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 already made secret arrangements with one another on the issues at stake. The rôle of the Congress consisted in pronouncing a benediction upon decisions which had been reached before it met. Every Government was pursuing in characteristic fashion its own nationalistic and imperialistic designs and bluffing its home public. Every plenipotentiary was intriguing behind the backs of his associates. As Count Corti, the Italian ambassador at Constantinople, sarcastically observed: "Everybody was telling everybody else to take something which belonged to somebody else." Disraeli was the master-mummer of them all. While spending millions of national money on loudly-advertised preparations for war, he was negotiating with Russia under cover of them. He got Cyprus out of Turkey before the Congress met, in exchange for a promise to guarantee the Sultan's possessions in Asia, which promise he never had the slightest intention of carrying out. He proposed at the Congress that Austria-Hungary should occupy the Turkish provinces of Bosnia and Herzgovina, having secretly agreed to the step beforehand. After the Congress he secretly urged France to seize Tunis, Bismarck taking the same line, and her ultimate action in doing so inaugurated the rape of North Africa.

Meantime Italian imperialism knocked vainly at the door of the Congress and retired empty and chagrined. It had largely itself to thank. In the preceding March, the British Cabinet had proposed to the Italian ambassador "an exchange of views," directed to the formation of a Mediterranean League to maintain the status quo. Italy had declined the overture, and Disraeli had no plums for her when the Congress met, although Lord Salisbury is reported by the Italian delegate to have casually remarked, in course of conversation with him at the Congress, that Italy might eventually console herself in the direction of Tripoli for the British acquisition of Cyprus, and for the Austrian occupation of Bosnia. Three years later the French Government took steps to apply the "free hand" in Tunis, which Disraeli had graciously undertaken to secure for it. On the flimsiest of pretexts the French picked a quarrel with the Bey—who was a nominal vassal of the Sultan of Turkey—invaded the country, forced a Protectorate upon it, and