Now, it was in the years 1876-77, while the nation lay deep in the trough of economic depression, that the demand for "protection for home industries" grew loud and persistent. Whether it would not have been raised even if German finance and industry had held on its way in a straight course and on an even keel, cannot of course be determined, for the protectionist movement had been growing since the year 1872, owing to the propaganda of the "Verein für Sozialpolitik" (Union for Social Politics) founded in that year. But it is safe to say that the collapse of speculation due to inflowing of the French milliards greatly strengthened the forces of economic reaction.

Bismarck himself put it in this way: that the introduction of Free Trade in 1865 soon produced a state of atrophy in Germany; this was checked for a time by the French war indemnity; but Germany needed a permanent cure, namely, Protection. It is true that his ideal of national life had always been strict and narrow--in fact, that of the average German official; but we may doubt whether he had in view solely the shelter of the presumedly tender flora of German industry from the supposed deadly blasts of British, Austrian, and Russian competition. He certainly hoped to strengthen the fabric of his Empire by extending the customs system and making its revenue depend more largely on that source and less on the contributions of the federated States. But there was probably a still wider consideration. He doubtless wished to bring prominently before the public gaze another great subject that would distract it from the religious feuds described above and bring about a rearrangement of political parties. The British people has good reason to know that the discussion of fiscal questions that vitally touch every trade and every consumer, does act like the turning of a kaleidoscope upon party groupings; and we may fairly well assume that so far-seeing a statesman as Bismarck must have forecast the course of events.

Reasons of statecraft also warned him to build up the Empire four-square while yet there was time. The rapid recovery of France, whose milliards had proved somewhat of a "Greek gift" to Germany, had led to threats on the part of the war party at Berlin, which brought from Queen Victoria, as also from the Czar Alexander, private but pressing intimations to Kaiser Wilhelm that no war of extermination must take place. This affair and its results in Germany's foreign policy will occupy us in Chapter XII. Here we may note that Bismarck saw in it a reason for suspecting Russia, hating England, and jealously watching every movement in France. Germany's future, it seemed, would have to be safeguarded by all the peaceable means available. How natural, then, to tone down her internal religious strifes by bringing forward another topic of still more absorbing interest, and to aim at building up a self-contained commercial life in the midst of uncertain, or possibly hostile, neighbours. In truth, if we view the question in its broad issues in the life of nations, we must grant that Free Trade could scarcely be expected to thrive amidst the jealousies and fears entailed by the war of 1870. That principle presupposes trust and good-will between nations; whereas the wars of 1859, 1864, and 1870 left behind bitter memories and rankling ills. Viewed in this light, Germany's abandonment of Free Trade in 1878 was but the natural result of that forceful policy by which she had cut the Gordian knot of her national problem.

The economic change was decided on in the year 1879, when the federated States returned to "the time-honoured ways of 1823-65." Bismarck appealed to the Reichstag to preserve at least the German market to German industry. The chances of having a large export trade were on every ground precarious; but Germany could, at the worst, support herself. All interests were mollified by having moderate duties imposed to check imports. Small customs dues were placed on corn and other food supplies so as to please the agrarian party; imports of manufactured goods were taxed for the benefit of German industries, and even raw materials underwent small imposts. The Reichstag approved the change and on July 7 passed the Government's proposals by 217 to 117: the majority comprised the Conservatives, Clericals, the Alsace-Lorrainers, and a few National Liberals; while the bulk of the last-named, hitherto Bismarck's supporters on most topics, along with Radicals and Social Democrats, opposed it. The new tariff came into force on January 1, 1880.

On the whole, much may be said in favour of the immediate results of the new policy. By the year 1885 the number of men employed in iron and steel works had increased by 35 per cent over the numbers of 1879; wages also had increased, and the returns of shipping and of the export trade showed a considerable rise. Of course, it is impossible to say whether this would not have happened in any case owing to the natural tendency to recovery from the deep depression of the years 1875-79. The duties on corn did not raise its price, which appears strange until we know that the foreign imports of corn were less than 8 per cent of the whole amount consumed. In 1885, therefore, Bismarck gave way to the demands of the agrarians that the corn duties should be raised still further, in order to make agriculture lucrative and to prevent the streaming of rural population to the towns. Again the docile Reichstag followed his lead. But, two years later, it seemed that the new corn duties had failed to check the fall of prices and keep landlords and farmers from ruin; once more, then, the duties were raised, being even doubled on certain food products. This time they undoubtedly had one important result, that of making the urban population, especially that of the great industrial centres, more and more hostile to the agrarians and to the Government which seemed to be legislating in their interests. From this time forward the Social Democrats began to be a power in the land.

And yet, if we except the very important item of rent, which in Berlin presses with cruel weight on the labouring classes, the general trend of the prices of the necessaries of life in Germany has been downwards, in spite of all the protectionist duties. The evidence compiled in the British official Blue-book on "British and Foreign Trade and Industry" (1903. Cd. 1761, p. 226) yields the following results. By comparing the necessary expenditure on food of a workman's family of the same size and living under the same conditions, it appears that if we take that expenditure for the period 1897-1901 to represent the number 100 we have these results:--

Period.	Germany.	United Kingdom.
1877-1881	112	140
1882-1886	101	125
1887-1891	103	106
1892-1896	99	98
1897-1901	100	100

Thus the fall in the cost of living of a British working man's family has been 40 points, while that of the German working man shows a decline of only 12 points. It is, on the whole, surprising that there has not been more difference between the two countries[84].

Before dealing with the new social problems that resulted, at least in part, from the new duties on food, we may point out that Bismarck and his successors at the German Chancellory have used the new tariff as a means of extorting better terms from the surrounding countries. The Iron Chancellor has always acted on the diplomatic principle do ut des--"I give that you may give"--with its still more cynical corollary--"Those who have nothing to give will get nothing." The new German tariff on agricultural products was stiffly applied against Austria for many years, to compel her to grant more favourable terms to German manufactured goods. For eleven years Austria-Hungary maintained their protective barriers; but in 1891 German persistence was rewarded in the form of a treaty by which the Dual Monarchy let in German goods on easier terms provided that the corn duties of the northern Power were relaxed. The fiscal strife with Russia was keener and longer, but had the same result (1894). Of a friendlier kind were the negotiations with Italy, Belgium, and Switzerland, which led to treaties with those States in 1891. It is needless to say that in each of these cases the lowering of the corn duties was sharply resisted by the German agrarians. We may here add that the Anglo-German commercial treaty which expired in 1903 has been extended for two years; and that Germany's other commercial treaties were at the same time continued.

It is hazardous at present to venture on any definite judgment as to the measure of success attained by the German protectionist policy. Protectionists always point to the prosperity of Germany as the crowning proof of its efficacy. In one respect they are, perhaps, fully justified in so doing. The persistent pressure which Germany brought to bear on the even more protectionist systems of Russia and Austria undoubtedly induced those Powers to grant easier terms to German goods than they would have done had Germany lost her bargaining power by persisting in her former Free Trade tendencies. Her success in this matter is the best instance in recent economic history of the desirability of holding back something in reserve so as to be able to bargain effectively with a Power that keeps up hostile tariffs. In this jealously competitive age the State that has nothing more to offer is as badly off in economic negotiations as one that, in affairs of general policy, has no armaments wherewith to face a well-equipped foe. This consideration is of course scouted as heretical by orthodox economists; but it counts for much in the workaday world, where tariff wars and commercial treaty bargainings unfortunately still distract the energies of mankind.

On the other hand, it would be risky to point to the internal prosperity of Germany and the vast growth of her exports as proofs of the soundness of protectionist theories. The marvellous growth of that prosperity is very largely due to the natural richness of a great part of the country, to the intelligence, energy, and foresight of her people and their rulers, and to the comparatively backward state of German industry and commerce up to the year 1870. Far on into the Nineteenth Century, Germany was suffering from the havoc wrought by the Napoleonic wars and still earlier struggles. Even after the year 1850, the political uncertainties of the time prevented her enjoying the prosperity that then visited England and France. Therefore, only since 1870 (or rather since 1877-78, when the results of the mad speculation of 1873 began to wear away) has she entered on the normal development of a modern industrial State; and he would be an eager partisan who would put down her prosperity mainly to the credit of the protectionist régime. In truth, no one can correctly gauge the value of the complex causes--economic, political, educational, scientific and engineering--that make for the prosperity of a vast industrial community. So closely are they intertwined in the nature of things, that dogmatic arguments laying stress on one of them alone must speedily be seen to be the merest juggling with facts and figures.

As regards the wider influences exerted by Germany's new protective policy, we can here allude only to one; and that will be treated more fully in the chapter dealing with the Partition of Africa. That policy gave a great stimulus to the colonial movement in Germany, and, through her, in all European States. As happened in the time of the old Mercantile System, Powers which limited their trade with their neighbours, felt an imperious need for absorbing new lands in the tropics to serve as close preserves for the mother-country. Other circumstances helped to impel Germany on the path of colonial expansion; but probably the most important, though the least obvious, was the recrudescence of that "Mercantilism" which Adam Smith had exploded. Thus, the triumph of the national principle in and after 1870 was consolidated by means which tended to segregate the human race in masses, regarding each other more or less as enemies or rivals, alike in the spheres of politics, commerce, and colonial expansion.

We may conclude our brief survey of German constructive policy by glancing at the chief of the experiments which may be classed as akin to State Socialism.

In 1882 the German Government introduced the Sickness Insurance Bill and the Accident Insurance Bill, but they were not passed till 1884, and did not take effect till 1885. For the relief of sickness the Government relied on existing institutions organised for that object. This was very wise, seeing that the great difficulty is how to find out whether a man really is ill or is merely shamming illness. Obviously a local club can find that out far better than a great imperial agency can. The local club has every reason for looking sharply after doubtful cases as a State Insurance Fund cannot do. As regards sickness, then, the Imperial Government merely compelled all the labouring classes, with few exceptions, to belong to some sick fund. They were obliged to pay in a sum of not less than about fourpence in the pound of their weekly wages; and this payment of the workman has to be supplemented by half as much, paid by his employer--or rather, the employer pays the whole of the premium and deducts the share payable by the workman from his wages.

Closely linked with this is the Accident Insurance Law. Here the brunt of the payment falls wholly on the employer. He alone pays the premiums for all his work-people; the amount varies according to (1) the man's wage, (2) the risk incidental to the employment. The latter is determined by the actuaries of the Government. If a man is injured (even if it be by his own carelessness) he receives payments during the first thirteen weeks from the ordinary Sick Fund. If his accident keeps him a prisoner any longer, he is paid from the Accident Fund of the employers of that particular trade, or from the Imperial Accident Fund. Here of course the chance of shamming increases, particularly if the man knows that he is being supported out of a general fund made up entirely by the employers' payments. The burden on the employers is certainly very heavy, seeing that for all kinds of accidents relief may be claimed; the only exception is in cases where the injury can be shown to be wilfully committed[85]. A British Blue-book issued on March 31, 1905, shows that the enormous sum of £5,372,150 was paid in Germany in the year 1902 as compensation to workmen for injuries sustained while at work.

The burden of the employers does not end here. They have to bear their share of Old Age Insurance. This law was passed in 1889, at the close of the first year of the present Kaiser's reign. His father, the Emperor Frederick, during his brief reign had not favoured the principles of State Socialism; but the young Emperor William in November 1888 announced that he would further the work begun by his grandfather, and though the difficulties of insurance for old age were very great, yet, with God's help, they would prove not to be insuperable.

Certainly the effort was by far the greatest that had yet been made by any State. The young Emperor and his Chancellor sought to build up a fund whereby 12,000,000 of work-people might be guarded against the ills of a penniless old age. Their law provided for all workmen (even men in domestic service) whose yearly income did not exceed 2000 marks (£100). Like the preceding laws, it was compulsory. Every youth who is physically and mentally sound, and who earns more than a minimum wage, must begin to put by a fixed proportion of that wage as soon as he completes his sixteenth year. His employer is also compelled to contribute the same amount for him. Mr. Dawson, in the work already referred to, gives some figures showing what the joint payment of employer and employed amount to on this score. If the workman earns £15 a year (i.e. about 6s. a week), the sum of 3s. 3-1/2d. is put by for him yearly into the State Fund. If he earns £36 a year, the joint annual payment will be 5s. 7-1/2d.; if he earns £78, it will be 7s. a year, and so on. These payments are reckoned up in various classes, according to the amounts; and according to the total amount is the final annuity payable to the worker in the evening of his days. That evening is very slow in coming for the German worker. For old age merely, he cannot begin to draw his full pension until he has attained the ripe age of seventy-one years. Then he will draw the full amount. He may anticipate that if he be incapacitated; but in that case the pension will be on a lower scale, proportioned to the amounts paid in and the length of time of the payments.

The details of the measure are so complex as to cause a good deal of friction and discontent. The calculation of the various payments alone employs an army of clerks: the need of safeguarding against personation and other kinds of fraud makes a great number of precautions necessary; and thus the whole system becomes tied up with red tape in a way that even the more patient workman of the Continent cannot endure.

In a large measure, then, the German Government has failed in its efforts to cure the industrial classes of their socialistic ideas. But its determination to attach them to the new German Empire, and to make that Empire the leading industrial State of the Continent, has had a complete triumph. So far as education, technical training, research, and enlightened laws can make a nation great, Germany is surely on the high road to national and industrial supremacy.

It is a strange contrast that meets our eyes if we look back to the years before the advent of King William and Bismarck to power. In the dark days of the previous reign Germany was weak, divided, and helpless. In regard to political life and industry she was still almost in swaddling-clothes; and her struggles to escape from the irksome restraints of the old Confederation seemed likely to be as futile as they had been since the year 1815. But the advent of the King and his sturdy helper to power speedily changed the situation. The political problems were grappled with one by one, and were trenchantly solved. Union was won by Bismarck's diplomacy and Prussia's sword; and when the longed-for goal was reached in seven momentous years, the same qualities were brought to bear on the difficult task of consolidating that union. Those qualities were the courage and honesty of purpose that the House of Hohenzollern has always displayed since the days of the Great Elector; added to these were rarer gifts, namely, the width of view, the eagle foresight, the strength of will, the skill in the choice of means, that made up the imposing personality of Bismarck. It was with an eye to him, and to the astonishing triumphs wrought by his diplomacy over France, that a diplomatist thus summed up the results of the year 1870: "Europe has lost a mistress, but she has got a master."

After the lapse of a generation that has been weighted with the cuirass of Militarism, we are able to appreciate the force of that remark. Equally true is it that the formation of the German Empire has not added to the culture and the inner happiness of the German people. The days of quiet culture and happiness are gone; and in their place has come a straining after ambitious aims which is a heavy drag even on the vitality of the Teutonic race. Still, whether for good or for evil, the unification of Germany must stand out as the greatest event in the history of the Nineteenth Century.

NOTE TO THE SECOND EDITION

The statement on page 135 that service in the German army is compulsory for seven years, three in the field army and four in the reserve, applies to the cavalry and artillery only. In the infantry the time of service is two years with the colours and five years in the reserve.

FOOTNOTES:

[72] Quoted by C. Lowe, Life of Bismarck, vol. i. p. 615.

[73] E. Marcks, Kaiser Wilhelm I. (Leipzig, 1900), pp. 337-343.

[74] Up to 1874 the government of Alsace-Lorraine was vested solely in the Emperor and Chancellor. In 1874 the conquered lands returned deputies to the Reichstag. In October 1879 they gained local representative institutions, but under the strict control of the Governor, Marshal von Manteuffel. This control has since been relaxed, the present administration being quasi-constitutional.

[75] Bismarck said in a speech to the Reichstag, on September 16, 1878: "I accepted universal suffrage, but with repugnance, as a Frankfurt tradition."

[76] The three years are shortened to one year for those who have taken a high place in the Gymnasia (highest of the public schools); they feed and equip themselves and are termed "volunteers." Conscription is the rule on the coasts for service in the German Navy. For the text of the Imperial Constitution, see Lowe, Life of Bismarck, vol. ii. App. F.

[77] J.W. Headlam, Bismarck, p. 367.

[78] Busch, Our Chancellor, vol i. p. 139, where he quotes a conversation of Bismarck of Nov. 1883. On the Roman Catholic policy in Posen, see ibid. pp. 143-145.

[79] Lowe, Life of Bismarck, vol. ii. p. 336, note.

[80] Busch, Our Chancellor, vol. i. p. 122, quotes speeches of his hero to prove that Bismarck himself disliked this Civil Marriage Law. "From the political point of view I have convinced myself that the State . . . is constrained by the dictates of self-defence to enact this law in order to avert from a portion of His Majesty's subjects the evils with which they are menaced by the Bishops' rebellion against the laws and the State" (Speech of Jan. 17, 1873). In 1849 he had opposed civil marriage.

[81] For that treaty, and Austria's desire in 1862 to enter the German Zollverein, see The Diplomatic Reminiscences of Lord A. Loftus, vol. ii. pp. 250-251.

[82] Bismarck: Some Secret Pages of his History, by M. Busch, vol. iii. p. 161 (English edition).

[83] German State Paper of June 28, 1884, quoted by Dawson, Bismarck and State Socialism, App. B.

[84] In a recent work, England and the English (London, 1904), Dr. Carl Peters says: "Considering that wages in England average 20 per cent higher in England than in Germany, that the week has only 54 working hours, and that all articles of food are cheaper, the fundamental conditions of prosperous home-life are all round more favourable in England than in Germany. And yet he [the British working-man] does not derive greater comfort from them, for the simple reason that a German labourer's wife is more economical and more industrious than the English wife."

[85] For the account given above, as also that of the Old Age Insurance Law, I am indebted to Mr. Dawson's excellent little work, Bismarck and State Socialism (Swan Sonnenschein & Co., 1890). See also the Appendix to The German Empire of To-day, by "Veritas" (1902).

CHAPTER VII

For the benefit of the tiresome person who insists on having a definition of every term, the Eastern Question may be briefly described as the problem of finding a modus vivendi between the Turks and their Christian subjects and the neighbouring States. This may serve as a general working statement. No one who is acquainted with the rules of Logic will accept it as a definition. Definitions can properly apply only to terms and facts that have a clear outline; and they can therefore very rarely apply to the facts of history, which are of necessity as many-sided as human life itself. The statement given above is incomplete, inasmuch as it neither hints at the great difficulty of reconciling the civic ideas of Christian and Turkish peoples, nor describes the political problems arising out of the decay of the Ottoman Power and the ambitions of its neighbours.

It will be well briefly to see what are the difficulties that arise out of the presence of Christians under the rule of a great Moslem State. They are chiefly these. First, the Koran, though far from enjoining persecution of Christians, yet distinctly asserts the superiority of the true believer and the inferiority of "the people of the book" (Christians). The latter therefore are excluded from participation in public affairs, and in practice are refused a hearing in the law courts. Consequently they tend to sink to the position of hewers of wood and drawers of water to the Moslems, these on their side inevitably developing the defects of an exclusive dominant caste. This is so especially with the Turks. They are one of the least gifted of the Mongolian family of nations; brave in war and patient under suffering and reverses, they nevertheless are hopelessly narrow-minded and bigoted; and the Christians in their midst have fared perhaps worse than anywhere else among the Mohammedan peoples.

M. de Lavelaye, who studied the condition of things in Turkey not long after the war of 1877-78, thus summed up the causes of the social and political decline of the Turks:--

The true Mussulman loves neither progress, novelty, nor education; the Koran is enough for him. He is satisfied with his lot, therefore cares little for its improvement, somewhat like a Catholic monk; but at the same time he hates and despises the Christian raya, who is the labourer. He pitilessly despoils, fleeces, and ill-treats him to the extent of completely ruining and destroying those families, which are the only ones who cultivate the ground; it was a state of war continued in time of peace, and transformed into a regime of permanent spoliation and murder. The wife, even when she is the only one, is always an inferior being, a kind of slave, destitute of any intellectual culture; and as it is she who trains the children--boys and girls--the bad results are plainly seen.

Matters were not always and in all parts of Turkey so bad as this; but they frequently became so under cruel or corrupt governors, or in times when Moslem fanaticism ran riot. In truth, the underlying cause of Turkey's troubles is the ignorance and fanaticism of her people. These evils result largely from the utter absorption of all devout Moslems in their creed and ritual. Texts from the Koran guide their conduct; and all else is decided by fatalism, which is very often a mere excuse for doing nothing[86]. Consequently all movements for reform are mere ripples on the surface of Turkish life; they never touch its dull depths; and the Sultan and officials, knowing this, cling to the old ways with full confidence. The protests of Christian nations on behalf of their co-religionists are therefore met with a polite compliance which means nothing. Time after time the Sublime Porte has most solemnly promised to grant religious liberty to its Christian subjects; but the promises were but empty air, and those who made them knew it. In fact, the firmans of reform now and again issued with so much ostentation have never been looked on by good Moslems as binding, because the chief spiritual functionary, the Sheikh-ul-Islam, whose assent is needed to give validity to laws, has withheld it from those very ordinances. As he has power to depose the Sultan for a lapse of orthodoxy, the result may be imagined. The many attempts of the Christian Powers to enforce their notions of religious toleration on the Porte have in the end merely led to further displays of Oriental politeness.

It may be asked: Why have not the Christians of Turkey united in order to gain civic rights? The answer is that they are profoundly divided in race and sentiment. In the north-east are the Roumanians, a Romano-Slavonic race long ago Latinised in speech and habit of mind by contact with Roman soldiers and settlers on the Lower Danube. South of that river there dwell the Bulgars, who, strictly speaking, are not Slavs but Mongolians. After long sojourn on the Volga they took to themselves the name of that river, lost their Tartar speech, and became Slav in sentiment and language. This change took place before the ninth century, when they migrated to the south and conquered the districts which they now inhabit. Their neighbours on the west, the Servians, are Slavs in every sense, and look back with pride to the time of the great Servian Kingdom, carved out by Stephen Dushan, which stretched southwards to the Ægean and the Gulf of Corinth (about 1350).

To the west of the present Kingdom of Servia dwell other Servians and Slavs, who have been partitioned and ground down by various conquerors and have kept fewer traditions than the Servians who won their freedom. But from this statement we must except the Montenegrins, who in their mountain fastnesses have ever defied the Turks. To the south of them is the large but little-known Province of Albania, inhabited by the descendants of the ancient Illyrians, with admixtures of Greeks in the south, Bulgarians in the east, and Servians in the north-east. Most of the Albanians forsook Christianity and are among the most fanatical and warlike upholders of Islam; but in their turbulent clan-life they often defy the authority of the Sultan, and uphold it only in order to keep their supremacy over the hated and despised Greeks and Bulgars on their outskirts. Last among the non-Turkish races of the Balkan Peninsula are a few Wallachs in Central Macedonia, and Greeks; these last inhabit Thessaly and the seaboard of Macedonia and of part of Roumelia. It is well said that Greek influence in the Balkans extends no further inland than that of the sea breezes.

Such is the medley of races that complicates the Eastern Question. It may be said that Turkish rule in Europe survives owing to the racial divisions and jealousies of the Christians. The Sultan puts in force the old Roman motto, Divide et impera, and has hitherto done so, in the main, with success. That is the reason why Islam dominates Christianity in the south-east of Europe.

This brief explanation will show what are the evils that affect Turkey as a whole and her Christian subjects in particular. They are due to the collision of two irreconcilable creeds and civilisations, the Christian and the Mohammedan. Both of them are gifted with vitality and propagandist power (witness the spread of the latter in Africa and Central Asia in our own day); and, while no comparison can be made between them on ideal grounds and in their ethical and civic results, it still remains true that Islam inspires its votaries with fanatical bravery in war. There is the weakness of the Christians of south-eastern Europe. Superior in all that makes for home life, civilisation, and civic excellence, they have in time past generally failed as soldiers when pitted against an equal number of Moslems. But the latter show no constructive powers in time of peace, and have very rarely assimilated the conquered races. Putting the matter baldly, we may say that it is a question of the survival of the fittest between beavers and bears. And in the Nineteenth Century the advantage has been increasingly with the former.

These facts will appear if we take a brief glance at the salient features of the European history of Turkey. After capturing Constantinople, the capital of the old Eastern Empire, in the year 1453, the Turks for a time rapidly extended their power over the neighbouring Christian States, Bulgaria, Servia, and Hungary. In the year 1683 they laid siege to Vienna; but after being beaten back from that city by the valiant Sobieski, King of Poland, they gradually lost ground. Little by little Hungary, Transylvania, the Crimea, and parts of the Ukraine (South Russia) were wrenched from their grasp; and the close of the eighteenth century saw their frontiers limited to the River Dniester and the Carpathians[87]. Further losses were staved off only by the jealousies of the Great Powers. Joseph II. of Austria came near to effecting further conquests, but his schemes of partition fell through amidst the wholesale collapse of his too ambitious policy. Napoleon Bonaparte seized Egypt in 1798, but was forced by Great Britain to give it back to Turkey (1801-2). In 1807-12 Alexander I. of Russia resumed the conquering march of the Czars southward, captured Bessarabia, and forced the Sultan to grant certain privileges to the Principalities of Moldavia and Wallachia. In 1815 the Servians revolted against Turkish rule: they had always remembered the days of their early fame, and in 1817 wrested from the Porte large rights of local self-government.

Ten years later the intervention of England and France in favour of the Greek patriots led to the battle of Navarino, which destroyed the Turco-Egyptian fleet and practically secured the independence of Greece. An even worse blow was dealt by the Czar Nicholas I. of Russia. In 1829, at the close of a war in which his troops drove the Turks over the Balkans and away from Adrianople, he compelled the Porte to sign a peace at that city, whereby they acknowledged the almost complete independence of Moldavia and Wallachia. These Danubian Principalities owned the suzerainty of the Sultan and paid him a yearly tribute, but in other respects were practically free from his control, while the Czar gained for the time the right of protecting the Christians of the Eastern, or Greek, Church in the Ottoman Empire. The Sultan also recognised the independence of Greece. Further troubles ensued which laid Turkey for a time at the feet of Russia. England and France, however, intervened to raise her up; and they also thwarted the efforts of Mehemet Ali, the rebellious Pacha of Egypt, to seize Syria from his nominal lord, the Sultan.

Even this bare summary will serve to illustrate three important facts: first, that Turkey never consolidated her triumph over the neighbouring Christians, simply because she could not assimilate them, alien as they were, in race, and in the enjoyment of a higher creed and civilisation; second, that the Christians gained more and more support from kindred peoples (especially the Russians) as these last developed their energies; third, that the liberating process was generally (though not in 1827) delayed by the action of the Western Powers (England and France), which, on grounds of policy, sought to stop the aggrandisement of Austria, or Russia, by supporting the Sultan's authority.

The policy of supporting the Sultan against the aggression of Russia reached its climax in the Crimean War (1854-55), which was due mainly to the efforts of the Czar Nicholas to extend his protection over the Greek Christians in Turkey. France, England, and later on the Kingdom of Sardinia made war on Russia--France, chiefly because her new ruler, Napoleon III., wished to play a great part in the world, and avenge the disasters of the Moscow campaign of 1812; England, because her Government and people resented the encroachments of Russia in the East, and sincerely believed that Turkey was about to become a civilised State; and Sardinia, because her statesman Cavour saw in this action a means of securing the alliance of the two western States in his projected campaign against Austria. The war closed with the Treaty of Paris, of 1856, whereby the signatory Powers formally admitted Turkey "to participate in the advantages of the public law and system of Europe."

This, however, merely signified that the signatory Powers would resist encroachments on the territorial integrity of Turkey. It did not limit the rights of the Powers, as specified in various "Capitulations," to safeguard their own subjects residing in Turkey against Turkish misrule. The Sultan raised great hopes by issuing a firman granting religious liberty to his Christian subjects; this was inserted in the Treaty of Paris, and thereby became part of the public law of Europe. The Powers also became collectively the guarantors of the local privileges of the Danubian Principalities. Another article of the Treaty provided for the exclusion of war-ships from the Black Sea. This of course applied specially to Russia and Turkey[88].

The chief diplomatic result of the Crimean War, then, was to substitute a European recognition of religious toleration in Turkey for the control over her subjects of the Greek Church which Russia had claimed. The Sublime Porte was now placed in a stronger position than it had held since the year 1770; and the due performance of its promises would probably have led to the building up of a strong State. But the promises proved to be mere waste-paper. The Sultan, believing that England and France would always take his part, let matters go on in the old bad way. The natural results came to pass. The Christians showed increasing restiveness under Turkish rule. In 1860 numbers of them were massacred in the Lebanon, and Napoleon III. occupied part of Syria with French troops. The vassal States in Europe also displayed increasing vitality, while that of Turkey waned. In 1861, largely owing to the diplomatic help of Napoleon III., Moldavia and Wallachia united and formed the Principality of Roumania. In 1862, after a short but terrible struggle, the Servians rid themselves of the Turkish garrisons and framed a constitution of the Western type. But the worst blow came in 1870. During the course of the Franco-German War the Czar's Government (with the good-will and perhaps the active connivance of the Court of Berlin) announced that it would no longer be bound by the article of the Treaty of Paris excluding Russian war-ships from the Black Sea. The Gladstone Ministry sent a protest against this act, but took no steps to enforce its protest. Our young diplomatist, Sir Horace Rumbold, then at St. Petersburg, believed that she would have drawn back at a threat of war[89]. Finally, the Russian declaration was agreed to by the Powers in a Treaty signed at London on March 31, 1871.

These warnings were all thrown away on the Porte. Its promises of toleration to Christians were ignored; the wheels of government clanked on in the traditional rusty way; governors of provinces and districts continued, as of yore, to pocket the grants that were made for local improvements; in defiance of the promises given in 1856, taxes continued to be "farmed" out to contractors; the evidence of Christians against Moslems was persistently refused a hearing in courts of justice[90]; and the collectors of taxes gave further turns of the financial screw in order to wring from the cultivators, especially from the Christians, the means of satisfying the needs of the State and the ever-increasing extravagance of the Sultan. Incidents which were observed in Bosnia by an Oxford scholar of high repute, in the summer of 1875, will be found quoted in an Appendix at the end of this volume.

Matters came to a climax in the autumn of 1875 in Herzegovina, the southern part of Bosnia. There after a bad harvest the farmers of taxes and the Mohammedan landlords insisted on having their full quota; for many years the peasants had suffered under agrarian wrongs, which cannot be described here; and now this long-suffering peasantry, mostly Christians, fled to the mountains, or into Montenegro, whose sturdy mountaineers had never bent beneath the Turkish yoke[91]. Thence they made forays against their oppressors until the whole of that part of the Balkans was aflame with the old religious and racial feuds. The Slavs of Servia, Bulgaria, and of Austrian Dalmatia also gave secret aid to their kith and kin in the struggle against their Moslem overlords. These peoples had been aroused by the sight of the triumph of the national cause in Italy, and felt that the time had come to strike for freedom in the Balkans. Turkey therefore failed to stamp out the revolt in Herzegovina, fed as it was by the neighbouring Slav peoples; and it was clear to all the politicians of Europe that the Eastern Question was entering once more on an acute phase.

These events aroused varied feelings in the European States. The Russian people, being in the main of Slavonic descent, sympathised deeply with the struggles of their kith and kin, who were rendered doubly dear by their membership in the Greek Church. The Panslavonic Movement, for bringing the scattered branches of the Slav race into some form of political union, was already gaining ground in Russia; but it found little favour with the St. Petersburg Government owing to the revolutionary aims of its partisans. Sympathy with the revolt in the Balkans was therefore confined to nationalist enthusiasts in the towns of Russia. Austria was still more anxious to prevent the spread of the Balkan rising to the millions of her own Slavs. Accordingly, the Austrian Chancellor, Count Andrassy, in concert with Prince Bismarck and the Russian statesman, Prince Gortchakoff, began to prepare a scheme of reforms which was to be pressed on the Sultan as a means of conciliating the insurgents of Herzegovina. They comprised (1) the improvement of the lot of the peasantry; (2) complete religious liberty; (3) the abolition of the farming of taxes; (4) the application of the local taxation to local needs; (5) the appointment of a Commission, half of Moslems, half of Christians, to supervise the execution of these reforms and of others recently promised by the Porte[92].