All these governing issues underlay his great Berlin Treaty. Its first principle was to uphold the effective independence of Turkey. Several absurdities have been alleged on this head. It was also bruited for political ends that, as a Semite,125 he fostered the Moslem, whom, as a Briton, he should have suppressed.

This is not only untrue, but inaccurate. It is the sort of mistake adopted by such as imagine Mahomet to have been a Turk. Disraeli had early in life travelled far into the East, had been present at Yanina during an insurrection, had known leading pachas (one of whom consulted him), and observed inner intrigues. But while the Moslem soldier and peasant always impressed him, he detested the system of the Sultan. An early passage records this detestation. Pondering, in Contarini Fleming, the failure of successive Governments to rid Asia of “the revelations of the son of Abdallah,” he calls its whole object one “to convert man into a fanatic slave.” His two earlier romances, Alroy and Iskander, both glow with this theme—rebellion against Islam. The picturesqueness, both in scenery and history, of all Mediterranean countries,126 fascinated him; so did the charm of the East, which, as a stripling, he defined as “repose.” But it was the habitation of the Turk, not the Turk, that exercised the spell. “Live a little longer in these countries before you hazard an opinion as to their conduct,” says one of his characters. “Do you indeed think that the rebel beys of Albania were so simple?... The practice of politics in the East may be described by one word, dissimulation....”

An adverse opinion also characterises his letters from the East, some of which are embodied in his books. Alroy, dedicated to Jerusalem, as Iskander127 is to Athens, are neither of them favourable to Turkey. And even the Turkish want of humour annoyed him. “I never offered an opinion till I was sixty,” says the old Turk in the last romance, “and then it was one which had been in our family for a century.” He detested fanatics as he detested bores, but he loved purpose; and the sole thing that recommended the Turk to him was that, though a fanatic and a bore, he was both for a purpose. Moreover, up to 1840 the Greeks were more favourable to the Jews than the Turks; and it can scarcely be contended that his attitude to the Afghans—who are Semite by race—was prejudiced by the fact. No; if we seek for a Semitic affinity in Disraeli outside that to Israel, we must find it in that to the Saracens of Spain.

But neither is the stricture of his principle valid. As is well known, in upholding the independence of Turkey, he was following in the steps of his predecessors and indorsing the known views of two skilled diplomatists, Sir Robert Morier and Sir Henry Layard, whose political tenets were opposite to Disraeli’s. He had long before made up his mind on this subject, had defined Turkey as a “barrier” against aggression. In a speech towards the close of the Crimean War—“the Coalition War”—a speech in which he blamed the Government for their treatment of Russia, and considered Russia’s “preponderance” towards Turkey, he observed: “... I believe that there are elements, when Turkey shall be more fairly treated—and never has any country been more unfairly treated than Turkey, especially within the last two years—for securing the independence of her empire, and (what is to us of vital interest) preventing Constantinople from becoming an appanage to any great military power.”

By a tripartite treaty we, conjointly with Russia, Austria, and France, were allies bound to maintain the territorial integrity of Turkey—that is, whatever dispositions might be made, she must retain a compact and self-inclosed dominion. And why had this become a necessity for England, which is an Eastern as well as a Western power? There was a double cause—our Indian Empire and our Mediterranean trade; it was in the interest of both that a comparatively weak power should occupy the very key of the position—an historical capital whose very name symbolises empire, and whose situation, facing both east and west, dominates the Levant and commands the high-road of the Orient. As between Greece and Russia, the first undoubtedly possesses the claims of race and inheritance. The second is an interloper, and her “Greekness” springs from ecclesiastical and political usurpation. The Greek Macedonians are more hostile to Russia than to Turkey. Before now the Greeks have expressed their gratitude that Disraeli saved them from being sucked into a huge Bulgaria. It was in the interest of European peace that Constantinople should not be in the hands of a power so small, so restive, so motley, so fluid as Greece. It was in the interest of India that the Moslem pope should be upheld. It was in the interest, moreover, of the Christian subjects of the Porte themselves that Turkey should be so tied and so pledged to the great military and maritime powers in concert, that they could exact real guarantees for their protection, should brutal misbehaviour re-arise, and that the work of humanity should be left to none of these powers apart, and exposed to the temptation of indulging separate ambitions and disturbing the peace of the world. If united selfishness has deterred them from doing their duty, that must not be laid to the treaty’s charge. “Those,” he said, in 1876, “who suppose that England ever would uphold, or at this moment particularly is upholding, Turkey from blind superstition and from a want of sympathy with the highest aspirations of humanity, are deceived. What our duty is at this critical moment is to maintain the Empire of England;” and before the Congress, he again solemnly pointed out that worse, more widespread, and far more lasting agonies would be caused to myriads abroad if the misguided excitement of several sections at home were to prevail, than even by any horrors which must move both indignation and sympathy in every heart.

Into the detailed controversies of the “Bulgarian atrocities” agitation I will not here enter. It is now generally confessed that Disraeli was right not to be led away by the sensational exaggerations manufactured for Russian purposes abroad, and retailed, sometimes, for political purposes at home. Horrible savageries, of course, happened on both sides in such a war, and those horrors, from the nature of their theatre, were Oriental. But that they were bound up with racial feuds, and were in full evidence on the other side, was vouched for to me—and in great detail—some ten years after their occurrence, by Sir William White, then Ambassador at Constantinople, and by the then consul, himself a leading member of the committee for their investigation. These authorities went much further in their declarations than ever Disraeli did, with his extreme reticence in public. Indeed, they told me that the whole source of the war had been engineered by the acute irritations of Russian diplomacy, which, as Lord Derby long ago expressed it, “has never proceeded by storm, but by sap and mine.”

The true facts should not be blinked. With regard to Turkey in Europe they are both racial, political, and ecclesiastical. The race aspect was powerful with Disraeli. He always believed it to be “the key of history, and the surest clue to the characters of men in all ages.” In England he discerned the blend of “Saxon industry and Norman manners.” While it was race again that had made national institutions “the ramparts of the multitude against large estates exercising political power derived from a limited class.” Practically, it is still a question of the Slav against both Greeks (whom they have murdered) and Albanians, who themselves massacre the Serbs. Politically, it is a question of Russian influence and both Austrian and Italian jealousy. Ecclesiastically, it is a question of the freed principalities against the Patriarch of Constantinople; who, since the very time when Russia first newly pretended to the Byzantine inheritance of the Greeks, became (oddly enough) a nominee of the Sultan. From the outset Disraeli determined to undo that larger Bulgaria, stretching to the Ægean, involving all the international conflicts just hinted, and ranging from the Danube to Salonica, which Russia proposed by the clandestine Treaty of San Stefano. As is familiar, he founded a smaller Bulgaria, barriered by the Balkans, dividing it into two portions—Bulgaria and Eastern Roumelia—in the last of which he implanted autonomy. It has often been said that the sequel proved him futile, for the two slices of the big worm have since been repieced. But the events of 1885–86 which caused this reunion were the gift, not of Russian ascendency, but of those very institutions which Disraeli created. Again, it has been popularly put as if the treaty were not his own policy and had not endured. I could most easily prove the error of both these propositions. As regards the first, just as in the Reform Bill of 1867, the co-operation of both parties was necessary for the limited achievement of his views, so it fared with the need for European concert in the Berlin Treaty. But his ideas had been sketched out during the Crimean War, and the restoration of that very concert, which still subsists, was a birth of the treaty. The Berlin Treaty restored not only British prestige, but—as a foreign statesman remarked—Britain’s moral influence in the councils of Europe. It was so hailed in England, and this, as Mr. Roebuck acknowledged, was its ground for enthusiastic national support. Russia withdrew from Constantinople. Both the Dardanelles and the Turkish frontier in Europe were assured. A Sultan, then beset with bankruptcy and dynastic troubles, was given his chance of heading a party of reform championed by Midhat. Turkey was rendered compact, and lopped of mongrel provinces, while she obtained the port of Burgos on the Black Sea as a check to Russia. As regards Turkey in Asia, Disraeli’s aim, as I have already outlined, was Indian. Erzeroum, Bayazid, Alashkerd, proved powerful buffers against Russian predominance; and Russia still sways the mongrel Bessarabia then restored to her. It is now recognised that Russia, to traverse Persia, would encounter a British bayonet at every step. Disraeli’s great object, like Palmerston’s, was to prevent Turkey from becoming a fief to Russia, and the Black Sea from remaining a mere Russian lake, as the repudiation by Mr. Gladstone, in 1871, of the clause in the Treaty of Paris, for which the Crimean War had been resumed, subsequently empowered it to become. Turkey, Disraeli had written in The Press of May 21, 1853, was “a necessary evil in the European system,” but one preferable to some others, and more likely to prevent general anarchy and bloodshed. And he recalled Prince Potemkin’s old inscription on the gates of Chusan: “This is the road to Constantinople.” The standing danger was the interposal of Russian ambition on the perpetual plea of a Christian protectorate—resented by many of the Christian provinces themselves—in order to constitute Turkey a Russian province, and to spread a dominion less fanatical, perhaps, but even more merciless and repressive in Europe, however civilising it has proved in portions of Central Asia. His scheme, compassing autonomy here, independence there, compactness, the power to govern and the accountability to improve, everywhere was one of development. It held within it, as he said, the seeds of “Evolution.”

How did Disraeli diagnose Russia’s legitimate aspirations? He certainly neither ignored nor condemned them, but he distinguished between aspirations legitimate and illegitimate. Speaking in 1871, after Russia had violated and Mr. Gladstone had torn up the Black Sea Clause, Disraeli criticised the course which the Ministry had pursued.

“... Russia has a policy, as every great power has a policy, and she has as much right to have a policy as Germany or England. I believe the policy of Russia, taking a general view of it, to have been a legitimate policy, though it may have been inevitably a disturbing policy. When you have a great country in the centre of Europe, with an immense territory, with a numerous and yet, as compared with its colossal area, a sparse population, producing human food to any extent, in addition to certain most valuable raw materials, it is quite clear that a people so situated, practically without any seaboard, would never rest until it had found its way to the coast, and could have a mode of communicating easily with other nations, and exchanging its products with them. Well, for two hundred years Russia has pursued that policy; it has been a legitimate though disturbing policy. It has cost Sweden provinces, and it has cost Turkey provinces. But no wise statesman could help feeling that it was a legitimate policy—a policy which it was impossible to resist, and one which the general verdict of the world recognised—that Russia should find her way to the sea-coast. She has completely accomplished it. She has admirable seaports; she can communicate with every part of the world, and she has profited accordingly.

“But at the end of the last century she advanced a new view. It was not a national policy; it was invented by the then ruler of Russia—a woman, a stranger, and an usurper—and that policy was that she must have the capital of the Turkish Empire. That was not a legitimate, that was a disturbing policy. It was a policy like the French desire to have the Rhine—false in principle. She had no moral claim to Constantinople; she did not represent the races to which it once belonged; she had no political necessity to go there, because she already had two capitals. Therefore it was not a legitimate but a disturbing policy. As the illegitimate desire of France to have the Rhine has led to the prostration of France, so the illegitimate desire of Russia to have Constantinople led to the prostration of Russia....”

The means used by Disraeli for preserving the peace of Europe and protecting our Eastern Empire were, in the rough, on the lines I have tried to shadow. First of all, refusing to allow the creation of an unwieldy and anarchic province of discordant races which could not become a coherent nation, he reduced the Bulgaria designed under the San Stefano arrangement by two-thirds, created Eastern Roumelia, with a framed constitution, south of the Balkans, and yielded the rest to Turkey. By this measure not only was Bulgaria prevented from being bulky and hybrid, but the Macedonian Greeks (preponderant over Slavs and Serbs) were saved from absorption. Turkey was delimited in Europe by the natural fastnesses of the Balkans—one that even in his youth Disraeli marked as the real frontier. Turkey was pledged to reform her administration, while the signatories also guaranteed her from Russian aggression. Both Russia and Turkey, therefore—and, indeed, all Europe—knew that England was in earnest about her Indian Empire. Turkey’s position was ascertained, so was Russia’s. Russia was propitiated by Bessarabia, Kars, Ardahan, and Batoum; Turkey, gratified by the retention of the great portion of what was to have been Bulgaria’s, by the retention of Bayazid, by the great region of Erzeroum, and of the valley of Alashkerd.

Further, Cyprus fell to the lot of England as a post “of arms,” a strategical, a coasting and a coaling port of high value for our Indian Empire, commanding as it does the high-route which leads to the Euphrates Valley, and useful besides for Egypt. He had noted this island on his youthful trip in the East as most opportune for the purpose.128

Disraeli’s whole purview, in these arrangements, apart from the defence of Great Britain, was to ensure a feasible government under the watch of the European concert. This intention is well expressed by the late Master of Balliol, writing in 1877: “... I want to see the higher civilisation of Europe combining against the lower and offering something like a paternal government to ... the East. But then there is such a danger of taking away the government which they have and substituting only chaos. This might be avoided if the European Powers would jointly take up their cause....”

I may be allowed to recall, in relation to some of these matters, a few of Disraeli’s immediate after-utterances. They are too often neglected.

As regards the English guarantee of the Porte against Russian offence, attained by the Convention of Constantinople which supplemented the treaty, he observed—

“... Suppose now ... the settlement of Europe had not included the Convention of Constantinople and the occupation of the isle of Cyprus, ... what might ... have occurred? In ten, fifteen, or twenty years, the power and resources of Russia having revived, some quarrel would again have occurred, Bulgarian or otherwise, and in all probability the armies of Russia would have been assailing the Ottoman dominions, both in Europe and Asia; and enveloping and inclosing the city of Constantinople, and its all-powerful position. Well, what would be the probable conduct under these circumstances of the Government ... whatever party might be in power? I fear there might be hesitation for a time—a want of decision, a want of firmness; but no one doubts that ultimately England would have said, ‘This will never do; we must prevent the conquest of Asia Minor; we must interfere in this matter and arrest the course of Russia....’ Well, then, that being the case, I say it is extremely important that this country should take a step beforehand which should indicate what the policy of England would be.... The responsibilities of England are practically diminished by the course we have taken.... One of the results of my attending the Congress of Berlin has been to prove, what I always suspected to be an absolute fact, that neither the Crimean, nor this horrible devastating war which has just terminated, would have taken place if England had spoken with the necessary firmness. Russia had complaints to make against this country; that neither in the case of the Crimean War, nor on this occasion—and I don’t shrink from my share of the responsibility in this matter—was the voice of England so clear and decided as to exercise a due share in the guidance of European opinion.” Without such finality the treaty could only have been patchwork. “That was not the idea of public duty entertained by my noble friend and myself. We thought the time had come when we should take steps which would produce some order out of the anarchy chaos that had so long prevailed. We asked ourselves was it absolutely a necessity that the fairest provinces of the world should be the most devastated and the most ill-used, and for this reason, that there is no security for life and property so long as that country is in perpetual fear of invasion and aggression.... I hold that we have laid the foundation of a state of affairs which may open a new continent to the civilisation of Europe, and that the welfare of the world, and the wealth of the world, may be increased by availing ourselves of that tranquillity and order which the more intimate connection of that country with England will now produce....” And, added the late Lord Salisbury, “We were striving to pick up the thread—the broken thread—of England’s old imperial position.”

Before this utterance Disraeli had stated that the Convention’s object was not only to confirm “tranquillity and order,” but to safeguard India. “We have a substantial interest in the East; it is a commanding interest, and its behest must be obeyed.”—“In taking Cyprus,” he continued, “the movement is not Mediterranean, it is Indian;” and, speaking of Russia’s temptation to profit by a state of things which tended to resolve the societies of Asia Minor and the countries beyond into the anarchy of original elements, he used the familiar words: “... There is no reason for these constant wars, or fears of wars between Russia and England. Before the circumstances which led to the recent disastrous war, when none of those events which we have seen agitating the world had occurred, and when we were speaking in another place of the conduct of Russia in Central Asia, I vindicated that conduct, which I thought was unjustly attacked, and I said then, what I repeat now, there is room enough for Russia and England in Asia.”

On the other hand, in another speech alluding to Austria’s trusteeship of Bosnia, he said it permitted us to check, “... I should hope for ever, that Pan-Slavist confederacy and conspiracy which has already proved so disadvantageous to the happiness of the world.” Nobody acquainted with Austria’s desire for Salonica, Italy’s dread of that possibility, and the fear of one at any rate of these powers lest Greece should absorb Albania, can fail to grasp the relevance of this hope.

It should be borne in mind that at the time these deliverances were made Abdul Hamid129 was not what he seems since to have become. He was then—and the late Sir William White was my informant—an enthusiastic reformer, with the wise and accomplished Midhat for his inspirer. Had he remained so Turkey would have achieved much for Asia Minor. Even now, Abdul may perhaps be sometimes excused for mistrusting the cant of reform on the part of unreforming powers. Perhaps it is impossible long to be Sultan of Turkey without falling into the faults bred by habitual suspicion. Perhaps the varying conduct of Western Powers conduces to cynicism. But at this period the Armenians themselves were hopeful. With the Russian aspiration I sympathise. Russia is destined to expansion and greatness; she is a cold power desiring to be warm, pushed by a military power eager to be forward. But she is also that strange anomaly—a new empire with a mediæval standard. With the freezing officialism of Russia, giant in profession and pigmy in practice, I entertain no sympathy at all. Nor are the Cossack barbarities a whit less infamous than those of the Bashi-Bazouks. What is always to be dreaded is the periodical recurrence of race-hatreds and barbarism on the confines of both countries. Turkey comprises many more races than Russia; at such times, therefore, when bad governors incense brutalised men, unspeakable horrors eclipse imagination and baffle even sympathy. Bulgarian or Servian Slavs massacre Macedonian Greeks, Albanians butcher Macedonian Serbs, and Turks both massacre and torture Macedonian Slavs. The name of the particular province inflamed at a specific time by revolutionary committees is constantly used as if designating the natural uprising of a united people or of a single race; but this is not the case. The recent blood-orgy, however, connived at by more than one of the powers, would seem to disgrace the Ottoman beyond any other single group concerned. And yet the normal Turk—soldier or peasant—is not naturally brutal. It is only when insulted fanaticism dements him that he becomes so; and his fanaticism seldom fans the flames unprovoked by foreign designs. Of course nothing could be more desirable than a practical, a permanent understanding with Russia; nothing more desirable than a complete reform of European Turkey, which the joint powers could enforce if they would unite. Both are consummations devoutly to be wished. But bearing in mind the panther tread of Russian diplomacies, their recent developments in China and Japan, their constant designs on India and in Persia, their stealthy hankering after Constantinople, their earlier annexation even of American territory, as Disraeli pointed out—is the former practical? By all means let Russia expand, as she has a right to expand; but by all means let England ascertain the due spheres of her expansion, and retain her own empire, that gives justice and freedom to countless races once oppressed. Nor let any cant of whatever nature blind her eyes to the hard issues.

Throughout his pronouncements on foreign affairs is to be discerned his construction of “balance of power” and of “interference.” As regards the first, his principles are well defined in a speech of 1864. “... The proper meaning of ‘balance of power’ is security for communities in general against a predominant and particular power.” It also follows “that you have to take into your consideration states and influences that are not to be counted among the European powers.” Every crisis in Europe bears on America and the colonies. So early as 1848 he had pointed out that, though insulted, “... yet our welfare as a great colonial power was so intimately connected with European politics, that in seasons of crisis we could only retire from interference at the expense not only of our prestige but of our safety.” The “balance of power” principle he derived from Bolingbroke; he also adopted from Bolingbroke his principle of “interference.”

“... There are conditions,” he laid it down in 1860, “under which it may be our imperative duty to interfere. We may clearly interfere in the affairs of foreign countries when the interests or the honour of England are at stake, or when, in our opinion, the independence of Europe is menaced. But a great responsibility devolves upon that minister who has to decide when those conditions have arisen; and he who makes a mistake upon that subject, he who involves his country in interference or in war under the idea that the interests or honour of the country are concerned, when neither is substantially involved, he who involves the country in interference or war because he believes the independence of Europe is menaced, when, in fact, it is not in danger, makes of course a great, a fatal mistake. The general principle that we ought not to interfere in the affairs of foreign nations, unless there is a clear necessity, and that, generally speaking, it ought to be held a political dogma that the people of other countries should SETTLE THEIR OWN AFFAIRS without the introduction of foreign influence or foreign power, is one which I trust the House ... will cordially adhere to....” To this let me add a passage from the great Denmark speech of 1864. It is its corollary—

“... By the just influence of England in the councils of Europe, I mean an influence contradistinguished from that which is obtained by intrigue and secret understanding; I mean an influence that results from the conviction of foreign powers that our resources are great, and that our policy is moderate and steadfast.... I lay this down as a great principle which cannot be controverted in the management of our foreign affairs. If England is resolved upon a particular policy, war is not probable.”

One illustration is worth many arguments. At the Berlin Congress affairs at a time began to march ill. The Russian plenipotentiary was making mischief. Disraeli quietly pencilled some requisitions on the part of England and forwarded them to him. “If you accept these,” he said, “peace—if not, war.”

Bearing these two further principles of foreign policy in mind, let me endeavour to sketch Disraeli’s attitude towards various other powers. With America I deal separately in the next chapter.

Friendship with France amounted with him almost to a passion, and none would have rejoiced more heartily at the amity which our King has recently renewed. He himself knew the French well, and in the ’forties had met with the most cordial welcome on two occasions from the King, the Court, the lights of literature and science, the politicians and the people. He thought that with French alliance other powers might exclaim as Shakespeare’s Constance exclaimed—

France was the nation of society, the nurse of arts and manners. England and France supplied reciprocal wants. Their friendship is a pledge for European peace. Had the Czar been made aware of it in time, the blunder and misfortune of the Crimean War would not have taken place. In Coningsby he called Paris “the university of the world,” and enlarged on commercial exchange between two first-class powers in a vein at once light and serious. In 1845, France regarded Peel as the guardian of Anglo-French cordiality, and feared the chance of Palmerston’s return to office as fraught with a possible treatment of “the French connection with levity or disregard.” Louis Philippe relieved his anxieties by consulting Disraeli on this point.130

“A good understanding,” was Disraeli’s interpretation in 1864, “between England and France is simply this—that so far as the influence of these two great powers extends, the affairs of the world shall be conducted by their co-operation instead of by their rivalry. But co-operation requires not merely identity of interest but reciprocal good feeling. In public as well as in private affairs, a certain degree of sentiment is necessary for the happy conduct of matters.” In another speech ten years earlier he also observed that Anglo-French relations were not dynastic, but depended on commercial interests.

Perhaps his most remarkable expression on this theme occurs in a speech of 1853,131 when Sir James Graham had gone about saying that the Emperor was a despot who turned his people into slaves, and when there was one of those periodical outbursts of Gallophobia to which we are accustomed. Disraeli pointed out that peace with France had then subsisted for forty years, that social relations had multiplied, that an identity of interest in high policy existed. He exploded the fallacy that national hostility was a true tradition. Even Agincourt and Crécy stood for a struggle between two princes rather than between two nations. “... No one can deny that both Queen Elizabeth and the Lord Protector looked to that alliance as the basis of their foreign connections. No one can deny that there was one subject on which even the brilliant Bolingbroke and the sagacious Walpole were agreed—and that was the great importance of cultivating an alliance, or good understanding, with France. At a later date the most eminent of the statesmen of this century, Mr. Pitt, formed his system on this principle....” The traditional prejudice, therefore, was the reverse of true. The natural tendency was to concord, for after the great European revolutions at the close of the eighteenth and dawn of the nineteenth centuries, a durable peace had emerged. Nor were the defences (which Sir Robert Peel had really inaugurated) due to the rise of the Third Napoleon; they were due to the changes in scientific warfare. It was true that in France there was then a military government. “But there is a great error also, if history is to guide us, in assuming that because a country is governed by an army, that army must be extremely anxious to conquer other countries.” The lust for conquest under militarism is due to home-uneasiness, and from a feeling in the army that its power is not felt. The real prejudice was that France had subverted her constitution. This prejudice had foundation, but it was the very cause of those acts which indiscreet journalism was now criticising so angrily. “Some years ago,” he resumed (and the glimpse of Louis Philippe is interesting), “I had occasion frequently to visit France. I found that country then under the mild sway of a constitutional monarch—of a prince who, from temper as well as policy, was humane and beneficent. I know that at that time the Press was free. I know that at that time the Parliament of France was ... distinguished by its eloquence, and by a dialectic power that probably even our own House of Commons has never surpassed. I know that under these circumstances France arrived at a pitch of material prosperity which it had never before reached. I know also that after a reign of unbroken prosperity of long duration, when he was aged, when he was in sorrow, and when he was suffering under overwhelming indisposition, this same prince was rudely expelled from his capital,132 and was denounced as a poltroon by all the journals of England, because he did not command his troops to fire upon the people. Well, other powers and other princes have since occupied his seat, who have asserted their authority in a very different way, and are denounced in the same organs as tyrants because they did order their troops to fire upon the people. I think every man has a right to have his feelings upon these subjects; but what is the moral I presume to draw upon these circumstances? It is this, that it is extremely difficult to form an opinion upon French politics; and that so long as the French people are exact in their commercial transactions and friendly in their political relations, it is just as well that we should not interfere with their management of their domestic concerns.”

The same ideas animated him in 1854, when he pointed out that ten years earlier the Czar had, by a secret manœuvre, sought to provoke an estrangement which had not endured, but which the Czar was led to believe enduring when the Crimean War broke out. The same guided his hearty approval of Mr. Cobden’s aims in relation to France. What he objected to in the later Italian Treaty was that it embodied “reciprocity” too late—at a time when for England reciprocity could secure no more. In 1858—the Walewski affair—Disraeli termed our alliance with France “the key and corner-stone of modern civilisation.” After the Treaty of Villafranca, Disraeli advised England not “to go to congresses and conferences in fine dresses and ribands, to enjoy the petty vanity of settling the fate of petty princes,” but to have recourse to “your ally the Emperor of the French”—a monarch who, as Disraeli said some years afterwards, “... has been created and can only be maintained by the sympathies of his people—a proud, imperious, and apt to be discontented people.” In 1860, when many were jubilant over Italy’s united nationality, Disraeli, demonstrating its present incompleteness, asserted that its accomplishment must come not through the “moral influence of England,” but “by the will and the sword of France”—though this did not blind him to contingent perils.

“It is the will of France that can alone restore Rome to the Italians. It is the sword of France, if any sword can do it, that alone can free Venetia from the Austrians.” But in a long and splendid speech he urged, almost prophetically, that by forcing the French Emperor to a policy which he was unwilling to pursue, we should eventually give him a dangerous preponderance: “... It will be in his power ... to make those greater changes and aim at those greater results which I will only intimate and not attempt to describe.” In 1864, on the Danish crisis, advocating firmness of action following on firmness of statement, he once more repeated: “... If there is, under these circumstances, a cordial alliance between England and France, war is most difficult; but if there is a thorough understanding between England, France, and Russia, war is impossible.” Though here, again, this consideration would not deter him from the single object of England’s welfare.

Finally, he consulted French sentiment in the delicate arrangement at Berlin. “... There is no step of this kind that I would take without considering the effect it might have upon the feelings of France—a nation to whom we are bound by almost every tie that can unite a people.... We avoided Egypt, knowing how susceptible France is with regard to Egypt; we avoided Syria; ... and we avoided availing ourselves of any part of the terra firma, because we would not hurt the feelings or excite the suspicions of France.... But the interests of France ... are, as she acknowledges, sentimental and traditionary interests; and although I respect them, ... we must remember that our connection with the East is not merely an affair of sentiment and tradition, but that we have urgent and substantial and enormous interests which we must guard and keep.”

I pass now to Germany. Prussia, in his early days, he had described as “the Persia” of Europe; the Austrians as “the Chinese.” Some thirty years before Germany became united, and Bismarck had brandished the mailed fist, Disraeli regarded much in the air as “dreamy and dangerous nonsense;” he considered theory and “inner consciousness” as distinctive of the German nature, and he failed to perceive the rising wave of its instinct for united nationality. Here certainly his foresight flagged. When Prussia dismembered Denmark, he pointed out that by the arguments used she, too, might be deprived of Posen. Here certainly his foresight failed. But when the great war broke out, he rose to the occasion and realised its meaning to the full. “It is no common war,” he said at the onset, “like that between Prussia and Austria, or like the Italian war in which France was engaged some years ago; nor is it like the Crimean War. This war represents the German revolution, a greater political event than the French Revolution of last century. I don’t say a greater or as great a social event. What its social consequences may be are in the future. Not a single principle, accepted by all statesmen for guidance in the management of our foreign affairs up to six months ago, any longer exists. There is not a diplomatic tradition that has not been swept away. You have a new world, new influences at work, new and unknown objects and dangers with which to cope, at present involved in the obscurity incident to the novelty of such affairs.... Lord Palmerston, eminently a practical man, trimmed the ship of State and shaped its policy with a view to preserve an equilibrium in Europe. But what has come to pass? The balance of power has been entirely destroyed, and the country which suffers, and feels the effects of this great change most, is England.” He recommended an attitude of “armed neutrality,” such as Austria’s occupation of the Danubian provinces, which certainly abridged the Crimean War. Such a policy tends to prevent, if possible, to shorten if it cannot prevent a conflict; and when that conflict is finished, to temper the terms for the vanquished. Had it been feasible in the then state of our armaments, it might have produced lasting results. As time went on Disraeli grew to understand Germany better, though he never ceased to regret the humiliation to France. In Bismarck, however, he found a powerful friend, and one of his last utterances regarding Germany was to praise her as a peacemaker.

At the Berlin Congress Lord Beaconsfield made his speeches in English. This was of design. A story was told that an eminent English diplomatist, in attendance on his chief, had adroitly suggested this course out of apprehension that “Dizzy’s” French accent might not impress foreign representatives. But however this may have been, I am convinced it was not the real reason, which was to assert the leadership of Great Britain.

Disraeli’s French was fluent, if insular. In Italian he was naturally proficient. Italian literature was familiar to him, and next to Dante, he was fondest of Alfieri, a fine passage from whom, it will be remembered, he quotes in Lothair. He knew German well enough to read it.

No sentiment surrounded his favour to Austria. It was her partition that he feared. So early as 1848 he objected, from the sole standpoint of England’s interest, to championing the Magyars and the Italians against Austria, the Sicilians against Naples. We should, he then said, “mind our own business.” And in 1856, when he combated the views of his opponents who sighed for the dismemberment of Russia, he also pointed out the dangers to European peace that must attend the dismemberment of Austria. The complete dismemberment of that empire—partly a few years later to be accomplished—would involve the independence of Hungary and the emancipation of Italy.

With Italy herself he nourished, indeed, an innate sympathy, and for her a sentimental attachment. In all his reveries Venice and Rome figure no less frequently than do Athens and Jerusalem; and afterwards none applauded Daniel Manin more than he. Italy is the haunting refrain of Venetia, Venice of Contarini Fleming, Rome romanticises Lothair. Perhaps a leaven of his old enthusiasm for “a cluster of small states” and “federal unions” still mingled with the practical outlook which also made him sacrifice many of his personal emotions to the cold requirements of statesmanship. “Federal unions,” he had sighed in Contarini, “would preserve us from the consequences of local jealousy.”—“There would be more genius, and, what is of more importance, much more felicity.”—“Italy might then revive.” However this may be—and I for one regret his forced attitude towards the first flutter of Italian freedom—or whether his late acquaintance with Metternich had coloured his ideas, there can be no doubt of their constraining cause. His public views always confined themselves to what he believed was for the benefit of Great Britain. And in this instance—“... If we, or any other power,” he urged, “should forcibly interfere in the affairs of Italy with the view of changing the political settlement of that country, the result will be, as in the case of an attempt to dismember Russia, one of those protracted wars that might fatally exhaust this country, and which, even supposing it to be successful, would leave Italy very possibly not in the possession of Austria, but under the dominion of some other power as little national.” It should be recollected that 1858–61 were critical years for Anglo-French relations. After Palmerston’s Orsini imbroglio we were more than once on the verge of war with France. Luckily, England was never forced into interference. Luckily, Italy regained her independence, through two commanding individualities. But it was history that warned Disraeli. Italy had been the battle-field of Austria and Spain, and a prolific source of war, disorder, and havoc throughout the eighteenth century. “A war in Italy,” he said in 1859, “is not a war in a corner. An Italian war may by possibility be an European war. The waters of the Adriatic cannot be disturbed without agitating the waters of the Rhine. The port of Trieste is not a mere Italian port. It is a port which belongs to the Italian confederation, and an attack on Trieste is not an attack on Austria alone, but also on Germany. If war springs up beyond the precincts of Italy, England has interests not merely from ... those enlightened principles of civilisation which make her look with an adverse eye on aught that would disturb the peace of the world, but England may be interested from material considerations of the most urgent and momentous character.” It was from England’s vantage-ground alone that he discussed these questions in public. He wished Italy to be free, but he feared the results of ineffective feeling. Italy, he held, must free herself, and her aid, if any, should be French, not English, for France heads the Latin League. In 1859 he rested on a mutual accord and disarmament between Great Britain and France. This would, he pleaded, be “a conquest far more valuable than Lombardy, or those wild dreams of a regeneration ever promised but never accomplished.” “National independence,” he urged in another speech on the same subject, “is not created by protocols, nor public liberty guaranteed by treaties. All such arrangements have been tried before, and the consequence has been a sickly and short-lived offspring. What is going on in Italy—never mind whose may have been the original fault, what the present errors—can only be solved by the will, the energy, the sentiment, and the thought of the population themselves.”

One word before I close this chapter about Greece and Poland. Of his own feeling for Hellas there can be no question. It pervades his works. “All the great things have been done by the little peoples.” He was offered, I have heard, the kingship of that country. But Greek ambitions, he felt, outgrew her capacities. Her hereditary dream has always been Constantinople. He bade her, in a famous passage, take the advice that he would give to a youth of genius and enterprise: “Be patient.” But he also insisted that she should be heard at the Conference of Berlin.

With Poland’s free aspirations he always sympathised, and more than once expressed the grounds of his sympathy in Parliament. The movement in Poland was one, natural, spontaneous, and national. It was not forced by agitators, nor fomented by despots, nor provoked elsewhere from ulterior motives. It was the genuine expression of a combined people, and not the plea of a single race overbearing its fellow components, or the pretence of a single locality to manage itself, both of which have so frequently proved the stalking-horse of “national rights;” pleas that, if sound, would bring back the Heptarchy in England, undo the union of Germany and of Italy, break up the faculty for government, and resolve into petty elements every great nation in Europe. Such an article of “liberal” faith is neither more nor less than political atomism; and its humanitarian guise too often the false philanthropy of “sublime sentiments.” In all his treatment of “Britain’s interests abroad,” Disraeli realised that whereas in England government can still be carried on by “traditionary influences,” the remaining ancient communities of Europe were falling more and more under the veiled sway of “military force.” These were the two alternatives. A “reconstruction” of England “on the great Transatlantic model” would only accentuate the discrepancy between the ineradicable features of her body politic, and the social standard which she would seek to imitate. The result would be that “after a due course of paroxysms for the sake of maintaining order and securing the rights of industry, the State quits the senate and takes refuge in the camp”—

“Let us not be deluded by forms of government. The word may be republic in France, constitutional monarchy in Prussia, absolute monarchy in Austria, but the King is the same. Wherever there is a vast standing army the government is the government of the sword. Half a million of armed men must either be, or be not, in a state of discipline. If not... it is not government but anarchy; if they be in a state of discipline, they must obey one man, and that man is the master.”133

I have tried to track a large subject deserving a longer space. At any rate, I hope to have justified Disraeli’s own language in the touching letter which breathed farewell to his constituents when failing health compelled him to accept an earldom—

“Throughout my public life I have aimed at two chief results. Not insensible to the principle of progress, I have endeavoured to reconcile change with that respect for tradition which is one of the main elements of our social strength; and in external affairs I have endeavoured to develop and strengthen our empire, believing that a combination of achievement and responsibility elevates the character and condition of a people.”

It is not a little remarkable that this farewell re-echoes the sentence quoted in my first chapter from his tract What is he? as well as that later Runnymede Letter which, forty years earlier, he addressed to Sir Robert Peel.134