“We don’t want to fight, But by Jingo if we do, We’ve got the ships, we’ve got the men, And we’ve got the money too.”
[Illustration: HUGHENDEN MANOR. (_From a Photograph by Taunt and Co._)]
A new political term crept into use, namely, “Jingoism,”[117] or the cult of the war-god Jingo, whose worshippers, however, were bellicose rather than warlike, for they always prefaced their hymnal invocations by the assurance that they did “_not_ want to fight.” The Ministry, too, was divided--Lord Beaconsfield, Lord John Manners, and Mr. Hardy leading the “Jingo” faction, whilst Lord Derby, Lord Carnarvon, and Mr. Cross represented the Peace Party. This split in the Cabinet was deplored at the time, and yet it was of enormous advantage to England. It prevented her from being dragged into the war. It is true that it buoyed up the expectant Turks with false hopes of aid from England, and thus tempted them to reject the easy terms of peace which Russia would have accepted after the fall of Plevna.[118] But the wrecking of Turkey was not in 1877 a matter that deeply moved the British taxpayer, unless he held Turkish Bonds, and if Lord Beaconsfield, Mr. Hardy, Lord John Manners, and their group, by their bellicose attitude, lured the Ottoman race to disaster, it was for the Turkish or War Party, and not for the nation, to call these Ministers to account.[119] As for the policy of neutrality which the English people literally forced on Lord Beaconsfield and Mr. Gladstone, it was justified in the second week of December, by a statement which Count Andrassy made to the Austro-Hungarian Delegations on the 8th and 9th of that month. He frankly said that Austrian sympathies were with the Christian subjects of the Sultan, and that he “would not dare to stand up for the _status quo_” in Turkey.
It needed little insight to discern that when Austria--a Power that could have hurled 150,000 men on the flank of Russia--declared herself against Turkey, and the _status quo_, it meant that Russia had bought her alliance by consenting to an Austrian occupation of Bosnia and Herzegovina. In such a crisis the true policy of a high-spirited English statesman was to have safeguarded British interests in the Ottoman Empire by “temporarily” occupying Egypt, as Austria was to “temporarily” occupy Bosnia. Lord Beaconsfield, however, adopted the surest means for paralysing his arm for such a bold stroke. He summoned Parliament to meet three weeks earlier than usual, and permitted his supporters to divert the attention of the country from Egypt--obviously endangered by the impending fall of Turkey--to wild schemes for occupying Gallipoli, sending a fleet to defend Constantinople, and an army to obstruct the advance of Russia in Asia Minor. As any one of these projects meant war with Russia, popular excitement soon grew intense.