y for its national policy, to ask
themselves these questions:

Is it true that the Powers could have prevented in large measure the
abominations which Turkey has practised in the Balkans for the last
half-century or so?

Has our own policy been a large factor in determining that of the
Powers?

Has our own policy directly prevented in the past the triumph of the
Christian populations which, despite that policy, has finally taken
place?

Was our own policy at fault when we were led into a war to ensure the
"integrity and independence of the Turkish dominions in Europe"?

Is the general conception of Statecraft on which that policy has been
based--the "Balance of Power" which presupposes the necessary rivalry of
nations and which in the past has led to oppose Russia as it is now
leading to oppose Germany--sound, and has it been justified in history?

Did we give due weight to the considerations urged by the public men of
the past who opposed such features of this policy as the Crimean War;
was the immense popularity of that war any test of its wisdom; were the
rancour, hatred and scorn poured upon those men just or deserved?

* * * * *

Now the first four of these questions have been answered by history and
are answered by every one to-day in an emphatic affirmative. This is not
the opinion of a Pacifist partisan. Even the _Times_ is constrained to
admit that "these futile conflicts might have ended years ago, if it had
not been for the quarrels of the Western nations."[6] And as to the
Crimean War, has not the greatest Conservative foreign minister of the
nineteenth century admitted that "we backed the wrong horse"--and, what
is far more to the point, have not events unmistakably demonstrated it?

Do we quite realise that if foreign policy had that continuity which
the political pundits pretend, we should now be fighting on the side of
the Turk against the Balkan States? That we have entered into solemn
treaty obligations, as part of our national policy, to guarantee for
ever the "integrity and independence of the Turkish dominions in
Europe," that we fought a great and popular war to prevent that triumph
of the Christian population which will arise as the result of the
present war? That but for this policy which caused us to maintain the
Turk in Europe the present war would certainly not be raging, and, what
is much more to the point, that but for our policy the abominations
whi