HL Deb 05 May 1904 vol 134 cc499-515
* EARL SPENCER

rose to ask the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs whether the independence from interference by the Turkish Government of the European officers appointed to reorganise and direct the gendarmerie in Macedonia has been duly secured, and what powers have been placed in their hands, and what progress has been made by the civil agents appointed by the Austrian and Russian Governments to supervise the improvements in the civil administration of the Macedonian provinces which have been promised. He said: My Lords, this matter, which is one of great importance, has already occupied the attention of both Houses of Parliament during the present session; but I think the time has come when it is desirable to get an authoritative declaration from the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs as to the existing state of affairs in Macedonia. We have had two discussions upon this matter in your Lordships' House, and on both those occasions the noble Marquess made exceedingly important statements. What had happened at that time was that two of the great European Powers, with, no doubt, the consent, and I suppose the approval, of the other great Powers, were proceeding to carry out, and tried to carry out, certain important reforms in Macedonia. Those reforms were intended to improve the ordinary administration of law and justice and to effect a reorganisation of the constabulary. At that time there was considerable hope that the reforms would be effected, and if they had been effected we might have looked forward to peace being maintained in Macedonia and to an end being put to the disastrous troubles there.

The scheme of reform of the administration was accompanied by a proposal that two European civil assistants should be appointed to see that these reforms were properly carried out. I think this proposal was made at the instance of the noble Marquess; and I am sorry to think that he made it an alternative to a much greater and, as it seems to me, a much better proposal—namely, that the government of Macedonia should be under the control of one Christian Governor. From what we hear of the work of these two civil assistants, I am afraid that very little has been done. So far as we know the two civil assistants have remained where they landed and have been altogether useless. With regard to the question of the gendarmerie, which is exceedingly important, it was proposed that a European officer should become the head of the gendarmerie; that he should have the complete control, as we understood it, of the police in Macedonia, and that he should have sufficient power to carry out his duties. It was a long time before anything was done, but after a time a distinguished Italian General—General de Giorgis—was appointed, and he proceeded to Constantinople. There he remained for many weeks endeavouring to get the arrangements for his administration carried out. After a time he succeeded to a certain extent, and went to Macedonia to commence his duty.

We learn that the proposals that were intended to be carried out have really been almost nullified, or at any rate so minimised that it will be impossible for the Inspector-General to carry out his work effectively. First of all we were told that sixty European officers were to be appointed to assist him, to be under his control, and to be responsible for the administration of justice in various parts of the country. But we are told that the Sultan has, up to the present time, refused to grant these sixty officers. He has only agreed to find twenty or twenty-five officers to work under General de Giorgis. If that be the case, it really looks as if the whole of this scheme has broken down, for twenty or twenty-five officers is quite an insufficient number for the administration of a district containing nearly 20,000 square miles. I should like to know, further, whether the Inspector-General has effective power. We are told in another place that he has the power to order and control the European officers under him, but we do not hear whether the European officers under him have the power to order and control the Turkish officers and men under them. It seems to be a prevalent idea that they, and even the Inspector-General, will be mere reporting officers and will really have no effective control over the police and the administration of justice.

I should like to know whether we are correctly informed, or whether the noble Marquess can say that this scheme will be effective in its operation. We are told, and we know, that this scheme which Austria and Russia were to carry out is the minimum that would be acceptable. On previous occasions the noble Marquess has made some very important statements on this matter. On the first occasion he said— We have made it perfectly plain to all concerned that, if these schemes should fail to produce the desired result, we reserve to ourselves entire liberty to take into consideration and to propose alternative and more far-reaching measures. Speaking on the Motion of my noble friend Lord Newton, on 15th February, he said— If the gendarmerie can be reorganised it is not too much to hope that the people of the Balkan Peninsula who are watching these events with so much anxiety may be re-assured and may be content to abstain from any action calculated to produce a fresh crisis at the beginning of the spring. I may be too sanguine, but I do earnestly hope that the experiment now being tried, to which we are to some extent committed, will be given a fair trial, and if, having received such a trial, it fails to produce the result we anticipate, then I think noble Lords will be amply justified in asking the Government to carry out the pledges they have given and calling upon them to put forward more drastic and more thorough measures of reform. What will the noble Marquess now say? I fear from what we hear that these schemes have failed. If they have failed, we may call upon him to fulfil his pledges and to take some further steps in order to secure peace and quiet in these districts. It is of immense importance that this should be done now. We have passed the trying winter, when it is almost impossible to carry on warfare, and now is the time when there is great fear that there may be a recurrence of those terrible encounters which resulted in so much bloodshed during last year—encounters in which many lives were lost, great cruelty was perpetrated on the unfortunate inhabitants of the country, villages were destroyed, and all the horrors of civil war were present. I fear there is now great alarm lest these encounters should recur. The only hope is that the population may rely on these reforms being carried out effectively, that they may rely on what the Powers may do.

I think it was said in another place that it was evident in the country that there was an inclination on the part of the population to rely upon the assurances and the sincerity of the European Powers instead of exposing themselves once more needlessly to the perils and sufferings of a perfectly useless struggle. That is an important statement; and I cannot help thinking, from what I hear, that there is a great deal of force and truth in it—that the population do rely upon the Great Powers, and rely a great deal more upon the influence and interest of this country than, possibly, upon those of any other country. This throws a heavy responsibility on all the Great Powers, and among them, no doubt, on Great Britain and the noble Marquess who so ably presides over the Foreign Office. I most earnestly and sincerely hope, in the face of the difficulties which exist in these districts, the terrible suffering that is going on, and the obstinate determination of the Sultan to refuse these reforms or any change of government unless he is absolutely pressed, that the noble Marquess will consult the Great Powers and see whether they cannot support and give greater effect to the mandate which has been issued and received by Russia and Austria, and really bring pressure to bear on the Sultan in order that these reforms in Macedonia may take place.

LORD NEWTON

My Lords, as the noble Earl has referred to observations which I previously made on this question, perhaps I may be permitted to interpose for a few minutes in the discussion. The noble Earl has put upon the Paper a Question which, without usurping the functions of the Foreign Secretary, I should like to have the privilege of answering myself. The noble Earl asks what progress has been made by the civil agents appointed by the Austrian and Russian Governments. To that question I reply, without the slightest hesitation, that no progress whatever has been made, and I do not see any prospect of any progress being made by them in the future. These two gentlemen, who, by the way, represent the collective wisdom of Europe, have been established for something like four months in Salonika. They have never left that town. They are the objects of the mingled pity and contempt of the Europeans in the neighbourhood, and, as I said before, I do not think there is any prospect of their discharging any more useful work than they have accomplished hitherto. I may add that it is a source of perpetual and never-ending astonishment to the inhabitants of those regions that the two civil agents take implicitly for granted everything that is told them by Hilmi Pasha, and never take the slightest trouble to verify the information. So much for the civil agents.

With reference to the general situation, I rather gather from the remarks of the noble Earl that he thinks that everything can be put right if sufficient pressure is put upon the Turkish Government. I would like to remind the noble Earl and the House that this work has practically been taken out of the hands of the Turkish Government, and has been delegated by Europe to the Austrian and Russian Governments. I agree with the noble Earl that their action so far has been as nearly as possible a complete failure, although the high-sounding reforms promised under the so-called Murzsteg Programme have dwindled into an emasculated scheme for the reform of the gendarmerie. Even that particular portion of the reforms has been so successfully emasculated by the obstruction of the Turkish Government, and by the apathy of the Austrian and Russian Governments, that I gather it is not worth very much at the present moment.

One instance which is not altogether devoid of humour may bring home to your Lordships some sense of the obstruction practised with regard to the gendarmerie officers. The British delegate, who happened to be the Military Attaché at Vienna, was appointed by our Government either at the end of last year or at the beginning of January. His Majesty's Government were laudably anxious to be first in the field. This gentleman's presence was so urgently desired in the interior of Macedonia that he was telegraphed for to come immediately, and he had, in consequence of this urgent summons, to throw over the Emperor of Austria, with whom he was engaged to dine that day. That officer, who arrived in Constantinople in the beginning of January, was detained there till the middle of April. That will give the House a fair impression of the delay that is taking place with regard to this matter.

I do not like to destroy agreeable illusions. I observe that it is generally taken for granted in official circles—I am not speaking particularly of British official circles—that everything is going to end in a favourable manner, and the foundation for this appears to consist largely in the fact that what is called the Turco-Bulgarian Agreement has been arrived at, and that the gendarmerie officers have arrived. As for the Turco-Bulgarian Agreement, in my opinion it is not worth more than the paper it is written on, because I am firmly convinced that neither side intends to adhere to it. I do not desire to appear either as a pessimist or an alarmist, but in the course of the journey which I took recently in European Turkey I was enabled to gauge the opinion of almost every section, and in my travels I only came across two persons who might fairly be described as optimists. One of these persons was Hilmi Pasha, the Inspector-General of the Macedonian Provinces, and the other was the Sultan himself. I am prepared to admit that these are important personages and that their opinion ought not to be disregarded, but at the same time it would hardly do to consider them absolutely impartial authorities on the question. On the other hand, I found that every single independent person whom I came across, with always the exception of Austrian and Russian agents, took an extremely gloomy view of the future, not only because of the incapacity and the unwillingness of the Turkish Government, but because of the profound distrust which is universally felt with regard to the attitude and intentions of the Austrian and Russian Governments, and I must say I see nothing whatever surprising in this view. Can anybody mention one single solitary instance in which either of these two Governments have shown the slightest desire to improve the condition of Turkey, either in Europe or in Asia? On the contrary, everybody knows that it has been the object of one of these Powers at all events—namely, Russia—to weaken the Turkish Government and to keep the country in as unsound a condition as is possible, with very obvious objects.

The situation in what we call Macedonia, which, in official circles, is looked upon as favourable, is, as a matter of fact, very little better than it was a year ago. The state of that country is very little removed from a state of war at the present moment. It is full of unpaid, and, in many instances, demoralised troops; every yard of railway has to be guarded by soldiers; there are thousands of unfortunate people whose houses have been burned, and who have got nothing to live upon and no place in which to live; and there are thousands of refugees outside the country who are supported by charity. An amnesty has, I understand, just been proclaimed, but the result of an amnesty in that country is that nearly everybody who is let out of gaol joins an insurgent band on the first opportunity. What is most important of all, the Musssulman population is in a dangerously excited condition. It would not take very much, I am afraid, to provoke a massacre on an extensive scale and nobody can say what a massacre would lead to at the present moment. It would lead to a wide-spread insurrection, and to a war Between Bulgaria and Turkey, and there is no one who can say what that would eventually develop into. I say that no one who travels in that part of the world at the present moment can fail to realise that there is in that country the typical lull before the storm, and that it is only a question of how soon the storm is going to break out.

What are the guarantees against an explosion of the kind I have mentioned? So far as I can see, the sole guarantee consists in the presence of the foreign officers, whose functions will be defined to us this afternoon. When I was in what is called the disturbed districts, I was assured on all sides that the one and only chance of preventing a disturbance was the prompt appearance of foreign officers dressed in foreign uniforms, who should be independent of the Sultan and really possess executive powers. Even the presence of these foreign officers may lead to considerable difficulty. The Austrian officers are going to be sent to the one district in which the inhabitants, both Mussulmans and Christians, are firmly determined they will not have them if they can possibly prevent it. In face of this fact, this particular area has been allotted to the Austrian officers, and I shall be surprised if their appearance in these regions is not followed by unfortunate results.

There is one satisfactory feature upon which I may touch. Nothing surprised me more when I was in that country than the universal confidence which appeared to be felt in British policy. It was a most agreeable surprise to me, because I never experienced anything of the kind before; but the fact remains that both Mussulmans and Christians do feel the most implicit confidence in the intentions of the British Government. They realise that we, at all events, have got clean hands in the matter and do not desire to derive any material advantage from the situation. Therefore, whatever may happen to the other foreign officers, I think I am safe in prophesying that the British officers will meet with a cordial reception wherever they may find themselves. I gather, not only from the speech of the noble Earl but from speeches made by other persons, that it is considered that this country should take some more decided action in the matter. I sometimes wonder whether gentlemen who take that view quite appreciate the difficulty in which His Majesty's Government find themselves, and I do not think sufficient justice has been done to the persistent efforts which have been made by the noble Marquess the Foreign Minister and his representatives abroad in order to secure a better state of things.

I will go so far as to say that almost everything good which has been effected has been due almost solely to the action of the noble Marquess and of the British Ambassador at Constantinople, Sir Nicholas O'Conor. I have said that our hands are clean in this matter; our policy is directed solely from disinterested, and, I should say, humanitarian motives. I am not going to assert that other nations are less humanitarian in their sympathies than we are, but at the same time this is the only country which allows its foreign policy to be dictated, or even influenced, by humanitarian considerations; and the difficulty in the way of His Majesty's Government adopting an energetic attitude on this particular question is that there is no likelihood, or very little likelihood, of their being supported by any other Government. The noble Marquess is not in a position to admit what I say, but your Lordships may take it from me that my assertion is practically true. I say that we, with the exception of the French, are the only people whose hands are clean in this matter, and who do not seek to obtain material advantages from the present situation, and everyone will recognise the extreme difficulty which the French Government would have in acting with us at the present moment.

With regard to the future, I should deprecate isolated action on our part. I believe there are some individuals who would like to urge that the British Fleet should be sent to Salonika or somewhere else for the purpose of terrifying the Turkish Government. I believe the results would be much worse if we attempted anything of that sort than they are likely to be under present circumstances; but I would venture to suggest to the noble Marquess that this scheme of entrusting the pacification and amelioration of this country to the Austrians and the Russians, if it has not broken down already, is bound to break down before long. It is an arrangement which cannot work. Although everybody approved of it at the time, it is obvious to me, after what I have seen, that it is impossible that it can ever be anything else than a merely temporary and unsatisfactory arrangement. What I do very respectfully suggest to the noble Marquess is this, that the question is one of such extreme complication and difficulty, there are so many nationalities and different questions involved, that it cannot be solved by the rough and ready plan which has been adopted. In my opinion, the only way in which the situation could be adequately dealt with is by means of a conference before which the respective interests of all these different nationalities could be fairly considered, and, what is no less important, the interests of the Mussulman population would be considered as well as those of the Christian population. I believe that in the adoption of this principle of a conference or congress the ultimate solution of this difficulty lies; and I urge this, in conclusion, that I firmly believe that if an opportunity were obtained of proposing a conference, and if the assent of Europe could be obtained to the conference, it would not only have the best possible effect in the future, but it would have the immediate effect of restraining revolutionary bodies and preventing them from rising, for they would then know that European diplomacy was really in earnest in desiring to do something for them.

* THE SECRETARY of STATE FOR FOREIGN AFFAIRS (The Marquess of LANSDOWNE)

My Lords, I do not know whether the noble Earl will be content with the answer which my noble friend so I kindly volunteered on my behalf, but it, is perhaps necessary that I should supplement it by a few words. With some of the observations he addressed to your Lordships I certainly do not disagree. Let me say at once that he will not find me in the ranks of the incurably optimistic officials of whom he has spoken. I am, on the contrary, one of those who regard with great apprehension the condition of things in the Balkan Peninsula, and think, with my noble friend, that we have too much reason to be disappointed with the progress which has up to the present time been achieved in the carrying out of the scheme of reforms; I feel, as he does, that if the rate of progress is not accelerated we shall be confronted with a situation giving rise to the gravest anxiety.

In one or two of my noble friend's observations I certainly did not concur, I do not, for example, agree with him when he tells your Lordships that the intervention of Austria and Russia has had the effect of relieving the Porte from all responsibility in this matter. I do not think that is the case. We all know that, however promising may be the measures of reform put forward for the acceptance of the Turkish Government, and however; readily those reforms may he accepted, there is always left a great deal of room for the exercise of those arts of delay and obstruction in which, I am afraid, it must be said, Turkish officials are usually found to excel. Again, I do not agree with my noble friend in his belief that the agreement which has been concluded between Turkey and Bulgaria is not worth the paper on which it is written. In my belief that agreement is likely, at any rate, to lead to some useful results; and it will have this result, amongst others, that it will greatly strengthen the hands of the Bulgarian Government in, checking the insurrectionary movements which have used Bulgarian territory as a base of operations, and which the Bulgarian authorities have in the past had great difficulty in restraining.

My noble friend made, not for the first time, a complimentary reference, which I greatly appreciate, to the efforts, of His Majesty's Government, and particularly to our representative at Constantinople, in promoting the cause of reform. My Lords, let me say that so far as Sir Nicholas O'Conor is concerned that compliment appears to me to be well deserved. It is impossible to exaggerate the value of the continued and strenuous efforts which Sir Nicholas O'Conor has made during the last few months in endeavouring to bring about an improvement in the state of things in the Balkan Peninsula. He has found the means of commanding the confidence of the Sultan, and his position has been undoubtedly strengthened by the knowledge that the advice he has given, to the Turkish Government is of an absolutely disinterested character and designed solely for the good of all concerned. One word more with regard to my noble friend's speech. He suggested to us the appointment of a European conference. I would ask my noble friend whether he is quite sure that if a conference were to be assembled to-morrow we should really be much nearer the satisfactory solution that we all desire? I have always been under the impression that a conference of the Powers does not hold out much hope of success unless before the conference is assembled there is some reason for believing that the Powers concerned will enter into it in general agreement as to the means which might be adopted of dealing with the questions at issue. We have had some experience of the difficulties encountered even by two Powers in dealing with this problem; and I own that I should be sorry to speak with entire confidence of the prospects of a conference assembled without a previous understanding and merely with the object of what I may describe as fishing for a solution of the Macedonian question. And surely it is fair to say that of all the calamities which could befall these much afflicted regions, none could be greater than that a conference should assemble and should separate without having discovered a means of putting an end to this grievous condition of things. Then, indeed, something like despair would overtake these long-suffering populations, and we might look forward with the gravest anticipation to the result which such a feeling might produce upon their minds.

And now, my Lords, I will endeavour to answer the Questions put by the noble Earl, with regard to the European officers who are to be employed with the Macedonian gendarmerie, and with regard to the two high officials who are to be attached to the staff of the Inspector-General. First as to the number of the European officers. It is quite true that at this moment only twenty-five are to be sent out; but the number originally mentioned was sixty, and the Powers have made it clear that they do not depart from their original demand, and that they reserve to themselves the right of sending additional officers at the proper time. I may say that General de Giorgis, who is to have command of the force, expressed the opinion that for the present and as a beginning twenty-five officers was a sufficient number. The officers to be employed are of two classes. There are, in the first place, seven staff officers—officers of senior rank who are attached to the General, and who will not be in the Turkish service, and who will consequently not wear the Turkish uniform. In the second place, there are the twenty-five European officers already mentioned who will be attached to the gendarmerie and who will be in the Turkish service

The noble Earl is anxious to know something of the degree of authority and independence which will belong to these officers. I think I may say that both classes will have very extensive powers and a very considerable amount of independence of the ordinary Turkish administration. That will be the case, although they will not be in immediate or executive command of the gendarmerie in the sense in which a regimental officer has executive command of the troops under his charge. That point was very carefully considered; and both Sir Nicholas O'Conor and the distinguished officer who has been appointed as British staff officer with General de Giorgis—Colonel Fairholme—advised that, all things considered, it would be better that these officers should not have executive command. They thought, to begin with, that it was not desirable that British officers should be in actual command of Turkish troops. They believed that the authority of the officers would be greater, and not less, if their position was made to differ from that of the ordinary Turkish officer; finally, by putting them in a special position of this kind, we relieve them from the necessity of taking the oath of allegiance to the Sultan, which would have been necessary if they had been actually in executive command.

The senior, or staff, officers will be the advisers of the General in all matters concerning the administration, the training of the force, and its organisation. They will report to the general and receive their instructions from him. As to the remaining European officers, all orders issued to the gendarmerie will be either sent through these officers or communicated to them and transmitted, in case, they are given to them, to the Turkish officers in executive command of the troops; and, what is very important, it will be the duty of the European officers to see that those orders are carried out and to report to the General if there is any failure to comply with the orders or to obstruct their execution. Another important point as bearing on the position of the officers is this. The European officers will be irremovable except in consequence of a decision of a special committee presided over by the General himself. But while they are to be irremovable, they are to have the right of calling for the dismissal or removal from the corps of any members, officers or men, who are disobedient, obstructive, or inefficient. These are, so far as we have been able to ascertain, the functions of these European officers; but I should make it clear that the Powers reserve to themselves the right of revising these arrangements should they be found to work unsatisfactorily in practice.

I should like to add one other observation with regard to these officers. I think it would be a mistake to suppose that their authority and position will depend entirely upon the terms of their appointment or the regulations subject to which they will serve. They will serve in the gendarmerie not merely in the capacity of assistants to the General, but as representatives of the Powers by whom they are appointed and they will have exceptional opportunities of watching the progress of events in these provinces and reporting upon them from time to time. I do not think that at any moment we have yet had an opportunity of obtaining the kind of evidence which it may be hoped we shall be able to obtain from them.

Passing to the civil assistants of the Inspector-General, I am constrained to say with much regret that I am not able to describe their achievements in language much more reassuring than that which my noble friend has used. They were appointed with the expectation that they would be able to direct the attention of the Inspector-General to the needs of the Christian population; and I think we all of us supposed that, in order that they might be able to exercise that extremely important function, they would be officials of a peripatetic description, who would make tours in their districts and endeavour to see with their own eyes what was going on in them. I regret extremely to say that differences of opinion have arisen with regard to these tours; and I understand that the Turkish Government has insisted that if such tours are to take place the civil assistant is invariably to be accompanied by a Turkish official, and that this restriction has been objected to, with the result that the tours have not taken place. The controversy, I believe, is still proceeding; and up to the present time I am afraid it is impossible to point to any very special results from the presence of these officials. I may say that we have invited the two Governments concerned to supply us if possible with any reports which may have been furnished by the civil assistants, but up to the present we have not succeeded in obtaining any such documents.

I think I have now said all I am able to say in reply to the specific Questions of the noble Earl. With regard to the general situation, I can only once more express my regret that the progress which has been made with these reforms should have been so tardy. I might almost say that at times it has been heartrending to find the number of minor difficulties which apparently have cropped up on every side to prevent the expeditious carrying out of arrangements which every one professes to desire. We can only promise your Lordships that, so far as we are concerned, we shall continue to use such influence as we may be able to exercise for the purpose of expediting these measures of reform and for the purpose of inculcating moderation and self-restraint where those qualities are most needed.

LORD TWEEDMOUTH

My Lords, on the last occasion when the noble Marquess spoke on this subject he suggested that the Government might be assisted in the future by action being taken by Members of both Houses to encourage them and strengthen their hands. What is the situation to-day? Your Lordships have heard the statement of a Member of this House, who certainly has not the character of being an anti-Turk. You have heard what he has seen during his recent visit to the Balkan provinces, and you have heard him describe the imminent danger of massacre. Exactly the same thing was hinted at by The Times correspondent in to-day's paper. The snow has gone, and now is the time when an outbreak is likely to occur. In face of that, I ask the House, can we accept the statement we have just heard from the noble Marquess as satisfactory, or say that it seems to indicate any great hope of successfully battling with the situation in these countries? I fully acknowledge the difficulties of the situation and the difficulties which the Government have to face. Still it does seem to me that the speech of the noble Marquis is almost a confession of impotence. All the great Powers are agreed that the present situation should be put an end to. The duty of carrying out the views of the Powers has been entrusted to Russia and Austria. I think it is an unfortunate thing that these two Powers should be the very Powers which hive the greatest interests in these territories. It is also an unfortunate thing that one of those Powers should at this moment have its hands very full elsewhere. Is there no hope that the other great Powers may be able to bring some influence to bear upon them to force them to take some action? I believe Lord Newton has declared quite truly the confidence of the population of these provinces in British good intentions and British power. I wish we had heard the noble Marquess announce some intention to endeavour to influence somehow—it is not for me to suggest how—Russia and Austria; and, if we cannot do that, to act on our own behalf in conjunction with France and Germany. The time is passing quickly, and if prompt action is not taken we may expect a renewal of the terrible incidents which have lately been so frequent. Surely it is a scandal that the Sultan should be able to turn the jealousies, desires, and ambitions of the European Powers to his own advantage, to use them for the purpose of leaving these wretched subjects of his in their present terrible condition. I do not wish to say a word which would add to the difficulties of the situation; but I desire that Members of Parliament should adopt the course suggested by the noble Marquess on a former occasion, and I hope the effect of their action will be to enable the Government to take some more decided action than they have yet indicated.

House adjourned at a quarter before Six o'clock till Tomorrow, half-past Ten o'clock.