"I would fain enter a vehement protest against the spirit and the manner in which the relative positions of Great Britain and Russia are treated by Englishmen, and I hope to show the immense detriment to which this treatment has subjected, and still subjects, our prestige and our good name.
"We were lately asked by an educated native of Bombay if the Russians are not ready to throw fifty lakhs of men—five hundred thousand bayonets!—upon British India; and not a few of the lower classes, Mussulmans all, had told me that the 'Moskoff' is about to attack the Punjáb.
"Men now just middle age, whose youth saw the virulent attack of Russophobia which in 1838-39 led to the Afghan War, the severest shake, next to the Sepoy Mutiny, which our Indian Empire has ever endured, find it difficult, with the proverbial difficulty of mastering new ideas after the tenth lustre, to appreciate the complete change in the positions of the two great rival Powers. As early as 1791, Russia prepared to invade India from Orenburg, viâ Ashur, Ata, and Asterabad, 'the line of least resistance,' Meshhed, Herat, and Kandahar.
"Let us suppose that in 1835 she had taken heart of grace and resolved to follow in the footsteps of Nadir Shah. The road to Delhi lay completely open to her. She had only to point to India, the 'traditional plunder-ground of Central Asia,' and all the rugged robber-hordes, from the Sutlej to the mouths of the Euphrates, would have rushed to the 'loot' like wolves and vultures to the quarry, and Persia was only waiting to see the offensive action taken. Afghanistan was ever ready to renew the pleasant scenes of Paniput. The whole line of the Indus, Mooltan, Bahawulpore, and Sind, under the Talpúr Amirs, would have hurried to the flank attack. The direct line lay through the dominions of our good friend and bitterest enemy, Runjeet Singh, whose gallant heart was broken by the easy successes of the British in Afghanistan, where he flattered himself they had fallen into his trap. With the Punjáb would have sided Cashmere, Nepaul, and even Bhootan; in fact, the whole region south, and possibly north, of the Himalayan range.
"But Russia did not take the opportunity, which means she had other things to do; and that cautious, far-seeing Power saw no advantage in a raid like the 'Chapáo' of Nadir Shah. Now the conditions of our frontier are completely changed. From the modest line of the Sutlej and the great North-western Desert, we have occupied a thousand miles of the Indus frontier, extending from Peshawar to the sea; the Punjáb is ours; Cashmere, Nepaul, and Bhootan exist on sufferance; they may be ours at any moment we please.
"Persia might still join Russia, but we have operated more than once with fatal effect upon her vulnerable heel, the Gulf. Her strength has been wasted by famine; her exchequer is empty; and the chivalry of the Desert, her Iliyát or Bedawi, have been crushed by the contact of a so-called Regular Army. The Afghans would still flock to enrol under the banners of the North, but they would be met by their hereditary foe, the Sikh. How secure we are upon this point may be judged by the way in which the military authorities have dismantled the whole Indian fortress. Our native army has been converted into an irregular machine, which could not meet even the Abyssinians without sending for reinforcements of officers to Madras and Calcutta.
"The hare-hearted Sepoy—undoubtedly the worst soldier in Asia—has been reduced to eight European officers per regiment, with all the combatants mounted, so as to secure their being swept away by the first fire.
"We have no army in England beyond what is required for police purposes; nor shall we have one until the Britons, still happily separated from the total world, determine, by a general conscription, to march with the rest of Europe, and to exchange a small standing army for a national force. And whilst we literally hold India with eighty thousand white faces, we freely allow the Native Powers to levy and to drill troops in numbers exceeding our own. Evidently our authorities are very sure of their affair. Possibly they rely upon the fact that the game is no longer worth the candle; that India, that golden land, has been squeezed till no more is to be got out of her. 'Poor India, every hair of her head is numbered!' said a mercantile traveller, when I explained to him the figures on the date trees; and, certainly, between the Abkari (excise) and the salt-tax, we have thoroughly emptied the pockets of the breechless population.
"But, happily, things are gradually getting to the worst, and we may fairly hope that they will surely mend. Presently we shall take a lesson from Russia, who manages her trans-Caucasian provinces by a mixture of foreign and native employés. Nothing more offends the patriotic Russian than to doubt that he is wholly European; and yet to the dash of Asiatic blood he owes many of his highest national gifts,—his facility in acquiring languages; his devotion to his Emperors, the 'Shadows of Bog upon Earth;' his subtle and persistent policy; his love of conquest and military glory; and his fatalistic calmness under fire.
"We shall remedy the chronic discontent of a pauper population by opening up new sources of wealth in reproductive works, in manufactures and mines. At present India is administered for the benefit of England, or rather, of the English trading classes, who must supply the public offices with paper and sealing-wax, and the soldiers and sepoys with broadcloth and ducks. The National Religion of England will become the State Church in India, and we shall cease to foster and encourage, by a fatuous and absurd toleration, the fanaticism of Pagan idolatry. We shall borrow from Russia another lesson of economy, by substituting military law and rule for the pseudo-constitutionalism with which we, like Portugal, have afflicted India; we shall relieve our great colony, or rather conquest, of such an incubus as Presidency Governors and Commanders-in-Chief, Members of Council and Chief Justices. We shall reserve High Courts and similar preserves for lawyers' game; but we shall confine them to the various capitals, where wealthy natives may play at law, and ruin themselves à discretion.
"With this money, now profligately wasted upon civil establishments, we shall maintain an efficient Native Army, which will deliver us from the feeble politic of 'purpose and no power.' At home a general conscription, or a revival of the Militia Act, will give us a force, between actives and reserves, of two millions of men. The first serious 'shake' in the East or the West will show us that our national existence depends upon this measure, or rather that the alternative will be subsiding into the position of Belgium and Holland. And finally, when Russia begins her railway from Tabriz to Teheran and Baghdad, we shall check her by the Euphrates Valley Line, at present our principal Colonial want. And thus the 'Ikbal,' or good fortune, which apparently departed with the defunct East India Company, will be inherited by the Imperial Rule.
"The Government of the Company, it must be remembered, was aristocratic,—an aristocracy of bales and barrels, if you please, but still, to a certain extent, a rule of honour. Its successor acts upon the latest and most modern rules of political economy; it buys its labour in the cheapest market, and it demands only a fair day and a half's work for a fair day's wage. It notably borrowed from China its system of competitive examinations, which examine all least worth examining,—that is, the memory and the receptivity, not the moral and physical value of its Mandarins. Some day, perhaps, we shall see a return of the well-abused system of patronage, whose evils can so easily be checked by the administration of proper tests, and by provisional appointments to be confirmed only after a sufficient period of practical trial.
"To an Englishman who has at heart the honour and interests of his native land, nothing is more offensive than the low standing taken by our writers in treating of the Central Asian Question, and the tone of despondency which contrasts so disparagingly with the high grounds assumed by the Russians. England accepted as a kind of boon the creation of a neutral zone,—a string of independent semi-barbarian States, separating the frontiers of the two great Asiatic Powers. Russia, with the moderation engendered by her intense vigour and vitality, throws this sop to Cerberus, perfectly certain that the measure is merely temporary, whilst the powerful war party which looks upon the Cesarewitch as its head, openly expresses its scorn and disgust. We are told by our Pundits that 'all we want is rest—rest from foreign wars, rest from political disturbance.' We want nothing of the kind: our only want is, de l'audace, de l'audace, et toujours de l'audace.
"We are assured that we are conservative, not aggressive; whereas our rivals are aggressive, not conservative; in other words, that they are young and active and strong, while we are old and stiff and weak. We are advised to push forward, because any check upon our frontier would raise a host of enemies in our troubled rear,—which means that our position in India is more or less precarious. We are informed in the same breath that Russia has certainly not contemplated anything like an invasion of India; and yet we are advised to take the strongest steps in order to secure ourselves from invasion.
"A curious comment, by the way, upon the first dictum is the tone of the young Grand Duke Nicholas' letters, published by Miss Fanny Lear, in which he considers an appointment to the Caucasus as the first step of a Russian march upon India. Again, we read the alarming sentence, 'If there was danger to British India from the attitude and possible designs of Russia twenty-eight years ago, that danger must be increased a hundred-fold at the present day.' Furthermore, we are threatened with the 'moral leverage' which Russia, by menacing India, can bring to bear upon us in Europe; and with the chronic conflagration which would result from the mere contiguity of a rival European Power; in other words, we are told that Russia can make India too hot to hold us,—as if we could not make, by means of China, Turkestan too hot to hold Russia. Her troops are ever moving on resistless as fate, whilst we are thoroughly alarmed by their advance: that is, Russia swoops like the hawk, while we cower like the pigeon.
"Hence, the perpetual reports of new invasion-routes from the North which fill our Press, the old Buroghil Pass being the latest 'fad.' And hence the trembling anxiety with which the Anglo-Indian eye was fixed upon the late Amir el-Muminin, Ya'akub Khan of Kashgar, as if a struggling little Moslem Prince, who would assuredly be crushed between the rival Colossi, Russia and China, held the destinies of British India in his weakling hand. Hence the exaggerated importance attached to what is called the 'Indian situation,' to the 'Russian glacis' on the north-east of Persia, and to the strategic approach from the south-eastern corner of Persia, 'which is so stealthily, but steadily progressing.' And hence, finally, the forcible feeble stand which we are making about the independence of villainous Bokhara, and the inviolability of pauper Merv—a village which once numbered a million of souls.
"This tone of excited despondency, this symptom of weakness and violence, has travelled far, and has already done great damage to our name. It has thoroughly complicated our relations with Afghanistan. As may be proved by any old map, that turbulent land of robber-chiefs has gained enormously, both in territory and in population, by our intervention. Yet Shere Ali Khan sulks and pouts because Lord Lawrence acknowledged his elder brother, the friendly Afzul Khan; because Lord Mayo did not anticipate his every wish, and because Lord Northbrook did not pay his subsidy—'tribute' I would rather call it—with all the regularity he desired. Hence he refused the Kashgar Mission, under pretext of being unable to protect the members,—'Their blood be upon their own heads if they come to Cabul!' Hence he will admit no English resident Agent; and the native Aakil-i-Sarkar-i-Angriz is hardly permitted to address him in Durbar. The fact is, this miserable Highland Chief believes, and has been taught by us to believe, that he holds 'the road to the English.' He is convinced that he has only to offer aid to the Russians in order to drive us out of India. That he hates us, we know: during the Sepoy Mutiny he urged in vain his wise old father, Dost Mohammed, to invade the Punjáb—a measure deprecated by Afzul Khan. That he despises us, we cannot fail to see; and not less can we fail to feel that our policy has given him a right to despise us.[12]
"What, then, should we do in this matter? The 'repose of strength' is liable to be interpreted by the Oriental as supineness; moderation means fear; and 'compromise,' the basis of public and private life in England, has no synonym in the East. De l'audace, etc., is the only rule of conduct in the Afghan hills. At the first opportunity—and any day may bring one—we should break openly with Shere Ali; tread boldly upon the coat-tail which he is trailing for a fight; withdraw that phantom of a Native Agent, and offer the subsidy, a lakh per mensem, to the successor who promises us his friendship and his confidence. The latter measure has been characterized as a premium on rebellion. Sit, so be it!
"We have nothing to fear from the Afghan chief, most of whose subjects would right willingly exchange his barbarous sway for our civilized rule. We have nothing to hope from him; he would take, Afghan-like, our money with one hand, and stab us with the other. Here, if anywhere, are the time and place to assume the tone and position of a 'dominant race.' We have talked too long and too loudly about 'our fellow-subjects in India' and our 'Afghan allies;' let us now change the terms for 'conquered races' here, and for 'paid partisans' there.
"Curious to say, the latest form of Russophobia was developed by our grand national blunder, the great artillery duel in the corner of the Black Sea, which history will call the 'Crimean War.' After nearly incurring national bankruptcy by our rabid hostility to Napoleon I., we were cozened by Napoleon III. into an alliance, whose sole object was to give his house a status amongst the old and aristocratic dynasties of Europe. But, to do the latter justice, he proposed to take upon himself the chief onus of the campaign.
"It was Lord Palmerston—the statesman who saddled us with the Fenian imbroglio; the man who, believing about as much as Epicurus, never missed a Sunday morning service; the Irishman who knew the English public better than it knew itself—that rejected the Frenchman's offer to send the army, whilst England supplied the fleet. Thus, upon the obsolete principle that one Englishman can beat three Mossoos or Johnny Crapauds, we were allowed to contribute a mere contingent. Thus we were condemned to play, as is commonly said, second fiddle, without the least hope of rising in the world; whilst the want of ability amongst our superior officers, the normal English deficiency of organization, and a few miserable blunders, glorious like the Balaclava Charge, and inglorious like the run from the Mamelon, duly printed abroad throughout the civilized world, combined to form an ample 'vengeance for Waterloo.'
"The world has not yet learned that we entered half-hearted into that war; that we were thoroughly ashamed of our Turkish allies and of their cause; that many of our leading statesmen determined upon not abasing Russia; that Cronstadt was allowed to exclude us from St. Petersburg, when the late Captain Cole's turret-ship would have set the fortress at defiance; that Kars was given over to starvation because the Russians refused to make peace without a set-off for the southern half of Sebastopol, evacuated after a resistance of eighteen months; that Napoleon insisted on coming to terms with Russia, because his Crimean army was mutinous, and he had won his point; and lastly, that our allies' ignoble jealousy confined us to a game at long bowls in the Crimea, when, with the assistance of the Turks, the Kurds, and the Persians, we might easily have driven Russia once more behind and beyond the Caucasus.
"All this, and more, we have been told by the late Lord Strangford, in the two volumes of his pleasant works published some years ago by the Viscountess, whose late gigantic charitable undertakings in Bulgaria must be the envy and admiration of every woman. But, in determining that Russia had gained by the war as much as Great Britain lost, my clever friend was not so happy as in the rest of his judgments: in fact, he neglected one great item in the account which determined the balance in our favour. The Crimean War prevented the march of the Russian empire southwards,—the general rule of northern conquest. It compelled her to go and grow eastward.
"This necessity of growth in the Northern Giant is treated by our writers with a luxury of explanation. It is attributed to a steadfast political purpose; to the preponderating impulse of irresponsible military ambition thirsting for distinction; to a traditional creed of the Empire, which aims at augmented power in Europe through extension in Asia; to obeying the natural law of increase; and to all these causes combined.
"For the anthropologist, one amply suffices. The body politic, like the individual, must grow to attain full development; and 'earth-hunger,' as it is called, characterizes all young peoples in the lusty prime of life. At present the only great conquering races are the Slav, especially Russia, and the English, especially the Anglo-Americans. The former conquer by invasion, the latter by occupation and colonization.
"Why Great Britain, at the present moment of her history, has turned her sword into a ploughshare, is apparently little understood by the mass of foreign writers. The truth is, we are still in a period of reaction. During the first quarter of the present century we meddled with—and often, it must be confessed, we muddled—European affairs which least concerned an insular people.
"About 1850 the counter-action set in with peculiar violence. Lord Palmerston was rebuked by the Crown for his officious interference in continental matters. Mr. Cobden was at the summit of his fame. The Great Exhibition of 1851 was to inaugurate the reign of peace and good will amongst men, and international commerce was to cement the union of the Pan-European family. The Frenchman would never invade us. If he attempted so obsolete a step, our touching and charitable reception of him would melt the heart of the bearded Zouave and the Sapeur, to whom nothing is sacred. The army should be turned into a body of navvies; the navy was to be converted into police-ships and emigrant-ships. Posterity will marvel at this peace mania, and perhaps will sneer at the part which the peacemakers took in precipitating the Russian War of 1853. It reads like a tale of Bedlam, but it is not the less true. The secondary symptoms of the dread malady still ferment in the national constitution, and possibly we may not escape without tertiaries. But the perfect cure must come at last.
"About 1863, when Russia had recovered from the fatigues of the Crimean campaign, her 'manifest destiny' began to show itself in what we vaguely term 'Central Asia.' It is not my purpose to trace her steps. England, and especially India, looked on uneasily, although a 'large portion of the thinking public, including the optimist class of Anglo-Indian politicians to a man, declared in favour of the Russian advance.' And no wonder. The actual civilization of the Russian Empire may not yet be of the highest order, yet it is long centuries in advance of the reckless barbarism which characterizes the Great Horde and the Usbeg Khanats. Whilst annexing the barren steppes, the eastern shores of the Caspian, the lands about the Aral, and the noble valleys of the Oxus and the Jaxartes, Russia's mission was terram aperire gentibus. She opened military roads and proposed railways; she built forts and meditated canals. She rendered the country passable to the traveller and to the trader. The European had no longer to fear being plundered or reduced to slavery, or being foully murdered. She enlisted sundry marauding tribes; she had made them disciplined soldiers and peaceful subjects, whilst many 'bad neighbours' were converted by example into 'good neighbours.'
"Again, the dash of Eastern blood in the veins of Russia enabled her to curb the fanatic spirit of her new lieges. Her enemies had predicted that she had disturbed a hornet's nest; that her lines were now cast in unpleasant places, amongst the most violent and bigoted of Mohammedan races. Even our latest writers dwell upon the prospects of an anti-Russian Jehád, or Holy War.
"But Russia is the only European Power which can successfully abate the evil; and we must seek the reason of her success in her despotic rule, the only regimen which the Oriental understands. She knows how to handle her Sáyyids and her Súfis; she 'grasps her nettle,' and this is the only treatment to which the ecclesiastical throat, priest or parson, Mullah or Brahmin, unconditionally submits.
"We, on the contrary, with our excess of toleration and penchant for liberty, too often degenerating into licence, make the natives subjected to our rule far more bigoted than they were when we first conquered them. Formerly, the Hindú would allow the 'Mlenchha' to drink out of his metal pot, which only required scouring to become pure once more; now he pours the water into a double leaf, or into the European's hand. Twenty-five years ago, when entering the mosques or mausolea, we removed our hats and wore our boots; now the Moslems insist upon our conforming to a practice which, in our case, means degradation. At Jeddah, the guardians of Eve's tomb only laugh when a terrier runs in and out of the doors; after a few years of British rule they would object to admitting not only the terrier, but the terrier's master. In her early relations with Persia, the Russian was as fanatical as the Persian, till the murder of an envoy taught him the more prudent way of dealing with Moslems. We have notably failed in this matter, and I should be sorry to see the experiment tried elsewhere.
"Some six years after Russia's first decided move eastwards (1869), she abandoned the direct Persian line, and adopted the new plan of turning her friend's flank by annexing the Balkan or Krasnovdsk Bay, and exploring the northern valley of the Atrek river, the road popularly known as the 'Atok,' or hill-skirt. Thereupon the alarmist openly denounced the annexation of the eastern coast of the Caspian, and the subjugation of the Turkomans, as a 'violation of treaty.' The good sense of the public refused to be scared. What sympathy, indeed, could England have with wretched Khiva, whose main industry was kidnapping Russians and enslaving Persians? What with hateful Bokhara, the very focus and head-quarters of Islamitic fanaticism; the city of barbarians, whose murderous chief, Nasr Allah, had foully put to death Stoddart and Conolly? Could we forget that, unable to reach this double-dyed assassin, despite the proverbial length of her arm, England was compelled to leave the slaughter of her envoys unavenged, to sit down and cry like an impotent crone?
"Again, the public saw no objection to the two great Powers, Russia and England, dividing between them the Empire of the East. Not a few of us were put to shame by the importance attached to establishing a craven 'neutral zone' of independent native states. The 'friendly partition of Asia, leaving no intermediate zone,' was the favourite idea of the Russian Press and of the public, especially the powerful and influential war party, or party of progress. Here, again, we took theoretically lower grounds than Russia. We were afraid to meet her; she did not fear to meet us. After all, the prize, such as it is, will fall to the better man: detur digniori will be the verdict of the world. If we can win the day, let us do so; if we cannot, let us cease to accumulate futile obstacles in the path of those who deserve to win.
"And we shall gain little or nothing by the strong flanking position secured by the reoccupation of the open country of Shaul, of Kandahar, and even of Herat. Men are ever hankering after Herat and its 'stupendous earthworks.' A still better line of outlying frontier, namely, Khelat, Quetta, and Jelalabad, would avail us as little. Wanting an army, English or native, we shall be driven to moral influence, to sympathy and moral support, to moral disapprobation—a pretentiously feeble tactic without the gros bataillons to give it vis. So the late Macgregor Laird defined moral influence in West Africa as a 68-pounder worked by British seamen.
"Our present policy must be a lively trust in the chapter of accidents, and looking forward to the day when we can place two millions of bayonets in the field. Russia has internal dangers of her own. She works cheaply; her invasions of Khiva cost her, we are told, £70,000, whilst we paid £15,000,000 for our occupation of Afghanistan. Still capitalists are beginning to inquire curiously about her budget, and she refuses to satisfy their curiosity. 'Russians' fell two per cent. in one day during last autumn, and a chilling report pronounced them to be 'shaky.' The fact is, a portion of the English Press has so long been preaching the doctrine of repudiation, that the world of debtors begins to lend its ear to the charmer: there are so many nations which can afford to payer les Anglais. South America may be pronounced to be 'going,' Turkey to be 'gone;' and the influence of such failures on a gigantic scale, especially when they extend to Europe and to England,—where at the present moment nothing is safe beyond ground-rents, railways, and three per cents.,—must sooner or later weigh upon Russia. Even she cannot go to war without the sinews of war; even her ingenuity will be puzzled to make la guerre nourrir la guerre amongst the impecunious peoples of Central Asia.
"But our highest prospect of happy deliverance from this terrible northern rival is still to be noticed; and that so little attention has been paid to it by our writers is not a little astonishing to the student. In Russia it must have caused a vast amount of anxious thought; and it readily explains the cautious system of her approaches, parallels, and encroachments in the East: her provisional system of indirect until ready for direct rule over her new conquests; her strategic lines of observation and demonstration; and her carefully disposed apparatus of supports, reserves, and bases of operations. Nolens volens, will-we nill-we, Russia must eventually absorb Kashgar; she must meet China face to face, and then her serious troubles begin.
"The dash of Tartar blood in Russian veins establishes a remote cousinhood with China. There is something of physical, and more of moral, likeness between the two peoples. Both are equally sturdy, hardy, frugal, energetic, persistent, aggressive, and brave in facing death. Both have a national speech, a peculiar alphabet, and, to go no further, a religion which distinguishes them from the rest of the world. Both are animated by the sturdy vigour of a newly awakened civilization. During the war of 1842 we facetiously said that it was rank murder to attack the Chinese troops with any missiles but oranges. Presently the Ever-Victorious Army, led by Gordon, one of England's noblest and best neglected sons, showed the might that was slumbering in a nation of three hundred millions.
"And now China is preparing herself, with that slow but terrible stedfastness of purpose which distinguishes her, to exercise her influence upon the civilized world,—upon the other three-fourths which compose the sum of humanity. After a hundred checks and defeats she has utterly annihilated the intrusive Mohammedan schism which attempted to establish its independence in Yunnan. She will do the same in Kashgar, although the dilatoriness of her proceedings, unintelligible to the Western mind, tends to create a false feeling of security. She is building a fleet and is rolling her own plates. Her army is being drilled by Europeans; the men are armed with Remingtons, and she has six manufactories for breech-loading rifles. Securely cautious of her coming strength, she declines all little wars with England and France till another dozen years or so shall enable her to meet her enemies on terms which, forecasted in 1842, would have appeared the very madness of prophecy.
"Such is the nation which is fated to contend with Russia for the glorious empire of Central Asia. This is the Power which our Press and its teachers have agreed to ignore. In the coming struggle we shall see the direct result of the Crimean War, and then, perhaps, we may reap the reward of sacrifice and losses which hitherto have added little to our honour or to our power.
'Now whether he kill Cassio,
Or Cassio him, or each do kill the other,
Every way makes my gain.'
"When we were at Jeddah I addressed to the Daily Telegraph a letter upon the 'Partition of Turkey.' This paper had not pronounced itself in January, 1876, as decidedly as in January, 1877, so the missive was published on March 7th, with the heading only changed to 'The Future of Turkey.' I did not then know that the Duke of Wellington had put forth exactly the same views upon the critical point, the main question, What is to become of Constantinople? nor could I forecast that Mr. Grant Duff, who probably glances, like other men, at the Daily Telegraph, would see in a dream what I saw when wide awake,—the Kingdom of Byzantium revived.
"During the last two years and a half of war and massacre, which must have cost the lives of a million human beings, the situation has shifted, but the truth remains untouched. Still the Sick Man's constitution is breaking up fast; and the political doctors and patent drugs have done him no good. What peace he now enjoys is accompanied neither by honour nor by honours. Instead of removing proud flesh and amputating gangrened limbs, the rough surgeons have cut into the very vitals of the patient. They should have pruned the tree; they preferred to bark it. Under such circumstances vitality is impossible. With acephalous governments and dynastic demoralization, diminished states and autonomous provinces, to say nothing of utter impecuniosity and of a paper money that threatens to be cheaper than assignats, ruin is a mere matter of time.
"Resolved to maintain the 'integrity of Turkey,' the doctors have disintegrated it. Turkey has become, not 'a scattered Empire like England,' but a mere 'geographical expression,' as was the Italy of the past. And now the Sick, or rather the Dying Man, has only to look forward to financial ruin, to Russification, to the reign of dementia, to spoliation, to partition—
'The dull grey close and apathetic end.'
"During the last quarter of a century the preservation of the putrid Power has cost us forty thousand lives and four hundred millions sterling. We are not likely to spend much more.
"The first letter was written, it will be remembered, under the reign of Abd el Aziz, the suicided and 'forbicated' Vitellius, when the troubles began at Podgorizza. In those days (1875-76) the general reader knew nothing of Dalmatia, Servia, and the Herzegovina, beyond what he had learnt from our late friends Gardner Wilkinson, Alexander Paton, Miss Muir Mackenzie (the late Lady Sebright), and from the present Viscountess Strangford. Mr. Arthur Evans had not published either his brilliant book or his still more brilliant letters in the Manchester Examiner. The older writers did indeed bring out the fact, afterwards ignored by a host of 'Our Correspondents,' that the Turk of the Slav Provinces has not one drop of Turkish blood in his veins, that he cannot speak a word of Turkish, and that he detests the Turk, especially the Effendi from Constantinople, with the bitterest hate; witness the murdering of two Pashas, Mehemet Ali and Sa'ad ed Din, by the Albanians in September, 1878. Even the dress of the Slav 'Turk,' his big turban, his tight jacket, and his bag breeches, are those of old Slavonia, and contrast strongly with the flowing robes of the Osmanli, whom you insult by calling a 'Toork,' i.e. a wild wanderer, a nomad. He is by blood a cousin of the Russian Slavo-Finn, an element which peoples nearly half of the great Empire, which forms thirty-four out of seventy-one millions. In creed he is simply a renegade Christian, an Islamized Paulicean or Bogomil, with all the malignant animosity of a renegade, with a horror and an abomination of the creed which he abandoned. Hence the tenacity and fury which he displayed at Plevna and the Balkan Passes, where Russian met Russian, where heretical Jugo-Slav struggled with orthodox Slavo-Finn. This is the true history of the 'gentle and gallant Turk,' as far as the Bosniac element is concerned. And that element supplied Turkey with one hundred thousand of her best Regulars.
"Like most outsiders, I cannot see the difficulty of settling the Eastern Question (malè pereat!), but I thoroughly see the danger of leaving it, as at present, half settled. Of course, the distribution of the spoil and the Turkish debt favour the conservation of Turkey. But although the haute politique makes all kinds of delays, ambiguities, considerations, and mysteries, the eye of common sense can detect none. As regards matters of finance, if the Powers that profit by annexation will only guarantee, as in fairness they should, the liabilities of Turkey, one prop of the rotten old pile is at once knocked away. And even total loss is better than this chronic state of irritation now afflicting the European system; this disturbance of trade and industry; this fool's paradise of the gaming-table; this armed peace, which has many of the evils and little of the good that war brings.
"Our great diplomatic triumph in the second half of the nineteenth century has removed from us the fatal necessity of propping up 'Turkism' in Europe. The late occupation of Bosnia by the Austrians shows what are the Bosniacs and their Beys. Savage and brutal as Krevosjes or Cimariots, they have all the Moslem vices, none of the simple and noble virtues which distinguish their peasant co-religionists in Caramania, Anatolia, and other parts of Asia Minor, where the Faithful number three to one. Their bullying tyranny was exasperated for many a generation by the conviction that, despite numerical inferiority of one to three (3,380,000 to 9,500,000), theirs was the ruling class; and that the Mudir, the Wali, the Ministry, and the Sultan himself would invariably support their iniquities, unless compelled by the Great Powers of Europe to do simple justice under threat of war. His temper was not improved by the aggravating presence of the Kafir; and his habit of carrying weapons enabled him to gratify every whim by a stab of the ready yataghan. He had never heard of the classical policy embodied in Sultan Selim's will—Farriku baynhumá wa Sallitu alayhumá ('Breed dissensions between them both, Moslems and Christians, and rule them both'). Selim El-Fátih (the conqueror) left a will, you see, like Peter Velika, and their merits were, being the expressions of hereditary racial thoughts, like Lord Palmerston and M. Thiers. Yet he recognized the working of this obsolete Machiavelism as it still prevails throughout the Turkish Empire. Whenever a dispute arises between the rival religions about a field, a woman, or a boy whose face has been slapped, the Nazarene applies officially to the Pasha. The Pasha lends an attentive ear to the complaint, quotes all the Hatts Sheríf, Humayoon, and so forth, and exhorts the petitioner to remember that under a Constitutional Government (Heaven save the mark!) men of all faiths are equal. When the Mussulman proffers his counter-complaint, the same Pasha swears by his beard that no earthly power can make the Infidel take rank with True Believers. This was the tactic that caused the Syrian massacre of 1860. My theory stands proved by the fact that in the outlying villages and hamlets, where no Turks were, the Mohammedan peasants fought against the emissaries from Damascus, in defence of their Christian neighbours.
"Austria has at length adopted the course prescribed to her many years ago. Prince Eugène was the first name of note that advised the Holy Roman Empire to abandon her worse than useless Italian conquests, and to bring her weight to bear upon the Ottoman. Bosnia and the Herzegovina are in these days political necessaries to her; and the visit of the Emperor to Dalmatia was the beginning of the present policy. It would have been carried out two years ago, only circumstances then tied the hands of Count Andrassy, who throughout the affair has shown himself a statesman. Without the inner regions the stout Dalmatian kingdom cannot hold in the world the rank which it deserves to hold. The country of Diocletian, the mother of Emperors, was the narrowest realm of Europe, a mere masque, a face without a head. She had the finest ports in the Mediterranean and the noblest maritime population, while she had nothing to import, nothing to export, nothing to transport. Meanwhile the barbarous and exclusive policy of the Porte cut off the interior from the outer world. The precious metals, the 'Dalmatic gold,' famed by the Romans, silver, copper, iron, and coal remained undug, and the timber, the cattle, and the wool never saw the sea. Building was confined to forts; entrenchments took the place of roads, and whenever a traveller passed through the country he carried his life in his hand.
"But things are now changed. After an occupation which has been a campaign costing some four thousand lives, Austria, by the mandate of Europe, has pacified Bosnia and the Herzegovina. She has taken the first step towards becoming a great Slav power. These modern Sarmatians and Scythians are divided by ethnologists into a multitude of races, Slovaks, Slovenes, and so forth. I know only two halves. The majority would be the Northern (Russo-Orthodox), the minority the Southern (Jugo-Slavs) and Catholics. Here religion, not race, draws a hard-and-fast line. Dual empire has now become virtually a Triregno, as she would have been but for Count Beust, so much more distinguished as an Ambassador than a Minister. The conquest of Bosnia, for such it is, puts an end to Dualism; the Slav will now have his rights. Austria may lose her 'better half,' Hungary, which threatens to renew the scandals of 1849. The land of the Magyar, once the Antemurale Christianitatis, the outlying bulwark of Christendom, has now become a country of white Turks, of 'Ogres,' as Mr. Freeman calls them, of Ugro-Altaics, more Turkish than the Turks. There is nothing to prevent her becoming a great Jugo-Slav power, ever extending herself to the south-eastward till she meets the Greek. Thus she will halve with Russia the Slav world. By cultivating the Christian populations on the Lower Danube, and by a league with Old Bulgaria (Servia, Roumania, Roumelia, etc.), added to Bosnia, she would invest the Muscovite rival to the south and the south-west, while Germany hems it in to the west and north-west. Indeed, Russia declares that such a union, forming a state of siege impossible to endure, would be a calamity second only to the restoration of the Polish kingdom.
"Here, then, has begun the distribution of the Dying Man's estate. The characteristic of the situation is its purely provisional nature. No one is satisfied as matters now stand. All are, without exception, claimants, and urgent claimants, for something more than 'administrative autonomy,' either municipal or provincial. The 'rebellious principalities,' Montenegro and Servia, have enlarged their boundaries at the expense of Bulgaria; but both want more, and will have more. The new 'tributary principality' of Bulgaria Proper, as I suppose we must call her, will not be satisfied with quasi-independence. As soon as she is strong enough she will fight again, and, unless amalgamated with the 'Servian accession,' she will insist upon becoming Russian. Meanwhile the Russians have not withdrawn their armies, and they are justified in not doing so as long as Austria holds Bosnia and England holds Cyprus. Eastern Roumelia, which is Southern Bulgaria, will obtain her freedom only by uniting with Bulgaria Proper and Russia.
"By the way, I must notice the notable injustice of the European Press, that expects the wretched Bulgarians, who have been treated like wild beasts for the last five hundred years, to show all the virtues of freemen. There is an old prejudice against them since Pushkin sang—
'Be a Pole, or be a Russian,
Frenchman, Austrian, or Hungarian,
Englishman, or Dane, or Prussian,
Anything but base Bulgarian.'
Nothing can palliate their 'atrocities;' but what horrors have they not to revenge? We all remember Lord Macaulay's answer when the Jews were taunted with preferring low and immoral callings. But fair play in English politics threatens to be a thing of the past. At least, the Bulgarians have as yet enjoyed very little of our boasted national quality. And Bulgaria literally has been what Turkey will be, broken up, distributed into Roumania, Servia, and Roumelia. She is in the world (without knowing it), a Southern Poland.
"Another sturdy claimant is Greece, not including her neighbour and old congener Albania. The writings of Messrs. Gladstone and Freeman have told the public of Turco-Græcia's wrongs. Since 1872, when her independence was recognized, she has been shut up in the barren Morea and the rocky deserts north of the financial world as a turf-defaulter; and the massacre of Marathon is better known to our generation than the battle of Marathon. But she now begins to see the error of her ways. She makes roads, she proposes to pay her debt, and she puts down brigandage. She behaved with exemplary patience during the Russo-Turkish War; and we must excuse the irritability which presses for the proposed concession—a miserable slice. But her turn will come. Her manifest destiny is to divide with Austria the broad lands between Albania and the Despoto Dagh, the Rhodope range. Meanwhile, Albania—classic land of ruffians, hemmed in by Montenegro, Servia, and Greece—clamours for self-rule. Let her take it and supply bath-men to Byzantium.
"So much for Turkey in Europe. In Asia, Turkey has lost her most valuable possessions: Kars, the great base of military operations; and Batoum, the port which commands the Bosphorus. The Russians intend to run their fine harbour against Trebizond, and to divert as much as they can of the caravan-trade that enriches the latter. Hence their obstinacy in the matter of that 'interesting tribe,' the Lazes. The Muscovite wants nothing more at present in Western Asia, and it was a second masterly stroke of policy, our pledging ourselves to defend that which needs no defence. The Russian has nothing to do with the bleak and barren mountains of Armenia, which must also count amongst the rebellious provinces; and they are sturdy fellows, the men of Adana, of Old Cilicia. Nor is she tempted by the rocky wastes of Kurdistan, where every brigand 'subject' would want waiting upon by a soldier. She may assist and laugh till she cries at the pleasant spectacle of Mrs. Britannia performing the part of 'Reform by Moral Force,' and proposing an honest gendarmerie, just tribunals, and tax-gathering publicans turned to saints. If England were 'doctrinary' she would either let the task severely alone or she would appoint to every wilayat (province) a 'Resident,' after the fashion of British India. But compromise is her specific, her panacea for home use. She will do neither this nor that; she will use mezzi termini (half-measures), rely on the rule of thumb, and in fact meddle and muddle her position between the two stools. Liberal measures of reform have been freely promised, but that stale trick now deceives nobody. It is very well to command, but what is the use where none obey? Europe has had so much dust of this kind thrown into her eyes, that she now endures the process without writhing. And the Turk virtually says, 'Pay us, and we will give ear to you; no loan, no reforms.' Which means, if you do not pay him he won't reform; and if you do pay him, he will do ditto. The truth is, he can't reform, and if he could he wouldn't. When Turkey assented to the proceedings of the Berlin Congress, the credulous dreamed that she intended to keep her treaty engagements. Not she! When Turkey promises, suspect a lie; when she swears, be sure of a lie. What to her are treaties, save things to be broken? Talk of a treaty between a dog and its fleas!
"Our beloved Syria and Palestine must also be drawn from the vampire claws of Turkey—this daughter of chaos. The Holy Land for many past centuries has not enjoyed a gleam of prosperity, except when connected with, or, rather, when placed under, Egypt. It was a miserable and mistaken policy of Lord Palmerston in 1840, which, arresting the progress of Mohammed Ali Pasha, made England the cat's-paw of Russia. The old Bāsh-Buzzuk of Cavala, as Sultan of Turkey, would have given fresh life to the obsolete and effete, the battered and broken empire of the barbarian; and his ambition was, naturally enough, dreaded by the northern pretenders to Constantinople. Let one sentence suffice to show the difference of development between the two Pashaliks. Syria has not one made port, Egypt has three; Egypt has a dozen railways, Syria boasts of only one carriageable road—the Beyrout-Damascus—and that one French. Of late years many efforts have been made to restore the Israelites to their own; and there is, I believe, a project of the kind—financial, not sentimental—actually in hand. The idea is to obtain the consent and the subscriptions of the Jews in every part of the world, and to purchase the tract between Dan and Beersheba by means of a loan to the Porte. Jerusalem cannot, in the present state of Europe, become the exclusive possession of any one European Power. But already the land has been almost all bought up by the Jews, and the City—like its holy sisters, Hebron, Tiberias, and Safet—now virtually belongs to them.
"Moreover, Syria is fated to become in a few years most important to England. The Euphrates Valley Line, under the surveillance of the Duke of Sutherland, has at last fallen into shape. Instead of a Levantine port, Alexandretta, Tripoli, or Tyre, and the great river for termini, it will set out from Constantinople and pass, viâ Baghdad, to Persia and India. This great highway—the only means of consolidating Turkey in Asia Minor—has hitherto been delayed only by the activity of Muscovite agents, and by the systematic self-effacement of our own. Before many years are past a branch of the main trunk-line will connect it with the Syrian coast opposite Cyprus. Baalbak and Palmyra are not yet 'played out.' These main stations, on the first and best of the many 'overlands,' will presently hear the whistle of the railway, and in the evening of their days they will again be made happy. The Euphrates Valley system will be to the Suez Canal what the 'Egyptian Bosphorus' has been to the Cape of Good Hope.
"And then we shall recognize the full value of Cyprus. After the melancholy policy of the pedagogue-demagogue in 1862, that restored the ruined Corfu, where some few years ago there was a popular tumult in favour of bringing back the old masters, England must secure ports and stations for her ironclads. The marvellous excitement caused by our last scrap of annexation shows the way the popular wind blows. Such a cackling over such a very small egg! We do not wish to make the Mediterranean an English lake, but we object to its being a French lake or a Russian lake, like the Black and Caspian Seas. Candia and Mitylene would certainly not oppose the hoisting of the Union Jack. Of course, those possessions will at first be unpopular—they will cost money, soldiers will die of fever, and officers will grumble. The Turks, after making the noble islands howling wildernesses, will propose to raise loans upon their 'surplus revenues.' But British gold will drain these homes of fever, ports will be laid out, and population will be introduced. We are not justified in failing where the Crusaders and the Knights succeeded so grandly.
"The destiny of Turkey in Africa is equally manifest. France, who has by no means abandoned her claim to 'hegemony,' would add, if she pleased, to her Algerine provinces the fair lands of Tunis as far east as the plains of Jafara, where the southern bend of the coast ends in the Gulf of Sidra. The limits are roughly east long. (G.) 8° to 12°, a linear length of two hundred and forty direct geographical miles. Already there is a report that the offer has been made to her, despite the active opposition of Italy. This latter might be contented with Tripoli, as far as the eastern shore of the Gulf of Sidra. But, since her emancipation, she has shown a turbulent spirit, which threatens the peace of Europe. I lately met a young Italian diplomatist, who would hardly speak to an Englishman because we hold Malta as our haupt-piquet. The occupation of Cyprus was a severe blow: the three standards in St. Mark's Square, Venice, represent Cyprus, Candia, and the Morea. 'Unredeemed Italy' means an Italy 'free from Etna to Trieste.' It represents, I have shown, amongst the moderates, the annexation of the Trentino, the duchy of Gorizia, and the peninsula of Istria. The immoderates add the whole of Dalmatia and part of Albania; in fact, wherever the Roman 'regiones' reached.
"I say 'Tripoli as far as East Sidra,' the knob projecting into the Mediterranean eastward of Sidra, and including Barca and the Cyrenaic, should be added to Egypt, which would thus be prolonged from east long. (G.) 24° to 20°, also about two hundred and forty direct geographical miles. Grennah, of Old Cyrene, has a noble port, lying at a short distance south-east of Malta, and this will be the terminus of a future railway, connecting the glorious lands lying along the Mediterranean with the Nile Valley. By this line passenger-traffic shall escape the sea-voyage between Malta and Egypt, whilst the Cairo-Sioot, prolonged to Cosseir, will save the mortification of the Suez Gulf.
"As regards Egypt, we were only beginning to take into consideration the grand results brought about by the great Mohammed Ali Pasha and his family. We want from her nothing but the free right of transit and transport; we are resolved that the highway of the nations shall not be barricaded. We may eventually be compelled to annex her, but that measure is still distant, although lately advocated in England, and feared in France. Meanwhile, we might be a little kinder to her. Whilst the Turks are allowed freely to repudiate their debts, poor Egypt must pay her usurious Christian creditors the uttermost farthing. The Powers of Europe unwisely and wickedly compelled her to take part in the last Russo-Turkish campaign. We have hitherto refused to set her free from the immense 'benevolences' and other douceurs, heavier than any tribute, which perpetually find their way into the Seraglio, and into the ministerial pockets at Stamboul; and now that all the family income is mortgaged, the head of the house will still be obliged to hold his position by bribery. Surely the absolute independence or annexation of Egypt has now become a necessity.
"Remains the real 'bone of contention'—Constantinople. Europe has generally assumed that, with this queen of the Golden Horn added to her dominions, the great Muscovite power would become irresistible; men and statesmen have made it an article of faith. I am far from believing in such results; at the same time, it would be unwise to allow Russia the chance. The problem to be worked out is this: How, when the Eastern half of Europe is almost wholly Slav, to exclude the Slav from Stamboul—to create another island like Roumania, breaking the Slavonic flood? Practically it was solved many years ago. Volney narrowly escaped the Bastille for advocating a Franco-Russian coalition against Turkey. When the Emperor Joseph I. of Austria had shaken the equilibrium of Europe by his alliance with Catharine II., the great traveller saw the political necessity of his project, namely, a Christian State having command of the Bosphorus. The Duke of Wellington, as has been told, recommended it in the same words, and the Russians have never refused to accept the measure. What says the Turk himself? 'For Turkey, Roumelia is the Past, Anatolia is the Future.' Pleasant prospect, by-the-by, for poor Anatolia! And what say his serfs? 'Avoid the Turk if you can; for either he eats you out of very love, or in his rage he tears you to pieces.'
"I would abolish the very name of Constantinople, whose hateful sound reminds us of religious cruelty and hypocrisy. Let us substitute a kingdom or principality of Byzantium,—a Hanse town mediatized by Europe. Her territory would extend northwards, through Eastern Roumelia, to the Balkans, and westwards to Rhodope, a fair and fertile country, somewhat larger than increased Servia. Protected by the Great Powers, she would be governed by a prince chosen from amongst the ruling families of Europe. She would be neither Greek, nor Bulgarian, nor Jewish, nor Armenian, nor Roumelian, nor Frank, but something of all. The Hellene would make her illustrious by his political aptitude and literary gifts; the Israelite and the Armenian would enrich her by banking and commerce; the Bulgarian and the Roumelian would be her hewers of wood and drawers of water; and, finally, the Frank would connect her with the civilization of the West. I know nothing in Europe which shows a finer combination of intellect and labour than this would be. No stronger dyke could be opposed to the Muscovite flood.
"Turkey would thus be confined to Asia Minor proper, with Broussa or Koniah, the old Iconium, for a capital. Her new frontier, bordering on Russia and Persia, would remain untouched, and southwards she would be barred by a line drawn from Alexandretta, viâ Aleppo, to the Euphrates. She would thus cease to be an incubus on Europe, especially on South-Eastern Europe, whose 'neutral armaments' must last till relieved of her hideous presence. Thus the evil effects of her extended influence, which exists by acting upon the hates and fears of her neighbours, would presently be abated, leaving behind them the battle and the wrack. Thus her hopeless misgovernment and her inveterate maladministration would at once be confined within comparatively narrow limits. The old and venerable kingdoms, the Syria of the Seleucidæ, for instance, which her iron heel has trodden and trampled into wastes and deserts; where ruins are the sole remnants of a glorious and memorious past; where even hope, man's last delusion, can hardly cheer the prospect of the future, would soon recover a prosperity now all but forgotten. Christendom would once more be free from the deadening presence of that Mohammedan Mongol, whose hateful boast it ever was that—
'Where once the Sultan's horse has trod,
Grass neither grows, nor shrub, nor tree.'
Ay, truly quoth Mazeppa—
'The year before
A Turkish army had marched o'er;
And where the Spahi's hoof hath trod,
The verdure flies the bloody sod.'
"'This is a mere spoliation of Turkey,' I hear some one cry. Well, yes; the Osmanli rose to empire by spoiling others, and it is now his turn to be spoiled. What he won by the sword he must keep by the sword, or the sword will snatch it from him. His presence in Europe is in these days an anachronism; it might be tolerated for good, certainly not for evil. He is fit only for Asia Minor, where, untrammelled by rival Plenipotentiaries and unscrupulous Ambassadors, he can throw off the tights that embarrass his limbs, and become once more the 'man on horseback.' There, at least, he can clean abolish his Irádes, his Tanzimát, and other bastard forms of constitutionalism, which, combined with so-called reforms, have destroyed the old forms without substituting anything new; which have weakened his material powers, spoiled his temper, and debased his character. There he can revert to those mediæval institutions that made the race what it was; to the eternal 'non possumus,' to the 'Pacha of many Tales,' to the slave and the concubine, to the eunuch and the mute, to the bowstring, the bastinado, and the bag for the light o' love. There la gent qui porte le turban may cultivate its mixture of childishness and senile cunning; its levity of mind, cloaked by solemn garb and mien; its mental indolence, with spasmodic efforts by way of change; and its conscious weakness warring with overweening arrogance. But Europe will no longer bear in her bosom this survival of the Unfittest. Apage Sathanas! Return, Tartar, to that Tartary whence thou earnest. These are the words of St. Louis, and they shall be heard."
[He also wrote later on—]
"The curious are beginning to ask, Do statesmen, politicians, and Foreign Offices really wish to settle the so-called 'Eastern Question'? Does the trade hesitate to take it in hand from the dread vision of half its occupation gone? And yet what a host of evils such fainéance breeds! Take, for instance, the last miserable move, known to politics as the 'Cession of Dulcigno,' a paltry village on the wild Albanian shore. It kept the fleets of Europe at bay for a couple of months; it kept the whole of Southeastern Europe in 'hot water;' it kept newspapers in news while starving trade; and it supplied history with an episode the most comical, the most absurd. Of the Turk we may say (with Spenser)—
'That his behaviour altogether was
Alla Turchesca.'
He has adhered to his traditional policy—procrastination, promising, non-performance. 'The friendly concert of the Great Powers' has been sorely tried, strained to breaking point. Bulgaria, 'one and indivisible,' has been arming and drilling instead of tilling and earing. Greece has made it the business of her national life to raise a loan and an army of 60,000 men. Albania has, perhaps, fared the worst. The Porte encouraged her to resist the so-called 'will of Europe,' and to oppose with all her might the transfer of Albanians to Montenegrins. Then the Porte executed the normal manœuvre volte face; commanded, or pretended to command, her to give up her property; and made a happy despatch of her recusant chiefs—by means of the usual cup of coffee. The turbulent mountain region is now between two stools; she is neither Turkish nor Albanian, she is lost to the Porte without having gained her independence; and, like the Libanus in the past, she has become one of the 'tinder-boxes' of the West. Meanwhile the work of the European world has suffered, and still suffers, from an armed peace which has many of the evils and none of the good which war brings.
"When I last wrote (1879) the Turco-Russian campaign of two years, which must have cost the lives of a million human beings, had dragged itself to its weary end. It left the Sick Man weaker and more prostrated than ever—even the political doctors with their patent drugs could do no good to a constitution fast breaking up. The short respite from his sufferings called peace was not a 'peace with honour.' Resolved to maintain the 'integrity of Turkey,' the rough surgeons dismembered, disintegrated her. She was, before that treatment, a 'scattered Empire like England;' after it she became a 'geographical expression,' as was the Italy of the eighteenth century. Virtually she lost all her European provinces, except Roumelia, which took the peculiarly inconsequent title of Eastern Bulgaria. Dynastic demoralization and despotic government; diminished territory and autonomous provinces; national bankruptcy, with confusion of finance, unpaid debts, and a paper money which caused disturbances wherever it circulated, have made the Sick Man a dying man; and, instead of soothing and syruping his last moments, the greedy heirs standing by his bedside are wrangling and recriminating and calling one another names over the approaching distribution of his property.
"The 'future of Turkey' was virtually settled in 1816, when 'Field-Marshal the Duke of Wellington' proposed to the great Muscovite Empire the mediatization of Constantinople. Russia saw how great a boon this step would be to her. She may look forward to absorbing the Queen of the Bosphorus after half a century; in the present state of things she knows that the superb possession would be a well-nigh unmitigated evil. It would cut her Empire in two: and the southern would only injure the sounder and sturdier northern half. The status quo she knew to be equally detrimental; autocratic governments must obey popular will; and an ebullition of national rage may at any moment force on a campaign like that of 1877-78. She wants rest; and she wishes to recruit her finances, to reorganize her armies, and to settle conclusions with the Tartars and the Chinese. In fact, peace in Europe, but not an armed peace, is a desideratum to her, and she can obtain it only when Constantinople becomes a free town. She knew this half a century ago, and she knows it still.
"Meanwhile, the partition of Turkey has been going on merrily. In the war brought on mainly by our old enemy Rashíd Pasha, the 'rebellious Principalities,' Montenegro and Servia, have enlarged their boundaries; but both want more, and both will have more. For the characteristic of the actual 'situation' is its purely provisional nature. No one is satisfied as matters now stand; all are without exception claimants, and urgent claimants, for something more than 'administrative autonomy,' either municipal or provincial. The new 'tributary principality' of Bulgaria Proper, as I suppose we must call her, will not be satisfied with quasi independence. She has spent the last two years in preparations for a campaign; in buying arms and in drilling under Russian officers. She waits only for Greece to begin the game; whilst Greece says, 'Gentlemen of Bulgaria, fire first.' It is the old story of the Earl of Chatham and Sir Richard Strachan. Eastern Roumelia, which is Southern Bulgaria, cannot be satisfied with her rank as a mere province, even under a nominal Christian Governor whose ministry rules. She must conquer her freedom; and she will conquer it by uniting with Bulgaria Proper, and by throwing herself into the arms of Russia, if we compel her to commit this act of political suicide.
"Greece, that progressive little kingdom, which has been so much and so unjustly abused by the sentimentalists of England, behaved with exemplary patience during the Russo-Turkish War. She allowed herself to be cajoled by promise after promise, and now she finds that—
'In native swords and native ranks,
The only hope of freedom dwells.'
Action, in fact, is thrust upon her. The two Conferences of Berlin promised her a thin slice of enslaved Greece, which she thankfully accepted as an earnest of more. It would weary the reader to recount the miserable subterfuges and tergiversation of Turkey, who alternately presents the bittock to her lips and withdraws it, proposing impossible conditions. In this mean matter politics are complicated by something like personal spite and racial hatred. The Turk makes it a pundonor not to yield to the Greek; he would keep for his own use the right of robbery and rape, kidnapping and murdering. The Greek will bear no more the hateful yoke.
"The former declares with perfect untruth that the transfer of Janina, Larissa, and other places would be the loss of a commanding strategic line. The Greek asserts that he must also have Epirus, Thessaly, and even Thrace, because the whole country is Greek in language, manners, and religion. And a fresh complication has sprung up. Greece has been making, for her, immense sacrifices, and an army of 30,000 to 40,000 men will soon eat up a State whose population is 1,500,000, and whose revenue of £3,600,000, with a deficit of half a million and a debt of eighteen millions; it would hardly keep her in bread and cheese. Every day costs her more money than she can afford; the business of everyday life is at a standstill.
"Austria has at length adopted the course prescribed to her in the last century by the soldier and statesman, Prince Eugène of Savoy, who advised her to abandon her worse than useless Italian conquests, and to bring her weight to bear upon the Turk. After an 'occupation,' which was a campaign costing some 4000 lives, she has established herself in Bosnia and the Herzegovina, which are geographical necessities to the 'Kingdom of Dalmatia,' the old 'Mother of Emperors.' Here she has done, despite her enemies, excellent work. A traveller writes to me, 'The improvements effected in the new protectorate during the last two years must be seen to be believed. The military roads extending from Brood on the Sava to Serajevo, and from Serajevo through Herzegovina, by Mostar, to the mouth of the Narenta, do infinite honour to the Engineer Department, and, considering the immense outlay of the Imperial Treasury, to the forethought and generosity of the Government. A capable police has been organized, and district courts and schools have been established throughout the length and breadth of the land. I found perfect order and tranquillity prevailing everywhere, and well will it be for the best interests, social and political, of the people, the farther Austrian rule is extended and the longer it is perpetuated.'
"Austria took formal charge of the Ottoman in South-Eastern Europe at the Congress of Berlin—a step enthusiastically hailed by a statesman as 'glad tidings of great joy.' The Emperor's journey to Dalmatia (1876) was the beginning of that policy, and we have still to see the results of the Imperial round of visits in the summer of 1880. It is understood that the attitude of England has revived the league known as the Dreikaiserbund, and that Germany and Austria are united in the determination that the other third should not profit exclusively by annexing Turkish territory. When the war breaks out, and it may break out at any moment, Austria cannot remain passive. Under pain of retrograding she must advance. Adrianople will become necessary to the Dual Empire when Greece enlarges herself; when Bulgaria shall conquer her independence, the course of events must carry Austria forward to Salonica. There is nothing to prevent her becoming a great Jugo-Slav (South Slavonic) power, the mainstay of the Catholic Slavs, as Russia is of the Northern or orthodox. By cultivating the Christian populations on the Lower Danube, and by a league with 'Old Bulgaria' (Servia, Roumania, Roumelia, etc.), she would invest the Muscovite rival to the south and the south-west, while Germany hems him in to the west and the north-west. Russia declares that such a union, forming a state of siege impossible to endure, would be a calamity second only to the restoration of the kingdom of Poland.
"Austria has two opponents who will serve only to force her forwards. The Land of the Magyar has become a country of 'white Turks,' of 'ogres,' as Mr. Freeman calls them, more Ottoman than the Ottomans. Kossuth's lately published volumes explain the reason why; but the ambitions and the passions of 1848, which brought about the unnatural and abominable union, cannot outlast a second generation. The other rival is Italy, whose statesmen view, with a curious mixture of rage and spite, the aggrandizement of a quondam master. Since Italia became una, her politicians have shown a turbulent spirit which menaces the peace of Europe. Italia Irredenta, an old idea, but an expression apparently coined in 1878, means much. The Redenta represents an 'Italy free from Etna to Trieste.' The Moderates would be satisfied with annexing the Trentino, the duchy of Gorizia, and the peninsula of Istria. The 'Immoderates' add all Dalmatia and part of Albania; in fact, wherever the Roman regiones extended. But Trieste will not be Italian. Mr. Disraeli said, 'The port of Trieste is not a mere Austrian port; it belongs to the German Confederation; and an attack on Trieste is not an attack on Austria alone, but also on Germany.' The managing man, par excellence, of Europe has as openly declared that if the Italians attempt to march upon the Vice-Queen of the Adriatic, they will meet a sword-point which is not Austrian. Italy might do better than to lay out her income upon 'bloated armaments,' a disproportionate army which she is still increasing, and colossal ironclads, which any torpedo-cockboat may blow up. She is one of the poorest of nations, in the very richest of soils; her agriculture has progressed little beyond that of the 'Georgics;' her railroads are a disgrace; so is her post-office; her finances suffer from the good old practice of converting a stocking into a bank; and her business is injured by her over-'cuteness' and greed of gain. She is no longer the charming country of the early nineteenth century. Freedom has taught her all the roughness, but little of the virtue of the Northerner. Honesty seems to be at its lowest ebb. The knife is king. Whatever Italy has of genius, energy, and 'go-ahead' is now devoted to warlike preparations, and to dreams of conquest. The awaking will be bitter.
"So much for Turkey in Europe, where, despite Mr. Redhouse, she can hardly be said to exist. In Asia, or rather Asia Minor, her future home, she has lost her most valuable possessions—Kars, the great base of military operations, and Batoum, the rival of Trebizonde, and the port that commands the Bosphorus. The Muscovite really requires nothing more in Western Asia; and it was a masterly stroke of policy our pledging ourselves to protect what wants no protection. It is again the Dean's—
'When nothing's left to need defence
They build a magazine.'
But here again Russia is being forced forward. She has nothing to do with the bleak and barren mountains of Armenia, an Asiatic Scotland; but the cries of the unfortunate Christians, though peremptorily suppressed in the Turkish papers, are exciting legitimate Muscovite sympathies. It is the old story of the 'Bulgarian atrocities.' Armenia, when I last wrote, was a 'rebellious province,' and she was to be put down by slipping at her the Kurd bloodhound. This race of bandits, fanatical as it is ferocious, has perpetrated every horror under the sun; and the complication of a hunger-year has made the desolate Christians ready to accept any rule. And now they are attacking in force Persia, the neighbour and ally of Russia, so as to compel the latter to remove.
"The 'reform by moral force,' the honest gendarmerie, the just tribunals, and the tax-gathering publicans turned to saints, all these choice projects of a future for Asia Minor have turned out, as might have been expected, the merest visions, baseless as a mirage. If England were doctrinaire, she would either let the task severely alone or she would appoint to every government (vilayet) of Turkey a British 'Resident,' after the fashion of Anglo-India. But compromise is her specific; it is a panacea for home use, and, ergo, it is a panacea everywhere. She has done neither this nor that; she has adopted mezzi termini (half-measures); she has again applied the rule of thumb; she has 'meddled and muddled' once more. How perfectly she has failed is known to every newspaper reader.
"A number of English officers, mostly ignorant of the languages and customs of the East, have been made Consuls and Vice-Consuls in Asia Minor. Turkey, on her side, has sent Englishmen, with high official rank in her armies, to inspect provinces, to inquire into abuses, and to send in long reports for instant pigeon-holing. This is again mere dust thrown in the general eyes. As Sultan of Turkey, the old Bāsh-Buzzuk of Cavala would have given new life to the battered and broken empire of the 'unspeakable;' and, naturally enough, his ambition was dreaded by the northern pretenders to Constantinople. Let one sentence suffice to show the difference of development between the two. Syria has not one made harbour; Egypt has three. Egypt has a dozen railroads; Syria boasts only of one carriageable highway, and that is French property. But Palestine grows in importance every year. Mr. Laurence Oliphant has surveyed the land of Gilead, the eastern frontier; and, supported by the Israelitish capitalists of Europe, he proposes to restore that part of Judæa to her old owners. Captain Cameron, equally well backed, has virtually begun the Euphrates Valley line, despite the adverse forecasts of Mr. Wilfrid Blunt. Jerusalem, it is true, cannot, in the present state of Europe, become the exclusive possession of any European Power. But already almost all the land around has been bought up by the Jews, and the Sacred City, like her holy sisters, Hebron, Tiberias, and Safet, may be said to belong to them. The sooner Syria is made over to Egypt the better.