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 %fft (Bittk Committee. 
 
 A FEW WORDS 
 
 ON 
 
 THE GREEK SETTLEMENT. 
 
 AHTHUE AEK^OLD, M.P.. 
 
 Chaivinaa of the Executive. 
 
 PUBLISHED BY THE GREEK COMMITTEE.
 
 THE GREEK SETTLEMENT. 
 
 I WISH to put before the public a few facts concerning the 
 present settlement of the Greek question. Lord Salisbury at 
 Newcastle laid down two propositions. He said^ with regard 
 to Mr. Gladstone's Government : " The fact is^ that in the 
 summer of 1880 they demanded for Greece a great deal more 
 than the Treaty of Berlin, or rather the Protocol of Berlin, 
 had ever suggested. In 1881, they forced Greece to accept a 
 great deal less than the Protocol of Berlin airreed to o-ive 
 her.'^ Now, inasmuch as I approve the policy of the Govern- 
 ment, I am concerned to show that both of these propositions 
 by Lord Salisbury are misstatements. In the first place. 
 Lord Salisbury imj^lies that which is the very opposite of 
 truth — that the Government have acted in isolation. I tliink 
 a chief merit of the policy of Mr. Gladstone and Lord Gran- 
 ville has been that, from first to last, they have preserved the 
 authority of the Powers of Europe as a Court of Arbitration. 
 I look upon that as exceeding in importance the affairs of 
 Greece, and as containing for Greece herself a guarantee and 
 a security of greatness which is not yet fulfilled. I say as a 
 matter of fact, in contradiction to Lord Salisbury, that the 
 line upon which the representatives of the Powers agreed in 
 Conference at Berlin in 1880 did not give to Greece more 
 than was suggested by the Protocol of Berlin ; because that 
 Protocol declared that the rectification might follow the 
 '^ valleys '' of the two rivers, and the Conference selected in
 
 4 
 
 Iwth cases the northern watershed, which is just as much 
 suggested by the use of the word '^ valley ■'■' as the watercourse 
 or as the southern watershed. Therefore I say that Lord 
 Salisbury's first proposition has not the merit of truth. In 
 the second he says Her Majesty's Government have forced 
 Greece to accept a great deal less than the Protocol of 
 Berlin agreed to ffive her. I shall show that this also is 
 utterly incoiTect. But I must notice, first, the disin- 
 genuousness of Lord Salisbury's argument. In the second 
 proposition he refers to the Protocol as having " agreed "" to 
 give Greece a certain territory. I wish it had " agreed.'' If 
 Mr. Gladstone and Lord Granville had been our pleni- 
 potentiaries at Berlin, I think this Protocol would have 
 '^agreed" to the enlargement of Greece. And if it had 
 ^^ agreed " to give her the valleys of those two rivers, 
 Mr. Gladstone and Lord Granville would, in concert 
 with the Powers, have enforced that agreement. But, 
 as Lord Salisbury knows very well, the Protocol did nothing 
 of the sort; it contained, as he says for his own purpose, 
 in his first proposition, only a suggestion. I admit that the 
 suggestion received the most liberal interpretation at the 
 Conference of Berlin in 1880; and I admit also that Greece 
 has now received less than any reasonable interpretation of 
 that Protocol would award. It remains to show how that 
 came to pass. The Government desired to act in conjunction 
 with Prince Bismarck, to whom Mr. Goschen communicated 
 their willingness to join, if necessary, in coercing Turkey 
 to accept the line of the Berlin ConfereDce. The Prince 
 Chancellor declared that Greece should have nothing less; 
 that for any subtraction from that award Turkey should 
 give compensation, and he suggested the Island of Crete. 
 He would accept operation in concert with England, but 
 without pledging Germany to take "active measures.'' 
 
 u,uc
 
 He said langhing-ly to Mr. Goschen that he was quite pre- 
 pared that Greece should have " immoral support/' He 
 suggested that the ships of England, or of some other Power, 
 should transport 30,000 Greek troops to the Dardanelles, 
 and so cut off the possibility of a Turkish army advancing 
 by that route, while the naval forces of the Powers denied the 
 approach of the Turkish fleet. lu addition to all this Prince 
 Bismarck indicated that, if war should ensue, the Powers 
 should have strict regard to its localisation, and should agree 
 that operations should not extend beyond the countries directly 
 engaged in the struggle. It was the firm belief of the Prince 
 and of Mr. Goschen, as well as of the British Government, 
 that this policy would be successful without causing bloodshed. 
 In that belief, and with a determination to carry the line of 
 the Conference, Mr. Goschen went to Constantinople. I have 
 not space to do justice to the diligence and the determination 
 with which Mr. Goschen adhered to the interests of Greece, 
 while the ideas of Prince Bismarck upon the subject of 
 ^^ contingent coercion^'' melted away under the influence of 
 the late Baron Haymerle, the Austrian Minister for Foreign 
 Affairs, who said he would be content with a smaller cession 
 of territory than Her Majesty's Government Avould be 
 disposed to insist upon; not because he did not prefer the 
 larger, but because he would have nothing to do with 
 coercion, and did not believe in obtaining it otherwise from 
 the Porte. Prince Bismarck at once instructed the German 
 Ambassador at the Porte to accept a compromise. Count 
 Hatzfeld again and again acknowledged that his attitude was 
 placing Mr. Goschen in isolation. At almost every meeting 
 Mr. Goschen stood alone, and if Mr. Gladstone and Lord 
 Granville had instructed Mr. Goschen to give way as readily 
 as did Prince Bismarck's representative, the Greeks would not 
 have gained Larissa. To say that England forced upon
 
 6 
 
 Greece this reduction of her claims is a trespass by Lord 
 Salisbury upon the ignorance o£ his friends. What England 
 did was to declare that though the arrangement proposed by 
 Turkey was not such as she could regard as the most satis- 
 factory, yet she could not on that account violate the principle 
 which must rule in such an arbitration upon the affairs of 
 nations. It was never enforced upon Greece. Greece was 
 perfectly free to reject this reduced award and to declare war 
 against Turkey. Had (Greece taken that course, I have not the 
 shghtest doubt that the British fleet would have protected her 
 capital from destruction. But I am glad she did not take 
 that course. At the best it would have loaded her with debt, 
 without advantage ; it would have strained that principle of 
 bloodless operation which in this case has enlarged her terri- 
 tory by more than 10,000 square miles. That is an area 
 somewhat larger than the whole of Wales, together with the 
 counties of Lancashire and Cheshire. I know that land, and 
 if I had to name the province in Europe which is the most 
 fruitful and beautiful, which has the greatest natural riches 
 and the most spacious harbour for shipping, which unites to 
 splendour of scenery the nearest approach to perfection of 
 cHmate, I should name without hesitation that lovely land of 
 Thessaly. I would be the first to censure Her Majesty^s 
 Ministers if I thought they had been in any degree unmindful 
 of the just claims of Greece. But I know not which to praise 
 the more — Lord Granville's resolute maintenance of the claim 
 of Greece to a larger area, or his loyalty to the paramount 
 principle of union among the Powers of Europe. Lord 
 Granville declared that the arrangement now accepted is not 
 one which if Her Majesty's Government had been acting 
 alone they would have agreed to, and he sanctioned its accept- 
 ance only on the condition that a decided protest should be 
 made in favour of a better settlement, together with a declara-
 
 tion that Her Majesty's Government agree '' out of deference 
 to the other Powers/' That is the plain unvarnished history 
 of a European event of no small importance, which does 
 honour to all cuucerned, except to those British plenipotentiaries 
 who were content with a suggestion at Berlin when they 
 ought to have demanded an agreement.