No More Learning

" The dervish was
strangled, but the crowd of Believers saw a halo
hovering about his corpse. And the people were
right ; for so long as the Koran remains the supreme
law-book of all Islamic States, the introduction of
Western conceptions of law is a degradation and
crime.
It is therefor that all the reform-laws of the last
three Sultans have been simply so many steps
towards destruction. The most perilous time
for a declining State always begins when its
Government tries to better itself, and thereby
itself challenges criticism. The old Bourbon
kingdom did not fall in the prime of its vices, but
under the only king who strove well-meaningly to
abolish the ancient abuses; the Second Empire
did not collapse before its Parliamentary period.
In like manner, the worst days arose for the Osman
Empire when attempts at reform were started.
The experience of half a century shows that Count
Nesselrode was right when (in a remarkable
dispatch of 21st January, 1827) he opined about
Mahmud 11 's innovations that "they are shatter-
ing the ancient power of the State, without setting
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? 36 Turkey and the Great Nations
a new one in its place. " A tragic figure, that
powerful Mahmud, the last great one in Osman
history! He waded in blood over his knees in
order to give his people a better time, and he sank
despairing into his grave, conscious he had made
a failure of life. He was once readily compared
with Peter the Great, and the assassination of the
Janissaries with the annihilation of the Strelitzi.
But the barbarian genius of the North ruled a
people which, despite all its crudity, was docile and
mouldable, and understood how to follow out its
master's bold ideas; whilst from the soul of the
Osman nation the Sultan's Prankish innovations
fell away without a trace, like water from waxed
cloth.
The annihilation of the Janissaries was a momen-
tary gain, because the wild, uncivilized troops
menaced civil peace, but it was a yet greater loss
for the future, for that massacre put a period to the
clever old system which compelled the Rayahs
themselves to fashion their own whips. The
Christians forthwith possessed the forces of their
youthful manhood ; the whole enormous btirden of
war-service and the guarding of subjects now lies
on the shoulders of Osmans alone -- an overstrain
of the powers of the ruling race which can but
benefit the masses. Likewise the Empire's mili-
tary strength gained only slightly by the deed of
violence, as was soon displayed in the campaigns
against Russia and Egypt. In the same way it
was merely a hand-to-mouth measure by which
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? Turkey and the Great Nations 37
the Fanariots lost their influential posts at the
time of the Greek uprising, and the powers of the
Greek Patriarch were limited. The Porte has
since gone further on that alluring path, until
finally it has recently granted a national Head
of the Church to the most numerous of the Rayah-
races, the Bulgarians, and has thus destroyed the
Greeks' ancient ecclesiastical State. This State
in the State, however troublesome though it might
sometimes be, was nevertheless bound by import-
ant interests to the maintenance of the Osman
Empire, and kept the Rayahs together; since it
was abolished, the centrifugal forces working
among the Christian Deoples are completely set
free.
Meanwhile the numberless unkept promises of
freedom on the part of the Sultans had a more
destructive effect than anything else, for they
enhanced the ancient and deadly hatred of the
Rayahs by a further ill-feeling caused by this out-
rageous breach of promise, and degraded the Porte
in Europe's eyes. Who does not know of the
farcical pantomime that took place at the pro-
clamation of the Hatti-Shereef of Gulhane? First
of all the Sultan's Court Astrologer came forward
with his astrolabe in order to calculate the favour-
able hour willed by God, and when Allah spoke
and said, ''Now is the time," the great decree
of liberty was read out which bestowed upon the
Rayahs all the glories of Western toleration and
equality before the law. Of course all these hats,
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? 38 Turkey and the Great Nations
granted to such a people, were so much "paper
written with honey," as the astute Moslems are
wont to say among themselves with amused wink-
ings of the eye. Their enforcement was never
at all earnestly essayed; the Neo-Turkish wor-
shippers of Western countries showed exactly the
same qualities as the Old Believers in the art of
deceiving the Christians. The two friends, Ali
Pasha and Fuad Pasha, are rightly held to be the
noblest and most highly-educated of the youngest
generations of Turkish statesmen. And yet it
was Ali who induced the Cretans to submit by
resounding promises of freedom, and afterwards
forgot all about it; whilst Fuad expressed to the
Christians in Syria his deep regret at the massacre
of the Druses, and then intentionally allowed the
fighters of God to escape. The word of the
Prophet and the natiu-e of the State are in fact
mightier than the outwardly assimilated European
culttu-e. The farce of reform reached its zenith
at the period of the Crimean War. The "Great
Elchi," Lord Stratford de Redcliffe, ruled in
Stamboul, and even to-day we hardly understand
how a statesman so highly gifted and such a judge
of men could have squandered his extraordinary
will-power on such an entirely impossible policy.
He himself perceived, and admitted long ago, his
old mistake. The great Powers admitted the
Turkish Empire, then yet again resurrected,
into the community of European international
law at the very moment when the Porte itself ex-
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? Turkey and the Great Nations 39
hibited a formal testimony to its weakness in the
Humayum hat, and unambiguously showed how
little it deserved to be treated as a European
Power. The new decree of liberty simply repeated
what had already been solemnly promised a
decade and a half previously, and merely proved
that this Government was neither able nor willing
to be just to Christians.
In very truth Turkey left the ranks of independ-
ent States as a result of the Treaty of Paris.
The Porte had to proclaim the hat; it was the
condition of admittance to the European Concert.
It accordingly undertook towards the Great Powers
the duty of reforms, and came under the police
observation of Europe, although the phrasing of
the Treaty did not recognize this inevitable
effect. Turkey to-day is indeed more dependent
than ever; she has already had to suffer the
armed intervention of the Powers in Syria.
What were the consequences of all these legis-
lative experiments, which were so often welcomed
in the English Parliament with the jubilant cry,
"Turkey is saved, and the liberation of the Rayahs
achieved"? The fez has driven out the turban,
the beauties of the seraglio wear Paris fashions,
and doubtless also adorn their walls with a few
bad European lithographs. So that it certainly
happens that a portrait of the Prince of Wales,
with his name under it, is introduced as Napoleon
III to smiling visitors from Pera. Society drinks
champagne, and murders French; Young Turkey
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? 40 Turkey and the Great Nations
brings home a few strong Voltairean phrases from
his years of study in Paris, jeers at the creed of
his fathers, and ennobles the ancient Eastern
viciousness by the virtuous habits of the Closerie
des Lilas. Inconvenient Pashas are no longer got
rid of by the silken string, but they are banished,
and the assassin's dagger is now used only on
quite exceptional occasions. The enlightened
Turkish statesmen have diligently assimilated all
the arts of Napoleonic Press-control; they are
masters in the manipulation of correspondence
and entrefilets; the golden pills kneaded on the
Bosphorus can always find a few obliging patients
in the journalistic circles of London and Paris,
but especially among the industrious Oriental
kin who dominate the Vienna Press. The Porte
strove with even greater success to make an appear-
ance also in the bourses of Europe as a member of
equal standing with the civilized community of
States. The rejuvenated domestic economy of its
Government soon threw into the shade the boldest
deeds of European finance. During about four-
teen years of peace this land, with its measureless
natural resources, burdened itself with a debt of
over five milliards of francs, and finally reached
that unparalleled Budget which, out of ? 18,000,-
000 revenue, put aside two for the Sultan's house-
hold, fifteen for the interest on the National
Debt, and kept only one million for the army,
navy, and officials.
The ancient, humiliating head- tax on the
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? Turkey and the Great Nations 41
Christians was removed ; but as the Rayahs do not
serve in the army, and the Osmanli did not wish
to give them weapons, the ancient tax returned
under the euphonious title of a war contribution,
and the sole result of the reform was the increased
burden on the Christians. A few Christians
were summoned to the district councils, but they
did not dare to open their mouths; the Giaour
remained without rights, since no Osman judge
allowed his evidence to weigh against a Mussul-
man. The oppressive system of tax-farming,
the iltisan, continued, despite all promises, for the
tax-farming is based upon the natural economy;
the Porte possessed neither will nor power to
raise the rough Rayah peasants to a higher degree
of economy, and the commissions of the tax-
farmers remained indispensable to their officials.
Year after year, desperate Christian peasants
make over their property to the moshes, and
receive it back tax-free; the vakuf is driving out
the mulk, the mortmain latifundia threatened
entirely to consume the small, free landed
property. Innumerable revolts of the ill-treated
people proved that even the submissiveness of the
Orientals, which can endure indescribable hard-
ships, found its limit under this regime.
Briefly, the ancient system, the exploitation
of the Rayahs by the master-people and its assist-
ants' assistants, was not altered in the slightest by
the Neo-Turkish reforms, only the ruling power of
the Osmans vanished. The ancient Turkdom com-
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? 42 Turkey and the Great Nations
pelled the admiration of its foes by the strength of
its character; the Neo-Turkish method, with its
unbroken barbarism and the shiny Prankish varnish
over it, resembles that of the deHghted Indian who
has put on a frock-coat over his naked, tattooed
body. The final reason for this incorrigibleness
of the State undoubtedly lies in the ominous fact
that the Oriental theocracy appears in this case at
the same time as the foreign government of a small
minority. Purely Mohammedan States such as
Egypt are in a happier position; they may intro-
duce a few European ideas without endangering
the existence of the Government.
The epoch of reforms was one of ceaseless defeats
and losses for the exterior power of the Empire.
Algiers fell to France ; Egypt won the heredity of its
ruling family and an independent position which
approaches sovereignty; respect for the Porte is
weakened in Mesopotamia, in Arabia it is an
empty name; Servia and Greece gained their
freedom; the Danubian principalities became
unified, and almost quite independent; the estu-
aries of the river first fell to Russia, then to the
management of a European Commission. Of
the 16,000,000 inhabitants of the Balkan Penin-
sula -- that is the calculation of Jakschitsch --
7,500,000 are to-day already entirely or nearly
independent, and the Porte possesses now in
Europe only about 8,500,000 direct subjects.
The provinces are declining or at a standstill,
the power of the Empire is receding to the capital
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? Turkey and the Great Nations 43
more and more. The importance of these facts
is in no way lessened by the fond assurance of the
friends of Turkey that the Rayahs would never
have freed themselves if Europe, especially Russia,
had not supported them. The insinuation is
as brilliant as the assumption; the tree would
not grow if it did not derive nourishment from
the atmosphere and earth. The Rayahs, after
all, do not inhabit a lonely, distant island, but live
in the vicinity of luckier nations allied to them
by race and creed, and so long as the last feehng
of brotherly community does not perish in Christen-
dom, there is always bound to be some European
Power which shall take care of the Rayahs, either
out of self-interest or sympathy. Whether the
Turks were able to put down the revolt of the
Serbs with their own forces or not, it is at least
beyond doubt that Ibrahim Pasha would assuredly
have smashed the rebellious Greeks had not the
European Powers intervened. But that inter-
vention was an obvious necessity; Europe could
not look on indifferently whilst a Christian people
was being annihilated by Egyptian hordes, and
the great English statesman, George Canning,
who, breaking once and for all with the traditions
of a narrow-hearted trading policy, encompassed
this result, will always receive fame for willing
what was necessary. Nowadays, after the Porte
has made and broken such numerous promises, it
has become quite impossible for the Great Powers,
and particularly for Russia, to leave the fate of
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? 44 Turkey and the Great Nations
the Rayahs to be solely determined by the
pleasure of the Turks. Count Nesselrode once
expressed himself very challengingly, but plain-
spokenly and pregnantly, about Russia's relations
to the Christians in Turkey. In a letter to Herr
von Brunnow (ist June, 1853) he referred to the
sympathies and common interests which bound his
Court to the Rayahs and made its interference
in Turkish affairs possible at any time. He
concluded: **We shall hardly be asked to dispense
with this influence in order to dissipate exag-
gerated anxieties. Putting the impossible case,
that we should wish to do so, we should neverthe-
less not be able to do so" -- and, he might have
added, ''even if we ourselves were able to do so,
the Southern Slavs would never believe that the
White Czar had withdrawn his hand from them. "
And on that it all depends. The confident belief
of the Rayahs, supported by facts, that they can-
not be wholly sacrificed by Russia and the other
European Powers, is a spur which is continually
driving them on to new things, is an operative
power in the latest history of the Orient, and will
not be abolished by the strong words of the Eng-
lish Press.
None of the small States which have thus formed
themselves with the help of Europe has hitherto
reached sound political conditions. A strong and
far-seeing absolutism, which should awaken the
country's economic and intellectual forces whilst
at the same time leaving the communities some
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? Turkey and the Great Nations 45
degree of independence, is clearly the kind of
government best suited to such a state of civili-
zation. Instead of which the whole glorious Neo-
French Constitutional quackery was introduced
everywhere. Each one of these little nations
boasts of the most liberal constitution in the
world, and tries to outdo all the fashionable
follies of Western Radicalism by the abolition of
capital punishment, of the nobility, of the classes,
and similar jokes. None of the young States
has yet acquired a firmly established dynasty, the
great advantage still possessed by Turkey. If
the Prince is a native, he is deposed, because the
free Rumanian, Hellene, etc. , will not bow down
to a person like himself; if he is a foreigner, he is
driven away, because the proud nation will not
endure the yoke of foreign domination. It is un-
deniably difficult to escape this pleasing dilemma.
A wild quarrel between parties, which hardly
attempts to hide its real object, the hunt for
office, is demoralizing the peoples, and so crippling
the powers of the Governments that even the
clever, energetic, and conscientious Prince Charles
of Rumania could only achieve in this instance
a portion of what he would have achieved without
the blessing of Parliamentary government by
parties. Still, it would be unfair to judge these
peoples solely by their weakest aspect, by their
skill in ruling. It is indeed incontestable that
their social conditions are slowly progressing,
that, especially in Greece, a noteworthy impulse
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? 46 Turkey and the Great Nations
towards culture has been awakened; briefly,
that they are to-day happier in every respect than
they were formerly under the rule of the Crescent.
In the neighbourhood of the Acropolis, where only
a few decayed huts stood in the time of the Turks,
there is to-day a comfortable quarter, with
churches and schools, and a flourishing little
university. And, what weighs more than any-
thing with a politician, the liberation of these
countries has already long been an irrevocable
fact, the restoration of the Crescent in Athens,
Belgrade, and Bucharest is no more within the
sphere of the possible. The rise of the Rayahs has
had permanent, definite results, therefore it will
continue and progress.
Recently the movement has already seized
upon those countries which were hitherto held
to be the most trustworthy; the Bulgarians were
always despised as the most servile of all the
Rayahs, Bosnia with its Mohammedan Begs
was even highly esteemed as the strong arm of
warlike Islam. However ominous this symptom
seems, it must nevertheless be recognized that
with every further step forward the falling away
meets with increasing hindrances. The liberation
of Rumania, Servia, and Greece occurred under
unusually favourable circumstances. Rumania
always enjoyed a certain independence; and,
both in Greece and Servia, warlike Christian mount-
aineers lived next to a small number of Mohammed-
an immigrants; so that here the alien population
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? Turkey and the Great Nations 47
could be easily expelled after victory. The three
liberated States now treat Islam more intolerantly
than the Turks did Christendom. To-day, how-
ever, the movement is approaching the coastal
regions of Bulgaria and RumeHa, which the
Moslems occupy in dense masses. Jakschitsch
reckons among the Porte's direct subjects in
Europe 4. 7 millions of Christians, and 3. 6 millions
of Mohammedans, and though he may perhaps
rather overrate the number of the latter, it is clear
that three millions of Moslems can neither be
converted, nor destroyed, nor probably expelled.
During the last ten years, the Porte settled about
half a million of Circassian fugitives, from the
Caucasus, near the Danube in the villages of
expelled Christians : one of the few acts of modern
Osman policy which still remind one of the govern-
ing skill of greater days. With these fanatical
foes of Russia, with the other Mohammedans
of the Peninsula, finally with the thirteen millions
of her Asiatic Moslems, she may confidently expect
yet once more to quell the revolt in Bulgaria and
Bosnia -- provided only a spark of the old power of
action still survives in Stamboul, and the Euro-
pean Powers do not intervene.
And even if the liberation of the two rebellious
provinces took place, the decisive problem as to
the future of the East would not be touched on,
viz. , the fate of the capital. There on the Bos-
phorus and Dardanelles dwells that section of
the Greeks who from time immemorial have most
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?
48 Turkey and the Great Nations
readily bent their necks beneath the yoke both
of Byzantine and Osman slavery. They have
grown rich, those fellows, by energy in commerce,
and still more by the complaisance of Turkish
statesmen. It is at least improbable that this
people should rise of its own accord, that the rabble
of the capital, a blend of all the slums of Europe
and Asia, should dare to war against a domination
which is both feared and convenient. There is
hitherto no sign of any dangerous agitation in
those circles. So far as human judgment goes,
the Crescent will not fall from the cupolas of the
Church of Santa Sophia until the army of a Euro-
pean Power plants its standards on those ancient
walls which the last Comnenus defended to his
death. And nobody knows better than the Porte
what impediments to such a disaster are opposed
by the jealousies of the Great Powers; for amid
its decline it has nevertheless retained something
of that barbaric cunning which once caused the
great Suleiman to ask the French agent: "Is the
Emperor Charles at peace with Martin Luther? "
These general conditions alone, and not the
vital strength of the State itself, justified the
Porte in the hope that its doom may now again
be postponed for a few years. I should be insult-
ing my readers if I were to speak more at length
about the weirdly ludicrous farce being played
to-day by the English Ambassador on the Bos-
phorus. Surely we stupid Franks are no longer
so childish as to faithfully believe that the scientific
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? Turkey and the Great Nations 49
idealism of the strenuous softas got rid of an
uncultured Sultan by means of suicide ; it would be
the same as if the Wingolf Theological Union
wanted to depose the German Emperor. "Execu-
tion is better than disturbance, " says the Prophet.
Behind the softas stood the Old and Young Turkish
statesmen, all who desired to maintain the mastery
of the Moslems over the Christian masses. In
times of quiet, public opinion can neither form
nor express itself among the Turks, since the
newly invented free Press does not reach the mass
of the people; it therefore flames up all the more
suddenly and violently in days of peril, if the ruling
race thinks itself menaced in its ruling rights.
Behind the Osmans, however, Sir Henry Elliot
was the leader of the Revolution. The English
Premier in the joy of his heart has already revealed
that transparent secret; for at a moment when
decency forbade him from knowing anything
about the opinions of the new Sultan, he related
to the House of Commons that better times had
now come for Turkey.
It is perhaps possible that the world may still
gaze for a few years upon the wonderful comedy of
these "better times. " It knows the plot and the
sequence of scenes quite accurately, and has still
a vivid recollection of the impressiveness with
which the great comedian Abdul Aziz once de-
claimed the effective concluding verse of the first
act: "Turkey shall be new-built on the principles
of a legislative State. " But the name of the
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? 50 Turkey and the Great Nations
dramatic poet is this time not Stratford but Elliot,
and he will be desirous of embellishing the old
play with some new inventions; perhaps he will
really cheer us up with the gallows '-humoiu* of an
Ottoman Parliament. There are enough Catonic
natives among the merchants of the Fanar, as
well as among the Armenian and Greek tax-
farmers; with the aid of the customary baksheesh
the requisite number of loyal Rayah deputies will
assuredly be found. And what a triumph it
would be for Disraeli's diplomacy if it succeeded
in introducing a fresh kind of constitutional
monarchy into Europe's constitutional history,
viz. , parliamentarism tempered by murder! In
what illuminating relief would this picture stand
out in the dithyrambs of the English Press against
the well-known descriptions of the Russian Con-
stitution !
What the Rayahs have to expect from the new
Government the semi-official Oriental correspond-
ence has just confessed in an unguarded moment
of sincerity. Tolerance -- thus it ran -- may be
expected by Christians, but no political rights on
any account from a Sovereign who owes his throne
to the Osmans. That is the truth of the matter.
Even as the Turks formerly replied to the outburst
of the Greek revolution by the murder of the
Patriarch of Constantinople, they have to-day
answered the Bosnio- Bulgarian revolt and the
Serbian war preparations by the Sultan's deposi-
tion. It was an uprising of the old master-race
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? Turkey and the Great Nations 51
which was accompanied by its usual brutahty,
but which was quite respect- worthy of its kind.
The Old and Young Turks are quite united in
their determination to keep their feet on the
Christians' necks. They laugh, rightly too, about
the notion of comfortable persons that the Sultan,
expelled from Stamboul, will presently govern
an incomparably happier Asiatic Empire from
Broussa ; such a rejuvenation of a Power which has
just been disgracefully defeated would be contrary
to all experience of Oriental history. They feel
so safe amid the quarrels between the European
Powers, that doubtless many a Turkish statesman
may quietly wish that Russia might, by a false
step, give the Porte an opportunity for forcing a
war. The new Sultan is already in the middle
thirties; about that time of life the inevitable
results of harem-life are wont rapidly to appear
in the latest generations of Osman's descendants.
Should he, however, remain in the long run more
responsible than his two glorious predecessors,
he can never belie the origin of his government.
With England's help, financial means and military
forces will probably be found so as to overcome the
embarrassments of the moment ; perhaps real satis-
faction will be given for the murder of the two
consuls instead of open contempt. Still, if Allah
bestows his blessings, everything will after all
remain as it is. The Rayahs cannot put any trust
in the Porte's promises so long as there are not
some Christians in the Porte's Ministerial Council
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? 52 Turkey and the Great Nations
-- not corrupt Fanariots, but trusty agents of the
small races -- and such a proposal would now be
simply impossible.
As already stated, one may regard Turkey as a
religious State, but the Padishah is the Caliph
of all the Sunnites, and the Caliphate's mighty
actuaHty will be stronger than a paper promise.
With their customary diplomatic cleverness they
may make the most delightful promises to the
Great Powers, but the valis and kaimakams will
not forget the equally customary and ancient art
of making life sour for the Rayahs, and the English
will again, just as under Stratford's rule, receive
commands to report nothing adverse about the
Turkish administration. So, perhaps, the world
will keep patient until after a few years the Empire
is involved in a fresh crisis. In politics incom-
petence in living is by no means synonymous with
death, as we Germans know by the experiences
of our small States ; and the power of sluggishness
is nowhere greater than in the East.
Will matters really develop so slowly? The
decision depends on the conduct of the Great
Powers.
He who speaks about the Oriental Question with
a great show of moral indignation, ever runs the
risk of being suspected of hypocrisy. It is hardly
edifying to find to-day in part of the German Press
a repetition of English stock speeches against
Muscovite selfishness. Surely it ought to be
taken quite as a matter of course by us honest
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? Turkey and the Great Nations 53
Germans that Russia and England, the two prota-
gonists there in the East, think first of their
own strength, and both are pursuing their purpose
with that complete unscrupulousness which has
been peculiar for thousands of years to all fights
between Powers in the Orient. If you examine
the matter impartially, you cannot deny that
Russia has always judged the character of the
Turkish State, the unchangeableness of that
theocracy, more accurately than most of the other
Powers. In this regard, Petersburg politics was
always superior to its opponents, even at the
periods when they arrogantly underrated the
Turks' power of resistance. The biting irony with
which the Russian Plenipotentiary to the Paris
Congress was wont to accompany the reform-
programmes of the West has met with full justi-
fication in the events of the following decades.
The grounds of this superiority are tolerably
obvious. The Russians are themselves a half-
Eastern people, and are not regarded as Franks by
Moslems; they have been in immemorial inter-
course with Asiatics, understand how to treat their
Mohammedan subjects very skilfully, and formed
earlier than the rest of European peoples a con-
viction about the future of the Balkan countries
which has become a national tradition owing
to two centuries of wars and negotiations. That
the strongest of the Slav Powers, which bears the
Imperial Eagle of Byzantium in its coat-of-arms,
must act so as to expel the Crescent from the
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? 54 Turkey and the Great Nations
Czarograd of the South, requires no elucidation.
Since the Porte by the Peace of Kutchuk-Kainar-
ji had to promise the Petersburg Court to protect
the Christian reHgion and its Churches, Russia
has posed as the lawful protector of the Greek
Christians in Turkey; only an Orthodox Believer
can become Russian Ambassador in Stamboul.
This tendency towards Byzantium is to Russians
what their "manifest destiny" was to the North
Americans, viz. , a political necessity imposed by
the Empire's world-position as well as by the
nation's holiest feelings and memories. In his
Oriental scheming all the Russian's sincere idealism
comes to light, especially the strength of his
religious feeling. It is not only the masses who
revere Holy Russia in their State, but the higher
classes also, despite their Voltairean education,
regard Russiadom and the Orthodox Creed as
synonymous, and there is often to be found in
these circles an enthusiastic veneration for the
''Primary Church of Christendom," which alone
has remained unalterable. A short time ago a
Russian statesman, one of the freest- thinking
heads among his race, wrote to me : ' * In our religion
the Communion Cup remains concealed with a
covering till the moment of transubstantiation ;
the day will come when the covering will also fall
from the Orthodox Church and its Divine contents
will be shown to the world. " I certainly doubt
if the Russian Church has really such a wealth of
hidden moral forces at its disposal; suffice it that
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? Turkey and the Great Nations 55
the inmost being of the State and of popular opin-
ion compels every Czar to maintain the ancient
union with their brother-believers in the South.
But the forms and methods of this policy have
manifoldly changed in rapid sequence; a doctrin-
aire insistence on ready-made programmes is the
last reproach that could be brought against the
realism of Petersburg diplomacy. In the eight-
eenth century Russia was a Power highly danger-
ous to the peace of the world, expanding hugely,
absorbing everything which lay within reach of its
arms; the land-grabbing Cabinet policy of those
days found, naturally, its most audacious expon-
ents in the least-civilized of courts. It would be
well for Russia if she no longer denied to-day what
is a historical fact: that Peter the Great wished
to be buried in Byzantium; that Muennich de-
scribed Turkey as the Czar's assured booty;
that Catherine cherished boundless ideas of
conquest when she negotiated with Joseph II and
Thugut, and had her second grandson baptized
with the name of the Byzantine Emperors; that
the Peace of Kutchuk-Kainarji was carried
out in an extremely violent way, owing to Russia
-- and so on, ad infinitum. The echoes of this
poHcy of conquest could be heard well into our
nineteenth century. For instance, the acquisi-
tion by Czar Nicholas of the mouths of the Danube
was an outrageous attack on the territory of a
foreign Power, which Europe should never have
tolerated. It is only since Alexander II 's Reform
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? 56 Turkey and the Great Nations
Laws that this conquest policy has been given
up. One reform engenders another, every
cut into the ancient injuries of a State exposes
other wounds previously unnoticed; the aboli-
tion of serfdom is no longer enough, the Empire
requries comprehensive agrarian laws, in order
that the free peasant may also obtain inde-
pendent possession of soil. New and unavoid-
able problems for legislation are quickly arising,
and the small number of really educated men
at the disposal of the Government is scarcely
sufficient to solve them all. Moreover, the free
discussions of the last two decades have only just
stirred up in Russia a real national life; even as
they have learnt to adopt as a necessity the new
State-formations of Central Europe, they are also
asking their own government for a national
foreign policy.
And nobody can deny that Czar Alexander has
so far satisfied their claim. The quelling of the Pol-
ish uprising was, despite all the horrors connected
with it, after all only an act of self-defence,
compelled by the Poles' incomprehensible folly, as
well as by the unanimous desire of the Russian
people; and that splendid campaign of conquest,
too, in Central Asia is a national deed, however
paradoxical it may seem. The Russians are not
meeting there, like the Britons in the East Indies,
a very ancient civilization, equal in birth, but
naked barbarism; they appear as the heralds of a
superior civilization, and yet are not imapproach-
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? Turkey and the Great Nations 57
ably alien to the conquered by descent and moral-
ity. The conquest is therefore much easier of
accomplishment, and it needs more rarely, than
was once the case with the East India Company,
those unworthy means which were needed for the
subjection of India. The conqueror may expect,
gradually, to inspire those hordes with his civili-
zation, just as he has already Russified Kazan
and Astrakhan, the Tartars of the Crimea, and the
Kirghiz tribes, yes, even the greater part of the
Caucasus. We Liberals of the West, however,
have gradually grown out of the ridiculous enthus-
iasm of earlier days and begin to perceive that it is
gain for culture when the bestial Circassians,
Luanetians, etc. , become Russians. This tremen-
dous outflow of Slavdom towards the East cannot
stop before the whole boundless regions from the
Amur and the Chinese boundary to the Ural form
a safe commercial dominion. Prince Gortchakof's
well-known phrase, '^Cest done toujours d recom-
mencer^^^ hits the nail on the head.
Now, is it at all credible that a Government
which places before itself so great and difficult and
yet attainable aims, both in its home and foreign
policy, should pursue a Napoleonic adventurer's
policy in the case of Turkey ? The Russians are not
nearer to the Serbs and Greeks than the Germans
to the Danes and English; with the Rumanians
they have absolutely nothing in common except
the Orthodox Creed and that incomplete civili-
zation which distinguishes the whole Slav- Jewish-
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? 58 Turkey and the Great Nations
Wallachian Eastern half of Europe. The morbid
national pride of the small Rayah peoples rejects
scornfully the idea of becoming Russian; the
Greek especially despises the Muscovites as Slavs
and barbarians, although he condescends to use
them for his purposes. Many unpleasant truths
may be enunciated about the lamentable realms
Rumania and Greece; they are not Russian
provinces, much rather are they very jealous of
their national independence. That fanatical Pan-
Slavists long for the conquest of Byzantium is
known to all; but can an intelligent Russian
Government commit itself to such madness. ^ It
does not possess the means of destroying the
deeply-marked nationality of the small Rayah
peoples, it cannot desire to forge yet another
Polish cannon-ball for its feet, and, above all, it
owes its powerful position among the Balkan
States, in great part, to the submissiveness of the
Rayahs and cannot dream of subduing them by
force. Several historical philosophers demon-
strate, with an amount of erudition which would
be worthy of a finer cause, that in the cold North-
ern country life is really quite too uncomfortable,
a natural instinct is impelling the Russians to
exchange these inhospitable regions for the gor-
geous South. At Petersburg, however, people will
be very well aware that a population of 75,000,000
cannot, nowadays, casually start a new migra-
tion and leave the scenes of its thousand-years*
work.
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? Turkey and the Great Nations 59
It is also simply a learned fallacy to gloomily
maintain, in a free version of Alexander I's
notorious phrase, that the Bosphorus is the key to
the Russian house, the Czar's Government must
aim at its possession. After all, the Sound is the
second key to the Russian house, and when has
Russia ever tried to conquer Copenhagen, the
Byzantium of the North? Just as the Petersburg
Court is able to feel quite at ease, now that the
Sound is in the hands of two harmless Middle
Powers, it is likewise naturally only so far interested
in the Bosphorus, viz. , that it should be ruled
by a friendly Orthodox Power. Russia does not
wish to conquer the Bosphorus for itself, because
it has not the necessary power. No European
State, Germany least of all, can tolerate a per-
manent Russian settlement in Stamboul, if only
because of the feverish excitement which would be
bound to flame through all Slav races at such a
movement; and how is it thinkable that they
could maintain themselves there, if a German army
entered Poland, Austria's troops marched over
the Balkans, and an English fleet lay before
SeragHo Point? Who has a right to attribute
such gasconading tricks to the Russian Court?
Emperor Alexander has already proved, since
the beginning of his reign, by the conclusion of the
Paris Treaty how remote such visions are from
him. He was certainly unable to remain per-
manently content with that transaction, and for
good reasons. The plan of the Western Powers, to
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? 6o Turkey and the Great Nations
carry out the reforming of Turkey without and
against Russia, was, as the outcome showed, a sin
against nature and history. Seldom was a victory
less magnanimously and more stupidly exploited
than the truly modest success of Sebastopol.
It is impossible to forbid a mighty Empire to
sail the sea before its coast with warships, and it
is as immoral as was formerly the treaty for the
closing of the Scheldt, and similar products of
the older commercial policy. So shameful a con-
dition is observed by a proud State only so long
as it must be. With regard to such obligations the
mot holds good: "The breach of faith is then more
honourable than the observance. " The blame for
the announcement of that clause of the Paris
Treaty falls solely on the shoulders of the silly
conquerors, who in the intoxication of success
fancied they could impose the impossible on the
conquered; the indignant EngHsh cry about
Russian "breach of faith" found the less echo in
the right feeling of the European world, since
everybody knew the Paris Treaty had already a
long time before been broken in another respect.
Contrary to the Paris Treaty, the union of the
Danubian Principalities had been achieved, and
the Porte positively trampled under foot the
Humayum hat, the preamble of that Treaty.
The aim of Petersburg policy has lately been to
enhance the privileges of the Christian races and
Churches of the Balkan Peninsula and, where
possible, to raise those countries to semi-sovereign
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