Government thought of hinting at a remonstrance.1 Lord Lytton did not, any more than his two predecessors, discourage before the middle of September, 1876, the communications between Cabul and Tashkend. And when he did object, the ground of his objection was a Russian letter which he had received from the British Agent at Cabul three months previously, and which he had sent home to Lord Salisbury without remark. Neither did Lord Salisbury at the time attach any importance to it.

Thus far, then, the Papers on Central Asia have led us by two routes to the same conclusion. The correspondence between the English Foreign Office and the Russian Government on the affairs of India and Central Asia culminated in the speech of Mr. Disraeli in the summer of 1876-a speech which was absolutely inconsistent with any belief on the part of the Ministry, of which Mr. Disraeli was chief, that any danger was arising to British interests in India, through Afghanistan or otherwise, from the extension of Russian rule in Central Asia. The same conclusion is inevitable from a perusal of the correspondence between Shere Ali and General von Kaufmann. Not only does that correspondence fail to establish any Russian or Afghan intrigues, but the tacit approval of it by the Viceroy's Government down to September 16, 1876, and of Lord Beaconsfield's Government down to October, 1876, proves that neither Government had previously considered it in any way objectionable. And even when the Foreign Secretary did call the attention of the Russian Government to the matter, he was careful to confine his objection to one letter; and with respect to that one letter, he is careful to observe that, though he thinks the tone and insinuation of General Kaufmann's letter to the Ameer of Cabul to be undesirable, the letter itself does not contain any statement of a distinctly objectionable character.' 92

1 Central Asia, No. 1 (1878), p. 79.

2 Ibid., p. 80. There is nothing to show that the letter is Kaufmann's, and there is internal evidence to show that it is not.

271

CHAPTER III.

INTERRUPTION OF THE FRIENDLY UNDERSTANDING BETWEEN ENGLAND AND RUSSIA.

WE have seen that in the beginning of May, 1876, the relations between the English and Russian Governments were of the most cordial character. The Prime Minister of England not only repudiated all fear and jealousy of Russia; he did more: he expressed a wish that her career of conquest in Central Asia, so far from stopping, would follow the example set her by the progress of our arms in India. This went beyond anything previously uttered by an English statesman, and the party of action in Russia were not slow to note the importance of that fact. The party of annexation, represented by Kaufmann, and of Muscovite interests, represented by the Moscow Gazette, thanked the English Premier and congratulated the Russian public on the complete understanding between the two Governments, which Mr. Disraeli's speech proclaimed to all the world. It was the highest mark of confidence yet reposed by an English Minister in the intentions of the Russian Government. Unfortunately it also marked the turn of the tide. Mr. Disraeli's next utterance on the relations between the two Governments was the notorious Guildhall speech of the following November, in which he taunted Russia with her annexations and menaced her with three campaigns. How shall we account for the violent change? In the interval the Bulgarian atrocities had been perpetrated; the Berlin Memorandum had been rejected; war had in conse

quence broken out between Servia and Montenegro on the one hand and Turkey on the other; the state of feeling in Russia made a war of liberation probable; Mr. Disraeli would have intervened by force of arms in defence of the Turkish Government if the agitation aroused in England by the doings of the Turks in Bulgaria had not prevented him. That is the explanation, and here are the proofs.

The Berlin Memorandum was received by the English Government on May 15. The popular impression is that it was rejected on the ground that it was an affront to the dignity of England to propose to it for signature a document in the preparation of which it had not been consulted. The Blue-books give no countenance to that impression. The reasons why the Berlin Memorandum was rejected may be summed up in Lord Derby's concise phrase on the occasion, that the Government of Lord Beaconsfield' deprecated the diplomatic action of the other Powers in the affairs of the Ottoman Empire.' 'The integrity and independence' of that empire were at that time the object nearest to the Ministerial heart. The notion that the Berlin Memorandum was rejected because it trenched on the amour propre of the British Cabinet has often called forth the cheers of the credulous. But it is a fiction. Lord Derby's despatches are on record to disprove it. And, in truth, there was nothing in the circumstances to justify the inference. In drawing up the Berlin Memorandum, and then submitting it to the consideration and criticism of the other Powers, the three Emperors had before them the example of France and England in 1860. When the Syrian massacres roused the indignation of Europe the Governments of France and England, as being primarily interested in the matter, submitted a project of intervention to the other Cabinets. These, so far from taking umbrage, applauded the initiative taken by France and England, and the pacification

1 Turkey, No. 3 (1876), p. 174.

of the Lebanon speedily followed. But the defection of England from the European concert in the summer of 1876 led first to the war between Turkey on one side and Servia and Montenegro on the other, and then to the Russo-Turkish war. England was kept out of the fray by the much-abused Bulgarian agitation. This is not a disputable inference: it is capable of documentary proof. On July 1, 1876, Lord Derby wrote to the British Ambassador at St. Petersburg as follows:

The Russian Ambassador called to-day and asked me whether, in the event of war breaking out between Turkey and Servia, Her Majesty's Government intended, as he had been led to believe, to adhere to a policy of strict and absolute non-intervention. I said that such was undoubtedly the case, but that it must be clearly understood that Her Majesty's Government entered into no engagement to continue to abstain from intervention in the event (which, however, I could not assume as probable) of a different course being pursued by other Powers.1

Here we have a sufficiently plain intimation that if any other Power intervened against the Porte, England might take up arms in defence of the Porte. War did break out between Turkey and Servia as a direct result of England's desertion of the cause of freedom, which was unanimously upheld by the other Great Powers. A Russian officer took the chief command of the Servian army, and between 2000 and 3000 Russian soldiers volunteered under his banner. The pro-Turkish party in England set itself to influence the public mind against Russia, and the guiding spirit of the Government chafed angrily at the agitation which made a war in support of the rule of the Turk in Bulgaria impossible. But let the Government speak for itself. On August 29, 1876, Lord Derby sent the following telegram to Sir Henry Elliot :

I think it right to mention, for your guidance, that the

1 Turkey, No. 3 (1876), p. 351.

T

impression produced here by events in Bulgaria has completely destroyed sympathy with Turkey. The feeling is universal, and so strong that, even if Russia were to declare war against the Porte, Her Majesty's Government would find it practically impossible to interfere.

On September 5 this was expanded, in a written despatch, as follows:

It is my duty to inform you that any sympathy which was previously felt here towards that country (Turkey) has been completely destroyed by the recent lamentable occurrences in Bulgaria. The accounts of outrages and excesses committed by the Turkish troops upon an unhappy, and for the most part unresisting, population have roused an universal feeling of indignation in all classes of English society; and to such a pitch has this risen, that in the extreme case of Russia declaring war against Turkey, Her Majesty's Government would find it practically impossible to interfere in defence of the Ottoman Empire. Such an event, by which the sympathies of the nation would be brought into direct opposition to its Treaty engagements, would place England in a most unsatisfactory, and even humiliating position. Yet it is impossible to say that if the present conflict continues the contingency may not arise.1

There could not be a plainer confession that public opinion alone restrained the Government from going to war against Russia in the event of Russia going to war in defence of the Christians of Turkey. How bitterly the Prime Minister resented this frustration of his policy we have learnt from the Aylesbury speech on September 20, 1876, in which he declared Mr. Gladstone a greater criminal than Chefket Pasha.2

The course of events forced Lord Beaconsfield to accept, a few weeks later, a Conference at Constantinople. But how much it went against the grain with him to accept what promised to be a pacific solution of the question is shown by the warlike language of his

1 Turkey, No. 1 (1877), p. 105.

2 Lord Beaconsfield's Speech at Aylesbury, published by authority,

pp. 8, 9.