such agreement. 'Austria ought to have been the heir of Turkey; the protector of a Greece extended to include Albania, Macedonia, the Islands, and the coast to Constantinople and down to Asia Minor; the friend of Servia and Roumania, and what not.' But these things remained in the class of visions, even if occasionally some Austrian or Hungarian statesman, like Herr von Kallay, seemed disposed to grasp them, and to renew the tradition of the forward policy attributed to Prince Eugène of Savoy and the Archduke Charles. Hungary also had made Roumania her antagonist by her illiberal policy in regard to the navigation of the Danube. Any permanent confederation of the Balkan States as distinct from a temporary alliance for some special and defined object, such as a possible attack on Turkey, seemed therefore no longer possible, especially after the recent events in Bulgaria. Meanwhile there was to be peace, because Prince Bismarck so willed it. [Footnote: See _Der Krimkrieg und die Österreichische Politik_, von Heinrich Friedjung, chap, ii., p. 16 (Stuttgart und Berlin, 1907); Louis Léger, _Études Slaves: L'Autriche-Hongrie et la Question d'Orient_, p. 395.] The overmastering sense of the importance of whatever happened at Vienna and Constantinople--of which every page of _The Present Position of European Politics_ is the evidence--will largely explain Sir Charles Dilke's views on another question. It has been seen that he was amongst the strongest advocates of an active policy in Egypt in 1882, agreeing in this with Mr. Chamberlain and Lord Hartington. But at an early period after the Battle of Tel-el-Kebir he pronounced himself, when the question arose, in favour of the earliest possible evacuation of the country, and contemplated it as a possibility of the immediate future. [Footnote: Sir Charles wrote in the _Speaker_ of January 23rd, 1892, in reply to Admiral Maxse: 'Admiral Maxse appears to think that my views in favour of evacuation have been recently formed....' 'There was a time, _before_ the intervention of the condominium with France by Lord Derby, when I held a different view; but it was not only formed under circumstances very different from those which have now existed for fourteen years, but also at a time when I had not given special consideration to our probable naval and military position in the event of war.'] Egypt to him, considered from the point of view of British interests, was subsidiary to Constantinople. All that really signified was the right of passage through the Suez Canal, which could, he believed, be secured by international arrangement and the neutralization of the country, a plan for which, as already seen, was being actually discussed by Mr. Gladstone's Government when it fell. Egypt, in fact, he regarded as part of Asia rather than of Africa, and he believed that time would make this more clear than ever, in proportion as railways were developed in Syria, Arabia, and Asia Minor. In this connection