TO A TOWN POET.

What if your heritage be

The huddled trees along the smoky ways; At a street's end the stretch of lilac sea; The vender, swart but free,

And I long for the choir of skylarks, for the coo of the mating dove,

For the liquid note of the throstle's throat, or the songs of the land I love;

faces which come and pass,

For the voice of Spring when streamlets sing, and the murmur of life in the grass;

For the sweet, sweet breath of the beanfields, the scent of the fresh-turned

sod, For arms which wait by my cottage gate. and the bells which cry to God.

I am man, and the world is mighty. Should I die thus alone outcast,

Would my soul in the end find the soul of

a friend, and win to its love at last? CLIVE PHILLIPPS-WOLLEY. Pall Mall Magazine. Victoria, B. C.

PHILLIDA AND CORYDON.

In the merry month of May,
In a morne by breake of day,

Forth I walked by the wood-side,
Whenas May was in his pride:
There I spied all alone
Phillida and Corydon.

Much ado, there was, God wot,
He would love and she would not.
She said never man was true,
He said, None was false to you,
He said, he had loved her long,
She said, Love should have no wrong,
Corydon would kiss her then.
She said, Maids must kiss no men,
Till they did for good and all:
Then she made the shepherd call
All the heavens to witnesse truth,
Never loved a truer youth.
Thus with many a pretty oath,
Yea and nay, and faith and troth,
Such as silly shepherds use
When they will not love abuse
Love which had beene long deluded,
Was with kisses sweet concluded.
And Phillida with garlands gay,
Was made the lady of the May.

NICHOLAS BRETON.

From The Nineteenth Century. “THE INTEGRITY OF THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE" AS A DIPLOMATIC FORMULA.

I.

Lord Salisbury's admirers, and they are to be found in both parties, have long been constrained to admit that, with all his great qualities, he suffers from one curious infirmity. It has pursued him from the very beginning of his distinguished public career, and it will apparently cling to him to his latest day. It is the infirmity which, nearly thirty years ago, was described by Mr. Disraeli in the House of Commons with that biting sarcasm which he loved to employ against friends as well as foes. Stated in less severe language than Mr. Disraeli's, Lord Salisbury's weakness may be described as his habit of using rash and dangerous phrases. Its latest illustration was found in his astounding reply to Lord Kimberley two weeks ago, when he referred him to the statement of M. Hanotaux in the French Chamber as containing an exposition of the policy of her Majesty's government. It is very probable that when Lord Salisbury gave this unprecedented answer to a question addressed to him by his predecessor in the office of foreign secretary, he had not even read the full text of the speeches in the French Chamber, and based himself upon nothing more than the telegraphic summaries in the English newspapers. But even these summaries should have put Lord Salisbury on his guard against the indiscretion into which he fell. The principal statement which was made by M. Hanotaux and M. Méline was that the policy of France "rested upon the integrity of the Ottoman Empire;" and it was to this statement that Lord Salisbury committed himself by his answer to Lord Kimberley.

It is not surprising that many Liberals, including Lord Kimberly himself, should have been stirred by amazement and indignation when they received this explicit declaration as to the character of the policy of their country in eastern Europe. A reference to "the integrity of the Ottoman Empire" ought not in itself to have disturbed Lord Kimber

ley, or any other man acquainted with the history of the Eastern question; for, as I desire to show in these pages, "the integrity of the Ottoman Empire" is a phrase which has borne many different meanings, and which may fairly be used by an English statesman without giving just cause of offence to anybody. But it is one thing to use this phrase in the sense in which it is nowadays employed by most diplomatists, and quite another thing to refer to it as the principle upon which British policy rests, the very foundation-stone, as it were, of that policy, and of our duties and purposes in the East. British policy, in the belief of the great majority of the people of these islands, ought to rest, and does rest at this moment, upon the maintenance and advancement of human freedom throughout Europe; and, as everybody recognizes the fact that the rule of the sultan of Turkey is a standing menace to all freedom, it is difficult to reconcile Lord salisbury's acceptance of the statement of the French ministers with the popular conception of our national policy.

But did the prime minister really intend to convey the meaning which Lord Kimberley has read into his words, and is the phrase upon which the latter fastened, thoughtless and ill advised though it undoubtedly was, as mischievous as many of Lord Salisbury's critics profess to believe.

To both these questions the answer ought, I think, to be in the negative. No mistake can be greater than that which we shall make if we try to strain the language of the prime minister in order to find in it some excuse for faultfinding. Men are naturally of course prone to put the less rather than the more favorable interpretation upon the public utterances of their political opponents. But the temptation to do this is one that we are bound to resist with all our strength at moments like the present, when the prime minister stands not for a party only, but for the nation as a whole, and when he has it in his power, no matter what may be the wishes of his opponents, to commit the country to engagements of the most

serious and, it may be, of the most disastrous kind. At such times the duty of a patriotic opposition is not to imagine causes of offence on the part of the prime minister, but to make quite sure that real cause of offence exists before offence is taken. To some Liberals at all events (who are not less truly Liberals because they have not been able to join in the movement of "the Forward Party" and similar bodies) it seems that this sound doctrine has been forgotten by many of their friends during the present crisis. Lord Salisbury has been accused of following a "dishonoring policy," when no proof that he has done so has been forthcoming; and the government has been severely censured for its acts when we are still without any clear information respecting the nature of those acts. This, surely, is inconsistent alike with patriotism, common sense, and fair play. If Lord Salisbury really meant all that some persons assume by his references to "the integrity of the Ottoman Empire," it will no doubt be impossible to deny that the censures which have been heaped upon him by many Liberals are well deserved. But I contend that a reference to the facts and to the best authorities must suffice to show that when the English government uses this phrase it does so in a sense which is far from justifying the angry protests that have been raised in many of our Liberal newspapers, and on all our Liberal platforms.

The first and greatest of the authorities who can be cited to dispose of the allegation that "the integrity of the Ottoman Empire" means the maintenance of the rule of the sultan wherever that integrity is respected, is Mr. Gladstone. Good service has been done in the present crisis by the untiring pertinacity with which the Daily News has presented its readers with copious extracts from the utterances of Mr. Gladstone in former years on the subject of the concert of Europe and the integrity of the Ottoman Empire. Some of my fellow-Liberals must have been more than a little surprised when they found that the leader whom they revere so

justly had ten years or twenty years ago used language so absolutely opposed to that which is now adopted as the shibboleth of the ardent spirits who have been leading the present agitation in favor of the Greeks. But even ten years is a space of time sufficient to justify a man in changing his opinions on many questions; and considering that ten years ago Mr. Gladstone was the minister who used towards Greece the very measures of coercion against which he now declaims so eloquently, it may be unwise to trust in the present crisis to his utterances of 1886 on the subject of the integrity of Turkey. It will be simpler and more satisfactory to cite his declarations in the letter to the Duke of Westminster which deals with the existing crisis anu is dated so recently as the 13th of March, 1897. Deploring the fact that what he calls "the rent and ragged catchword of 'the integrity of the Ottoman Empire' should still be flaunted before our eyes," he proceeds:

Has it, then, a meaning? Yes, and it had a different meaning in almost every decade of the century now expiring. In the first quarter of that century it meant that Turkey, though her system was poisoned and effete, still occupied in right of actual sovereignty the whole southeastern corner of Europe, appointed by the Almighty to be one of its choicest portions. In 1830 it meant that this baleful sovereignty had been abridged by the excision of Greece from Turkish territory. In 1860 it meant that the Danubian Principalities, now forming the kingdom of Roumania, had obtained an emancipation virtually (as it is now formally) complete. In 1878 it meant that Bosnia, with Herzegovina, had bid farewell to all active concern with Turkey, that Servia was enlarged, and that northern Bulgaria was free. In 1880 it meant that Montenegro had crowned its glorious battle of four hundred years by achieving the acknowledgment of its independence and obtaining a great accession of territory, and that Thessaly was added to free Greece. In 1886 it meant that southern Bulgaria had been permitted to associate itself with its northern sisters. What is the upshot of all this? That eighteen millions of human beings, who a century ago, peopling a large

part of the Turkish Empire, were subject to its once paralyzing and degrading yoke, are now as free from it as if they were inhabitants of these islands, and that Greece, Roumania, Servia, Montenegro, and Bulgaria stand before us as five living witnesses, that, even in this world, the reign of wrong is not eternal.

And all these triumphs for the great cause of freedom have been won under cover of the phrase "the integrity of the Ottoman Empire!" Surely it is made clear, upon no less an authority than that of Mr. Gladstone, that the use of this phrase does not by any means imply that the hateful rule of the sultan is to be maintained along with the "integrity" of the empire. But Mr. Gladstone might have gone further if he had been pleased to do so. In October, 1881, I myself heard the herald in the porch of the palace of the bey of Tunis proclaiming the fact that Tunis was and would forever remain a portion of the Ottoman Empire. Yet at that very moment a French army was occupying Tunis, and the bey was no better than a prisoner in the hands of M. Roustan. Tunis, as everybody knows, is now virtually a French province; yet it is quite possible that the old proclamation is still made at sunset from the marble steps of the palace, and that the faithful still believe that they are in some mysterious fashion connected with the caliph. "The integrity of the Ottoman Empire" has not prevented Cyprus from being administered by officials of the British crown, and did not enable the sultan to carry out his intrigues against British supremacy at Cairo. In short, the fact remains beyond dispute that whilst this phrase has been in the mouths of European statesmen and diplomatists during many decades, the work of reducing the power of the sultan and the geographical extent of his rule "consolidating" that rule it was called by the ingenious Lord Beacons field-has gone on almost without intermission, and certainly without any hindrance whatever from the employment of this formula.

It would be easy to cite in support of Mr. Gladstone's authority and of the

facts mentioned above, innumerable passages from the writings and speeches of eminent members of both political parties, living and dead, to show that the adoption of this phrase does not mean that the man using it thinks of bolstering up the blood-stained rule of the sultan, or has in his mind any intention, however remote, of keeping within the power of that tyrant a single human being who is able to escape from it. But, after all, Mr. Gladstone is most deservedly the one supreme authority on this question, and his description of the practical effect of the phrase "the integrity of the Ottoman Empire" ought to be conclusive. It ought certainly to prevent such a misconception of the use of the words by Lord Salisbury as that which unhappily seems to prevail at present in the minds of many of my fellow-Liberals.

"The integrity of the Ottoman Empire" is I take it, a formula which is accepted by the diplomatic world as a convenient fiction under cover of which deeds may be done that would hardly be possible if it were to be dispensed with. In itself it means no more than is meant by the Norman-French phrase, familiar to frequenters of the House of Lords, which converts acts of Parliament into the law of the realm, and which does so avowedly because "the queen wills it." We do not live under an autocratic government because this very autocratic phrase must be used beIore the decisions of Parliament can become law; and when men talk about the "integrity of the Ottoman Empire" they do not, by doing so, commit themselves to the maintenance of the sultan's rule.

But why use a formula which means nothing, and which is therefore calculated to mislead? I imagine that the a swer to this question is that when the Great Powers use it they seek to convey to each other their resolve not to enter upon a sudden scramble for the spoils of the Turkish Empire in which each will consider nothing beyond his own selfish interests. It is intended, in other words, to attest the existence of a self-denying ordinance. We have seen