They have annexed territories and we have annexed territories. Annexations are the necessary results of the contact of order with anarchy. If we work together the regeneration of Asia may proceed peacefully and beneficently. If we quarrel in earnest, as things now stand, the whole enormous continent will be split into factions, nation against nation, tribe against tribe, family against family. From the Bosphorus to the Wall of China, and perhaps inside it, there will be an enormous faction-fight, with an amount of misery to mankind of which no recorded war has produced the like. It will be a war, too, which can lead to no atoning results. England staggers already under the vastness of her responsibilities, and even if she conquers can undertake no more. That we might not conquer is an eventuality which our pride may refuse to entertain; yet such a thing might happen, and if we are defeated we are a lost nation. Russia might recover, but we could not; a disaster on the Dardanelles or the Afghan frontier would cost us our Indian Empire. [Sidenote: RUSSIA AND ENGLAND] In such a war we stand to lose all and to gain nothing, while in itself it would be nothing less than a crime against mankind. We are told that a cordial co-operation with Russia is impossible. It will not be made more possible by a quarrel over Turkey. Yet to a peaceful arrangement we must come at last if the quarrel is not to be pursued till one or other of us is destroyed. These are the broad facts of the situation, to which the fate of the Principalities or of the Bosphorus itself are as feathers in the balance. Disraeli, in whose hands for the moment the tremendous decision rested, chose to overlook them. He persevered in the policy of upholding the Turkish Empire. It was the traditional policy of England, and, as he professed to consider, the most consistent with English interests. It may be that he remembered also that the Turks had befriended his own race when the Russians had been their bitterest enemies. It may be that something of his early vanity still lingered in him, and that he was tempted by the proud position of being the arbiter of Europe. But fact was against him. Turkish rule in Europe is an anachronism, and neither force nor diplomacy can prevent the final emancipation of Christian nations from Mahometan dominion. He chose a course which gave him for a moment an ephemeral glory, but it was at the cost of undoing the effects of his whole political life, wrecking again the party which he had reorganised and giving a fresh lease of power to the revolutionary tendencies which threatened the dismemberment of the Empire.