1887

EUROPE REVISITED.

507

if a conference could meet and rearrange the map of Europe on some such lines as I have ventured to sketch, it is not impossible that Russia might accept the position and war might be averted; but if war is inevitable, then the thing most to be desired is finality, and it may well be that, if the issue was fairly put before the English electorate, Will you permit Russia to seize the capital of the Ottoman Empire, to destroy your trade with the Levant, and demoralise the conditions of your rule in India-will you permit all this or, on the other hand, spend, if necessary, twenty millions sterling in a final effort, which will certainly be successful, to settle the Eastern question?-it seems reasonable to suppose that a nation so proud of its achievements and traditions as Great Britain would reply to this with no uncertain voice. The fighting material, the brave Turkish peasant, the cheapest and the best exemplar of that form of cheap labour,' is ready to England's hand in the Asiatic provinces of Turkey. That is an invaluable recruiting ground. What alone is wanted is British gold and British officers. The issue itself is of the utmost gravity and is pressing for instant solution. That the growth of Austrian influences on the Continent would be distasteful to that school of English politicians whose memories carry them back to the national struggle of Kossuth, is nearly inevitable; but less biassed judgments will by no means recognise in the Austria of to-day the foe of national liberties, and in any case the Eastern question has got to be settled, not by references to ancient history, but by our generation and for our generation. It therefore remains that we should act without prejudice and in full view of the present crisis, our judgment unwarped by the history of periods that antedated constitutionalism in Austria, and the consequent rapid growth of Liberal principles.

The present position of Europe is the gravest scandal that attaches to the nineteenth century. Originating very largely in the critical condition of Turkey, it has now come to this-that 'industrial development' and the 'progress of civilisation' are mere terms used to disguise the fact that the Continent has become one vast Camp. It would be absurd to contend that any instantaneous cure for such a condition of things as this lies ready to our hand, that it can all be remedied at once by a process of map-making, and by a few statesmen sitting round a table. On the contrary, it is nearly inevitable that a bloody war must cut the Gordian knot. But it is the business of statesmen to act, and to fight at the right moment, which moment appears to be the present; so that war, if war there must needs be, may be a final war, and the outcome be such that thereafter the peace of Europe and the liberties of nations may no longer be menaced from day to day by the forces of an irresponsible despotism. Probably it will be objected to this settlement of the Eastern troubles, that it is a reckoning without the host; that Turkey

would never agree to a copartnership of the kind proposed, and that the past relations of the Porte with Austria render concerted action impossible. Historically, no doubt, Austria represents a Christian union against the Moslem Power; but to-day Austria and Turkey are being brought together by forces which ignore history. Common dangers and common misfortunes have done much to reconcile historic enemies, and I believe that a promised release from present difficulties, coming to Turkey in the guise of federation with Austria, would not be unpalatable to His Imperial Majesty the Sultan.

Financially the Porte is hopelessly embarrassed. Her estimated revenue is less than sixteen millions sterling, which has to provide the annual interest on a vast debt held abroad, and also to support the position of a first-class military power, a power too surrounded, strained, and really besieged by anxious and hungry neighbours. The co-operation of Austria will alone remedy all this. Brigandage would be promptly repressed, so that the Church lands of the interior could again be cultivated and become of commercial value. At present they are unsaleable wastes. These vakoufs include the most fertile portions of Turkey, are of immense extent, and would with any guarantee of secured possession be readily saleable for a hundred millions sterling. Any such sum would redeem the foreign debt of Turkey, enable her to perfect her defences, and make of her a selfsupporting and valuable ally. To the propertied classes at Constantinople the advent of Austria would be extremely welcome. Today the palaces of the Bosphorus are falling into decay, and land fronting on that magnificent waterway, which under different conditions would be invaluable for industrial purposes, is unused and unsaleable, because credit is exhausted and no one will invest in view of existing political uncertainties. A little further west, since the absorption of Bosnia by Austria, rents have trebled in Serajevo and other towns, all prices have risen proportionately, while the loan rate for money has fallen nearly a half. This condition of things is being closely marked by the impecunious Pashas, who now recognise that, granted political stability, the district from Pera to Therapia would, from its beauty and its wealth of local advantages, be more valuable than any area of equal dimensions in Europe.

Then also this joint administration, Turkey supported by Austria, would solve the religious difficulty. According to the Mahommedan faith, no inch of territory may be yielded to the infidel; but there is nothing which precludes the Sultan from accepting an eligible tenant, who would respect His Majesty's position as an historic Suzerain. Of more force I think is the alleged objection that Hungary would be alarmed at so large a numerical addition to the present preponderance of the Slavic element in the Austrian Empire. But it is hardly necessary to point out that there is all the difference in the world between an Empire, and a federal union with an

emperor as its nominal head. Slavic affinities have recently so entirely failed to reconcile Bulgaria to the certainty of perpetual interference from St. Petersburg that, granted conditions of strict Home Rule, the ethnical objection will hardly prove a barrier to the acquiescence of Hungary.

I have briefly and imperfectly outlined in these pages that solution of the Eastern question which alone seems possible in view of the crisis at hand, the solution also which will make of the Queen's Indian subjects at all times a willing soldiery. It is also the solution which affords the best prospect of finality, which is most compatible with national obligations, with the balance of power, and the peace of Europe during the coming century. If, as it appears to me, Austria has during the past few years come within the right lines to settle this Home Rule question for all mankind by the development of a federal system, do not the Great Powers owe it to Austria to recognise in this way her liberal and constitutional efforts? It may well be that, not much later, the federal principle will have to obtain universally, and that those nations which reject it at the dictation of despotic sovereigns, or of not less despotic ministers, will have to be coerced into accepting it, because only thus can the world be safeguarded from the awful devastation of modern warfare. It will be a strange instance, indeed, of the irony, and the irresistible justice of Fate, if Russia's recent creation, for her own selfish ends, of the Danubian Principalities is destined to culminate in a result so magnificent as this.

SALAR JUNG.

POSTSCRIPT.

Since writing the above I have read with great interest M. Emile de Laveleye's book, The Balkan Peninsula. It is to me a matter of great satisfaction to find that the distinguished Belgian economist has anticipated me in his very careful yet very pronounced estimate of the importance to the whole of Europe of the growth of the Federal system in the Austro-Hungarian Empire. M. de Laveleye believes that the increasing tendency everywhere to Home Rule, a tendency till a few years since either ignored or ridiculed, is to be attributed less to Nationalist aspirations and to race jealousies than to the more unsentimental requirements of modern material progress.

The Magyars (says M. de Laveleye) must not expect to Magyarise the Croats, Servia and Bosnia being so near to these, neither will these assimilate Wallachia, which is neighboured by young Roumania.

How dangerous it will be to Austria if, when the defence of the Empire has to be undertaken, these nationalities within the country itself are found to be hostile

1 London: T. Fisher Unwin.

VOL. XXII.-No. 128.

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to one another! I saw in Transylvania the blackened ruins of Hungarian castles burned in 1867 by the Wallachian peasantry. The legislature of Pesth had suppressed the autonomy of Transylvania, which dated from the tenth century, just as the English Parliament has destroyed the autonomy of Ireland. England now wishes to re-establish this, but what perils will follow from the bitter memories of the past! Look, on the other hand, at the Swiss canton of the Tessin; it is wholly Italian. Italy is united, free, glorious, even prosperous; and yet the Italians of the Tessin do not desire to be united with Italy, they prefer to remain a Canton of the Swiss Federation. The Croats, the Servians, and the Wallachs, may all become equally devoted to the crown of St. Stephen, but it is only by federation that this result can be obtained.

The world is now the theatre of two active movements the one centripetal, the other centrifugal. The first, the fusion of races, results from propinquity and from like customs and laws; the second, however, is the result of the determination to decentralise, which originates in the desire of nations, or provinces, or towns, to undertake the responsibilities of self-government.

S. J.

1887

511

'THE WINTER'S TALE:

THE stage-history of this play is not so long or so full of incident as the stage-history of the great tragedies, about which volumes might be written. To trace the career of Hamlet, Macbeth, Othello, and King Lear on the stage would be, in effect, to write a history of English tragic acting. Even the more popular comedies, such as The Merchant of Venice or As You Like It, would afford matter for anecdotic annals of almost unlimited length. The Winter's Tale has been less popular, and consequently its record is less eventful; but it has had its fair share of vicissitudes. It suffered more than most of its fellows at the hands of the self-complacent eighteenth century, and even the nineteenth century has taken no small liberties with it.

Of The Winter's Tale before the Restoration little is known. It was seen by Dr. Simon Forman at the Globe on May 15, 1611, and it is plausibly argued that this must have been during its first run. Again, on August 19, 1623, Sir Henry Herbert, then Master of the Revels, enters in his notebook:

For the king's players. An olde playe called Winter's Tale, formerly allowed of by Sir George Bucke, and likewyse by mee on Mr. Hemmings his worde that there was nothing profane added or reformed, thogh the allowed booke was missinge.

The allowed booke' was no doubt destroyed when the Globe Theatre was burned down in 1613. In the following January (1623) Sir Henry Herbert notes that The Winter's Tale was performed at Whitehall by the King's company, 'in the kings absence.' Ten years later we find the following entry: 'The Winter's Tale was acted on thursday night at Court, the 14 Janua. 1633, by the K. players, and likt.' It thus appears that the comedy did not, like so many of its fellows, absolutely vanish from the stage, and even that it was fairly popular.

At the Restoration, however, its popularity was forgotten, and eighty years passed before it was taken from the shelf. At last, on January 15, 1741, it was revived by Giffard at Goodman's Fields, the East End theatre to which, some nine months later, all London