PRINCE LOBANOFF’S QUESTION.

“Do you suppose for one moment that if England were to rescind her obligations under the Cyprus Convention we should fail to immediately respond with proposals for a new departure?”

The speaker was Prince Lobanoff, and the question was asked in such a way as to make the answer quite unmistakable.

The occasion on which the question was asked made it all the more memorable.

It was at one of the court balls, given at Moscow during the coronation of our present Emperor, that I last met the gifted Foreign Minister, whose sojourn at the Foreign Office, although brief, was long enough to give Russia a position as commanding as she occupied during the reign of Alexander I. after the overtures of Napoleon. Prince Lobanoff seemed glad to have the opportunity of telling me how pleased he was with my efforts to promote friendly feelings between England and Russia. But here I interrupted him. “Well,” said I, “everybody should try to work in the direction of peace and good-will,—but,” I added, smiling, “as far as our Foreign Office is concerned, I find no great help there.”

There was no smile on Prince Lobanoff’s face when he retorted, with a slight frown:

“You refer to the terrible Armenian question?”

“Exactly,” replied I, firmly.

“But how,” Prince Lobanoff asked, speaking with more animation than I ever noticed in him before—“how can we Russians ignore the meaning and importance of the Cyprus Convention, which compels England to oppose Russia whenever a serious danger threatens Turkey, and which is obviously directed against us?”

“Oh, well,” said I, “but there is decidedly a great change in English opinion concerning the sacredness of that Treaty.”

“No doubt,” he replied; “I am not so badly informed as you seem to suppose. I know all about that healthy change for the better. It is a most welcome beginning— but, nevertheless, that anti-Russian Treaty still exists. Do you suppose, for one moment, that if England were to rescind her obligations under that Treaty we should fail to immediately respond with proposals for a new departure?”

My first impulse was to ask what definite shape that possible “new departure” would take. Lobanoff was the very man for forming vast far-reaching plans, but he was very prudent, and I could never expect any vague and reckless scheme. Unfortunately, as in a fairy-tale, just as the conversation reached its culminating point, a newly appointed Ambassador joined us. Lobanoff and I had only time to exchange another glance and the conversation became general and frivolous.

Prince Lobanoff, alas, is no more, but his memory is dear to us, and I therefore think it my duty to repeat that conversation, as it shows that he was not “the prejudiced, obstinate Anglophobist,” which some people here are determined to describe him.¹

Possibly, the English people will appreciate better than some English statesmen the importance of Lobanoff’s remarks. For, when even Mr. Gladstone, who used to denounce the Cyprus Convention so fiercely, now puts it forward as justifying England’s isolated action against Turkey, Russians can hardly regard it as non-existent, except of course from the point of view of international law. We have always ignored it. It was from the very first illegal and in contradiction of existing treaties. But we knew England was bound by it—voluntarily bound—and from that obligation she will not escape while her flag flies over Cyprus. The case is, however, worse than we believe. We thought that Mr. Gladstone at least regarded it as a worthless sham, although Lord Salisbury, its author, might treat it as a reality. We now learn that Mr. Gladstone (Mr. Gladstone of all the world!) regards it as possessing such validity and solidity as to furnish a basis for English intervention in Turkey.

But if so, a fortiori it must furnish a casus belli against Russia if she intervened in Armenia. For England’s right to coerce the Sultan under the Convention is a deduction, or an inference. Her obligation to defend him set forth in the Convention is categorical.

It really seems as if you had forgotten your obligations, not even to the Armenians, but even to the Sultan. For instance, I am told sometimes, with an emphasis more remarkable for its vigour than its courtesy, that it is false and absurd to say that England is bound to defend the Sultan; because the promise was conditional upon reforms being carried out, and that as the reforms have not been executed, you have informed him that you are thereby released from your undertaking to defend the Asiatic frontier of his Empire from Russia.

Now, in discussing this weighty and vital question it is useless to go to any authorities but the original documents.

As Englishmen generally, including some of the leading English statesmen, seem to have forgotten the text of the famous (or infamous) Convention, I reproduce the clauses. No honest man can read them without admitting that they prove conclusively, first, that your engagement to join your forces to those of the Sultan in defending his Asiatic frontier against us is made unconditionally. The promise to execute reforms and the assignment of Cyprus were only given by the Sultan in return for уоur promise to defend him.

Her Majesty the Queen and His Imperial Majesty the Sultan, being mutually animated with the sincere desire of extending and strengthening the relations of friendship happily existing between the two Empires, have resolved upon the conclusion of a Convention of defensive alliance, with the object of securing for the future the territories in Asia of His Imperial Majesty the Sultan. Their Majesties have accordingly chosen and named their plenipotentiaries, to wit, &c., who have agreed upon the following articles:—

Article I. If Batoum, Ardahan, Kars, or any of them, shall be retained by Russia, or if any attempt shall be made at any future time by Russia to take possession of any further territories of His Imperial Majesty the Sultan, as fixed by the definitive Treaty of Peace, England engages to join His Imperial Majesty the Sultan in defending them by force of arms.

In return His Imperial Majesty the Sultan promises to England to introduce necessary reforms, to be agreed upon later between the two Powers in the Governments, and for the protection of the Christian and other subjects of the Porte in these territories.

And in order to enable England to make necessary provision for executing her engagements, His Imperial Majesty the Sultan further consents to assign the Island of Cyprus to be occupied and administered by England.

Article 2 provides for ratification in a month.

The Convention is dated June, 1878. An Annex was appended on July 1st, the last clause of which is as follows:—

1. That if Russia restores to Turkeу Kars and the other conquests made by her in Armenia during the last war, the Island of Cyprus will be evacuated by England, and the Convention of the 4th June will be at an end.

If any doubt could possibly be entertained to this, it is removed by the last article in the Annex which is quoted above. This provides that, if Russia shall at any time surrender to the “Sultan of the good impulses” Kars and the other conquests made in Armenia, Cyprus shall be evacuated, and the Convention will be at an end. Clearly, therefore, Cyprus has nothing to do with reforms.

For if, at this moment—while not one single reform has been executed—if Russia were to invite the perpetrator of the massacres at Sassoun and at Constantinople to extend the area of his slaughter to Kars and to the territory we rescued from his grasp in 1878, you would be bound to evacuate Cyprus, and the Convention would be at an end.

Russia, therefore, is compelled reluctantly to recognize the fact that, as long as your flag flies over Cyprus, the Convention is not at an end; that the defensive alliance exists, and on the first serious movement of the Russian army to avenge Sassoun, the Sultan, “whose every impulse is so good,” would at once have a right, by virtue of your occupation of Cyprus, to appeal for the despatch of the British army and the British fleet to join him in defending his territories by force of arms.

I would like Mr. Gladstone, or any other English statesman, to explain how Russia can possibly hold any other view than that which Prince Lobanoff expressed, viz., that England is now bound hand and foot to help the Sultan, if Russia moves a single step towards coercion, and your occupation of Cyprus was expressly conceded in order to enable you to make necessary provision for executing your engagement to defend the Asiatic frontier of Turkey against Russia, and for no other purpose whatever.

This promise has nothing to do with the reforms which the Sultan promised to execute to reward you for having promised to defend him fully, fully and unreservedly, without any conditions whatever, promised to join your armies to his in defending his Asiatic frontier against Russia.

And that therefore you are bound by your Treaty obligation to help Turkey against Russia as long as you remain in occupation of Cyprus, whatever may be the failure of the Sultan to execute reforms.

I confess frankly, that if it were not for this obstacle of the Cyprus Convention, which explains much, I could not say that Prince Lobanoff’s reserve in the Turkish massacres would particularly delight us Slavophiles. It was too much like Lord Beaconsfield’s attitude in 1876. And I confess also, that there was great humour in Prince Lobanoff’s Memorandum, where he appealed, à la Disraeli, to the sacredness of the articles IX. of the “Treaty of Paris” as an “infringement of the principles of European public law.”

What solemn coxcombry this would be if it had not been intended to bring home in the most sarcastic fashion to Lord Salisbury the hateful nature of England’s traditional policy in the East. Before the Treaty of Paris we exercised a direct interference in the affairs of Turkey. After that Treaty we exercised it in concert with the others, but we always asserted it.

Interference to protect the Christians has been Russia’s specialty for centuries; but this may have seemed a good opportunity of demonstrating to England what her opportunity of demonstrating to England what her traditional policy is, and how it works out in bloodshed and outrage. Let us hope that the last terrible events may lead the English Foreign Office to abandon once for all its pro-Turkish policy.

Remember that Russia has not much reason to believe in the sincerity or the permanence of England’s professions. You are going to have another St. James’ Conference on behalf of Armenia, absit omen! For after the last St. James’ Conference, on behalf of Bulgaria, England reinstated half the Bulgarians whom we had freed, and then made a defensive alliance with the Sultan, binding yourself to go to war with Russia on his behalf. That was our wages, paid in English coin, for believing English assurances. If we are to be reassured and are to work together about Armenia, you will do well to do something for Macedonia, which you have enslaved, and give up Cyprus.

As I begun with Prince Lobanoff’s question, I will close with Skobeleff’s. Standing on the battlefield of Plevna, he said to an English war correspondent:—

“Cannot you see how this (English) policy should stir us so? For two years we have deluged this land (Bulgaria) with our blood. Our brothers are slain, our country has made enormous sacrifices. We don’t mourn. Children weep, and fathers lament the loss of promising sons. All this we would have borne with the patience which God gives, but the full freedom which we had won for our brothers in race and religion, in language and faith, been accorded to them. But accursed diplomacy steps in and says: ‘No ; only the smaller half of them shall be free.’² And the greater number shall be again handed over to the tender mercies of the Turks. You know yourself what the Turks have been, and are, and ever will be; and, placing yourself in our position, would you not also be consumed with wrath that our sacrifices are to be in vain, and that the men over whose graves we are now treading should have died for naught?”

If you put yourself in our position you will have little difficulty in answering Skobeleff’s question by repeating the question of Prince Lobanoff.

The Bulgaria liberated by Russia at San Stefano contained a population of 3,986,000 persons. Lord Beaconsfield boasted that by the Treaty of Berlin he had restored to the Sultan Eastern Roumelia, with 746,000 inhabitants, and South Western Bulgaria, with 1,467,000—making 2,213,000 persons thrust back under the Turk out of the four millions whom we freed. Eastern Roumelia soon undid the Berlin Treaty, so far as it was concerned, but the million and a half inhabitants of Southern territories still groan under the Sultan.

1. And here I would like to quote one passage in support of what I say. It appeared in the Daily Chronicle of September 8, and was written by “a Russian who knew him.” This Russian, whom I know to be a distinguished journalist who had ample opportunity of knowing the facts, says:—“There is one assertion made in some newspapers that it is only justice to the Prince to contradict—viz., his supposed hostility to England. This might be denied even a priori as a prejudice impossible to be entertained by any well-balanced and thoroughly informed mind, and least of all by such a lover of a natural and historical evolution of forms of government as Prince Lobanoff. And I feel happy to be able to state most emphatically that in the many references to England made to me by him there has not been one which did not include esteem, or was not suggested by admiration. Especially one personal reference often came to the Prince’s lips, and always with unrestricted enthusiasm. He called his relations with Mr. Gladstone the most enjoyable part of his diplomatic career. I never understood so well what Mr. Gladstone was as when I saw, at a mention of his name, Prince Lobanoff’s face lighting up with a strong and genuine feeling of a man for a man, for, certainly, if there ever was any one able to appreciate fully Mr. Gladstone’s universality of genius and loftiness of soul it was the late Russian statesman. He evidently loved to remember the hours passed in the great Englishman’s company, and was never tired of telling upon what a variety of subjects he had found it improving for himself to listen to Mr. Gladstone, dwelling particularly on his high-minded, humanitarian way of treating every political question. I am well aware that during his short Ministry Prince Lobanoff found himself separated from the English Government in several international questions. I won’t allow myself to introduce a political polemic into these personal recollections, but I must state my conviction that the late Russian Minister would have been happy to have England’s full co-operation in the pacification of the Far as well as of the Near East, and that he never lost an opportunity of making use of it whenever he could obtain it. With a frankness I would have used towards Prince Lobanoff himself, had I had an occasion to meet him lately, I will confess that, Having all my life warmly sympathized with all Eastern Christians, I would have loved to see Russia, in concert with other Powers or alone, liberating Armenians as well as Greeks and other victims of barbarous fanaticism. I am sure that Prince Lobanoff was too much of a Russian not to share that feeling which lies deeply-rooted in every Russian’s heart. If he did not give way to it he must have had good reasons, all of which are not known to myself or to the public in general.” Of these reasons he says he had a glimpse in а letter which Prince Lobanoff addressed to me in reply to one I had received from Mr. Gladstone on the subject of Armenia. He continues: “Prince Lobanoff says in it, with a perceptible shade of regret, that England is free to indulge in her humanitarian feelings in this matter, not having any material interests involved in it, while Russia has to consider the populations of the various races under her dominion and the condition of her frontier provinces. I do not recollect his argument further, but am sure of the general keynote as given above.”
2. The Bulgaria liberated by Russia at San Stefano contained a population of 3,986,000 persons. Lord Beaconsfield boasted that by the Treaty of Berlin he had restored to the Sultan Eastern Roumelia, with 746,000 inhabitants, and South Western Bulgaria, with 1,467,000—making 2,213,000 persons thrust back under the Turk out of the four millions whom we freed. Eastern Roumelia soon undid the Berlin Treaty, so far as it was concerned, but the million and a half inhabitants of Southern territories still groan under the Sultan.