young pride of Louis and the veteran craft of Mazarin stood rebuked,' and 'whose imperial voice arrested the sails of the Libyan pirates and the persecuting fires of Rome,' interposed on behalf of the persecuted Piedmontese, and that on the suggestion of our modern Imperialists. For her own sake as well as for the sake of those who are looking up to her for protection, England is bound to see that her remonstrances have another and a different issue.

The first and most essential condition of this is, that we get rid both of the party and international intrigues which in reality make the capital on which the Sultan trades. So far as our internal affairs are concerned, our first business is to lift the whole question out of the region of party strife. Our one concern should be to put an end once and for ever to the possibilities of Turkish despotism. How that may best be secured is a problem which statesmen have to solve. It is ours to make it clear to them that it must be done, and that no apology will be accepted for failure, or at all events until every possible method has been exhausted. It is simply pitiable to find men trying to turn the incidents of a crisis like this to the advantage or disadvantage of any particular statesman. Policies must be judged, but it should be on their own merits, and not on their bearing on the interests of a particular leader or party. It is for this reason that I personally welcome the letter which Lord Rosebery addressed to myself. That does not mean that I agree in every word or in every opinion, but simply that I approve of his attitude as worthy of a statesman occupying his distinctive position as leader of the Opposition. When Mr. Gladstone raised his trumpet voice in 1876 he was not hampered by his relation to a party, and yet his work had hardly commenced before the Prime Minister of that day took fright and treated the whole as an attack upon the Government. Much more certainly would this have occurred had Lord Rosebery put himself forward as the leader of any opposing policy.

Never indeed was there a subject in relation to which a party strife would be more utterly discreditable. Unfortunately there are those who seem unable to contemplate any subject except through party spectacles. They are so intent upon the battles of factions, and even of individuals, that they seem to forget that there are numbers of earnest politicians in the country, who care little or nothing about the personnel of a ministry, but who are intensely anxious as to the success of principles. They have no axe of their own to grind, are far removed from the temptations of place, have not even the faintest desire for a title. Naturally they are disgusted by the intrigues of the lobbies and the log-rolling of journalists. It is these unselfish politicians who are the strength of the present movement, and they are determined that it shall not have a party character. It is bad enough that the Armenians should suffer from the jealousies of contending potentates. It would be worse still if they were sacri

ficed to the ambitions of English parties. But it would be worst of all if their cause were to be prejudiced by intestine dissensions in the English party which specially prides itself upon undertaking the defence of its interests. In saying this, I do not for a moment mean to suggest that any Foreign Secretary ought to be sustained in power regardless altogether of the character and success of his policy. Speaking as a Liberal I must express my strong opinion that any attempt to promote the interests of Liberalism by an Armenian. agitation would be impolitic in the highest degree. If we are to help these unfortunate people, we must have a singleness of eye. The law holds good here: we cannot serve God and Mammon.

But the second point which I wish to emphasise is not less important than the first. Personally, I do not share the anxiety which so many express as to the possible results of our taking an independent position in defence of Armenia. Every one outside diplomatic circles ought to speak with extreme reserve on such a point, since his knowledge of the situation must necessarily be very restricted. But it would require a good deal to convince me that the European Powers could ever be brought to unite to save the Sultan from the righteous penalty of his own misdeeds. Their bond of union is distrust of England rather than sympathy with Turkey, and it is hard to understand how, with views so divergent that they must necessarily become antagonistic as soon as any positive action was attempted, they could agree on measures of hostility to this country. It is, to say the least, extremely doubtful whether any resistance would have been offered if Great Britain, having invited the other Powers to unite in repressive measures and been refused, had taken independent action.

Be this as it may, it is eminently desirable that a work of humanity in which all the Powers are interested, should be undertaken by them conjointly. It is idle to deny that the chief difficulty in our way is the distrust and jealousy of Great Britain which evidently prevails on the Continent and perhaps especially in Russia. Russia has certainly been the most powerful obstacle to the success of our policy. Her representatives have hitherto thwarted us at every point, and there is no reason to hope for anything different until some better understanding is established between us. I venture to think that it should be the aim of our statesmen to secure this. Diplomacy has not yet exhausted all its resources. But if it is to succeed it must be prepared to exercise trust in order that it may inspire it in return. Russia is in no sense our natural enemy. It is not even an ancient foe. The policy which began with the Crimean War set aside the best traditions of our Foreign Office, and our action at the Berlin Conference fostered the antagonism which had thus been engendered between two hitherto friendly peoples. That alienation and rivalry must cease, or there is little hope for the Armenians. The Berlin Convention blocks the way. The obstacle ought to be removed. If our

Government are unprepared for this, what is the alternative? We are told that everything possible has been done, and now that we have simply to wait until the European Powers come to a different mind. Advice more cowardly and pusillanimous could hardly be tendered, and it is safe to say that the English people are not in the mood to brook such a confession of impotence. We can at least withdraw our Ambassador, and so cease to play our part in consultations which have too much the character of a farce, and at the same time save ourselves from giving any sanction to so detestable a rule. What further action we take must be determined by events. No sane man counsels war, but to say that we will do nothing that would lead up to it is to make war a certainty. Even were we compelled to act alone, Great Britain is not so impotent as some would fain represent her. But for myself I have no love even for splendid isolation; I long to see the end of the insane jealousies which have separated Russia and this country, and I believe that the establishment of better relations between these two great peoples would inaugurate a new era in the history of the world.

J. GUINNESS ROGERS.

II

BY THE RIGHT HON. THE EARL OF MEATH

'CONSTANTINOPLE Riots. Further details of massacres. Six thousand defenceless people murdered.' So run the headlines of a sober, unsensational, leading newspaper, appearing this 9th day of September, in the year of our Lord 1896.

Six thousand defenceless people murdered! One's breath is taken away if one thinks of the meaning of these words. If 6,000 people had passed away within a few days by the visitation of God; if they had died of, say, the cholera, or of any similar deadly disease; if they had suddenly been swallowed up by an earthquake, or had been overwhelmed, as sometimes has occurred in China, by a gigantic flood, we should all have been horrified; but to be murdered, and murdered in cold blood by their fellow-subjects and fellow-citizens, suddenly and without warning, not in China or in some far-off, semi-civilised or uncivilised land in Asia or Africa, but in Europe, and in a capital largely inhabited by Europeans, under the very walls of the palace of their sovereign, to whose ears their dying shrieks may quite possibly have reached, within sight of the Embassies representing the most powerful and most civilised countries of the world, and under the very eyes of the police and soldiery paid by them for their protection and defence, but who, under the spell of some mysterious influence, stood passive spectators of these horrible scenes of carnage! What more sickening and ghastly story of wholesale murder is it in the power of the imagination of man to conceive?

One has to return in thought to the awful massacres of St. Bartholomew, when a sovereign hounded on his soldiery to the destruction of his own people, for a parallel to the fearful situation which now reigns in Constantinople. But this dreadful crime occurred more than three centuries ago, and it might have been hoped that the world had made some progress since those days.

Let it not be said that the 6,000 men suffered for the crime committed by some twenty-five of their co-religionists in seizing by

violence the Ottoman Bank and in hurling bombs at the Turkish soldiers.

These few misguided men were responsible for their own crimes and assuredly deserved punishment, but what had the innocent 6,000 done that they should be massacred in cold blood? As well say that because some Protestant Englishmen have been wounded by the bombs of Roman Catholic Irish dynamiters, that therefore it would be legitimate for the British to massacre 6,000 Irish Roman Catholics in the streets of London.

The Sultan is directly responsible for these murders, and should not be allowed to escape from the just punishment of such an awful crime. When massacres occurred in Armenia it was possible for him to plead inability to restrain the passions of his Mohammedan subjects in distant portions of the Empire. He could urge that inefficient police and undisciplined soldiery far from the restraining hand of his centralised power had broken loose from his control, and, excited by their Mussulman fanaticism, had committed crimes in the heart of Asia which he greatly regretted and which should never be repeated. He might, I say, plead this in extenuation of the horrible massacres in Asia Minor which have justly excited the wrath and indignation of Europe, though every indication has gone to show that, far from restraining his soldiery and officials in these distant regions, he directly encouraged them in their bloody work of massacre; but no such excuse can be made in the present case.

The Sultan of Turkey, whatever may be his power in the distant portions of his Empire, is certainly supreme and all-powerful in his own capital. He surrounds himself with the most trustworthy and best disciplined men both in the army and in the police. It is notorious that nothing can take place in his capital without his being instantly acquainted with it. His spies are in all parts of the city, and report direct to him the conversation and movements of all suspected persons. A revolutionary movement in which so many persons were engaged as in the attack on the Ottoman Bank could hardly have been organised without some intimation of the intention of the conspirators having reached the ears of the Sultan through his numerous detectives, and in the excited state of the populace it would only have been natural to anticipate that some reprisals would be made by the Mussulmans on the Christians, if precautions were not taken to prevent them.

Had the Sultan desired the massacre of the Armenian Christians in his capital he could not have planned a better course of action than to allow these twenty-five mad revolutionaries to carry out their foolish and wicked designs, knowing that the Mussulmans would certainly revenge the outrage, and that if the police and soldiers were held aloof from the disturbances for forty-eight hours, the dis