it, viz. Roumania, Bulgaria, Eastern Roumelia, &c., countries which apparently only require to be let alone in order that they may develop their strength and regain their prosperity. Difficulties in carrying out this proposal may no doubt be suggested, but it may be that still greater difficulties would attend any other solution of the question; and it has at least the merit that it evades many of the thorny obstacles which arise from the mutual jealousy of the Powers. MY DEAR DU CANE, E. F. Du CANE. 8 Victoria Grove, Gloucester Road, Kensington: January 16, 1881. I send you the Blue Book, Condition of Asia Minor &c., but I think you will, on looking over it, see that it merely contains for the most part a description of the deplorable state of the Turkish provinces, and does not in any way— or at any rate only indirectly-show how the misgovernment is to be remedied. In fact the perusal is wearisome, as there is no decided remedy proposed, though amelioration is suggested by insisting on this and that being forced on the Porte. I consider that any promise or statement of the Turkish Pachas to improve or remedy any evil are to be deemed utterly insincere, will be carried out with a pure intuition to evade the spirit, and only to comply with the letter while under pressure. I consider that enforced reform can be only exotic and ephemeral, that it will fall to the ground when it is no longer enforced. I consider it is quite hopeless for foreigners to attempt to dictate how the administration, collection of taxes, &c. (of which this Blue Book is full) are to be performed. I consider that unless the people of Turkey will not take up the remedy of the abuses of their government, it is hopeless thinking of any progress being made against the Turkish Pachas by foreigners which will be permanent. I therefore say that the unique way to deal with misgovernment in Turkey is to call on the Turkish peoples to execute them. 1. The Turkish peoples know exactly the full extent of the corruption and rottenness of their government; they know how and in what way any remedy they may enact will act on the country. They are in every way interested, for themselves and their children, in obtaining a good government; whereas to the Turkish Pachas, so long as they can fill their purses it is all they care. 2. To put the power in the hands of the Turkish peoples is a fair, perfectly just effort on the part of foreign governments; it is merely the supporting of the Sultan's own design when he gave his constitution. Foreign governments who support this liberation of the Turkish people cannot be accused of intrigue or selfishness; they will gain the sympathy of the peoples, whereas now what have they got? Have they the sympathy of either the Sultan or Pachas or peoples? and, judging from the Blue Book, they, or at least our government, are overloading their heads with details of administration, when the whole foundation on which the success of these details rests is thoroughly rotten. A foreign government is no match for the Sultan and the Pachas: it has not the knowledge necessary to cope with them: it is the Turkish peoples who alone have the power to hold their own, besides which no foreign government has any right to interfere. It may be said that the foreign government interferes in virtue of promises, but these promises were extorted and are not valid. By the way foreign governments are now working they are inevitably drifting, day by day, into still increasing interference with the internal affairs of Turkey, and are helping to band Sultan, Pachas, and peoples against any improvement. Such interference must end in serious complications, and can in no way further the professed object-improved government. No individual Pacha, let him be one of the exceptions to the usual rule, can now stand against the influences of the Sultan and the parasite Pachas; the fact of his being backed by this or that foreign government will be (whenever the time comes when that foreign government becomes urgent in its demands for reform) the cause of his downfall, and will be explained at large that he is dismissed because he is a tool of this or that government; but if this rara avis, an upright Pacha, was found, and if he was backed by the peoples of Turkey, it would go hard with the Sultan and his ring ere they flew in the face of their peoples in dismissing him. It is urged that the Turkish peoples are not fit for representative government. Well, look at Roumania and Bulgaria, and, in some degree, to Roumelia; they succeed very fairly. If the peoples never have a chance, they will never be able to show what they can do. Had we waited till our monarchs or our lords had given us representative assemblies, we would be without them to this day. What I maintain, therefore, is that our government should unceasingly try, with other governments, to get the Midhat constitution reconstituted; that they should leave that very dubiously just (in fact it may be called iniquitous) policy of forcing unwilling peoples under the yoke of other peoples, which is not only unfair to the coerced and ceded peoples, but is a grave mistake, for by it are laid the seeds of future troubles. To collect all these reports may be useful enough for those who have the time and patience to read them, but what do all these reports tend to elucidate? Simply that the government of Turkey is utterly rotten, that the peoples are miserable and discontented, that the sole object of the Sultan and his Pachas is to drag the entrails of the provinces into their palaces at Constantinople. There may be petty schemes here and there for improvements, but it is like painting up the bulwarks of a vessel which is rotten at the bottom. I say, too, that at any moment, in the event of the death of the Sultan, most serious events may take place: who is to take his place? who is to nominate his successor? The reconstituted chamber of the Midhat Constitution would at any rate prevent any great catastrophe, and I have no doubt would so coerce the new Sultan as to obtain full promise to benefit the country. Believe me, my dear Du Cane, C. E. GORDON. The Editor of THE NINETEENTH CENTURY cannot undertake THE NINETEENTH No. CCXXXVIII-DECEMBER 1896 THE OLNEY DOCTRINE AND AMERICA'S NEW FOREIGN POLICY THAT the settlement of the Venezuela question, so far as it is in the power of Great Britain and the United States to settle it, should. be received with general satisfaction in this country, is extremely natural; that it should be treated as a matter scarcely important enough to rouse interest, or require other than hasty and perfunctory comment, is rather curious. Not ten months ago it was viewed with passionate emotion on one side of the Atlantic, with perturbed and painful anxiety on the other; now it drifts quietly away in a mist of half-understood detail, and we scarcely turn our heads to look at it as it disappears below the political horizon. The experts will have a good deal to do with it before it is quite disposed of; but it may now reasonably be hoped that it will be left in the condition in which it will concern the diplomatists and the lawyers. alone, and will not again run any risk of interesting the general public. The precise effect and meaning of the settlement not very many Englishmen have been at the pains to ascertain, nor are they likely to do so. The common sentiment echoes the prudent and wellcalculated levity with which Lord Salisbury treated the subject in his Guildhall speech. Most of us are much inclined to agree with the Prime Minister that after all the whole affair was one of no great moment to the people of this country. A trumpery dispute, about some leagues of swamp and forest, with a fifth-rate Republic, on one VOL. XL-No. 238 3 L of the odd corners of the Empire! Surely the wearied Titan has other things to think about. Even if there is auriferous territory involved, there are plenty of gold mines elsewhere. With all the careful coaching' he got from laborious journalists who had worked up the maps and the blue-books, it is probable that the man in the street and the man in the club, on either side of the Atlantic, never quite made out where the Cuyuni River ran or what the Schomburgk line was. He became excited over the question when he heard, if he was an American, that the Britisher was trying to violate the sacred Doctrine of Monroe; if an Englishman, when he was told that the United States was attempting to bully us out of something which a British colony (might justly claim as its own. Now that his political guides and leaders have informed him that a compromise has been arranged which is satisfactory to the honour of both parties, he is quite content to forget the whole affair. In this country there is assuredly no disposition to look narrowly at the terms of settlement, or weigh too strictly the gains and losses in the diplomatic bargain. It is assumed-for the exact details are not yet known, and when they are known they probably will not be generally understood that while we have given way to the United States, by admitting its right to intervene in the dispute, we have secured the substantial securities for which, as the guardians of British Guiana, we were mainly contending. An equitable arrangement has been made by which the long-established prescriptive occupation of the inhabitants of the older colonial territories is recognised; subject to this we are to arbitrate on the whole debatable district, as the United States Government has all along demanded. If there are some who feel that, supposing this arrangement to be prudent and just, it might have been most suitably made before instead of after Mr. Cleveland's Message: if they find a certain humiliation in the fact that this solution, so long refused to diplomatic pressure, has been somewhat precipitately granted when diplomacy was backed by a threat of war, they are in the minority. There is no denying the fact that in concluding the Arbitration Treaty, Lord Salisbury has satisfied the great body of his countrymen. The prevalent sentiment is one of impatient relief. We are glad to be done with a vexatious business; we are only somewhat annoyed to think that, trivial as we are now led to believe it really was, it should have given us some months of occasional anxiety and some moments of genuine alarm. But though the boundary question is in itself of no very great importance, the same cannot be said of the episode of American intervention, or of the process by which it has been terminated. On the contrary. It would not be surprising if the future historian of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries should come to consider this series of occurrences as the beginning of a new epoch in international relations; and he even may see cause to regard it as the most significant and pregnant event of all this annus mirabilis 1896. It is true its importance and interest are much more for the people of the United States than for Englishmen, though the latter too are very closely concerned in it. For Americans the assertion, and the partial recognition, of the new version of the Monroe Doctrine, laid down by Mr. Olney last summer, may have consequences that will be felt for generations. It is strange that this aspect of the matter has received very little attention in America and next to none in this country. Both nations are content to welcome the fact-which indeed is gratifying enough in itself—that their rulers, after getting to high words, and after hesitating as it seemed on the very brink of a serious quarrel, have contrived to adjust all differences by an arbitration arrangement, and have even made the incident the occasion of settling the draft of a General Treaty of Arbitration. In the exultation or the relief with which this comfortable escape from a most awkward embarrassment is hailed, it is forgotten that, before the solution had been reached, principles had been asserted, and precedents laid down, which must become part, if not of International Law, at any rate of public policy. A novel attempt has been made to define the attitude of the United States towards the other Governments of the two Americas. A fresh article has been added to the code which regulates the relations of the civilised Powers to one another. How far the new system extends, and what its precise meaning and validity may be, are questions which the recent transactions have left in much uncertainty. They are at least worth some consideration. There are, I know, observers who deny that any such striking: results as those suggested have been developed in the course of the Anglo-American negotiations. Nothing, they would say, is changed; there is only a treaty the more. There is a tendency among some American journalists, who have specially supported the action of Mr. Cleveland and Mr. Olney, to minimise the importance of the State Secretary's famous Despatch. They refuse to admit that there has been any change in the policy of the United States, or that anything said or done in connection with the Venezuela frontier dispute has seriously modified international relations. The Times correspondent at Washington has asserted this opinion with a good deal of emphasis; and it seems to have been adopted, after some hesitation, by his employers in London. We have been told that the new Monroe Doctrine does not seem very materially to differ from the old one.' These, however, are the second thoughts of the Times. A day or two previously that journal had committed itself to a much more serious and more logical opinion on the meaning of the Washington compact : From the point of view of the United States the arrangement is a concession by Great Britain of the most far-reaching kind. It admits a principle that in respect of South American Republics the United States may not only intervene in See the Times, November 16, 1896. |