nor Henry IV. produced any immediate effect. There ensued a full half -century of war, due mainly to the aggressions of Louis XIV. of France and his ambition to estabhsh the ascendancy of France over continental Europe. The Treaty of Utrecht (1713) registered the failure of his attempt, and the year which witnessed the conclusion of the Peace witnessed also the pubHcation by the Abbe de Sainte -Pierre of his famous Pro jet de Traits four rendre la Paix perpetuelle. Like Henry IV. the Abbe proposed to estabhsh a confederation of Europe based upon a perpetual and irrevocable alHance between the sovereigns. Each sovereign was to send Pleni- potentiaries to a Congress which was to define the cases which would involve offending States being put under the ban of Europe. The Powers were to enter into a mutual compact to take common action against any State thus banned until the offender should have submitted to the common will. Events mocked the efforts of the Abbe de Sainte-Pierre as they had mocked those of Sully. Throughout all the middle years of the eighteenth century Europe, not to say the world, was at war. In Europe, war was due mainly to the restless ambition of Frederick the Great of Prussia ; in Asia and America to the prolonged contest between England and France for supremacy in the Far East and the Far West. After this half-century of war Immanuel Kant pubhshed in 1795 his Essay on Perpetual 10 EUROPE AND BEYOND 1 Alliance Peace. Kant re[judiatcd the idea of a Universal Empire : " It is," he writes, " the desire of every State, or of its ruler, to attain to a permanent condition of peace in this very way ; that is to say, by subjecting the whole world as far as possible to its sway, but Nature wills it otherwise ; Nature brings about union not by the weakening of com- petitive forces but through the equilibrium of these forces in their most active rivalry." Kant therefore proposed that there should be a Law of Nations founded on a Federation of Free States. The Holy When Kant published his Perpetual Peace Europe was already in the third year of a war destined to last for another twenty years. Long before it ended, the Czar Alexander I. was busy with a scheme for the reconstitution of the European Polity upon the lines of a great Christian Re- public. The idea thus adumbrated subsequently took shape in the Holy Alliance of 1815. The Holy Alliance was a genuine attempt, inspired by a contemplation of the horrors and havoc of war, to induce the rulers of the w^orld to take " for their sole guide the precepts of that holy Religion, namely, the precepts of justice, Christian charity, and peace, w^hich far from being applicable only to private concerns must have an immediate influence upon the counsels of Princes and guide all their steps." But the Holy Alliance, though genuinely founded with this object, rapidly degenerated into a League of Auto- crats for the suppression not only of revolutionary move- ments but of all liberal progress. Yet autocracy was not of the essence of the experiment, nor was it the cause of its failure. Fundamentally the Alliance foundered upon the rock of intervention. The Holy Allies laid it do\vn at Troppau (1820) that^ — " States which have undergone a change of government due to revolution, the result of which threatens other States, ipso facto cease to be members of the European Alliance, and remain excluded from it until their situation gives guarantee for legal order and stability. ... If, owing to such alterations, immediate danger threatens other States, the Powers bind themselves by peaceful means, or, if need be, by arms, to bring back INTRODUCTORY 1 1 the guilty State iuto the bosom of the Great Alliance." The principle thus laid down was difficult to reconcile \nth the legitimate claims of national independence. How can a State be adjudged guilty if there be no tribunal before which it may be brought ? what is the use of a tribimal unless it possess a sanction ? but the employment of sanctions involves intervention, and intervention may degenerate into interference. It is not easy to draw the line between external afiairs and matters of purely domestic concern ; upon that rock the Holy Alliance foundered. The conflicting ideals roughly adumbrated above have Conflicting been striving for supremacy during the last hundred years. ^^^^^ On the one hand, the idea of Dominion founded on Power ; on the other, of Confederacy founded on Law. Germany has, during the last half-century, been the leading exponent of the former principle. The Hohenzollern have regarded themselves as the apostolic successors of that Augustine Empire which gave peace to a distracted world^ — as the legitimate heirs of the Ghibellines, and destined to realise, as Hohenstauffen and Luxemburgs failed to realise, the sublime ideal embodied by Dante in the Be Monarchia. The ultimate ideal of the modern German Empire was, be it admitted, universal peace. But it was to be a world- peace achieved by the supremacy of the German sword. In contrast and conflict with this ideal there has gradually developed the ideal of a peaceful confederacy of Free States, bound together by the common acceptance of international law. The latter idea has made more progress than is commonly recognised. Paitly by the meeting of periodical congresses, partly by the intercourse of scholars and men of science, partly by an attempt to establish, as in the matter of copyright or the conduct of war, common legislation and common practice, most of all by the progress of international arbitration, the world has been slowly advancing towards a realisation of the ideal embodied in the schemes of Sully and of the Abbe de Sainte-Pierre, of Kant and the Holy AlUes. The World- War of 1914 brought the two ideals— World- Dominion and World-Confederacy — into sharp conflict. 12 EUROPE AND BEYOND The former has been discredited by the broken sword of Germany ; it remains to be seen whether the latter can be realised by the League of Nations. The New But to resume. Hardly had the era of the Nation-State Era reached its climax before signs were discernible that a new era had already opened. " Yes," said Bismarck, before his fall, " this is a new era." The half -century which has elapsed since the Franco-German War may, it is claimed, be clearly differentiated from the centuries which preceded it. The world has passed under the domination of new and untamed forces. Is it possible to discern their characteristics and to trace their operation ? It is the purpose of the following pages to attempt the task, but it is one which at the best can only be at present provisionally accomplished. Welt- The outstanding feature of European history during Poiitik ^]je lag-t ^y years is a shifting if not in the centre of political gravity, at least in its distribution: European history has ceased to be exclusively European. The inventions of physical science have completely revolu- tionised the conditions of world-history. The develop- ment of the means of transport and communication have brought the ends of the world together. " The cardinal fact of geography in the twentieth century is the shortening of distances and the shrinkage of the globe. . . . The result is that problems, which a century ago, or even fifty years ago, were exclusively European, now concern the whole world." ^ So obviously is this proposition true that the history of the recent epoch has been summed up in a brilliant formula as the expansion of Europe.^ Down to this latest period the several continents were more or less self-contained. It is true that the geographical Renaissance of the later fiiteenth century led to great discoveries, and in time to the establishment of great extra-European Empires by Portugal, Spain, Holland, France, and Eng- land. It is true that the Colonial struggle between England and HoUand in the seventeenth century, between ^ General Smuts : Address to the Royal Geographical Society. 2 Ramsay Muir : The Expansion oj Europe (Constable). INTEODUCTORY 13 England and the Bourbon Powers in tlie eighteenth, re- acted upon European politics. Still, apart from England and her oceanic Empire, and apart from Russia, with a vast land Empire, half-European and half- Asiatic, Europe was in the main self-contained. During the last half- century all this has been altered. During that period there was no great European war. There was no war at all in Europe beyond the limits of the Ottoman Empire. Out- side the Balkans there were hardly any changes in the political map of Europe. Cyprus was virtually ceded to England in 1878, Heligoland was handed over to Germany in 1890, Norway severed itself from Sweden in 1905. This is the sum of the changes which took place between 1871 and 1914. The real activities of the European Powers have been for the most part displayed in the extra-European sphere. European diplomacy has been transformed into Welt-Politik, and the ideal of the Welt-Politik has been Welt-macht. It is not without significance that the dominating ideas The Rise of of the new era should have to be expressed in the German ^^""^"y language. For the peculiar characteristics of the new era must in large measure be ascribed to the astoundingly rapid rise of Germany, and German policy in the period of its domination has been largely inspired by three motives which, though most conspicuously illustrated in Germany, have also been in operation elsewhere and have driven the great nations towards the abyss of Armageddon. The forces which have thus moulded the history of the most recent era are those of industrialism, of commercialism, industriai- and imperialism. Industrially, the face of Europe has ^^^ been transformed by the development of productive capacity under the domination of science. The age of coal and iron, of steam and electricity, to mention only the most obvious forces, has succeeded to the age of hand- labour, of pasturage and tillage. The country-dwellers have been brought together into towns and factories. The resulting development of productive capacity has con- tributed to an overmastering desire on the one hand for the command of those raw materials without which 14 EUKOPE AND BEYOND modern productive processes are impotent, and on the other for markets in which to dispose of the surplus commodities produced in profusion by modern industrial processes. " Formerly," says General Smuts, " we did not fully appreciate the Tropics as in the economy of civihsation. It is only quite recently that people have come to realise that without an abundance of the raw materials which the Tropics alone can supply, the highly developed industries of to-day would be impossible. Vegetable and mineral oils, cotton, sisal, rubber, jute, and ■ similar products in vast quantities are essential require- ments of the industrial world." But the modern world looks to the Tropics not merely for the supply of the raw material but as a market for the disposal of their manufactured products. Thus we have had in recent days a re\aval of the old idea of " planta- tions," of oversea estates to be worked for the benefit of the home-proprietors. In a word, the old colonial system denounced by Burke and Adam Smith as unworthy of any nation save a nation of shopkeepers and unworthy even of them. Thus the new Industrialism has largely contributed to a revival of commercial-nationalism, the neo-protectionism first popularised in Germany by Friedrich List. In this way the dream of the statesmen and economists of the Manchester School has been dismally dissipated. The early triumphs of Cobdenite Free Trade were hailed in England and to some extent elsewhere as the inaugura- tion of a new area in international relations. Free Trade would render v/ar if not impossible at least ridiculous. International commerce if not international law would silence arms. The demolition of commercial barriers was to be the prelude to a universal peace. Such was the dream which inspired the most characteristic of the mid- Victorian poets, when he addressed to the cosmopolitan patrons of the great Exhibition of 1862 the famous adjuration : — O ye, the wise who think, the wise who reign, From growing commerce loose lier latest chain, INTRODUCTORY 15 And let the fair white-wing'd peacemaker fly To happy havens under all the sky, And mix the seasons and the golden hours, Till each man find his own in all men's good. And all men work in noble brotherhood, Breaking their mailed fleets and armed towers, And rulmg by obeying Nature's powers, And gathering all the fruits of earth. And crowned with all her flowers. But the dream faded. The fiscal policy of England found few imitators. So far from " breaking their mailed fleets and armed towers," the wise who reigned (to say nothing of the wise who thought) piled armaments on armaments. So far from loosing from commerce her latest chain, they raised higher and higher their protective tariffs. States- men of the '' realistic " school turned not to Adam Smith but to Friedrich List for inspiration. Not cosmopolitanism but economic nationalism became the fashionable philosophy. Under the conditions of the modem world a further imperial- consequence almost necessarily ensued. To the forces of ^^"^ industrialism and commercialism was added that of Imperialism— a desire for the extension of territory. The British Empire is largely the product less of actual con- quest than of simple settlement — ^the occupation and colonisation of the waste places of the earth. But by the time that the European States system was completed, by the time that Germany and Italy had attained to nationhood, these waste places had been largely occupied. Consequently the desire for territorial expansion could be satisfied on the part of the late-comers only by war and conquest. Welt-Politik thus came to involve Welt-macht. Germany it seemed could satisfy her desire for Colonial Empire only by successfully asserting her hegemony in Europe. Not content with the favourable position accorded to German her by the partition of Africa, Germany was bent upon ^f^f^' the establishment of a great empire in tropical Africa, extending from the Atlantic right across the continent to the Indian Ocean, and involving the annexation of a large portion of French equatorial Africa, of_Portuguese 16 EUROPE AND BEYOND West Africa, of Uganda and British East Africa, not to mention the great central mass of the Belgian Congo. The German Empire of Central Africa was demanded by the Colonial School on various grounds, of which the most conspicuous were commercial, military, and strategical. The Germans coveted that Empire, primarily in order to have a supply of raw materials for their industries independent of foreign competitors, partly in order to obtain naval outposts, and partly as a reserve of man- power. " The first and most important of all the national demands," wiites Dr. Hans Delbriick, " which we must raise at the future Peace Congress must be for a really big colonial empire, a German India. The Empire must be large enough to be capable of conducting its own de- fence in the event of war. A really big territory feeds its own troops and contains abundant man-power for reserves and militia. A really big territory can have its harbours and coaling-stations." " We are fighting," wrote Hermann Oncken, " for an Empire in Central Africa." " Many colonial politicians," writes Dr. Leutwein, "have come more and more to the conviction that an extensive terri- tory in Central Africa, bordering both on the Indian Ocean and on the Atlantic, would afford the most favourable conditions for our future colonial activity. This domain would have to include our most important possessions, the Cameroons, East Africa, and the northern half of South- West Africa, and be Amalgamated into a single whole by the addition of the Belgian Congo, together with strips of territory from the British, French, and Portuguese possessions and from British South Africa." Such an Empire would have satisfied most of the aims of the German Colonial School. Without a Mittel-Afrika the dream of Mittel-Europa could hardly have been safely realised. " German East Africa," writes Emil Zimmer- mann, " has shown itself to be the real rampart of nearer Asia. Without adequate flank protection in Africa, Asiatic Turkey cannot survive. Without this protection all the money which we have advanced to Turkey during the War will be lost." Other considerations presented INTRODUCTORY 17 themselves to the same writer. " For our present un- favourable position in the Far East, England, apart from Japan, is chiefly responsible. The principal opponent of our expansion in the Pacific is Australia, but we shall never be able to exercise pressure to Australia from a base in the South Seas. We might very well do so from East Africa. ... If we have a position of strength in Mittel- Afrika mth which India and Australia must reckon, then we can compel both of them to respect our wishes in the South Seas and in Eastern Asia, and we thereby drive the first wedge into the compact front of our opponents in Eastern Asia." Nor does the advantage end there. " German Africa will be a valuable ally for South America against North American aggression. . . . The United States could not permanently thwart our interests in Eastern Asia and the South Seas if a strong German Mittel-Afnka made its influence felt upon developments in South Amorica." The above quotations, though tedious in iteration, suggest some at least of the motive forces which have impelled Germany to the struggle for Welt-macht and thus exercised a powerful if not a dominating influence upon world-politics during the last haH-century. In the policy which such doctrines have inspired, we The have the clearest possible demonstration of the modern J^|°po^^j German spirit, the spirit not of Service but of Power, the doctrine of the State in excelsis. That policy rested fundamentally upon the adoption and exaltation of the ideas of materialism and militarism, or in old-fashioned language upon the deification of Mammon. Mirabeau and Voltaire perceived and proclaimed, as far back as the eighteenth century, that the national industry of Prussia was War ; since 1870 war has become the State-religion of Germany. " War," said Treitschke, " is political science par excellence" Worship of the majesty of the State has in recent years superseded in Germany the service both of God and of man. " The State organised as absolute power responsible to no one, with no duties to its neighbour and mth only nominal duties to a slightly 18 EUROPE AND BEYOND subordinate God, has challenged the soul of man in its dearest possessions." Such, as Sir Walter Raleigh has observed, is the suj^reme delusion in which Germany entangled herself, and from which escape was impossible save through the arbitrament of the sword in which she placed — and vainly placed — her trust. Democracy This book must uecessarily be concerned in the main with the relations of State with State. We must not, however, neglect to notice briefly the principles which have dominated the domestic affairs of the great nations during the period under review. In this sphere, also, it is possible to discern a striking uniformity of development. Domestic poHtics have been largely moulded, during the last half-century, by the oncoming of the principle of democracy. The principle has manifested itself mainly in two directions : political, and social or economic. Politically, power has passed in almost every State from the one or the few to the many ; and the many have naturally attempted to use the power recently acquired for the amelioration of the lives of the most numerous class. Unfortunately, the extension of political power has in most cases outstripped the diffusion of education. Consequently, the many have not always perceived the direction in which their own interests would really guide them. Looking, not unnatur- ally, mth envious eyes upon the wealth which to the superficial observer seems to be concentrated in the hands of the few, the many have sought to use the power now vested in them to secure greater equahty of economic and social conditions. The weapon has often broken in their hands, and the disappointment ensuing upon disillusion- ment has powerfully contributed to the unrest which in almost all the countries of the world has been a marked feature of social hfe. Socialism Other causes have contributed to a Hke result ; and of these some brief account must, later on, be given. Sum- marily, however, it may be said that the doctrine of Macht in international affairs — the exaltation of the majesty of the State — has, in domestic politics, translated itself into the doctrine of State sociaUsm. In this sphere, also, INTRODUCTORY 19 mainly through the influence of Karl Marx, German theory has largely dominated contemporary thought. Having thus analysed, in summary fashion, the main Outline of principles and forces which seem to have determined the 157(^920 current of political affairs during the last half-century, it now remains to make a rough preliminary survey of the country through which we shall have to travel before we reach the goal of the Great War and the subsequent Peace. The first twenty years of our period, extending from (i) The 1870 to 1890, may be fitly described as the age of Bismarck, ^y^^ of Not only in Germany but in Europe, and even beyond the maSc ' confines of Europe, Bismarck's influence was dominant. The supreme object of his pohcy was to conserve and to consolidate the position which he had won for Germany. To this end he sincerely desired the maintenance of peace in Europe ; and peace in his view was most Kkely to be attained by a close accord between the autocratic rulers of the three great States of central and eastern Europe. Hence the Dreikaiserbmid (the league of the three Emperors) formed by him in 1872. The League between the sovereign rulers of Germany, Austria, and Russia rested, however, on no very stable foundation. Between Russia and Austria there was a real antagonism of interests, and between Russia and Germany there was considerable pohtical tension despite the personal affection with which the Czar Alexander II. regarded his venerable uncle, the German Emperor. Even in 1872, at the moment when Bismarck was forming his League of Emperors, the Czar assured President Thiers that France had nothing to fear from such a League. Gortchakoff, the Russian Chancellor, was even more specific in his language : " We are not indifierent to your army or to your reconstruction. On this point Germany has not the right to address any criticism to you. I have said, and I repeat with pleasure, that we need a strong France." Nor, as we shall see, did Russia fail to honour her word to France when the crisis of 1875 arose. If, however, Russia was ahenated 20 EUROPE AND BEYOND from Germany by Bismarck's treatment of France, she was outraged by Bismarck's partiality for Austria as manifested in tbe Treaty of Berlin. Essentially it was tbe clash of Russian and Austrian interests in the Balkans which broke up the Dreikaiserhund. Bismarck had to choose between his two Allies. The result was the forma- tion in 1879 of the dual alliance (Germany and Austria), to which Italy was admitted in 1882 as the third partner, (ii) The A secoud period dates from the fall of Bismarck in 1890, Franco- ^j^^j o^^y perhaps be conveniently ended by the meeting Alliance, of the first Haguc Conference in 1898. The Emperor 1890-98 WilUam II. was, during the first ten years of his reign, hardly less anxious for peace than Bismarck ; but he desired it less for the purpose of conservation than for that of preparation. The domination attained by Germany in Europe was to be extended to other continents. The alarm, inspired by the young Emperor's pohcy, brought his two neighbours, Russia and France, into close alliance, and the gradual consohdation of that alHance gives its special character to the years between 1890 and 1898. 1898 1898 was one of the most critical years of the whole period. It witnessed, on the one hand, the culmination of England's forward pohcy in Egypt and the Sudan ; it brought England and France to the brink of war over the Fashoda crisis ; it witnessed the outbreak of war between the United States and Spain — a war which for the first time involved the United States in world pohtics, and which on that account may be said to have inaugurated a new era in international affairs. Events seemed also to indicate the impending break up of the Chinese Empire, and the beginning of a scramble among the Powers of Western Europe for territorial ascendancy in the Far East. In 1898, Germany occupied Kiaochow ; Russia occupied Port Arthur ; and England, Wei-Hai-Wei. (iii) The A year later (1899) England, after pursuing for more than Entente twenty years a shifting and vacillating pohcy in South 1899-1908 Africa, became involved in a war destined to be decisive against the Dutch Repubhcs. In the same year the rising of the Boxers in China led to the intervention ahke of the INTRODUCTORY 21 great European Powers and of the United States, in the domestic affairs of China. In 1902, Russia signed an im- portant Convention with Persia, and Great Britain con- cluded her Treaty with Japan. Two years later (1904) Russia embarked on a disastrous war with Japan, and was compelled to accept in 1905 the Treaty of Portsmouth. Meanwhile, in Europe, the attitude of Germany became ever more menacing. France became convinced that her old enemy was bent upon her destruction, not merely as a European, but as a Colonial Power. England was reluctantly forced to the adoption of a similar view as regards the attitude of Germany towards herself. France, as we have seen, had already concluded a defensive alhance with Russia, and in 1904 an understanding was arrived at between France and Great Britain. The intrigues of the German Emperor in North Africa ; the dismissal of M. Delcasse, and the proceedings at the Algeciras Conference convinced the least suspicious that trouble was brewing, and in 1907 England concluded the Convention with Russia which inaugurated the Tri'ple Entente. The year 1908 inaugurated the last period of the armed (iv) The peace. The significance of successive events could hardly p^^^ be mistaken, least of all by so close an observer of conti- 1908-12 nental poKtics as King Edward VII., who in the autumn of that year foresaw and foretold the eruption that was to ensue. 1 The storm-centre was in the Balkans. In July, the Young Turk revolution was effected at Con- stantinople ; on 5th October, the Czar Ferdinand renounced the suzerainty of the Porte and proclaimed Bulgarian in- dependence ; on 7th October, Austria tore into fragments the Treaty of Berlin by the annexation of Bosnia and the Herzegovina ; on 12th October, Crete declared itself united with Greece. During the next four years, Europe awaited the bursting (v) The of the storm. The first ominous rumble was heard when, ^/^e"^ in September, 1911, Italy declared war on Turkey and storm, invaded Tripoli. The Tripoli War was brought formally 1912-14 ^ Cf. Lord Redesdale : Memories, i. 178-179 ; see also interview with M. Cambon {Times, 22nd December, 1920). 22 EUROPE ANT) BEYOND 1 to an end by the Treaty of Lausanne (18th October, 1912). Ten days before that Treaty was signed, Montenegro had declared war on Turkey, and before October was out Turkey was involved in war, not only with Montenegro, but with the leagued Balkan States of Serbia, Bulgaria, and Greece. Before this combination, the Ottoman Empire collapsed. An armistice was arranged in De- cember, and during the next four months Diplomacy — in particular British Diplomacy — did its utmost to isolate Balkan politics ; to arrange a compromise between Turkey and her enemies, and, above all, to prevent the conflagra- tion first lighted in the Balkans from spreading to Western Europe. In February, 1913, however, the war of the Balkan League was renewed, and was brought to an end (30th May, 1913) by the Treaty of London. The success of the Balkan States against their traditional enemy had been, however, too rapid and too complete. In June, the Bulgarians made a sudden and most treacherous attack upon their Serbian Allies, and the second Balkan War — the War of Partition— had begun. The Bulgarians went down before the combined attack of Serbs and Greeks. Roumania also threw in her weight against Bulgaria ; the Turks took the opportunity of recapturing Adrianople, and on 10th August, 1913, Peace was signed at Bucharest. Had Italy been mlling to join Austria and Germany in an offensive against Serbia, the great European War would have been antedated by nearly twelve months. Italy, however, refused to recognise the proposed aggres- sion of Austria-Hungary against Serbia as a casus foederis. Consequently, Armageddon was postponed. On 28th June, 1914, however, the Archduke Ferdinand, the heir to the Dual Monarchy, was with his wife assassinated in the Bosnian capital Serajevo. Austria's ultimatum was presented to Serbia on 23rd July, and on 28th July, Austria declared war upon Serbia. Russia had been intimidated by Germany into acquiescence in the Habs- burg aggressions in the Balkans in 1908. It was recog- nised that she could not afiord a second humiliation. Germany consequently declared war upon Russia on INTRODUCTORY 23 1st August, and upon France on 3rd August ; she invaded Belgium on 4th August, and on the same day Great Britain declared war on Germany. The spark which lighted the great conflagration had come, not without significance, from the Balkans. With the Great War and the ensuing Peace, this narrative will end. The Treaty of Versailles (1919) closed an epoch of European, indeed, of world history. It will be for the historian of the future to say whether it opened another. The half-century which opened with the German victory over France closed with the decisive victory of France and her Allies over Germany. The German victory inaugurated a period of perpetual and profound unrest in international affairs ; the victory of the Allies was signalised by the formation of a League among the nations designed to inaugurate a period of peace. The issue of that great experiment is on the knees of the gods. SOME GENERAL BOOKS ON THE PERIOD (Lists of Special Authorities will be appended to the Chapters on which they bear.) The Annual Register, 1870-1919. (London, annual.) P. Albin : Les Grands Traitts Poliiiques. Texts. (Paris.) DifeBiDouR : Histoire Diplomatique de V Europe, vols. iii. and iv.. La Paix Armee. (Paris, 1917.) Lavisse et Rambaud : Histoire Gmerale, vol. xii. (Paris.) J. Holland Rose : The Development of the European Nations. (London.) J. Holland Rose: The Origins of the War. (Cambridge, 1915.) R. MuiR : Nationalism and Internationalism. (London, 1910.) R. Mum: The Expansion of Europe. (London, 1917.) J. A. R. Marriott: The European Co mmomvealth. (Oxford, 1918.) C. Seymour: Diplomatic Background of the War. (Yale, 1916.) C. D. Hazen : Fifty Years of Europe, 1870-1919. (London, 1919.) ATLAS Robertson and Bartholomew : Historical Atlas of Modern Europe. (Oxford, 1915.) CHAPTER II THE NEW GERMANY AND THE NEW FRANCE (1871-75) Political questions are questions of power. — Bismarck. Germany must remain armed to the teeth for fifty years in order to keep what took her six months to win. — Moltke in 1875. La Republique est le Gouvemement qui nous divise le moins. — Thiers. The ^ I ^HE Franco-German War produced results of immense Franco- J significance not merely to the combatants im- Warandits mediately engaged in it, but to Europe at large. It set Results the seal upon the accomplishment of German unity under the hegemony of Prussia ; it facilitated the final act in the romantic drama of Italian unity ; it inflicted upon France humiliation and mutilation ; it gave Russia the opportunity of denouncing some of the most important clauses of the Treaty of Paris (1856) and thus at once to cancel the neutralisation of the Black Sea and to impose upon England a serious diplomatic rebuff ; at the same time it gave England a chance, which was not neglected, of establishing, on a basis more secure than ever, her supremacy in the domain of commerce and finance. It is, however, with the sequelae of the war in Germany and France that this chapter is primarily concerned. The The Germany which emerged from the Franco-German German War Was in literal truth a New Germany. The Napoleonic '^P^^^ Wars had dissolved the Holy Roman Empire, and with it disappeared the older Germany which had subsisted for nearly a thousand years. The new Germany was not 24 THE NEW GERMANY AND THE NEW FRANCE 25 yet born. In 1815, Germany was reconstitued as a loose Confederation of thirty-nine States under the Presidency of the Emperor of Austria. The spirit of nationalism and the spirit of liberalism were, however, beginning to operate in many of the German States. Liberalism made an effort to assert itself in 1830, and in 1848 it co-operated wdth national- ism to secure the meeting of a constituent national assembly at Frankfort, from which there issued the abortive con- stitution of 1849. Frederick William IV. of Prussia dechned an Imperial Crown at the hands of a democratic Assembly, he refused to proclaim himseK " The Serf of the Revolution," or, least of all, " to dissolve Prussia in Germany." Where the votes and parchments of the Frankfort Parliament had failed, Bismarck by blood and iron succeeded. By his statecraft, aided by the military genius of Roon and Moltke, Germany was merged into Prussia. The annexation of the Danish Ducliies ; the attack upon Austria ; the dissolution of the Bund of 1815, and the formation of the North German Confederation under the Presidency of the King of Prussia — these were the preliminary steps towards the achievement of Bismarck's ultimate purpose. Napoleon III. was then lured into a series of diplomatic indiscretions, which effectually isolated France and alienated from her the sympathies of Belgium, of England, and, above all, of the South German States. In 1870, France was provoked into a declaration of war The upon Prussia ; Russia's benevolent neutrality had been q^^^^ secured ; Austria stood aloof ; the South Germans enlisted War under the banners of Prussia ; after a month's decisive campaign Napoleon III. was forced to surrender with 80,000 Frenchmen at Sedan ; the Second Empire fell, and the Third Republic was proclaimed in Paris (4th Septem- ber). The surrender of Napoleon did not, however, end the war. France rallied to the call of the Provisional Government ; Favre declared that he would not " yield an inch of French soil, nor a stone of French fortresses," but on 28th September, Strassburg was compelled to 26 EUROPE AND BEYOND I surrender ; a month later Bazaine delivered the great fortress of Metz, together with 150,000 men and immense war stores, into the hands of the Germans ; and on 28th January, Paris itself, which had been besieged since 20th September, was compelled to capitulate. Thiers, called to supreme power in France, made a desperate effort to mitigate the harshness of the terms which the enemy sought to impose upon his country, but Bismarck and Moltke were inexorable, and preliminaries of peace were signed on 26th February, and were ratified at Frank- fort on 10th May, 1871. By the Treaty of Frankfort, France agreed to cede the whole of Alsace except Belfort and eastern Lorraine, together with the fortresses of Metz and Strassburg. The indemnity was fixed at five milliards of francs, and was to be paid within three years. German troops were to remain in occupation of defined French districts until the indemnity was paid. Bismarck had not gone to war in 1870 for the purpose of acquiring or recovering Alsace-Lorraine. He went to war to complete the unification of Germany, to humihate France as he had already humbled Austria, and by France's humiliation to put the new German Empire in a position of indisputable primacy in continental Europe. The acquisition of Alsace-Lorraine was at once the symbol of France's humiliation and the guarantee of German security. If Metz in German hands meant an open road into France, Strassburg in French hands meant an open door into Germany, and that door France had frequently used. Bismarck was determined to lock the Strassburg door against France ; Moltke was equally determined to keep in German pockets the key of Metz. One great concession Thiers had, however, obtained : the retention by France of the great and commanding fortress of Belfort. He had also got the indemnity reduced from 6,000,000,000 francs to 5,000,000,000, and had induced Bismarck to accept some part of it in securities instead of cash. Bismarck, however, had his eyes from the first fixed on one supreme object, and before the peace with France was signed that object had been achieved. THE NEW GERMANY AND THE NEW FRANCE 2/ In the autumn of 1870 tlie staff of the Willielmstrasse was transferred to Versailles, and there, in the great palace of Louis XIV., the final stages in the building of a stupendous pohtical edifice were completed. Baden was only too anxious to join the North German Con- federation. Bavaria was much more tenacious of its independence, and ultimately came in only on the under- standing that certain rights (Sonderrechte) were to be The Son- strictly reserved to it. The King of Bavaria was still to ^^''''^^^^^^ command his army in time of peace ; Bavaria was to have a permanent place upon those standing committees of the Bundesrat which deal with foreign affairs and the army respectively ; to control its own railway, post, and tele- graphic systems ; to retain its own laws in regard to marriage and citizenship ; and to be exempt from Imperial excise on brandy and beer. Wiirtemberg came in on similar terms, and by November, 1870, the difficult diplo- matic work was done. " The unity of Germany," said Bismarck, " is completed, and with iint Kaiser und Reich."! As to the title of Kaiser there was considerable difference The im- of opinion. Bismarck laid great stress upon the assumption ^VJ^^ of the Imperial title ; he regarded it, indeed, as " a political necessity." Still more did the Crown Prince of Prussia, whose views were even more unitary than those of the Chancellor. The older Prussian nobiUty and the^King himself were, on the contrary, averse from the change. The southern kings would, however, brook no superior. It was agreed, therefore, that the Prussian King should become, not Emperor of Germany or of the Germans, l)ut Kaiser in Deutschland—GeTman Emperor. h. This title King William agreed to accept from his brother sovereigns in Germany,^ and by this title he was acclaimed in the Hall of Mirrors in the Palace of Versailles on 18tli January, 1871. That the final act in the evolution of a 1 Cf. Junon : " La Baviere et I'Empire allemand" {Annalesde VEcole Libre des Sciences politiques, 1892). 2 The offer was actually conveyed in a letter (drafted by Bismarck) from King Ludwig of Bavaria. Kaiser 28 EUROPE AND BEYOND long drama should have been played at Versailles is a fact not lacking in dramatic irony. The Instrument of the new Constitution was laid before the Reichstag on 14th April, 1871, and was formally pro- mulgated on 16th April. It was based upon (i) the Con- stitution, as amended, of the North German Confedera- tion, and (ii) the Treaties of 15th, 23rd, and 25th November between that confederation and the vSouthern States. The Constitution of the North German Confederation was adapted, without difficulty, to the new conditions. The The Kaiser's position was constitutionally a pecuhar one. He was not strictly an hereditary sovereign. He was not indeed " sovereign " at all. Article xi. stated : " The presidency of the union belongs to the King of Prussia who, in this capacity, shall be entitled German Emperor." There was, therefore, no German crown, no German civil-list ; the " sovereignty " was vested in the aggregate of the German governments as represented in the Bundesrat. In the Bundesrat Prussia was all-powerful, and it was through the Bundesrat that the King of Prussia technically exercised his rights as German Emperor. The Emperor enjoyed the threefold position which attached to the President of the North German Confederation : Bundesprasidium, Bundesfeldherr, and King of Prussia ; he represented the Empire in relation to foreign powers and to the constituent States ; he controlled, with the aid of a committee of the Bundesrat, foreign affairs, con- cluded alHances, received foreign envoys, declared war, and made peace ; but for every declaration of an offensive war the consent of the Bundesrat was essential. To him it belonged to summon and adjourn the Legislature and, with the consent of the Bundesrat, to dissolve the Reich- stag, to levy federal execution upon any recalcitrant State, and to promulgate and execute the laws of the Empire . The Exec- The executive was vested in the Emperor and the Chancellor (Reichskanzler) was appointed by him. The Chancellor, though he was the only federal Minister, was assisted in his work by a number of subordinate officials, utive THE NEW GERMANY AND THE NEW FRANCE 29 such as the Foreign and Colonial Secretaries. Bismarck always refused to have a Cabinet. The Chancellor was the sole responsible official of the Empire ; but neither the Bundesrat nor any one else except the Kaiser could get rid [of him.^ As Imperial Chancellor he presided in the Bundesrat, but if he voted it was as the Prussian delegate ; as Chancellor he had no vote. In the Keichstag also he had no seat ; he sat and spoke there as Prussian delegate to the Bundesrat. On its administrative side the Empire, as equipped by the Constitution, was extraorcjinarily weak. For the execution of federal laws it had to depend upon State officials. Only in foreign affairs and in military and naval matters did it exercise efiective control. In legislation, on the other hand, the Empire was all-powerful. The Legislature consisted of (i) the Bundesrat or Imperial The Legis- Council, and (ii) the Reichstag.^ The latter had very ^^^"""'^ little real power. It was elected for five years by universal manhood suffrage. It had a veto on legislation and, constitutionally, the right of initiative. But, as a fact, legislation, including the annual budget, originated as a rule in the Bundesrat. Far more extensive, at any rate on paper, were the The Bund- powers of the Bundesrat. An American commentator described the Bundesrat as '* the central and characteristic organ of the Empire." ^ Like the American Senate, it represented not the people of the Empire, but the States. Unhke the American Senate, however, it represented them unequally. Prussia claimed seventeen votes in her own right ; Bavaria six ; Saxony and Wiirtemberg four each ; Baden and Hesse three ; and the rest of the States one apiece. Its functions were legislative, executive, and judicial. It fixed the Imperial Budget, audited the accounts between the Empire and the States, and supervised the ^ The position of the executive was not legally affected by the Biilow incident of 1908. ^ Whether the Imperial Legislature is technically bi-cameral or uni-cameral is a moot point, for discussion of which cp. Marriott : Second Chambers, pp. 116 seg. * President Woodrow Wilson. 30 EUROPE AND BEYOND collection of customs and revenue generally. It had the power, with the Emperor, of declaring war, of dissolving the Reichstag, and had a voice in the conclusion of treaties and the appointment of judges of the Supreme Court and other officials. In many respects it acted as an administrative court ; it had the right, by issuing ordinances, to remedy defects in legislation ; it acted as Supreme Court of Appeal from the State Courts, and decided points of controversy between State and State, and between the Imperial Government and an individual State. No revision of the Constitution could take place, if fourteen negative votes were cast against the amendment in the Bundesrat. Thus any coiLstitu- tional amendment could be defeated by Prussia alone ; or by the combined vote of the middle States ; or by the vote of the single-member States, acting with tolerable unanimity. The nominal powers of the Bundesrat were, then, enormous : but it was always a debatable point how far the practice corresponded with the theory. The Judi- In the Imperial Judiciary the Bundesrat had an important place. Apart from it there was one great Federal Supreme Court, which was not created until 1877^ — ^the Reichs- gericht. This Court exercised original jurisdiction in cases of treason, and acted as a court of appeal on points of Imperial law from the State Courts. It lacked, however, the supremely important fmiction assigned to the Supreme Court of the United States — the power to decide whether an Act of the Legislature is or is not " constitutional." Such a court is an essential attribute of true federahsm. The German Constitution fell, therefore, in this and other respects very far short of the genuine federal type. In legislation the power of the Central Government was almost unitarian ; in administration it was conspicuously weak. Again, German federahsm was not based upon the equahty of the component States, but presupposed marked inequahty. Finally, no provision was made for an authoritative interpretation of the constitution ex- ternal to and independent of the Legislature. Clary THE NEW GERMANY AND THE NEW FRANCE 31 The truth is, and the events of the next twenty years were to prove it, that Prussia, instead of being, as in 1849 she well might have been, lost in Germany, contrived to absorb all Germany, save the Teutonic portions of the x\ustrian Empire. That in the process much was lost that the world would fain have preserved must be obvious to any one who recalls the characteristic products of the German particularism of the eighteenth century. Yet the Germany of that day lacked something. It possessed no guarantee for permanent pohtical independence. Where was that guarantee to be found ? " The Gordian knot of German circumstance," wTote Bismarck, " could only be cut by the sword. . . . The German's love of Fatherland has need of a prince on whom it can concen- trate its attachment. . . . Dynastic interests are justified in Germany so far as they fit in mth the common national Imperial interests." That final identification was the work of Bismarck, aided by the technical genius of Roon and Moltkc, and supported, though not without wavering, by his honest and simple-minded sovereign. The Constitution of 1871, the main features of which have been summarised in the preceding paragraphs, embodied Bismarck's constructive work. For the next twenty years Bismarck was the foremost Bismarck's figure in the politics not merely of Germany but of Europe, ^^^y"^ That the Emperor William I. chafed at times against the i87i-yo domineering temper of his imperious Chancellor is not to be questioned, but it is equally clear that although he recoiled from the diplomatic methods employed by the Minister, he supported him throughout his reign with unvarying loyalty. And there were moments when Bismarck needed all the support the Emperor could afiord him. Over the army, its chiefs and its administra- tion, he had no control, and even in the Reichstag he encountered from time to time considerable opposition. Not that the government of Germany was in any real sense " parliamentary " ; in Prussia, as Bismarck had said in 1862, the King not only reigns but governs, and after 32 EUROPE AND BEYOND 1871 the aphorism was equally true as applied to Germany. Only to the Emperor was the Chancellor responsible ; and only to the Chancellor were the Mnisters responsible. Cabinet there was none ; the Imperial Secretaries and other departmental " Ministers " were the Chancellor's servants, not his colleagues. This system, considerably modified after 1890, was maintained until Bismarck's fall. But the Mihtary Cabinet, the General Staff, and the War Ministry were wholly independent not only of the Reichstag but of the Chancellor, and many of his legislative projects were largely modified and even defeated by the Reichstag. The Kuiiur- Qf all the domestic difficulties which Bismarck had to ""*^' face, the most obstinate were those which centred round the agelong problem of " Church and State." If it had been found difficult in the Middle Ages to reconcile the claims of the Empire and the Papacy, it was hardly more easy to adjust those of the New German Empire and the New Papacy. The " syllabus " of 1864, followed by the Vatican Council of 1870 and the Decree of Papal infalli- bility, seemed to indicate, on the part of the Roman Church, a renewal of propagandist activity. PoHtical Ultramontanism had lately been gaining ground notably in Austria and in France. The relations between the French Empress and Rome were notoriously close, and the hostihty of the Papacy to the unification of Germany was as intelhgible as it was undoubted. Equally distasteful to Bismarck was the activity of the Roman Church among the Poles of Prussian Poland. Most of all was he incensed by the demand put forward by the ultramontane Bishops in Germany that the dogma of Papal infalhbihty should be taught in the universities and schools. This was to touch to the quick the traditional pohcy of Prussia. The schools were the nurseries of/patriotism ; the higher studies of the uni- versities had long been devoted to the cult of HohenzoUem hegemony. Nor was the contest simply one between Csesarism and Cathohcism. The " Old Cathohcs," led by Dr. Dollinger, one of the greatest of German scholars, were not less reluctant than the Imperialists to accept the Vatican Decrees, or to put liberal education in Germany THE NEW GERMANY AND THE NEW FRANCE 33 under the heel of the hierarchy. Bismarck was no icono- clast, but his poHtical creed excluded the idea of a divided supremacy. " There is," he said, " only one standpoint for Prussia, constitutionally as well as pohtically ; that of the Church's absolute hberty in matters ecclesiastical, and of determined resistance to her every encroachment upon State-rights." In this spirit the legislation known as the " May Laws " was conceived. Between 1872 and 1876 the Jesuits were expelled ; civil marriage was made compulsory ; the Pulpit Paragraph was added to the Imperial Penal Code by which priests were forbidden to interfere officially in political matters ; the Cathohc Bureau in the Ministry of Education was suppressed, and the inspection of schools was withdrawn from the clergy and placed in the hands of State inspectors ; priests were forbidden to abuse ecclesiastical punishments, e.g., excommunication : all ecclesiastical seminaries were placed under State control ; no priest was to hold office in the Church unless he were a German, educated in a German university, and had passed a university examina- tion in history, philosophy, hterature, and classics ; exer- cise of office by unauthorised persons was made punishable by loss of civic rights, and power was given to suspend in any diocese where the bishop was recalcitrant the payment to the Koman Church authorised since 1817. Bismarck announced in a famous phrase that " we will not go to Canossa either in the flesh or in the spirit." But he had miscalculated the strength and determination of his opponents. The Empress and the Court were against him ; the Emperor viewed with dismay the schism which clove Germany into two camps of embittered opponents ; many Protestants resented and disliked the extreme claims for the secular power embodied in " the May Laws " ; the old Conservatives broke away and reproached Bismarck with deserting the principle of a Christian State, and the power of the National Liberals drove many Bismarckians who hated Liberalism and all its works into the arms of the opposition. Most formidable of aU was the stubborn refusal of Roman Catholics to obey the law. They defied 34 EUROPE AND BEYOND the executive, with the result that in 1876 six bishops (including the Cardinal- Archbishop of Posen, Ledochowski, the Archbishop of Cologne, and the Bishop of Trier, were in prison, and 1,300 parishes had no public worship. The Koman CathoHc population, in fact, was in open revolt, and the most drastic pohce measures and the penalties of the Courts failed either to diminish its spirit or to break down its refusal to accept the law as vahd. In the Reichstag the Centre Party, led by Windthorst, the ablest Parliamentarian whom Germany has produced, attacked and opposed the Chancellor, his Ministers, and their measures. In the general election of 1874 the Clericals increased their members in the Reichstag from sixty-three to ninety-one, and polled 1,500,000 votes. A Change Thus by 1878 Bismarck was confronted with a dangerous iSTS^^*^^"^' and a difficult situation. The Conservatives, after a spUt in 1876, had reunited. Bismarck's heart was with them. He was sick of the KulturJcampf which he chose to regard as hopelessly mismanaged by Falk and the National Liberals, and with the intuition which was one of his greatest gifts he divined truly that Liberalism was a spent force. The death of Pio Nono (1878) and the election of Leo XIII. inaugurated a new era at the Vatican. Negotiations were commenced. Bismarck went to Canossa by a devious and slow route, and called it a compromise. Falk resigned, and Puttkamer, a Conservative, took his place. In 1881 the Government was granted a discre- tionary power in the enforcement of the penal legisla- tion ; in 1886 the State examination of priests was given up, as was also the State control of seminaries, while from 1881 onwards a series of arrangements with the Vatican, by which appointments were to be made by agreement between Pope and King-Emperor, brought the struggle to an end. In return, Bismarck obtained a general though not an unvarying support from the Centre Party. Protection Meanwhile Bismarck, having broken with the National SociSism Liberals, had entered on a comprehensive policy of pro- tection and State sociaHsm. The main reasons for this change of policy were three. With 1877 began the epoch THE NEW GERMANY AND THE NEW FRANCE 35 of agricultural depression which hit the agricultural interest, led by Prussian Conservatism, very hard. Pro- tection against the competition of the New World was demanded, and protection of agriculture involved protection of industry. Imperial finance was in sore straits, and three remedies only seemed possible : direct Imperial taxation, which would have met with strenuous resistance ; an increased matricular contribution from the federated States, which would have been very unpopular ; and indirect taxation through an Imperial tariff imposed both for revenue and for protection. Bismarck chose the third because it combined, in his judgment, every advan- tage — ^the line of least resistance, a large and elastic revenue, the alliance of the protected interests, and ample material for political bargains. The growth of Social Democracy inspired the elaborate social legislation which after years of strenuous discussion and criticism resulted in the Acts which provided for compulsory insurance against sickness (1883), insurance against accident in employment (1884), and insurance against old age (1889) in the shape of old-age pensions. By these measures Bismarck intended to fight Social Democracy with its own weapons, and prove that the Empire could do more for the working classes than their parliamentary representatives. By 1890 Social Democracy had become a very formid- Social able political and economic force. ^^"^^^ Bismarck did his best to stamp the movement out in its infancy, but repression served only to stimulate its growth. In 1872 Bebel and Liebknecht — its two repre- sentatives in the Keichstag— were sent to prison for two years. But in 1874 nine Social Democrats were returned ; in 1877 twelve. The attempt on the Emperor's life by Nobiling in 1878 was unjustly attributed to the Socialists, and a ferocious law was passed prohibiting Socialist books, meetings, or unions, and empowering the Bundesrat to proclaim a state of siege in any town, and this law was thrice renewed in 1881, 1886, and 1888. It was rigorously applied ; the whole Socialist organisation was broken up and its members punished, harassed, and ruined by 36 EUROPE AND BEYOND the police — but with the result that in 1881 the Socialist Democrats secured twelve, in 1887 thirty-five, in 1893 forty-four, in 1898 fifty-six, in 1903 eighty-one, and in 1913 one hundred and sixteen seats in the Reichstag. But as long as Bismarck remained in office his supremacy, though spasmodically attacked, was unshaken. Bismarck's Master of the Imperial machine in Germany, Bismarck Ascend- exercised upon European politics an influence greater Europe than that of any ruler since Napoleon I., perhaps since Louis XIV. The principle of his policy during the period before us was simplicity itself : Divide et impera. France, despite the disastrous defeat of 1870-71, was still the enemy ; France, therefore, was to be kept weak at home and isolated in Europe. To attain the former object Bismarck favoured the republican party in France, think- ing, unlike Thiers, that the Republic would divide France most. As for her position in European society the utmost vigilance must be exercised to prevent any rapprochement between France and England (Egypt came handy for this purpose), between France and Italy (Tunis would serve here), most of all between France and Russia. The Drei- A Secondary object of his policy was to prevent any kcnserhund, uudue Cordiality between Vieima and Petersburg, while himself maintaining intimate relations with both. It was an accepted aphorism of Prussian policy that " the wire between Berlin and Petersburg must always be kept open," but to do this without sacrificing the friendship of Austria was a task which demanded all Bismarck's vigilance and skill. The task was, however, facilitated on the one hand by the prudent generosity with which, ever since the Prussian victory at Sadowa, Bismarck had treated Austria ; on the other by the excellent personal relations which the Emperor William had always maintained with the Czar Alexander II., and which he succeeded, after 1871, in establishing with the Emperor Francis Joseph of Austria. In August, 1871, the German Emperor made a ceremonial visit to his brother of Austria at Ischl, which the latter returned in the following year in the Prussian capital. At Berlin, the Czar was also present, with his Chancellor THE NEW GERMANY AND THE NEW FRANCE 37 Gortschcikoff, and there the " league of the three Emperors " was arranged. Bismarck always maintained that "the liaison of the three Emperors, though habitually termed an alliance, rested on no written agreement," and involved no mutual obligations. That there was no written docu- ment is likely enough ; nevertheless the understanding was complete, and it formed the soHd bed-rock of German diplomacy, until it was dissipated by the clash of Russian and Austrian interests in the Balkans. The three Emperors cordially agreed to maintain the territorial status quo as established in 1871 ; to find if possible a solution of the Near Eastern problem mutually acceptable to the three Empires, and above all to suppress in their respective countries the growing power of revolutionary sociaUsm. Such were the terms of the new Holy AUiance, confirmed by annual meetings, between the august Allies at Vienna and Petersburg (1873), at Ischl (1874), and at Berlin in 1875. In the meantime the friendship between Germany and Russia was severely tested by the attitude assumed by the Czar during the " scare " which threatened a renewal of war between France and Germany in the spring of 1875. Before proceeding to examine this significant episode it will be convenient to recapitulate events in France since the conclusion of the Treaty of Frankfort. The debacle at Sedan (2nd September) was immedi- France ately followed by the outbreak of revolution in Paris ; ^^^ -^^^^ the Empire collapsed like a pack of cards ; the Empress- Regent appealed to M. Thiers to save the dynasty, but Thiers was more intent on saving France, and promptly set ofi on a tour to the neutral courts in a vain effort to obtain succour for his unhappy country ; the Empress fled with the Prince Imperial to England, and the Re- public was again proclaimed in France (4th September). A " Government of National Defence," hastily set up under Jules Favre, Gambetta, and General Trochu, Governor of Paris, made an heroic effort to restore the national morale and to avert the worst consequences of a crushing military disaster; but the effort was vain, and Commune 38 EUROPE AND BEYOND France was compelled to accept the terms dictated by the conqueror. The By the Treaty of Frankfort France was humiliated and dismembered but she was not crushed. With hardly an instant's delay her thrifty and patriotic citizens set their hands to the task of staunching the wounds inflicted by the enemy and rebuilding the body politic. But her cup of agony was not yet full. Before the preliminaries of peace were ratified an insurrectionary movement broke out in Paris ; the Provisional Government withdrew to Versailles, and Paris was handed over to the tender mercies of the Commune. A curious situation ensued. The German flag still waved over St. Denis ; the tricolour of the Republic over Versailles ; the red flag of the Com- mune over Paris. The Government was compelled there- fore to reconquer its o'wn capital ; for six weeks Paris was, for the second time, besieged, and w^hen the Republican troops at last forced an entry (21st May) they found the devoted city in ruins and ablaze. Fierce fighting followed in the streets, but at last order was restored ; 10,000 persons were imprisoned or exiled, and perhaps 30,000 in aU were slain, though it is difficult to arrive ^'at precise estimates. Nor is it easy to determine the exact character of the insurrection thus successfully suppressed. It was partly patriotic^ — a demonstration against those who would surrender the soil of France to the enemy ; partly anarchical — " the first attempt " (in the words of an apologist) " of the proletariat to govern itself." ^ What- ever the motive which inspired the movement, it could not fail to weaken and embarrass France at a critical juncture of her fortunes. GraduaUy, however, order was restored in Paris, though it was full four years before the Republic was definitely established. The losses in men and money which external war and internal strife inflicted upon France were enormous : 1,597,000 citizens were transferred from the French to ^ For the Commune, c/. E. Lepelletier : Histoire de la Commune (2 vols., 1911-12), or History of the. Commune of 1871 by Lissagaray (Eng. trans. E. M. Aveling, 1886). The latter an uncritical apologetic. THE NEW GERMANY AND THE NEW FRANCE 39 the German flag; 491,000 persons were killed in the war and the Commune ; while the loss in money is reckoned at £614,000,000.1 The rapidity with which France repaired this havoc The was marvellous. The enthusiasm and energy of Thiers, f^^r^^^^ now a veteran of seventy-four, infected the whole nation. Nominated as Head of the National Executive in February, 1871, Thiers in August exchanged the title for that of President of the Republic. This was a broad hint to the Monarchists and Imperialists who, could they have com- posed their domestic differences, would have found little difficulty at this time of re-estabUshing in some form a monarchical regime. Between the Legitimists, the Orleanists, and the Bonapartists feeling still, however, ran high. The National Assembly, elected during the war, was predominantly monarchical and, in July, 1871, re- pealed by a large majority the laws which condemned to exile the Bourbon and Oiieanist princes. In the same summer an effort was made to effect a reconciliation between the Comte de Chambord, as representing the elder, and the Comte de Paris, who represented the younger, line. But nothing came of it. The country proved itself decidedly more republican than its elected representatives. In the bye-elections of July, 1871, the Republicans captured 100 seats out of 111, and of the candidates elected in the Departmental elections (October) two-thirds were of the same persuasion. Thiers, therefore, with his superb instinct for politics, moved, though very slowly, towards the Left, and with the help of men like Casimir-Perier and Remusat was able to form gradually a Left Centre Party pledged to the support of a Government " which though republican in form was conservative in policy." Such a Government could most effectively carry through the immediate task of recupera- tion — political, financial, military, social, and commercial. In the short space of four years that task was accom- Thiers and pHshed. The German indemnity was paid off by instal- ^^ ^ ments, and with each payment the area of occupation ^ Hanotaux : Contemporary France, i. 323-27. 40 EUROPE AND BEYOND was reduced. A loan of £80,000,000 issued in June, 1871, was covered two and a half times; a second, for £120,000,000, in July, 1872, was covered twelve times. By the autumn of 1873 not a German soldier remained on French soil, and Thiers was deservedly acclaimed as " The Liberator of the Patrie.^^ Financial equilibrium was re- stored by fresh taxation, mostly indirect. Meanwhile, by the Constitutional Laws of August and September, 1871, a Provisional Constitution was estabhshed ; executive power was vested in a President of the Republic, who was to appoint and dismiss the Ministers, but the latter, Hke the President himself, were to be " responsible " to the Assembly which was to sit at Versailles. Local Government was reorganised by the Municipal Act of 1871 — a skilful compromise which kept the larger towns under Prefets appointed from Paris, while permitting the democratic luxury of election to the smaller communes. The new frontier was re-fortified, and in 1872 compulsory miUtary service, on the Prussian model, was introduced. Presidency The Services rendered to France by Thiers were, indeed, Mahon' beyond computation ; yet his power rested on a danger- 1873-79 ously narrow base. Confronted, on the one hand, by the Monarchists, numerous though divided ; attacked on the other, by the extreme Repubhcans who, lacking numbers, found in Gambetta a leader of brilliant parts and proud patriotism, Thiers with difficulty maintained his position until May, 1873. Defeated in the Assembly on a vote of confidence, Thiers, instead of dismissing his Ministers, preferred to resign the Presidency, and Marshal MacMahon, an avowed Royalist, was elected in his stead. Thiers had always refused to accept the principle of ministerial responsibility on the ground that " though it was perfectly consistent with the dignity of a constitutional king, it was for him, a httle bourgeois, entirely out of the question." Conformably with this view of his position, he accepted his dismissal at the hands of the Assembly. MacMahon appointed a Ministry representative of all the monarchical parties under the leadership of the Due de BrogKe, and frantic efforts were made to consolidate THE NEW GERMANY AND THE NEW FRANCE 41 the mouarchical forces. But in vain. The Comte de Chambord, being childless, did indeed recognise the Comte de Paris as heir-presumptive in return for a promise of Orleanist support to the Legitimist claims during his own lifetime (August, 1873) ; but there was no real reconciliation. Still there is little doubt that if " Henri V." could have been persuaded to acknowledge the tricolour, the monarchy would have been restored. How long it would have lasted is another question. The obstinacy of " Henri V." forbade the experiment ; he preferred the " White Flag " to the throne of France. In May, 1874, Broghe's Ministry was defeated owing to monarchical dissensions, and the Republicans, encouraged by a series of consistently favourable bye-elections, felt themselves strong enough to demand revision, and on 30th January, 1875, the principle of a Repubhc (though only by a majority of one) was definitively accepted by the Assembly. A series of organic laws, passed in the course of 1875, The Consti- defined the Repubhcan Constitution under which, with ^gj^ ^ °^ some few and unimportant modifications, France is still governed. The President is elected for a term of seven years by a (a) The National Assembly, and is a " constitutional " chief of Executive the State. As M. Raymond Poincare writes : " The President presides, but does not govern ; he can form no decision save in agreement with his Ivlinisters ; and the responsibihty is theirs. . . . The President, therefore, exercises no power alone." ^ Sir Henry Maine declared, with some exaggeration, that there was no hving function- ary who occupied a more pitiable position than a French President. It is true that he neither reigns nor governs, but his position plainly depends largely on his personaUty ; and many French Presidents, not excluding M. Poincare himself, have played not merely a dignified but an im- portant part in the pubHc hfe of France. The President is " responsible " only in case of high treason, and acts invariably on the advice of Ministers responsible to the Legislature. ^ How France is Governed (Eng. trans.), p. 173. 42 EUROPE AND BEYOND (b) The The Legislature consists of two Houses : a Seriate and Legislature ^ Chamber of Deputies. Together they form the National Assembly by which the President is elected and the Constitution revised. The Senate contains 300 (now ^ 317) members. Of the original 300 Senators 75 were elected for hfe by the National Assembly and the remaining 225 for nine years by electoral colleges in the Departments and Colonies. The Chamber, comprising 610 members, is elected for four years, virtually by manhood suffrage. The President can dissolve the Chamber before the expira- tion of its legal term only with the concurrence of the Senate. The prerogative thus attaching to the Senate is plainly one of great importance, since it gives it great influence over the Executive. Only by its leave can the Executive make a special appeal to the electorate. The Constitution thus defined has stood the testjof experience with singular success, only five amendments of any importance having been carried in forty-five years. In 1883, the Republican form of Government was declared to be fundamental and not subject to revision ; in 1884, the principle of Life-Senatorships was denounced, the places of the Life-Senators being filled, as vacancies occur, by indirect election ; in 1886, members of famihes which have reigned in France were declared ineligible for the Presidency of the Republic ; in 1889, single districts were re-established for the election of deputies, and multiple candidatures were prohibited ; in 1919 the scrutin de liste with proportional representation was again restored. In December, 1875, the National Assembly was finally dissolved, and the elections of 1876 gave to the Republicans an overwhelming majority in the Chamber and a large party in the Senate. The Third Repubhc was estabhshed. The Constitution of 1875 as a whole represented a compromise between the Conservative majority, who were too divided to procure the restoration of any form of monarchy, and the Repubhcan minority. They combined to draft a simple form of Constitution which neither party imagined would be other than temporary. Both the ex- 1 1920. THE NEW GERMANY AND THE NEW FRANCE 43 treme parties have been disappointed in their expecta- tions : the Constitution of 1875 has already lasted more than twice as long as any Constitution in France since the outbreak of the Revolution in 1789. Bismarck watched the rapid recuperation of France Bismarck with astonishment and chagrin. The indemnity which ^^^^^ was intended to cripple France for a generation was paid ofi in two years, and the payment inflicted less harm upon France than upon Germany. The acquisition of Alsace and Lorraine opened the French frontier to Grerman attack and contributed immensely to the industrial prosperity of Germany. But would France permanently acquiesce in the loss of these Provinces ? Would the inhabitants permanently accept the harsh German rule ? What might not happen if the recovery of France should proceed with the same rapidity as it had exhibited in the half-decade since the debacle ? France could do little without allies ; but might she not get them ? A day must come when Germany would have to choose between the friendship of Austria and that of Russia. If she chose Austria, would not Russia be flung into the arms of France ? And England ? England, in 1874, abjured the domina- tion of the Manchester School, and the old aristocracy in aUiance with the newly enfranchised artisans placed the Conservatives in power for the first time since 1830. Under Disraeli England might emerge from her splendid isolation, and again take a hand in continental diplomacy. Under these circumstances might it not be the msest The pohcy for Germany to attack France before her strength ^ is??'^^ was removed, and while she was still isolated in Europe ? This time, if fortune favoured German arms, France should be " bled white " ; the " French mortgage " should be once for all cleared ofi. France had indeed given no sort of pretext for attack ; she had more than punctually dis- charged all her obligations, and had wisely heeded Gam- betta's warning : "to think of Ravanche always, and never to speak of it." Despite this, there is little doubt that Bismarck in the winter of 1874-75 tried to pick a quarrel with France. His own master confided to Prince 44 EUROPE AND BEYOND ^ Huhenlohe : " I do not wish war with France . . . but I fear that Bismarck may drag me into it little by little." " Bismarck," wrote Lord Odo Russell from Berlin to Lord Derby, "is at his old tricks again." On 15th April, 1875, there appeared in the Berlin Post an article, obviously inspired: " Krieg in sicht ? " On 4th May the Due Decazes, the French Premier, informed de Blowitz, the Times correspondent in Paris, that Germany intended to " bleed France white," to demand from her a fine of ten milliards of francs (about £400,000,000), payable in twenty instalments, and to keep an army of occupation in her eastern Departments until the fine was paid. Similar reports appear to have reached the Czar Alexander in St. Petersburg and to have been privately transmitted to Queen Victoria by her daughters in Berlin and Darmstadt. The Queen wrote to Alexander begging him to use his influence with the Emperor to avert war, and the Czar, accompanied by Gortschakoff, hurried to Berlin. In June the Queen wrote a personal letter to the German Emperor offering her mediation. The Emperor assured her in reply that her fears were groundless. It was true. Bismarck had been outplayed by Decazes and Gortschakoff at his own game. The scare was over. Hardly, however, had the fear of renewed war in Western Europe been averted, when the rumblings of a coming storm began to be heard in the Near East. The rumblings deepened, and for the next three years the centre of political interest shifted from Berlin and Paris to Constantinople. The Eastern Question was reopened. AUTHORITIES A. L. Lowell : Governments and Parties in Continental Europe. (London, 1896.) DoDD : Modern Constitutions, with texta in l^nglieh. (Chicago, 1909.) C. G. Robertson : Bismarck. (London, 1918.) Lanessan : L' Empire germanique sous Bismarck et Guillaume II. Marriott and Robertson : Evolution of Prussia. (Oxford, 1915.) W. H. Dawson: The Evolution of Modern Germany. (London, 1911.) M. Lenz : Geschichte Bismarcks. P. Matter : Bismarck et son temps (3 volumes). H. Blum: Das Deutsche Reich ziir Zeit Bismarcks. THE NEW GERMANY AND THE NEW FRANCE 45 W. Oncken : Das Zeitalter des Kaisers Wilhelm. M. BuscH : Bismarck : Some Secret Pages of his History (3 vols., London, 1898), and other works. F. CuRTius (ed.) : The Memoirs of Prince Hohenlohe (Eng. trans., G. W. Chrystal). (2 vols., London, 1906.) Bismarck : Reflections and Reminiscences (trans, by A. J. Butler). (London, 1898.) FiTZMAXJRiCE : Life of the Second Earl Granville. (London, 1905.) E. Bourgeois: Modern France (1815-1914). (2 vols., Cambridge, 1919.) Hanotaux : Hist, de la France contemporaine. (Paris, 1904.) Blowitz : Memoirs. (London, 1903.) Thiers : Notes et Souvenirs. CHAPTER 111 THE EASTERN QUESTION (1875-98) Russia and Turkey. The Balkan States Amongst the great problems of our age none is more fitted to occupy the thoughts, not only of the professional statesman but of every keen- sighted indivividual who takes an interest in politics, than the so-called Eastern Question. It is the pivot upon which the general politics of the century now drawing to an end are turning, and it will be so for the coming century also. ... It is not a question which has disturbed the peace of Europe only yesterday: it is not even a production of this century. It has exercised a powerful influence upon the course of the world's history for about five hundred years. — J. I. Von Dollingee, Tout contribue k developper entre ces deux pays I'antagonisme et la haine. Les Russes ont recur leur foi de Byzance, c'est leur metropole, et les Turcs la souillent de leur presence. Les Turcs oppriment les coreligionnaires des Russes, et chaque Russe considere comme une oeuvre de foi la delivrance de ses freres. Les passions populaires s'accordent ici avec les conseils de la politique : c'est vers la mer Noire, vers le Danube, vers Constantinople que les souverains russes sont naturellement portes a s'etendre : delivrer et conquerir deviennent pour eux synonymes. Les tsars ont cette rare fortune que I'instinct national soutient leurs calculs d'ambition, et qu'ils peuvent retourner contre I'empire Ottoman ce fanatisme religieux qui a precipite les Turcs sur r Europe et rendait naguere leurs invasions si formidables. — Sorel. The Christian East has had enough of Turkish misrule. . . . High diplomacy will never solve the Eastern Question ; it can be solved only in the East, in the theatre of war, with the co-operation of the peoples directly concerned. — Prince Carol of Roumania. These newly emancipated races want to breathe free air, and not through Russian nostrils. — Sir William White, 1885. The ^T^HE quotations prefixed to tliis chapter may serve Eastern J^ ^q indicate in rough fashion the many-sided complexity of " that shifting, intractable, and interwoven tangle of conflicting interests, rival peoples, and antagonistic 46 THE EASTERN QUESTION (1875-98) 47 faiths that is veiled under the easy name of the Eastern Question." ^ That question has, in one form or another, been perplexing Europe for more than five hundred years. It is only with its latest phases that this book is concerned, but to render those phases intelligible a brief retrospect is not merely permissible, but essential. The root of the problem is to be found in the presence. Origins embedded in the living flesh of Europe, of an alien substance problem — ^the Ottoman Turk. Akin to the European family neither in creed, in race, in language, in social custom, nor in political aptitudes and traditions, the Ottomans have long presented to the European Powers a problem, now tragic, now comic, now bordering on burlesque, but always baffling and paradoxical. How to deal with this alien substance has been for five hundred years the essence and core of the Problem of the Near East. Crossing the Hellespont into Europe in the middle of Advance the fourteenth century, the Turks, in the course of two ottoman hundred years, made themselves masters of all the lands Turks bordering on the Eastern Mediterranean. Adrianople was snatched from the feeble hands of the Byzantine Empire in 1361 ; the historic victory at Kossovo (1389) meant at once the dissolution of a great Slavonic combina- tion and the overthrow of the Serbian Empire ; the de- struction of Tirnovo in 1393 marked the extinction of Bulgarian independence ; finally, in 1453, the Imperial capital surrendered to the Turks ; and Constantinople, with all that it meant to Europe in commerce, in communica- tions, and in ecclesiastical sentiment was in the hands of the Infidel. For two hundred and fifty years after the capture of Constantinople the Turks were a terror to Christian Europe, but towards the end of the seventeenth century the problem changed. The decrepitude of the Turks was manifest to all men, and the rapid decline of Their their power presented to Europe a problem almost as ^^^ ^"^ baffling as their marvellous rise. Ever since the early years of the eighteenth century, Europe has been haunted by the apprehension of the consequences likely to ensue * Lord Morley. 48 EUROPE ANT) BEYOND upon the demise of the " sick man," and the subsequent disposition of his heritage. The first claimant was Russia, and from 1702 to 1820 the Eastern Question largely turned upon the relations of Russia and Turkey. United to many of the subjects of the Sultan by ties of religion and of race, the Russian Sovereigns made rapid progress in the course of the eighteenth century towards the domination of the Black Sea. Their obvious goal, if not Constantinople itself, was the command of the Bosphorus and the Dardanelles. When Peter the Great took up the reins of government in 1689, Russia had little claim to be regarded as a European power. She had access neither to the Baltic nor to the Black Sea. The foundation of St. Petersburg secured the one, the conquest of Azov (1696) opened the door to the other. Temporarily lost in 1711, Azov was finally secured by Russia by the Treaty of Belgrade (1739). By the same Treaty the Russians were permitted to trade on the Sea of Azov and the Black Sea, provided, however, that all their goods were carried in Turkish vessels. The Empress, Catherine II., carried on the work begun by Peter the Great. At the bidding of France, whose diplo- macy had for nearly two hundred years been dominant at Constantinople, the Turks attacked Russia in 1768, and brought upon themselves a crushing defeat which was signalised by the conclusion of the Treaty of Kutschuk- Kainardji. By that famous Treaty, Russia obtained a firm grip upon the northern shores of the Black Sea ; the right to estabhsh Consuls and Vice-Consuls wherever she might think fit ; free commercial navigation on the Black Sea, and a strong diplomatic footing in Constantinople itself. The Crimea was annexed by Catherine in 1782, and ten years later the Russian frontier was advanced to the Dniester, an advance which gave Russia the great fortress of Oczakov. Thus, by the close of the ^century, Russia was firmly entrenched upon the shores of the Euxine and was already beginning to look beyond them. " I came to Russia," said Catherine, " a poor girl. Russia has THE EASTERN QUESTION (1875-98) 49 dowered me riclily, but I have paid her back with Azov, the Crimea, and the Ukraine." Proudly spoken, it was less than the truth. The next phase of the Eastern Question was dominated Napoleon by Napoleon. He it was who first directed the attention N^elr^^E^st of the French people to the high significance of the problem of the Near East. The acquisition of the Ionian Isles, the expedition to Egypt and Syria, the grandiose schemes for an attack on Buddhist India, the agreement with the Czar Alexander for a partition of the Ottoman Empire — all combined to stir the imagination aUke of traders and diplomatists in France. And not in France only. If Napoleon was a great educator of the French, hardly less was he an educator of the English. Hitherto the Enghsh had been curiously careless as to the fate of the Near East. Napoleon was quick to perceive where their vital interests lay. " Really to conquer England," said Napoleon, " we must make ourselves masters of Egypt." His schemes failed, but the attempt opened the eyes of the Enghsh, though it was not until the Greek insurrection of 1821 that the English Foreign Office or the Enghsh pubhc began to take a sustained interest in the development of events in South-Eastern Europe. With the Greek insurrection the Eastern Question enters The Greek on an entirely new phase. Hitherto, it had meant the Jion"^J82i relations of the dominant Turks with the Habsburgs, with Venice, with France, and with Russia. Of the submerged and conquered peoples of the Balkans, Europe had taken no heed. In the course of the nineteenth century, how- ever, the Eastern Question was largely concerned with the re-emergence of these conquered peoples — Greeks, Serbs, Bulgarians, and Roumanians. Greece led the way. In 1832 the Greeks succeeded, thanks in large measure to the cordial sympathy of England and France, and in even larger measure to the renewal of war between Russia and the Porte, in estabhshing themselves as an inde- pendent kingdom. In that same year the Sultan appealed to the Powers Mehemet against his own overmighty vassal, Mehemet AH, the ^^ 4 50 EUROrE AND BEYOND Pasha of Egypt. Rewarded for services rendered to his Suzerain during the Greek revolt by the island of Crete, this brilUant Albanian adventurer began to conceive a larger ambition. He aspired to an independent rule in Egypt, to the Pashalik of Syria, perhaps to the lordship of Constantinople itself. The attempt to realise these ambitions kept Europe in a state of almost continuous unrest for ten years (1831-41). Treaty of To save himseH from Mehemet AH, the SuHan appealed skSessi ^^ ^^® Powers. Russia alone responded to the appeal, 1833 ' and in return for her services imposed upon the Porte the humiliating Treaty of Unkiar-Skelessi (1833). By that Treaty Russia became virtually mistress of the Bosphorus and the Dardanelles. The Sultan undertook, while per- mitting free egress to the Russian Fleet, to close the straits to the ships of war of all nations. The Black Sea had become to all intents and purposes a Russian Lake, and the key of the narrow straits had passed into Russian keeping. England The triumph of Russia aroused the jealous interest of Rifssia England. For the first time England became seriously alarmed by Russian progress in South-Eastern Europe ; and for the next half-century the problem of the Near East revolved round the antagonism of these two Powers. The Czar Nicholas of Russia made more than one effort to bring about an accommodation with England, but he failed to dispel the mistrust with which the designs of Russia had come to be regarded in this country. The The first result of this failure was the Crimean War. Wa"^^" The significance of that war has been very variously estimated. Sir Robert Morier described it as " the only perfectly useless modern war that has been waged." Lord Cromer, on the other hand, maintained that if it had not been " for the Crimean AVar and the pohcy subsequently adopted by Lord Beaconsfield's government, the inde- pendence of the Balkan States would never have been achieved, and the Russians would now be in possession of Constantinople." Be that as it may, this much, at any rate, is certain : the Crimean War, for good or evil, THE EASTERN QUESTION (1875-98) 51 registered a definite set-back to the policy of Russia in the Near East. It also gave the Sultan an opportunity to put his house in order had he been minded to do so. For twenty years he was reheved of all anxiety on the side of Russia. The event proved that the Sultan's zeal for reform was in direct ratio to his anxiety for self-preserva- tion. To reheve him from the one was to remove the only incentive to the other. Consequently httle or nothing was done to amehorate the lot of the subject populations, and towards the end of the nineteenth century those populations began to take matters into their own hands. Crete, " the Great Greek Island," had been indeed in a state of perpetual revolt ever since in 1840 it had been replaced under the direct government of the Sultan. In 1875 the unrest spread to the Peninsula, and the whole Eastern Question was again reopened by the outbreak of insurrection among the peoples of Bosnia and the Herze- govina. Thence it spread to their kinsmen in Serbia and Montenegro. How far this insurrection was spontaneous, how far it The was stimulated from St. Petersburg, is a question which it f^^^c- is not easy to decide. Plainly, Russia was not sorry to tion, 1875 have the opportunity of fishing again in troubled waters. It had been obvious for some time past that the Czar Alexander did not intend to accept as final the results of the Crimean War. He had, as we have seen, taken ad- vantage in 1870 of the preoccupation of Europe to de- nounce, with the connivance of Bismarck, those clauses of the Treaty of Paris which decreed the neutrality of the Black Sea. That neutrality Disraeh declared to be " the very basis and gist of the Treaty of Paris." The rising of the Southern Slavs in 1875 gave the Czar a still larger opportunity. Turkish misgovernment in the European provinces had Turkish become a crying scandal. The subject peoples groaned JJe?t°^^™" under the oppressiveness and uncertainty of a fiscal system which nevertheless ruined the Treasury, for it is one of the salutary paradoxes incidental to misgovernment that it is as ruinous to the sovereign as it is hurtful to the subject. 52 EUROPE AND BEYOND The inherent extravagance of a bad system combined with the peculation of an army of officials to bring disaster upon Turkey, and in October, 1875, the Sultan was compelled to inform his creditors that he could not pay the full interest on the debt. Partial repudiation complicated an international situation already suflS.ciently embarrassing. The three Emperors took counsel together, and on 30th December, 1875, the Austrian Chancellor, Count Andrassy, issued from Budapest the Note which bears his name. The The Andrassy Note expressed the anxiety of the Powers Noi^^^ to curtail the area of the insurrection, and to maintain the peace of Europe ; it drew attention to the failure of the Porte to carry out reforms long overdue, and it insisted that pressure must be put upon the Sultan effectually to redeem his promises. In particular, he must be pressed to grant complete religious liberty ; to abolish tax farming ; to apply the direct taxes, locally levied in Bosnia and Herzegovina, to the local needs of those Pro- vinces ; to improve the condition of the rural population by multiplpng peasant owners, and above all to appoint a special commission, composed in equal numbers of Mussul- mans and Christians, to control the execution not only of the reforms now demanded by the Powers, but also of those spontaneously promised by the Sultan in the decrees of 2nd October and 12th December. To this Note the British Government gave in their general adhesion, though they pointed out that the Sultan had, during the last few months, promised the more important of the reforms in- dicated therein. The Note was accordingly presented to the Porte at the end of January, 1876, and the Sultan, with almost suspicious promptitude, accepted four out of the five points — ^the exception being the application of the direct taxes to local objects. The friendly efforts of the diplomatists were foiled, however, by the attitude of the insurgents. The latter refused, not unnaturally, to be satisfied with mere assur- ances, or to lay down their arms without substantial guarantees. The Sultan insisted again, not without THE EASTERN QUESTION (1875-98) 53 reason, that it was impossible to initiate a scheme of reform while the Pro\ances were actually in armed rebellion. Meanwliile, the mischief was spreading. Bulgaria broke out into revolt in April ; on 7th May a fanatical Muham- madan emeute at Salonika led to the murder of the French and German Consuls ; the Sultan Abdul Aziz was deposed on 30th May, and on 4th June was found dead, " having apparently committed suicide." More drastic measures were obviously necessary, if a great European conflagra- tion was to be avoided. On 1 1th May the Austrian and Russian Chancellors were The Berlin in conference with Prince Bismarck at Berlin, and deter- ^emoran- mined to make further and more peremptory demands upon the Sultan. There was to be an immediate armistice of two months' duration, during which certain measures of pacification and repatriation were to be executed under the superintendence of the delegates of the Powers. If by the expiry of the armistice the object of the Powers had not been attained, diplomatic action would have to be rein- forced. France and Italy assented to the Note, but the British Government regarded the terms as unduly peremp- tory ; they resented the independent action of the three Imperial Powers, and declined to be a party to the Memorandum. Accordingly the proposed intervention was abandoned. Mr. Disraeli's refusal created, as was inevitable, pro- Attitude of found perturbation abroad, and evoked a storm of criticism J^^ q^' at home. There can be no question that the European emment Concert, whatever it was worth, was broken by the policy of Great Britain. Had the British Cabinet gone whole- heartedly with the other Powers, irresistible pressure would have been put upon the Porte, and some terrible atrocities might, perhaps, have been averted. On the other hand, it is clear that the Imperial Chancellors were guilty, to say the least, of grave discourtesy towards Great Britain ; nor can it be denied that, assuming a sincere desire for the preservation of peace, they committed an inexcusable blunder in not inviting the co-operation of England before formulating the demands of the Berlin Memorandum. 54 EUROPE AND BEYOND Spread of Events were in the meantime moving rapidly in the i^u??ic-^ Balkans. On 30th June, 1876, Serbia formally declared tion war upon the Porte, and on 1st July Prince Nicholas of Montenegro followed the example. Nor was the insurrec- tion confined to Slavs of the purest blood. On 1st May some of the Bulgarian Christians, imitating the peasants of the Herzegovina, defied the orders of the Turkish officials, and put one hundred of them to death. This was a serious matter. The Herzegovina was relatively remote, but now the spirit of insubordination seemed to be in- fecting the heart of the Empire. The Porte, already engaged in war with Serbia and Montenegro, was terrified at the idea of an attack upon the right flank of its army, and determined upon a prompt and terrible suppression of the Bulgarian revolt. A force of 18,000 regulars was marched into Bulgaria, and hordes of irregulars, Bashi- Bazouks, and Circassians were let loose to wreak the vengeance of the Sultan upon a peasantry unprepared for resistance and mostly unarmed. Whole villages were wiped out, and in the town of Batak only 2,000 out of 7,000 inhabitants escaped massacre. Bulgarian On 23rd June a London newspaper published the first account of the horrors alleged to have been perpetrated by the Turks in Bulgaria. How much of exaggeration there was in the tale of atrocities with which England and the world soon rang it was and is impossible to say. But something much less than the ascertained facts would be sufficient to account for the profound emotion which moved the whole Christian world. Turco-Serb Meanwhile another compKcation had arisen. At the end of June, Serbia and Montenegro, as we have seen, had declared war upon the Porte. How far would that conflict extend ? Could it be confined within the original limits ? The Serbian Army consisted largely of Russian volunteers and was commanded by a Russian general. How long would it be before the Russian Government became a party to the quarrel ? The Serbian Army, even reinforced jby the volunteers, could ofier but a feeble resistance to the Turk, and in August Prince Milan, acting on a hint Atrocities War THE EASTERN QUESTION (1875-98) 55 from England, asked for the mediation of tlie Powers.^ England, thereupon, urged the Sultan to come to terms with Serbia and Montenegro, lest a worse thing should befall him. The Sultan declined an armistice, but formu- lated his terms, and intimated that if the Powers approved them he would grant an immediate suspension of hostilities. But Serbia would accept nothing less than an armistice, and, after six weeks' suspension, hostilities recommenced. Nevertheless, the English Government was untiring in its efforts to promote a pacification, and suggested to the Powers some heads of proposals (21st September) : the status quo in Serbia and Montenegro ; local or administra- tive autonomy for Bosnia and Herzegovina ; guarantees against maladministration in Bulgaria, and a comprehensive scheme of reform, all to be embodied in a protocol concluded between the Porte and the Powers. Russia then proposed (26th September) that, in the event of a refusal from Turkey, the allied fleets should enter the Bosphorus, that Bosnia should be temporarily occupied by Austria, and Bulgaria by Russia. Turkey, thereupon, renewed her dilatory tactics, but Russia's patience was almost ex- hausted ; General Ignatieff arrived at Constantinople, on a special mission from the Czar, on 15th October, and on the 30th presented his ultimatum. If an armistice were not concluded with Serbia within forty-eight hours, the Russian Embassy was to be immediately withdrawn. On 2nd November the Porte gave way ; Serbia was saved ; a breathing-space was permitted to the operations of diplomacy. The interval was utilised by the meeting of a Conference Conference of the Powers at Constantinople. The Powers agreed to ^f^^p^**"' the terms suggested by Lord Derby in September, but the pec. isTO Sultan, though prodigal in the concession of reforms, on paper, was determined that no one but himself should have a hand in executing them. On this point he was inexorable. Thereupon General Ignatieff, refusing to take further part in a solenm farce, withdrew from the Con- ference. The Czar had already (10th November) announced I Turkey, 1877 (No. 1), p. 380. 56 EUROPE AND BEYOND his intention to proceed single-handed if the Porte refused the demands of the Powers ; his army was already mobilised on the Pruth, and war appeared imminent. The diplomatists, however, made one more effort to avert it. Their demands were reduced to a minimum : putting aside an extension of territory for Serbia or Monte- negro, they insisted upon the concession of autonomy to Bosnia, to the Herzegovina, and to Bulgaria, under the control of an international commission. On 20th January the Sultan categorically refused, and on the 21st the Con- ference broke up. Great Britain, nevertheless, persisted in her effoi-ts to preserve peace, and on 31st March, 1877, the Powers signed in London a protocol proposed by Count Schouvaloff. The Turk, in high dudgeon, rejected the London Protocol (10th April), and on 14th April the Czar, having secured the friendly neutrality of Austria,^ declared war. Russia had behaved, in face of prolonged provocation, with commendable patience and restraint, and had shown a genuine desire to maintain the European Concert. The Turk had exhibited throughout his usual mixture of shrewdness and obstinacy, but it is difficult to believe that he would have maintained his obstinate front but for expectations based upon the supposed goodwill of the British Government. Had the English Cabinet, even in January, 1877, frankly and unambiguously gone hand in hand with Russia there would have been no war. Russo- Meanwhile the armistice arranged in November between Turkish Turkey and Serbia had been further prolonged on 28th December, and on 27th February, 1877, peace was con- cluded at Constantinople. But on 12th June, Montenegro, encouraged by the action of Russia, recommenced hostili- ties, and on 22nd June the Russian Army effected the passage of the Danube. No other way towards Constantinople was open to ^ By the Agreement of Reichstadt (8th July, 1876), confirmed by definite treaty, 15th January, 1877. The terms of the Austro-Russian agreement have never been authoritatively revealed : cf. Rose : De- velopment of European Nations, p. 180. THE EASTERN QUESTION (1875-98) 57 them, for tlie Russian Navy had not yet had time since 1871 to regain the position in the Black Sea denied to it in 1856. The co-operation of Roumania was, therefore, indispensable. The Roumanian Army held the right flank for Russia, but an offer of more active co-operation was declined with some hauteur by the Czar. From the Danube the Russians pushed on slowly but successfully until their advanced guard suffered a serious check before Plevna on 30th July. On the following day Osman Pasha, strongly entrenched at Plevna, inflicted a very serious reverse upon them. Instead, therefore, of carrying Plevna by storm the Siege of Russians were compelled to besiege it, and the task proved P*'"^"* to be a tough one. In chastened mood the Czar accepted, in August, the contemned offer of Prince Carol, who was appointed to the supreme command of the Russo- Roumanian Army. For five months Osman held 120,000 Russians and Roumanians at bay, inflicting meantime very heavy losses upon them ; but at last his resistance was worn down, and on 10th December the remnant of the gallant garrison — some 40,000 haK-starved men — were compelled to surrender. Four days later Serbia, for the second time, declared Re-entry war upon the Porte, and recaptured Prizrend, the ancient ?f Serbia capital of the Idngdom. The Russians, meanwhile, were war pushing the Turks back towards Constantinople ; they occupied Sofia on 5th January, and Adrianople on the 20th. In the Caucasus their success was not less com- plete ; the great fortress of Kars had fallen on 18th Novem- ber ; the Turkish Empire seemed to lie at their mercy, and in March, Russia dictated to the Porte the Treaty of San Stephano. A basis of agreement had already been reached at Treaty of Adrianople (31st January) ; the terms were now emborlied ^f" ^*^" in a treaty signed, on 3rd March, at a village not far from March' Constantinople. Montenegro, enlarged by the acquisition ^^'^ of some strips of Bosnia and the Adriatic port of Antivari, was to be recognised definitely as independent of the Porte ; so also was Serbia, which was to acquire the districts of 68 EUEOPE AND BEYOND Nishi and Mitrovitza ; the reforms recommended to the Porte at the Conference of Constantinople were to be immediately introduced into Bosnia and the Herzegovina, and to be executed under the conjoint control of Russia and Austria ; the fortresses on the Danube were to be razed ; reforms were to be granted to the Armenians ; Russia was to acquire, in lieu of the greater part of the money indemnity which she claimed, Batoum, Kars, and other territory in Asia, and part of Dobrudja, which was to be exchanged with Roumania (whose independence was recognised by the Porte) for the strip of Bessarabia retro- ceded in 1856. The most striking feature of the treaty was the creation of a greater Bulgaria, which was to be constituted an autonomous tributary principality mth a Christian government and a national mihtia, and was to extend from the Danube to the ^Egean, nearly as far south as Midia (on the Black Sea) and Adrianople, and to include, on the west, the district round Monastir but not Salonika. ^ The Ottoman Empire in Europe was practically annihilated. Attitude of These events caused, as we have seen, grave disquietude great in Great Britain. Before the Russian armies crossed the Danube the Czar had undertaken to respect Enghsh interests in Egypt and in the Canal, and not to occupy Constantinople or the Straits (8th June, 1877) ; but the Russian victories in the closing months of 1877 excited in England some alarm as to the precise fulfilment of his promises. Accordingly, in January, 1878, Lord Derby, then Foreign Secretary, deemed it at once friendly and prudent to remind the Czar of his promise, and to warn him that any treaty concluded between Russia and Turkey which might affect the engagements of 1856 and 1871 " would not be valid without the assent of the Powers who were parties to those Treaties." (14th January.) In order to emphasise the gravity of the warning, the Fleet, which had been at Besika Bay, was ordered to pass the Dardanelles (23rd January), and the Government asked Parliament for a vote of credit of £6,000,000. 1 See Turkey Papers, No. 22, 1878 ; Holland : European Concert, pp. 335 seq. THE EASTERN QUESTION (1875-98) 59 A fortniglit later the British Cabinet, in response to urgent telegrams from Mr. Layard, the British Ambassador in Constantinople, decided to send a detachment of the Fleet into the Sea of Marmora for the protection of British subjects in Constantinople. Russia retorted, that if British ships sailed up the Straits, Russian troops would enter Constantinople for the purpose of protecting the lives of Christians of every race. But the Sultan, equally afraid of friends and foes, begged the English Fleet to retire, and it returned, accordingly, to Besika Bay. ■'he extreme tension was thus for the moment relaxed. Austria then proposed that the whole matter should be referred to a European Congress, and Great Britain assented on the express condition that all questions dealt with in the Treaty of San Stephano " should be considered as subjects to be considered in the Congress." To the demand that the treaty in its entirety should be submitted to a congress, Russia demurred. Great Britain insisted. Again peace hung in the balance. Apart from the dispute between England and Russia there was a great deal of inflammable material about, to which a spark would set hght. Greece, Serbia, and, above all, Roumania, who with incredible tactlessness and base ingratitude had been excluded from the peace negotiations, were all gravely dissatisfied with the terms of the Treaty of San Stephano. Greece had indeed actually invaded Thessaly at the beginning of February, and only consented to abstain from further hostihties upon the assurance of the Powers that her claims should have favourable consideration in the definitive Treaty of Peace. Lord Beaconsfield then announced, on 17th April, that he had ordered 7000 Indian troops to embark for Malta. The couf was denounced in England as " sensa- tional," un-English, unconstitutional, even illegal; but if it alarmed England it impressed Europe, and there can be no question that it made for peace. The operation of other forces was tending in the same Russia, direction. The terms of settlement proposed by Russia ^^^"^' were not less distasteful to Austria than to England. An Austria 60 EUROPE AND BEYOND Austrian Army was mobilised on the Russian flank in the Carpathians, and on 4th February the Emperor Francis Joseph demanded that the terms of peace should be referred to a Congress at Vienna. Austria might well take a firm hne, for behind Austria was Germany. Bismarck's Bismarck had made up his mind. He would fain have Policy preserved in its integrity the Dreikaiserhiind of 1872 ; he was under deep obligations to Russia, and was only too glad to assist and even to stimulate her ambitions so long as they conflicted only with those of Great Britain or France. But when it came to a possible conflict between Russia and Germany matters were different. It was true that Russia had protected Prussia's right flank in 1864, and her left flank in 1866, and — highest service of all — had " contained " Austria in 1870. The Czar thought, not unnaturally, that in the spring of 1878 the time had arrived for a repayment of the debt, and requested Bismarck to contain Austria. Bismarck was still anxious to " keep open the wire between Berhn and St. Petersburg," provided it was not at the expense of that between Berhn and Vienna. He rephed, therefore, to the Czar that Germany must keep watch on the Rhine, and could not spare troops to contain Austria as well. The excuse was trans j)arent. Bismarck had, in fact, decided to give Austria a free hand in the Balkans, and even to push her along the road towards Salonika. His attitude was regarded in Russia as a great betrayal, a dishonourable repudiation of an acknowledged debt. It is not, however, too much to say that it averted a European conflagration. The Czar decided not to fight Austria and England, but, instead, to accept the invitation to a Congress at Berlin. The Treaty On 30th May Lord Salisbury and Count Schouvaloff of Berlin ^ame to an agreement upon the main points at issue, and on 13th June the Congress opened at Berhn. Prince Bismarck presided, and filled his chosen role of " the honest broker " ; but it was Lord Beaconsfield whose per- sonaUty dominated the Congress. " Der alte Jude, das ist der Mann," was Bismarck's shrewd summary of the situation. THE EASTERN QUESTION (1875-98) 61 Little time was spent in discussion ; the treaty was signed on 13th July. Russia's sole acquisition in Europe was the strip of Bessarabia which had been retroceded to Roumania in 1856, and was now, by an act of grave impolicy and base ingratitude, snatched away from her by the Czar. In Asia she retained Batoum, Ardahan, and Kars. Bosnia and the Herzegovina were handed over for an undefined term to Austria, who was also to be allowed to occupy for mihtary, but not administrative, purposes the Sanjak of Novi Bazar. England, under a separate Convention concluded with Turkey on 4th June, The Cypx-us was to occupy and administer the island of Cyprus, so long ^^^^'^^'^o" as Russia retained Kars and Batoum. Turkey was to receive the surplus revenues of the island, to carry out reforms in her Asiatic dominions, and to be protected in the possession of them by Great Britain. France sought for authority to occupy Tunis in the future ; Italy hinted at claims upon Albania and TripoU. Germany asked for nothing, but was more than compensated for her modesty by securing the gratitude and friendship of the Sultan. Never did Bismarck make a better investment. Greece with no false modesty claimed Crete, Thessaly, The Bai- Epirus, and part of Macedonia ; but Lord Beaconsfield, in ''^" ^^^^^ resisting the claim, suggested that Greece being " a country Vr^th a future could afford to wait." The Congress of Berlin did indeed invite the Sultan to grant to Greece such a rectification of frontiers as would include Janina and Larissa in Greek territory ; but the Sultan, not unnaturally, ignored the invitation. Two years later (1880), the Powers suggested to the Porte the cession of Thessaly and Epirus ; and at last, in 1881, the tact and firmness of Mr. Goschen wrung from the unwilling Sultan one-third of the latter province and the whole of the former. Macedonia was still left, fortunately for Greece, under the heel of the Sultan. Lord Beaconsfield did not exhibit much positive benevolence towards Greece, but negatively she, like Serbia, owes him a considerable debt. If he had not torn up the Treaty of San Stephano, Bulgaria would have obtained a commanding position in Macedonia, Serbia 62 EUROPE AND BEYOND would never have got Uskub and Monastir, Greece would still be sighing for Kavala and perhaps for Salonika. At the moment, however, the Southern Slavs were bitterly disappointed by the terms of the settlement. Serbia did indeed gain some territory at the expense of Bulgaria, but the gain was more than ofi-set by the position assigned to Austria. The Sarjak of Novi Bazar, still governed by the Turks but garrisoned by Austrians, cut off the Southern Slavs of Serbia from their brethren in Montenegro, while the Austrian " occupation " of Bosnia and the Herzegovina made a further breach in the solidarity of the Jugo-Slav and brought the Habsburgs into the heart of Balkan affairs. Roumania was equally dissatisfied. Treated with dis- courtesy and gross ingratitude by Russia at San Stephano, she fared no better at Berlin. Bismarck, indifferent to the dynastic ties which united Prussia and Roumania, was not sorry to see Russia neglecting a golden opportunity for binding Roumania in gratitude to herself. A Roumania alienated from Russia would be the less likely to quarrel with the Dual Monarchy and to press her claims to the inclusion of the unredeemed Roumanians in Transylvania and the Bukovina. Lord Beaconsfield professed much Platonic sympathy for the disappointment of their wishes in regard to Bessarabia, but frankly confessed that he could not turn aside from the pursuit of the larger issues to befriend a State in whose fortunes Great Britain was not directly interested. It was a gross blunder, the consequences of which are not yet exhausted. For the loss of Southern Bessarabia, Roumania deemed herself ill- compensated by the organisation of part of the Dobrudja, but she secured complete independence from the Porte, as did Serbia and Montenegro, who received most of the districts promised to them at San Stephano. Bulgaria did not. And herein lay the essential differ- ence between the Treaty of Berlin and that of San Stephano. " Bulgaria," as defined at Berlin, was not more than a third of the Bulgaria mapped out at San Stephano. It was to consist of a relatively narrow strip between the Danube THE EASTERN QUESTION (1875-98) 63 and the Balkans, and to be an independent State under Turkish suzerainty. South of it there was to be a province, Eastern Roumelia, which was to be restored to the Sultan, who agreed to place it under a Christian governor approved by the Powers. By this change the Sultan recovered 2,500,000 of population and 30,000 square miles of terri- tory ; Bulgaria was cut off from the ^gean ; Macedonia remained intact. Such were the main terms of the Treaty of Berlin. That Treaty forms a great landmark in the history of the Eastern Question ; but its most important features were not those which at the time attracted most attention. The enduring significance of the Treaty is to be found, not in the fact that Lord Beaconsfield snatched from the brink of destruction a renmant of the Ottoman Empire, but that he left a door open to the new nations which were arising upon the ruins of that Empire. The oflOicial attitude of Great Britain during the critical years 1875-78 might seem to have committed the English people to the cause of reaction and the Turkish misgovernment. In effect, the policy of Lord Beaconsfield, whatever its motive, was far from obstructive to the development of the Balkan Nationalities. Two of them at least have reason to cherish the memory of the statesman who tore up the Treaty of San Stephano. Had that Treaty been allowed to stand, both Greece and Serbia would have had to re- nounce their ambitions in Macedonia, while the enormous accessions of territory secured by that Treaty to Bulgaria might ultimately have proved, even to her, a doubtful advantage. The partition of Bulgaria was, however, manifestly an Union of artificial arrangement, and did not long survive the death BuigrHas (in 1881) of its real author. Lord Beaconsfield. But Bulgaria proper had in the meantime to be provided with a Constitution and a ruler. A single-chamber Legis- lature and a responsible Executive were bestowed by the Organic Law of 1879 upon a people entirely unfitted for " constitutional " government. That business accom- plished, the Czar recommended and the Assembly in April, 64 EUROPE AND BEYOND 1879, elected as ruler Prince Alexander of Battenberg, a scion by a morganatic of the House of Darmstadt, a nephew by marriage of the Czar, and an ofl&cer in the Prussian Army. It was hoped that the " Battenberg " would prove a pliant instrument of Russian diplomacy ; but during the years which succeeded the Treaty of Berlin a remarkable change took place in Bulgaria. The accession of the new Czar Alexander III. (1881) altered for the worse the personal relations between St. Petersburg and Sophia ; the arrogance of the Russian officials towards the Bul- garian peasants obliterated the remembrance of the service rendered to them by their " liberators " in 1877 ; above all, a " strong man " had appeared in Bulgaria in the person of Stephen Stambulofi, who in 1884 became President of the Sobranje. In the two Bulgarias there was a keen desire for union, and Stambuloff ardently espoused the cause. In September 1885 Gamil Pasha, the Turkish Governor of Eastern Roumelia, was expelled, and the Province announced its union with Bulgaria proper. Prince Alex- ander had no option but to yield to the clearly expressed will of the people, and at once agreed to the union of the two Bulgarias. The diplomatic position was, however, curiously paradoxical : the parts were reversed ; Russia was now indignant ; Great Britain not merely acquiescent but approving. The explanation is simple. Russia had played her cards in Bulgaria as badly as they could be played. In opposition to her high-handed and self-seeking methods, there had grown up a strong national party. The " Greater Bulgaria " of 1878 would have been a Russian Province, within striking distance of Constan- tinople. The Bulgaria of 1885 was, as Lord Salisbury (again in office) clearly perceived, a sure bulwark against Russia. " If," wrote Sir Robert Morier from St. Peters- burg to Sir William White at Constantinople, " you can help to build up these peoples into a bulwark of independent States and thus screen the ' sick man ' from the fury of the Northern blast, for God's sake do it." With Lord Salisbury's help Sir William White did it, and thus in Morier's words : "A State has been evolved out of the THE EASTEEN QUESTION (1875-98) G5 protoplasm of Balkan chaos." It is fair to remember that but for Lord Beaconsfield's action in 1878 that evolu- tion would have been impossible. Prince Alexander waited for no leave from the Powers. Stambulofi had bluntly told him that there were only two paths open to him : the one to PhilippopoUs, and as far beyond as God may lead ; the other to Darmstadt." Alexander's choice was soon made, and on 20th September he amiounced his acceptance of the throne of united Bulgaria. Meanwhile Bulgaria was threatened with a new danger. If Russia began to see in a united Bulgaria a barrier in her advance towards the Straits, Austria had no mind to see the multiplication of barriers between Budapest and Salonika. On 14th November, King Milan of Serbia, who in 1882 Seibo- had followed the example of Prince Carol of Roumania and ^^^ar '^^^^" had assumed a royal crown, suddenly seized an obviously frivolous pretext to declare war upon Bulgaria. Whether Austria actually instigated this attack, it is impossible to say. There were perhaps sufficient reasons apart from this for Serbian jealousy against the aggrandisement of Bulgaria. The Serbian attack was, however, repulsed by Bulgaria, which in its turn took the offensive against Serbia. Thereupon Austria intervened, and the Bulgarians were informed that a further advance would bring them " face to face no longer with Serbian, but with Austrian troops." Serbia was saved, but so also was the union of the two Bulgarias. Early in 1886 the Porte formally recognised the union of the two Bulgarias, and appointed Prince Alexander to be " Governor-General of Eastern Roumelia." Alexander did not long enjoy his new honour. Alexander III. was deeply mortified by the turn events had taken in the Balkans, and inspired by implacable enmity against his cousin determined to dethrone him. On 21st August, 1886, Prince Alexander was kidnapped Rassian by a band of Russian officers and carried off into captivity. ^^^^ ^^ A provisional government was hastily set up at Sofia under isse' Stambuloff, and its first act was to recall the kidnapped prince. Permitted temporarily to return to Bulgaria, 66 EUROPE AND BEYOND Alexander played his cards badly, and on 7tli September, under renewed pressure from the Czar, he abdicated and left Bulgaria for ever. The Bulgarians were obliged to seek a new prince, and after several mishaps eventually found a ruler in Prince Ferdinand of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, a grandson of King Louis Philippe. Kussia refused to recognise Ferdinand, but strong in the support of Bismarck and the Emperor Francis Joseph, the young Prince defied the opposition of Russia, and on 14th August, 1887, ascended the Bulgarian throne. Stambuioff For the next seven years, however, Bulgaria was ruled by Stephen Stambuioff, a rough, coarse-grained peasant of indomitable will, strong passions, and burning patriotism. Stambuioff effected a great work for Bulgaria. He intro- duced internal order and discipline ; he laid the founda- tions of a modern civihsed State, and he emancipated his country from foreign tutelage. In 1894, however, he was dismissed by Prince Ferdinand, that crafty diplomatist, after an apprenticeship of seven years, having determined to take up the reins of government. Stambuioff bitterly resented his dismissal, and took no pains to hide the fact ; but in July, 1895, he was finally removed from the scene by assassination. Prince Ferdinand was now master in his own house, and the first use he made of power was to effect a recon- ciliation with Russia. By this time, however, the centre of interest in the Near East had shifted from Bulgaria to Greece. The Pro- Handed back to the Porte in 1840, Crete had been for biem of more than half a century in almost perpetual insurrection. All these insurrections had one supreme object — the reunion of the " Great Greek island " with the Greeks of the mainland. Cretan In- In the Spring of 1896 the islanders were once more in 189&^97°"' arms. Civil war broke out between Moslems and Christians in Canea, and the Powers, to prevent the spread of dis- turbances, put pressure upon the Sultan to make con- cessions. The latter accordingly agreed to grant an amnesty, to summon a National Assembly, and to appoint THE EASTERN QUESTION (1875-98) C7 a Christian governor. But neither Moslems nor Christians took the Sultan's promises seriously, and in February, 1897, war again broke out at Canea, and the Christians again proclaimed union with Greece. No power on earth could now have prevented the Greek patriots from going to the assistance of the islanders. Prince George, the king's second son, was accordingly sent (10th February) with a torpedo-boat flotilla to intercept Turkish reinforcements, and three days later an army was landed under Colonel Vassos. The admirals of the Powers then occupied Canea with an international landing party, and compelled the insurgents to desist from further fighting. Interest then shifted back to the mainland. The The " patriots " believed that the moment for decisive action ^^^w^ „ against the Turks had at last come, and King George I7th April yielded to the warhke sentiments of his people, perhaps ^j/^i897 with the secret hope that the Powers would again inter- vene to avert war. But if the Greek hot-heads wanted war, the Sultan was prepared for it, and his august ally at Berhn urged him to put to the test the new weapon which German soldiers had forged for him, and, once for all, teach the insolent Greeks their place. On 17th April the Porte accordingly declared war. " The Thirty Days War " ensued. It was all over before the end of May. Russia had warned her friends in the Balkans that there must be no intervention. The Greeks were diplomatically isolated ; they made no use of their superior sea-power, and on land the forces which had invaded Thessaly were quickly pushed back over their own frontiers. The Turkish Army under Edhem Pasha occupied Larissa, and won two decisive victories at Pharsalos and Domokos. So disorganised were the Greek forces that Athens became alarmed for its own safety, and turned savagely upon the King. The Powers, however, having no mind to embark, for the third time, upon the tedious task of providing the Greeks with a king, imposed an armistice upon the combatants (20th May). The definite peace was signed in December. The war was nothing less than disastrous to Greece : 68 EUROPE AND BEYOND it discredited the dynasty ; it involved tlie retrocession of a strip of Thessaly ; and it imposed upon a State, already on tlie verge of bankruptcy,, the burden of a considerable war indemnity. Nor was Greece spared the further humiliation of International Control, exercised by means of a mixed Commission, over her external finance. On the Crete other hand, the war brought to Crete final, though not formal, emancipation. It was some time, however, before the position in Crete was regularised. In 1898 an ingenious arrangement was devised under which the four protecting Powers — Great Britain, France, Russia, and Italy — nominated Prince George of Greece to act as their High Commissioner in the island. In 1899 a new Constitution on hberal fines was approved by a Constituent Assembly. Its author was a young lawyer destined to fill a conspicuous place in the history, not merely of Greece, but of Europe, Eleu- therios Venizelos, and thanks largely to him Crete enjoyed real self-government. In 1905 the islanders, led by Venizelos, proclaimed the union of Crete with the Hellenic Kingdom ; but it was not until after the whilom rebel had become Prime Minister of Greece (1910) that the union was formally acknowledged. Long before this the Eastern Question had entered upon a new phase, and the Ottoman Sultan had found a new ally in the German Emperor. But much was to happen in Germany and elsewhere before the German factor became dominant in the Balkan problem, and to these events we must now return. AUTHORITIES Marriott : The Eastern Question. (Oxford, 1918.) Driault : La Question d' Orient. (Paris.) Duke of Argyll : The Eastern Question. (2 vols., London, 1879.) Duke of Argyll: Our Responsibilities for Turkey. (London, 1896.) Klaczko : The Two Chancellors. (Gortschakoff aiid Bismarck.) (London, 1876.) PiNON : U Europe et V Empire Ottoman. MoNYPENNY AND BucKLE : Life of Lord Beaconsfield. (6 vols,, London, 1910-20.) MoRLEY : Life of Gladstone. (3 vols., London, 1903.) (See also authorities for Bismarck under Chapter II.) CHAPTER IV THE ASCENDANCY OF GERMANY (1879-90). THE TRIPLE ALLIANCE. THE GERMAN EMPIRE IN AFRICA The Close of a Chapter To Bismarck the conclusion of the Treaty of 20tli May, 1882, was the culmination of his sj^^stem. . . . The Triple Alliance comijleted Central Europe ; it closed the Alpine passes ; it barred the great gate to Vienna through which Napoleon had marched m 1796 ; it opened the Mediter- ranean to Germany ; it rent away from France the ally of the sister Latin race ; . . . Best of all, it shivered the serious menace of 1869 and 1871. — C. Grant Robeetson. All distant possessions are a burden to the State. A village on the frontier is worth a principality two hmidred and fifty miles away. — Frederick the Great. This colonial business would be for us Germans like the wearing of sables by Polish noblemen who have no shirt to their backs. — Bismarck. Tropical Africa, which was the dark continent and a great field of geographical discovery a little more than a generation ago, has marched with great suddemiess to the centre of the European stage, and must henceforth profoundly influence the problems of its statesmanship. — General Smuts. THE Balkan crisis of 1875 broke in awkwardly upon Bismarck's Bismarck's diplomatic schemes. To the Eastern ^^p^*^'"^"'^ Question he always expressed complete indifference. " I never take the trouble," he said, " to open the mail bag from Constantinople." " The whole of the Balkans," he petulantly declared, " is not worth the bones of a single Pomeranian grenadier." Whatever the value of these pro- fessions, Bismarck lost no oppoi-tunity of turning the Near East to account as a convenient arena in which to reward the services of friends or to assuage the disappointment of temporary opponents without expense to Prussian pockets or detriment to Prussian interests. 70 EUROPE AND BEYOND Two illustrations of tHs policy will suffice. In 1866, Bismarck not only turned Austria out of Germany, but, in order to secure the assistance of Victor Emmanuel, he deprived the Habsburgs of the last remnant of their heritage in Italy. He had, however, no desire to see Austria unnecessarily humiliated, still less permanently disabled. Provided it were clearly understood that henceforward she had no part or lot in German affairs, Austria might regard him as a friend and ally. The Drang Two results eusucd. The new frontier of Italy was oUhe^^^^^* drawn with a niggardly hand. If Bismarck had really Habsburgs been animated in 1886 by friendly feelings towards Italy, he would unquestionably have insisted, without any nice regard for ethnography, upon the transference to the Italian kingdom of the whole of the Venetian inheritance, including Istria and Dalmatia. As it was, even " Venetia " itself was interpreted in the narrowest possible sense, and the northern frontier of the Italian kingdom was so drawn as to deprive Italy of a compact mass of 370,000 Italians, to exclude these people and their products from their natural market in North Italy, and to thrust into the heart of an Italian province the military outpost of an unfriendly neighbour. From this niggardly interpreta- tion of " Venetia " arose the Trentino problem, which found a solution only in the Treaty of Paris (1919). Bismarck, however, was concerned much less with the future of Italy than with the future of Austria-Hungary, and he deliberately encouraged the Drang nach Osten, which, from 1866 onwards, became a marked feature of Habsburg policy. Istria and Dalmatia, therefore, were retained by Austria. Thus did Bismarck conciliate a temporary enemy and a potential ally. Four years later he took the opportunity of rewarding the services of a most constant friend. The Black Sea clauses of the Treaty Bismarck of Paris were, as we have seen, torn up in favour of Russia, gj^jj^ That transaction was not, of course, inspired entirely by benevolence towards Russia. Bismarck's supreme object was to keep Russia at arm's length from France, and, what was at the moment more important, from England. THE ASCENDANCY OF GERMANY (1879-90) 71 Nothing was more likely to conduce to tliis end than to encourage the pretensions of Kussia in the Near East, and, indeed, in the Further East. The Black Sea served his purpose in 1870 ; the " Penjdeh incident '* was similarly utilised in 1885. Another critical situation arose in 1877. Since 1872 The Crisis the DreiJcaiserhund had formed the pivot of Bismarck's °^ 1^77-78 foreign policy. But the interests of two out of the three emperors were now in sharp conflict in the Balkans. It is true that in July, 1876, the Emperors of Russia and Austria had met at Keichstadt, and that the Emperor Francis Joseph had agreed to give the Czar a free hand in the Balkans on condition that Bosnia and the Herze- govina were guaranteed to Austria. But by 1878, Russia was in occupation of Bulgaria and Roumelia, and in less complaisant mood than in 1876 ; an immense impulse had been given to the idea of Pan-Slavism by recent events ; the Southern Slavs were beginning to dream of the possibility of a Jugo-Slav empire in the west of the peninsula. Under the new circumstances, Bosnia and the Herzegovina might easily slip from Austria's grip ; the Drang nach Osten might receive a serious set-back ; the road to the ^Egean might be finally barred ; even access to the Adriatic might be endangered. Thus Bismarck had virtually to choose between his two friends. At the Berlin Congress he played, as we saw, the role of the " honest broker." For aught he cared Russia might go to Constantinople, a move which would have the advantage of embroiling her with England ; but Austria must have Bosnia and the Herzegovina. Austria got them, and the road to Salonika was kept open. Prince Gortschakofi never forgave his pupil for the rupture of the Dreikaiserhund ; but the mind of Bismarck was already turning towards another diplomatic combina- tion. He had devoted ten years of his life to the task of creating a united Germany under the hegemony of Prussia ; the remaining twenty he gave to the consolidation of the position thus acquired. The main plank in his diplomatic platform was friend- 72 EUROPE AND BEYOND The Dual sliip with tlic Habsburg Empire. After the Treaty of tsio^^^' Berlin, Euroj)e was in a condition of very unstable equilibrium ; no single Power, except perhaps Austria- Hungary, was satisfied with the " settlement " ; least of all Russia. Russia cherished not unnatural resentment against all the Great Powers ; primarily against Great Britain and Austria, but most deeply against Germany, who had been guilty not merely of betrayal, but of the basest ingratitude. Even France did not entirely escape ; for Russia imagined that her pretensions in the Near East had been at the outset encouraged by France, though the latter had failed to support them when the crisis actually arrived. Two other factors not to be neglected were, on the one hand, the embarrassments caused to England by events in Afghanistan, in South Africa, and in Ireland ; and, on the other, the increasing tension between France and Italy, due partly to rivalry in North Africa, but more immediately to the failure of negotia- tions for a commercial treaty, and the consequent eruption of a tariff war. In August, 1879, Bismarck met Count Andrassy, the Austrian Chancellor, at Gastein, and on 7th October an alliance between the two empires was concluded. Bis- marck's greatest difficulty in effecting this most significant arrangement arose not on the side of the Austrian but of the German Emperor. His Imperial master could not forget the injury he had inflicted upon Austria in 1866, nor would he forget the debt he had incurred to Russia in 1863, in 1866, and in 1870. Moreover, the Czar Alex- ander II. had, on 15th August, addressed a personal letter to the Emperor William protesting his own friendship for Germany and his concern at the growing unfriendhness of Bismarck. Early in September the two sovereigns met at Alexandrovno in Poland, and the German Emperor returned from the interview convinced of his nephew's good faith, and resolved to take no step calculated to cause a breach in the good relations between the two countries. But Bismarck was inexorable ; there was no room either for eternal hatreds or for eternal gratitude in pohtics. THE ASCENDANCY OF GERMANY (1879-90) 73 He was convinced tliat there had been negotiations be- tween St. Petersburg and Paris, and that the Czar, partly to pay Bismarck out for his conduct in regard to the Balkans, partly to divert the attention of his own subjects from questions of domestic reform, partly to lay the spectre of Nihilism by a brilliant feat of arms, was contemplating an attack upon Germany. At last the Kaiser reluctantly and regretfully gave way, and gave his consent to the momentous treaty with Austria (15th October). Its terms were to be kept secret, and not until 1888 were they officially published. The compact provided that if either ally were attacked by Kussia, the other must assist it with all its forces ; if any Power, other than Russia, were the assailant, then the ally was to observe neutrahty, and was not bound to mobihse until Russia entered the field. In plain Enghsh, if France attacked Germany, Austria must contain Russia.^ Bismarck always maintained that the Dual Alliance in " iieinsur- no wise involved the dissolution of the Dreikaiserhund of ^reat" of 1872, and his contention was, in some degree, substantiated Skiemie- by the conclusion, in 1884, of the famous " reinsurance " gp'^^ember treaty between the three Emperors. By this compact it i884 is beheved that the three Powers mutually bound them- selves to maintain a benevolent neutrality if any one of the three made war upon a fourth Power, and to oppose stoutly any assault upon the institution of monarchy. There were also, it would seem, provisions in regard to the Balkans. The Treaty was to hold good for three years. 2 This compact was a conspicuous triumph for Bismarckian diplomacy. The Czar Alexander III. was tied to the tail of the Triple Alliance, without being ad- mitted to the confidence of the Allies. Between 1879 and 1884, however, events had happened which it is neces- sary to recapitulate, and which may in part explain this paradoxical situation. During the last twenty years of the nineteenth century 1 P. Albin : Le-s Grand Trait cs Politique, pp. 58-60. - For a discussion of the " Reinsurance Treaties," cf. Robertson : Bismarck, pp. 435 seq., and Appendix B. 74 EUROPE AND BEYOND The Ex- a new factor began to intrude itself into the problem of Europ? °^ international politics of Europe. Ever since the sixteenth century the relations of the European Powers — notably those of Spain, England, France, and the United Provinces — had been materially affected by their rivalry in distant oceans and in non-European continents. But the con- tinents and oceans were distant, and the reactions they evoked in European affairs were, therefore, relatively feeble. It was otherwise in the last years of the nineteenth century. The uttermost parts of the earth were no longer distant from Europe, but were in close and almost con- tinuous contact with the nerve-centres of world-affairs : with London, Paris, and BerHn. From the 'eighties onwards, therefore, we must be prepared to give a larger interpretation to " European History " and " European Pohtics." Africa and Asia, the Atlantic and the Pacific, begin to react upon Europe in a way they had never done before. Not in England only did men begin " to think in continents." Imperiahstic ambition — the lust for territory — was in large measure the outcome of economic necessity. The industriahsation of the great European countries, in particular Great Britain and Germany, brought in its train three results : a demand for food for the new town populations, a demand which German agriculturists could barely meet and which British agriculturists entirely failed to supply ; a demand for raw materials, most of which were produced only in non-European lands, and a demand for markets for the disposal of their manufactured products. Had the dream of the Manchester School materialised ; had " the wise who think, the wise who reign, From growing commerce loose(d) her latest chain," the competition among the European peoples for com- modities and for markets might have been peaceable if not entirely friendly. The reaction against Free Trade and the advent of high Protectionism rendered it practically certain that the struggle would be bitter and probably not bloodless. The scramble began in Africa. Africa was near ; Africa THE ASCENDANCY OF GEKMANY (1879-90) V5 was full of wealth ; it offered strategical points of immense The potential importance, and though it teemed with native fo^^^ic^ peoples it was, in a European sense, " almost unoccupied." From this description the northern coast must clearly be excepted ; but the northern coast of Africa, from Morocco to the peninsula of Sinai and Sjnria, where it joins the continent of Asia, geographically belongs, as Principal Grant Robertson has observed, "to the Mediterranean area and system, cut off by the girdle of mountains and the deserts of their hinterland from the rest of the vast continent of which it is a part. The history of this portion is primarily European, secondarily Asiatic, and only in the last degree African." ^ But of the rest of Africa it was true that prior to the period at which we have arrived, European enterprise was represented by a fringe of settlements and trading stations. The Portuguese had been at Delagoa Bay for nearly four hundred years ; the Dutch, at the Cape of Good Hope for nearly two hundred and fifty ; the Enghsh, in Cape Colony and Natal during the greater part of the century ; while French, Dutch, British, and Portuguese trading stations had been dotted along the coasts from Senegal round to the Straits of Bab-el-Mandeb. A new era in the history of Africa opens with the 'eighties. The struggle between Britons and Boers for supremacy in South Africa (1880-1902), and the regeneration of Egypt and the Soudan under British rule (1882-98), will form the subject of subsequent chapters. We are con- cerned here with the partition of Africa between the several European Powers carried out between 1880 and 1890. France opened the ball. The French had long been The French interested in North Africa, which they regarded as within ^^ '^^^^^ the sphere of their Mediterranean influence. The conquest and organisation of Algeria (1830-47) was the most notable achievement of the Orleans monarchy. French interest in Egypt was of even longer standing, and had been more lately manifested by the construction of the ^ Robertson and Bartholomew : Historical Atlas of Modern Europe, p. 20. 76 EUROPE AND BEYOND *Suez Canal (1859-69), an enterprise initiated by a French engineer and carried through mainly by French capital. The administration of their Algerian colony brought the French into inevitable contact with Tunis, then ruled in virtual autonomy by its Beys under the suzerainty of the Sultan. For some years past the economic penetration of Tunis by Frenchmen and Italians had proceeded apace. Most of the public works, railways, telegraphs, and aqueducts had either been constructed or were maintained by French capitalists, and of the 123 millions of pubhc debt, 100 was held in France. The native administration was shockingly bad, and on several occasions France and Italy had had to intervene to save the State from bankruptcy. As early as 1878, Bismarck had broadly hinted to Italy that the Tunisian pear was ripe ; but Italy, out of regard for French susceptibihties, refused to pluck it. If Italy could not be made to quarrel with France, France must be in- duced to offend Italy. At the Congress of Berlin, Bismarck suggested to Lord Salisbury that an offer of Tunis to France might smooth the path for England in the Near East. Lord Salisbury accordingly assured France that if she wished to establish a Protectorate over Tunis she would encounter no opposition from England. Risniarck Bismarck was supremely anxious to divert the attention of France from Alsace-Lorraine, and hardly less anxious to stir up strife between France and Italy. If he could at the same time bring Italy into the bosom of the Triple Alliance, set England and France by the ears, sow the seeds of discord between England and Russia, his diplo- matic purpose would be finally achieved. Tunis served to secure the first three ends ; Egypt the fourth ; the Near and the Middle East the fifth. Jules Ferry, who had become Prime Minister of France in September, 1880, cherished large colonial ambitions, and proved, therefore, an easy prey to the wiles of Bis- marck. Pretexts were not wanting to the French for an attack on Tunis. The undisciplined tribesmen who OTVTied the suzerainty of the Bey were troublesome neighbours to the rulers of Algiers. Reparations were demanded ; THE ASCENDANCY OF GEEMANY (1879-90) 77 the Bey appealed to the Sultan Abdul Hamid ; the latter showed a disposition to fight, but, having no friends in Europe, restrained his ardour. Italy entered a strong protest against the action of France, and appealed to the Powers. The Czar Alexander III., who had but now (1881) succeeded to the unsteady throne of his murdered father, was not in a position to respond ; England was morally pledged to France ; Germany and Austria were her only possible friends. Bismarck spared no effort to estrange Italy and France, The Triple and to encourage King Humbert to enter into closer re- -^^^'•'^"^^ lations with the Dual Allies. As far as Germany was concerned there was no serious obstacle to friendship ; but friendship with Germany meant friendship with Austria ; and between Austria and Italy there was inter- posed the barrier of Italian irredentism. The Trentino, Gorizia, Trieste ; the Istrian peninsula ; Pola and Fiume ; the Dalmatian coast and archipelago — were not these part of the Venetian heritage ? (3r if not Venetian, Italian in tradition and blood ? What right had Austria in the Adriatic ? How could Italy be mistress in her o^vn house so long as Trieste and Pola were in Austrian hands ? Between Italy and Austria there was an antagonism of interest (as the outbreak of the World- War was to make manifest) too fundamental to be overcome even by the mingled honey and gall of Bismarck's diplomacy. In 1881, however, Italy sorely needed a friend. Except in Germany, where was she to find one ? England, her traditional friend, was, on the Tunisian question, irre- vocably committed to France. Moreover, Bismarck had another card up his sleeve ; whether he actually played it mil never, perhaps, be known. Bismarck had adhered to his resolution never to go to Canossa ; but since the death of Pius IX. in 1878 he had met his successor Leo XIII. at a half-way house. The days of the KuUurJcampf were over ; Falk, the instrument of that policy, had been dis- missed ; the " May Laws " were in suspense. The prisoner of the Vatican was a nightmare to the Quirinal ; what if Bismarck w^ere to espouse the cause of the 78 EUROPE AND BEYOND Temporal Power ? He was moving towards the Catholic Centre party in Germany ; Austria was the last refuge of extreme Ultramontanism ; the Clericals did not even despair of France. That one of the arguments used by Bismarck to estrange Italy from France was the possi- bility of republican France resuming the Napoleonic role of protector of the Temporal Power is almost certain. Is it impossible that he should have clenched the argument by a hint that if France declined the role, Germany might assume it ? Be this as it may, Italy came to heel ; the compact was signed on 20th May, 1882, and the Dual was converted into the Triple Alliance. Concluded in the first instance for five years, it was renewed in 1887, and again in 1891, 1902, and 1912. The precise terms of the Treaty have never been officially published ; but it is well under- stood that Italy promised her full support to Austria and Germany if either were attacked by a third Power ; while a similar guarantee was given to Italy by the Central Empires. A year later the HohenzoUern King (Carol) of Roumania was virtually admitted as a sleeping partner into the same firm. Bismarck's The conclusion of the Triple Alliance constituted a Diplomacy ygj-j^aijie triumph for the Iron Chancellor. Germany was now as safe as friendships carefully cultivated, and enmities sedulously fomented, could make her. '' Henceforward," as Principal Robertson writes, " German hegemony in Central Europe moved securely on the pivotal point of the Triple AlHance, which gradually and naturally grew into the one grand combination in the European State System, with which all other possible combinations or ententes had to reckon." ^ Of such counter-combinations there seemed at the moment little probability. Early in 1880 there were some signs of a rapprochement between Russia, France, and Great Britain, but the terrible crime of 1881 frightened Russia off from any closer association with the Western democracies, the existence of which constituted, so Bis- marck was always careful to insist, a persistent menace 1 Bismarck, p. 407. THE ASCENDANCY OF GERMANY (1879-90) 79 to all respectable monarcliies. Besides, England was sufficiently preoccupied with Ireland, South Africa, and Egypt. France was in more cautious mood after the fall of the Ferry Cabinet (November, 1881) ; and, apart from that, had her own quarrel with England in Egypt. Bismarck, therefore, could feel reasonably secure, and Germany's in 1884 secured his position still further, as we have seen, Ambitions by the " Keinsurance Treaty " with Russia. Accordingly, there seemed to be no reason why she should not turn a more friendly eye upon the younger enthusiasts in Ger- many who were beginning to complain that the old Father- land was too " cribb'd, cabined, and confined," and that Germany was as much entitled to a place in the sun as any of her European neighbours. " I am not a Colony man " Bismarck was wont to say when pressed to over- seas enterprise by German merchants. But by 1884 he was confronted by the inexorable facts of a new economic situation, the significance of which he could not gainsay. Much later than England, or even than France, Germany The had at last felt the impulse of the new industriaUsm. Revdutfon Hamburg, Bremen, Cologne, and Frankfort — to name only in Germany a few of her great cities — had long been among the most important commercial and financial centres in the world ; but Germany as a whole was predominantly a rural community. After 1871 a change set in, and during the next thirty years the social and economic hfe of Germany was revolutionised. In 1871 the population of Germany was 41,000,000 ; it Urban had risen by 1910 to just short of 65,000,000. During pop^^don the same period the ratio of urban {i.e. hving in towns of upwards of 5000 inhabitants) to rural population was completely altered. In 1871 the percentage of urban inhabitants was 23-7, of rural 76-3 ; in 1890, 32*2 and 67-8 respectively; in 1900, 42-26;and 57-74; and in 1910, 48.8 and 51.2 respectively. In other words, between 1871 and 1900 the urban population increased by 18'56 per cent., and the rural population decreased by 18*25 per cent. In 1871 the population of BerHn was 800,000 ; in 1890, 1,578,000; in 1905, 2,040,000; while in 1910 the 80 EUKOPE AND BEYOND number of " large " towns, wliich in 1871 was only 8, had risen to 48, of which 6 had over half a million, and 17 over a quarter of a miUion, of inhabitants. The statistics of the occupation censuses of 1882 and 1895 reinforce these results. It has been calculated that in 1871 about 60 per cent, of the population earning a livehhood were engaged in agriculture and kindred occupations, and 40 per cent, in industry, trade, and commerce. In 1895 the 60 per cent. had fallen to 37-5. The occupation census of 1907 showed that broadly 9,750,000 of the population were engaged in " agriculture," while 14,750,000 were engaged in industry, mining, trade, and commerce — a complete reversal of the distribution obtaining in 1871. Foreign The statistics of foreign trade tell the same tale. In Trade jggQ ^^^ imports Were valued at £141,000,000, the exports at £144,800,000 — interesting figures, for in that year Germany was still a debtor country, exporting more than she imported. By 1907 the imports were £443,000,000 and the exports £356,000,000. Apart from the gigantic increases, piled up steadily with every decade after 1880, Germany was now a creditor country, balancing the excess of her imports by her invisible exports, interest on capital invested abroad, and profits of her shipping, etc. The advance of that shipping has been as remarkable as other advances. In 1871 German shipping was 892,000 tons, and her share of the mercantile marine of the world was 5-2 per cent. ; in 1905 she had 2,200,000 tons of shipping, representing 9-9 per cent, of the world's mercantile marine. In 1913 the tonnage had risen to over 5,000,000 tons, and Germany had attained the second place in the shipping of the world. Moreover, an analysis of the trade returns between 1870 and 1890 discloses four significant facts : first, the rapid increase in the import of raw materials for industry ; secondly, the steady increase in the export of manufactured goods ; thirdly, the relative decrease in the ratio of imported to exported manufactured goods ; and, finally, the steady increase in the import of food, luxuries, and cattle. These tendencies were all accentuated after 1890. With every decade after 1870 THE ASCENDANCY OF GERMANY (1879-90) 81 Germai)^ has become more and more a worksliop of the world, less and less able to feed her increasing population from her own resources, more and more dependent on the import of raw materials for her industries, more and more dependent on keeping and opening up foreign markets for her exports, and spheres of investment for her capital. Dr. Rohrbach in 1903 emphasised the bearing of these data on German poHcy. A yearly increase of population of 800,000 demanded answers to these questions : Where will this population Hve ? How will it be employed ? How will it be fed ? Bismarck saw only the beginning of these things, but he saw enough to convince him that an entirely new situa- tion had arisen ; that the increase of Germany's overseas trade justified the demand for a development of sea- power ; that the steady outflow of German capital for investment abroad made her economic interests world- wide ; and that her increasing dependence on the import of raw materials and upon foreign markets for the disposal of her surplus manufactured products rendered irresistible, if they did not actually justify, the cry for a forward Colonial pohcy. There was another reason which appealed even more powerfully to Bismarck. Of all forms of capital, human capital was in his eyes the most valuable. The rapid growth of population stimulated the tide of emigration. After 1876, Germans began to leave the homeland at the rate of about 200,000 a year, and on leaving Germany they were mostly lost to Germany. Until 1884 there was no German flag flj^ng abroad. Bismarck deplored the loss of citizens and soldiers : " A German who can put off his Fatherland hke an old coat is no longer a German for me." The Fatherland therefore must be expanded to receive its citizens. Where was the new Fatherland to be found ? The fijst incHnation was to look towards Brazil, where there was already a large and increasing German population ; but the entrance to South America was barred by the Monroe doctrine, and Germany therefore turned to Africa. 6 //2Lar^ 82 EUROPE AND BEYOND Colonial Africa offered everything whicli Germany was seeking : Enterprise ^j^told wealth in law material ; inexhaustible man-power, which, if brought under German discipline, might well be utilised for European warfare ; strategical points of immense significance — especially in relation to the eventual conflict with the British Empire to which the thoughts of far-seeing Germans were already beginning to turn. The way was carefully prepared. In December, 1882, there was founded at Frankfort the Deutscher Kolonialverein. The idea was taken up with immense enthusiasm and was carefully fostered by an elaborate Press campaign. On 22nd April, 1884, the Kolnische Zeitung published an article containing the following words : " Africa is a large pudding which the English have prepared for themselves at other people's expense, and the crust of which is already fit for eating. Let us hope that our sailors will put a few pepper- corns into it on the Guinea Coast so that our friends on the Thames may not digest it too rapidly." The Press campaign was only one of many indications that the Colonial enterprise of Germany was directed from above. This point has been strongly emphasised by a recent writer. " In a degree unparalleled in the history of European Imperialism, the German Colonial Empire was the result of force, and of design, not of a gradual evolution. It was not the product of German enterprise outside of Europe, for, owing to the conditions of her history, Germany had hitherto taken no direct part in the expansion of Europe ; it was the product of Germany's dominating position in Europe and the ex- pression of her resolve to build up an external Empire by the same means which she had employed to create this position." ^ That is the reason why it has been deemed proper to treat German colonisation in a chapter mainly devoted to European diplomacy. The Ex- Germans, however, had long since taken their full share of^Afiica ^^ African exploration. As far back as 1796 Friedrich Hornemann made a remarkable journey from Tripoli to ^ Ramsay Muir : Expansion of Europe, p, 140. THE ASCENDANCY OF GERMANY (1879-90) 83 the Niger. A little later Heinrich Barth, a citizen of Hamburg, also starting from Tripoli, " crossed the Sahara by a new route, reached Lake Chad, visited the mysterious city of Timbuctoo, and helped to fill up gaps in our know- ledge of the Central Niger regions." ^ In 1860 Baron Karl Von Der Decken performed a notable service to geographical science by his survey of Mount Kilimanjaro. As Mr. Lewin points out. Von Der Decken was one of the first to conceive the idea of a German colony in East Africa. " I am persuaded," he wrote, " that in a short time a Colony established here would be most successful, and after two or three years would be self-supporting. . . . It would become of great importance after the opening of the Suez Canal. It is unfortunate that we Germans allow such opportunities of acquiring colonies to slip, especially at a time when it would be of importance to the Navy." German explorers were equally active in South Africa. In 1869 Mohr undertook a remarkable journey to the Victoria Falls, and about the same time Karl Mauch was travelling " in the Zambesi regions, visited the Mashonaland goldfields, and discovered the Zinbabwe ruins." Nor did these and other explorers conceal their chagrin that England was ahead of Germany in South Africa. " Would to God," said Mauch, on his return from the Transvaal, " that this fine country might soon become a German colony." "Is it not deplorable," asked Gerhard Rohlfs, after a journey to the Cameroons, " that we are obliged to assist inactive and without the power to intervene in the extension of England in Central Africa ? " ^ England, however, was not alone among the promoters Brussels of African exploration and settlement. In 1876 King Jf ^^^q j,. Leopold of the Belgians summoned an International ference, Conference at Brussels, in order to discuss various problems ^^'^^ connected with the future of Africa. As a result of this ^ Cf. Evans Lewin : The Germans in Africa (Oxford Pamphlets). p. 10. A work to which I am, in the following paragraphs, deeply indebted. 2 Quoted, op. cit. 84 EUROPE AND BEYOND Conference, tlie International Congo Association was founded, an Association whicii was afterwards responsible for the development of tlie Congo Free State. In 1878 Stanley returned from Lis famous journey in the Congo, and his reports served still further to stimulate European interest in the future of the dark continent. A bare enumeration of dates is at this point highly suggestive. In 1879 the Belgians began their occupation of the Congo. In 1880 the French resumed their acti\'ities in West Africa, and in 1881 established their Protectorate over Tunis. In 1882 England established a virtual Protectorate over Egypt. In the same year the Port of Assab, on the Abyssinian coast, was transferred from a private trading company to Italy. In 1883 the French began to occupy Madagascar. In 1885 Massowah was occupied by the Italians and was subsequently developed by them into the colony of Eritrea. Meanwhile the English, as will be disclosed in a subsequent chapter, after a long period of apparent carelessness and indifference, had resumed their advance in South Africa. Germany Under these circumstances it is small wonder that the and South Germans, having established an almost unparalleled position for themselves in Europe, should have decUned to be left in the shade in Africa. Besides, the notorious unrest among the Dutch in South Africa seemed to offer a favourable opportunity for German activities. To this opportunity Ernst von Weber had called attention in 1879. He strongly advocated the acquisition of Delagoa Bay from Portugal, and the economic penetration of the Transvaal and British South Africa. " In South-East Africa we Germans," so he wrote in the Geographische Nachrichten, " have a peculiar interest, for here dwell a splendid race of people nearly alhed to us by speech and habits . . . pious folk with their energetic, strongly marked, and expressive heads, they recall the portraits of Rubens, Teniers, Ostade, and Van Eyck . . . and one may speak of a nation of Africanders or low-German Africans which forms one sympathetic race from Table Moimtain to the Limpopo. What could not such a country THE ASCENDANCY OF GERMANY (1879-90) 85 become if in the course of time it were filled with German emigrants ? The constant mass immigration of Germans would gradually bring about a decided numerical pre- ponderance of Germans, and of itself would by degrees effect the Germanisation of the country in a peaceful manner." Von Weber was not writing in the sand. Paul Kruger had already visited Berhn to seek German intervention at the time of the first British annexation of the Transvaal. He visited it again in 1884, and was cordially welcomed both by the Emperor and his Chancellor. Meanwhile a resolute attempt had been made by Germany to secure a footing at Delagoa Bay, at St. Lucia Bay and in Pondo- land, and it was subsequently stated by Sir Donald Currie, speaking with knowledge, that " the German Govern- ment would have secured St. Lucia Bay, and the coast- hne between Natal and the possessions of Portugal, had not the British Government telegraphed instructions to dispatch a gunboat from Cape Town with orders to hoist the British Flag at St. Lucia Bay." ^ In 1884 German effort in Africa was abundantly re- German warded. In the course of less than two years (1884-85), ^^"^^ Germany leapt into the position of the third European Power in Africa. She established a Protectorate over Damaraland and Namaqualand, a district which was after- wards known as German South- West Africa. That terri- tory, with an area of 332,450 sq. miles and a population — terribly depleted by German cruelties — of 79,556, passed into British keeping in July, 1915. A second German Colony was estabhshed by the annexation of Togoland and the Gamer oons. The former, with an area of 33,700 sq. miles and a population of over a milhon, was conquered by Great Britain in August 1914 ; the latter, with an area of 191,130 sq. miles and a population of 2,643,720, fell into British hands in February, 1916. Most important of all, however, ahke from the point of view of strategy, of man-power, and of raw materials, was the great province on the East Coast which became known as German East ^ Quoted by Lewin, op. ciL, p. 17. 86 EUROPE AND BEYOND Africa. That province, with an area of 384,180 sq. miles and a population of 7,645,770 persons, mostly belonging to strong fighting races, was conquered by Great Britain in December, 1917. Germany Simultaneous with these German annexations in Africa Pacific ^^^ ^^® establishment of German possessions in the Pacific. The northern coast of New Guinea, subsequently known as Kaiser Wilhelm's Land, and the group of islands col- lectively known as the Bismarck Archipelago were acquired by Germany in 1884. They passed to the British Empire, together with Samoa, which Germany had divided with the United States (1900), in the first weeks of the Great War. The The achievement of Germany, though destined to be Empire of transitory, was nevertheless remarkable. In the space of Germany less than two years, Germany had become a great world- power. Colonies in the English sense, however, she did not seek, and has never obtained. " My aim," said Bismarck in 1885, " is the governing merchant and not the governing official in those regions. Our privy councillors and expectant subalterns are excellent enough at home, but in the Colonial territories I anticipate more from the Hanseatics." In one sense the hopes of Bis- marck were entirely disappointed. The German colonies were never self-supporting, they never became the home on any considerable scale of German colonists ; they were exploited to the great profit of German capitahsts and merchants, but from first to last they were the affair of the German Government, and never really evoked the interest of the German people. ^ One thing more must be added. The German Colonial Empire came into being with the express sanction, if not with the blessing, of the dominant Colonial Power. The German settlements in South Africa and in the Pacific were not effected without loud protests from the Englishmen on the spot. But to these protests the Government at home refused to listen. " If Germany is to become a great ^ For German aims in Africa, cf. E. Zimmerman : The German Empire oj Central Africa ; for her treatment of natives, cf. Cd. 9210 (1910). THE ASCENDANCY OF GEEMANY (1879-90) 87 colonising power, all I say is, God speed her. She becomes our ally and partner in the execution of the great pur- poses of Providence for the advantage of mankind." So spake Mr. Gladstone in the House of Commons. The natives of Africa, after a few years' experience of the German rule, entertained very different sentiments. " The Germans," wrote Bishop Weston of Zanzibar to General Smuts, " rule entirely by fear, and cruel punishments are their means of spreading terror throughout the land." 1 There was indeed universal testimony from the late German colonies in Africa that " their return to German rule would be regarded by every native tribe in Africa as the greatest disaster in their tribal history." In 1884, however, this could not be foreseen, and in Tiie Berlin November of that year an International Conference met at issSs^^^' Berlin under the presidency of Prince Bismarck to discuss the whole African situation. The General Act of the Conference, which is contained in a long and elaborate document, was approved by Great Britain, France, Germany, Belgium, Portugal, as well as other Powers. The Act laid down regulations as to the traffic' in slaves; in regard to freedom of trade in the Congo Basin ; to the neutrality of territories in the same region ; to the naviga- tion of the Congo and the Niger ; and finally in regard to the treatment of the native populations.^ The Congo State under King Leopold was recognised, and in 1908 was transferred to the Belgian Kingdom. Six years later, an even more comprehensive agreement Anglo- was concluded between Germany and Great Britain. ^^^^ Great Britain transferred to Germany the island of i890 Heligoland, and recognised German claims to the land north of Lake Nyassa. On the other hand, Germany acknowledged the claims of Great Britain to the northern haK of the shores and waters of Lake Victoria Nyanza, to the valley of the Upper Nile, and to the coast of the Indian Ocean about Vitu and thence northwards to Kis- 1 The Black Slaves of Prussia, p. 5. ^ For text of the General Act, cf. P. Albin : Les Grands traites politiqves, pp. 368-406. 88 EUROPE AND BEYOND majTTi. Germany also recognised the Britisli Protectorate over the islands held by the Sultan of Zanzibar. Partition The final partition of Africa left France in a territorial of Africa ggj^ge i]^q largest of African Powers — her territories, including the Sahara Desert, extending over an area of 3,804,974 square miles. British territory, excluding Egypt and the Soudan, covered before the World- War an area of 2,713,910 square miles. Germany came third, with some- thing less than 1,000,000.^ Statistics of area give, however, a very false impression of relative values. In any scientific computation the advantage unquestionably rested with Great Britain. For the British possessions, as Principal Grant Robertson has pointed out, have three distinctive features. Firstly, " they are grouped on the shores of each of the waters that wash the continent, the Mediterranean, the Eed Sea, the Indian Ocean, and the Atlantic, and at four critical points aided by possessions outside Africa proper they control strategic lines of the first importance. Gibraltar, Aden, and Socotra, Zanzibar, St. Helena, and Cape Town have and confer a military and naval significance indisputable and incomparable. Secondly, in the solid block of British South Africa, Great Britain possesses the one great area fitted to be a colony for the White races. Thirdly, of the four great African rivers, the Nile, the Niger, the Zambesi, and the Congo, British territory controls or shares in the control of the three first. Mastery of the arterial rivers of a huge con- tinent, as the history of the American continent proves, is a brief expression of the great truth that poKtical power follows and rests on the trunk waterways. What the Danube, the Rhine, and the Vistula have been to the Europe of the past, the Nile, the Zambesi, the Niger, and the Congo will be to the Africa of the future, for a great river can be the perpetual cradle of a great civilisation." ^ It is truly and finely said — ^but we are anticipating the sequence of events, and must return to Europe. Close of Before the Anglo-German agreement of 1890 was con- Bismarck's Reign, ^ These are the figures of Mr. Scott Keltie : a^.EncyclopoBdia Britannica. 1 890 2 Historical A tlas, p. 2 1 . THE ASCENDANCY OF GERMANY (1879-90) 89 eluded, the greatest figure had been removed from the stage of European politics. In 1888 the Emperor William I. had died, and after a few months' interval during which his son, the gifted but stricken Emperor Frederick, nominally reigned, had been succeeded by Ms grandson, the Emperor William II. The young Emperor had taken to heart the advice given by his ancestress to his great-great-grand- father, George III. of England, " George, be King." As in England there was no room for George III. and William Pitt, so in Germany there was no room for William II. and Bismarck. In 1890 the young Emperor dropped " the old pilot." Bismarck's long reign was ended. In the history of the nineteenth century, Bismarck will Bismarck' always claim a foremost place ; in the sphere of diplomacy ^^^oj" no one except Cavour could dispute his claim to the first place. That he was a great patriot will be denied only by those to whom patriotism is an exploded superstition. He desired to see Germany united, and after the tragic failure of 1848, he believed, rightly or wrongly, that it could never be united by parliamentary action ; that it must be made by blood and iron. These were the tradi- tional instruments, not of German, but of Prussian state- craft, and Bismarck was primarily a Prussian patriot. Germany must be made not by the merging of Prussia in Germany, but by the merging of Germany in Prussia. That was Bismarck's supreme aim, and that was his remarkable achievement. The end was reached by methods which no plain man can approve : by diplomacy, which was a masterpiece of bluff duplicity, and by overwhelming force unscrupulously applied. Every move in a complicated game was carefully planned from the outset : calculated assistance to Russia in Poland in 1863 ; a quarrel picked with Denmark for the twofold purpose of acquiring Kiel and of estranging his master from Austria and from the Germanic Confederation ; the rupture with Austria and the dissolution of the Bund ; the formation of a North German Confederation under the presidency of Prussia ; the luring of the Emperor Napoleon III. to his fate ; the Hohenzollern candidature in Spain ; the quarrel fastened 90 EUROPE AND BEYOND upon France in 1870 ; the crushing German victory ; the formation of the new German Empire ; the undisputed hegemony of Prussia in Germany ; the almost undisputed ascendancy of Germany in Europe— the sequence was logical and unbroken. Did Bismarck ever look beyond Europe ? The question has been often asked. It cannot yet be authoritatively answered. He himself declared that " the Colonial business would be for us in Germany like the wearing of sables by Polish noblemen who had no shirts to their backs." As late as 1889 he re- peated : "I am still no Colony man." Lord Odo Russell always maintained that Bismarck's discouragement of Colonial enterprise was not mere diplomatic bluff but represented his genuine conviction ; and Mr. Sarolea agrees with him. " Bismarck," he writes, " was a realist and a materialist. He did not indulge like Talleyrand in visions of a distant future, in dreams of a German Oceana. . . . Bismarck's ambition was to control the Continent, to establish a Napoleonic Empire in Europe." ^ Mr. Lewin, on the other hand, insists that when Bismarck was convinced that the time for action had arrived, he was as eager for expansion as the most advanced exponents of Colonialism. 2 But with or ^vithout Bismarck the leaven of Imperialism was already working in Germany, and was destined to produce results of world- Vvdde significance. Bismarck had made Prussia supreme in Germany, and Germany supreme upon the continent of Europe. The young ruler who dismissed him in 1890 was determined to make Germany supreme in world-politics. AUTHORITIES See as for Chapter II., and in addition : — V. Deville : Le Partage d'Afrique. Evans Lewin : The Germans and Africa. (London, 1915.) E, Deschamps : UAfrique Nouvelle. ^ The Anglo- German Problem, p. 230. ^ Qp (.^ p 5^ THE NILE TTT^ Candia 4/i ez ^nc^r '>fc! them with fatal results. The incident created intense 1904 excitement in England, and might easily have led to the outbreak of war. The British Government, however, behaved with admirable restraint, and the incident was referred to an international commission, by whom it was estabhshed that the Russian admiral had mistaken the British trawlers for Japanese torpedo boats, and had fired upon them in panic. Russia was required to apologise to Great Britain and to compensate the fishermen. Hardly had Rodjestvensky's fleet reached Japanese Battle of water when Togo fell upon it and annihilated it in the J^"'^^^"^* Straits of Tsushima (27th May, 1905). The Battle of 27t.h May Tsushima finished the war. Through the friendly ofl&ces ^^^ of the United States, negotiations between the belligerents were opened at Portsmouth (New Hampshire), and on 23rd August, 1905, the Treaty of Portsmouth was concluded. Treaty of Russia agreed to restore to Japan the Island of Sakhahn ^^^{^ which she had seized in 1875 ; to surrender to Japan her lease of the Liao-Tung Peninsula and of Port Arthur, to evacuate Manchuria, and to recognise Korea as falling within the Japanese sphere of influence. Korea, however, was declared to be independent, and Russia and Japan mutually agreed to evacuate Manchuria. Five years later, Japan put an end to ambiguities in Korea by a definite annexation (1910). The Russo-Japanese War was an event of resounding Results of significance, and its reactions were far-reaching. In Asia tht'-^^yaf the victory of Japan imposed a definite check upon the advance of Russia, and placed Japan herself in a position of unquestioned pre-eminence. It also exercised a powerful effect upon the domestic politics of China. China hurriedly began to Europeanise her institutions in the Japanese mode, established a parliamentary government in 1911, and in 1912 overthrew the ancient Manchu dynasty, and embarked upon the hazardous experiment of a republic. 184 EUROPE AND BEYOND Results of Even more significant were the reactions of the Russo- the^War Japanese War upon Europe — primarily, of course, upon urope j^^gg-g^ herself. The Russian autocracy had long ago appreciated the fact that for them it was a race between brilhant prestige acquired from success abroad, and an internal movement which, beginning with reform, might easily develop into revolution. Changes in During the previous thirty years Russia had been the Russia, subject of three great movements, any one, or all, of which might be properly described as revolutionary. One was industrial, a second intellectual, and a third constitutional or pohtical. Russia was almost the last of European countries to pass under the dominion of modern industrial- ism. But from 1870 onwards Russia has been moving in an industrial sense in the same direction, if not at the same pace, as the countries of Western Europe. Curiously Industrial enough a strong impulse was given to the industrial move- Revolution nient by the emancipation of the serfs. Not a few of those who had subsisted in comparative comfort as serfs found it impossible to make a living as free peasant proprietors. They got deeper and deeper into debt, and at last, as the only solution of their difficulties, sought and found work in the cities. The progress of industrialisation was followed in Russia, as elsewhere, by symptoms of intellectual, social, and political restlessness. Owing to the autocratic form of government and the severely restrictive measures taken by the Russian police, the reform movement assumed from the first a revolutionary character. Consequently, many of the most brilliant Russian intellectuals found themselves in exile. Among them was Bakiinin, the prophet of anarchy, who in 1868 pubHshed at Geneva his People's Business, which was followed in 1873 by his Statecraft and Anarchy. The pubhcation of these works may be taken as having initiated the movement which reached fruition in 1917. The Con- Side by side with the Revolutionary movement there stitutional ^^g ^ Constitutional movement which found a focus in the Zemstva. One of the great reforms effected by Alex- WEST AND EAST 185 ander II. was the reorganisation of Local Government. In 1864 there was established a system of local elected councils, representing the Nobles, the Burghers, and the Peasants. These Zemstva were established in each dis- trict, and the District Zenistva elected Provincial Zemstva. They were charged with such duties as the maintenance of pubHc highways and bridges, the relief of the poor, public health, and elementary education, but their main significance lay in the fact that they trained large bodies of the people in habits of local self-government, and formed the starting-point for larger schemes of constitu- tional reorganisation. In 1878 a Conference of Zemstva met at Kieff and drafted a programme of reform which included the restoration and reorganisation of local government, reform of judicial administration, and freedom of the press ; and during the next few years numberless schemes of reform were discussed. On 13th March, 1881, however, Alexander 11. , whose life had been more than once attempted, was assassinated in the streets of St. Petersburg. For nearly a quarter of a century reaction reigned Reaction, supreme in Russia. Not until the Japanese War revealed ' the entire incompetence and the gross venality of the Autocracy did the reform party venture to resume the movement which had progressed so favourably under Alexander II. In July, 1904, Plehve, the reactionary Minister of the Interior, was assassinated. The first step taken by his successor. Prince Sviatopolk-Mirsky, was to suspend the press censorship ; the second was to summon a conference of Zemstva, which met in St. Peters- burg in November, 1904. This conference not only drafted a programme of political reform, but gave a power- ful impulse to political agitation throughout the country. An incident which took place on 2nd January, 1905, added fuel to the flame. On that day a procession of workmen in St. Petersburg was fired on by the troops, with results which caused the day to be known as " Red Sunday." Disturbances continued, and culminated in the summer of 1905 in a general strike. Meanwhile the Government 186 EUROPE AND BEYOND had already decided to summon a Representative Assembly, or Duma, endowed with merely Consultative Powers. After the general strike, however. Count Witte, who had given proof of statesmanlike qualities when appointed to the Ministry of Finance in 1892, was recalled to power. Witte, who had just negotiated the Treaty of Portsmouth, promptly decided that the proffered concessions must be enlarged, and a Duma endowed with legislative powers, and elected on a simpler and extended franchise, was summoned. Dunr''* The Duma met in May, 1906. There were two legis- lative Chambers, an Upper House, consisting of the old Council of the Empire in a reorganised form, and an elected Lower House. The majority of the Lower Chamber belonged to the party known as the Constitutional Demo- crats or Cadets, led by men like Struve and Milukov ; there was also a considerable party of strong Conservatives ; a Right Centre, known as the Octobrists, and a small Labour representation. The meeting of this first Russian Parliament was hailed with the utmost enthusiasm through- out the Empire ; a new day of liberty had dawned, it was believed, for Russia. Never were high hopes destined to more bitter disillusionment. On the eve of the opening of the Duma there was issued by the Government a Funda- mental Law which reaffirmed in the most unequivocal terms that in the Emperor alone supreme and autocratic power was vested. Of his grace he was prepared to share with the Duma his legislative functions, but in him and him alone sovereignty was to reside. No sooner, however, was the Duma opened than the Cadets formulated their demands : universal suffrage ; reconstruction of the Second Chamber ; freedom of person, of speech, of public meeting, of combination, of the press, of conscience ; compulsory and gratuitous education ; fiscal reform ; redistribution of landed property, and much else ; but of all the demands the most fundamental was that Ministers should be responsible to the Duma, that the Legislature should control the Executive. The formulation of such a programme recalls for English- WEST AND EAST 187 men the days of the early Stuarts. The essential point at issue was identical. Where was sovereignty hence- forward to reside, in the Crown or in the King-in-Parlia- ment 1 Neither side would, or perhaps could, recede from the position it had taken up. Goremykin, who had replaced Count Witte as Prime Minister before the Duma met, was faced by a vote of censure, carried with only eleven dissentients. Would the Czar give way and accept a Duma Ministry ? For some two months acrimonious debates proceeded ; but in July, Gorem;fkin was dismissed, only, however, to be succeeded by Stolypin, a younger and stronger man, who was charged with the duty of dissolving the recalcitrant Duma. On 21st July it was dissolved by proclamation, and the members were excluded by a body of troops from their accustomed place of meeting. A second Duma was promptly summoned to meet in the The ensuing March, and in the meantime Stolypin made it ^^'^^ clear that while inflexibly opposed to revolution, he was 5th March, not merely wilKng, but anxious to carry through far-reach- Jgth'june ing reforms. The condition of Kussia was at this time critical in the extreme : reeling under the shock of her recent defeat ; scandalised by successive revelations of the incompetence of generals, admirals, and officials ; dissolved in anarchy on the one side by strikes and in- surrections, on the other by savage reprisals ; — such were the conditions under which the elections for the second Duma took place. Out of 470 seats the Cadets and their allies secured about 200 ; the Radicals and Socialists about 170 ; the Conservatives, 100. Stol;^in met the new Chamber with a programme of comprehensive reform, but on two points, eagerly demanded by the majority, he was adamant : he would neither expropriate the landlords nor put the Executive under the heel of the Legislature. A deadlock ensued, and the Minister proposed to solve it by a sort of " Pride's Purge " — by the exclusion of fifty of the extreme Socialists and the arrest of their leaders ; but on 16th June the Czar dissolved the Duma. 188 EUEOPE AND BEYOND The Third A iiew electoral law was promptly promulgated ; the Nov\ m7^ franchise was varied and restricted, and a considerable redistribution of seats was effected. The result was much more favourable to the Government, and when in November the third Duma met, Stol;fpin found himself at the head of a good working majority which settled down to carry through, quietly and steadily, a comprehensive programme of sorely needed administrative reform. Thus did the Japanese victory react upon the domestic politics of Russia. The following chapter will show that it reacted not less powerfully upon the international situation. AUTHORITIES P. Leroy Beaulieu : La Renovation de VAsie. Krahmer : Russland in Asien. Albrecht : Das Russische Central- Asien. Meadows : The Chinese and their Rebellions. Hake : Events in the Taiping Rebellion. Lord C. Beresford : The Break-up of China. Ravenstein : Russians on the Amur. V. Chirol : The Far Eastern Question. A. R. CoLQUHOUN : The Mastery of the Pacific, China in Transformation, English Policy in the Far East, and The Truth about Tonquin. Lord CuRZON : Problems of the Far East. F. H. Serine and E. D. Ross : The Heart of Asia. Sir R. K. Douglas : China, and Europe and the Far East. C. B. Norman : Tonquin, or France in the Far East. J. L. de Lanessan : UEmpire de VAnnam. H. C. Potter : The East of To-day and To-morrow (N. Y., 1902). D. Murray : The Story of Japan. W. E. Griffts : The Mikado's Empire. H. Norman : The Story of Japan. Sir R. P. Porter : Japan. Sir Ian Hamilton : A Staff Officer\i5Wt THE WORLD SETTLEMENT 315 conscience, and facilities for missionaries and ministers of all creeds.^ German East Africa was originally assigned to Great East Britain, but in consequence of strong protests from ^^"^^ Belgium was ultimately divided between the two Powers. The British portion, now known as the Tanganyika Terri- tory, lies inmiediately to the south of the Kenya Colony (formerly the British East Africa Protectorate) ; it has a coast-line of 620 miles, extending from the mouth of the Umba to Cape Delgado ; an area of some 384,180 square miles, and an estimated pre-war native population of about 7,600,000. Tanganyika Territory is to be held under mandate, but the terms of it have not yet been published. The mandate for the rest of German East Africa — the Provinces of Rhuanda and Urandi, together with the country round Lake Kivu — has been conferred upon Belgium. A strip on the east of the Belgian portion has, however, been reserved to Great Britain to facilitate the construction of the Cape to Cairo Railway. Togoland, which surrendered to a Franco-British force in the first month of the war, was divided between them : about one-third of the Colony (some 12,500 square miles) bordering on the Gold Coast territories being assigned to Great Britain, and the remainder to France. The Cameroons proved a somewhat harder nut to crack, and did not surrender until February, 1916. It too has been divided : an area of 33,000 square miles (out of 191,130), extending from the coast along the Nigerian frontier up to Lake Chad, has been assigned to Great Britain, the rest to France. East Africa, Togoland, and tlie Cameroons are all held West by their respective assignees under mandate from the "^* League of Nations. These mandates, however, will presmnably belong,- not, like that for the South-West Protectorate, to Class C, but to Class B., which differs in two important respects from the former. On the one hand, the " mandated Colony " does not become an integral 1 The mandate is now officially published. (Cmd. 1204, 1921.) 2 These mandates have not yet (March, 1921) been published. 316 EUROPE AND BEYOND portion of the territory of the mandatory ; on the other, the mandates secure " equal opportunities for the trade and commerce of other members of the League." No such provision is contained either in the mandate for South- West Africa or in those for the Pacific islands. The insertion of such a provision would plainly have proved too embarrassing to the Union of South Africa in the one case ; to Australia and New Zealand in the other. Hence the necessity for the distinction contained in the Covenant. Portugal put in a claim to a share in the re-partition of Africa, but after careful consideration it was disallowed. The general result of the partition may be summarised as follows : out of the 12,500,000 persons who were in 1914 living under the German flag in Africa 42 per cent, have been transferred to the guardianship of the British Empire, 33 per cent, to that of France, and 25 per cent, to Belgium.^ The settlement would seem in the main to accord with the principle laid down by Mr. Wilson, who insisted that there should be : "A free, open- minded, and absolutely impartial adjustment of all colonial claims, based upon a strict observance of the principle that in determining all such questions of sovereignty the interests of the populations concerned must have equal weight with the equitable claims of the Government whose title is to be determined." '^ If there was one point upon which every African native who had ever lived under German rule was resolved, it was that under no circum- stances would he voluntarily remain under or return to it. In the court of historic judicature Germany had plainly forfeited the kingdom to which, with the general assent of her European neighbours, she had succeeded ; it was high time in the interests of the native peoples that an- other should take it. For the protection of those interests in the future, every possible security has been taken in the Covenant of the League of Nations : should that Covenant be broken, a grim reckoning will await the offender. * History of the Peace Conference at Paris, ii. 244. - Address of 8th January, 1918, " The Fourteen Points." I • CJ iSi<; zn.