'Be a Pole, or be a Russian,
Frenchman, Austrian, or Hungarian,
Englishman, or Dane, or Prussian,
Anything but base Bulgarian.'
Nothing can palliate their 'atrocities;' but what horrors have they not to revenge? We all remember Lord Macaulay's answer when the Jews were taunted with preferring low and immoral callings. But fair play in English politics threatens to be a thing of the past. At least, the Bulgarians have as yet enjoyed very little of our boasted national quality. And Bulgaria literally has been what Turkey will be, broken up, distributed into Roumania, Servia, and Roumelia. She is in the world (without knowing it), a Southern Poland.
"Another sturdy claimant is Greece, not including her neighbour and old congener Albania. The writings of Messrs. Gladstone and Freeman have told the public of Turco-Græcia's wrongs. Since 1872, when her independence was recognized, she has been shut up in the barren Morea and the rocky deserts north of the financial world as a turf-defaulter; and the massacre of Marathon is better known to our generation than the battle of Marathon. But she now begins to see the error of her ways. She makes roads, she proposes to pay her debt, and she puts down brigandage. She behaved with exemplary patience during the Russo-Turkish War; and we must excuse the irritability which presses for the proposed concession—a miserable slice. But her turn will come. Her manifest destiny is to divide with Austria the broad lands between Albania and the Despoto Dagh, the Rhodope range. Meanwhile, Albania—classic land of ruffians, hemmed in by Montenegro, Servia, and Greece—clamours for self-rule. Let her take it and supply bath-men to Byzantium.
"So much for Turkey in Europe. In Asia, Turkey has lost her most valuable possessions: Kars, the great base of military operations; and Batoum, the port which commands the Bosphorus. The Russians intend to run their fine harbour against Trebizond, and to divert as much as they can of the caravan-trade that enriches the latter. Hence their obstinacy in the matter of that 'interesting tribe,' the Lazes. The Muscovite wants nothing more at present in Western Asia, and it was a second masterly stroke of policy, our pledging ourselves to defend that which needs no defence. The Russian has nothing to do with the bleak and barren mountains of Armenia, which must also count amongst the rebellious provinces; and they are sturdy fellows, the men of Adana, of Old Cilicia. Nor is she tempted by the rocky wastes of Kurdistan, where every brigand 'subject' would want waiting upon by a soldier. She may assist and laugh till she cries at the pleasant spectacle of Mrs. Britannia performing the part of 'Reform by Moral Force,' and proposing an honest gendarmerie, just tribunals, and tax-gathering publicans turned to saints. If England were 'doctrinary' she would either let the task severely alone or she would appoint to every wilayat (province) a 'Resident,' after the fashion of British India. But compromise is her specific, her panacea for home use. She will do neither this nor that; she will use mezzi termini (half-measures), rely on the rule of thumb, and in fact meddle and muddle her position between the two stools. Liberal measures of reform have been freely promised, but that stale trick now deceives nobody. It is very well to command, but what is the use where none obey? Europe has had so much dust of this kind thrown into her eyes, that she now endures the process without writhing. And the Turk virtually says, 'Pay us, and we will give ear to you; no loan, no reforms.' Which means, if you do not pay him he won't reform; and if you do pay him, he will do ditto. The truth is, he can't reform, and if he could he wouldn't. When Turkey assented to the proceedings of the Berlin Congress, the credulous dreamed that she intended to keep her treaty engagements. Not she! When Turkey promises, suspect a lie; when she swears, be sure of a lie. What to her are treaties, save things to be broken? Talk of a treaty between a dog and its fleas!
"Our beloved Syria and Palestine must also be drawn from the vampire claws of Turkey—this daughter of chaos. The Holy Land for many past centuries has not enjoyed a gleam of prosperity, except when connected with, or, rather, when placed under, Egypt. It was a miserable and mistaken policy of Lord Palmerston in 1840, which, arresting the progress of Mohammed Ali Pasha, made England the cat's-paw of Russia. The old Bāsh-Buzzuk of Cavala, as Sultan of Turkey, would have given fresh life to the obsolete and effete, the battered and broken empire of the barbarian; and his ambition was, naturally enough, dreaded by the northern pretenders to Constantinople. Let one sentence suffice to show the difference of development between the two Pashaliks. Syria has not one made port, Egypt has three; Egypt has a dozen railways, Syria boasts of only one carriageable road—the Beyrout-Damascus—and that one French. Of late years many efforts have been made to restore the Israelites to their own; and there is, I believe, a project of the kind—financial, not sentimental—actually in hand. The idea is to obtain the consent and the subscriptions of the Jews in every part of the world, and to purchase the tract between Dan and Beersheba by means of a loan to the Porte. Jerusalem cannot, in the present state of Europe, become the exclusive possession of any one European Power. But already the land has been almost all bought up by the Jews, and the City—like its holy sisters, Hebron, Tiberias, and Safet—now virtually belongs to them.
"Moreover, Syria is fated to become in a few years most important to England. The Euphrates Valley Line, under the surveillance of the Duke of Sutherland, has at last fallen into shape. Instead of a Levantine port, Alexandretta, Tripoli, or Tyre, and the great river for termini, it will set out from Constantinople and pass, viâ Baghdad, to Persia and India. This great highway—the only means of consolidating Turkey in Asia Minor—has hitherto been delayed only by the activity of Muscovite agents, and by the systematic self-effacement of our own. Before many years are past a branch of the main trunk-line will connect it with the Syrian coast opposite Cyprus. Baalbak and Palmyra are not yet 'played out.' These main stations, on the first and best of the many 'overlands,' will presently hear the whistle of the railway, and in the evening of their days they will again be made happy. The Euphrates Valley system will be to the Suez Canal what the 'Egyptian Bosphorus' has been to the Cape of Good Hope.
"And then we shall recognize the full value of Cyprus. After the melancholy policy of the pedagogue-demagogue in 1862, that restored the ruined Corfu, where some few years ago there was a popular tumult in favour of bringing back the old masters, England must secure ports and stations for her ironclads. The marvellous excitement caused by our last scrap of annexation shows the way the popular wind blows. Such a cackling over such a very small egg! We do not wish to make the Mediterranean an English lake, but we object to its being a French lake or a Russian lake, like the Black and Caspian Seas. Candia and Mitylene would certainly not oppose the hoisting of the Union Jack. Of course, those possessions will at first be unpopular—they will cost money, soldiers will die of fever, and officers will grumble. The Turks, after making the noble islands howling wildernesses, will propose to raise loans upon their 'surplus revenues.' But British gold will drain these homes of fever, ports will be laid out, and population will be introduced. We are not justified in failing where the Crusaders and the Knights succeeded so grandly.
"The destiny of Turkey in Africa is equally manifest. France, who has by no means abandoned her claim to 'hegemony,' would add, if she pleased, to her Algerine provinces the fair lands of Tunis as far east as the plains of Jafara, where the southern bend of the coast ends in the Gulf of Sidra. The limits are roughly east long. (G.) 8° to 12°, a linear length of two hundred and forty direct geographical miles. Already there is a report that the offer has been made to her, despite the active opposition of Italy. This latter might be contented with Tripoli, as far as the eastern shore of the Gulf of Sidra. But, since her emancipation, she has shown a turbulent spirit, which threatens the peace of Europe. I lately met a young Italian diplomatist, who would hardly speak to an Englishman because we hold Malta as our haupt-piquet. The occupation of Cyprus was a severe blow: the three standards in St. Mark's Square, Venice, represent Cyprus, Candia, and the Morea. 'Unredeemed Italy' means an Italy 'free from Etna to Trieste.' It represents, I have shown, amongst the moderates, the annexation of the Trentino, the duchy of Gorizia, and the peninsula of Istria. The immoderates add the whole of Dalmatia and part of Albania; in fact, wherever the Roman 'regiones' reached.
"I say 'Tripoli as far as East Sidra,' the knob projecting into the Mediterranean eastward of Sidra, and including Barca and the Cyrenaic, should be added to Egypt, which would thus be prolonged from east long. (G.) 24° to 20°, also about two hundred and forty direct geographical miles. Grennah, of Old Cyrene, has a noble port, lying at a short distance south-east of Malta, and this will be the terminus of a future railway, connecting the glorious lands lying along the Mediterranean with the Nile Valley. By this line passenger-traffic shall escape the sea-voyage between Malta and Egypt, whilst the Cairo-Sioot, prolonged to Cosseir, will save the mortification of the Suez Gulf.
"As regards Egypt, we were only beginning to take into consideration the grand results brought about by the great Mohammed Ali Pasha and his family. We want from her nothing but the free right of transit and transport; we are resolved that the highway of the nations shall not be barricaded. We may eventually be compelled to annex her, but that measure is still distant, although lately advocated in England, and feared in France. Meanwhile, we might be a little kinder to her. Whilst the Turks are allowed freely to repudiate their debts, poor Egypt must pay her usurious Christian creditors the uttermost farthing. The Powers of Europe unwisely and wickedly compelled her to take part in the last Russo-Turkish campaign. We have hitherto refused to set her free from the immense 'benevolences' and other douceurs, heavier than any tribute, which perpetually find their way into the Seraglio, and into the ministerial pockets at Stamboul; and now that all the family income is mortgaged, the head of the house will still be obliged to hold his position by bribery. Surely the absolute independence or annexation of Egypt has now become a necessity.