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For the time being Great Britain contented itself with a diplomatic agent and consul general, selecting for this important post Lord Cromer, then Sir Evelyn Baring, in 1883, and through his successful administration order was brought out of chaos. His position was not different in title from that of any other diplomatic agent and consul general in Egypt. In fact he advised the Egyptian Government on all matters in which Great Britain felt itself to be interested, and the advice was equivalent to a command, as the late Khedive Amas Hilmai found when he dismissed his ministers, satisfactory to Lord Cromer but displeasing to himself. In the course of a few days the new ministry was dismissed, and it thus became evident that under the velvet glove there was an iron hand. When the disorganized state of Egyptian finances, due to the extravagance of Ismail Pasha, in whose reign the canal had been built, threatened the credit of the country, Great Britain and France in 1876 practically assumed a joint control of the finances of the distressed country, and Great Britain called upon France to intervene jointly in 1881 to put down the rebellion of Arabi Pasha. Owing to trouble with the Chambers, France was unable to do so and Great Britain acted alone. The desire of the French Government was to acquire Egypt for itself, or, if that were impossible, to prevent any other Power from acquiring it, in the hope that French influence might become in the course of time so marked as to make Egypt in fact, if not in law, a French dependency. Therefore the occupation of Egypt by Great Britain was peculiarly distasteful to the statesmen of the Third Republic. However, in 1904, Great Britain and France put an end to their outstanding differences by the convention of April 8 of that year, by the terms of which Great Britain was to have a free hand in Egypt, so far as France was concerned, and France was to have a free hand in Morocco, so far as Great Britain was concerned. This was a further step toward British annexation of Egypt, although events moved more rapidly in Morocco than in the land of the Pharaohs. As is well known, France established its protectorate in Morocco, notwithstanding the protest of Germany, in 1911, and Great Britain has taken advantage of the war with Turkey to break the slender tie which bound that country to the Ottoman Empire.

Without going into the history of Egypt and a discussion of its legal relations to Turkey, for which the reader is referred to the leading case of the Charkich (L. R., 4 Admiralty and Ecclesiastical Courts, 59) decided in 1873 by Sir Robert Phillimore, it may be said that an Albanian adventurer, known as Mahomet Ali, established himself in Egypt with the

consent of the Porte, and without the intervention of the European Powers he would have taken Constantinople and proclaimed himself Sultan of the Ottoman Empire. The Powers, however, intervened, the Empire was saved for the moment, Egypt was declared to be a tributary state with an hereditary ruler, termed the Khedive, in the family of Mahomet Ali. In law Egypt was thus a part of Turkey, although it was an autonomous, that is to say self-governing, community. In fact it was practically independent of Turkish control, and, while the legal relation existed after as before the British occupation in 1883, Egypt was from that date in fact, though not in law, a dependency of Great Britain. From and after December 17, 1914, Egypt has become, and probably will remain, a protected state of Great Britain, or in the rhetorical language of Kipling, of the "far flung Empire."

ANNEXATION OF CYPRUS BY GREAT BRITAIN

On November 5, 1914, the British Foreign Office published the following notice in the London Gazette: "Owing to hostile acts committed by Turkish forces under German officers, a state of war exists between Great Britain and Turkey as from today." At the same time Great Britain declared the conventions of June 4, July 1, and August 14, 1878, between Great Britain and Turkey, by the terms of which Great Britain acquired the right to occupy and administer Cyprus, to be annulled by the war, and formally annexed Cyprus, as appears from the following extract from the Order in Council of November 5, 1914: "From and after the date hereof the said island shall be annexed to and form part of His Majesty's Dominions, and the said island is annexed accordingly."

It is common knowledge that Great Britain threatened, in 1878, to intervene in the Russo-Turkish war; that Great Britain objected strenuously to the terms of peace which Russia had dictated to Turkey at San Stefano; that, by a brilliant stroke, Disraeli transported Indian troops to Cyprus and persuaded Russia to yield to a revision of the Treaty of San Stefano of February 19/March 3, 1878, without resort to arms. It is further common knowledge that Russia was obliged to refer the Turkish situation to a congress called for that purpose at Berlin, where the Treaty of Berlin was negotiated and signed on July 13, 1878, which so profoundly affected the destinies of the Balkan peninsula.

From the convention of defensive alliance between Great Britain and Turkey, signed June 4, 1878, the following article is quoted:

ART. I. If Batoun, Ardahan, Kars, or any of them shall be retained by Russia, and if any attempt shall be made at any future time by Russia to take possession of any further territories of His Imperial Majesty the Sultan in Asia, as fixed by the definitive treaty of peace, England engages to join His Imperial Majesty the Sultan in defending them by force of arms.

In return, His Imperial Majesty the Sultan promises to England to introduce necessary reforms, to be agreed upon later between the two Powers, into the government, and for the protection of the Christian and other subjects of the Porte in these territories; and in order to enable England to make necessary provision for executing her engagement, His Imperial Majesty the Sultan further consents to assign the Island of Cyprus to be occupied and administered by England.1

In the annex to this convention, dated July 1, 1878, the following oc

curs:

VI. That if Russia restores to Turkey Kars and the other conquests made by her in Armenia during the last war, the Island of Cyprus will be evacuated by England, and the convention of the 4th of June, 1878, will be at an end.2

On August 14, 1878, Turkey and Great Britain added the following additional article to the convention of June 4, 1878:

It is understood between the high contracting parties, without prejudice to the express provisions of the Articles I, II, and IV of the Annex of the 1st July, 1878, that His Imperial Majesty the Sultan, in assigning the Island of Cyprus to be occupied and administered by England, has thereby transferred to and vested in Her Majesty the Queen, for the term of the occupation and no longer, full powers for making laws and conventions for the government of the island in Her Majesty's name, and for the regulation of its commercial and consular relations and affairs, free from the Porte's control.3

In law, Cyprus remained a part of the Ottoman Empire, occupied and administered by Great Britain; in fact, it became a British province. Great Britain has taken advantage of the war with Turkey to regard the conventions concluded with that country as annulled by the war, and thus, having got them out of the way in accordance with international law, Great Britain has annexed the Island of Cyprus.

Holland, European Concert, in the Eastern Question, p. 354.

2 Ibid., p. 356.

'Hertslet, Commercial Treaties, Vol. XIV, p. 1177.

THE BRITISH MISSION TO THE VATICAN

On November 24, 1914, it was announced that Sir Henry Howard, formerly British plenipotentiary to the Netherlands and delegate of his government to the Second Hague Peace Conference, was appointed special envoy to Pope Benedict XV. His instructions state that the appointment is made for a twofold purpose; namely, to congratulate the Pope upon his election, and at the same time to lay before him "the motives which compelled His Majesty's Government, after exhausting every effort in their power to preserve the peace of Europe, to intervene in the present war," and to inform him "of their attitude towards the various questions that arise therefrom." After pointing out that Great Britain had done all in its power, both by means of its representatives to neutral countries and by the circulation of diplomatic documents, to enable the neutral governments to understand the case of Great Britain and of its allies by removing conceptions of misunderstandings, to reach "the unbiased judgment of public opinion in these countries," it is next pointed out that it was impossible to lay before the authorities of the Roman Catholic Church statements of the British attitude and motives which led Great Britain to take part in the present war, "owing to the want of a representative of His Majesty at the Vatican." Sir Edward Grey then instructs Sir Henry Howard, on behalf of the British Government, as follows:

You will, therefore, in presenting your letters of credence to His Holiness and offering him the cordial congratulations of His Majesty the King on the occasion of his election, intimate to him that his Majesty's Government are anxious to put themselves into direct communication with him for the purpose of demonstrating the motives which have governed their attitude since the first moment that the normal relations between the great Powers of Europe began to be disturbed, and of establishing that His Majesty's Government used every effort to maintain the peace of Europe which His Holiness's venerated predecessor had so much at heart.

From this brief summary of the instructions, it appears that Great Britain has had three purposes in mind in appointing a special envoy to Pope Benedict XV: (1) to congratulate him upon his election to the papacy; (2) to explain the motives of Great Britain in taking part in the war; and (3) to supply His Holiness with exact information of events as they have occurred and which may occur during the period of Sir Henry Howard's mission.

This is a very important action on the part of the British Government

and merits more than a word in passing. It has been usual for the sovereigns of Catholic countries to maintain a representative at the Vatican. Some Protestant countries with a large Catholic population have found it convenient so to do. Great Britain, however, has held aloof from entering into official relations of this kind with the Vatican, and the announcement of the appointment of a special envoy was received with displeasure and in some cases with protest by Protestant organizations in England. It is a fact that within the last few years there has been apparently a growing friendliness between the British Government, on the one hand, and the Vatican, on the other. A brief and summary statement of these relations is contained in the sketch of Leo XIII in the last edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica. Thus:

In Ireland he [Leo XIII] condemned the "Plan of Campaign" in 1888, but he conciliated the Nationalists by appointing Dr. Walsh archbishop of Dublin. His hope that his support of the British Government in Ireland would be followed by the establishment of formal diplomatic relations between the court of St. James and the Vatican was disappointed. But the jubilee of Queen Victoria in 1887 and the Pope's priestly jubilee a few months later were the occasion of friendly intercourse between Rome and Windsor, Mgr. Ruffo Scilla coming to London as special papal envoy, and the Duke of Norfolk being received at the Vatican as the bearer of the congratulations of the queen of England. Similar courtesies were exchanged during the jubilee of 1897, and again in March 1902, when Edward VII sent the Earl of Denbigh to Rome to congratulate Leo XIII on reaching his ninety-third year and the twentyfifth year of his pontificate. The visit of Edward VII to Leo XIII in April, 1903, was a further proof of the friendliness between the English court and the Vatican.

It thus appears that the idea of establishing official relations between Great Britain and the Vatican is of comparatively long standing, and that little by little the interested parties have been coming together. Sir Edward Grey has evidently taken advantage, in congratulating the present Pope upon his election, of the opportunity of establishing the official relations which Leo had at heart. It may well be that a special envoy would not have been accredited to the Vatican for other than purely ceremonial reasons unless the present unfortunate war had broken out. This is, however, a matter of conjecture. The important fact is that Great Britain is apparently to be represented at the Vatican by a special envoy, thus reversing the policy which has obtained since the reign of Queen Elizabeth, except during the short reign of James II. The appointment of an envoy does not involve the recognition of the Papacy as a state. It does, however, recognize the importance of friendly and confidential relations with the Pope as the head of the

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