little Servia and her backers ourselves to the fact that, out of court. There only re- brutal as it is, Austria, from mained the treaty violation. her point of view, has a case. Well, time and opportunism She has a settled policy with would heal that sore-as long regard to the Serb races, as this "conference," behind which, in a word, is, "come to which Europe in its irresolu- us, or take the consequences. tion has entrenched itself, was Austria cannot afford to have only a registering committee, this sore of Serb sentimental it did not matter to Aehren- prejudices always irritating, thal whether it took place or and, in her brutal manner, not. His little deal with she intends to cut it out for Turkey has modified the raison ever and a day. She has, as d'être of the conference. He she thinks, found the golden could therefore settle with opportunity to effect this end, Servia when the weather and it must be admitted that became warmer. We do not for a moment wish to defend Aehrenthal. We think that Austrian diplomacy, as exploited by him, has been brutal and uncompromising in the extreme. Neither has it been straightforward. But there is not much evidence in the history of diplomacy upon which to base hope for straightforward dealing. We must not blind Aehrenthal, though he has used a sledgehammer, has hewn out his policy with great skill. And all said and done, in whatever light Austrian policy is viewed, it must be admitted that the Powers signatory to the Berlin Treaty made it possible. Austria cannot justly be blamed that the representatives of these Powers could not see thirty years ahead of their time. EUROPE'S RESPONSIBILITY. Now we come to the more delicate question of Europe's considerable responsibilities in the present crisis. Those of Russia are very great. All through this affair Servia has responded to advice from Russia. Russia is presumed to be working with reciprocal intention with England. Russia has deliberately, and England has indirectly, encouraged Servia to make this show of armed resistance to the Dual Monarchy. Yet neither Power, nor the other two Powers associated with Russia and England, have made any attempt to put that pressure upon the Dual Monarchy which alone will deter her from forcing Servia to her knees. Nothing will be gained by wrapping up a statement of the present situation in diplomatic language. Austria has seen through the feebleness of Russia and the supineness of British diplomacy. Unless Servia, by the time almost that the printing-ink on these lines is dry, has opened direct negotiations with Vienna, the Dual Monarchy will insist, under threat of arms, that Servia renounces all her pretensions and comes in, penitent and submissive, to Aehrenthal's fold. Servia will have "to eat dirt," as the Eastern saying has it, or take the consequences. Not a soldier will move in Russia, not a white ensign in the Mediterranean, to save Servia from this indignity. Baron von Aehrenthal knows this, and he has known it all the time. We see, therefore, the pathetic picture of a weak European state forced into capitulation to a greater, in spite of the fact that it was encouraged in its claims by the might of Europe to hold out. We see the edifying consummation of von Aehrenthal's brutal policy, simply because he had realised from the first that, now that Russia was feeble, no one would make it his business to fight about Servia. Servia has traded on the bombast of Europe, Aehrenthal on the weakness. Aehrenthal has consequently won. THE PASSING OF SERVIA. There is little more to be said. It is just possible that such a situation may arise that Servia can bear to eat no more dirt, and in sheer desperation may throw herself against her mammoth neighbour. But this is not likely. The great step was the issue of the note to the great Powers, in which Servia renounced all the claims she had been advertising for the past three months. Now she has brought herself to do this, the rest may be found easy. But the honour of the great Powers is not a whit enhanced by the attitude they have shown towards Servia. It is said in the Belgrade papers, with more truth than the editors realise, that "for Servia the great Powers do not exist." The Servians would have done well to have recognised this before the present crisis. Bulgaria realised it years ago. It was upon this very assumption that she shaped her in ternal policy, when Servia was wasting her energy in the struggle to find a dynasty suited to her peculiar temperament. Unless we are very much mistaken, Servia will shortly bow to the inevitable. She will never forgive Russia the part she has played during the past few months. She will end her short hysterical independence as & tolerated dependant of the Dual Monarchy. Everything has been against her. The Treaty of Berlin gave her a geographical position that was impossible. Heredity has not brought to her people those characteristics which go to make a solid nation. Her sentimental belief in Russia and pan-Slavism has not saved her from the influence of the German magnet. The subtle forces of gravity cannot be combated by sentiment alone. The echo of the Treaty of Portsmouth is heard in the Balkans to-day. MUSINGS WITHOUT METHOD. THE ART OF THE VICTORIAN ERA THE QUEEN'S JOURNAL THE scholars whose fortune it will be fifty or a hundred years hence to write the history of the Victorian era will not be hampered by lack of material. They will not be driven, like many historians of to-day, to conjecture and a vague surmise. The springs of public action, the motives of kings and statesmen, will be laid bare before them. They will not be hampered at every step by gaps in the argument; they will not be compelled to reconstruct important events from a chance hint given here and there. Contrast for a moment what we know of Queen Elizabeth with what is already discovered of Queen Victoria. The records of the earlier reign are scanty and scattered. No faithful hand kept and garnered them, and despite our modern methods of research the portrait of our first great Queen is traced by the hand of tradition. In far other guise does Victoria slip from the past upon the canvas of all time. Letters and Journals confirm the judgment of memory, and give life and colour to the official records. The Correspondence, published more than a year ago, revealed something of the debt which England and the Empire owe to their Queen, and the impression is deepened by every addition to our know THE INSTINCTS OF ledge. Lord Esher, in a lecture given not long since at the Royal Institution, drew aside still farther the veil of secrecy. He told us that there were treasured among the archives at Windsor, not merely a thousand volumes of Correspondence, but the Journal which the Queen kept vigilantly throughout her long and busy life. When, therefore, the moment of publication, which is not yet, has arrived, there will be found the material of a complete record, such as we have not of any period in the world's history. Meanwhile Lord Esher is permitted to print some extracts from the Queen's Journal, and every line of these extracts intensifies what we already know of her service and character. No monarch ever cherished a loftier sense of duty. Even from her childhood, the Queen determined to learn only such lessons as would help her in the task of government. Three weeks before her accession to the throne she confided these reflections to her note-book: "To-day is my eighteenth birthday! How old! and yet how far I am in being what I should be. I shall from this day take the firm resolution to study with renewed assiduity, to keep my attention well fixed upon what I am about, and to strive to become every day less trifling and more fit for what, if Heaven wills it, I'm sometime to be." The words are simple enough in their sincerity, and the Queen kept the promise thus devoutly made to herself with an unfailing loyalty. She was always striving to be fit for her high office, and doubtless in her own wise modesty she seemed always to fall short. But from beginning to end her sense of responsibility never dwindled. It was in no idle vanity that she spoke of "my Ministers" and "my country." She believed with all the ardour of an ardent temperament that she was called by some divine power to rule the destinies of England, and this belief strengthened her purpose in youth as in age. At the same time, she did not disdain the advice of her Ministers. If two courses of action presented themselves she never chose one without trying and testing both, and she gladly went to her friends and advisers for counsel and sympathy. Not long after her accession she conferred an order upon Lord Durham, and this is how in her Journal she describes the ceremony. "I knighted him with the sword of state," she writes, "which is so enormously heavy that Lord Melbourne was obliged to hold it for me, and I only inclined it." That might be taken for a symbol of the earlier years of her reign. The support was Melbourne's, it is true, but it was the Queen who gave the inclination to the sword of state. The more we are told of Queen Victoria, the more we As admire the intense concentration of her nature. She did not use the Throne as a stepping-stone to pleasure, to art, or to science. She was no dilettante, professing an interest in subjects which she did not understand. If she liked and appreciated many things which lay beyond her sphere, she clearly saw their relative unimportance to her, and passed them by for the daily toil of governance. a ruler, indeed, she surpassed all her contemporaries. She attained with the years a habit of authority to which none other could aspire. Her natural gift for statesmanship was marvellously increased by the duties that were thrust upon her. At home and abroad she held a unique position. Her mastery of foreign affairs persuaded the reluctant Bismarck to call her the greatest statesman in Europe; and Gladstone, never a favoured Minister, confessed, after a long experience of her policy, that "the aggregate of direct influence nominally exercised by the Sovereign upon the councils and proceedings of her Ministers" was very great. How was it that she reached so lofty a pinnacle of influence? How was it that she controlled even the most fiercely democratic of her advisers? Much she owed, as has been said, to her natural gifts of perception and industry. As the goal of sovereignty was always clear before her, so she toiled after it with tireless zeal. There was nothing that happened within the borders of her kingdom of which she was not cognisant. She read every despatch; she discussed every appointment; and thus the last detail of administration was revealed to her. Lord Esher is certainly right in describing that which she exercised as influence, not power. She did not often initiate a policy in the course of her long reign. Never did she dismiss a Ministry, as William IV. dismissed Lord Melbourne's in 1834, for no better reason than that she was tired of it. On the other hand, no policy was framed, no Ministry was formed, without her influence. That influence, in truth, was felt in every corner of her government, and always for good. And her And her courage was as great as her discretion. If she did not love war, she did not fear it, and she had a perfect trust that the cause of her country would be triumphant. Nor was her trust merely instinctive. It was based upon an unbroken experience. Her Ministers came and went, in accordance with the popular vote. She remained, the fixed head of our Empire, gathering the accumulated wisdom of men and Ministries. In other words, she was a great governor, not because she possessed discursive talents or read the newest books from the circulating library, but be- . cause she studied without rest and without fatigue the arts of government. This may seem a commonplace. Unhappily it is nearer a paradox. Though our kings are chosen on the sound principle of heredity, our VOL. CLXXXV.—NO. MCXXII. In too Ministers win their position by all kinds of irrelevant advertising. A trick of Demagogy, a successful book, a triumph in the law-courts-any one of these appears a fair equipment for an English Minister. the scramble for preferment, notoriety counts for more than a real and purposed fitness for office. Government, it is assumed, is a work which the talented amateur can perform without training and without dismay. Ministers are often like those sanguine persons who think that through the medium of the daily press they can add a hundred a-year (or more) to their income without detriment to their previous employment. Patriotism might suggest a finer humility, but it is not in the House of Commons, where one man is as good as another, that we must seek humility or patriotism. The present Government, for instance, does not lack talent. If its members had pursued each his own profession with the same zest he has given to politics, they would certainly have achieved success. They prefer to practise in simple ignorance the arts of government. They are pleased that the glamour of office should cling about them. They delight in the pomp and circumstance of high-sounding names. They give one another their titles as though they were seriously performing a national duty. And all the while it is their object not to govern but to please. With feverish anxiety they cling to their posts, and care not what 2 Q |