to make clear to all our readers our reasons for believing the precise contrary. He is sure that on military grounds the Germans will march through Belgium; he is sure that England will not resist them if they do. We absolutely deny the soundness of his military assumption, and we propose to expose the weakness of the grounds of his political one. We intend, in either case, to state fully the reasons for our belief.1

This part of the subject that of relative military power, and of the courses of action which are, as a consequence of it, open to us-is of such paramount importance, and needs such full statement, that we cannot follow him into those deeply interesting, but may we say it without offence?-slightly gossipy records of past politics which have enlivened his pages.

We must, however, once and for all, enter our protest against the claim of the writer to appeal to those who desire to put aside "personal and party prejudice." Whether or not he "who drives fat oxen should himself be fat," this much at least is certain, that the appeal to men to judge, on higher than party grounds, questions in which party passions have been largely involved, can only justly be made by a man who first takes the beam out of his own eye. In our life, among all the passionate perversions of facts, of which we have had enough and more than enough of late years, we have never read assumptions as to the past more grotesquely unfair than those which are thus paraded under the banner of impartial history. For a man with the past political record of Sir Charles Dilke, who has now avowed the authorship of these papers, to

attempt, when writing anonymously, and at a time when his identity was really concealed, to pass for an impartial historian, weighing, with the fair balance and even weight of one looking only to his country's good, the foreign policy of the past, seems to us, to put it mildly, to be a not very ingenuous proceeding. But in every historical statement, still more in every carefully considered omission, the cloven foot of the bitter partisan peeps out. It is made worse, not better, by the well-calculated compliment to Lord Salisbury's recent policy, so worded as to make it appear as though Lord Salisbury had done little more than adopt Lord Rosebery's line of action in foreign affairs, so that it matters now little which party is in office, so far as foreign politics are concerned. There is something strangely cynical in this boundless faith in the short memory of the English public.

If it were not for the rapidity with which now new electors come on to the register, so that continually we have, in fact, to deal with a Pharaoh who "knows not Joseph," we should hardly care to correct these pseudo-historical fictions. The present writer had some opportunities for judging what were the feelings which swayed the electorate in several London constituencies at the two last elections. He has always disbelieved in that great expression of feeling being due to some abstract "Conservatism" among Londoners. He knows, at least, of clubs of working men who deliberately met and discussed the question how they should vote, who showed a knowledge of the history of our recent foreign and colonial politics that would startle this happy novelist

out of his self-complacent assumption that he may write a partisan pamphlet, and tell the constituencies that it is exceptionally impartial and patriotic history. The vote of London was given under many influences, of course; but, more than anything else, it meant that that very foreign policy of Mr Gladstone's Government which, if we were to accept Sir Charles Dilke's account of it, was all-wise and all-successful, had been tried in the balance and found wanting. Rightly or wrongly, Londoners believed that it had degraded us before Europe; had sacrificed priceless lives and countless treasure always to be "too late "; that it had alienated from us nearly, if not quite, every Power in Europe, and had kept us for years in one continual simmer of anticipated war; that it had been at once feeble and restless; that it had cringed before Russia, before Germany, and before France, on specific and well-quotable occasions, yet had alarmed them all as to our intentions and our purposes. How ingeniously all these facts have been dropped out of sight by a suppressio veri here and a suggestio falsi there, it would take a space almost equal to Sir Charles Dilke's own articles to point out. We can only select, as we go on, a few of the most glaring and conspicuous cases, which will at least suggest the caution with which these political reminiscences are to be received.

It has pleased Sir Charles Dilke to fix the date when that reign of force began in Europe, which, as he truly says, now so determines facts, that every politician of the present day who desires to be more than a vestryman, must understand the conditions under which armies are marshalled for the field. We allege distinctly that he has

fixed that date solely, we will not say for the purposes of party, but blinded to the plainest historical facts by that spirit of partisanship which, after years of party life, has become to him a second nature, from which he can no more emancipate himself than he can leap from his own shadow. He says that England, at the Berlin Congress, contributed to set up that reign of force because we "virtually annexed an island which had not been conquered," and that from that moment the reign of force began. We say that England did contribute her share to the setting up the reign of force in Europe, but that it was not in the year 1878, when, with the full assent of the Sultan of Turkey, we occupied Cyprus. The reign of blood and iron was not established by paying good gold that might have enabled reforms to be carried out, and by actually improving the administration of a Turkish island. No! It was in the month of February 1864 that England, after through the mouth of Lord Kimberley, then Lord Woodhouse she had persuaded the Danes to surrender to Prussian aggression the first line of their defences and the fortress of Rendsburg, expressly on the ground that, till that was done, she could afford no material assistance, drew back and left the Danish monarchy to be dismembered avowedly by sheer force.

Nothing in all diplomacy is recorded with more precision than the fact that then force was set up as the rule of right. The Berlin lawyers expressly recorded their opinion after the war that Prussia and Austria were the sole lawful possessors of the Duchies, because the only original right to them was that of the reigning King of Denmark, who, as a consequence

of the conquest, had transferred by treaty all his rights in them to the conquering States.1

a

Of the part which England played in those transactions, the father of the present ambassador in Berlin, Sir A. Malet, has, in his Overthrow of the Germanic Confederation,' recorded his view in terms of such vigour as diplomatist rarely permits himself. He has shown conclusively that England did lead the Danes to suppose that armed assistance would be offered by her, even if she stood alone. It was, in fact, certain that she would not stand alone. Austria knew well that Prussia was then preparing her overthrow, and she was therefore only waiting for a signal from us to abandon the artificial alliance into which she had been forced. The French Emperor was only sulking because we had refused to join him in his proposed European Congress. The feeling in France in behalf of the Danes would have been too strong to be long resisted. Sweden with her gallant little army was ready to join us at once. All that was needed was the facing of a momentary danger of enormous apparent magnitude.

We have always believed that, in a military sense, the danger was apparent only. We speak on the evidence of some of the best trained English soldiers, who were actually present at the struggle, when we say that we believe that, had even such a force as we could then have sent to Denmark been joined to the Danish and Swedish armies, positions could in that most peculiar country have been taken up where, protected by the guns of our fleets, the united army, all of excellent quality, could have defied

the utmost efforts of the AustroPrussian forces to break down their resistance. It needed only a few weeks of boldly facing the risk then, to have broken down the first avowed effort at setting up the law of force in Europe.

We are far from saying that we now wish all the history of the past undone. We are by no means sure that the formation of a United Germany in the centre of Europe, by whatever means it has been brought about, has not been the event of our time which in the long-run will most tend to the happiness of the human race. But that England then, for the first time, shrank back from redeeming her virtually pledged word in the presence of mere force, and that she did so under a mistaken estimate of her danger, we are firmly convinced. We believe that then Prussia, despite her breech-loaders, which she had not tried in war, and with an army-organisation which, inaugurated only four years before, was not as yet complete, would have evaded the struggle, knowing well the dangers to which in a short time she would have been exposed.

What Sir Alexander Malet does not record, but what is nevertheless a matter of history, is that the great question on which the whole future of European history, "of the position of European politics," for at least a century, of the "balance of European power" was to depend, was settled at a certain Cabinet Council in London. Then for the first-not for the last time the Sibyl presented herself to the responsible statesmen of England, offering for a price, not, as she did to Tarquin, merely the books which should foretell the future,

VOL. CXLII.-NO. DCCCLXI.

I

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but ready at their bidding to change the very course of history. fore that Cabinet Council, Lord Palmerston and Lord Russell had been conscious of the absolute obligation which lay upon England to redeem words which, taken in their natural meaning by those to whom they were addressed, were now pleaded by Denmark as binding us to support her. They had actually ordered Sir Alfred Horsford to prepare the scheme for an English army to be landed on the shores of Denmark, though for the moment we should have had alone to face two of the great Powers of the Continent. But when the Cabinet Council broke up, Sir Alfred Horsford heard no more of any warlike proposals.

Who had carried the decision of the Council in the teeth of two such statesmen ? Who had succeeded in persuading an English Cabinet to make itself responsible for the true inauguration of the reign of Blood and Iron? Who had triumphed so far over all the past traditions of English policy? Who had set the ball a-rolling which, with rapid rush, was to lead on to the "overthrow of the Germanic Confederation," to the annexation of Alsace-Lorraine, to the creation of that life of war in peace-time which now lies like a blight on all the nations of the Continent?

It has not needed that the Queen's secrets should be betrayed in order that it should be matter of notoriety that in that Cabinet meeting, though other influences affected the question, and though other members of the Cabinet were strongly in favour of a peace policy, that which decided it was the overmastering eloquence of Mr Glad

stone.

It is not therefore surprising that a Radical statesman who up

to the last associated himself with the very latest phases of what Mr Bright has lately called "Mr Gladstone's many turnings of his coat," should desire to forget that very noteworthy date of February 1864, and should desire to transfer to the Congress of Berlin the responsibility for that change in English politics and in the international law of Europe which was then inaugurated. It is not unnatural, we say, that he should "desire to make this change. But, seeing that all that we have here written is known to Sir Charles Dilke as well as it is to us, with what face, when he thus changes some of the best known pages of history in accordance with partisan desires, can he address himself "to those, if there be such in these days, who are free from party prejudice, from prejudice personal and national-to those, in short, who try to see things as they really are"? That is certainly what we wish to do, as far as we can; but we are warned by the example of the Reviewer against protesting too much.

It is by no means only with a view to the question of the correct date of the origin of the modern reign of force that we have referred to the story of the Danish war. The chief purpose for which we recall it to mind will appear fully after we have dealt with a very curious confession, accompanied, as we do not think but absolutely know, by an enormous historical error of fact, of the gravest possible consequence.

"If," says Sir Charles Dilke, "I have sometimes fallen foul of those whom I look upon as belonging to the Jingo school of 1878, it is because I doubt their wisdom. Of their viction; and it is only of their patriotism I have a profound conmethods that I complain, believing

as I do that the inflated language of 1878 was a mere insult to our intelligence, and that the occupation of Cyprus was a blunder calculated to divert the country from the penitential consideration of its own real military weakness, and of the true ways in which that weakness should be remedied. Nevertheless I hate to contend with them, because I feel all the time that upon the essential points we are in real agreement namely, that we are living in a fool's paradise; that we are not in a military position, in spite of the enormous sums that we have been spending, to defend the empire against attack. 'Fortnightly Review,' June, pp. 815,

816.

Now there is a good deal here which suggests food for reflection. To begin with, the word "Jingo" is one of extremely doubtful acceptation. It was originally invented by Mr Bradlaugh, and made its first appearance, under his auspices, in a letter which appeared in the 'Daily News,' in which he said that a certain race of people had recently come to be known "whom I call Jingoes." The word was eagerly caught at, at the time, by Mr Gladstone's followers, because there existed, independently of party, a widespread feeling of patriotic appreciation of the position which, under Lord Beaconsfield's guidance, England had assumed in Europe, and it was necessary, for party purposes, to pour contempt upon that feeling.

In all such popular movements there are necessarily elements of vulgarity mixed, and the music hall song which was popular at the time expressed undoubtedly the vulgar side of the feeling in the

words

"For we don't want to fight,
But, by Jingo, if we do,
We've got the ships, we've got the men,
We've got the money too."

Shortly afterwards Sir William

Vernon Harcourt, at Oxford, fully explained what he and his friends meant by flinging the expression from them in opinion. He began "Jingoes" at those who differed by saying, "Do you want to know who the Jingoes are? I will tell you who they are. And then, using that ample vituperative vocabulary with which he is supplied, he proceeded to represent a character in which everything that was contemptible in point of brains, loathsome in point of vice, repulsive in manners, was mingled in a well-chosen mass of offensiveness.

From this time onwards, therefore, the word served two uses, different in degree but similar in kind, and both of them invaluable. In the first place, the name was of a meaning sufficiently uncertain to prevent it, in its apparent use, from being too manifestly abusive for the purposes of ordinary conversation. "Oh, you are a Jingo!" was in 1880 the ready reply to any one who thought that Mr Gladstone was a man capable of human error, or that Lord Beaconsfield might occasionally slide, by accident, into conduct which was neither that of a fool nor of a knave. To all who so far in either respect transgressed the party creed of the passing hour, the expression was so used, no matter what their antecedents might have been. It was intended to hint, without asserting, that it would necessarily follow that the person so addressed was probably an habitual frequenter of the lowest music-halls in London, and that it was quite an open point whether, properly speaking, all that Sir William Vernon Harcourt had said of him was not true.

Thus the word was delightful alike in the universal sweep with which it could be flung, in its deliberate and essential insolence