Chapter 22

Among these delights he retained his vigilance in political matters, and there was often need for it, since the German Government was now developing that habit of 'rattling its sword', and threatening its neighbours with war, which disquieted Europe for another forty years. The worst crisis came in 1875, when Morier heard on good authority that the military clique at Berlin were gaining ground, and seemed likely to persuade the Emperor William to force on a second war, expressly to prevent France recovering its strength. In general the credit for checking this sinister move is given to the Tsar; but English influences played a large part in the matter. Morier managed to catch the Crown Prince on his way south to Italy and had a long talk with him in the railway train. The Crown Prince was known to be a true lover of peace, but capable of being hoodwinked by Bismarck; once convinced that the danger was real (and he trusted Morier as he trusted no German in his entourage), he returned to Berlin and threw all his weight into the scale of peace. Queen Victoria also wrote from London; and, in face of a possible coalition against them, the Germans decided that it was wisest to abstain from all aggression.

A new period opened in his life when he left German courts, never to return officially, and became the responsible head of Her Majesty's Legation at the Portuguese Court. His five years spent at Lisbon cannot be counted as one of his most fruitful periods, despite 'the large settlement of African affairs', which Lord Granville tells us that Morier had suggested to his predecessors in Whitehall. For the big schemes which he planned he could get no continuous backing at home, either in political or commercial circles. For the petty routine England hardly needed a man of such outstanding ability. Of necessity his work consisted often in tedious investigation of claims advanced by individual Englishmen, whether they were suffering from money losses or from summary procedure at the hands of the Portuguese police. Of the diplomatic questions which arose many proved to be shadowy and unreal. Something could be done, even in remote Portugal, to improve Anglo-Russian relations by a minister who had friends in so many European capitals. The politics of Pio Nono and the Papal Curia often find an echo in his correspondence. Here, too, as elsewhere, the intrigues of Germany had to be watched, though Morier was sensible enough to discriminate between the deliberate policy of Bismarck and the manoeuvres of those whom he 'allowed to do what they liked and say what they liked--or rather to do what they thought _he_ would like done, and say what they thought _he_ would like said--and then suddenly sent them about their business to ponder in poverty and disgrace on the mutability of human affairs'. In a passage like this Morier's letters show that he could distinguish between a lion and his jackals, between 'policy' and 'intrigue'.

Had it not been for Germany and German suggestions, Portuguese politicians would perhaps have been free from the fears which loomed darkest on their horizon--the fears of an 'Iberian policy' which Spain was supposed to be pursuing. In reality the leading men at Madrid knew that they had little to gain by letting loose the superior Spanish army against Portugal and trying to form the whole peninsula into a single state. Morier, at any rate, made it clear that England would throw the whole weight of her power against such treatment of her oldest ally. But alarmist politicians were perpetually harping on this string, and Morier, in a letter written in 1876, compares them to 'children telling ghost-stories to one another who have got frightened at the sound of their own voices, and mistake the rattling of a mouse behind the wainscot for the tramping of legions on the march'.

To Morier it seemed that the important part of his work concerned South Africa, in which, at the time, Portugal and Great Britain were the European powers most interested. It was in 1877 that Sir Theophilus Shepstone annexed the Transvaal, and many people, in Europe and Africa, were talking as if this must lead to the expropriation of the Portuguese at Delagoa Bay. Morier himself was as far as possible from the imperialism which would ride rough-shod over a weaker neighbour. In fact, he pleaded strongly for British approval of the pride which Portugal felt in her traditions and of her desire to cling to what she had preserved from the past. Once break this down, he said, and we should see Portuguese dominions put up for auction, and England might not always prove to be the highest bidder. Friendly co-operation, joint development of railways, and commercial treaties commended themselves better to his judgement, and he was prepared to spend a large part even of his holidays in England in working out the details of such treaties. He studied the people among whom he was, and did his best to lead them gently towards reforms, whether of the slave-trade or other abuses, on lines which could win their sympathy. He appealed to his own Foreign Office to abstain from too many lectures, and to make the most of cases in which the Portuguese showed promise of better things. 'This diet of cold gruel', he says in 1878, 'must be occasionally supplemented by a cup of generous wine, or all intimacy must die out.' Again in 1880, he asks for a K.C.M.G. to be awarded to a Governor-General of Mozambique, who had done his best to observe English wishes in checking the slave-trade. 'Perpetual admonition', he says, 'and no sugar plums is bad policy'--a maxim too often neglected when our philanthropy outruns our discretion.

When Morier was promoted in 1881 to Madrid, he used the same tact and geniality to lighten the burden of his task. No seasoned diplomatist took the politics of Madrid too seriously. Though the political stage was bigger, it was often filled by actors as petty and grasping as those of Lisbon. The distribution to their own friends of the 'loaves and fishes' was, as Morier says, the one steady aim of all aspirants to power; and measures of reform, much needed in education, in commerce, in law, were doomed to sterility by the factiousness of the men who should have carried them out. In the absence of principles Morier had to study the strife of parties, and his correspondence gives us lively pictures of the eloquent Castelar, the champion of a visionary Republic, the harsh, domineering Romero y Robledo, at once the mainstay and the terror of his Conservative colleagues, and the cold, egotistic Liberal leader Sagasta, whose shrewdness in the manipulation of votes had always to be reckoned with. The constitution given in 1876 had entirely failed to establish Parliament on a democratic basis. For this the bureaucracy was responsible. The Home Office abused its powers shamelessly, and by the votes of its functionaries, and of those who hoped to receive its favours, it could always secure a big majority for the Government of the moment. For the three years which Morier spent at Madrid, he recounts surprising instances of the reversal of electoral verdicts within a short space of time.

The King was popular and deserved to be so, for his personal qualities of courage, intelligence, and public spirit; but his position was never secure. There was a bad tradition by which at intervals the army asserted its power and upset the constitution. Some intriguing general issued a _pronunciamiento_, the troops revolted, and the Central Government at Madrid, having no effective force and no moral ascendancy, gave way. Parliament had little stability. Cabinets rose and vanished again; the same eloquent but empty speeches were made, and the same abuses remained unchanged.

But before now a spark from Spain had set the Continent ablaze. The past had bequeathed some questions which, awkwardly handled, might cause explosions elsewhere, and it was well to know the character of those who had the key to the powder magazine. More than once Morier was approached on the delicate question of the admission of Spain to the council of the Great Powers. In Egypt, where so many foreign interests were involved, and where Great Britain suffered, in the 'eighties, from so many diplomatic intrigues, Spain might easily find an opening for her ambitions. She might advance the plea that the Suez Canal was the direct route to her colonies in the Philippines. Germany, for ulterior ends, was encouraging Spanish pretensions; but, to the British, Spain with its illiberal spirit scarcely seemed likely to prove a helpful fellow-worker. Morier had to try to convince Spanish ministers that Great Britain was their truer friend while refusing them what they asked for; and in such interviews he had to know his men and to touch the right chord in appealing to their prejudices or their patriotism. The English tenure of Gibraltar was also a perpetual offence to Spanish pride. Irresponsible journalists loved to expatiate on it when they had no more spicy subject to handle. On this, as on all questions affecting prestige only, Morier was tactful and patient. When they should come within the range of practical politics, he could take a different tone. But he knew that more serious dangers were arising in Morocco, where the weakness of the Sultan's rule was tempting European powers to intervene, and he laboured to maintain peace and goodwill not only between his own country and Spain, but also between Spain and France. The common accusation that the English are not 'good Europeans' was pre-eminently untrue in his case. He realized that the interests of all were bound up together, and used his influence, which soon became considerable, to remove all occasions of bitterness in the European family, being fully aware that at Berlin there was another active intelligence working by hidden channels to keep open every festering sore.

Morier was fertile in expedients when ministers consulted him, as we see notably on the occasion of King Alfonso's tour in 1883. Before the King started, the newspapers had been writing of it as a 'visit to Berlin', though it was intended to be a compliment to the heads of various states. To allay the sensitiveness of the French, Morier suggested to the Foreign Secretary that the King should make a point of visiting France first; but, owing to the ineptitude of President Grévy, this suggestion was rendered impracticable. When the King did visit Paris, after a sojourn at Berlin, where he received the usual compliment of being made titular colonel of a Prussian regiment, a terrible scene ensued by which Morier's sagacity was justified. The King was greeted with cries of 'à bas le Colonel d'Uhlans', and was hissed as he passed along the streets; only his personal tact and restraint saved the two Governments from an undignified squabble. He was able to give a lesson in deportment to his hosts and also to satisfy the resentful pride of his fellow-countrymen. The whole episode shows how individuals can control events when the masses can only become excited; kings and diplomats may still be the best mechanics to handle the complicated machinery on which peace or war depends. Alfonso XII died in November 1885, soon after Morier's departure for another post, but not before he had testified to the high esteem in which our Minister had been held in Spain.

From Madrid he might have passed to Berlin. The British Government had only one man fit to replace Lord Ampthill (Lord Odo Russell), who died in 1884. Inquiries were made in Berlin whether it was possible to employ Morier's great knowledge at the centre of European gravity, but Bismarck made it quite clear that such an appointment would be displeasing to his sovereign. It was believed by a friend and admirer of both men that, if Bismarck and Morier could have come to know one another, mutual respect and liking would have followed; but magnanimity towards an old enemy, or one whom he had ever believed to be such, was not a Bismarckian trait, and it is more probable that all Morier's efforts would have been thwarted by misrepresentation and malignity.

Instead he was sent to St. Petersburg, where he took up his duties as Ambassador in November 1885. Here he had to deal with bigger problems. The affray at Penjdeh, when the Russians attacked an Afgh[=a]n outpost and forcibly occupied the ground, had, after convulsing Europe, been settled by Mr. Gladstone's Government. Feeling did not subside for some years, but for the moment Asiatic questions were not so serious as the conflict of interests in the Balkan peninsula. The principality of Bulgaria created by the Congress of Berlin was the focus of the 'Eastern question'--that is, the question whether Russia, Austria, or a united Europe led by the Western powers, was to preside over the dissolution of Turkey. Bulgaria certainly owed its existence to Russian bayonets; in her cause Russian lives had been freely given; and this formed a real bond between the two nations, more lasting than the effect of Mr. Gladstone's speeches, to which English sentimentalists attached such importance. But the Bulgarians have often shown an obstinate tendency to go their own way, and their politicians were loath to be kept in Russian leading-strings. Their last act, in 1885, had been to annex the Turkish province of Eastern Roumelia without asking the consent of the Tsar. At the moment they could safely flout the Sultan of Turkey, their nominal suzerain; but diplomatists doubted whether they could, with equal safety, ignore the Treaty of Berlin and the wishes of their Russian protector. The path was full of pitfalls. The Austrian Government was on the watch to embarrass its great Slavonic rival; English statesmen were too anxious to humour Liberal sentiment as expressed at popular meetings; Russian agents on the spot committed indiscretions; Russian opinion at home suspected that Bulgaria was receiving encouragement elsewhere, and the air was full of rumours of war.

Across this unquiet stage may be seen to pass, in the lively letters which Morier sent home, the figures of potential and actual princes of Bulgaria, of whom only two deserve mention to-day. The first, Alexander of Battenberg, member of a family which enjoyed Queen Victoria's special favour, had been put forward at the Berlin Congress, and justified his choice in 1885 by repelling the Serbian Army and winning a victory at Slivnitza. He had won the attachment of his subjects but had incurred the hatred of the Tsar, and the tone of his speeches in 1886 offended Russian sentiment. Two years after Slivnitza, in face of intrigues and violence, he abandoned the contest and abdicated. The second is Ferdinand of Coburg, whose tortuous career, begun in 1887, only ended with the collapse of the Central Powers in 1918. He was put forward by Austria and supported by Stambuloff, the dictatorial chief of the Bulgarian ministry. For years the Russian Government refused to recognize him, and it was not till 1896 that he came to heel, at the bidding of Prince Lobanoff, and made public submission to the Tsar. But, first and last, he was only an astute adventurer of no little vanity and of colossal egotism, and such sympathies as he had for others beside himself went to Austria-Hungary, where he owned landed property, and had served in the army. He was also displeasing to orthodox Russia as a Roman Catholic, and in Morier's letters we see clearly the mistrust and contempt which Russians felt for him.

With an autocrat like Alexander III, secretive and obstinate, these personal questions became very serious. Ambitious generals might anticipate his wishes, Russian regiments might be on the march before the Ministers knew anything, and Europe might awake to find itself over the edge of the precipice.

Morier's own attitude can best be judged from the letters which he exchanged with Sir William White, our able ambassador to the Porte, who was frankly anti-Russian in his views. At first he put his trust in strict observance of the Treaty of Berlin, and wished that Prince Alexander would consent to restore the _status quo ante_ (i.e. before the change in Eastern Roumelia); but although a stout upholder of treaties, he admitted as a second basis for settlement 'les voeux des populations', on which the modern practice of plebiscites is founded. The peasants of Eastern Roumelia were clearly glad to transfer their allegiance from the Sultan to the Prince. Also the successes achieved by Prince Alexander in so soon welding together Bulgaria and Eastern Roumelia had to be recognized as altering the situation. In fact, Morier's position was nearer to that of 1919 than to the old traditions in vogue a century earlier, and would commend itself to most English Liberals. But, as an ambassador paid to watch over British interests, he was guided by expediency rather than by sentiment. These interests, he was convinced, were more vitally affected in Central Asia than in the Balkans. He believed that, if British statesmen would recognize Russia's peculiar position in Bulgaria, the advance of Russian outposts towards India might be stayed, and the two great powers might work together all along the line. But, to effect this, national jealousies must be allayed and an understanding established. Morier had to interpret at St. Petersburg speeches of English politicians, which often sounded more offensive there than in London: he also had to watch and report to London the unofficial doings and sayings of the aggressive Pan-Slavist party, who might at any moment undermine the Ministry.

Foreign policy was in the hands of de Giers, an enlightened, pacific minister, who lacked, however, the courage to face his master's prejudices and had little authority over many of his own subordinates. De Nelidoff, at Constantinople, dared even to make himself the centre of diplomatic intrigue directed against the policy of his chief. Still less was de Giers able to control the strong Pan-Slavist influences which ruled in the Church, the Home Office, and the Press. Morier gives interesting portraits of Pobedonóstsev, the bigoted procurator of the Holy Synod, of Tolstoy the reactionary Minister of the Interior, of Katkoff the truculent editor of the _Moscow Gazette_. These were the most notable of the men who flouted the authority, thwarted the work, and undermined the position of the Tsar's nominal adviser, and often they carried the day in determining the attitude of the Tsar himself. Yet Morier was bound by his own honesty and by the traditions of British diplomacy to do business with de Giers alone, to receive the assurances of one who was being betrayed by his own ambassadors, to make his protests to one who could not effectively remedy the grievances. His difficulty was increased by de Giers's manner--'when getting on to slippery ground he has a remarkable power of speaking only half intelligibly and swallowing a large proportion of his words'. Morier was often conscious that he was building on sand; but in quiet weather it was possible to stem the flood for a while even with dikes of sand. Perhaps a little later the tide of Balkan troubles might be setting in another direction and the danger might be past. In Russia, where so much was incalculable, it was wise to make the most of such help as presented itself. Meanwhile the Russian Ambassador in London, Baron de Staäl, co-operated as loyally with Lord Salisbury as Morier with de Giers; and thanks to their diplomatic skill, rough places were smoothed away and bases of agreement were found. In the course of 1887, the smouldering fires of Anglo-Russian antagonism died down, and Russia adopted a waiting attitude in Bulgaria.

But this happy result was not attained till after Asiatic problems had given rise to serious alarms. The worst moment was in July 1886, when the Tsar suddenly proclaimed, contrary to the Treaty of Berlin, that the port of Batum was closed to foreign trade. His point of view was characteristic. His father had, autocratically, expressed in 1878 his intention to open the port; this had been done, and it had proved in practice a failure; as a purely administrative act, he (Alexander III) now declared the port closed, _et tout était dit_. But naturally foreign merchants resented the injury to their trade, and insisted on the sanctity of treaties. The Berlin Government, as usual, left to Great Britain all the odium incurred in making a protest, and the other Continental powers were equally silent. Morier asserted the British case so strongly that he roused even de Giers to vehemence; but when he saw that protests would avail nothing, he advised his Government to cut the loss and to avoid further bitterness. He reminded them that Russia had given way in Bulgaria, where the British point of view had prevailed, and that they must not expect her to submit to a second diplomatic defeat. Besides, a quarrel between Russia and Great Britain would only benefit a third party, ready enough to avail himself of it. Harmony was preserved, but the risk of a breach had been very great, and feeling was not improved by Russian activity at Sebastopol, where the Pan-Slavists were acclaiming the new birth of the Black Sea fleet. The death of Katkoff in 1887, and of Tolstoy in 1889, with the advent of more Liberal ministers, strengthened de Giers's hands; and during his later years, though he often needed great vigilance and tact, Morier was not troubled by any crisis so severe.

The Grand Cross of the Bath, which he received in 1887, was a fitting reward for the services he had rendered to England and to Europe in this anxious time. He never lost heart or despaired of a peaceful solution.

At bottom, as he often repeats, Russia was not ready for big adventures--was, in fact, still suffering from lassitude after the war of 1878, 'like an electric eel which, having in one great shock given off all its electricity, burrows in the mud to refill its battery, desiring nothing less than to come again too soon into contact with organic tissue'.

Apart from _la haute politique_ and the conflicts between governments, Morier's own compatriots were giving him plenty to do. A few instances will illustrate the variety of the applications which reached the Embassy. Captain Beaufort requests a special permit to visit Kars and its famous fortifications. Mr. Littledale asks for a Russian guide to help him in an ascent of Mount Ararat. Father Perry, S.J. (the Jesuits were specially obnoxious to the Holy Synod), wishes to observe a solar eclipse only visible in Russia. Another traveller, Mr. Fairman, is summarily arrested near Rovno where the Tsar's visit is making the police unduly brisk for the moment. Morier procures him a prompt apology; but, not content with this, the Englishman now thinks himself entitled to a personal audience with the Tsar and the gift of some decoration to compensate him, which suggestion draws a curt reply from the much-vexed ambassador. But he was always ready to help a genuine explorer, whether it was Mr. de Windt in Trans-Caucasia or Captain Wiggins in the Kara Sea. To the latter, in his efforts to establish trade between Great Britain and Siberia by the Yenisei river, Morier lent most valuable aid, and he is proud to report the concessions which he won for our merchants in a new field of commerce.