produce a feeling bordering on despair. The most striking lesson to be drawn from the Congress of Vienna is that a power, overwhelmingly defeated on the battlefield and actually occupied in large part by the victorious troops of a grand alliance, may, if it has a diplomatist of the calibre and shrewdness of Talleyrand, set its conquerors at variance one with another and in the name of "legitimacy" or of some other mouth-filling fiction preserve its territorial integrity and continue to play a role as a great power. The Congress of Vienna was not even a congress, yet it accomplished much more of permanent value than did the Congress of Paris. In the latter there is only a comedy of errors played by a humorous green-table troupe—the pompous, ponderous, Palmerstonian Clarendon; Walewski, the much-talking and little-thinking agent of Napoleon III. the "arrogant, mannerless, and haughty" Count Buol; the bluff, jovial, "old-soldierly" Count Orloff; and the Turkish grand vizier, "the only self-made man"—as much like Gilbert-and-Sullivan in their procedure as they were like Hamlet in their crazy and tragical achievements. It is not surprising that historical interest has centred less in this burlesque than in the two side-shows which accompanied it—the Declaration of Paris on maritime law in time of war, and the quiet but effective intrigues of Count Cavour.
Both at Paris and at Vienna the visiting diplomatists were constantly distracted from business by banquets, receptions, and balls; at Berlin, they had only to retire to Bismarck's buffet and to sample his "jug of port", and they were forthwith refreshed and invigorated for the tasks before them. Yet in sheer futility the Congress of Berlin outrivalled its predecessors. Mr. Lord, after endorsing the statement that "the treaty of San Stefano was the wisest measure ever prepared for the pacification of the Balkan Peninsula", affirms that had the powers other than Russia
been actuated only by disinterestedness, moderation, and foresight, they would then have assembled in congress resolved, at the least, to confirm the essential arrangements of San Stefano, to stipulate analogous arrangements for the western half of the peninsula, and to provide for the collective guardianship of Europe over the organization and free development of the liberated nations.
That they did nothing of the sort was due to their indifference to the principle of nationality, to their unfounded jealousy of Russia, and to the fact that they consulted only their own selfish interests; their selfishness was to bear fruit in wars of the twentieth century.
In a word [concludes Mr. Lord] the great fault of the Congress of Berlin, as of so many congresses in the past, was the failure to recognize that the peace of Europe is not ensured nor the interests of any Power permanently served by creating unnatural, unjust, and intolerable conditions; the failure to recognize that even in international politics justice is, in the long run, the surest foundation of states and nations.
