The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke, Vol. 2

S >> Stephen Gwynn >> The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke, Vol. 2

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 | 32 | 33 | 34 | 35 | 36 | 37 | 38 | 39 | 40 | 41 | 42 | 43 | 44 | 45 | 46 | 47 | 48 | 49 | 50

Mr. Robert Lowe is credited with having said that a metaphysician
resembled a blind man groping in a dark room for a black hat that was
not there. The comparison might almost have been applied to the Foreign
Minister of the Dual Empire, vainly seeking for a coherent policy among
the mists and cross-currents of rival nationalities. The charge to be
made against the foreign policy of Austria-Hungary was, in fact, not
that she had got a policy--good or bad, ambitious or the reverse--but
that it was almost impossible as a rule to ascertain whether she had any
policy at all: the explanation being that her internal problems
paralyzed her action abroad. 'It was difficult to be a patriot in
Austria, for nobody exactly knew to the representatives of what race,
tongue, or language, his allegiance was due.' 'Austria was indeed of all
countries in the world by far the most difficult to govern, and as a
necessity of her condition she must before all things long for peace....
Under her many difficulties caused by racial divisions she had become
constitutionally timid and naturally slow to move, and the outlook was
far from promising ... nor had Prince Bismarck'--notwithstanding the
terms of the Triple Alliance--'bound Germany to espouse all the quarrels
of Austria, no matter where and with whom.' It had been said, and by
Prince Bismarck himself, that the bones of not a single Pomeranian
grenadier should be allowed to whiten in a Balkan quarrel. [Footnote:
Speech in the Reichstag, December 16th, 1876.] 'The only real question
worth asking was: Will Austria resist Russian pretensions, and will she,
if in danger of conquest, be supported by allies, or will she yield and
take her share of the spoils?' [Footnote: _The Present Position of
European Politics_, pp. 185, 193, 194, 205, 206, 219, 221-224.]

The long-standing jealousies, also, of Austria-Hungary, Italy, and
Greece, in regard to the future of the Adriatic coast, Sir Charles Dilke
felt were not sufficiently appreciated in England, where public opinion
was too much inclined to see the Turk and the Slav only in every
question concerned with the Balkan Peninsula. When Under-Secretary for
Foreign Affairs in 1880-81, he had given a strong support to the
proposals in regard to Albania of Lord Edmond Fitzmaurice, which had the
approval of Mr. Goschen, then Special Ambassador to the Porte--proposals
which were framed with a view to the ultimate autonomy of the country,
and were not accepted by the European Commission of Reforms, mainly
owing to the opposition of Austria-Hungary. [Footnote: See _Life of Lord
Goschen_, vol. i, p. 215. These proposals were revived in 1912, and,
which is remarkable, by Count Berchtold, the Foreign Minister of
Austria-Hungary, in a despatch in favour of 'progressive
decentralization.' See an article in the _Edinburgh Review_, April,
1913: 'Austria and Italy have been rivals for influence in Albania, as
Austria and Russia were rivals in Macedonia. It was because of this
rivalry that the Treaty of Berlin, so far as it applied to the European
provinces of Turkey, was never properly carried into effect. For the
same reason the Fitzmaurice proposal of 1880 was defeated by the
opposition of Vienna. The suggestion was that a greater Albania should
be created, which would have been autonomous under a European guarantee.
It is among the ironies of history that this scheme, rejected by Austria
when it came from a friendly and neutral source, should have been put
forward by the Austrian Foreign Office itself thirty-two years later.
Count Berchtold's Circular Note of August 14th, 1912, revived the
Fitzmaurice programme. The proposition came too late.'] But in _The
Present Position of European Politics_ it is seen how the author's
increasing confidence in the future of Greece led to a change of opinion
on this, the most intricate, perhaps, of all diplomatic questions
connected with the Near East. He now advocated as large an extension as
possible of the existing northern boundary of Greece, and held that the
rest of Albania should be joined to Greece by some form of personal
union, which ultimately might grow into a closer tie, bearing in mind
the friendly cooperation of Greeks and Albanians in the War of
Independence against Turkey, and the fact that a strong Albanian element
already existed in the Greek kingdom. [Footnote: _The Present Position
of European Politics_, pp. 146, 148, 193, 206, 214-217, 232, 237, 238.]
A European Congress seemed to him the only method to avoid the ultimate
arbitrament of war in this mass of tangled questions, but experience had
shown that a Congress was useless unless the Great Powers had settled
the main questions beforehand in agreement among themselves. Experience
had unfortunately also shown the extreme difficulty of obtaining any
such agreement.

'Austria ought to have been the heir of Turkey; the protector of a
Greece extended to include Albania, Macedonia, the Islands, and the
coast to Constantinople and down to Asia Minor; the friend of Servia and
Roumania, and what not.' But these things remained in the class of
visions, even if occasionally some Austrian or Hungarian statesman, like
Herr von Kallay, seemed disposed to grasp them, and to renew the
tradition of the forward policy attributed to Prince Eugene of Savoy and
the Archduke Charles. Hungary also had made Roumania her antagonist by
her illiberal policy in regard to the navigation of the Danube. Any
permanent confederation of the Balkan States as distinct from a
temporary alliance for some special and defined object, such as a
possible attack on Turkey, seemed therefore no longer possible,
especially after the recent events in Bulgaria. Meanwhile there was to
be peace, because Prince Bismarck so willed it. [Footnote: See _Der
Krimkrieg und die Oesterreichische Politik_, von Heinrich Friedjung,
chap, ii., p. 16 (Stuttgart und Berlin, 1907); Louis Leger, _Etudes
Slaves: L'Autriche-Hongrie et la Question d'Orient_, p. 395.]

The overmastering sense of the importance of whatever happened at Vienna
and Constantinople--of which every page of _The Present Position of
European Politics_ is the evidence--will largely explain Sir Charles
Dilke's views on another question. It has been seen that he was amongst
the strongest advocates of an active policy in Egypt in 1882, agreeing
in this with Mr. Chamberlain and Lord Hartington. But at an early period
after the Battle of Tel-el-Kebir he pronounced himself, when the
question arose, in favour of the earliest possible evacuation of the
country, and contemplated it as a possibility of the immediate future.
[Footnote: Sir Charles wrote in the _Speaker_ of January 23rd, 1892, in
reply to Admiral Maxse: 'Admiral Maxse appears to think that my views in
favour of evacuation have been recently formed....' 'There was a time,
_before_ the intervention of the condominium with France by Lord Derby,
when I held a different view; but it was not only formed under
circumstances very different from those which have now existed for
fourteen years, but also at a time when I had not given special
consideration to our probable naval and military position in the event
of war.'] Egypt to him, considered from the point of view of British
interests, was subsidiary to Constantinople. All that really signified
was the right of passage through the Suez Canal, which could, he
believed, be secured by international arrangement and the neutralization
of the country, a plan for which, as already seen, was being actually
discussed by Mr. Gladstone's Government when it fell. Egypt, in fact, he
regarded as part of Asia rather than of Africa, and he believed that
time would make this more clear than ever, in proportion as railways
were developed in Syria, Arabia, and Asia Minor. In this connection
Constantinople, not Alexandria or Cairo, seemed to him the decisive
factor: an opinion which brought him into opposition with those who held
the view that since the occupation of Egypt by British troops events at
Constantinople had become comparatively unimportant to this country. He
also feared that if some great European crisis were to arise, in which
Great Britain was involved, the occupation of Egypt might be a hindrance
rather than a source of strength, and might hamper our exertions in
other lands.

He had, however, no fear of allowing the Bosporus and the Dardanelles to
be opened under suitable conditions to the passage of Russian ships of
war, but only on the condition laid down by Sir William White, that the
right accorded to Russia must be accorded to the ships of war of other
nations; and this partly out of regard to the dignity of the British
flag, and partly because any exclusive right accorded to Russia would be
resisted by the States bordering on the Black Sea and by those
interested in the trade and navigation of the Danube. But the opening of
the Straits was one thing, the possession of Constantinople by Russia
was another, and in his opinion would cause a European convulsion; for
he saw in Constantinople what has since been termed 'the great strategic
centre of the world': [Footnote: The expression was used by Mr. Winston
Churchill in a speech on November 15th, 1915, in the House of Commons.]
the meeting-place and clearing-house of the trade and politics of three
continents.

'Russia at Constantinople,' he wrote, 'would mean the destruction of
Austria and the Russification of a large portion of her Slavs. When
Austria had disappeared or had been transformed out of all knowledge,
Germany, placed between France and Russia, would be still weaker in her
military position than she is at present. It is no doubt impossible that
Germany can really contemplate that contingency with complete
satisfaction. And if she cannot get other people to help Austria to keep
Russia away from Constantinople, it is probable that she would be forced
to interfere to help to do so, however stoutly her rulers may make the
opposite declaration. One of my most valued correspondents, whose
criticisms have been of the highest use to me, admits that to place
Turkey at the head of a Balkan Confederation would be "adding a badger
to your three unfriendly cats and altogether hostile dog"; but,
nevertheless, he thinks that such a combination would be possible on
account of the overwhelming dread of the danger of absorption by Russia;
and I think it right to state his view, although I am unable to modify
that which I have said as to the difficulties which the dispute for
Macedonia causes.' [Footnote: _The Present Position of European
Politics_, pp. 372, 373.]

In the autumn of 1891 this note occurs in the Memoir: 'John Morley
having made a speech in favour of the cessation of the Egyptian
occupation, I wrote to tell him how pleased I was, and in his reply he
asked why we should go on mechanically applauding Lord Salisbury's
foreign policy, which left this danger standing.'

Mr. Morley's satisfaction was, however, not shared by Mr. Chamberlain,
who wrote in January, 1892, 'to implore me to have regard to the opinion
of society about Egypt.'

'I do not mean fashionable society,' he added, 'but political society,
and the great majority of cultivated politicians. I think you do go out
of your way to offend them when you advocate evacuation of Egypt, and I
ask you to consider if it is worth your while. It is not necessary for
your constituents, and with regard to the others, there is no need to
add to their causes of anger against you. My advice is, "Be as Radical
as you like, be Home Ruler if you must, but be a little Jingo if you
can."'

The correspondence had begun in the autumn of 1891, when Sir Charles
wrote the following letter:

'Pyrford by Maybury,
'Near Woking,
'_October_ 19_th_, 1891.

'My Dear Chamberlain,

'I have never said that there are not conceivable circumstances in
which it would be better for us to be in Egypt. I'm going to try and
discuss them in the book I am at work on. _Re_ command of the sea
against France. We have not quite a sufficient force to blockade
Brest and Toulon. Lefevre and most of our sailors contemplate only
"masking" Toulon by a fleet at Gibraltar, and using the Cape route.
In this case we could not reinforce Egypt except from India, and
not, of course, from India if we were at war with Russia too.

'I am in favour of a stronger navy, and attempting blockade, though
it is not _certain_ that it can be made _for certain_ successful.
Still Colomb is a better authority than Beresford, etc. I mean
"Admiral Colomb," not Sir John. The difficulty, even if blockades
are possible, is that France keeps building after us so as always to
be without the limits which would make it possible. Lefevre will
support Mr. G. in cutting down the navy on this ground--i.e., will
prove by figures that every time we lay down nine ships the French
lay down six or seven.

'I think that in the long-run France will beat Germany. She will
fight her some day single-handed on a point in which Austria and
Italy will not move, nor Russia either. Then, if Germany gets the
best of it, the others will "mediate."

'Yours ever,

'Chs. W. D.'

'November, 1891, we spent in France.... While I was away I had a
correspondence with Chamberlain about his speech on Egypt' (in reply
to Morley), 'and pointed out to him,' says the Memoir,' that he had
changed his mind so completely about evacuation that it was hardly
prudent in him not frankly to admit the change of mind, as he had
done in at least one speech previously.' He replied:

'"I have looked the matter up, and I think it is quite true that in
1884 we were all for evacuation as early as possible. But I did not
then estimate properly the magnitude of the task we had undertaken,
nor did I know how splendidly it would be performed by Baring and
his colleagues. Baring himself began as a strong advocate for
evacuation."

'In my answer, I said that Baring had only changed his mind in the
way in which all people are apt to change their minds when they are
employed as the agents of a policy, and I combated Chamberlain's
military views, which were, in fact, for defending Egypt by the
fleet--that fleet which is expected to do everything!'

Sir Charles set out in an article in the _Speaker_ all the pledges to
evacuate which had been given by the Liberal Government and repeated by
Lord Salisbury. Thereupon Mr. Morley, whose general views on foreign
policy were not as a rule at all the same as those of Sir Charles, wrote
from Biarritz, where he was in Mr. Gladstone's company, that he had read
the _Speaker_ with enormous satisfaction. It would have a stimulating
effect in quarters where a little stimulus was much needed, and had
given much satisfaction to other people in Biarritz besides himself.

'"Quarters" of course meant Rosebery,' is Sir Charles's comment, and he
adds:

'In order to meet the Rosebery objection to evacuation, I wrote an
article for the January _Fortnightly_, of which the editor changed
nothing but the title. I had called it "Lords Salisbury and
Rosebery," and he changed it to "Conservative Foreign Policy."'

At a later date, in a letter [Footnote: This letter was apparently
written on April 14th, 1893:

'Those of us who bitterly dislike the occupation of Egypt by a
British force have been both to add to your work before and during a
session in which, not to speak of the ordinary demand on the time of
a Prime Minister, your unprecedented relation to the chief measure
makes it the duty of your supporters to confine themselves to
helping clear the road. Naught else could have excused us from
having hitherto refrained from pressing the state of Egypt on the
consideration of yourself, or of the House of Commons. It is only
because since the publication of a recent despatch we feel that the
time has nearly come for making up one's mind to be for ever silent
upon the question, and because I cannot do so, given the strong
feeling that I have with regard to it, without one last attempt to
cause some change in a "temporary" situation now crystallizing into
permanency, that I venture to address you. I ask for no reply. I
shall have to bring the question before the House of Commons. I have
no illusions as to what is likely to be the result of so doing. Sir
E. Grey will tell us that the occupation is still "temporary," but
must last, "for the sake of Egypt," till we can "with safety" leave:
and so it will continue, with all its dangers to ourselves, till the
next great war. Whoever else may again raise the Egyptian question
in the future, I shall not. Vote I must, whenever it comes before
the House, but I need not do more.

'Not one word of blame of anyone will fall from me when I raise the
question on first going into Committee on Civil Estimates. It seems
to me, I confess--but I shall try to keep the opinion to myself--
that it would have been, on the whole, the safest course to have
done in 1892 that which Lord Granville, under your guidance, did in
1880, and to have ourselves proposed, on the very day of the
accession to office of the new Government, the policy which we
thought best in the interest of the country and had supported in
Opposition. Lord Granville congratulated himself, and with justice,
on the promptitude with which, before the Russians could say a word
to him as to the complete fulfilment of the Treaty of Berlin, he had
told the Ambassador, in the first minute of their first interview,
that the Government would insist on that fulfilment. Had the present
Secretary of State, at his first interview with the French
Ambassador, made a similar communication with regard to Egypt (at
least so far as to propose to resume the negotiations of 1887), we
should, perhaps, have avoided many evils. I share to the full the
belief, which you expressed in such admirable terms a couple of
years ago, that the long-lasting occupation of Egypt by our forces
is the cause of all the difficulties by which our foreign policy,
and even our position in Europe, are oppressed. Our hands are not
free, and never will be free, so long as the occupation continues.
But ills more direct are likely to fall upon us; and no one can look
forward without the gravest dread to the prospect of our being
drawn, step by step, into a situation in which we shall be driven to
arrest the persons of the young Khedive and those of his advisers
who possess the confidence of all that is intelligent among the
Egyptian people; or (as seems hinted in Lord Bosebery's despatch) to
insist upon a deposition.

'In the discussions as to the occupation of Egypt which occurred in
the Cabinet, before I was a member of it, in 1882, even before the
expedition (for the occupation was foreseen), I took a share, as
Lord Granville was good enough to consult me on the papers
circulated by his colleagues. As far as I am concerned, I have never
budged from the principles of a memorandum which I wrote on July
4th, 1882; but those principles were far more excellently stated by
you in a memorandum of the beginning of September, 1882--before
Tel-el-Kebir--a memorandum which was approved by men now so hostile
to your views as Sir Auckland Colvin and Sir Edward Malet. Sir E.
Baring, now, as Lord Cromer, so bitterly opposed to us, in a paper
of September or October, 1882, and Chamberlain in his paper of about
October 21st, 1882, both pointed out how essential it was that our
occupation should be really temporary, and that our condition--that
we should leave behind us a "stable" state of things--depended on
and meant what Chamberlain called "the extension of Egyptian
liberties": the convoking, if not of a truly representative
Assembly, at least of the Notables. Lord Dufferin, in December 1882,
wrote to me that he would sooner run any risk than abandon the
representative institutions proposed for Egypt in his famous scheme.
Yet now the French are bidding the Khedive call together, against
Lord Dufferin's virtual successor, this very Assembly of Notables,
which Lord Cromer, such is his present policy, dare not call. The
conception of this Assembly was the act of yourself, supported by
Lord Granville and Sir William Harcourt and supported on paper by
Lord Dufferin and Sir E. Baring, and opposed by Lord Hartington, by
the then Chancellor, and by Lord Northbrook. This "extension of
Egyptian liberties," which was our pride, which was our excuse for
that "short prolongation" of the occupation, to which I was myself
opposed--an extension of liberties which has not been carried into
practical effect by us--is certain to result in a declaration by the
Notables, when they meet, as within this year, through the French
Agent's influence, they will, that they are rootedly opposed to our
presence in their land.

'It may be said that neither the Turks nor the French have pressed
us, directly, to come out. The Turks will never really press us. The
Sultan is forced by Moslem public opinion to ask us to leave Egypt,
but he is in fact personally anxious that we should stay there to
keep Mahdism in the desert and representative institutions in the
shade. The French have also their inner policy--their Rothschilds to
keep in good humour--and two currents, one political and one
financial, with which to deal. M. Waddington expressed to you at
Hawarden a mere desire for exchange of views between the Cabinets.
He was naturally anxious not to be refused in any direct request.
But French public opinion is exasperated against us; only one man in
France believes a word we say, and our diplomatists and admirals
behave as though they represented German instead of neutral
interests. We are responsible for tempting Italy to stay in the
alliance of the Central Powers, to her own hurt.

'None of these things shall I be able to say when I bring the
question before the House of Commons. To do so would involve
statements based on private letters and statements as to Cabinet
differences of 1882, which I cannot make. We shall be compelled to
rely chiefly upon the declarations of Lord Salisbury, which were
summed up in his words of May, 1887, to the effect that the
occupation entails on us "heavy sacrifices, without adequate return
either in peace or in war."

'Having given attention for some years past to our general position
as a nation, feeling as I do, with you, how adversely it is affected
by the prolongation of the "temporary" occupation, which, as matters
stand, seems likely to endure till the next war, even should it be
postponed till half a century hence, I cannot but feel miserable at
the situation of this affair, and I once more ask your pardon for in
this way liberating my mind, or, I fear, rather discharging upon
you, regardless of your prodigious avocations, this last expression
of a regret deeper than that which I have previously entertained on
any public question.

'Through the mischiefs of the occupation there now seems to come no
single ray of light. The present year will not pass over without a
change in the local situation at Cairo, from which a conference is
likely to result. A passage near the end of Lord Rosebery's despatch
shows that he is prepared to have a conference forced upon him. Had
we invited it, such a conference would be to us the blessing that it
will be to others. Would it not at least be best that we should call
that conference on the first opportunity rather than have it thrust
down our throats?

'This letter has not been shown to anyone, and needs, as I said, no
reply, but I should be glad if it were not handed to anyone outside
of your own circle. It has not been mentioned to anyone except Mr.
Herbert Gladstone.']

to Mr. Gladstone during his last Premiership, Dilke summed up his views
when a debate was about to take place in the House of Commons, and four
days later he notes: 'On April 18th I had a long interview with Mr.
Gladstone, who sent for me, on my letter. The only thing he said worth
remembering was, "Jingoism is stronger than ever. It is no longer war
fever, but earth hunger."'

In 1887 the possibility of a German attempt to violate the neutrality of
Belgian territory, notwithstanding the treaty of guarantee of 1839,
which Prussia herself had signed, was again attracting attention owing
to a sudden renewal of warlike apprehensions on the Continent. The
position of Luxemburg was a kindred question, though the international
guarantee was of a far more uncertain character than in the case of
Belgium. Sir Charles, as already related, had returned from his work in
France during the war of 1870 with a profound conviction that a spirit
of reckless violence was abroad in Germany, which would stop at nothing
if favourable circumstances offered a temptation to action; and in his
opinion the absence of any fortifications at Liege and Namur afforded
such a temptation. The point had been till then little discussed in
England, though General Brialmont had written in the _Revue de Belgique_
on the subject. Sir Charles's view having been questioned, that the
danger to Belgium's neutrality for military and other reasons was from
Germany alone, he drew attention to the enormous accumulation of
supplies of every kind in the entrenched camp of Cologne as of itself
sufficient in military eyes to prove the truth of what he said. He
considered also that the reduction of our horse artillery greatly
impaired the possibility of Great Britain affording really effectual
military assistance to Belgium, and that the recent utterances of the
principal organ of the Conservative party, the _Standard_, and of the
writers in the _National Review_, that intervention in support of
Belgium 'would be not only insane but impossible,' showed that the
public opinion of Great Britain was no longer unanimous as it had been
in 1870-71. [Footnote: The questions connected with the Belgian and
Luxemburg guarantees are very fully discussed in a recent work,
_England's Guarantee to Belgium and Luxemburg_, by C. P. Sanger and H.
T. J. Norton. See also chapter i. of _War: Its Conduct and Legal
Results_, by Dr. Baty and Prof. J. H. Morgan; _The Present Position of
European Politics_, pp. 42-48, 73, 321-323.] This dispassionate
consideration of the chances of England's intervening single-handed and
without allies, in the case of a European war, to protect the neutrality
of an unfortified Belgium, led to statements that he was opposed to such
a step, and he had to point out in reply that for years he had
consistently expressed the contrary view, but that he was now dealing
with facts and tendencies, not with his own wishes. [Footnote: _British
Army_, chap. ii., p. 55.] Shortly after the appearance of this article,
discussion in Belgium led to the introduction of a Government Bill for
the fortification of the towns upon the Meuse, and it was afterwards
decided to fortify Namur and Liege.