Sketches from the Subject and Neighbour Lands of Venice

On whom rests the blame? Surely not on the conquerors, whose warfare was waged in the noblest cause for which man can fight, for their faith, their freedom, their national life, the extension of freedom and national life to their brethren under the yoke. Nor can we say that it rests with the men who fought against them, who, from their own side, were fighting for faith and freedom and national life fully as much. It rather rests with the dangerous neighbour of both, whose very existence is founded on the trampling down of freedom and national life among all its neighbours. It rests with the power which takes care to strike no blows itself, but which knows how to suck no small advantage from the blows which are struck by others on either side. The ruin of Antivari is in truth the work, though the indirect work, of the power hard by, the power which was not ashamed to stretch forth its hand for such a spoil as Spizza, the hard-won earnings of its poor neighbour. The guilt of ruined Antivari rests with those who drove its conquerors to conquest in the wrong place by hindering them from peaceful advance in the right place. It rests with those who stirred up its defenders to a hopeless resistance by promises which never were fulfilled. When we see how in 1878 Montenegro was allowed to keep possession of ruined and almost worthless Antivari, but was forced to give up its other comparatively flourishing conquests of Spizza and Dulcigno, we better understand how the rule of doing as one would be done by is looked on in the council-chamber of an Apostolic King. And we see too, with some comfort, how England, as one of her first national acts when England found herself once more under English leadership, knew how to step in, with vigour and with patience, to undo at least one part of the wrong which had been done.

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