Page:Eminent English liberals in and out of Parliament.djvu/313

 innumerable letters to the newspapers, and speeches in various towns, he did an immense deal to enlighten public opinion; and he succeeded personally in raising no less a sum than fifty thousand dollars in furtherance of the good cause. In 1877 he visited Greece, and was received by the people of such places as Zante, Corfu, Ithaca, and Athens, with unbounded enthusiasm and gratitude. He addressed them in their own tongue, and, as he himself has related, was not merely cheered but kissed by certain of his audience. Among the Christian population of the Balkan Peninsula the names of Gladstone and Freeman are deservedly regarded as household words.

The greatest impeachment, in my opinion, of the soundness of Mr. Freeman's political judgment, was his justification of the annexation of Alsace-Lorraine—I beg a thousand pardons, Elsass-Lothringen—by the Germans at the conclusion of the Franco-German war. He boldly argued that Germany was entitled to rend from France a portion of territory which had once been Teutonic, whatever the inhabitants, who were notoriously French in sympathy, might say to the contrary. The consent of the governed, the necessary condition of free government, was nowise needed when the precious Teuton had his fish to fry. Now, I admit that France had many offences at her back for which it was right that she should atone; but had the "man of blood and iron" and the Majesty of Prussia none? What of bleeding Poland? what of Silesia? what of Hanover? what of Schleswig-Holstein? All this Pan-Teutonism conveniently overlooked. And what has been the result? A war of revenge has been rendered a dead certainty.