The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke Volume I Part 24

"There is no more popular man in the House of Commons than he who seven years ago" (it was only five) "was hooted and howled at, and was for many succeeding months the mark of contumely and scorn in all well-conducted journals."

On this statement Sir Charles's diary affords a commentary:

'At this time (April, 1877) there occurred some discussion between Chamberlain and me as to what should be our att.i.tude in the event of the formation of a Liberal Government, and he was willing to accept office other than Cabinet office, provided that it was office such as to give him the representation of his department in the House of Commons. Chamberlain and I found that we could exercise much power through the Executive Committee of the Liberal Central a.s.sociation, which was a new body which at this time managed the whole of the electoral affairs of the party. It comprised the two Whips _ex- officio_--the Right Hon. W. P. Adam, and Lord Kensington; and among the other seven members, Chamberlain and I represented the Radicals, and communicated with the union of Liberal a.s.sociations commonly known as the Birmingham Caucus. Of the others Waddy was there to represent the Methodists; C. C. Cotes [Footnote: M.P. for Shrewsbury. He was a Lord of the Treasury and one of the Whips in Mr. Gladstone's second Government.] and Sir Henry James were there chiefly as amateur whips fond of electoral work; Lord Frederick Cavendish, to represent his brother, the leader of the party; and Whitbread, to strengthen the Whig influence.'

Sir Charles notes here that on June 29th, when he was to second, as usual, Mr. Trevelyan's annual motion concerning franchise and redistribution, he

'had a conference with Chamberlain on the question whether we could possibly get together a small knot of young peers to help us in the House of Lords. Rosebery seemed the only one that we could find worth thinking of, and we had him to dinner, and went to stay with him, and generally tried to join forces, but without any very marked effect.'

Dilke and Chamberlain also sounded the Home Rulers to see if they could find any basis of co-operation; and about this date Sir Charles, with Lord and Lady Francis Conyngham and b.u.t.t, and 'in their sitting-room, full of perennial clouds of smoke,' where a captive nightingale sang ('thinking the gas the moon unless he took b.u.t.t's face for that luminary of the heavens'), settled with the Irish leader that in following years they should amend Mr. Trevelyan's franchise resolution by moving for the extension of the franchise in counties throughout the United Kingdom; not even Radicals had previously proposed to enlarge the electorate in Ireland.

But in these days the Irish party were beginning to apply and develop that use of Parliamentary forms for obstructive purposes which had been first systematically attempted by the "Colonels" in opposition to Mr. Cardwell's Bill for abolishing purchase in the Army, and Liberals were a little scandalized by their allies. In the close of July Sir John Lubbock, then a Liberal, 'foreshadowed his future Unionism by observing that "the obstructive Irish were the Bashi Bazouks, who did more harm to us by their atrocities than good by their fighting."' A couple of days later, when Liberals supported an Irish amendment, Dilke himself agreed with Mr.

Rylands's pun that "they would have had a bigger vote if it hadn't been Biggar." Upon this matter Sir Charles's att.i.tude was naturally affected by that of b.u.t.t, in whose company he delighted. The great advocate believed in his own power to effect by eloquence and reasoned argument that change of mind in the British House of Commons which five-and-twenty years'

experience of Ireland had wrought in himself since the days when he opposed O'Connell on Repeal, and this led him to resent the methods of unreason. Mr. Parnell, who never believed that England was open to reason in the matter of Ireland, was only beginning to impress his personality on the House; there is but one incidental mention of his name in the Memoir for 1877.

But notwithstanding all the claims of home politics, in Sir Charles's judgment every statesman had, under existing conditions, to study the details of modern warfare, and he kept closely in touch with naval armament:

'On February 24th I suddenly went down to Portsmouth to go over the dockyard and see the ships building there, taking letters from Childers and from Sir Edward Reed to Admiral Sir Leopold McClintock, the Arctic explorer (Superintendent), and to Mr. Robinson, the Chief Constructor. I went over the _Inflexible_, the _Thunderer_, and the _Glatton_, which were lighted up for me. Noting the number of sets of engines, and the number of the separate watertight compartments of the _Inflexible_, I wrote: "All these extremely complicated arrangements are handed over to a captain, of whom ... is a favourable example, and to engineers who are denied their due rank in command."'

Nearly thirty years later the necessary reform which the last words indicate was carried out by Lord Fisher.

CHAPTER XVI

THE EASTERN QUESTION--TREATY OF SAN STEFANO AND CONGRESS OF BERLIN

At the beginning of 1878 Parliament was summoned a month earlier than usual to tranquillize public feeling--a result not thereby attained, for the Russians, now completely victorious, were but a short distance from Constantinople.

Sir Charles returned from Toulon, 'breakfasting with Gambetta on the 14th January,' and on the 15th delivered to his const.i.tuents the speech already quoted, which gave a summary of the events leading up to the war, his judgment of the facts as they existed at the time of his speaking being that the Government's whole policy was "isolated, undignified, inconsistent, unsafe." [Footnote: See p. 205]

"We stand alone, absolutely alone, in face of terms of peace which we dislike, but can't resist. Turkey is crushed, about whose integrity the Tory party raved. Russian influence will have risen and English influence fallen in the East. Greece, the anti-Russian friend of England, is not to gain. Servia and Montenegro, the tools of Russia, are to be rewarded. Bulgaria is to owe its freedom, not to Europe, but to Russia."

So much was accomplished fact. It had still to be decided how much farther Russia should be allowed to push her advantage. Upon this he said, speaking "as a European Liberal,"

'I agree with what the first Napoleon said, in those St. Helena days when he was acting Liberalism for the benefit of his historic character and of his line, that "it is necessary to set up a guaranteed kingdom, formed of Constantinople and its provinces, to serve as a barrier against Russia." The open question for discussion is whether the present Turkey serves the purpose....

'Were the choice between Russia at Constantinople and Turkey at Constantinople, I should prefer the latter. The Turkish is in ordinary times a less stifling despotism than the Russian....

'The Turks let any man go to any church and read any book, the Russians do not, and in such a position of power as Constantinople I should prefer the Turk if, as I do not think, the choice lay only there.'

Where else, then, did the choice lie? The answer is that Dilke, in his own words, "dreamed of a new Greece." He spoke of the lands then blighted by the Sultan's Government--of "rose-clad Roumelia and glorious Crete"--of countries held back by Turkish incompetence, that were by Nature incredibly rich--"the choicest parts of Europe, perhaps of the world."

"The Greek kingdom is a failure, we are told. Greece, liberated by the wise foresight of Mr. Canning, but left, on his ill-timed death, without Thessaly, Epirus, Crete, has been starved and shorn by the Great Powers. As once said Lafayette, "the greater part of Greece was left out of Greece." What kind of Greece is a Greece which does not include Lemnos, Lesbos, or Mitylene, Chios, Mount Olympus, Mount Ossa, and Mount Athos? Not only the larger part, but the most Greek part of Greece, was omitted from the h.e.l.lenic kingdom. Crete and the other islands, the coast of Thrace, and the Greek colony at Constantinople, are the Greek Greece indeed, for Continental Greece within the limits of the kingdom is by race half Slav and half Albanian. We must not, however, attach too much importance to this fact, for in all times the Greeks have been a little people, grafting themselves on to various barbaric stocks. Race is a small thing by the side of national spirit, and in national spirit the Greeks are as little Slav as the Italians are Teutonic. Even the corrupting influence of long slavery--and it was deep indeed--had not touched this spirit, and the very thieves and robbers of the hills of Greece made for themselves in Byron's days a glorious name in history. I do not think that Greece has failed. I believe in Greece, believe In the ultimate replacement of the Turkish State by powerful and progressive Greece, attached in friendship to France and England, her creators--an outpost of Western Europe in the East; and I think the day will come when even Homer's city may once more be Greek. Those who do not wish to see Slavonic claims pushed much farther than justice needs should speak their word on behalf of Greece."

From this ideal he never swerved, and the authority which he possessed in European politics helped to keep it present before the mind of Europe.

Greece knew her friend, and after his death the Munic.i.p.ality of Athens gave his name--_hodos Dilke_--to a fine street in the true mother city of h.e.l.las. [Footnote: "The name of Sir Charles Dilke is more highly prized in Greece than that of any living Englishman," wrote M. Zinopoulos, General Secretary to the Ministry of the Interior in Greece. "This feeling still survived in 1887, when we went to Athens," adds Sir Charles's note.] He never lived to see h.e.l.lenic government extend itself over Turkish fiefs, except in that poor strip of northern territory which, thanks greatly to his exertions, was secured for Greece in 1881. But before this memorial of him could be completed, while those who worked on it were still searching among his papers to reconst.i.tute the projects he had shaped, came the realization of some of his premonitions, and the end of Turkish sway in "the most Greek parts of Greece."

'It was a good speech so far as concerned the position of Russia, of Turkey, and of the Opposition, and in its protest against Manchester Doctrine and in favour of a broader view of foreign policy, but it proposed the annexation of Egypt, a view from which I soon afterwards drew back, and which I did not hold at the time at which it became popular some years later on.'

Upon the main issue which in 1878 lay before the mind of Europe, he was for a part.i.tion of the Turkish Empire, though upon condition of keeping Constantinople secured to the Turk. But as to the question of England's going to war, he asked:

"For what are we to fight? Against an extension of Russian boundaries in Armenia which will be slight, and which, if it were great, would be better met by an even greater extension of English territories in Egypt? Against 'the pa.s.sage of the Dardanelles'--which means in time of war its pa.s.sage if Russia can--a pa.s.sage which Russia would equally attempt if she could, but had not the right. Against this we are to fight without allies. Again, let us pray for peace. I will not describe what war must mean--your sons and daughters killed, or lying crippled amid horrors worse than death; the proceeds of your toil wrung from you by new taxes; the dearness of your children's bread. I have seen too much of war. ... No tongue can depict its horrors. ...

It is said that the const.i.tuencies are warlike, and that party wire- pullers think that war would be "a good card to play." I hope and believe that English const.i.tuencies would be warlike if real honour and real interests were at stake. If they are warlike now, it is that they know not war. Are those for war who know its face? ... The day may come when England will have to fight for her existence, but for Heaven's sake let us not commit the folly of plunging into war at a moment when all Europe would be hostile to our arms--not one Power allied to the English cause."

It seemed as if that folly were to be committed. When Parliament opened in January, a declaration of war was foreshadowed by the hint of a demand for funds to make "adequate preparation against some unexpected occurrence."

Nor was there any steady rallying point offered by the Opposition:

'January 17th was the day of the meeting of the House, the Radical Club Dinner having replaced our private Queen's Speech Dinner of 1877.

But the disorganization of the Liberal party at this moment was so complete that no Front Bench party was given on the night before Parliament met, and Liberal politicians, or such of them as were asked, had had to do their best to talk at a Tory house--Lady Stanhope's in Grosvenor Place--where I met Harcourt and some of the others. The situation in the debate on the Address was one which ought to have led to successful attack upon the Government. The Queen's Speech was neither of war nor of peace, but of perplexity and division, and gravely informed us that poor Turkey had not interfered with British interests. The discourses of the Ministers were peaceful in the Lower House, and warlike in the Upper. Money was to be asked for in the event of an "unexpected occurrence" happening.'

'Nothing, however, was made of the situation by the Opposition, and I felt more interest therefore for the moment in my proposed political reforms, in which I was on the point of a partial success, [Footnote: 'I introduced my two Bills of the previous year--both destined this year to pa.s.s, though one of them after amalgamation with a Conservative Bill--my Hours of Polling Bill and my Registration Bill.

I moved for my return, intended to facilitate my action in the direction of redistribution, and got my Select Committee promised me.'] and sheered off from the Eastern Question, with regard to which I felt that in Parliament at the moment I could do no good.'

The speech to his const.i.tuents had attracted much attention. Among the personal congratulations which he received he valued most highly those of a great diplomatist and friend, 'high praise from Sir William White.'

[Footnote: Sir William White (1821-1891): February 27th, 1875, British Agent and Consul-General in Servia; March 3rd, 1879, Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary at Bucharest, Roumania; April 18th, 1885, Envoy Extraordinary at Constantinople; October 11th, 1886, Special Amba.s.sador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary at Constantinople.] On January 17th he 'received a deputation of London merchants with regard to the Black Sea blockade.'

'On Friday the 18th I dined at Lady Waldegrave's to meet the old Strawberry Hill set--the Duke of Argyll, the d.u.c.h.ess of Manchester, Lord and Lady Granville, Harcourt, James, Ayrton, Lord William Hay, and Mr. and Mrs. Tom Hughes--and some people came in after dinner, of whom Sir J. Rose and his daughter (Mrs. Stanley Clarke) warmly congratulated me on my speech. There was a discussion between the Liberals and the d.u.c.h.ess of Manchester, who was in both camps, and Sir John Rose, who as a financier was the same, as to the reasons for Lord Carnarvon's absence from Lord Beaconsfield's Queen's Speech Dinner, but we could not get farther than to learn that "Dizzy had made it unpleasant for him. ..." [Footnote: 'Another matter as to which I was personally interested, though the others seemed hardly to have heard of it, was a communication which had been made to France about Egypt with regard to joint inquiry into the state of finances, a communication all but volunteered by us, and not, I thought, in the least necessary, but which was so strong in terms as to appear to shut the door in the future against any possibility of action on our part other than joint action with the French.']

'On Sat.u.r.day the 19th Mr. Gladstone sent Lefevre to me, and asked me not to raise the case of Greece at present, as he thought that a combined movement with regard to Greece might soon be made in the House of Commons with some chance of success.

'On the Sunday Drummond Wolff dined with me, very full of the intrigues to get rid of Lord Derby and Lord Carnarvon from the Conservative Front Bench, and very hopeful of success, for at this moment the Conservatives were so angry with their two peaceful men that they made no secret of their intention to force them out, and used freely to discuss the situation with the Liberals.

'On January 22nd I started an attempt to get up a Greek Committee, an attempt which was successful, for our little meeting of this day, of Fitzmaurice and Lefevre and myself, with the adhesion by letter of Lansdowne and of Rosebery, led to the private formation of a Committee, afterwards made public, and much enlarged, of which I made Lewis Sergeant secretary, and which was able to do much good in the course of the three next years. ...That night I dined with Mrs. Inwood Jones (Lady Morgan's niece), and met Mr. and Mrs. Stansfeld, Browning, Charles Villiers, Lady Hamilton Gordon, and another man whom I will not name, because I wish to mention that I received from him on that occasion a doc.u.ment relating to Greek affairs, from which I was afterwards able to show how badly our Government had treated Greece, but the origin of which I ought not to reveal.

'On January 23rd Evelyn Ashley, Chamberlain, and I had a meeting with regard to Greek matters, at which we drew up the public declaration to be made on behalf of the friends of Greece.

'On the next day, January 24th, a good many startling events occurred.

A War Ministry was formed at Athens; the vote of money was announced in the British Parliament. Lord Carnarvon resigned in the morning, and Lord Derby at night; but Lord Derby's resignation was for a time withdrawn.'

In 'the great debate' on Mr. Forster's motion against the vote of six millions sterling for 'adequate preparation'--a debate which opened on January 31st, and was prolonged to the second week in February--Sir Charles took part on the fourth day. Great interest attaches to this speech in view of all his later work:

'I pointed out that we spend normally on defence or war far more than any other Power: at that time twenty-five millions sterling at home and seventeen millions in India, or forty-two millions in all, swelled in that year by the extraordinary vote to forty-eight millions, while France and Germany spent much less. I was to return to this subject after many years, and when I wrote upon it in 1890, while the Indian expenditure stood at the same sum, the annual expenditure in England had risen to over thirty-eight millions, making the whole fifty-five, and with the rest of the Empire nearly fifty-seven millions sterling.'

A side-note adds: 'It is now (1905) vastly greater.'

As he was the first non-military politician to devote himself to the question of defence and to call public attention to the subject, so this question of wasteful expenditure always occupied his attention. He laid stress on the inadequate return received for naval and military outlay, not only on the popular ground that money was thus deflected from projects of internal reform, but pre-eminently because the nation in time of peace resents heavy defence expenditure, and he feared that the necessary money might not be forthcoming for that naval equipment which he held to be essential to our existence as a Great Power.

But the main burden of his complaint was that now when a Conference was proposed, and when England ought to have gone into the Conference with all the weight of a unanimous people, the bringing forward of a "sham war vote," which was a contradiction of the alleged desire to negotiate, had produced inevitable division of counsels. Before the debate closed came the rumour of an occupation of Constantinople by the Russians, and under the belief that the war vote might be needed in good earnest, Mr.

Forster's motion was withdrawn.

'On February 6th ... I dined with Lady Brett and went on to Mrs.

Brand's, and at the Speaker's House heard that the Russians had occupied a fort in the Constantinople lines. This lie got out the next day, and was universally believed; and after a panic in the City, Hartington decided, also in a panic, to make W. E. Forster drop the resolutions which he had brought forward at Hartington's request.

Hartington saw me, and told me this behind the Speaker's chair before questions. Within an hour after the withdrawal of the resolutions had been mentioned in the House the whole story had been blown into the air by the Russian Amba.s.sador.'