nople, were but details in the hastening of the crisis which brought into play the combinations resulting in the Congress of Berlin. In these combinations we now know the predominating force was exercised by the Austro-German and English plenipotentiaries. Constantinople lay within reach of the hand of Russia, but that hand was powerless. Englishmen have been pleased to believe that the British fleet at Constantinople and Gallipoli was what deterred the Russians from entering the capital of the Sultan ; but the belief was a fond and flattering delusion. The invisible cord which withheld the hand of Russia was drawn in Berlin through Vienna. The certainty of the entry of an Austrian army into Moldavia and Bessarabia was the real obstacle to the Russian advance, which the British fleet alone was impotent to prevent. The Russian army was ever compelled to look behind it, always seeing the shadow of the concealed hand it had cause to dread. The writer vividly calls to mind an incident which occurred at Constantinople while the Russian troops were bivouacked in sight of its minarets. He paid a visit one evening, in the company of a friend, to Skobeleff, who was confined to his bed by an attack of fever. Despite his malady, the general was deep in the study of some military work, but on the names of his visitors being announced he sprang up in his couch to receive them, and almost the first question he put to the writer was "What is Austria doing?"-a sufficient indication of the apprehensions disturbing the counsels and paralysing the action of Russia. Information of a trustworthy character had just then been received at Constantinople, and it was known both at the Russian headquarters and at the Sublime Porte that a partial mobilisation of the Austrian army was imminent, and that the occupation of Bosnia and Servia on one hand, and of Jassy and various points in Moldavia on the other, were contemplated.

So

serious a menace was one the Russian army, crippled though victorious, was unable to despise; and so it came to pass that, under the pressure of Austria and Germany, Russia submitted to enter the congress chamber at Berlin, to sacrifice all that nigh a century of intrigue and war had gained.

With the details and results of the Berlin settlement all who followed the reports of the proceedings of the Congress are familiar. Of the fact that what was believed to be a settlement is proving but a truce, most, if they had not already foreseen it, are now becoming convinced. Races and communities delivered from an inert barbaric despotism were partitioned and carved out to suit the selfish ambitions of certain governments, and the political exigences of the moment. A condition of things foredoomed to perish was created from the Danube to the Egean and from the Black Sea to the Adriatic. The opportunity of settling the Eastern difficulty on a just and stable basis was thrown away with a recklessness inconceivable except by those who understood that a sense of right and political morality were absent from the council board over which Prince Bismarck presided. The opportunity of re-integrating each race within its rights vanished. The Bulgarians were divided into three sections. The Greeks were betrayed, while false hopes were dangled before their eyes. Albania, distracted by intrigue of every kind, was left a prey to anarchy and misrule. Bosnia and Herzegovina, against the will and in spite of the heroic resistance of their peoples, were given over to Austria, who virtuously pretended bashful compliance with the "will of Europe," conscious that it was her own action which had produced the "disorder” which she was called in by accomplices to put down. Montenegro, which had maintained for centuries its independence against the Turk, was virtually handed over to Austria by the twenty-ninth Article of the Berlin Treaty. Macedonia was

left, with its conglomerate population of Serb, Albanian, Bulgarian, Greek, Wallach, and Moslem, to ferment to a degree of anarchy sufficient to require the orderly hand of the Austrian bureaucracy to restore tranquillity and cover it with their " civilising

influences."

He

The creation of the autonomous pro vince of East Roumelia was the fruit of the Treaty of San Stefano, trimmed and reduced at Berlin. The elaboration of its organic statutes and form of government was entrusted to a mixed international body called the East Roumelia Commission, the guiding spirit of which was Herr von Kallay, the Austro-Hungarian delegate. A zealous partisan of the Andrassy policy in the East, Herr von Kallay had passed many years at Belgrade, working industriously for the advancement of Austrian influence in Servia by means of the press and the diplomatic service. brought, then, to the work of his mission at Philippopolis, where the commission sat, an accurate concep tion of the end to be attained, and a complete knowledge of the means necessary to further the designs of his Government. Consistently supported by his German and English colleagues, he was enabled to override all opposition raised by the Russian or Turkish delegates. It was during the sitting of the East Roumelia Commission, towards the end of 1878, that Austria openly showed her hand-somewhat prematurely it seems to have been, for even Lord Beaconsfield's Cabinet, with all its anti-Russian proclivities, was not prepared to follow unreservedly the lead of its allies. brief, Count Andrassy proposed to the English Government that while the civil and financial administration of East Roumelia and Macedonia should be undertaken by England, Austrian troops were to occupy the two provinces. This was so bold a stroke in the forward policy that it is hardly to be wondered at that good

In

and substantial reasons were found for not at once acceding to the Austrian request. Perhaps, too, the compensations had not been so well defined as they were later on; the proceeding savoured, besides, too much of the iron and the earthen pot floating together on the ruffled surface of the water. The earthen pot of English civil and financial administration must soon have disappeared before the iron pot of Austrian military exigences. A British Parliament could hardly have sanctioned such proceedings, even if the Government had entertained the proposal. The rejection of this caused anger and heart-burning at Vienna, augmented later on by Lord Salisbury's reluctance to support the Austrian Government in their effort to compel the Russian evacuation of East Roumelia by the thirteenth of April, 1879, which Count Andrassy declared, in addressing the delegations, was a point of honour with Austria. The Treaty of Berlin, in the twenty-second Article, had fixed nine months from the date of signature of the Treaty, which was the thirteenth of July, 1878, as the term of the Russian occupation of the conquered territory; and accordingly Count Andrassy had held the view that the last Russian should retire from its soil by the thirteenth of April; whereas the Russian Government maintained, and maintained successfully, that the complete occupation only should cease on that date, and accordingly did not commence the evacuation before the day called for by Count Andrassy for its termination. Great annoyance was both felt and expressed at Vienna on this subject, and Lord Salisbury was openly accused of having come to an understanding with Russia over the head of the "old and faithful" ally of England. Those who followed the news of the day will call to mind the pertinacity with which, by means of the press, the Vienna Government endeavoured to predispose the public mind in Europe in favour of a mixed occupa

tion of East Roumelia by foreign. troops, from which Russians were to be rigorously excluded. The failure was a sore trial to the political temper of the Austrian Cabinet. Without the intervention of foreign arms the East Roumelia Commission at Philipoppolis concluded its labours; and at the banquet given by the Commission before its members separated, Herr von Kallay astonished his hearers by announcing that "We [that is, Austria] do not care now how soon East Roumelia and Bulgaria are united."

During the sitting of the Bulgarian Assembly at Tirnova, the part played by Austria was rather that of an observant spectator. The representatives of East Roumelia who went to Tirnova to claim the right to sit in the Constituante assembled to organise the government of the principality, were refused admission. Meeting with no encouragement from the Russian Imperial Commissioner, a small number of the East Roumelian delegates addressed themselves to Vienna, and implored the Austrian Emperor to save them from being restored to Turkish dominion. But the moment for action was not yet ripe, and the question was left in abeyance to a more convenient season. The resistance in Bosnia to the execution of the European mandate with which Austria had entered that province and Herzegovina, had been of so much more serious and forcible a character than anticipated, that Austria-Hungary was for the time arrested in the career of adventure on which she had launched. Anything more, therefore, than a formal expression of interest in their welfare could not be given to the East Roumelians. The attention of Austria was absorbed in consolidating her position in the new provinces, and securing the means of preventing any possible future joint action of Servia and Montenegro. The reluctance of the Hungarians to further the aims of the forward party in Austria, and to diminish their own forces by the addition of Slavs to

the already powerful Slav element in the empire-kingdom, was a temporary check to further advance. The impolitic speech of M. Tisza, in which he described the Austrian occupation of the Turkish provinces as destined to crush the head of the Slavonic serpent, was rather calculated to act in the nature of a challenge to the whole Slavonic race, than to produce a reassuring or tranquillising effect on minds still heaving from their late struggles. The overhaste also with which the Roman Catholic propaganda followed in the wake of the military occupation could not but be regarded with suspicion by a people of whom but a fifth are Roman Catholics by religion, the rest being either adherents of the Eastern Church or Mussulmans. The whole Austrian action, indeed, in the provinces snatched from Turkey, has, since the day her troops crossed their borders on their mission of civilisation, been marked by all the errors of a military bureaucracy hampered by Parliamentary opposition and want of funds, and a certain subjection to outside opinion, more particularly to that expressed in the foreign press.

But the many important stipulations of the Treaty of Berlin which yet remained to be carried out at the end of 1879, and which there is much reason to believe were not intended to be carried out in their integrity, called for settlement. The Montenegrin and the Greek questions; the execution of reforms in the European provinces of Turkey, called for by the twenty-third Article of the Berlin Treaty, and the condition of Armenia, demanded attention. The settlement of these questions on the basis of the Treaty to which all the Powers represented at Berlin had affixed their signatures, did not, however, meet with the ulterior views of all their governments. The union of interests so ostentatiously proclaimed between Germany and Austria, and the adhesion of the English Cabinet to their views of the settlement of the Eastern

Question as since developed, together with M. Tisza's "crushing of the head of the Slavonic serpent," were the irst overt indications of the Drang nach Osten (pressing eastward) policy of the Austro-German combination. It was the comprehension of this policy in its full scope and meaning which furnished the theme and motive of the speeches of Skobeleff at Paris and elsewhere, and brought into renewed activity the leaders and partisans of the Panslav cause in Russia and among the Slavonic races. The dissolution of Parliament in 1880, and the result of the appeal of Lord Beaconsfield to the people of England on that occasion, determined the fate of the combination which had been formed to inaugurate a new departure in Eastern affairs, entirely and radically at variance with the spirit and letter of the Berlin settlement. Who is there that cannot call to mind the almost frantic efforts made from Berlin and Vienna, during the exciting period immediately preceding that general election, to influence, by alternate cajolery and menace, the public sentiment of England in favour of Lord Beaconsfield's Administration? And who does not remember the wail of anger that went up when the accession to power of the Liberal party was announced? Under the determined lead of that party, England, acting on the Powers whose recalcitrancy to the Berlin Treaty menaced a complete disruption of the European concert, has obtained settlements of the Montenegrin and Greek questions, unsatisfactory indeed, and not without great difficulty, and in spite of a want of loyalty where the opposite might have been expected. But such harmony as it was possible to create among the discordant elements of which the European concert is composed, could not be obtained for the settlement of the conditions of the twenty-third Article of the Berlin Treaty. It is true delegates were despatched in 1880 to Constantinople to elaborate a series of statutes for the government of the

provinces remaining under the misrule of the Pashas. But the whole performance was a hollow mockery of the crying wants of the oppressed people of Thrace, Macedonia, and Epirus. Propositions tending to promote uniformity of method in the government of each province were strenuously opposed by the Austrian delegates, on the plea that the cha racter and local peculiarities of each district must be first considered, but with the real design of preventing any solid bond of union among the diverse peoples. The statutes, however, have remained a dead letter, for their execution is supported neither by Germany, Austria, Italy, France, nor Russia. Alone England could do, and the immovable Turk would do, nothing. The observation of Herr von Kallay, then Under Secretary for Foreign Affairs at Vienna, when his opinion of the organic statutes was asked by one of the foreign delegates on the revived East Roumelia Commission, was on a parallel with the Austrian action all through the recent phases of the Eastern difficulty. "We have a more serious solution than that," said Herr von Kallay a clear implication that reformed government, by the aid of Austria and her supporter Germany, was not to be established in the unemancipated provinces of European Turkey, nor even contemplated. The efforts of Austria to obtain the consent and recognition of Europe to her formal annexation of Bosnia and the Herzegovina showed the embarrassing nature of the position in which her Government found itself. At the same time they indicated to both the Turkish and Russian Governments that the time was not far off when a decisive move must be made on the part of Austria. To abandon the provinces again to Turkish misrule was impossible; to grant them anything in the shape of an autonomous government equally so, seeing the encouragement this would give the Czech autonomous party, and

the opposition which the idea met from the Hungarians. The alternative was the complete subjugation of the country; subjugation in a military sense, for there was no probability of the Mussulman inhabitants willingly accepting the rule of Austria, after so many thousands had lost their lives in opposing the transfer of an allegiance which had brought them nothing but the rigid exaction of augmented taxes, and would impose military service to an alien sovereign. To the Christians, the taxation to which they were subjected by Austrian officials was as onerous as to the Mussulmans; while the agrarian grievances, which were the ostensible cause of their rising against the Turkish rule, remained without redress.

The difficulty the Austrian Government had to face was extreme. The expenses of the occupation and administration of the provinces were in excess of the revenues, and the compact by which the Austrian and Hungarian Governments were not to be called on to contribute could not be broken without sufficient and weighty reason. Indecision was not less perilous than action; it was necessary to hasten a crisis; and accordingly the law of military service was ordered to be put in force, not only in the occupied provinces, but, to give it the air of impartiality, as well in those parts of Dalmatia which had hitherto successfully resisted the conscription, and with the inhabitants of which, as in the case of the Crivoscians, a special compact of exemption existed. The insurrection of the Crivoscians and Herzegovinians was the answer. Whether the conscription was the direct cause of the insurrection, or whether the Austrian authorities profited by their knowledge of what was in preparation to bring on the crisis, cannot be confidently determined. The localities in which the bands made their appearance in most force seem to indicate action,

a pre-arranged line of Those whose knowledge of

the country and people entitled their opinions to consideration had for some time held the view that a rising against Austrian rule was imminent, and that Christians and Mussulmans would be found fighting side by side in the struggle. The end in Eastern politics has generally been held to justify the means, and there is no reason to believe that a higher political moral tone is prevalent in the East to-day than at any other time.

The co-operation of Austria and Germany with Italy in the settlement of the Greek frontier question forms an interesting chapter in the history of the Eastern difficulty, which has yet to be written. But it is so linked with all Austrian policy in the East, that it is but an additional indication of what is contemplated by Austria and Germany, with the tacit adherence of Italy. Skilfully as Prince Bismarck masked German views of predominance in the East behind his Pomeranian grenadier, it is clear that, whatever interests in the settlement of the oriental difficulty it may once have pleased him to express, his pretensions are now of a solid and substantial gravity which must be the cause of uneasiness to more than one of the Western Powers and to Russia. It requires but a glance at the map of Europe to perceive what the accomplishment of the AustroGerman programme in the east of Europe signifies. Skilfully and perseveringly has the telegraph and printing press been worked until the idea of the Russian at Constantinople has been made a nightmare which has cost England millions of money and thousands of precious lives. It has been used to pervert the moral sense of her people and her rulers till she has come now to be almost invariably found on the side of the oppressor against the oppressed. And the same agencies are still busily at work to persuade this country that there is no other alternative to the blessings of AustroGerman rule for the nationalities of the East than subjugation to