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SEVENTH SERIES
VOLUME XXIX.

} No. 3200-Nov. 4, 1905.

FROM BEGINNING
Vol. CCXLVII.

CONTENTS.

1.

II.

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V.

VI.

VII.

The New Alliance. By Herbert Paul

NINETEENTH CENTURY AND AFTER 259
The Picturesque Side of Trafalgar. A Centenary Study. By
W. H. Fitchett
CORNHILL MAGAZINE 267
Peter's Mother. Chapter XII. By Mrs. Henry de la Pasture.

Sir Thomas Browne. By Daniel Johnston

A Visit to Baku. By the Earl of Ronaldshay. NATIONAL REVIEW 297
Mr. Sampson's Courtship. By Charles Lee

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LONGMAN'S MAGAZINE 303
ZINE
"Stones of Caen": A Study in Monosyllables. By Dorothy
Horace Smith

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MACMILLAN'S MAGAZINE

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289

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OUTLOOK 313 SPECTATOR 316

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THE NEW ALLIANCE.

The ups and downs of political life have often baffled the most ingenious calculations, as Bolingbroke was not the first to remark. The sudden conclusion of the war in the East, and the renewal of the Anglo-Japanese Alliance, have certainly done something, how much it is difficult to say, towards giving a moribund Government a fresh lease of life. It is true that the leaders of the Opposition accept on this point the policy of the Cabinet, and have no fault to find with it. But their approval was reserved until the Russian fleet had been destroyed, and the form of statesmanship which waits upon events, though sometimes inevitable, and in this case perfectly justifiable, loses with the risk of discredit the chance of triumph. Had Japan been defeated by Russia, Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman and Mr. Asquith, if they could not say "We told you so," could at least have said, "We have nothing to do with it." This natural reserve is often as patriotic as it is prudent. For no one outside the Cabinet, and perhaps not everyone inside it, can fully estimate the forces which control foreign affairs. I have never been one of those who thought that the relations of this country with her neighbors, either in Europe or in Asia, could be altogether removed from the sphere of party. Burke's celebrated definition certainly covers them. "Party is a body of men united for promoting by their joint endeavors the national interest upon some particular principle in which they are all agreed." But then (and it is a big but) those who attack the foreign policy of a Government must be clearly persuaded in their own minds that they know enough to condemn it. If there be any reasonable doubt, they should give the

benefit to men who know more than they do. Cases may of course arise, as, for example, Lord Beaconsfield's defence of Turkey, when Burke's "particular principle in which they are all agreed" admits with Liberals of no compromise or doubt. Had "splendid isolation," the avoidance of all alliances, been an article of the Liberal faith, like the right of the Sultan's Christian subjects to freedom, all other arguments would have had to give way. The conclusion of the Japanese Treaty in 1902 raised no such general doctrine, and grave indeed would have been the mistake of opposing it. Against its renewal now no one in England has a word to say.

Three years ago things were very different, and the Foreign Secretary is entitled to the credit of his foresight. When we remember that he also negotiated the Treaty with France, we must consider that he is what the late Mr. Rhodes would have called a valuable asset to the Government. There are indeed two Lord Lansdownes. There is Lord Lansdowne the Retaliationist, the Big Revolver Man, producing in the House of Lords a neat little bundle of fly-blown fallacies, which many boys in the first hundred at Eton could refute without difficulty before breakfast. There is also the accomplished diplomatist, watching with a keen eye for every opportunity to combine the protection of British interests with the maintenance of peace. This combination is the real value of the new Alliance, and to Lord Lansdowne belongs the honor of making it before Japan had become one of the great powers of the world. Entre les aveugles leborgne est roi. It is not among his own colleagues that Lord Lansdowne has any reason to fear competition.

But in tracing the connection of England and Japan we must go a little further back. It was the late Lord Elgin who made the first treaty with Japan in the year 1858, when the feudal system still prevailed there. That was a commercial arrangement only, though it had important consequences, for it introduced Japan to the civilization of the West. When Lord Rosebery was at the Foreign Office in 1894, he took an equally significant step of a different kind by abolishing the capitulations, and recognizing the jurisdiction of the Japanese courts over British subjects in return for freedom of travel and trade. After the war with China Lord Rosebery, being then Prime Minister, took a still more decisive course. He refused to join the combination of European Powers which under Russia's influence prevented Japan from acquiring Korea as the result of her victories over China. From that time Japan has regarded England as her friend, and therefore both parties, if that matters, are entitled to claim a share in securing her friendship. Lord Lansdowne, however, is the real author of the policy which rests upon Anglo-Japanese co-operation in the East, and if the Government went out of office to-morrow, he at least would have no cause for repentance. It is not likely that his colleagues, always excepting the Prime Minister, had much to do with the business. There are Liberals who would not be at all sorry to see Lord Lansdowne remain at the Foreign Office, whatever the result of the next General Election, if only he were a Free Trader. One need not be a Nipponomaniac, one need not exclaim "Almost thou persuadest me to be a heathen" at the sight of a Japanese Plenipotentiary in a picture paper, to feel the importance of this new understanding. Seldom, perhaps never, in the history of the world, has any

power displayed so suddenly and unexpectedly such singular aptitude for diplomacy and for war. The war speaks for itself. The Russian army is demoralized, and the Russian navy is gone. The diplomatic victory may seem to be with Russia. But that is a delusion. Inasmuch as popular rejoicings over the peace are forbidden in Russia, there is at least some color for the theory that Nicholas the Second, a very inferior edition of Nicholas the First, desired a continuance of the war. God forgive him if he did. The horrors of modern warfare are only weakened by rhetorical descriptions. Mr. Maurice Baring's With the Russians in Manchuria is more effective in its severe restraint than any amount of agonizing detail. Three or four pages of it, the only pages which deal with the subject, are enough to show the immensity of torture which peace has spared.

The sole credit for peace belongs to the Japanese Government, who proved themselves as wise and prudent as they were generous and humane. Το fight for money until there was no money left to fight for would have injured both Powers, and involved enormous cost. As it is, Japan has raised herself to a position which a couple of years ago would have appeared the wildest of dreams. Half a convict island, even though it be the less icy half, may not seem very magnificent. But there is Port Arthur; there is Dalny; there is Korea. The Russians are to clear, bag and baggage, out of Manchuria, and Japan has taken her place as the paramount Power in China. If Charles Pearson were alive, he would have a good deal to say about the Yellow Peril. Lord Lansdowne has taken the more practical course of recognizing accomplished facts, and even anticipating them. That the alliance was the cause of the peace is too broad a statement to be accurate.

Lord Lansdowne would not have made one a condition of the other. Yet, when so much is put down to the President of the United States, Englishmen may be pardoned for reflecting that nations are more apt to consult their allies than mere strangers. If the President brought the belligerents together, it may well be that the British Government prevented the renewal of the war. An alliance on equal terms with the first naval Power in the world is, even in the flush of victory, a considerable achievement for Japan. The treaty of 1902 was limited and specific in scope. The treaty of 1905 is much wider and more comprehensive. Just half a century ago the Cabinet of Lord Palmerston decided to continue a war with Russia for the purpose of regulating the number of Russian ships in the Black Sea. Such at least, was the ostensible reason for breaking off the Conference of Vienna. The real reason was Louis Napoleon's dread of his own troops if they came home without taking Sebastopol. Happily the Mikado had no such fears, and has set an example of magnanimity to Christian Sovereigns. His troops, by land and sea, have won victories enough and to spare. His ally, though not a party to the conflict, was able to exert a pacific influence all the stronger for being disinterested. The great French scholar, M. Victor Bérard, in his popular work, The Russian Empire and the Czardom, makes a peculiarly unfortunate prediction. "The war over," he says, "Manchuria recovered or lost, the Dalai-Lama under the hand of the Czar will be the best instrument of the Russo-Japanese alliance, or of the Russian revenge, of which one can foretell, without being a great prophet, that England will pay the cost." Prophets, great or small, are apt to go wrong, but they seldom go quite so wrong as that. The expedition to Thibet might be compared, for the

practical advantages which have accrued from it, with the good old Duke of York's march of ten thousand men up the hill and down again. But the alliance of Japan is with England, not with Russia, and it is Russia who has to pay the bill. That the consequence predicted by M. Bérard might have followed if there had been no treaty with England is likely enough. That is just one of the contingencies against which statesmen guard, and Lord Lansdowne has guarded. Alliances, like hypotheses, are not to be multiplied. Other things being equal, perfect freedom of action is a good thing in itself. But England has never been able to ignore the position of Russia in the East. A Russian invasion of Afghanistan, for instance, has for the last thirty years been recognized by both parties in England as necessitating immediate war. It was the intrusion of Russia in China, and her evident determination to remain there, which led to the war just concluded. Common hostility to Russia is an insufficient and undesirable ground of agreement. As Mr. Pitt said, to regard one country as the natural enemy of another is weak and childish. But, since there are now three great Eastern Powers, the joint action of two is the best security for peace in the absence of complete harmony among the three. That is not an unapproachable ideal. The most Liberal newspaper in Russia justifies Lord Lansdowne by lamenting that its country has lost the chance taken by England. It may well be that the British alliance with Japan would, under quite conceivable conditions, have renewed and strengthened the understanding between France and Russia in a manner not altogether agreeable to ourselves. But here, again, Lord Lansdowne has provided against untoward events by the Anglo-French Agreement. Not for many years has

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