"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—