It is very pleasant to think, in our weary, busy days, that there is a place in Europe where people come almost daily and spend their time in innocent, superfluous chat, and that that blessed part of the world is within easy reach of anybody who visits London. The English Parliament offers precisely that charming sight to simple-minded creatures, having a good deal of leisure on their hands—almost a lazzarone dolce far niente. To outsiders like myself, who watch their debates no longer as before from the gilded cage, but from under the Sicilian skies or the shores of the Mediterranean, many things seem rather strange. In addition to a United Kingdom and a disunited Ireland, a prodigious empire of I do not know how many hundreds of millions in India, and quite an English family of thriving commonwealths growing up all over the world, England has lately taken upon her shoulders the responsibility of controlling and reforming the north-eastern quarter of the African continent. But neither the wrongs of Ireland, nor the plagues of Egypt supply sufficient material for the loquacious energies of her indefatigable talkers, who sometimes, I see by way of ironical compliment, are termed “legislators.” In addition to discussing their own private or public affairs, they kindly also discuss ours—to what purpose? Oh, who can tell? Perhaps from mere fulness of the heart, perhaps for killing the time. Mr. Stanhope’s speech about Merv, for instance, served, no doubt, to pass the evening, and delay what is called the “despatch of business,” but it is a sincere pleasure to me to read such speeches as that of Lord Edmond Fitzmaurice. It is not often that English Ministers speak so candidly and so courageously concerning their neighbour’s policy. No doubt there is nothing new to any well informed person in the sentiment that “Russia has done one great and good work in Turkestan, she has struck a very great blow at one of the most barbarous and cruel systems of slave trade;” but it is well to have that and similar truths impressed upon unwilling ears by the official representatives of the British Foreign Office. Nor is there anything to which any Russian can object in the speech of Sir Charles Dilke. It is true that in annexing Quetta England repudiates many emphatic declarations made concerning the impolicy of going beyond the passes. It is somewhat remarkable to see the tenacity with which Liberals in office cling to the scientific frontier, which when they were in Opposition they denounced as a Naboth’s vineyard; but that is no business of ours.

The English Government is going to express their views to our Government, and to that no one, I suppose, can make any objection. Here, in Palermo, I am necessarily ignorant of what kind of negotiations are going on between England and Russia on Central Asia; but, for myself, speaking as a humble unit of the ninety million subjects of our Emperor, I do not see the use of any negotiations. If it is only a question of defining a boundary—well and good. Let it be defined. Our position is clear. North of the Oxus, outside the boundaries of Afghanistan, Russia has a free hand. She will advance or retreat, establish garrisons or agents or Residents, annex or protect, or do whatever she pleases and whenever she pleases, according to the dictates of her own interests and the interests of her Asiatic subjects. We shall do our duty without asking anybody’s leave, and we shall as soon think of making explanations about the occupation of Merv as England did about the occupation of Candahar. Afghanistan we recognize, and always have recognized, as lying outside the natural range of our influence, just as England recognizes that all the Asian States north of the Oxus lie beyond the range of her influence. That, of course, is when we are at peace, and when England threatens to make war on us we can prepare to make trouble for you either in Afghanistan or anywhere else, just as you can prepare to trouble us in Khiva, Bokhara, or Tashkent itself. You cannot ask us to respect Afghanistan more sacredly than if it were British territory. “It is a British outpost,” says Sir Charles Dilke, and therefore, if we should unfortunately after any length of time go to war, it will, like all outposts, be the point to be assailed.

But I will go a step further than this (travelling is sometimes useful). Not only is the understanding about Afghanistan—and that is the only understanding that exists in Central Asian politics—liable to be set aside by war, threatened or begun, but it can only be maintained during peace by the fulfilment of responsibilities to which no allusion seems to have been made in the debate. In time our frontier will touch that of Northern Afghanistan. The Afghans are not all members of the Peace Society. Suppose some of them raid across the Oxus and plunder, and slay, and burn a Russian outpost? What then? Afghanistan, they say, is a British outpost. Russia must not cross the Oxus to punish a bandit, or even to reclaim a stolen flock. Very well; but if so, then England will have to do the work herself. She will have to control the garrison of her outpost, or we shall have to take the task into our own hands. Russia has no wish to add that task to her many burdens. It is in order to assist in avoiding it that I state the question so frankly. But it seems evident to every rational Russian that, unless you are willing to accept the responsibility of guaranteeing the good behaviour of the tribes on your side of the Afghan frontier, no engagement, or understanding, or treaty yet invented can prevent Russia from taking the measures necessary to secure the safety of her territory.

Russia, I hope, has definitely broken with the foolish habit of giving assurances whenever the English get into a fidget about our advance. A rising tide can as soon be controlled by Canute as the Russian advance, even by Imperial declarations. Autocrats are not almighty, and circumstances are stronger than Emperors. The most imperative orders have been issued in vain. The same law that forced England from Calcutta to the Khyber has driven us from Orenburg to Merv.

Es ist eine alte Geschichte,

Doch bleibt sie immer neu—

as Heine says on some other occasion, not referring exactly to the Oxus. But really one cannot discuss certain things with due solemnity. How can England have the courage, this year of all times, to upbraid us with breach of faith and accuse us of perfidy and all sorts of other odious offences against honesty and truth, when in the face of all Europe she is herself pursuing a policy in Egypt directly contrary to the pledges which she gave to all the world only six months ago? I am not blaming English statesmen. Far from it. I am quite sure that Lord Hartington was sincere when twelve months ago he stated that in six months the evacuation of Egypt would be completed. To-day, instead of withdrawing, England is reinforcing her garrisons. Nothing that our Emperor ever said about either Khiva or Merv was half as strong as the declarations made by the present rulers of England as to the absolute determination of England to have nothing whatever to do in the Soudan. We were told over and over again that the Soudan lay altogether beyond the sphere of the object of the English expedition. The English Government would do nothing, not even give advice as to the Soudan. But to-day an English naval and military force is defending the ports of the Soudan, and an English officer is Governor-General at Khartoum. Undoubtedly England was reluctantly forced to modify her original programme. Of course she was. But when Fate or the Destinies have been so merciless to you, can you not imagine that they have been equally relentless with us?

There is one thing I must say before I close. Mr. Stanhope used to be a Minister of the Crown, and he is still, I suppose, an English gentleman; but he does not appear to think it inconsistent with his honour to make charges and insinuate accusations against Russia which are not only false, but which he knows to be false. This is a serious charge, but if it is incorrect, Mr. Stanhope can easily put himself right, and I shall eagerly apologise for my mistake. He is reported to have said that “the question of Merv had been one of prevarication, and was even a more melancholy story than that of Khiva.” I have answered the story about Khiva too often already to need to repeat it to-day. As to Merv, Mr. Stanhope quoted several assurances given by our Emperor in 1874, 1879, and by M. de Giers in 1881, that we had no intention of advancing to Merv, and he implied rather than asserted that now that Merv had passed under our direct control, we had broken our word. Now, as a matter of fact, we have never advanced on Merv. We have sent no column to Merv, we have made no conquest of that city. What has happened is this. The tribes of Merv have asked us, of their own accord, to admit them to the advantages of Russian protection. We have acceded to their request. Merv, no doubt, has gravitated towards Russia. That is all. That is a very different thing from despatching an expedition against the town, advancing upon it, threatening it, and seizing it with an armed horde, as, for instance, England seized Candahar and Cabul. But the charge which I have to make against Mr. Stanhope is far more serious than this. He accuses us of intentional prevarication. The gist of all his charges is that Russia, having promised never to go to Merv, has violated her pledges now that Merv has come to her. This can be met by a distinct and deliberate denial. No Russian Emperor, no Russian statesman, has ever said that we would never go to Merv. What we have said has been that at various specified times no intention was entertained of going to Merv. That was true. But that is a very different thing to saying that we would never go to Merv. Mr. Stanhope of all men can least pretend to believe that the two declarations are identical. For this reason. When in 1879 he asserted in Parliament that Russia had promised never to go to Merv, M. de Giers at once sent to Lord Salisbury a most positive denial that any such pledge had ever been given. “We had no intention then of going to Merv but,” said M. de Giers, significantly, “we cannot pledge ourselves never to go there, inasmuch as circumstances might leave us no choice but to do so.” That despatch was sent to London when Mr. Stanhope was in office. I suppose it is in the archives of the Foreign Office even now and Mr. Stanhope must have known of its existence. What can we think of a man who, after being connected with so vital a question five years ago, seems to have forgotten all about it? Has he been simply carried away by the wish to say something, or has he unconsciously been slandering a country with whom, according to Her Majesty’s Speech, England is on friendly terms? The importance of parliamentary debates will hardly increase much if one has often to read and hear digressions of that sort.

Palermo.

О. K.