552 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 



the growth has been to a great extent unde- 

 signed, and even involuntary, though we persist 

 iu ascribing to deliberate and far-reaching ambi- 

 tion on the part of Russia that which we know, on 

 our own part, is to be ascribed to nothing of the 

 kind. That either England or Russia, having 

 reached the foot of the Himalayas by extending 

 her empire over regions unoccupied by any civil- 

 ized nation, will proceed to scale the Himalayas 

 for the purpose of attacking another great Euro- 

 pean power, is as little to be presumed as it is to 

 be presumed that the tide will scale the cliff be- 

 cause it has raced in over a sandy flat. The 

 movements of Russia farther west are assignable 

 to an obvious cause, and one totally unconnected 

 with any imaginable designs on India. Every 

 great and growing power is led by a natural im- 

 pulse to make its way to an open sea. England 

 would hardly submit to being corked up in the 

 Dardanelles in order to gratify the jealous appre- 

 hensions of Russia, and she cannot expect that 

 Russia will complacently submit to being corked 

 up in order to gratify hers. Suppose Russia, like 

 ourselves, obtains the full freedom of the Medi- 

 terranean. All diplomatists and Russophobists 

 hold up their hands in horror at the thought. 

 But what is the specific evil which would ensue ? 

 Why is Sebastopol, or, if it came to that, Constan- 

 tinople, so much more likely to be dangerous 

 than Brest ? If Russia is provoked, she will very 

 likely give us trouble in India ; but why should 

 she be provoked? 



It is assumed that the Suez Canal would be 

 available in time of war. This is a point on 

 which, of course, we cannot presume to form an 

 opinion ; but it lies so near the root of the whole 

 question that it is to be hoped a deliberate 

 opinion will be formed. To occupy Egypt in de- 

 fiance of the wrath and future hostility of France, 

 to go to the expense of creating armaments pow- 

 erful enough to command the eastern Mediterra- 

 nean, and then to see the object for which all 

 this had been done practically annihilated by a 

 few shillings' worth of dynamite or the scuttling 

 of an old ship, would be mortifying in the extreme. 



Already our nervous anxiety about the canal 

 has brought an avalanche of calamity on the 

 world. To avoid this war with all its horrors, 

 and the danger of further conflagration which it 

 involves, it was necessary that from the outset 

 separate interests should be suppressed, and that 

 the crisis should be treated as a European one, to 

 be dealt witli by the common councils of Europe. 

 But hardly had it arrived when England avowed 

 her intention of separately securing her own in- 



terests, and pounced upon the Suez Canal. This 

 was the signal that a wreck had commenced, 

 and that everybody must look out for himself. 

 Everybody did look out for himself; every- 

 body made his own game. Cordial cooperation 

 thenceforth was impossible, and the inevitable re- 

 sult was this war — a war which puts back civili- 

 zation. Lord Derby has said that of British in- 

 terests the greatest is peace, and what Lord Derby 

 says is always wise. If we ask why Lord Derby 

 did not make a sincere and resolute effort to pre- 

 serve the greatest of British interests by enforc- 

 ing in common with Russia and the other powers 

 the reforms to which Turkey was pledged, and 

 which, if vigorously pressed, she would most cer- 

 tainly have conceded, the*answer will partly be 

 that this obvious line of policy was crossed by 

 the alarm about the Suez Canal and the interests 

 of England in the East. 



Egypt no doubt differs greatly in some respects 

 from India. But in Egypt, as in India,' you would 

 have a dominant and a subject race. You would 

 have a foreign government ruling, on arbitrary 

 principles, over people divided from the officials 

 by a wide social gulf. The reflex action on the 

 character of the imperial country would probably 

 be much the same. 



In the course of empire, one act of aggran- 

 dizement leads to another. The conquest of a 

 small territory round the British factories in India 

 has led to the conquest of the whole country. 

 This, again, leads to the occupation of Egypt. 

 India being in the hands of England, no one will 

 deny that the occupation of Egypt, in case of a 

 break-up of the Turkish Empire, presents itself 

 as a natural question for consideration. But the 

 advocates of the measure must allow it to be 

 fairly discussed, and not think to settle it by im- 

 pugning the patriotism of their opponents, though, 

 as we have already admitted, the nation is just 

 now in a mood in which such appeals are likely 

 to tell. If the party of moderation is inferior to 

 the party of aggrandizement in anything, it is not 

 in love of the country, but in power of discerning 

 her true interests. It does not seem to itself to 

 be advocating a policy of weakness. It holds 

 that, as we said before, the strength of England 

 is in herself, and that she derives more real 

 strength from one of her own counties than she 

 does from all her foreign dependencies put to- 

 gether. It holds, in fact, that acquisition of ter- 

 ritory which is not self-defending is extension, not 

 of strength, but of weakness ; and in proof of 

 the fact it may cite, among other things, the per- 

 petual complaints of its opponents that the em- 



