TO THE EDITOR OF THE TIMES.

Sir,—“Plain words to the Assassin,” in large letters on the newspaper posters, stared down upon me from the hoardings yesterday as I once more returned to my beloved London. It is nearly six months since I was here, and I still find you employed only in “words, words, nothing but words!”

Plain words, strong words, fierce words is the diet presented to the Sultan in varied diplomatic sauces; but the dish is always the same, and his response is quite as monotonous. To empty words, plain or flavoured, he replies by massacres, and this seems likely to go on for ever. For us this passe-temps is monotony. To the poor Armenians, alas, it is death!

I rejoice to see that the English nation is sick of all this diplomatic twaddle, and is urgently demanding not words but deeds. It reminds me of 1876, that great year when so many brave attempts were made to change your traditional policy—attempts which, unfortunately, met with but partial success. And above all I rejoice to hear once more sounding deep and loud, like the great Bell of our grand Kremlin, above the general hubbub, the commanding note of Mr. Gladstone’s voice—that voice through which the heart and conscience of nations has so often found utterance.

But, although in some respects like l876, there is this difference, which, as a Russian, I feel more keenly than any one. In 1876 Russia led, and though no other Power followed, we fought, we suffered, we triumphed!

To-day the initiative of chivalrous action is no longer ours, and bitterly I regret it. It does not seem, however, to have passed to any other hands. But that makes things only worse. Why is it that Russia is not as in 1876? The answer is easy. Because of 1878. Efface what you did in 1878 and Russia will revert to her generous and traditional policy of 1876.

Mr. Gladstone, I regret to know, has lamented and condemned the policy of the late Prince Lobanof. With the lament I concur. From the condemnation I dissent. Prince Lobanof’s policy in Turkey was inevitable. The responsibility for that departure from our traditional policy rests with England, and it is for England to say how long it must continue.

Is it not better to look at things as they are instead of debating unrealities?

The very vividness with which your present agitation brings 1876 back to my mind also recalls not less vividly the hideous disillusion of 1878. And I have reason. For through these years of trial and of triumph I did my uttermost to persuade my countrymen that England was Mr. Gladstone and not Lord Beaconsfield. The generous enthusiasm of St. James’s Hall made me wrongly suppose that it was equivalent to a resolute reversal of England’s traditional policy. But when we had made our sacrifices and settling day came, we found, alas! to our cost, that England was Lord Beaconsfield after all. You may be able to imagine the reproaches that were addressed to me. You can never realise the reproaches I addressed to myself.

We are not likely to make that mistake again. You can no more delude us with words than you can coerce the Sultan with adjectives. We look at facts—hard, disagreeable, ugly though they may be—and adjust our policy accordingly.

The first fact is the Sultan. You call him “the Assassin” and the “accursed” to-day. But you saved him in 1878, and you gloried in the deed. When Lord Salisbury reported from Berlin the net result of English diplomacy at the Congress, he boasted that it had “restored, with due security for good government (!), a very large territory to the Government of the Sultan,” and that the alterations made in our Treaty of San Stefano tended “powerfully to secure from external assault the stability and independence of his empire.”

It is difficult to repress a bitter smile when recalling the positive assurances which were given to Europe by Lord Beaconsfield as to the angelic character of Abdul Hamid, who was then England’s protégé, England’s ally, England’s favourite.

Russia maintained that no Sultan could be trusted to protect Christian subjects. Everywhere there must be guarantees. Either the populations must be freed entirely from his rule or an outside Power must superintend and enforce the execution of reforms. England met this with a flat refusal. She made it the first object of her policy to restore the direct uncontrolled authority of the Sultan over as wide a territory as possible, and Lord Beaconsfield exulted in the fatal success of that policy for many reasons, but especially for one, which most of my English friends seem to have forgotten, but which Russians, being the sufferers, do not forget sо easily.

Lord Beaconsfield was sure he had done right because the Sultan was such a good man. On his return from Berlin, in his speech at the Mansion-house (July 27, 1878) he gave the following testimonial to Abdul Hamid—the hero of to-day:—

“I look to the individual character of that human being as of vast importance. He is a man whose every impulse is good. However great may be the difficulties he has to encounter, however various may be the influences that may ultimately control him, his impulses are always good. He is not a tyrant, he is not dissolute. He is not a bigot. He is not corrupt.”

England had her way. Abdul Hamid, “whose every impulse is good,” reigns by virtue of your action in 1878 over regions from which Russia had driven him out. But that is not all. You deliberately spoiled, as you may see by reference to the protocols of the Congress, every stipulation made to compel the Sultan to keep his word. His “impulses were so good” it would be cruel to make provisions for the proper execution of his treaty obligations! He must be left unhampered and uncontrolled. England rejected Russian proposals to impose upon all contracting parties the mutual duty of controlling the stipulations of the treaty because the Porte objected to allow within its own limits the control of other States. That was not to be thought of. The Sultan must be left free and uncontrolled to obey those “good impulses” of which Lord Beaconsfield was so well assured. Thus, it is that Europe is paralyzed to-day.

We have England’s Sultan with the angelic impulses on the throne, and we have been deprived by England in advance of those effective means of coercion by which all these massacres might have been prevented. And then, in face of such a situation which you have created and in the midst of an impotence which was prepared in advance at the Berlin Congress, Russia is overwhelmed with denunciations because she does not remain true to the crusading policy of 1876. This hardly seems to me to be what in England you call “fair play.”

But that is not all. If we had merely to do with the Berlin Treaty we might endeavour to make the best use of the gapped and worthless weapons which it contains. Unfortunately, the responsibility of England for the inaction of Russia is far more direct, far more deadly, than this.

For Lord Beaconsfield—and the English people applauded him—with the evil prescience of hatred, foresaw exactly the present situation, and provided in advance for the paralysing of Russia’s generous initiative. He even fixed a date when events would compel Russia to face the necessity of resorting to force to coerce the Sultan, and, as be publicly explained in the heart of the City of London, he regarded it as the crowning achievement of his policy to prevent such action on our part by the solemn public pledge of immediate war by England in that case. Permit me to recall this passage which you must never forget, if you want to understand why Russia has refused to act against the Sultan this year.

Lord Beaconsfield said:—

“Suppose the settlement of Europe had been limited to the mere Treaty of Berlin. What are the probable consequences which would then have occurred? In ten, fifteen, it might be twenty years (it has been exactly eighteen!), the power of Russia being revived, her resources having again resumed their general strength, some quarrel would again have occurred, Bulgarian or otherwise (Armenian this time), between Turkeу and Russia, and in all probability the armies of Russia would have assaulted the Ottoman dominions both in Europe and Asia, enveloping with her armies the city of Constantinople and the powerful position which it occupies. Well, what would have been the probable conduct under these circumstances of the Government of this country?”

This was the vital question for Prince Lobanof, and the answer to it has shaped the whole policy of Russia, and I hope you will mark well Lord Beaconsfield’s words. For, though uttered in 1878, they are living still, standing on record as the deliberate conviction of the English Prime Minister as to the policy England was certain to adopt if we had supported this year the Armenian cause by force of arms.

Lord Beaconsfield continued:—

“Whoever might have been the Minister and whatever the party in power, the position of the Government would have been this. There must have been hesitation for a time, there must have been a want of decision and firmness, but no one could doubt that ultimately England would have said:—‘This will never do; we must prevent the conquest of Asia Minor and must interfere in this matter to assist because of Russia.’ No one, I am sure, in this country who merely considers this question can for a moment doubt that that must have been the ultimate policy of this country.”

Therefore, be went on to explain (I summarize the point of a long speech), in order to remove any possible doubt on the subject, the voice of England should be clearly, firmly, and decidedly expressed in advance, and this he claimed he had effected by the conclusion of the Cyprus Convention. There has to be no more hesitating, doubting, and considering “contingencies.” England was, once for all, definitely committed to defend the Asiatic frontier of the Ottoman Empire against any advance of the Russian army in any quarrel, “Bulgarian or otherwise.”

This, he declared, was “the ultimate policy” of England, and he embodied it for all men to see in the Cyprus Convention. Lord Salisbury had previously described that convention as an undertaking given “fully and unreservedly” to prevent any further encroachments by Russia upon Turkish territory in Asia.

That was plain speaking. The Convention of Cyprus, therefore, was a document prepared to prevent our taking any action for the protection of the Armenians. It means war—war by England, by sea and land all round the world, against Russia if she advances a single company of armed police into the valleys of Armenia. And with this convention still in force you blame Russia for not heartily joining in operations against Abdul, “whose every impulse is good,” and who is defended against the penalty of indulging “those impulses” by the full and unreserved pledge that the “ultimate policy”’ of England—convention or no convention, and therefore reforms or no reforms—is war against Russia if she lays a finger on Asia Minor!

Of course I shall be told—nay, I have already been told, even by Mr. Gladstone himself—that the Cyprus Treaty contains no obligation to protect the Assassin in Armenia except on condition of reforms, and that the Sultan has been informed long ago that the covenant fell to the ground by his breach of faith in not giving the reforms.

This, I confess, is news to me, and in Russia we know nothing of any such abandonment of the convention by the English Government. We shall indeed be glad if the evidence of the formal repudiation of the convention can be published without delay.

It would, I think, be a relief to many consciences in this country, and in Europe the effect could only tend to restore that confidence in England which was so rudely shaken when the convention was signed. There is, it must be admitted, some excuse for our ignorance of this momentous resolve on your part, because Cyprus, which you occupy and administer solely by virtue of the Anglo-Turkish Convention, is to this day in your possession. Nor will the abandonment of the convention be seriously credited until it is followed up by the abandonment of Cyprus.

When that is done the chief obstacle in the way of concerted action for the coercion of the Sultan “of the good impulses” will be removed and a new departure will be possible.

OLGA NOVIKOFF (“O.K.”).

4, Portman-mansions, W.

THE TIMES, THURSDAY, OCTOBER 8, 1896.