Chapter XIV: The Last Statesmen of the Tsardom

Those who still imagine that individuals rather than the character of the Tsarist State were responsible for those predatory habits and the uniform bad faith which so long rendered a trustworthy covenant between Russia and any other government virtually impossible, would do well to remember that, however widely individual ministers might differ from each other, the system invariably over-ruled the best intentions and vitiated the most straightforward conduct of the statesman in charge. Thus Count Lamsdorff was known to be a loyal and veracious man, of whom it could be predicated that his assertions were true and his promises sincere. But the former were always liable to be belied and the latter to be violated by his master or his colleagues. And he could not legally resign because the theory, in the Tsardom, to which the practice inflexibly conformed was that a minister is a civil officer whose commander-in-chief is the Emperor and that without the Emperor's permission--or in other words until he is dismissed from office--he may not lay down his functions.

Lamsdorff was an admirable Foreign Secretary, through whose hands all the important State papers and into whose ears all the momentous State secrets passed. He had served under Giers who often consulted him, and under Lobanoff-Rostoffsky and Shishkin. During Muravieff's tenure of office he held the post of assistant minister. By them all he was noted as a discreet, steady, hard-working, conscientious official, whose thorough knowledge of French and extraordinary habits of seclusion--Lamsdorff never married--rendered him incomparably more useful than any of his colleagues. On Muravieff's sudden death the Emperor seemed inclined to give the succession to Izvolsky, who was then Minister in Tokio, but had been in somewhat strained {254} relations with the Russian Foreign Office. It appears that when the famous invitation to all the governments of the earth to meet at the Hague was sent out by the Tsar under peculiar circumstances which will be unfolded in a later chapter, the Foreign Minister, Muravieff, wrote to his cousin Izvolsky, then minister in Munich, to ask him how the grandiose idea was received by the Bavarians. Izvolsky--who can, I am sure, bear out what I say--knew perfectly that the Hague Conference appeal was a shameful fraud which Muravieff and the Tsar were practising on the world, and he refused to humour the vulgar trickster by feigning to become ecstatic. He had the cruel frankness, therefore, to throw cold water on Muravieff's sudden fervour and to apprise him that in Bavaria the summons had been warmly acclaimed only by hysterical women, Jews, and Socialists. That response was resented by the vainglorious minister, who soon afterwards transferred his cousin from Munich to the Far East. M. Izvolsky, when he reached Yokohama, on his way to Tokio, learned that Muravieff was dead. And the Tsar at once turned his eyes towards Izvolsky, but did not wish to create an accomplished fact without first consulting Witte, who was very keen to have a colleague in the Foreign Office with whom he could work in harmony.

The great statesman, whose judgment of others was often at fault, had a higher opinion of M. Izvolsky's personal independence than of his statecraft and, what at that time was much more to the point, he was extremely anxious that Lamsdorff should take over the post, because he himself would then, he believed, be able to exert a general directing influence over the entire business of the Tsardom. As a matter of fact Izvolsky would have served his purpose better than Lamsdorff, because being independent he would not have tolerated, as Lamsdorff did, the formation of a secret governing board of adventurers behind his back, who plunged the Empire into war. He would doubtless have resigned or else obliged the Tsar to dismiss Bezobrazoff and his confederates. Witte contrived to have devoted agents of his own in the Ministries of War, the Marine, Justice, Education, {255} Railways, at court, in a word he possessed a powerful lever for every State department. And what is much more characteristic of the man, he had a small fleet of his own, a railway of his own, an army of his own of which he was the commander-in-chief, and he wanted to have Manchuria as his own domain. He built his own city Dalny and lavished enormous sums on laying it out. Disposing of all these means of influencing the government, Witte fancied that he could effectively hinder war and carry out his own scheme of governance by speedy industrialisation, railway building, technical and general education, and gradual political reforms. This, then, was the answer which he returned to the Tsar:

"If your Majesty desires a society man who is also an official of experience I would suggest Count Delyanoff,[1] but if you prefer to have a diplomatist, I think you will find no one as well fitted for the post as Count Lamsdorff. He is an animated archive of State documents. His drawbacks are an unconquerable aversion to society and all that this implies, so that he will not be a dispenser of hospitality, but even that drawback has ample compensations."

Thereupon Lamsdorff was made minister, and from that day onward he and Witte worked in rare harmony, the latter being invariably consulted on all questions involving important international issues. Here then were the two most influential ministers in the Empire, at one on the Far Eastern problem and how to tackle it, both resolved to do everything in their power--Witte alone was thought to be all-powerful--to hinder war, and yet the insignificant, untrained youth who occupied the throne frustrated their every effort with the utmost ease. To such a degree was the Tsarist State true to its nature. One difference between Witte and Lamsdorff consisted in the manner in which they conceived their functions. Lamsdorff was wont to say, "I endeavour to form a sound opinion on each of {256} the problems that are become or becoming actual and to seek for a solution. I then lay my view before the Emperor as lucidly and also as forcibly as I know how. And there my duty terminates. For is the Tsar not an absolute monarch? How and why then should I insist? Why ought I to resign merely because I differ from him? It is my duty to stay on and render him such services as he will accept." Witte, on the other hand, was always insistent and often dogmatic. He not only advised but drew on the future for deterrents with which he strove to frighten the Tsar, and his mode of carrying on a discussion was the reverse of courtly. Only about one political question had the two friends ever differed, and that was on the subject of Port Arthur. When it became urgent Lamsdorff, who was only assistant Foreign Secretary, held the same view as his chief, Muravieff, and was opposed to the Minister of Finances. Subsequently Witte taunted him with his mistake and pointed out the pernicious consequences that had resulted from it, but Lamsdorff answered, "I grant you it was an unwise step, and if I had to deal with the subject in the light of what I now know, I would certainly take sides with you. But I cannot admit that it led to war with Japan. This war was brought about by our impolitic endeavours to grab Manchuria and Korea."

But do what they might, honest, clear-sighted, and even genial political spirits made no deep dent on the Tsarist State. Witte with his ideal of peace resting upon economic revival, growing industries, larger markets, educational advance, and political training had just as little success as Izvolsky, who boldly started from the assumption that Russia was already a European community and that her policy, home and foreign, ought to be shaped in accordance with that--the nationalities being placated at home by reasonable concessions in the direction of autonomy, and the international intercourse of the Tsardom regulated in an equally liberal sense by removing all causes of friction between Russia and her neighbours and by striking up understandings with the progressive nations of the world. The Tsardom {257} remained to the end what it had been from the first: a predatory community, and, as the schoolmen used to put it, its action was congruous with its nature.

When writing and working to bring about an Anglo-Russian Entente, I took pains to set these facts candidly before the British public in a series of review articles,[2] and among other expressions of my opinion, which events have since confirmed, I stated that Russia's policy "is the resultant of conditions of which some elude analysis, most are bound up with her internal structure, and all are proof against diplomatic reagents." ...[3] For knowing the men who successively presided over the Foreign Office I could not ascribe to them, but only to the mechanism which they kept going, the pertinacity of the assaults they made upon the foundations of the European political system and upon such ethical postulates as are commonly supposed to militate in favour of its maintenance. In the space of two years the Tsar's government twice deliberately hoodwinked the British Foreign Office by means of the illusory hope of an all-round settlement; the Foreign Minister, Lobanoff, availed himself of a period of profound peace to organise a coalition of the great powers against Great Britain, offering Egypt to France and seeking to bribe Spain with Gibraltar; the war minister, Kuropatkin, was once on the very point of taking Herat, fighting the Afghans, and challenging their British protectors, at another time he laid a trap to seize the persons of the Emperor and Dowager Empress of China; the acting minister, Shishkin, in obedience to an imperial decree, was about to seize Constantinople and cut the Gordian knot of the Near Eastern Question without a word of warning to her Majesty's government; in January, 1904, war with Great Britain was in sight, and in the summer of the same year the littoral of the Baltic was hurriedly protected against British warships, and arrangements in Turkestan were made for an eventual campaign against India.

Thus the aggressive attitude of the Tsardom towards the {258} European family of nations was seen to be a link in the chain of politico-psychic necessity forged by its founders. It was the resultant of a clearly defined set of conditions, not the creation of the brain of a far-seeing statesman. Those who fancied that Russia's diplomacy was uncommonly sagacious, planning ages ahead the moves which would be made by remote posterity, and crediting Peter the Great with what was really the work of happy accident or the temporary success of shifty ministers, mistook a popular legend for an historical fact. The truth is that, like most other countries, Russia possessed many diplomatists and very few statesmen, but, unlike them, she advanced along certain unchanging lines of action whoever might happen to be at the head of affairs. It was an instance of _vis inertiæ_. For her policy was traced by internal conditions, one of which moved her to withdraw her main forces, moral and material, from the heart of the Empire to its extremities. I gave frequent expression to this conviction in bygone times. "Territorial expansion," I wrote, "and not internal development is the law which still shapes her course to-day. Hence the State grows in extent while the well-being of the people remains stationary. The government therefore is very wealthy, but the people exceedingly poor. The State is ever annexing territory, while the peasants complain that they lack soil to till. The bulky bags of gold are lavishly spent in Korea, Manchuria, and the uttermost ends of the globe, while the mooshik feels the pinch of poverty. In a word, the pent-up energy of the nation runs along the line of least resistance, which is that of territorial expansion, and every general, admiral, ambassador, and consul knows that he may safely try to score a point in that direction. For if he succeed he will have merited well of his government, and if he fail he will be promptly disavowed.

"One of the practical consequences of this state of things is that the Russian nation appears to the outsider as an agglomeration of distinct and hostile races, religions, and interests, which have never been blended, and are loosely linked together by obedience to one and the same head. {259} Hence the individual lacks not indeed patriotism, but that particular and inspiring form of it which is engendered by the consciousness that the State is to some extent, however small, the work of his own hands. Thus the Armenian, the Pole, the Finn, the Hebrew, does not feel himself a Russian in the same sense in which his compatriot in the United States feels himself an American. He is an Armenian or a Pole first and a Russian afterwards. Even the real Russian does not identify himself with the State, which grows rich at his expense and pursues ideals after which he himself has no desire to strive.

"Now to merge all these heterogeneous elements in one great nation, as the Americans have done, is an arduous task, to be successfully tackled only by means from which the government instinctively recoils. For such a change presupposes the repeal not only of such special legislation as at present exists for the different nationalities, Poles, Caucasians, Jews, Finns, etc., but also the removal of class privileges and disabilities, the spread of elementary, secondary, and technical education, and the introduction of other reforms which are eschewed as incompatible with the present political fabric. All the surplus activity of the population, therefore, as well as a large part of its financial resources, is diverted into other channels and utilised for the benefit of Manchus, Koreans, and other peoples who are neither Russian nor Christian. The purely mechanical attempts at assimilation, such as those which are associated with the names of General Bobrikoff in Finland and Prince Galitzin in the Caucasus, have hitherto produced only negative results, estranging and embittering instead of conciliating and uniting. Thus the Finns are less Russian in sentiment to-day than they were a quarter of a century ago. The Armenians, who were once regarded as zealous apostles of the cause of the Christian Slav in Asia Minor, are deeply distrusted by official Russia at present. And every new war renders it more and more difficult to reduce the motley elements of the population to a common denominator."[4]

{260}

How utterly unavailing were the endeavours, not always systematic, of Russia's genial statesman, Witte, to harmonise the Asiatic spirit of the old and unchanging Tsardom with the economic necessities and ethical tendencies of the new epoch, and to draw its peoples within the pale of European culture, is brought home to us with irresistible force in the government's dealings with the Far Eastern States. The outward and visible sign of the interest taken by the Petersburg government in the destinies of those remote countries was the resolve to treat the project of the Trans-Siberian railways as vital, to build the line within a relatively short period, and take it through Manchuria. This was Witte's scheme, for which he soon obtained the approval of Alexander III. The next link in the chain that was to connect the interests of these two aggregates of peoples was an understanding with China. The conversations that led to it were conducted by the Russian statesman with the display of all the means that strike the imagination and paralyse the reasoning powers of the Asiatic. The history of this bargaining is an epitome of the relations, cultural and political, between the two. The shrewd, epigrammatic, old-world sayings of the great Manchu leader, who was drawn to Russia by golden chains and hypnotised by fascinating spectres, contrasted with the bold, business-like language of the illustrious Russian. Although the Minister of Foreign Affairs at the time was the highly gifted _causeur_ Lobanoff-Rostoffsky, whom I had known in Vienna, it was the bluff Finance Minister who carried on the conversations.

In his secret dispatches from Russia to the Tsung Li Yamen[5] of Pekin, Li Hung Chang put the matter very simply before his government and sovereign. Here is one telegram of his which was given to me soon after it had been deciphered: "I received a visit[6] from the Russian Finance Minister, Witte, who developed his views on the subject of the Manchurian railway and the route which, in his opinion, {261} had better be chosen on the score of cheapness and expediency. Once built, he said, it would lessen the danger to be apprehended from Japan, but China ought not to be charged with its construction, because it would take her fully ten years. I objected that if the choice of a company were left to Russia she would construct it herself, and that a precedent would be created for other powers to follow. He answered that if we dissented China would never make the railway, and that in any case Russia is minded to extend her line to Nipchu, and then await a favourable moment, but that she could not renew her offer to help China. This view is Witte's, but his ability is made much of by the Tsar. Lobanoff, whom I have met on two occasions, has never broached this subject."

The next telegram is dated three days later and runs thus: "When an ambassador has once presented his credentials it is not usual for him to receive a second audience. Yet the Tsar has received me again in his private apartment, my son, Li Chung Fang, being the only person present. The pretext was his Majesty's wish to take over the presents. And this is what he said, 'Russia owns vast territories which are but thinly populated. Therefore she will not trespass upon a foot of soil which is the property of others. Moreover, the ties which bind her to China are very intimate. Hence her only motive in desiring the junction of the railways through Manchuria is the quick conveyance of troops for the purpose of affording effectual help to China whenever the latter country is hard set. Consequently, it is not for Russia's advantage alone that the line would serve. On the other hand, China's resources are not sufficient to enable her to build the railway. If she handed over the building concession to the Russo-Chinese Bank at Shanghai, safeguarding her right of control by means of suitable stipulations, no difficulties need be anticipated. Such things are done in every country.' For those reasons the Tsar requested me to weigh well the proposals, and to adopt practical means to realise them. _He added that China could not be sure that England and Japan would not brew trouble for {262} her very soon, but she could at least enable Russia to come to her assistance_.[7] In the execution of my duty, I report those words for the information of the crown."

_Li Hung Chang to the Tsung Li Yamen_

"27th April, 1896 (old style).

"Lobanoff invited me to dine with him yesterday, and I met Witte there. The building of the railway was put forward by both ministers as a matter of extreme moment. Witte maintained that it could be constructed in three years. I urged that there were obstacles in the way, but he answered that he would obviate them by putting on extra labour. China, he said, lacks the money to build the Manchurian line, and it would never be even begun if she were charged with the task of making it. It would therefore be better if the Russo-Chinese Bank undertook it. I answered that I would refer the matter to the crown. Respecting the Tsar's mention of help, Lobanoff told me that he had no instructions from the crown, and that he would obtain them by the 29th inst., and resume the conversation then. He thinks that if China solicited the despatch of Russian troops, it is she (China) who should undertake to provide them with food. If China were in straits Russia should come to her assistance, and vice versa. But the cardinal point was that railway connection should be made through Manchuria, and the convention once ratified, a secret treaty might then be concluded...."

Witte's power of suasion had been exerted to some effect before the next telegram was despatched.

_Li Hung Chang to the Tsung Li Yamen_

"2nd May, 1896 (old style).

"Concerning the treaty, there is little in it to which objection could be taken, Russia's motive being a desire to establish friendly relations with China. If we refuse it, her dissatisfaction will be deep and our interests will suffer in {263} consequence. Witte was the only person who witnessed the private negotiations with Lobanoff. He gave me to read the draft of a contract with the Russo-Chinese Company, setting out that the capital must be Russian and Chinese only, the merchants of other countries being eliminated from the list of subscribers. China would receive an annual sum of a quarter of a million dollars, whether the enterprise showed a loss or a profit. There would also be paid to her an initial sum of two million dollars. The line would be handed back to her fifty or eighty years after it had been built."

It is instructive to note that one of Russia's principal levers by which this apparently brilliant stroke of national policy was effected was the fear of Great Britain and Japan with which she successfully inspired China. Her sole object in making the Manchurian railway was to shield China from the infamous designs of the maritime powers, and her resolve to build it herself was inspired by the wish to get it done soon enough to counteract the aggressive moves of Japan and Great Britain, who might brew trouble very soon, Li Hung Chang was assured. And so anxious was Russia to discharge this friendly office for China that, unless she were permitted to do so, she threatened to join China's enemy, Japan!

I saw and possess the treaty to which these negotiations led up. In connection with that document an amusing incident cropped up which brought out Lobanoff's easy-going unconcern and ready resource. Witte, who had arranged everything with the Chinese statesman and kept the Tsar informed of every move, at last had all the points of the bargain in his head. Nicholas II. approved them, and said that they were to be communicated to Lobanoff-Rostoffsky. Witte accordingly called on his colleague and explained to him in his emphatic staccato manner what it was that he had induced Li Hung Chang to acquiesce in. Lobanoff listened and, having heard, at once took a pen, wrote for a few minutes, and then read out what was a complete and carefully-worded treaty, divided exactly into the {264} requisite number of clauses. The first paragraph ran thus: "This treaty is to come into force whenever in Eastern Asia Japan violates Russian, Chinese, or Korean territory. It is stipulated that in this event the two contracting powers shall forthwith send all their sea and land forces then available to the front, give mutual aid to each other, and likewise assist each other to the best of their ability in providing ammunition and war stores." On the following day Lobanoff was received by the Tsar, and after the audience he telephoned from the ministry to Witte saying, "His Majesty fully approves the wording of the treaty. I am sending you a copy." Witte, who never grudged any pains when engaged in official work, scanned the text, and saw that the words "whenever ... Japan violates" had been changed into "whenever ... any power violates," etc. Witte objected to the change for obvious reasons, and he went to the Emperor and laid the case before him. Nicholas II. upheld the objection, and said that it must have been merely an oversight which he would have corrected. Just then everybody's attention was engrossed by preparations for the coronation of Nicholas II. and many things were out of gear. Lobanoff meeting Witte told him that the Tsar had apprised him of the mistake, but that he had since corrected it. "The fact is," he explained, "I wrote 'Japan' at first, but then I deliberately put the case more generally, but on reflection I find your objection adequate." The day on which the document was to be solemnly signed came round. According to custom, a treaty is never read on this last day, but is merely signed by the contracting parties. In this case Lobanoff had to put his name first. And he was on the point of taking his pen to do so when Witte cast his eye over the open treaty and to his amazement noticed that the wrong wording was in the new copy. He made a sign and apprised his colleague. Lobanoff when told of it exclaimed, "Is it possible? Well, I'll arrange it." He clapped his hands for the servant, who came in; then turning to Li Hung Chang, he said, "In our country it is a traditional custom to eat always before we sign a treaty. It is supposed {265} to bring luck to the nations concerned. With your excellency's permission we shall now proceed to honour the custom and also drink to the well-being of your great country." Li Hung Chang bowed, and the party went into the dining-room and sat down to lunch. By the time the repast was over fresh copies of the treaty, this time properly drafted, were on the table awaiting the signatories.[8]

Lobanoff-Rostoffsky had a decided turn and some qualifications for historical research, and was one of the best-informed, most cultured, and least serious of Russia's foreign secretaries. He would sometimes conceive a grandiose plan which resembled a huge joke and, like a child's balloon brought too near the fire, would collapse on the first attempt to realise it. It was he who was in power when I went to Armenia disguised as a Russian general, after having learned from my friend the "Russian statesman" what the attitude of the Tsardom was going to be towards the Turkish murderers of the Armenians of Sassun. My descriptions of what I had seen in Armenia caused a stir in England and France. Mr. Gladstone's last great speech at Chester, devoted to the subject, held up the Sultan to the contumely of the world. By that time it had become evident that Sir Philip Currie's optimism was ill-founded, and that Russia's intention was to treat the butchery as a domestic matter between the Shadow of God and his subjects, and to let the Porte have _carte blanche_. The British people, on the other hand, were for compelling Abdul Hamid to draw the line of despotism at the extermination of a race, and their view was shared by a considerable number of influential Frenchmen--De Pressensé among others--who were bringing pressure to bear upon their government in order to oblige it to take action. "Russia," who was then identical with Lobanoff, entertained serious fears that France might combine with Great Britain and thwart the Muscovite plans in Asia Minor. Hence the minister resolved to pour out the vials of his wrath upon the British as soon as he should have an opportunity. Nor had he long to wait. {266} Public opinion in France was not strong enough to force the hand of the government; the danger was dispelled, the republic sided with the autocracy, and the Sultan decimated the Christian Armenians with impunity. Then the Russian Foreign Minister, determined to strike the iron while it was hot, imagined a scheme for a continental coalition against Great Britain. He would have satisfied France with the hope of Egypt, Spain with the retrocession of Gibraltar, and Russia was to have Constantinople and the command of the Dardanelles. But the plan remained a _pium desiderium_.

Thus, however profound the changes that might come over the rest of Europe, Russia's craving for aggrandisement was chronic and insatiable, and any man who rose up and undertook to gratify it, whether he was a narrow-minded minister, an army officer, or a simple bureaucrat, represented the Tsardom. I commented thirteen years ago on the significant fact "that Russia must pursue a policy of expansion in virtue of the sum total of her internal conditions, and that she is represented at a given moment by the man or men who are most effectually contributing to the realisation of that policy."[9] For some years General Kuropatkin was one of these individuals, and during that period he forced upon his colleagues a forward policy of such an aggressive character that pursued by any power but Russia it would have soon culminated in war. It was he, for instance, who insisted on the seizure of Port Arthur against the advice of the majority of the ministers whom the Tsar had consulted, and it was his pleading which was finally successful. Thus the views of the other official representatives of the Empire, some of whom were men of insight and experience, seemed but as dust in the balance when weighed against the opinion of the man who was bent on helping his master, the ruler of one-sixth of the earth, to govern one-fifth. While his star was yet in the ascendant, he noted without alarm or misgiving the symptoms of the storm which the Boxers were preparing. Indeed, Catholic missionaries, who are well-informed, asserted that the {267} Muscovite authorities were well aware of the troubles brewing in China, and watchful subjects of the dowager empress of the celestial kingdom aver that Buddhist priests, who owed allegiance to the Tsar, went about from place to place fomenting the discontent and inflaming the passions of the people. Hence Russia being the friend might play the profitable rôle of onlooker. It was she who had warned the unsophisticated Chinese against the secret schemes of Great Britain, Japan, and the United States, and it was from her troops that the Manchu dynasty and the Chinese people would eventually expect and receive timely succour. But when it turned out that the Boxers were making no invidious distinctions between Muscovy and the maritime powers, Russia was alarmed.

General Kuropatkin, whose notions of China and the Chinese were unobscured by a knowledge of confusing facts, elaborated a scheme of policy towards that country which was accepted and partly carried out by Nicholas II. He was wont to assure his friends that the periodic popular movements against foreigners there might be aptly likened to troublesome symptoms in the arm of a human being arising from the presence of a splinter in the brain. Remove the splinter and the jerky movements in the arm will forthwith cease. Now the Manchu dynasty, he would add, is the splinter, and if Russia once seizes that, the administrative machine will work quite smoothly, responding to the slightest touch of the St. Petersburg government. And the practical corollary which the general drew from this theory was that Pekin must be taken and the emperor and empress seized. This was the "splinter theory" to which he won over the Foreign Minister, Muravieff, and the Tsar, with the result that Russian troops were despatched to co-operate with those of the other powers against Taku and Pekin. If the wily dowager empress and the weak-willed Bogdykhan had not prudently quitted the capital in time, the course of their lives, as well as that of Chinese history, would have run very differently. But when the Russian forces reached their destination, the "splinter" had worked its way to a distant {268} part of the body politic, and was beyond the reach of the Muscovite surgeon.

Baffled in her attempt to get hold of the heads of the Manchu dynasty, Russia reverted to her traditional policy of friendship for the Middle Empire. She withdrew her embassy to Tientsin, in accordance with the wishes of the Chinese court, urged the other powers to follow her example, protested her affection for China, and solemnly declared that she neither needed nor coveted any territory there, and by way of proving her disinterestedness promised to evacuate Manchuria. These tranquillising assurances were repeated after the Anglo-German agreement was concluded on the 16th October, 1900.

One of the lessons which this seemingly wavering policy teaches--the only lesson which concerns diplomacy at present--is that whatever else might change, the fundamental policy of Russia was immutable.

So powerful was the Tsarist system and so well equipped for the gratification of its rapacious instincts that any individual, however insignificant or contemptible, was able, with its alliance, to nullify the most strenuous exertions of a genial statesman to transform it congruously with the requirements of the new age. Now of all foreign secretaries, Muravieff was unquestionably the most uneducated and shallow-brained. He could not write half a dozen sentences, French or Russian, without making egregious grammatical or orthographical mistakes. He could not carry on conversation for ten minutes without displaying the pettiness of his mind and the coarseness of his wit. About international relations his ideas were misty and incoherent. Yet this cross between a ninny and a buffoon frustrated Witte's well-laid scheme of Far Eastern policy with the help of Kuropatkin, the Minister for War. "In some ways," Witte told me, "Muravieff reminded one of the German Chancellor Von Bülow, but I need hardly add that cultural requirements did not constitute one of them. Indeed, it was well nigh impossible to talk with him on any serious topic. Not only did he lack breadth of view, but he lacked cultural varnish, working {269} capacity, industry, knowledge of languages, everything. His one qualification for the office was his apprenticeship at Copenhagen, but that was considered adequate, and he was set over Russia. It was he who marred my Far Eastern policy; not he alone, of course, but in league with others.

"My intention was to take the railway through Manchuria to Vladivostok, and my objects were primarily economic, not political. That the latter would eventually follow from the former is obvious, but I set my face against annexations, wars, and other acts calculated to culminate in these. I give little for mere shadows. I contrived to carry the Emperor with me until Muravieff arrived on the scene and then a new constellation appeared with him. They induced the Tsar to take the railway south to Port Arthur and thus to make the trans-Siberian a manifest instrument of invasion. You know the sequel. Remember that within a twelvemonth of this impolitic decision Russian troops were being landed at Port Arthur,[10] and Muravieff issued his famous communication to the powers respecting the needs and the means of securing general peace and disarmament. I need not tell you that neither that document nor the idea it embodies was Muravieff's, still less, alas! had the alleged aim anything to do with the real purpose of the invitation thus solemnly sent out to the nations of the earth."

_The Hague Conference Mystification_

It is always instructive and sometimes unedifying to trace momentous and lasting reforms to their veritable sources. The action and its sequel linked by the causal nexus sometimes turn out to be two ethical contraries. The revelation may be calculated to provide pabulum for the cynic and inspire the unbiassed with a feeling akin to contempt for the past. To strip such a seemingly noble act as the convocation of the world's first peace parliament of those associations of moral and humanitarian sentiments which had raised it to high rank among the achievements of the nineteenth century, {270} savours of wanton iconoclasm. But history has to do with facts, not romance, and, where the former are well established, cannot choose but assign to them their proper place among the factors of progress.

Concerning the origin of the first Hague Conference, the period of public deception has lasted longer than one would have thought possible, considering that several years ago[11] I did my best to disabuse the world, to reveal the prosaic motive underlying it, and to set forth the order of events as they occurred. But mankind prefers romance to reality, poetry to history. _Mundus vult decipi; decipiatur_. Enthusiastic publicists in London, Paris, and Vienna lavished tributes of unmeasured praise upon the Russian Tsar and commemorated gratefully, in passing, one or other of his supposed inspirers, and in particular my old friend Jean Bloch and the Empress Alexandra Feodorovna. But all agreed that whoever may have created and diffused the subtle atmosphere of enthusiasm for lofty and generous aims which must have pervaded the imperial court of Peterhof, it was the noble-minded sovereign who lived and worked in its centre, that focussed the forces of righteousness in the world, and gave them their full momentum.

From this pleasing picture the reality was, alas, widely different. It reminds me of the dastardly bomb-thrower who when carrying an infernal machine to blow up a palace dropped it on the doorstep, was knocked senseless by the explosion, was then rescued, taken care of, healed, and signally rewarded because it was charitably assumed that he was a passer-by who having noticed the explosive laid down or seen it smoking had risked his life in an heroic attempt to throw it into the street. What happened at the court of Nicholas II. that Eastertide of 1898 was briefly this:

At the beginning of the year, the Tsar, despite the protests of his Finance Minister, Witte, had, as we saw, despatched a squadron to Port Arthur under the pretext that China must be protected against her enemies. In truth, China's spokesmen were actually and vainly beseeching the {271} Petersburg Foreign Office to display its friendship in some less aggressive shape. Russian marines were landed in Port Arthur, the anger of the Japanese was raised to boiling point, and the civilised world caught a glimpse of the hypocrisy and perfidy of the Tsardom. Storm clouds hung black and dense on the horizon. China was then the "sick man" whose demise, supposed to be impending, aroused the keenest interest and brought out the least creditable traits of national character. True, the British House of Commons had passed a resolution affirming that the independence of China was a postulate of vital moment to British commerce, but the one element that could have lent weight to such a declaration--readiness to fight for the principle involved--being absent, continental politicians merely shrugged their shoulders and passed on. The Tsardom had frightened and wheedled and bribed China into granting her a lease of Port Arthur--the ice-free port on the Pacific--France had followed suit and extorted concessions in Yunnan and along the Yangtse. Even Italy was itching for a coaling station, a railway compact, or some other trophy to show that she too was a factor in the larger concerns of the globe. Spain and the United States were waging a newspaper war against each other, and their respective governments were at their wits' end to hold popular passions in check. In South Africa the air was thick with sinister omens and Kruger's policy, spontaneous or constrained, was embittering the foreigners and disquieting the government of Great Britain. The French nation was riven in twain by the historic Dreyfus trial which had divided the people into clericals and atheists, nationalists and republicans, Dreyfusards and anti-Dreyfusards.

The calmest, most active, and most thriving populations were those of the Central Empires. But their governments were industriously preparing for the "Day" when it would rain metal. Germany, ever ahead of the world in things military--and not only in these--had successfully completed the laborious and costly process of manufacturing new and improved artillery and supplying it to the army. This was a great stride forward in the race of armaments, and it was {272} also a warning to all the other competitors in the game of war preparations. Russia and Austria, true to their reputations and their past, were behindhand. Neither empire had made any improvement in field or heavy guns. They were both alive to the necessity of imitating the Germans, but unlike the frog in the fable, that sought to blow itself out to the size of the bull and burst in the exertion, they hesitated and would fain have postponed the sacrifices involved.

One day, Count Muravieff, the most empty-headed of the Tsar's advisers, who had succeeded M. Shishkin at the Russian Foreign Office, called on Witte who, like a masculine Fate, was spinning the threads of Russia's existence in his finance department. They were a curious pair, men of two distinct types, one might almost say of two different species, the one form without substance, the other amorphous reality. Witte had conceived an intense feeling, more akin to contempt than to hatred, for the nonentity who had upset his Far Eastern plans and gone far to mar his general policy without comprehending either. Muravieff produced a document, waved it theatrically before his colleague, said that it had been drawn up by the War Minister, Kuropatkin, read with close attention by the Emperor, and sent on for the Finance Minister to peruse and report on.

"I suppose it is a demand for more money for war materials?" Muravieff smiled but said nothing. "Unless it is for something necessary I really cannot and will not give another rouble." Muravieff muttered something about the necessity of breaking the eggs if you wish to make an omelette. Witte took the paper. He had guessed aright: it was a roundabout demand for a very large sum of money. The form in which it was put seemed to him at first but the sugar-coating of the pill. Witte frowned as he read the report: France and Germany, Kuropatkin wrote, having stolen a march on the other powers by providing their armies with the improved guns, Austria and Russia could not and would not lag behind. But the cost was deterrent, and was all the more to be dreaded that other and heavier expenses would have to be incurred very shortly, almost {273} simultaneously. Neither Russia nor Austria is wealthy. The populations of both empires are heavily enough taxed already. They and their respective governments would therefore, no doubt, welcome any arrangement in virtue of which they could escape the taxation which the re-arming of the national forces would entail. But how could one devise an effective plan? Could not one hit upon some simple compromise that would commend itself to both governments all the more readily that the two empires belong so to say to opposite camps? Whether you multiply or divide both the divisor and the dividend by the same number, the quotient undergoes no change. Apply that proposition to the case in point. Whether Russia and Austria go to the expense of supplying their armies with the improved guns or leave their artillery as it is, the final result, if the two groups of powers went to war, would be the same. Why then should they not agree between themselves to keep the money in their respective treasuries? If we in Russia plunge into the expense, the Austrians will vie with us and neither they nor we shall have scored an advantage over the other, yet we shall both be much the poorer. The Minister of Finance, who is the money-provider of the Empire and has an interest in keeping down its expenditure, may be able to utilise this suggestion.

That was the gist of Kuropatkin's message to the Emperor.

Witte replied with some warmth that the suggestion was not practical and ought not to have been made. "Just think it out," he said. "As an abstract proposition, Austria and Russia can well be imagined falling in with General Kuropatkin's expedient. But put the invitation in a concrete shape to the official representatives of the Austrian government and try to picture to yourself what would follow. Suspicion would at once be aroused as to the real motive of the device. Do you fancy they would accept our explanation? Nowise. They would infer either that our impecuniosity bordered on insolvency, and therefore that they could not do better than intensify it by obliging us to invest in the improved artillery, or else they would conjecture that we {274} were preparing to embark on some unavowed and unavowable enterprise directed against them, for which funds were needed, and that one of our methods of raising them was by economising on the new ordnance. In neither case would they close with our offer, and in either we should have injured our credit abroad. These are some of the reasons why I cannot entertain General Kuropatkin's project favourably. I need hardly add that if the defences of the Empire really call for the outlay in question, the War Minister has only to say so and I, as Finance Minister, will find the money and eschew all dangerous expedients for getting it."

Witte while thus talking turned the subject over in his mind and contemplated it from various angles of vision, giving utterance to his thoughts as they arose. He was anxious to save as much of the public money as he could, but it was impossible to allow his government to approach the statesmen of the Ballplatz with a suggestion as puerile as that framed by Kuropatkin. That was self-evident. How then could the Tsar's wish to act upon that suggestion and his own desire to economise be realised? That was the problem, and it must be solved on the lines--considerably widened if needs were, but not otherwise changed--of the War Minister's scheme. "In other words," Witte explained to me, "I knew that what was wanted was some ruse by means of which we could get Austria to stay her hand and discuss disarmament in lieu of investing in the improved gun. Within these limits then I had to work. I walked up and down the room for some time in silence, pondering the different aspects of the matter and giving utterance to my half-formed thoughts as they emerged into the realm of consciousness. They centred naturally and necessarily around my old pet idea of a league of pacific nations vying with each other in trade, industry, science, arts, inventions, and I said to myself that even if the opportunity had not yet come to draw nearer to that, there would be no harm in setting the powers talking about it. And that started me."

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Witte's ideal, I may say in passing, was not identical with the League of Nations of the latter-day socialists, nor was his way of achieving it their way. But a never-fading cloud-picture in that mechanico-mystical style, rudimentary and defective if you will, not comprehensive enough for an ideal, nor thorough enough for a viable organism, and with all the tangled roots of the militarist order of things about it, but still a generous dream capable of drawing him onward and upward to a better political or social ordering than the one over which he presided, floated constantly in his mind. I cannot assert that it had much influence over his policy, indeed I know that it had not. He was much too shrewd a statesman, too clever a judge of human character, to be hastily sanguine about the coming of the League of Nations. He was not sufficiently naïve to imagine that in the minds even of the foremost peoples of the earth consciousness of their common paramount interest in a stable peace and a compact system of international law was sufficiently sharp to nerve them to the sacrifices involved in political consolidation and social advance. Moreover, being conversant with the potent elements of obstruction in his own country and in Germany, he was patient and not over-hopeful.

Witte grudged every rouble he had to spend on armaments.[12] He loathed the very name of war and was never weary of denouncing it. "It is my conviction," he wrote in my wife's album, "that the burden of armaments without limitations may become more irksome than war itself." To assert that the groundwork of his policy was the avoidance of war does not commit me to approval of his political aims, or of the means by which he would fain have accomplished them. His most vigorous exertions were made to safeguard peace, and the war that first marked his failure also ruined his career and undid his whole life-work.

Pursuing the train of reflections started by Kuropatkin's memorandum, the Finance Minister reflected that if in lieu of saving a few million pounds on their artillery for the {276} benefit of two needy peoples it were possible, as it would be one day, to economise the countless sums of money that were being annually squandered on armaments generally, then the game would indeed be worth the candle. But all that could be done in his lifetime would be to prepare men's minds for the general reception of these notions, and in particular for the axiom that the one deadly enemy to cultural advance is militarism. Witte did not deny the fine side of patriotism, nor would he have done aught to weaken the sentiment, neither would he leave his own country inadequately prepared for the war which he knew was coming. "But I often think," he said, turning to Muravieff, "that the unexampled prosperity of the United States of America is a direct effect of its immunity from militarism. Suppose each of the States there were independent as are those of Europe, would the revenue of North America exceed its expenditure as it does to-day? Would trade and industry flourish there as they now do? On the other hand, suppose Europe could contrive to disband the bulk of her land forces, do with a mere nominal army, and confine her defences to warships, would she not thrive in an unprecedented way and guide the best part of the globe? Can that ever be accomplished? Who knows?"

The conversation ended thus: "Does his Majesty wish the money for the new weapon to be provided, or is it on the War Minister's plan that he lays the chief stress?" "He desires that General Kuropatkin's scheme should be discussed in council. It has taken his fancy. And he asked me to get your general impression in advance. I am sure he means to carry out the idea in some shape, and he hopes you will design a practical one." "Well, in that case," Witte remarked with a smile, "say that I approve the principle underlying it, but I would apply it not to Austria and Russia only, but to all the nations of the globe. In this way we should avoid invidious distinctions and leave no ground for misgivings. A proposal of this kind might be addressed to all nations, great and small; it would be welcomed by many. Whether the few would put off ordering the new {277} artillery is another matter. But if that be the theme to which I am to compose variations, you have them now. There can be none other."

Muravieff then left, and Witte said no more about the matter until he attended the special council at which Count Lamsdorff as Assistant Minister of Foreign Affairs appeared beside Count Muravieff. As soon as General Kuropatkin had read and explained his project, Witte criticised it sharply. A lively debate ensued in the course of which the two Ministers of Foreign Affairs endorsed Witte's view unreservedly, whereupon the scheme was negatived and dropped.

Then, to the amazement of those present, Muravieff calmly took out a sheet of paper and read the rough draft of a circular to the powers on the subject of the limitation of armaments. It was Witte's proposal put in diplomatic phraseology by the Foreign Office. It was approved unanimously by all present. Witte recognised the fruit of his suggestion, and smiled at the humanitarian wrappings which had thus been vouchsafed to Kuropatkin's simple ideas, for he knew that the whole scheme was a piece of hypocrisy and guile. That rough draft--in its finished form the work of Lamsdorff--was ratified by the Tsar and subsequently[13] handed to all the foreign diplomatic representatives accredited to the court of St. Petersburg. Soon afterwards Witte, when making his usual weekly report to the Emperor, behaving like one of the sceptical Roman augurs, paid him a handsome tribute for the warmth with which he had taken up the great humanitarian idea. And Nicholas II. accepted the tribute as well deserved. In this first circular the object of the conference was described as "a possible reduction of the excessive armaments which weigh upon all nations." And the way to effect it was "by putting a limit to the progressive development of the present armaments." But in view of the recent improvements in artillery, of the uncertain situation, and of disturbing elements which continued to agitate the political spheres,[14] the Russian government {278} took no further steps for a while. People hoped or feared that the matter would not be proceeded with further. But after some months' reflection and groping, the programme was modified, and instead of calling for a reduction of armaments, all that was now asked for was the maintenance of the budgetary sums allotted for them at a level which for a certain term of years must not exceed that of the year 1898-9.

There would in all probability have been no Hague Conference if General Kuropatkin had asked in the ordinary way for the necessary credit to enable him to follow the example of his German colleague and supply the Russian army with the new gun. It is equally probable that if Witte had simply accepted or rejected the War Minister's suggestion of a "deal" with Austria, the peace conference would not have been convoked or thought of. With a touch of that irony which generally accompanied his frank talks about the Tsar with an intimate friend like myself, Witte, who was sentimental rather than cynical, remarked that the Tsar's peace proposal was one of the greatest mystifications known to history, and at the same time a beneficent stimulus. However high we may rate the contributory causes of the peace movement inaugurated by Nicholas II., history will retain the decisive fact that the motive of its prime author was to hoodwink the Austrian government and to enable the Tsar's War Minister to steal a march on his country's future enemies.

This is not the place to pass in review the proceedings at the first Hague Conference, the inner history of which I outlined at the time. It rendered real statesmen, of whom there were two still living, one undeniable service: it enabled them to see that the abyss between the two groups of people into which the civilised world is divided was unmeasured--perhaps immeasurable.

[1] A Russianised Armenian, shallow, snobbish, and time-serving. He was my chief when I occupied the Chair of Comparative Philology at the University of Kharkoff, but I had known him through Kossowicz and Philippoff many years before, when he occupied the post of Director of the Imperial Library.

[2] Cf., for instance, the article entitled "The Obstacles to an Anglo-Russian Convention," _Contemporary Review_, June and July, 1904.

[3] _Contemporary Review_, July, 1904, p. 41.

[4] _Contemporary Review_, July, 1904, p. 45.

[5] The Chinese equivalent of our Foreign Office.

[6] On 21st April, 1896 (old style).

[7] It ought to be superfluous to state that the italics are mine.

[8] This happened in Moscow.

[9] _Contemporary Review_, July, 1904, p. 59.

[10] In the year 1897.

[11] In the year 1907.

[12] So did his successor in the Finance Ministry, Kokofftseff.

[13] On the 24th August, 1898.

[14] Cf. Count Muravieff's communication to the ambassador of the French Republic (11th January, 1899).

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