From the Lakes of Killarney to the Golden Horn

by Henry M. Field

Herein lies the difficulty of the Eastern Question, which no European statesman is wise enough to resolve. There is still another solution possible: that Turkey should be divided as Poland was, giving a province or two on the Danube to Austria; and another on the Black Sea to Russia; and Syria to Egypt; while the Sultan took up his residence in Asia Minor; and making Constantinople a free city (as Hamburg was), under the protection of all Europe, which should hold the position simply to protect the passage of the Bosphorus and the Dardanelles, and thus keep open the Black Sea to the commerce of the world.

But however these remoter questions may perplex the minds of statesmen, they cannot prevent, nor long delay, the first necessity, viz., that the Turk should retire from Europe. It cannot be permitted in the interests of civilization, that a half-barbarous power should keep forever the finest position in the world, the point of contact between Europe and Asia, only to be a barrier between them—an obstacle to commerce and to civilization. This obstruction must be removed. The Turks themselves may remain, but they will no longer be the governing race, but subject, like other races, to whatever power may succeed; the Sultan may transfer his capital to Brousa, the ancient capital of the Ottoman Empire; but Turkey will thenceforth be wholly an Asiatic, and no longer an European power.

And this will be the end of a dominion that for centuries was the terror of Europe. It is four hundred and twenty years since the Turks crossed the Bosphorus and took Constantinople. Since then they have risen to such power that at one time they threatened to overrun Europe. It is not two hundred years since they laid siege to Vienna. But within two centuries Turkey has greatly declined. The rise of a colossal power in the North has completely overshadowed her, till now she is kept from becoming the easy prey of Russia only by the protection of those Christian powers to which the Turk was once, like Attila, the Scourge of God.

From the moment that the Turks ceased to conquer, they began to decline. They came into Europe as a race of warriors, and have never made any progress except by the sword. And so they have really never taken root as one of the family of civilized nations, but have always lived as in a camp, a vast Asiatic horde, that, while conquering civilized countries, retained the habits and instincts of nomadic tribes, that were only living in tents, and might at any time recross the Bosphorus and return to their native deserts.

That their exodus is approaching, is felt by the more sagacious Turks themselves. The government is taking every precaution against its overthrow. Dreading the least popular movement, it does not dare to trust its Christian populations. It will not permit them to bear arms, lest the weapons might be turned against itself. No one but a Mohammedan is allowed to enter the army. There may be some European officers left from the time of the Crimean war, whose services are too valuable to be spared, but in the ranks not a man is received who is not a "true believer." This conscription weighs very heavily on the Mussulmans, who are but a small minority in European Turkey, and who are thus decimated from year to year. It is a terrible blood-tax which they have to pay as the price of continued dominion. But even this the government is willing to pay rather than that arms should be in the hands of those who, as the subject races, are their traditional enemies, and who, in the event of what might become a religious war, would turn upon them, and seek a bloody revenge for ages of oppression and cruelty.

Seeing these things, many even of the Turks themselves anticipate their speedy departure from the Promised Land which they have so long occupied, and are beginning to set their houses in order for it. Aged Turks in dying often leave this last request, that they may be buried at Scutari, on the other side of the Bosphorus, so that if their people are driven across into Asia, their bodies at least may rest in peace under the cypress groves which darken the Asiatic shore.

With such fears and forebodings on one side, and such hopes and expectations on the other, we leave this Eastern Question just where we found it. Anybody can state it; nobody can resolve it. It is the great political problem in Europe at this hour, which no statesman, however sagacious—not Bismarck, nor Thiers, nor Andrassy, nor Gortchakoff—has yet been able to resolve. But man proposes and God disposes. This is one of those mysteries of the future which Divine intelligence alone can penetrate, and Divine Providence alone can reveal. We must not assume to be over-wise—although there are some signs which we see clearly written on the face of the sky—but "watch and wait," which we do in the full confidence that we shall not have to wait long, but that the curtain will rise on great events in the East before the close of the present century.

CHAPTER XXXI.

THE SULTAN IS DEPOSED AND COMMITS SUICIDE.—THE WAR IN SERVIA.—MASSACRES IN BULGARIA.—HOW WILL IT ALL END?