THE FIASCO' OF CYPRUS.

IN one of the early days of July last, I, in common doubtless with most of my fellow-subjects, found in my morning paper an interesting item of intelligence under the heading ‘Annexation of Cyprus.' The news gave me pleasure; there was a savour of strength, of a policy, of a masterfulness in it. There was the ring of a coup, so dear to the British Philistine, in the secrecy of the negotiation and in the éclat of the dénouement. And the transaction gratified that amor habendi which lies deep down in the heart of the properly constituted Briton, in regard as well to his national as to his individual aspirations. In fine, I threw up my hat and crowed, as beseemed an honest and docile Jingo.

A few days later, I was instructed at a moment's notice to betake myself to Cyprus as the representative of a London paper, for the purpose of narrating the circumstances of the occupation of it by the British officials and soldiers, and of describing the characteristics which the island presented in its various aspects. Under these circumstances, it became necessary to go somewhat deeper into the matter than the cursory perusal of a leading article and a glance over the summaries of a few speeches. In common, as I suppose, with most of my fellow-countrymen, I had, in the first instance, to grope for the position of Cyprus on the map. I discovered that the authorities, in their laudable thirst for knowledge, had bought up the few outstanding copies of Murray's Turkey in Asia, an investment which a borrowed copy caused me to regard as better-intentioned than resulting in practical benefit. I read later how, on July 23rd, the Premier, replying to Lord Granville, declared that it was a great error to suppose that the Government decided on this step of the occupation of Cyprus without the possession of adequate information.' There can be no doubt of the truth of this statement, made as it was by Lord Beaconsfield; only it may be added that the Government so scrupulously kept its adequate information' to itself, that it did not furnish a scrap to the gallant and distinguished officer nominated to the governorship of the island. The official information at disposal consisted of a précis of consular reports compiled in the Intelligence Department, fragmentary, irrelevant, and obsolete even beyond the

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average of such documents, but with a good map attached furnished from a French source. The expedition, as regarded all practical matters, population, climate, mode of government, capacity for improvement and colonisation, was an expedition not less of exploration than of occupation. That expedition I accompanied, sharing in the task of exploration, investigating into the points noted in the foregoing sentence.

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But these points, although some details regarding them may be serviceable to people who are not already so fortunate as was the Government in its possession of adequate information,' have but a secondary interest in an Imperial sense. Lord Salisbury was no doubt right when he challenged a denial that the possession of Cyprus by England is likely to prove a civilising instrument,' in the sense that British administration and the expenditure of British capital may, if persevered with, improve the Cypriotes out of their existing state of semi-barbarism into a condition of pseudo-civilisation. But this is simply incidental. If we were to make it our aim and end to undertake a wholesale crusade of civilisation, a considerable quantity of this sort of philanthropic enterprise lies nearer and closer to us than a casual island in a dead angle of the Mediterranean. The AngloTurkish Convention was scarcely entered into with the artless, if genial, object of bringing the blessings of civilisation to the gates of Nikosia and Famagusta. Before, then, and overshadowing, the discussion of the internal aspects of Cyprus, come the infinitely more important questions:

1st. Under what conditions are we there?

2nd. With what objects are we there?

3rd. To what extent does our being there fulfil these objects? With these questions I propose to deal seriatim.

On the threshold of my studies, there confronted me the disheartening discovery that my newspaper heading, The Annexation of Cyprus,' was a swindle. The amor habendi of the Briton suffered a heavy blow in the perusal of the Convention and its Annex. The coup fizzled down into a fiasco. I discovered, to my disgust, that, so far from being the proud owners of a new acquisition, we are mere tenants at will, and, to make matters worse, are expressly barred from claiming on eviction compensation for improvements. Or, rather, our position is that of a broker's man in possession under a fictitious judgment, liable at any moment to be kicked out without receiving the half-crown a day of aliment money. The Porte is a landed proprietor who has tried to farm his own land to advantage and has failed-the fate of most landed proprietors who try to farm their own land. We are the humble horny-handed farmer with some capital and a knowledge of the business, who steps in and undertakes the work on the terms of a vaguely defined rental, the landlord reserving to himself the usufruct and disposal of a part of our

holding, the extent of which is undefined, but which may turn out to be three-fourths of the whole farm-in respect whereof, however, there is to be no reduction of our rental. (I refer to the stipulation in the fourth article of the Annex that the Sublime Porte may freely sell and lease lands and other property in Cyprus belonging to the Ottoman State and Crown.') And the tenure of the humble farmer is precarious beyond the caprice of any ordinary landlord. Another party altogether is the arbiter of it. That neighbouring proprietor, Russia, may take it into his head, just when we have got the farm into good order and it has begun to pay, to abandon his recent acquisitions in Armenia on the discovery that they are of less value to him than he had thought, or in virtue of some consideration given by our landlord Turkey, and then out we go neck and crop, leaving behind us our unexhausted improvements. We, claiming to be the greatest Power in Western Europe, have, quoad this wretched Asiatic island, constituted ourselves the vassals, the tributaries of a battered and broken barbarian power. We deal with a blind man, not by restoring his sight, but by accepting the proud rôle of the dog that leads him about and snaps at people who would molest him. And how precarious our boasted 'civilising instrument'! Should we have to evacuate this our dependency, we must abandon its population, on whom we shall have tried the experiment of civilisation, to the tender mercy of the re-established tithe-collector and the scrupulous consideration of the Kaimakan and the Kadi.

Nor is this all. The natives of Cyprus, with whose precarious civilisation we are thus concerning ourselves, remain all the while subjects of their master and our suzerain, the Porte. On this point the Attorney-General's reply to Sir William Harcourt was reluctantly clear. Why the former should have called the questions of the latter 'highly speculative and argumentative' is difficult to discern, seeing that they took cognisance of points some of which have already in practice come to the front on the island, and more of which must crop up before the winter cold shall render it temporarily habitable by Englishmen. The Convention,' so said the Attorney-General, 'does not destroy the allegiance of the natives of Cyprus to the Sultan.' Logically, then, supposing the Porte at war, say with Greece, or, to take an example of recent occurrence, with Servia, the Turkish inhabitants of Cyprus would be liable to the conscription of the Constantinople Seraskierate. The Turkish zaptieh, who has become one of Major Grant's policemen, must fulfil the claims of his allegiance, and lay down his baton to go and serve against a country with which his, second master, Britain, would in all probability be at peace. We have got into the way of thinking that all persons, irrespective of nationality, abiding in a locality where British jurisdiction prevails, are amenable to its provisions. The French forger who passes a bad five-franc piece in Leicester Square is dealt with at Bow Street. The

Trieste sailor who knocks down a Hindoo chowkedar outside a drinking bar in Dhurrumtollah Street, Calcutta, is prosecuted by Sir Stuart Hogg, and sent to gaol by the British police magistrate. But Cyprus is destined to furnish the one bad exception to this rule. Most of the European states, by specific capitulation with the Porte, have secured the right of exclusive jurisdiction over their own subjects in the Turkish dominion of the Levant. This right stands under our occupation; there is no reference to it, and therefore no arrestment of it, in the Convention. Indeed, the Attorney-General has in effect conceded its continued force. If,' said he, replying to Sir William Harcourt, any other country, or the subjects of any other country, should appear or claim to have any exceptional right in Cyprus under existing arrangements with the Porte, the position and claims of such country or subjects will be duly considered.' So if an Italian sailor happens to knife a Cypriote on the Marina of Larnaka, Colonel White cannot punish the ruffian, but on due requisition, which will certainly be forthcoming, must hand him over to be dealt with by the Italian Consul. The British lion, under such circumstances, has the sphere of the wag of his tail materially curtailed.

Another anomaly in our administration of Cyprus may be adverted to. The produce of the taxation of England-a taxation which bears on Englishmen universally-is to be expended in bettering the position of the Turkish bondholders, who are mere isolated individuals in the English community, and who indeed need not belong to it at all. This is a novelty; but Lord Salisbury is my authority for the statement. He furnishes this authority in the speech he made in the House of Lords on the 23rd July, in reply to Lord Camperdown. There is some ambiguity in the details, but none as to the fact. The Convention (art. 3 Annex) sets forth that England will pay to the Porte whatever is the present excess of revenue over expenditure in the island; this excess to be calculated upon and determined by the average of the last five years, stated to be 22,963 purses.' This would seem to prescribe a fixed annual tribute of about 94,000l. sterling. Lord Salisbury's words I find reported as follows: that the Porte should continue to receive whatever it might be calculated was the average of the past five years after all the expenditure had been paid' -a calculation already made in the Convention at the amount above stated, subject to verification; and,' his Lordship proceeds, then the surplus would go to the Porte, and would continue to do so.' A fair arrangement, continues his Lordship, seeing that the revenues had already been pledged to Turkish bondholders. It is not clear whether Lord Salisbury had in view that any 'surplus' that may arise from our better administration should go to swell the tribute to the Porte for the professed behoof of the bondholders; but it is certain that his expressed intention was that, whether thus or by direct pay

ment to the bondholders, they are to receive and be advantaged by such surplus as may accrue, and not the Imperial revenues, by whose disbursement in our administration that further surplus shall have been realised. He is explicit as to this. These are his words: If peculation in regard to the revenue had been so prevalent in the island, there would be a much better chance of the bondholders being paid when the revenues came under a better administration, and no doubt they would be much larger than they had been.' Now, I am not a Turkish bondholder, and I respectfully protest against being taxed to meet the expenses of our occupation of Cyprus for the behoof of private speculators. In the sense of a speculation, Cyprus is a national speculation; and if there are any returns, I claim that they go into the national purse.

I proceed now to inquire into the second question of the theme:
WITH WHAT OBJECTS HAVE WE OCCUPIED CYPRUS?

These ought to be of cardinal importance to have moved us to what Lord Salisbury has designated as a 'bold and even hazardous enterprise.' Even if we may fail to recognise any risk attending the enterprise in itself, save the certainty of Cyprus fever, none the less are we filled with an impression of the importance of the objects to be furthered by the occupation, when it is realised that their pursuit is considered worth the cost of our voluntary subjection to unprecedented humiliation and degradation. When one proceeds into an inquiry into the character of these objects, there rises up at the very outset a curious difficulty. Most things have appertaining to them something of a natural meaning and sequence. If we see a man drinking tumbler after tumbler of grog, the prediction that his sobriety will be impaired will hardly be challenged as far-fetched If we see a man going up the Finchley Road, we are entitled to assume that, if he does not turn off, he will pass the Swiss Cottage. But there is this peculiarity about the occupation of Cyprus, that the act in itself affords no clue to the motive, no hint as to the desiderated result. There was actually more prima facie coherency in the conduct of the ingenious Tamaroo, Mr. Bailey's successor at Todgers', who, we are credibly informed, when despatched to the post-office with letters, had been frequently seen endeavouring to insinuate them into casual chinks in private doors, under the delusion that any door with a hole in it would answer the purpose. There was internal evidence as to the character of this woman's aim; the occupation of Cyprus furnishes no internal evidence of any object at all. We must therefore look outside natural and internal, to collateral evidence on this subject; and that evidence is twofold. The Anglo-Turkish Convention states categorically an object-or rather perhaps it should be said the object--for which Her Majesty's Government has obtained from the Sultan the assignation of Cyprus. In order to enable England to make necessary provision for executing her engagement'