YOUR ARMIES HAVE BEEN IN THE CRIMEA, WHAT BENEFIT HAS COME TO THE CRIMEAN TARTARS? DID YOU RESTORE TO THEM THEIR COUNTRY? NO, YOU GAVE IT BACK TO RUSSIA.
WHAT BENEFIT DID THE TURKS GET FROM YOUR WAR? You made your enemy pay none of the expenses, and YOU ONLY DEPRIVED THE TURKS OF THEIR VICTORIES.
THE POLES did go to the Crimea, and WHAT BENEFIT did THEY GET FROM THAT WAR?
Did we too not help you? Did we not keep in check 100,000 men? Is Russia not sore and weak by the many years she has been fighting with us? If we did not prefer independence to slavery, would not 100,000 of our men be in her ranks? If we were not engaged in defending our country, would not the Russian frontiers be at Batun?
WHY DO WE SUFFER FROM THIS WAR? Is it not because RUSSIA WANTS TO BE MISTRESS OF INDIA and MISTRESS OF CONSTANTINOPLE? If you wait till her ends are gained it will be too late to get aid from us. If you do not give us to-day a favourable reply, we must go back to our people and tell them that the English people are joined with Russia, so that what Russia could not effect by her arms some people in England will have effected by their calumnies.
All these things we tell you. If you wish to be sure of the truth, make an assembly, as we do, and we will prove them. If you make no such assembly, you have no right to say them. From Europe or from England no help has come to us. We have heard that if there was justice to be found it was in England; we came then to England, weak and poor, expecting to find justice from you.
(Signed) Hadji Hayden Hassan.
Kustar Ogli Ismael.
APPENDIX XI.
HOLY RUSSIA AND THE CURSED CRESCENT.
By A. Cleveland Coxe,[33]