I think we have seen for ten years or thereabouts a curiously similaralliance of the sortframed for a similar purposeI refer to the allianceof the three great sovereigns of Eastern Europe which is sometimes calledthe alliance of the three Emperorswhichhoweverthey themselves do notadmit to be in form more than a personal understandingThis alliance orunderstandingif we may judge by the newspapersis not particularly popularin Western EuropePerhaps we do it the same injusticeand for the samereasonwhich as historical students we do to such great territorial aggregatesas the Medo-Persian Empire under the Great KingPolitical freedom and themovement which we call progress do not flourish in these vast territorialsovereigntiesperhaps through some necessity of human natureand thus wecontrast them unfavourably with the Athenian Republicthe parent of art,scienceand political libertyor else with those modern societies to whichwe ourselves eminently belongThere is not much constitutionalismas weunderstand the wordin Germany and Austro-Hungaryand there is none atall in Russiaand thus eve are led to forget the services they render tomankind by the maintenance of peace and the prevention of bloodshed.
I suppose thatof the causes of war which we know to exist in our day,there were never so many combined as in Eastern Europe during the last tenyearsThe antecedents of the three combined Emperors revere such as to threatenan outbreak of hostilities at any momentGermany had ravaged a successfulwar against Austriaand also had inflicted bitter humiliation on France,till the other day the most powerful military state in EuropeRussia in1877-had been at war with the Turkish Empirewhichthough in the greatestdecrepitudeexercised a nominal sovereignty over nearly all of Eastern Europewhich was not included in the dominions of the allied sovereignsAmong thesmall communities which were broken fragments of this Empirethe modernsprings of war were in perpetual activityThe spirit of ambitionthe spiritof religious antagonismthe spirit of race combination or of nationality(whatever it has to be called)were all looseNeverthelessunder thesemenacing conditionsthe 'amphiktionyof the three Empires preserved thepeaceWe do not know what were the exact terms of the understandingnordo we quite know when it beganThere are signs of something like it havingexisted before the Treaty of Berlin in 1878and though it has to contendwith many difficulties (at this moment with one most dangerous in Bulgaria),it is still said to existWe cannot doubt what the main heads of the understandingmust beThe three Emperors must have agreed to keep the peace among themselves,to resist the solicitations of external Powersand to forget many of theirown recollectionsThey must have aimed at keeping the quarrelsome littlecommunities about them to the limits assigned to them by the Berlin Treaty.
They have not absolutely succeeded in thisbutconsidering the difficulties,the success of the alliance has been conspicuous.
The precedent is one on which anyone who shares the hopes of the founderof this Professorship is forced to set the greatest storeIt has been shownthat a limited number of statesby isolating a limited group of questions,and agreeing to do their best (if necessaryby forceto prevent these questionsfrom kindling the fire of belligerencymay preserve peace in a part of theworld which seemed threatened by imminent warIt is not a very large experiment,but it has demanded sacrifices both of money and sentimentIt points toa method of abating war which in our day is novelbut whichafter havinghad for about ten years the sanction of one precedentis now in course ofobtaining the sanction of anotherFor the alliance of the three Emperorsis about to be succeeded by the combination of the Austro-Hungarian and GermanGovernments with the Government of ItalyIfthenfor periods of ten yearstogetherone community or moreeager for warcan be prevented from engagingin itone long step will have been taken towards the establishment of thatpermanent universal peace which has been hitherto a dream.
War is too huge and too ancient an evil for there to be much probabilitythat it will submit to any one or any isolated panaceaI would even saythat there is a strong presumption against any system of treatment whichpromises to put a prompt and complete end to itButlike those terribleconflagrations to which it has often been comparedit may perhaps be extinguishedby local isolationIn one instance at leastwhen apparently on the pointof bursting out in a most inflammable structureit has hitherto been keptunder.
