Clarksville weekly chronicle. (Clarksville, Tenn.) 1873-1890, 1878-06-29
EUROPE IN CONFERENCE.

The terms of peace are the concern
of the belligerents and of no other
powers" This was some months
ago the disdainful answer of the
Russian Government to the demand
of England that the preliminaries of
peace should be submitted to a con-
ference of those powers which had
been contracting parties to the treaty
of Paris, by which the Eastern
question had been temporarily set
tied after the Crimean war. 1t was
not unnatural that the Russian
Grand Duke at the head of victO-
riOus army should reject and even
resent the intervention of any other
power between his Outstretched
hand and the lOng-cOveted prize at
which it is grasping. The stubborn
resistance of the Turk had suddenly
collapsed; Plevna had been surren-
dered i'm a condition more resemb-
ling a graveyard than a fortified
post the passes of the Balkans so
impreguable in 1877 had been easily
passed in 1873 AdrianOple had
fallen without a struggle; the adj
vance posts of the Russian army had
been pushed within striking distance
of the defences of ConstantinOple,
and the dream of Catharine, the
prize sought by the diplomacy and
wars of two centuries, lay undefend-
ed before him, he had but to reach
out his hand to take it, and his old
antagonist, the British Government,
wants to know something about it.
The irritation which prompted the
petulaEt reply which heads this
article was natural enough, but the
reply itself was the most stupendOus
blunder ever made by a national
Government. 1t united the British
nation as one man, just as the first
shot from Fort Sumpter on "A vessel
bearing the American flag united
the South and consolidated the
North and made either war or a
square back-down on one side or
another inevitable; with us it was
war, with Russia a square back
down.
For while the Russian Govern
ment held its defiant position; the
treaty of San StefanO was published
and turned out to be a more absolute
humiliation of Turkey, a more alb
sOlute absorption of all that had
been Turkey into the substance of
the Russian Empire than the wild
est of alarmists had ever conceived,
and Russia announced that in thirty
days it must be cOnsummated /;
Shumla, Varna, Kars, BatOum
were to besurTendered and occupied
by Russian troops within that time;
the defenses of Constantinople were
to be evacuated, and all within
thirty days; Turkey, in both Europe
and Asia, was to become virtually
an outlying province of the Russian
Empire, and it was carefully mOOted
that Egypt had never ceased to be
nOminally at least part of the
Turkish Empire, and if Armenia
was absorbed, why not Egypt? and
then both of England's routes to her
Asiatic possessions would be
blocked. And then sooner or later
the absorption of India and China
was to follow that of Turkey, and it
was a magnificent programme for
Russia.
But a wary, keensighted Hebrew
was watching the interests of Eng
land all this bime. He had quietly
been accommodating vast military
stores at Malta, and the arsenals at
WOOlwhich, and the naval depOts
at POrtsmout h and Plymouth were
in a state of unwOnted activity, and
great irOnclads had been swinging
back and forth from Malta to Besika
Bay, and, soon after the saucy mes
sage which lis our text had been re-
ceived, they entered the Dardanelles
and Austria was observed to be
massing her myriads on the passes
of the Car pathian mountains, and,
what to those who knew was more
significant, Lord Derby resigned his
portfolio Us Secretary for Foreign
Affairs.
Nothing indicates the vast change
of public! sentiment in England so
much as this resignation. Before
the Russian blunder, Lord Derby had
been thorn in the side of D'Israeli
1--WE like his name better than his
title). His ideas of the Eastern
question were much nearer to those
of Gladstone, the opponent of the
Cabinet, than to those of D'Israeli,
its chief. He offered every possible
passive obstruction to the military
preparations above described, and
yet the premier dreaded his secession
irons the Cabinet, for he did not
know how many of its parliament
tary supporters he might carry with
him. But now the tender of his
resignation, which was made when
the British fleet entered the Dardan-
ellis, was gladly accepted. Lord
Salisbury succeeded to his office,
anil all Europe felt the difference.
Now came Lord Salisbury's man.
ife stO, which affirmed, first, that the
existing embrogliO could only be
pdIced6Ly settled by a conference or
congress of all the powers, and next
that the whole treaty of San Stefano,
with all its provisions, must be sub
nIitted to that conference. So far
had things already changed their
base that it was no longer question
whether Russia should consent to IA
conference, but on what terms Eng
land would consent to go into one.
I