"The former declares with perfect untruth that the transfer of Janina, Larissa, and other places would be the loss of a commanding strategic line. The Greek asserts that he must also have Epirus, Thessaly, and even Thrace, because the whole country is Greek in language, manners, and religion. And a fresh complication has sprung up. Greece has been making, for her, immense sacrifices, and an army of 30,000 to 40,000 men will soon eat up a State whose population is 1,500,000, and whose revenue of £3,600,000, with a deficit of half a million and a debt of eighteen millions; it would hardly keep her in bread and cheese. Every day costs her more money than she can afford; the business of everyday life is at a standstill.
"Austria has at length adopted the course prescribed to her in the last century by the soldier and statesman, Prince Eugène of Savoy, who advised her to abandon her worse than useless Italian conquests, and to bring her weight to bear upon the Turk. After an 'occupation,' which was a campaign costing some 4000 lives, she has established herself in Bosnia and the Herzegovina, which are geographical necessities to the 'Kingdom of Dalmatia,' the old 'Mother of Emperors.' Here she has done, despite her enemies, excellent work. A traveller writes to me, 'The improvements effected in the new protectorate during the last two years must be seen to be believed. The military roads extending from Brood on the Sava to Serajevo, and from Serajevo through Herzegovina, by Mostar, to the mouth of the Narenta, do infinite honour to the Engineer Department, and, considering the immense outlay of the Imperial Treasury, to the forethought and generosity of the Government. A capable police has been organized, and district courts and schools have been established throughout the length and breadth of the land. I found perfect order and tranquillity prevailing everywhere, and well will it be for the best interests, social and political, of the people, the farther Austrian rule is extended and the longer it is perpetuated.'
"Austria took formal charge of the Ottoman in South-Eastern Europe at the Congress of Berlin—a step enthusiastically hailed by a statesman as 'glad tidings of great joy.' The Emperor's journey to Dalmatia (1876) was the beginning of that policy, and we have still to see the results of the Imperial round of visits in the summer of 1880. It is understood that the attitude of England has revived the league known as the Dreikaiserbund, and that Germany and Austria are united in the determination that the other third should not profit exclusively by annexing Turkish territory. When the war breaks out, and it may break out at any moment, Austria cannot remain passive. Under pain of retrograding she must advance. Adrianople will become necessary to the Dual Empire when Greece enlarges herself; when Bulgaria shall conquer her independence, the course of events must carry Austria forward to Salonica. There is nothing to prevent her becoming a great Jugo-Slav (South Slavonic) power, the mainstay of the Catholic Slavs, as Russia is of the Northern or orthodox. By cultivating the Christian populations on the Lower Danube, and by a league with 'Old Bulgaria' (Servia, Roumania, Roumelia, etc.), she would invest the Muscovite rival to the south and the south-west, while Germany hems him in to the west and the north-west. 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 kingdom of Poland.
"Austria has two opponents who will serve only to force her forwards. The Land of the Magyar has become a country of 'white Turks,' of 'ogres,' as Mr. Freeman calls them, more Ottoman than the Ottomans. Kossuth's lately published volumes explain the reason why; but the ambitions and the passions of 1848, which brought about the unnatural and abominable union, cannot outlast a second generation. The other rival is Italy, whose statesmen view, with a curious mixture of rage and spite, the aggrandizement of a quondam master. Since Italia became una, her politicians have shown a turbulent spirit which menaces the peace of Europe. Italia Irredenta, an old idea, but an expression apparently coined in 1878, means much. The Redenta represents an 'Italy free from Etna to Trieste.' The Moderates would be satisfied with annexing the Trentino, the duchy of Gorizia, and the peninsula of Istria. The 'Immoderates' add all Dalmatia and part of Albania; in fact, wherever the Roman regiones extended. But Trieste will not be Italian. Mr. Disraeli said, 'The port of Trieste is not a mere Austrian port; it belongs to the German Confederation; and an attack on Trieste is not an attack on Austria alone, but also on Germany.' The managing man, par excellence, of Europe has as openly declared that if the Italians attempt to march upon the Vice-Queen of the Adriatic, they will meet a sword-point which is not Austrian. Italy might do better than to lay out her income upon 'bloated armaments,' a disproportionate army which she is still increasing, and colossal ironclads, which any torpedo-cockboat may blow up. She is one of the poorest of nations, in the very richest of soils; her agriculture has progressed little beyond that of the 'Georgics;' her railroads are a disgrace; so is her post-office; her finances suffer from the good old practice of converting a stocking into a bank; and her business is injured by her over-'cuteness' and greed of gain. She is no longer the charming country of the early nineteenth century. Freedom has taught her all the roughness, but little of the virtue of the Northerner. Honesty seems to be at its lowest ebb. The knife is king. Whatever Italy has of genius, energy, and 'go-ahead' is now devoted to warlike preparations, and to dreams of conquest. The awaking will be bitter.
"So much for Turkey in Europe, where, despite Mr. Redhouse, she can hardly be said to exist. In Asia, or rather Asia Minor, her future home, she has lost her most valuable possessions—Kars, the great base of military operations, and Batoum, the rival of Trebizonde, and the port that commands the Bosphorus. The Muscovite really requires nothing more in Western Asia; and it was a masterly stroke of policy our pledging ourselves to protect what wants no protection. It is again the Dean's—
'When nothing's left to need defence
They build a magazine.'
But here again Russia is being forced forward. She has nothing to do with the bleak and barren mountains of Armenia, an Asiatic Scotland; but the cries of the unfortunate Christians, though peremptorily suppressed in the Turkish papers, are exciting legitimate Muscovite sympathies. It is the old story of the 'Bulgarian atrocities.' Armenia, when I last wrote, was a 'rebellious province,' and she was to be put down by slipping at her the Kurd bloodhound. This race of bandits, fanatical as it is ferocious, has perpetrated every horror under the sun; and the complication of a hunger-year has made the desolate Christians ready to accept any rule. And now they are attacking in force Persia, the neighbour and ally of Russia, so as to compel the latter to remove.
"The 'reform by moral force,' the honest gendarmerie, the just tribunals, and the tax-gathering publicans turned to saints, all these choice projects of a future for Asia Minor have turned out, as might have been expected, the merest visions, baseless as a mirage. If England were doctrinaire, she would either let the task severely alone or she would appoint to every government (vilayet) of Turkey a British 'Resident,' after the fashion of Anglo-India. But compromise is her specific; it is a panacea for home use, and, ergo, it is a panacea everywhere. She has done neither this nor that; she has adopted mezzi termini (half-measures); she has again applied the rule of thumb; she has 'meddled and muddled' once more. How perfectly she has failed is known to every newspaper reader.
"A number of English officers, mostly ignorant of the languages and customs of the East, have been made Consuls and Vice-Consuls in Asia Minor. Turkey, on her side, has sent Englishmen, with high official rank in her armies, to inspect provinces, to inquire into abuses, and to send in long reports for instant pigeon-holing. This is again mere dust thrown in the general eyes. As Sultan of Turkey, the old Bāsh-Buzzuk of Cavala would have given new life to the battered and broken empire of the 'unspeakable;' and, naturally enough, his ambition was dreaded by the northern pretenders to Constantinople. Let one sentence suffice to show the difference of development between the two. Syria has not one made harbour; Egypt has three. Egypt has a dozen railroads; Syria boasts only of one carriageable highway, and that is French property. But Palestine grows in importance every year. Mr. Laurence Oliphant has surveyed the land of Gilead, the eastern frontier; and, supported by the Israelitish capitalists of Europe, he proposes to restore that part of Judæa to her old owners. Captain Cameron, equally well backed, has virtually begun the Euphrates Valley line, despite the adverse forecasts of Mr. Wilfrid Blunt. Jerusalem, it is true, cannot, in the present state of Europe, become the exclusive possession of any European Power. But already almost all the land around has been bought up by the Jews, and the Sacred City, like her holy sisters, Hebron, Tiberias, and Safet, may be said to belong to them. The sooner Syria is made over to Egypt the better.