A STRAIN UPON LOYALTY

“When the Government ordered the fleet to the Straits, They surely encountered the hardest of fates, For the order, scarce given, at once was recalled, And the Russians were not in the slightest appalled. And every one says who has heard the debates, It’s the Cabinet now, not the fleet, in the straits.” _Sir H. W. Lucy: ‘Later Peeps in Parliament.’_

“A health to Jingo first, and then A health to shell, and then to shot! The man who hates not other men, I deem no perfect patriot. To all who hold old England mad, We drink; to all who’d tax her food! We pledge the man who hates the Rad! We drink to Bartle Frere and Froude! Drinks all round! Here’s to Jingo, king and crowned! To the great cause of Jingo, drink, my boys! And the great name of Jingo, round and round!” _Anonymous parody of Tennyson’s ‘Hands All Round.’_

The absolute loyalty of Queen Victoria to the one-time opinions of her dead husband helped to lead England occasionally into devious ways. The Crimean War was the result of an idea in England that Turkey in Europe was necessary to the interests of this country, and once the war was started the Queen and Prince upheld it heart and soul. Albert had the usual German hatred of Russia, and deplored the Prussian tendency to court the Muscovite as an ally, expressing himself with astonishing frankness in his letters.

In 1875 came the beginning of another incident between Russia and Turkey, and the Queen followed exactly the same course as had been pursued over twenty years earlier, and unfortunately she had Disraeli, with his wild dreams of world expansion, at her elbow.

The Turks were actively oppressing their Christian subjects, the Slavs, and turning their backs upon past promises and conventions. The great powers, Russia, Austria and Prussia, drew up a Note demanding Turkey’s adhesion to past treaties, and asked the other nations to join them. France and Italy at once agreed, but England hesitated until such time had passed that Turkey herself felt oppressed and sent a message to England, which was in effect--

“Sign, my dear friend, that tiresome note. I shall know that you do not mean it, and I shall also know how to deal with it.”

England signed, and the note was received in Constantinople “with lively satisfaction.” It gave Turkey time, and she went on with her schemes for punishing the Christians. Then the Powers drew up another Note, plainly declaring that, if Turkey insisted upon transgressing, Europe would force her to decency. It would have settled the matter, for Turkey would not have thought of fighting Europe. But to England’s shame she resolutely refused to sign this warning, and so deliberately broke the Concert of Europe. It was tantamount to saying that Turkey was to be allowed to do as she liked, and England would uphold her.

Why was this?

Nominally because England suspected the good faith of Russia, and was in deadly fear lest the Tsar should obtain Constantinople in some curious way. But behind this were two reasons, both inadequate and, from a political point of view, vicious. The one I have indicated, the legacy of opinion left to England by the Prince Consort; the other was contained in the prejudices and ambitions of the Prime Minister, who, whatever his public pretensions, was at heart a Jew. In the last year of his life he said to Lord Ronald Gower--

“I would indeed be very ungrateful to Christianity, which has caused half the world to worship a man and the other half a woman, both of my race.”

As such, Disraeli had far more sympathy with the Mahommedans than with the Eastern Christians; had not the latter often persecuted the Jews? and how could he declare friendship for Russia? And further, he had gorgeous dreams concerning Egypt; perhaps, as some one said, of advancing from an earl to being Duke of Memphis.

So, for what might be called English royal family reasons, Turkey went on its way rejoicing. It burned Bulgarian villages and put every inhabitant to the sword; Turkish soldiers took whole parties of girls, and having done with them thrust them into barns and then burnt buildings and humans to cinders. The church at Batak was found piled with bodies, mostly women and children, half-way up the low arches. It had been set on fire, pieces of the roof torn off and burning oil poured in upon those below. Those who tried to escape were sabred, and the churchyard was piled two feet deep with bodies. These are but incidents in the many terrible things that occurred, and warnings of which were sent to England by alarmed English out there. Then reports arrived, but neither warning nor report moved Disraeli. He laughed at it all, called the accounts “coffee-house babble,” and as they were first published in _The Daily News_, declared that it was all a party trick.

The country got hot over it, and questions were constantly asked in the House; _The Daily News_ sent out a new Commissioner, who returned with confirmation of all that had been told, and added horrible details. Still Disraeli treated it with scorn, and, knowing little of Turkish affairs, asserted that the Bashi-Bazouks were Circassians who had long lived in Bulgaria by the consent of Europe, and went on to reproach the “Liberal Party with the lack of sympathy they now showed for a race of beings in whom they once professed such an interest.” He also described the Bulgarians as cruel oppressors of the Turks, probably having once read Voltaire’s _Candide_. As late as August 11 he asserted that the whole thing was negligible and grossly exaggerated, and that the integrity of the Ottoman Empire should be the leading principle of the foreign policy of England.

That was the last speech he made in the Commons, and it ended on the word “empire.” Instead of passing behind the Speaker’s chair, he walked the full length of the House, turned about at the Bar, glanced round at the familiar scene, and walked out never to return.

The next morning all the world was astonished to hear that he had gone to the Upper House as Lord Beaconsfield. The moment chosen helped him over a difficult situation. He intended to stick to his policy, but he knew that the majority of the country was against him, and he told the Queen that he must resign. She suggested his acceptance of a peerage, and he replied, “Yes, but with resignation.” She answered that that was impossible in the then state of Europe.[19]

Not only the Queen, but under her influence her Court was loudly pro-Turk, especially Leopold and Mary of Teck. The Prince of Wales was the only one who truly regarded his royal position, and no one ever knew on which side he stood, while he retained relations of equal cordiality with the leaders of both parties.

To save its credit the Government had to send out a representative to inquire into the “atrocities,” and he came back with much the same story, upon which the excitement rose high. Gladstone who, being sixty-five, had resigned the leadership of his party in 1873, was moved with such indignation that he wrote a pamphlet upon the question which went like wildfire, and he spoke at great meetings, championing the cause of the Slavs, and saying that England should send the Turks out of Bulgaria, bag and baggage.

Beaconsfield retaliated when speaking at what had been his own seat, Aylesbury, by a violent diatribe against the enemies of Turkey, and added that “the conduct of his political opponents was worse than any Bulgarian atrocity.” At the Lord Mayor’s banquet later, he hinted at approaching war with Russia, and from that time no one, not even his own followers, knew what he would do next.

The Queen, as has been said, was wholeheartedly for Turkey; sorry for the Bulgarians, of course, but that was not diplomacy; and politically she never had had sympathy for small countries rebelling against tyrannical rulers; all through her life, without exception, she had been true to her caste, and had upheld monarchy against oppressed people. Up to the autumn of 1876 she thought the matter had been managed fairly well. She believed that the public disgust at Turkey would soon die down, especially if she could show Russia as she herself saw her. And then across this growing content fell Gladstone’s pamphlet. She was astounded and then furious. The man had resigned the leadership; how dared he come forward in this way? She seemed to think that in that resignation he had sold his birthright as an Englishman and a politician. Had there been any wavering in her mind about war, this settled it, and “She accepted unhesitatingly Lord Beaconsfield’s view that England was bound to protect Turkey from injury at Russia’s hands.”[20]

Russia may have been as untrustworthy as our Imperialists believed, but it cannot be denied that up to that point Russia had been perfectly correct in her attitude, and she was equally correct in her further proceedings. She said--

“Here is an offshoot of my own nation, speaking a form of my own tongue and following my own religion, being exterminated by a lawless and barbarous nation. I have asked you to help me peacefully to protect Bulgaria, and you have refused. Now I shall take matters into my own hands and fight for it.”

Victoria did her utmost to dissuade the Tsar, to make him leave his kinsmen a continued prey to the inhumanities of the Turk. She privately based her reasoning entirely upon Albert’s programme of twenty-four years earlier, and she felt that every right-minded person would agree with her. Alexander listened politely and refused to be bound by the wishes of her defunct consort.

The third volume of Albert’s life, which had been intended to be the last, was then being written, and she altered the whole scope of it, for it had reached the period of the Crimean War. The book dealt with this in every detail, and though she could not possibly have conceived it, it was not altogether to the Prince’s credit. It showed him as an advocate of war at all risks and to the last extreme. Prussia, for refusing to join England in that reckless war, was vilified in the Prince’s letters to Stockmar: “Prussia’s conduct is truly revolting, and the King is looked upon by all political men here with profound contempt.” The King was also described as a nobody, who dishonoured his monarchy, as a tool of Russia, as trembling in his shoes, and ready to pawn his soul rather than provoke Russia.

The book also showed how, at the instigation of Stockmar, the Prince and the Queen had interfered in politics, badgered their ministers, and had gravely accepted such nonsense from the old German as, “The old Tories have died out, and the race which in the present day (1854) bears the name are simply bastards,” and “the Whigs stand in the same relation to the Throne as the wolf does to the lamb.”

Theodore Martin suggested that in deference to the relationship between the royal families of Russia and England, various passages should be deleted, but the Queen scorned the idea. “Do not let the fact of my son’s marriage into the Russian family weigh with you for a moment! Whatever conclusions you come to upon the facts and documents before you, express them as if no such marriage existed,” was her command. The book was published in 1877, provoking five marvellous criticisms by “Verax” in the _Manchester Guardian_, criticisms which were a deep sign of the spirit of the time.

Alexander fought and thrashed Turkey, and Victoria, watching events with trembling anxiety, “did not dissemble her disgust and disappointment” at his success.

At the end of 1877, to show her confidence in him, Queen Victoria with Princess Beatrice went, with much publicity, to visit Beaconsfield at Hughenden, lunched with him and planted the inevitable tree on the lawn. It was done in the face of Europe, and Europe duly registered the fact that in policy Victoria was one with her Prime Minister.

Beaconsfield denounced Russia so often, hinting, as often at war, that the people began at last to believe that their country was in imminent danger, and that their solemn duty was to fight for the unspeakable Turk, who had showered honours upon the soldiers engaged in murder and rapine in Bulgaria. He tried his utmost to push England into another Crimea, but his Cabinet was not with him, and he once said in private conversation, “In my Cabinet of twelve we have six parties; two think we should go to war with Russia immediately, two think that we should go to war with her before she gets to Constantinople, two think we should go to war with her when she has reached Constantinople, two think we should not go to war at all.” He ended with, “The Chancellor of the Exchequer and I think that something ought to be done, but we don’t know what it should be.”

A curious comedy in five acts took place in this divergent Cabinet, and five times we were on the brink of war, each crisis coinciding with a popular upheaval provoked by ministerial papers, and from the musichalls came the Jingo chorus--

“We don’t want to fight-- But, by jingo, if we do, We’ve got the ships, we’ve got the men, We’ve got the money too.”