ENGLISH POLICY AND ENGLISH SYMPATHIES.

Globe, Volume VI, Issue 689, 4 September 1876, Page 4

ENGLISH POLICY AND ENGLISH SYMPATHIES.

{Pall Mall Gazette, Jvly 7th.) The publication of the diplomatic papers which Mr Disraeli has promised ought to put an end to much inconsiderate talk and unnecessary alarm. To judge by what many people have been writing and saying lately, it might be thought that there were only two possible courses of action open to our Government in dealing with these Eastern troubles ; and that, inasmuch as they may be assumed not to have adopted the one. they must be taken to have adopted the other. If they are not giving an active moral support to the cause of the Slav Christians—and we may assume that they are not doing that, then according to the writers and speakers above mentioned, they muse be already giviDg active moral support to the Turkish Empire, and in a little while may be led further into " bolstering it up by actual resort to force. This assumption ran through Mr Bright's speech the other night; it ran through the speeches and resolutions of the meeting held on Wednesday at Birmingham ; it runs through all, or almost all, the criticisms which we hear passed upon the supposed policy of the Government. But we have no doubt whatever that the correspondence when published will show it to be quite unfounded, and will disclose the existence of a third cause, omitted altogether from the survey of these agitated critics, which course has been, in fact, pursued by her Majesty's Ministers. It will be seen, it is tolerably safe to predict, that the aim which the Government have all along had in view has been the support not of the Turkish but of the British Empire ; that they have had no " policy" at all in the sense in which their assailants use the word, but have simply held themselves throughout all the past intrigues, aad will hold themselves during the war which has followed, in readiness to take such steps as British interests may demand —indifferent whether in doing so they may incidentally benefit one party to the struggle or the other. Should this be made clear, it ought to go far to reconcile much of th>i existing conflict in English opinion ; but that it will do this completely is, we fear, not now to bo expeoted—for the tendency of matters to a crisis is showing the divergence of sentiment in this country to be formidably wide. For a long time, of course, it haa been evident that it existed, and that Englishmen might be divided, broadly speakiag, into those who place the " claims of the Christian populations of the Porte" before everyth'ng, and those who, while admitting the necessity of putting an end to the oppression and misrule against which these claims are a pro test, refuse to exclude other considerations from their view. The one party thinks and says that the objects with which they sympathize must be attained even at the risk of setting the worlcl ablaze with war. The othtr contends that this is very much like burning a house to roast an egg ; and declares particularly that the English Empire is too important an edifice to be used for any such purpose. Up till lately there was just room to hope that the first-named party would define their position as regards their opponents thus : " We consider the cause of the insurgents, and of Servia and Montenegro in so far as they are fighting to free the insurgents, a righteous cause, and we will not withhold our sympathies from it merely because you happen to see a more or less problematical danger to our interests in the vindication of that cause by arms. Once show us, however, that the danger is a real one, give us reason to believe that the attack of the provinces upon Turkey may lead to attack upon our own power and we shall no longer rejoice in it." Up till lately, we say, there was just room to hope that this might be the position of those who have been calling upon us to extend our sympathies to the men who have begun this "holy war" But if the Spectator may be taken as at all representative of the sympathisers, that hope must be abandoned. For them the war will still be blest if only the 81av population of Turkey is released from the domination of its masters, no matter what the consequences may be for nations which oppress nobody. They deny, of course that any ill consequences are to be anticipated—or rather they express a doubt on the matter which other words of theirs contradict; but they do not shrink from the conclusion that no considera tion of the aims or probable results of the war ought to affect the policy of Kngland The Spectator Bpeaks on this point with complete frankness. "There is no doubt," it admits, "that the Russian nation as yet, apart from the Bussian Government, is heartily favorable to the insurgents ; that it instigates them to select this particular time, that it sends them money, arms, and officers, and that it will in certain contingencies constrain its Government to assist them openly with the wi.ole force f the empire. There is also no doubt that the Bussian Government, if thu'i constraint 1, will employ the hopes of the insurgents &> u the enthusiasm of its own people to obtain political advantages for itself, And finely it may be admitted, though it is not so certain, that such advantages so obtaiued will be to the detriment of British influence and may be to the detriment of British safety. The British Governmeat, perceiviug this, is, as we believe, in danger of taking steps which will immensely increase the Turk's chance of retaining the Christians under Osmanli rule." Here the position of the Slav sympathizers isdefined very precisely indeed. Certain perils are threatening which may be to the detriment of British safety ; and the Government is, by implication, condemned for taking steps to meet the danger, because these measures will " immensely increase the Turk's chance cf retaining the Christians under Osmanli rule." At what point, then, is the duty of not increasing Turkey's chance of retaining her Christian subjects to yield to the duty of looking after our own safety? Is there no danger so great as to justify us in grappling with it, if thereby we injure the prospects of the Slavs ? No: nothing will justify us in doing any thing for our own security that would support the Turkish Empire. To help the Ottoman Government even indirectly wouid be " an utter infamy to which Englishmen ought not to descend were their dearest interests in peril." The dearest interests of a nation must be supposed to include its existence; but without pressing the argument to that length, let us conduct it to J at least one obviously legitimate result. Suppose the dearest interests of England in India were iri peril—suppose we were threatened with the downfall of our Indian Empire by the chances of this Eastern war. The argument goes the clear length of maintaining that in tbit case we ought to sit

heroically still and allow that peril to over* whelm us rather than descend to the " utter infamy " of averting it by striking a blow that would profit the Turks. We must reassert the accuracy of our own word " sentimental" as opposed to the Spectator's word " moral" in describing such counsel as this. It is sentimentalism in the stage of acute mania; while as to its morality, let that be judged by its results. What the Spectator would be apparently prepared to advocate as the " moral" course of action in the supreme crisis we have supposed is this : that for the sake of thirteen raillionsof Slavonic Christians we ought either to give over two hundred millions of Indian natives to anarchy, barbarism, and intestine bloodshed, or to see such a rule and such a civilisation as that of Russia substituted in India for our own. In addition, the prosperity of thirty millions of people at home is to be disturbed and diminished for the same purpose. If this is what policy is to come to under the guidance of " morality," mankind will soon learn to look back with regret to the unregenerate days when nations walked by the light of self-interest alone.

Such, however, is the principle which has now been openly laid down ; and since we have been thus solemnly warned that we must risk some of our most important interests rather than give even an indirect support to the Turk, it becomes highly necessary to inquire what course of action on the part of our Government will be interpreted as giving support to the Turk. For the moment, no doubt, the question does not specially press ; it depends upon the chances of the war whether the question ever becomes pressing at all. But, the chances of war being what they are, who can say at what moment our Government might find itself called upon to assume an attitude which it would be easy to represent as an attitude of "support to the Turkish Empire ?" Already the question has been raised of sending Turkish gunboats up the Danube to attack Belgrade ; but it is as regards the 1 and frontiers of Turkey that the difficulty we speak of is most likely to arise. Suppose Turkey to repel the invasion, and in her turn to cross the Servian frontier. How should such a step be regarded by the several signatories to the Treaty of Pans ? By the 29th article of that treaty it is provided that tnere shall be no intervention in Servia without the previous consent of the guaranteeing Powers. But evidently, as has been justly remarked, the framers of the Treaty of Paris never contemplated the possibility of Servia attacking Turkey, or they could scarcely in fairness have denied the right of Turkey to repel the aggression and to enter Servia. Suppose this theoretical question to become a practical one, and the British Go vernment to express the undoubtedly reasonable opinion that Turkey would be justified in taking the military measures required, simply notifying the Powers that it was about to do so, what then ? Will that be giving support to Turkey, and incurring utter infamy by so doing? Will " morality" constrain us to apply the strict letter of the Treaty of Paris in an obvious casus omissus; and will a " righteous war " be held to mean necessarily a war of " heads I win, tails you lose ?" We much fear that it would be so in this case ; and the case, unfortunately, is only one of many which may arise further to embarrass a Government already burdened sorely enough with the task of directing the policy of a country whose sympathies are at daggers-drawn with its interests.