[43] Byron, “Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage,” Canto II, Stanza 77.
[44] The name given by the Italians to the official residence of the Grand Signor in Constantinople. The Turks use the word Serai, which is derived from the Persian serai, signifying palace—a word which is applied to any residence of Sultan. In English seraglio is frequently, but erroneously, confused with harem.
[45] The Eastern Question, p. 139 et seq. (by J. A. R. Marriot, Oxford, 1917). Whatever may be said regarding the genuineness of the famous “Political Testament” of Peter the Great “there can be no question that it accurately represented the trend and tradition of Russian policy in the eighteenth century. Constantinople was clearly indicated as the goal of Russian ambition. The Turks were to be driven out of Europe by the help of Austria; a good understanding was to be maintained with England and every effort was to be made to accelerate the dissolution of Persia and to secure the Indian trade. Whether inherited or not these were the principles which for nearly forty years inspired the policy of Peter the Great’s most brilliant successor on the Russian throne, Catherine II.” Marriot, op. cit., p. 138.
[46] Cf. Napoleon et Alexandre Ier, Vol. I, p. 268 (by Albert Vadal, Paris, 1869). The famous Field Marshal von Moltke expressed a similar opinion when he wrote, in 1846, “Rom wurde eine Weltstadt durch seine Männer, Konstantinople durch seine Weltstellung”—Rome was a world-city because of her men, Constantinople because of her world location. Gesammelte Schriften und Denkwürdigkeiten des General-Feldmarschalls, Tom. I, p. 165 (by Grafen Helmuth von Moltke, Berlin, 1892). Mr. D. G. Hogarth, in his valuable work, The Nearer East, declares: “No other site in the world enjoys equal advantages, nor perhaps ever will enjoy them. For the Isthmus of Suez is beset by deserts, and that of Panama has a climate not to be compared. Constantinople not only has an open and most fertile environment and easy access to the interior of both Europe and Asia, but its position between two seas and exposure on the side of Russia gives it an almost northern climate. Add to this a dry, sloping site, a superb harbor, an admirable outer roadstead, easy local communication by way of the Bosphorus and an inexhaustible water supply, and it is easy to agree that those who founded Chalcedon but left Byzantium to others, were indeed blind.” Pp. 240, 241 (New York, 1902).
[47] Beaconsfield boasted on his return from Berlin to England that he had secured “peace with honor.” McGahan, the brilliant war correspondent, declared as soon as he read the treaty, that “it was not worth the paper on which it was written.” An English writer, forty years later, stigmatized it as a treaty that “was concluded in a spirit of shameless bargain, with a sublime disregard of elementary ethics and in open contempt of the right of civilized peoples to determine their own future. It was essentially a temporary arrangement concluded between rival imperialist states. And it sowed the seeds of the crop of ‘Nationalist’ wars in which the Balkan peoples were to be embroiled for the next half century.” The Turks in Europe, p. 179 (by W. E. D. Allen, London, 1919).
[48] Cent Projects de Partage de la Turquie, 1281–1913 (by T. J. Djuvara, Paris, 1913).
[49] The distinguished Russian scholar, Prince Eugène Nicolayevich Trubetskoy, expresses in a single sentence the dominant idea of his countrymen when he declares: “The possession of the Straits”—the Bosphorus and the Dardanelles—“may become indispensable for Russia in order to secure her daily bread; the possession of Tsargrad as the condition of her power and importance as a State.” See his lecture Saint Sophia, Russians’ Hope and Calling, p. 8 (London, 1916).
[50] “The eternal Eastern Question,” writes the historian Freeman, “will never be settled till the Greek nation once more has its own. We claim for that nation that whole extent of land in Europe and Asia where the Greek race and speech is the race and speech of the Christian population; and with that we claim for them their own ancient capital, the city of the Constantines, the Leos, and the Basils. We claim all this on the score of simple justice, on the score of that general philanthropy which, when Greeks are concerned, is not ashamed of the name of philhellenism.”
Again, he declares: “The fact that Constantinople has been and is and ever must be the head of South-eastern Europe is a practical fact which stares us in the face. And while this fact may, with those who look below the surface, awaken some fears which do not lie on the surface, allay some fears which do. Constantinople can never be the head of a province; it must be the head of an empire. But it does not follow that it can now be the head of an universal empire. Its annexation by a distant power would, in all moral certainty lead to the dismemberment of the power that annexed it.” Historical Essays, Third Series, pp. 376, 277 (London, 1879).
[51] Syria, the Desert and the Sown, p. X (by G. L. Bell, London, 1908).