The New Eastern Question

AFTER a short period of what the Germans would call organic development, the Eastern Question has again reached a point at which war seems, if not inevitable, at least possible, perhaps probable. The signs may deceive, but the signs are certainly not pacific. In view, therefore, of such a contingency, and utilizing what may be only a brief interval of peace, it seems important to review the history of the past four years, to seek out the causes and tendencies favorable to another collision, and to forecast some of the probable conditions of the struggle. It is important and useful not alone because the situation is full of grave possibilities for the whole family of nations, nor yet merely because its development may disclose incidents of startling dramatic interest, but also because there is involved in it, as in all international disputes, the question of right and wrong, the issue between justice and injustice ; because it affects the interests of oppressed and suffering yet heroic peoples, who, although far removed and little known, are not less deserving of our sympathy than the brigands of the Land League or the spoliated Jews of Russia ; and finally because it will prepare the student to pronounce upon the rival aspirations of two or three great empires which connect the East, in politics as in geography, with the West.

The actual form of the question is new, or is at least a serious modification of any form in which it has hitherto appeared. Both the parts and the actors are changed. Some which were prominent in the past have dropped out; others which were once passive have become active ; one at least must probably be added; and the entire cast shows striking novelties. It seems impossible, for instance, to think of an Eastern

Question without Turkey. The fate of the Ottoman Empire, or, what is the same thing, the assumed interest of the Great Powers in its fate, has always been the leading issue in the diplomatic intrigues of Constantinople, and in the wars which have raged on the shores of the Danube and the Black Sea. But at this time Turkey has been practically eliminated, either by her own choice or by the natural conditions of the problem, from the diplomatic skirmishing which is now in progress ; and she may remain a quiet spectator even in case of actual war. England, too, which in the Crimea was a belligerent, and in 187778 was a watchful and jealous censor, is now governed by statesmen who are bound by all their traditions and by every law of consistency to refrain from premature and officious interference. But if these actors disappear from the stage, their places will be supplied by two others far more powerful and imposing. Austria seems likely to be the chief belligerent on the other side, when Russia again takes the field, while Germany is committed by pledges, as well as by what politicians call her “interests,” to support the house of Hapsburg. As for France and Italy, their course would probably be guided by events, but each is a lactor on which Russia has more right to count than Austria. The opportunity for revanche which a war menacing the German Empire would offer might not be rashly seized by France, nor yet would it be magnanimously rejected; and Italy, skilled in the art of profiting by the embarrassments of others, has still unsatisfied aspirations on the Adriatic. It may indeed be regarded as certain that, without having secured at least one of these two powers as an eventual ally, Russia would not only shrink from war, but would even guard herself more carefully against the contingency of war.

The Russian Empire is passing through severe internal convulsions, which would seem to paralyze the arm of foreign adventure. Nihilism and Jewbaiting, assassination and persecution, conspiracies against the House of Romanoff and outrages upon the children of Israel, are problems of home policy, which require for their solution the best efforts of Russian statesmen. Either they divide the effective resources of the empire, and thus weaken its belligerent capacity ; or they alienate the good opinion of the world, and thus deprive the empire of an important source of moral strength. But both of these elements may easily be overestimated. The Jewish incident, cruel as it was, and permanent as are the passions which led to it, has probably passed its worst stage, and will not at once be revived as a disturbing force. Nihilism, instead of being an obstacle to war, is in a measure the product of peace and inaction, and as an evil would be mitigated by war. It is a sincere and resolute conviction, able to withstand the influence of a patriotic and popular struggle, only with a few gloomy fanatics ; while the bulk of the faction is made up of giddy students, full of crude knowledge, inflamed by chauvinism, and ready to cease ploting against the Czar if the Czar will lead them against a foreign foe. Russia is not different from other states in regard to the effects which may be expected from a national war. It would create a diversion. It would silence the voice of faction. It would suspend schemes of regicide and schemes of reform, and unite the whole people in arms about their sovereign. For it is a truth, which may seem paradoxical in view of the destructive recklessness of the Nihilists, but which will be confirmed by all who have any acquaintance with the Russians, that they are as a people intensely, almost morbidly, patriotic. There is little real loyalty, except among the peasants, in whom it resembles a species of fetichism. There is little of that higher kind of patriotism, which can discriminate as well as approve, can criticise while obeying, and can resist when obedience to authority becomes treason to the country. But the Russian patriotism, though neither supported by loyalty nor guided by discretion, is singularly prompt, passionate, and vigorous, and in the hands of an absolute prince is only the more effective because it does not reason. It was Kossuth, I believe, who said that bayonets think. The remark is true of some of the armies of Europe : in a large degree of that of Germany, in a smaller degree of that of which the countrymen of Kossuth now form an important part. There are other armies where a fierce religious zeal takes the place of intelligent valor. But the Russian host, which exceeds the Turkish in numbers, exceeds the German or Austrian in the strength which comes from fanaticism. It acts, but it does not think. No paltry dissensions at home, no desire to torture Jews or murder kings, can arrest such a force when the cry of danger rings through the country, and village priests, the cross in their hands, are pointing the way to the frontier.

This feeling of patriotism, instead of being peculiar to Russia, is, however, one which she shares with other nations in other parts of the world. But in her case it is reinforced by an auxiliary passion, which, though broader in scope, is scarcely less intense in energy, and which, leaping over national boundaries, connects Russia with a whole family of peoples, dispersed throughout Eastern Europe ; aliens all in political allegiance, some also in religion, yet kindred in race, language, and traditions. This is the imposing idea of Panslavism.

The thing is easy to define, but hard to describe. It embodies what is known, alike to enthusiasts and to philosophers, as the principle of nationalities, and yet is something considerably more than that. When Moritz Arndt undertook, in his immortal hymn, to find the true limits of the Fatherland, he drew them wherever he could find the German tongue, German habits, German spirit, and German traditions. The generous conception could thus be made to include peoples and districts which for centuries had been politically severed from the empire. But the test was still German, for not even the poet ventured to claim the entire Teutonic group of tongues and peoples, — England, America, Holland, Denmark, Sweden, — and the statesmanship of the age was far less audacious than its poetry. Panslavism is therefore a more ambitious idea than Arndt’s Fatherland. Instead of being only the dream of a poet, it is the aim of serious practical statesmen, or at least an impulse which they are willing to further and utilize. Instead of halting at the frontiers of the Russian language, it reaches out into Prussia and Austria, and Turkey, and embraces all men, whatever their political relations, whose idiom identifies them with the great Slavonic race. The Servians, the Bulgarians, the Bosnians, the Montenegrins, the Dalmatians, the Croats, the Poles of Warsaw, of Posen, of Galicia, the Czechs of Bohemia, — these all form part of the future Slav commonwealth. All are brothers, and owe one another the kindly offices of the fraternal relation.

In this novel domestic scheme the Czar himself has the part of Great, or rather, as the Slavs say, Little Father. Yet Panslavism stops apparently short of the idea of a close political union under a single sceptre, or even of a confederation, as Germans, or Swiss, or Americans understand the term, and aims only at a species of alliance, with Russia as patron and protector, — a plan not unlike that which Mr. Blaine probably had in mind when he called his Congress of American States. But in this qualified form the idea has a powerful hold on the imagination of the Russian peoples. Russians may be Nihilists or loyalists, radicals, liberals, or conservatives, editors or lawyers, plebeians or aristocrats, may have any opinion in politics or any status in society ; if they can only read and think and dream, they are nearly certain to be Panslavists, and to defend the cause with ingenuous fervor to every patient listener. At the clubs noisy patriots will declaim on the subject by the hour. In the salons fair ladies insinuate it upon you, with all the art of the sex, as they hand you your glass of tea. The stranger whom one meets in the train, or at the table d'hôte, or at the picture-gallery, is likely not only to be a champion of Panslavism, but to discuss its virtues with an enthusiasm and a naïveté which take no account of one’s foreign birth and possible iack of interest in the cause. General Skobeleff was therefore perfectly justified in protesting, as he did on his return from Paris, that he had only announced sentiments which in Russia every one holds and avows.

No one can, indeed, be more surprised than the gallant general himself at the political importance into which he has suddenly sprung. Like every educated man or woman in Russia, he is something of a politician. His opinions are well known, and he has often expressed them with a frankness which, even in this country, public opinion and the etiquette of their profession forbid to high officers of the army. But there was no special reason why General Skobeleff, in spite of his grave indiscretion, should be singled out for the malignant attacks of German Slavophobists, unless, indeed, a pretext was desired for humiliating Russia, or provoking a rupture.

The career of Skobeleff is a striking refutation of the common theory that the Russian public service is ruled by favoritism, and that no man can succeed on his merits alone against unfavorable or hostile influences. His father was also a soldier, and to his father he owed his original appointment in the Guards. But after that initial stage young Skobeleff fought his own way upwards, and fought it too against obstacles of singular strength and persistence, — the jealousy of rivals in his own class, the pedantry of martinets whose theories he ridiculed, the intrigues of enemies at court, the indifference and suspicions of the Czar. He was accused of peculation in Turkestan, and, although fully acquitted, was made to suffer, in petty indignities, most of the consequences of conviction. At the outset of the Bulgarian campaign, he could find employment only as volunteer aid on the staff of a parade general, whom the hard realities of the struggle soon left in the rear, while Skobeleff rose to high command. With his opportunities grew also the scale of his achievements. No other officer came out of the war with a more brilliant reputation than his, — a reputation won by hard fighting, skillful generalship, and passionate devotion to the real issues of the conflict.

It was an easy matter for Skobeleff to see tlmt the war meant far more to the Russian people than was announced by diplomatists, that its ends were not accomplished by the recovery of Bessarabia and the cession of Batoum, and that the Treaty of Berlin was a cruel blow to the victors. Since the peace he has therefore chafed under the disappointment of an ardent patriot and the indignation of a betrayed soldier. Against Count Schouvaloff he was outspoken and bitter from the very day that the Congress of Berlin adjourned; for he felt not only that the ambassador had sacrificed unnecessarily the just interests of Russia, but that his whole policy was one of fatal, not to say criminal, subservience to Bismarck. Schouvaloff was indeed a man of more political experience and more political sagacity than his critic. In the crisis which the Treaty of San Stefano had prepared for Russia, his caution and compliance were more useful than Ignatieff’s astuteness or Skobeleff’s impetuosity, and gave the country, if not a permanent peace, at least a brief respite from war. But the compromise proved, nevertheless, ruinous to its author; for on the first attempt to carry out its provisions, in the organization of the province of Rumelia, the failure of Schouvaloff’s scheme of a mixed occupation forced him to resign his embassy, and retire to private life. As the execution of the treaty proceeded, and new frictions from time to time arose, Skobeleff continued to find vindications of his own prescience. The duplicity of Turkey and the indifference of the other powers toward Greece, the betrayal of Montenegro, the arrogance of Austria toward her Danubian neighbors, the Bosnian occupation, and the more ambitious projects of which it was clearly the forerunner, —such incidents, coupled with the stern execution of the very letter of the treaty, where it pressed most severely upon Russia, worked up a formidable resentment, of which Skobeleff’s talents and courage made him the leading representative.

As a politician he has foreseen, and as a soldier has not feared, the early renewal of the struggle. It cannot be indiscreet for the writer to recall those hot September days in 1879, when, in company with that brilliant young general, he was riding over the manoeuvre fields of two German corps d'armée, and enjoying now his military comments, rapid, penetrating, and just, now his political views, glowing with the peculiar fire of Russian Panslavism. Skobeleff was the most famous of the many officers who followed that mock campaign on the Baltic coast. The Emperor William lent the scene the dignity of his venerable but infirm presence. England had sent Sir Henry Hardinge, a frail little man in personal appearance, but the hero of a noble episode, which the pen of Thackeray has described, in the Sepoy war. And there were scores of other brave warriors, French, Austrian, Italian, Russian, German, veterans in service, scarred perhaps from battle, liberally decorated for valor, and now gathered for an exhibition of the most perfect military machine in the world. But from that varied and showy group the curiosity and admiration of the public invariably singled out the man who had triumphed over all the obstacles of Russian military routine; who at thirtyfive was a lieutenant-general, commanding an army corps; and who was fresh from fields of battle, where he had distinguished himself above all his comrades. And in his deportment during the manœuvres could be found one secret of his remarkable career. To some of the foreign officers the occasion seemed little more than a holiday entertainment, which they languidly enjoyed rather than utilized. But Skobeleff, who, until the Bulgarian campaign, had passed most of his life fighting the nomadic tribes of Central Asia, and had seen little of the standing armies of Western Europe, took a higher conception both of the nature of his mission and of his duty to himself ; followed all the movements with the most scrupulous fidelity ; studied little details of organization and equipment, which escaped his more thoughtless colleagues ; and scratched his ready note-book full of data, which in the evening were expanded into reports for the Russian war office. Such industry, instead of being wasted, will, or at least may, prove doubly useful to the future of the general. It taught him the strong and the weak points of the German army, which will be knowledge of value in case of war ; and it gave him the key to many improvements in his own corps, which will be useful even in peace. When, at parting, he asked me to visit him at his headquarters at Minsk, he added, with a soldier’s pride, that he would show me as fine an army corps as could be found in Russia; and of this I was sure there could be not a particle of doubt.

But Skobeleff holds, as does Moltke, and as every professional soldier on the Continent practically shows, that so long as the Powers keep up their appalling armaments a state of nominal peace is really only one of preparation for eventual war. The armies are there to be used. It is folly to suppose that there will not he in the future, as there have been in the past, eager generals, ambitious statesmen, and princes as willing to use the one as the other. And even if princes could be always humane, and statesmen always moderate, and generals always pacific, they would be overruled at times by the quick voice of national honor, by the rivalry of imperative interests, and by the aggressive force of popular movements. It is these subtle and active agents which are leading Europe into war.

When General Skobeleff teaches Panslavism to Servian students at Paris, he is thinking mainly of Germany. When the Czar reprimands Skobeleff, he too has the dragon of Berlin, the man of blood and iron, before his eyes. But although Bismarck is the chief obstacle to Panslavist projects, although it is his diplomacy which speaks in grave tones of warning on the Neva, although it is even his policy which the generals of Francis Joseph are so cruelly carrying out in the mountains of Bosnia and Herzegovina, the real rival of Russia is still Austria, not Germany ; and with Austria must be fought the great battle for dominion, prestige, and power in Eastern Europe. And if the German war should be first in point of time, it would nevertheless be second in the solidity of its causes and the material value of its results. It might postpone, but could not take the place of, the other and the greater struggle.

The Austro - Hungarian monarchy seems as ill adapted for successful war on a large scale as any system which the art of caricature could invent. It was correctly described by Prince Gortschakoff, who said it was not a state, but a government. Yet even as a government it wants unity both of form and of action : for if there is only a single monarch, there are two capitals, Vienna and Pesth ; two leading and rival races, the Germans and the Magyars, and under these a variety of subject peoples, all of them disaffected, and most of them groaning beneath a fate to which the recollection of past grandeur lends a peculiar bitterness. There were busy cities and thriving industries in Dalmatia while the site of Pesth was a howling wilderness. The lords of Bohemia were electors of the German Empire before the first Hapsburg acquired the purple. A king of Poland saved Vienna itself from the Turks. And although the Hungarians, who, like the others, once felt the stern pressure of Austrian tyranny, finally obtained their release, the hardships of the remaining victims have been, if anything, aggravated since the partition of 1867. That arrangement, as is well known, assigned Dalmatia to Austria, and Slavonia and Croatia to Hungary, — a concession by the pride of Vienna to the persistence of Pesth. The experiment has now been tried several years ; and it is enough to say that any enthusiastic friend of Hungarian independence — and that, thirty years ago, meant every adult American — who should now travel through Croatia or Slavonia would suffer a bitter disenchantment. Austrian tyranny is cruel, but it is not always systematically cruel, and sometimes has intervals of weakness. But the Magyars show at once the brutal severity of newly emancipated slaves and the haughty insolence of feudal barons. In the Slavs, whom events have brought under their sway, they see an inferior race reduced to political servitude ; and the result is what

might have been, but was not, expected. The Croats, once the most ferocious warriors in Europe, the prized and favored servants of many a Hapsburg prince, have fallen to a position as low as that of the Poles in Russia. Relentless war is waged upon everything which makes them a people, — upon their speech, their habits, their songs, their literature. In Slavonia the same cruel policy is pursued. In either province to be a Slav is to wear the badge of social and political degradation. To be a patriot as well as a Slav, and to utter with tongue or pen the indignant complaints of patriotism, is the simple and infallible way to reach a dungeon. And the Dalmatians under Austria fare but little better. Is it strange that this unfortunate people feel no love for the power or the system that crushes them, and that their eyes are turned with affection and longing toward the one great kindred nation which can afford relief? Of this tendency I have an illustration from my own experience. It happened to me in 1878, just after the Congress of Berlin, to pass a few days at the frontier town of Brod, in Slavonia; and the hotels being full I found lodging in the house of a young school-master, a Slav. He was timid about politics, for the Magyar police have many eyes. Even after my host had become convinced that his secrets were safe in my keeping, he would utter them only in a light whisper, first carefully closing doors and windows, and stuffing keyholes; but after all this, the most striking communication was entrusted to my eyes and not my ears. At a propitious moment my friend beckoned me into his bedroom, led the way to a dark corner, pulled back a curtain, took down a species of shrine hangiug on the wall, and, opening it, revealed a portrait, which he fervently kissed, and then passed to me. I expected to see his wife, or his mother, or at least his sister. The portrait was that of Alexander II., Czar of Russia.

Much of the effect of this incident — the picturesqueness, the pathos — was in the school-master’s manner, and is lost in the telling. But its general significance will be clear. In this dull little village on the Save, which was full of Austrian soldiers and Hungarian spies, an humble pedagogue, isolated from the great world, unread in the literature of diplomacy, had brushed away all the sophistry of cabinets, and led me to the very heart of the Eastern Question.

But the Austrian court was not satisfied with three South Slavonic provinces to rule, or misrule, and the Treaty of Berlin put two others into its power. The history of that discreditable negotiation cannot here be rehearsed. Even that part of it which relates to the disposition of Bosnia and the Herzegovina would exceed the proper limits of this article ; and the task, however agreeable and useful, must therefore be omitted. But the reader may be reminded, in a few words, that Bosnia and the Herzegovina were two provinces peopled mainly by Slavs, and belonging to the Turkish Empire. Their language is the Servian, which is also that of Croatia, Slavonia, Montenegro, and Dalmatia. If the Jews, of whom there are a few in the towns, be ignored, the rest of the population may be divided, according to religious belief, into three classes : the orthodox or Greek Christians, commonly called “ Serbs,” the Roman Catholics, and the Mohammedans. The latter comprised, under the old régime, the ruling order. They were the great proprietors, the officials, the favorites of Constantinople ; and aided by Turkish troops they systematically robbed the Christian peasants, and sometimes, as a pleasant diversion, massacred them for their religion. The hardy mountaineers of the Herzegovina resented this cruelty, and broke out often in revolt. Under great provocation the Bosnians sometimes followed this example, but being less warlike, and less favored with natural strongholds, were more easily subdued. The heroic prince of Montenegro lent his kinsmen secret, and at times open, support ; and in 1876 the Servians made a bold effort for liberty. But deliverance still seemed remote, until the great Slav power of the north, roused by the harrowing stories which came up from the plains of Bulgaria, smarting under the defeat administered to its brethren the Servians, and unable longer calmly to witness the desperate struggle of the Herzegovinians, threw the weight of its great armies into the scale against the Turks. The issue is well known. In due time the Turk was crushed ; the Slavs and Christianity had fought out their liberation. At the very gates of Constantinople, in sight of the historic dome of St. Sophia, the Russians dictated a peace, which not only secured them ample compensation both material and political, for their own sacrifices ; but which also took account of the lesser peoples, whose hardships had hastened as their valor had helped to win the war, and made it certain that they should not again fall under the mild dominion of the kaimakan and the pacha.

There arose, however, between the signing and the ratification of the Treaty of San Stefano obstacles which it was impossible to surmount. An English fleet anchored in the Sea of Marmora. The Austro-Hungarian delegations voted a special credit for putting the army on a war footing to meet contingencies which might arise. And even Prince Bismarck revealed, under a thin disguise of friendship, sentiments not a little dangerous to Russia. In this condition of affairs, no alternative was left to the Czar. With an anguish of heart which can be easily imagined, he submitted to the cruel humiliation, accepted the plan of an European Congress at Berlin, and saw the Treaty of San Stefano torn into a thousand pieces.

The work of reconstruction then began. But it soon appeared that the order of priority and the order of importance would not be conceded to the populations whose grievances had been the cause of the war, or to the power which, not perhaps without some selfishness, yet nobly and effectively, had come to their relief. England was not ashamed to rob her own client in the secret treaty for the cession of Cyprus. And Austria, whose attitude during the war had shown the twin vices of duplicity and cowardice, which could bully Servia and Roumania while cowering before Russia, and which, touching the borders of Bosnia and Herzegovina, had never lifted a hand or a voice to stay the course of Turkish outrage, — Austria accepted the “ mandate ” to occupy and administer, that is to appropriate and annex, the two fairest regions which the war had wrested from the Sultan. A more flagrant outrage was never offered to the conscience of Europe. Even the partitions of Poland were honorable in comparison, for they were open acts of spoliation, which made no pretense of justification by subtleties of public law, and hid their true character behind no “ European mandates.” Any one of three other courses could have found some show of defense : the two provinces might have been made independent, like Servia and Montenegro ; they might have been placed under the protection of Russia, their liberator ; or they might even have been restored to the Turk with adequate security for reform. But Austro-Hungary, at least, had no claim whatever to them, moral, political, historical, or military; nothing except a title wrested from Russia on one side, and Turkey on the other, by two of the most cynical statesmen, Prince Bismarck and Lord Beaconsfield, whom the nineteenth century has known.

It is true that the misgovernment of the provinces by the Turk was a source of danger to the peace of Europe. But to introduce the Austrians anywhere in the name and cause of good administration was a touch of satire which would have seemed more enjoyable if less serious interests had been involved. Order will now, it was said, be established. But order was not established, even on the entry of the Austrians, whom it was supposed that the Christians would welcome as at least an improvement on the Turks ; and already, after three years of so-called pacification, a new insurrection has broken out, as fierce and formidable as those which repeatedly chased the pachas out of the mountains.

While thus executing the European Mandate in Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Austrian government has not neglected its own policy on the Lower Danube and the Lower Adriatic. This policy clashes, or is made to clash, with the rights of several small states ; and, as Mr. Freeman remarks, the Austrian government, though it succeeds badly against its equals, is singularly fortunate when fighting those not of its own size. It steals a harbor from Montenegro. It compels Servia to build her railways on lines which will enrich Austro-Hungarian commerce. It reconstructs the mixed Danubian commission in a way for which no treaty provides, and browbeats Roumania when she mildly attempts to assert her own rights in the matter. An evil counselor at Berlin has convinced Austria that she has a mission in the East, and in obeying that voice she is perhaps rather a dupe than an intelligent actor ; but the method of fulfilling that mission, in contempt of justice, of humanity, even of the simplest standards of fair play, is peculiarly and exclusively her own.

It is this policy which is reviving and reshaping the Eastern Question. It is not recent in its inception, or new in its methods; but it owes its opportunity to the Treaty of Beilin, and when that opportunity shall have been superseded by less favorable combinations, the inevitable reaction will come. Already the Slavs of Illyria are crying out against Austrian oppression, as formerly they cried out against the oppressors sent up from Constantinople. Montenegro, with an honorable respect for the obligation of treaties, but only contempt for the threats of Austria, still maintains an attitude of reserve, which, however, events may any day convert into one of action. Even little Servia is with difficulty kept out of the fray. In short, the whole peninsula is in a state of physical or moral insurrection against Count Andrassy’s pompous scheme of pacification, and Russian volunteers are as plenty in the ranks of the patriots as in the days when the tyrant was the Turk.

Thus the parallel between the present situation and that which preceded the war of 1877—78 can he traced for a considerable distance. But at one point the lines begin to diverge. Among the causes of the late war was indeed the question of race, or the mutual antipathy of Slav and Turk ; but this rather reinforced than preceded the older and graver issue between the Christian and the Mohammedan. The Bulgarian atrocities were directed, not against a people, but against a sect. The Christian victims were indeed nearly all Slavs, but the Slavs are not all Christians, either in Bulgaria or in Bosnia ; in fact, some of the most brutal and heartless of the agents in that tragic persecution were men in whose veins ran the blood, and on whose features were stamped the type, of the Slavonic race. They had renounced the Bible, accepted the Koran, and acquired the proverbial zeal and ferocity of apostates. It was accordingly not to exalt the Slav above the Turk, but to protect the Christian against the Infidel, not to emancipate a race, but to vindicate a religion, that the Russian hosts crossed the Danube and the Balkans.

Now the growing tension between Russia and Austria is happily but little aggravated by religious passions. It was in the nature of things that the apostolic emperor should secretly favor the Roman Catholics whom he found in Bosnia; and the army of occupation was promptly followed by zealous young priests and monks, and all the agents of the Propaganda. The Pope gave the enterprise his blessing. Money was sent to aid the holy cause. But it is out of the question for Austria to butcher the Serbs in their churches after the manner of the Turk, or even to vex their religion by such invidious restrictions as are put upon Protestants in other parts of the empire. The forms of toleration are therefore observed. The Greek communicants stand nominally on a basis of equality with the other sects ; and after the gross cruelties of the past, the minor discriminations which still remain are doubtless little felt. But as the religious element disappears from the issue, it leaves to the ethnic element only the more room for fermentation, development, and explosion. The Russian feels that the invaders, though sparing his religion, are enslaving his kinsmen ; and, worst of all, are enslaving them not as individuals guilty of crime, and responsible to their laws, but as representatives of a cause, that of Illyrian independence, and a principle, that of nationalities, both alike hateful to the House of Hapsburg. Indeed, the Austrian policy, cruel in its general aim, must seem in its execution to offer to the Russians details of almost satanic malignity. It not only invades and conquers two Slavonic provinces, to which it has not a shadow of moral right, but it also conquers them with the aid of Slav generals, who have sold themselves for gold, and of Slav soldiers, who are taken without even the formality of a sale. Its last measure is to apply the conscription in the occupied districts, and to drill the Bosnians for possible military service against their own liberator.

One need not be a very ardent Slavophil to see that this goes far beyond the letter of the Berlin Treaty. But while all the contracting Powers are bound to insist on the limits of the treaty, and Russia and Turkey especially have a right, under a well-known rule of interpretation, to require the strict construction of onerous clauses, too much aid ought not to be expected from such considerations. It is true that Article 25 provides only for the occupation and administration of the two provinces, not for their permanent annexation. But this was a mere diversion of diplomatic humor. Prince Bismarck had already shown in the case of Schleswig how much value he placed upon such restrictions. His example was fresh before the Congress. It is therefore folly to suppose that the Powers ever expected, or even really intended, that Austria should have the trouble of pacifying the provinces, of administering them for a term of years at her own cost, and should then quietly hand them back to the Turk.

But, on the other hand, the Powers must also have understood that the Mandate, embodied as it was in a treaty of peace, which was forced upon the victorious as upon the defeated belligerent, could give only temporary legality to the proposed solution of the Bosnian problem. The court of Vienna accepted the mission, therefore, with full knowledge that sooner or later it would have to be justified by the sword. The Turks were likely, perhaps, to acquiesce, though sullenly, for their hold upon the provinces had long been merely nominal. But very little familiarity with human nature would have shown that the people themselves were sure to resent the flippant scheme to transfer them like so many cattle. Their attachments were to another Power than Austria. And that Power must have been credited with little less than miraculous selfcontrol by any statesman or statesmen who could suppose that with all her torturing recollections — wounded pride, disappointed hopes, baffled aspirations — she would forever regard the compact as sacred, and not at some auspicious hour denounce and repudiate it. Whatever the results may be, Austria at least will deserve no sympathy. She is a receiver of stolen goods; or rather she accepted a fraudulent title, knowing it to he fraudulent, and knowing that she might at any time be required to defend it by force.

But this admission does not carry with it a general acquittal of Russia for anything and everything which she may undertake. Her course must rather be judged on its own merits. I have described the acute disappointment which the Treaty of Berlin, and the Bosnian article caused to all intelligent Russian patriots. They saw two provinces, which their efforts had freed from one form of slavery, turned over in the name of Europe to another form, scarcely less cruel, and certainly not less odious. They see Austria, which for years has been the apologist of the Turkish Empire, now pushing herself burglariously into the very heart of that empire, while Russia chafes in enforced inaction at home. They see this scheme of Austrian aggrandizement patronized by the German chancellor in contempt of Russia’s keenest sensibilities. And they feel that the authors of the movement are forcing a breach in the great family of Slavonic peoples, hoping first to destroy the possibility of a closer political union between the members, and finally to eradicate even that fraternal sentiment which, without the aid of political union, has long withstood both distance and disaster. It was this feeling of alarm and indignation to which General Skobeleff gave utterance at Paris. But while the feeling is natural, it does not follow that i-t would be just, or even prudent, statesmanship at this juncture to obey its commands. The rulers of a great state like Russia are bound by the very nature of their power, and the peculiarly personal character of their responsibility in international relations, to watch carefully the rise and direction of popular impulses, and to resist them when they are hasty, false, and dangerous. Even if the present Panslavist movement is correct in principle, the Czar may still oppose it as inopportune. But if he be forced into war with Austria, he may plead in defense that the movement, whether correct or incorrect, was irresistible, and that, like his father in 1877, he yielded only to the imperative voice of public opinion.

For Austria’s part in the complication there is, however, no such excuse. Public sentiment not only did not demand the Bosnian enterprise, but in some parts of the realm, notably in Hungary, and for reasons which need no explanation, was vigorously opposed to it. Only a few weeks ago, Tisza, the Hungarian premier, was compelled to defend the occupation against fresh criticisms in his own parliament. Even the Croats were suspicious, and justly suspicious, of the real motives of the scheme; and correctly foresaw that its result would be not an increase of the effective strength of the Slavs in the empire, but the reduction of one more installment of their kindred under the yoke of the Teuton and the Magyar. The popular approval was therefore never given to the enterprise, and, it is but fair to say, was never even solicited. The occupation was a mere dynastic scheme of the Hapsburgs; the Mandate was the invention of Andrassy. And for whatever may happen, the responsibility must be fixed first upon the emperor himself, next upon his ministers, and finally upon Prince Bismarck and Lord Beaconsfield. No part of the people of the empire, neither the Germans, nor the Magyars, nor the Croats, nor the Czechs, nor the Poles, were in favor of the enterprise ; only the Roman Catholics in the provinces looked on it with satisfaction; and three, at least, of the Great Powers, Turkey, Russia, and Italy, felt themselves betrayed, although helpless to prevent the treason. A deliberate scheme, born in ambition and baptized in blood, its consequences, even to a great European war, must be charged to its authors alone.

Herbert Tuttle.