e high-minded Aberdeen striving against hope to
play a steadfast and pacific part in a scene so sinister, among actors
of such equivocal or crooked purpose, recalls nothing so much as the
memorable picture long ago of Maria Theresa beset and baffled by her
Kaunitzes and Thuguts, Catherines, Josephs, great Fredericks, Grand
Turks, and wringing her hands over the consummation of an iniquitous
policy to which the perversity of man and circumstance had driven her.

As the proceedings in the cabinet dragged on through the winter, new
projects were mooted. The ground was shifted to what Lord Stratford had
called a comprehensive war upon Russia. Some of the cabinet began to aim
at a transformation of the policy. It was suggested that the moment
should be seized to obtain not merely the observance by Russia of her
treaty obligations to Turkey, but a revision and modification of the
treaties in Turkish interests. This is the well-known way in which, ever
since the world called civilised began, the area of conflict is widened.
If one plea is eluded or is satisfied, another is found; and so the
peacemakers are at each step checkmated by the warmakers. The Powers of
central Europe were immovable, with motives, interests, designs, each of
their own. Austria had reasons of irresistible force for keeping peace
with Russia. A single victory of Russia in Austrian Poland would enable
her to march direct upon Vienna. Austria had no secure alliance with
Prussia; on the contrary, her German rival opposed her on this question,
and was incessantly canvassing the smaller states against her in respect
to it. The French Emperor was said to be revolving a plan for bribing
Austria out of Northern Italy by the gift of Moldavia and Wallachia. All
was intricate and tortuous. The view in Downing Street soon expanded to
this, that it would be a shame to England and to France unless the Czar
were made not only to abandon his demands, and to evacuate the
Principalities, but also to renounce some of the stipulations in former
treaties on which his present arrogant pretensions had been formed. In
the future, the guarantees for the Christian races should be sought in a
treaty not between Sultan and Czar, but between the Sultan and the five
Powers.

BRITISH OPINION

Men in the cabinet and men out of it, some with ardour, others with
acquiescence, approved of war for different reasons, interchangeable in
controversial value and cu