iance.--GLADSTONE (_to Granville_, 1878).

I

Of 1878 Mr. Gladstone spoke as "a tumultuous year." In January, after a
fierce struggle of five months in the Balkan passes, the Russian forces
overcame the Turkish defence, and by the end of January had entered
Adrianople and reached the Sea of Marmora. Here at San Stefano a treaty of
peace was made at the beginning of March. The last word of the eastern
question, as Lord Derby said in those days, is this: Who is to have
Constantinople? No great Power would be willing to see it in the hands of
any other great Power, no small Power could hold it at all, and as for
joint occupation, all such expedients were both dangerous and
doubtful.(348) This last word now seemed to be writing itself in capital
letters. Russia sent the treaty to the Powers, with the admission that
portions of it affecting the general interests of Europe could not be
regarded as definitive without general concurrence. A treaty between
Russian and Turk within the zone of Constantinople and almost in sight of
St. Sophia, opened a new and startling vista to English politicians.
Powerful journalists, supposed to be much in the confidence of ministers,
declared that if peace were ultimately concluded on anything like the
terms proposed, then beyond all doubt the outworks of our empire were
gone, and speedy ruin must begin. About such a situation there had been
but one opinion among our statesmen for many generations. Until Mr.
Gladstone, "all men held that such a state of things [as the Russians at
Constantinople] would bring the British empire face to face with
ruin."(349)

(M185) Before the treaty of San Stefano, an angry panic broke out in parts
of England. None of the stated terms of British neutrality were violated
either by the treaty or its preliminaries, but even when no Russian force
was within forty miles of Constantinople, the cabinet asked for a vote of
six millions (January), and a few days later the British fleet passed the
Dardanelles. Two years earlier, Mr. Gladstone had wished that the fleet
should go to Constantinople as a coercive demonstration against the Porte;
now, in 1878, the despatch of the fleet was a demonstration against
Russia, who had done alone the work of emancipation that in Mr.
Gladstone's view should have been done, and might have been done without
war by that concert of the Powers from which England had drawn back. The
concert of the Powers that our withdrawal had para