Another influence whose importance cannot be overestimated has constantly turned the eyes of Russians towards Constantinople. Slavs are idealists. For an ideal, one makes sacrifices that material considerations do not call forth. To the Russians, Constantinople is Tsarigrad, the city of the Emperor. It is from Constantinople that the Russians received their religion. Their civilization is imbued with the spirit of Byzantium. Just as one sees in the Polish language the influence of Latin in the construction of the sentence, one sees in the kindred Russian tongue the influence of Greek. I have frequently been struck with the close and vital relationship between Constantinople and Russia during the period of the development of the Russian nation. Now that Russia seems to be entering upon a period of national awakening, the sentiment is bound to be irresistible among the Russians that they are the rightful inheritors of the Eastern Empire, eclipsed for so many centuries by the shadow of Islam and now about to be born again.
On a July evening in 1908, when the constitutional revolution in Turkey was beginning to occupy the attention of Europe, I sat with my wife in the winter garden of the Grand Hotel in Paris. We were listening to a charming and intelligent Russian gentleman explain to us the aims of the political parties in the Duma of 1907. A waiter came to tell us that our baggage was ready. "Where are you going?" asked the Russian. "To Constantinople," we answered. An expression of wistful sadness or joy—you can never tell which it is meant to be with a Russian—came across his face. "Constantinople!" he murmured, more to himself than to us: "This revolution will fail. You will see. For we must come into our own."
The political aspect of the question of the Dardanelles has changed greatly since Great Britain and France fought one war with Russia, and Great Britain stood ready to fight a second, in order to prevent this passage from falling into Russian hands.
Almost immediately after the crisis of San Stefano and the resulting revision of the Russo-Turkish treaty at Berlin, the interests of Great Britain were diverted from the north-east to the south-east Mediterranean. She decided that her permanent route to India was through the Suez Canal, and made it secure by getting possession of the majority of the shares of the Canal and by seizing Egypt. The Bulgarians began to show themselves lacking in the expected docility towards their liberator. British diplomats realized that they had been fearing what did not happen. They began to lose interest in the Dardanelles. This loss of interest in the question of the straits as a vital factor in their world interests has grown so complete in recent years that Russia has no reason to anticipate another visit of the British fleet to Besika Bay if—I refrain from prophesying. It is safe to say, however, that London has forgotten Mohammed Ali, the Crimea, and the Princes' Islands, while the traditions of Unkiar Skelessi are still dominating the foreign policy of Petrograd.
For, while the future of the Dardanelles has come to mean less to Great Britain, it means more than ever before to Russia. Russia has been turned back from the Pacific. The loss of Manchuria in the war with Japan caused her once again to cast her eyes upon the outlet to the Mediterranean. To the increase in her wheat trade has been added also the development of the petroleum trade from the Caucasus wells. Since the agreement for the partition of Persia with Great Britain in 1907, and the mutual "hands off" accord with Germany at Potsdam in 1910, the expectations of a brilliant Russian future for northern Persia and the Armenian and Kurdish corner of Asiatic Turkey have been great.
Since the Congress of Berlin, Germany has come into the place of Great Britain as the enemy who would keep Russia from finding the Ægean Sea. The growth of German interests at Constantinople and in Asia Minor has become the India—in anticipation—of Germany. When Russia, after her ill-fated venture in the Far East, turned her efforts once more towards the Balkan peninsula, it began to dawn upon her that the Drang nach Oesten might prove a menace to her control of the Dardanelles, fully as great as was formerly the British fetish of the integrity of the Ottoman Empire to keep open the route to India. Diplomacy endeavoured to ward off the inevitable struggle. But the Balkan wars created a new situation that broke rudely the accords of Skierniewice and Potsdam. Austria-Hungary in the Balkans and Germany in Asia Minor became the nightmare of Russia.