From the Lakes of Killarney to the Golden Horn

by Henry M. Field

But, although this is very bad political economy, yet it is not in itself alone a reason why a nation should be given up as beyond saving, if it were capable of learning wisdom by experience. Merely getting in debt, though it is always a bad business, is not in itself a sign of hopeless decay. Many a young and vigorous state has at the beginning spent all its substance, like the prodigal son, in riotous living, but after "sowing its wild oats," has learned wisdom by experience, and settled down to a course of hard labor, and so come up again. But Turkey is the prodigal son without his repentance. It is continually wasting its substance, and, although it may have now and then fitful spasms of repentance as it feels the pangs of hunger, it gives not one sign of a change of heart, a real internal reform, and a return to a clean, pure, healthy and wholesome life.

Is there any hope of anything better? Not the least. Just now there is some feeling in official circles of the degradation and weakness shown in the late bankruptcy, and there are loud professions that they are going to "reform." But everybody who has lived in Turkey knows what these professions mean. It is a little spasm of virtue, which will soon be forgotten. The Sultan may not indeed throw away money quite so recklessly as before, but only because he cannot get it. He is at the end of his rope. His credit is gone in all the markets of Europe, and nobody will lend him a dollar. Yet he is at this very moment building a mosque that is to cost two millions sterling, and if there were the least let-up in the pressure on him, he would resume the same course of folly and extravagance as ever. No one is so lavish with money as the man who does not pretend to pay his debts. He cannot change his nature. "Can the Ethiopian change his skin, or the leopard his spots?" The Turk, like the Pope, never changes. It is constitutionally impossible for him to reform, or to "go ahead" in anything. His ideas are against it; his very physical habits are against it. A man who is always squatting on his legs, and smoking a long pipe, cannot run very fast; and the only thing for him to do, when the pressure of modern civilization becomes too great for him, is to "bundle up" and get out of the way.

Thus there is in Turkey not a single element of hope; there is no internal force which may be a cause of political regeneration. It is as impossible to infuse life into this moribund state as it would be to raise the dead. I have met a great many Europeans in Constantinople—some of whom have lived here ten, twenty, thirty, or even forty years—and have not found one who did not consider the condition of Turkey absolutely hopeless, and its disappearance from the map of Europe only a question of time.

But if for purely economical reasons Turkey has to be given up as utterly rotten and going to decay, how much darker does the picture appear when we consider the tyranny and corruption, the impossibility of obtaining justice, and the oppression of the Christian populations. A horde of officials is quartered on the country, that eat out the substance of the land, and set no bounds to their rapacity; who plunder the people so that they are reduced to the extreme point of misery. The taxation is so heavy that it drains the very life-blood out of a poor and wretched people—and this is often aggravated by the most wanton oppression and cruelty. Such stories have moved, as they justly may, the indignation of Europe.

Such is the present state of Turkey—universal corruption and oppression, and things going all the time from bad to worse.

And yet this wretched Government rules over the fairest portion of the globe. The Turkish Empire is territorially the finest in the world. Half in Europe and half in Asia, it extends over many degrees of latitude and longitude, including many countries and many climates, "spanning the vast arch from Bagdad to Belgrade."

Can such things continue, and such a power be allowed to hold the fairest portion of the earth's surface, for all time to come?

It seems impossible. The position of Turkey is certainly an anomaly. It is an Asiatic power planted in Europe. It is a Mohammedan power ruling over millions of Christians. It is a government of Turks—that is of Tartars—over men of a better race as well as a purer religion. It is a government of a minority over a majority. The Mohammedans, the ruling caste, are only about one-quarter of the population of European Turkey—some estimates make it much less, but where there is no accurate census, it must be a matter of conjecture. It is a power occupying the finest situation in the world, where two continents touch, and two great seas mingle their waters, yet sitting there on the Bosphorus only to hold the gates of Europe and Asia, and oppose a fixed and immovable barrier to the progress of the nations.

What then shall be done with the Grand Turk? The feeling is becoming universal that he must be driven out of Europe, back into Asia from which he came. This would solve the Eastern Question in part, but only in part, for after he is gone what power is to take his place?

The solution would be comparatively easy, if there were any independent State near at hand to succeed to the vacant sceptre. When a rich man dies, there are always plenty of heirs ready to step in and take possession of the property. The Greeks would willingly transfer their capital from Athena to Constantinople. The Armenians think themselves numerous enough to form a State, but the Greeks and the Armenians hate each other more even than their common oppressor. Russia has not a doubt on the subject, that she is the proper and rightful heir to the throne of the Sultan. The possession of European Turkey would just "round out" her territory, so that her Empire should be bounded only by the seas—the Baltic and the White Sea on the North, and the Black Sea and the Mediterranean on the South. But that is just the solution of the question which all the rest of Europe is determined to prevent. Austria, driven out of Germany, thinks it would be highly proper that she should be indemnified by an addition to her territory on the south; while the Danubian principalities, Moldavia and Wallachia (now united under the title of Roumania) and Servia, which are taking their first lessons in independence, think that they will soon be sufficiently educated in the difficult art of government to take possession of the whole Ottoman Empire. Among so many rival claimants who shall decide? Perhaps if it were put to vote, they would all prefer to remain under the Turk, rather than that the coveted prize should go to a rival.