Such were the ideas that prompted the stroke of the Suez Canal shares, and his dramatic summoning of the Indian troops to Malta when Russia was before the citadel of the Levant, and India had to be impressed; that prompted, too, his proclamation of the Queen as Empress of India; and his choice of the late Lord Lytton as a poet suited for Indian Viceroyalty; these ideas, that made him announce, shortly before he died, that “London” was “the key of India.” In this context I must dwell too for a moment on what I have already hinted concerning the temper of his diplomacy. Already, in 1860, he had recognised the full changes imposed by the spirit of the age. “... In the old days,” he observed, “diplomacy was conducted in a secret fashion, whilst now we had ‘a candid foreign policy.’ What in former times ... would have been a soliloquy in Downing Street, now becomes a speech in the House of Commons.” But that was no pretext, he also always asserted, as I shall again have to notice, for roughness and offence, for a high voice and a low hand; still less for playing censor, lecturer, or hector at once. Above all, he abominated the diplomacy which encourages by words and disappoints by deeds--the diplomacy that in 1864 promised defence to Denmark and then denied her even encouragement. Speaking then, Disraeli said: “... We will not threaten, and then refuse to act; we will not lure on our allies with expectations we do not mean to fulfil. And, sir, _if ever it be the lot of myself or any public men with whom I have the honour to act, to carry on important negotiations on behalf of this country ... I trust that we at least shall not carry them on in such a manner that it will be our duty to come to Parliament to announce to the country that we have no allies, and then declare that England can never act alone_.” In diplomacy, moreover, he laid great stress--as is witnessed by a striking passage in _Endymion_--on the need for a minister’s personal acquaintance with the chief actors on the foreign stage, and with the temper of the people whose fortunes are in their hands.[124] * * * * * All these governing issues underlay his great Berlin Treaty. Its first principle was to uphold the _effective_ independence of Turkey. Several absurdities have been alleged on this head. It was also bruited for political ends that, as a Semite,[125] he fostered the Moslem, whom, as a Briton, he should have suppressed.