But for how much

the tying of her hands while her rivals gradually divided between themselves the still unparcelled spheres of penetration, and acquired over weaker Powers like Spain and Turkey a paramount influence. Nothing indeed threatened her in her own solid central position in Europe. That she could always have held. longer, if she had sat still to be isolated, would even Austria have cared to have her for an ally? She retains the Austrian connection against the hostility of most of the Slavs and all the Magyars only by the tie of selfinterest. She thought she saw some symptoms of an intrigue to detach or "debauch" even Austria from the Triple Alliance, in such demonstrations as the visit of the Eighty Club to the reactionary Magyar Independence Party, and later at the Ischl meeting. She had also to remember that the heir to the Dual Crown has pronounced Slavonic sympathies. She therefore decided that if she was to avoid total isolation, she must render to her "brilliant second" Austria some signal services on the "duelling ground" of the Balkans. Hence her intervention in St. Petersburg. Her success on that occasion, which English critics describe as an attempt to dominate Europe, was in her view only a demonstration that Germany cannot be "isolated" or "penned in" or reduced to impotence. It meant that there is one alliance which cannot be "debauched."

That, with such impartiality as the present writer can command, is the case for and against the two groups of Powers whose rivalry has made the "hush" in Europe. Each has some right on its side; both have been guilty of disloyalty to the ideal of a European concert. But, indeed, to talk of right and wrong in such debates is to misuse terms. Where the

fate of Moors and Bosnians and Persians is at stake only the Moors and Bosnians and Persians have rights; the Powers have interests. There has been played before us a complicated game in which each side may with some reason accuse the other of striving for predominance. One cannot fairly say that either party has acted simply on the defensive. Each has openly striven for self-aggrandizement. The balance of power at which we profess to be aiming, means obviously a balance which will give to the members of our coalition the opportunities for the particular act of expansion which for the moment seems tempting. In order to see the situation clearly it is not necessary to attempt to assign or to measure responsibilities. Nothing ever begins in diplomacy. Every attack is a reprisal, ever manœuvre defensive. Before each new wrong there was always some older wrong. Before Delcassé there was Bismarck. But without attempting to judge those who created the Triple Entente, one may take note of its effects upon Europe. It has riven such concert as ever existed. It has rendered impossible the discussing of any question upon its merits. No mediator, no arbiter, no neutral is left in any quarrel. It has divided Europe into two camps whose intercourse consists in the measuring of each other's armaments.

When we turn from the general European consequences to a survey of our own interests, the case is hardly better. Lord Rosebery, almost alone in England, predicted disaster when the entente cordiale was concluded. There is happily much to be set on the credit side of the account. We are at last emerging from our insularity, and we are forging with the French the happiest social and intellectual bonds. There is even with Russia the commencement of a like

process. For the rest it is from the Imperialist standpoint a gain that our hold on Egypt is now virtually unchallenged, and the City rejoices at the expansion of our highly speculative investments in Russia. But the first test of any alliance is the degree of security which it brings with it. For of an "alliance" we must learn to speak. The term is now employed on occasion by the Temps, and no one doubts that, whether or not a formal military convention exists, it is understood, and from time to time arranged, that in certain contingencies our forces will act together. Nor can the significance of the fact that General French and Admiral Fisher accompanied the King to Reval, and held there formal consultations with Russian generals and admirals, be misunderstood. The "league of peace" is a league of armed forces. A triple alliance multiplies threefold the risks which each Power incurs. It adds nothing to their security unless the combination is so solid or so strong that no rival is likely to challenge it. But unluckily, as it stands at present, the Triple Entente is markedly weaker on land than the Triple Alliance. France has to face the permanent fact of her numerical inferiority to Germany. Russia with all her millions is anarchic, bankrupt, morally divided, and subject to a ruling class which lacks both the science and the sense of responsibiity of the German military caste. In a general war, it would avail little that we held the command of the seas. Our allies could not certainly secure the victory on land. We indeed might suffer little, but in the final settlement our inability to strike home would none the less leave the last word to the stronger Continental coalition. It is this corrosive calculation which ruins the entente from the military standpoint. Its members take unequal risks. We indeed stake our prestige, France and

Russia their territorial integrity. Hence the uneasy sense in France that the alliance is unreal and incomplete, until we elect to become a military power. Hence too the continual uncertainty whether in any real crisis Russia will stand by her partners. One may doubt whether in making the French alliance Russia aimed at much beyond the access which it gave her to the French money-market. She retains ber traditional respect for the German legions beyond her almost undefended frontier. Our accession to the alliance makes that frontier no safer. The league, in short, is close enough to increase our anxieties and commitments-it might twice at least in the last four years have involved us in war. It makes us a factor in every Continental quarrel. Yet it gives us nothing approaching the security which Germany and Austria enjoy. We are, of course, absolutely secure in our own island while we retain our

naval supremacy. But in the struggle for Continental predominance we have not at our command the instrument which would enable us to intervene with effect. For a Continental policy we need the Continental arm. The school of critics who point out that this struggle, if we are really embarked seriously upon it, may involve us, as it involved us in the days of Marlborough and Wellington, in land warfare, have an unanswerable case. But if the British public really understood that it had to choose between conscription and the Triple Entente, it would certainly prefer to return to its "splendid isolation." There are before us, while we continue our present course, two possibilities. We may take our new ambitions seriously, and in that case we shall sooner or later be forced to acquire an army. Or we may muddle on, in and out of Europe, with an alliance which is no alliance, always arming, always forcing others

warlike Persia. She holds nearly all the other northern towns, and she has pushed southwards to Urmiah. The next phase may be a blundering suicidal resistance from the Persians themselves led by their Caucasian allies. That will be the pretext for a still more extended military occupation, during which we shall all forget to ask when the new Parliament is going to meet. Russia, in short, will make of her "sphere of influence" a real dependency, and we, flnding Teheran under her control, will be forced to do the like in ours. That is certainly the plan which commends itself to the Russian reaction, and it is for the mo ment in the ascendant. But the consequences of such a development would not be felt by the Persians alone. The Turks would bitterly resent and might even resist a prolonged Russian military occupation of Northern Persia. Already their dread of this has caused them to look with distrust upon us as the allies of Russia. They are no longer in the mood which caused them last autumn to talk of concluding a defensive alliance with Great Britain. Their inclinations are veering again towards the German connection, partly out of resentment for the comments of the Times and the attitude of some members of our Embassy staff during their internal crisis, but still more because they realize that the ties which bind us to Russia are stronger than the sympathies which link us to them. Here once more is a situation with which German diplomacy may, if it chooses, play. An emissary of the Persian Nationalities was told (as I have learned from his own lips) by a high personage who received him in Berlin, that Great Britain and Russia "will not be allowed"

to occupy Persia. One need not dwell too literally on that promise; but it suggests possibilities if Germany were to back a Turkish protest. That dis

agreeable development Russia can avoid only by maintaining a close friendship with Germany.

The pivot on which the whole fate of the Triple Entente turns is in short the character of the Russian Government. It has perfected the art of trading on its own weaknesses. Precisely because it is so nearly bankrupt, France dare not break the bond or cease to lend money. Precisely because we do not trust its good faith, we dare not insist on too much loyalty. For we know that the bureaucracy and the Court are always in delicate equipoise. The function of the first is to make treaties and of the second to break them. We know that if we press too hard on the letter of the Persian Agreement, the reply will be a heavy lurch in Russian policy towards the rival German camp. We never know in an emergency whether the decision will lie with the Tsar, or with a Minister whom we think that we can within certain limits trust. A more risky or less profitable partnership it would be hard to conceive. It was prematurely concluded. Had the French and ourselves but cared to wait a few months in April 1906, when Count Witte concluded the ninety million loan in London and Paris (the first Russian loan ever floated in London since the Crimean War), it is probable that Russia might have been to-day a Constitutional country. For a refusal on our part to grant any loan until the Duma (then about to meet) had endorsed it, would have placed in the hands of the Liberal majority a weapon with which they might have extorted the concession of a responsible Parliamentary Ministry. That chance has gone, and to-day, competing at every turn with Germany, it is no longer easy for us to spare any influence to throw into the popular scale. We look on unmoved, so far at least as our officially minded

press is concerned, at all the abominations of the reign of terror over which M. Stolypin presides. It is even possible for the Times to announce that it "reveres" the Tsar, whose complicity in the worst excesses of the "Black Hundreds" has been exposed in its columns. Our entry into the Continental system has in six brief years brought us to an almost Bismarckian cynicism. We are courting the Tsar, much as the Kaiser courted Abdul Hamid. A Power which embarks on a struggle for predominance in Europe must be prepared to dissemble its respect for liberty and to grasp any hand that may ald it. We are not the stronger for our alliances. We dare no longer speak our own minds without the fear of offending the Russian Tsar; we dare no longer implement the pledges we have given to the Persians, lest perchance some Court intrigue at Tsarköe Selo should ruin what we call our influence.

And yet, it will be said, there were always at Berlin those restless ambitions, that readiness to resort to force, which have made half the anxieties of Europe. Were we not to combat

them, and even to combine against them? One may admit a justification for a passive and defensive combination, but not for a league whose basis was the penetration of Morocco and the partition of Persia. One may admit the ideal of a Liberal group and a league of peace, but had official Russia a natural place in such a group? But the first consequence of any combination, even a sincerely defensive combination, is that it deepens all the latent antagonism which it seeks to meet, and sanctifies an aggressive temper by allowing it to assume the pose of defence. The Junker spirit, which we sought to oppose, is not eternal. By our policy of "penning-in" we have perpetuated its ascendency in Germany. We have The English Review.

helped it to enlist the middle class in its Navy League. We have helped it to crush the working class. Only because of the general sense of danger was Prince Bülow able to summon the whole patriotism of the German people to sink its party differences in an Imperialist "bloc." We have silenced every voice which might in Germany have seconded our plea for the reduction of armaments. Even the Social Democrats laugh at the patent insincerity of a pacifism which seeks, by professing disinterested aims, to snatch an advantage for itself amid a struggle for predominance. The end of this gigantic rivalry is beyond the range of our vision. It may subside by the exhaustion even of the stronger Powers. It may collapse through the difficulty, amid the general demoralization, of trusting the good faith of any ally. It may perhaps provoke the proletarian revolt to which Lord Rosebery looks forward. But the first step to any remedy is to realize that it has come about by no inevitable destiny, but by the deliberate will of individuals. Our own statesmen have done much to intensify it. We cannot with consistency deplore the fact that we are "rattling into barbarism," and in the same breath declare, without distinction of party, our blind faith in the two Foreign Secretaries who have involved us in the process. Two principles are at issue. We claim the right to dispose in our own way of certain spheres of influence, which we assign to ourselves and our allies. Germany is determined that nothing shall happen in the world without her consent. The only way to reconcile these principles is to work on the assumption that nothing ought to happen in the world without the consent of every civilized Power. We can end the war of groups only by creating a real concert.

H. N. Brailsford.