THE GREAT COUNCIL AT BERLIN, AND THE MEN WHO COMPOSED IT.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXIII, Issue 5447, 11 September 1878, Page 3

THE GREAT COUNCIL AT BERLIN, AND THE MEN WHO COMPOSED IT.

(From the Spectator.) No sceno more striking has been presented iu this half century, overcrowded as it has been with historic scenes. It is the first great assemblage, of the European Powers that has been held in the capital of the newest of all great States—the first recognition that, for the time at all events, substantial power in Europe has shifted its centre eastward. Nothing but a history like that of 1866-71, of the five years which transformed the newest and least regarded of the Great Powers into the foremost and most powerful, could have induced all Europe to select for its debates a city so, remote and eo little attractive to men who have seen all of luxury and convenience that Europe has to show—a city, too, in which, of all others, they will be least regarded. For, by a strange irony in their fate, just as Berlin is assigned a sort of European primacy among cities, the Berliners are discussing, not the rise of their empire, but her possible fall, the evil symptoms of social unrest, of which the attempted assassination of her Emperor is but the one most noticed by the world. A Congress at Berlin would have seemed to our ancestors as strange as a Parliament at Hawick. The Congres* sits in an old palace, the Palace of the Radziwills, the very name of which mustremind its members perpetually of the only European State which within the last three hundred years has dropped out of the roll of nations, and has been, perhaps finally, divided amoug its neighbors. Partition, the palace will suggest to them, is not always a temporary expedient. The members of Congress are most of them amoug the foremost statesmen of Europe, and two of them, at least, will live iu future history. There will, within no long time, be a Bismarck literature iu Germany, possibly in Europe, and centuries hence historians will make reputations by their pictures of the great Reiterdlplomatist, the dragoon-statesman, the Goetz-Richelieu, the man who in himself sums up so well the characteristics of the old and of the new Germany. Nor can we doubt that as the dreams of Alberoni are still studied, as meu still read lives of the Cardinal de Retz, as .Boliugbroke still interests statesmen, and as Napoleon 111. still appeals to those who love to investigate the puzzles of character, future historians will dwell lovingly oh the memoirs and tho letters, the caricatures, and tho “ Lives of Queens” which will slowly reveal to our children the true objects of the Sphinx-line personage who, whether the first civil statesman in Europe or only the first charlatan, is in either capacity at least the second figure in the Congress of Berlin. Nor, though these two stand by themselves, are the other attendants at the Board men to bo readily forgotten. Prince Gortchakoff lias governed Russia for twenty-one years, has for that long period stood at the centre of its secret history, has seen one Czar almost master of Europe, snubbing France, re-establishing Austria, dictating to Germany, and then passing from life, perhaps voluntarily, a beaten and hopeless man ; and has seen another, defeated in a war with Turkey and its allies, enfranchising his people, renewing the contest with the secular foe, triumphing greatly, and then quietly obeying a summons to the European bar. Just think, apart from his career, what Prince Gortchakoff must know, what secret history he could write, what reputations he could shatter with a phrase 1 Is there another man who is sure whether Russian diplomatists are the most artful or the most stupid of their kind ? Lord Salisbury and Count Andrassy are smaller men, but even they represent two of the most ancient political forces still surviving, the English and tho Hungarian aristocracies, and. in all but the prejudices and ignorance which aristocracies cannot avoid, represent them well. France has done well to choose M. Waddington to represent her, for it is her historic peculiarity to succeed when her agent is a natural-. ised foreigner; .and Turkey does better to send the astute Greek who for years has supplied her Foreign Office with despatches, and who sits at tho Board the latest, let us hope the last, specimen of those Greeks who for nearly two thousand years have placed capacity -and knowledge at the service of races whichhave become great in the world mainly because they succeeded in enslaving their own. Be the master Roman, or Turk, or Slav, the Greek has still found the brain. A Greek fitly represents Turkey in her hour of fate, if only that enslaved mind may be avenged on tyrannic matter. Lord Odo Russell is a man to whom England looks ia afi emergency ; St. Vallier, the one French diplomatist who has won confidence from Prince Bismarck ; Count Schouvaloff, the future Chancellor of an empire, and the one Russian, perhaps, who has understood English—for Pozzo di Borgo was no Russian ; and Count Corti, an Italian, who if Coristantinople gossip may he trusted, has, if not the force of Cavour, at last bis supple finesse. Men say there that, even a Greek can not take him in, or a Turk drive him from his path. Kings may be satisfied to regard such an assemblage of intellects, and think that 'the envoys are but agents ; aristocrats may'be pleased, for seven of the greatest—Bismarck, Gortchakoff, Schouvaloff, Andrassy, St. Vallier, Salisbury, and Russell—belong distinctively to their order ; while plebeians need not be dismayed by the spectacle, for the eighth, though full of the pride of a pedigree to which even SchouvalofTa is - modern—and he represents princes older than the Grand Princedom from which sprang the Czarship—is the son of a mere litterateur , and was once a clerk |n a Loudon attorney’s office, hoping, perhaps, to die a membe**for the Tower Hamlets. And if the assemblage is remarkable, so also is its object. The men who sit there, if they could but agree, have the power to carve the world ; and before them, avowedly to be carved, lies the Easteim half of the Roman Empire,—the half which, after many vicissitudes, escaped tho vivifying conquest of the Northern barbarians only to be crushed beneath tho deadening conquest of the barbarians from the south. If Spain were but there, the whole Western Empire would be deciding at last upon the fate of the Eastern. The power to fulfil the purpose of which the Papacy in its first thousand years always dreamed, but dreamed in vain, for which the hosts of Crusaders struggled through two centuries fruitlessly, which tempted Charlemagne when ho received a proposal from the Empress Irene, and Charles V. when Lepanto had saved the coasts of the Mediterranean, .has been placed by fate or Providence in the hands of that, Council-Board. Rome in its grandest height of power never possessed one inch which they either do not inherit or have not tho power, if they please, to replace under a regenerating civilisation. From the Persian Gulf to the northern confines of Dacia, from Batoum to the Atlas, every village that Justinian ruled lies stretched out at their disposal. . They can give Numidia order, and protection to the people now, as then, slaving for others in the Valley of the Nile. Syria is theirs, and Armenia: “ Asia,” studded with cities; Greece, Macedonia, and Thrace, the hundred islands of the Mediterranean's well as the land where peasants still speak the tongue carried among barbarians by Trajan’s colonists. Just think that these men can settle, if they please, as they, sit there, tho future of Athens and of Carthage, of Jerusalem and Alexandria, of Antioch and Erivau, as well as of. Constantinople, with Bagdad as a mere incident ia the arrangement, and scholars at least will realise that they are looking ou at a most marvellous scene. It will nevertheless, wo fear, be a disappointing one, Publicists who have nob forgotten history may amuse themselves with thinking of the grandeur of such a task as Congress might attempt, of the new career the world might run if a steam-plough were safe in the Valley of tho Creates, or if wheat could be once more reaped in peace before Iconium, and may smile to themselves as they think of stupid English squires, anxious mainly for a Meat Bill, working indirectly so beneficent a revolution; but the Englishmen of to-day are not capable of tho position, they can see nothing, bub the bold barbarians who but for Christianity would be so like themselves, and without their consent tho Eastern world can enjoy nothing but resignation. The dreams are all dreams. There will be struggles over details, trumpery little questions of for* treHaes and frontiers, and triumphs over minute victories such as Turks still remain oh the JEgean or that Bayazld is not Slav, and Turkish bonds will be raised to thirty, and Mr.

Disraeli will be a Duke, and “ the East” will be left once more to anarchy and decay. ' And who are wo, flat-nosed barbarians that we are, that we should complain when the descendant of an unmixed people has so decreed ? * f Parliamentary Government, is an excellent thing, but my race has seen and has survived the Pharoahs”—and has seen and will survive alike tho decay of the East and the greatness of the little island which to-day, by a mysterious chance, could revivify her again.