The Sun.
London, England, 1866-12-28 00:00:00

SPIRI r OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS.

TIMES.—The lull in our daily intelligence which
ordinarily marks the brief period of our Christmas
rejoicings is broken in upon by rumbling threats of
war in the East. The Porte, we learn, has com-
plained to the Greek Government of the volunteers
in Greek uniform landed in Greek steamers on the
shores of Crete in aid of the Candian insurgents,
and also of the several corps concentrated by the
Greek Government on the frontier of Epirus and
Thessaly. These, as our readers are aware, are no
new remonstrances. The tone of the Sultan's diplo-
matists may be more emphatic, but the substance of
their message is already familiar to King George.
Explanations, reproofs, or apologies would e'be
perfectly superfluous on either side. Between
Athens and Constantinople there has been, indeed,
for weeks and months, more than sufficient ground
for au open declaration of hostilities. The eager-
ness to come to blows is very obvious ; but the
would-be combatants are under the influence of a
feeling stronger than the most ardent desire—a
very wholesome fear. It has become a rule of late
years that the party which, no matter under what
provocation, venture on an appeal to arms, by that
very act puts himself in the wrong, and com-
mits a political blunder which it takes no
trifling amount of the most signal military suc-
cess to repair. Thus in the dispute between
Piedmont and Austria in 1859, or in the more
recent contest between the two great German
Powers this year, diplomatic preliminaries were so
adroitly conducted on all sides that, although we are
quite sure there was war, and although we have ma-
terial certainty as to when, where, and by whom the
first shot was fired, we are obliged to leave posterity,
to decide on whom the moral weight of original ag-
gression should justly be laid. In the case of Greece
and Turkey the guilt of disturbing the peace of
Europe would involve even greater responsibility,
since the former State was made and the latter was
spared by the Powers who look upon themselves as
guardians of the public tranquillity. It was with a
view to avert indefinite dangers that the little Hel-
lenic kingdom was suffered to come into existence ;
and it was for the purpose of putting off to the latest
possible moment the solution of the most intricate
territorial problems that the tottering Ottoman em-
pire was precariously propped up. Both Abdul Aziz
and George I. live in glass houses, and are bound
to refrain from throwing stones. This is not a case,
indeed, in which any doubt need be entertained as
to the first cause of contention. Judged by the com-
mon canons of international law, the whole odium
of the aggression must be thrown upon the King of
the Greeks and his Government. The question is,
however, whether there is anything like a Govern-
ment in Greece, and in what else besides the name
the young Danish prince may be said to be a King.
The Athenian War Ministry, we take it, exercises
no more control over the men and officers of the
Greekarmy, orover the steamers and gunboats of the
Greek navy, than Agamemnon possessed over the
chiefs and ships assembled before Troy in olden times.
An open declaration of hostilities against Turkey is
more than the noisiest of the patriots besetting the
palace of Athens would be prepared for. But in the
mountains of Crete or in those of Epirus are nar-
row gorges where a few volunteers can harass and
wear out whole armies year after year. To smite
the Turk at every vulnerable point, and offer him
no firm ground for attack, has been the strategy
of Greek warfare ever since the earliest efforts for
national emancipation. For skirmishes behind
rocks and bushes no formal declaration is needed,
and war in the open field is no part of Greek policy.
A desire to break through the cobwebs of trea-
cherous diplomacy would seem more natural on the
part of the Turk; but the Turk is borne down by
the consciousness of impending doom. He is aware
that he is only in Europe on sufferance. He knows
that his Mussulmans are not more than one to four
to the Christians on the European side of the
Straits ; he is convinced that Roumania only wants
an opportunity to shake off even that last shadow
of allegiance it has lately sworn to ; that Servia
merely bides her time to take that Belgrade for
which she now affects to negotiate. The Turk's
faith in himself has long been shaken, and the coun-
tenance of friendly Powers is only given him on one
condition—that he should afford no cause for
foreign intervention ; that he should keep for ever
on the defensive : or, in other words, that he should
slowly and surely execute himself. Already the al-
ternative between a natural and a violent death—
one from mere internal disorders, and one from out-
ward injuries—presses itself forcibly on the " Sick
Man." His forces are going to waste in Crete ; in-
surrection is rife in Thessaly ; Montenegro and
Servia bid him open defiance. A position more
hopeless is hardly to be conceived. Should, how-
ever, the contingency—in our opinion, as yet re-
mote, but daily becoming less improbable—of an
open collision between Turkey and Greece be
realised, it is far from certain that it
would at once bring all the rest of Europe
within its scope. There is no Power in this
part of the world, as we have often asserted,
prepared at a moment's notice to face the " Eastern
Question." The result of the Crimean war put an
end to all alliances, broke up all possible combi-
nations, and gave rise to that isolation of every
State ich the wars of Italy and Germany subse-
quently brought into full evidence. Should the war
with which we are now threatened actually break
out, France and Germany might find it necessary,
Russia might deem it expedient, for some time at
least, merely to look on. The real interests of Rus-
sia, no less than her present social and financial con-
ditions, would seem to advise a temporizing policy ;
for the Christians of Turkey, she thinks, are win-
ning her battles while fighting their own. France
and Prussia are watching one another on the Rhine,
and lie a long way from the Danube. Austria,
whose aims should be eastwards, has neither a home
nor a foreign policy; she has neither a Sovereign,
nor a statesman, nor a people. Should she be true
to her destinies, she might, perhaps, still find in the
German elements within her Empire, and in her
alliance with Prussia and United Germany, the
means of making up in the East for her losses in the
West. As it is, however, Von Beust and the Mag-
yars are more likely to involve her in the downfall
of the Ottoman Empire than to enable her to share
its fragments. The mere attempt at an alliance
with France would entail her ruin, for it would, as
if by main force, throw Prussia into the arms of
Russia, win the Upper Danube for the former, and
leave the Lower at the mercy of the Czar, or of a
League of Roumanian, Servian, and other Princes,
his dependents. As to England, we trust she would
be the last to join in the melee. Faithful to our con-
victions that the fall of Turkey is certain, and that
it is equally inadvisable to hasten or to retard it,
we should, for our own part, be most willing to let
events take their own course ; and, although we
have as yet no great faith either in Greeks or in
Roumans, or in any other of the races once subject
to the Porte, we could wish nothing better than
that they alone should win what the Porte must
lose, and that they should so grow in strength, in
wisdom, and in union as to be able to hold their
own against all comers.
MORNING POST.—Yachting is an amusement the
whole purpose and object of which is usually con-
sidered to have been fulfilled by a cruise from
Cowes to Southampton and back again. The more
adventurous spirits, it is true, do sometimes stretch
across the West Bay as far as Portland, and solace
themselves with considerations of the advantages
-to be derived from the approaching completion
of the breakwater, or with a contemplation of the
counterfeit presentment of an English monarch
on the shores of Weymouth. There have even
been known some who, after a long preliminary
course of study of the barometer, and the drums and
cones (uow alas ! obsolete), have fixed upon a likely
looking day in July, and have succeeded in induc-
ing the captain of their craft even to take them
across to Cherbourg. As a rule, however, the gold-
laced officials who rule supreme in yachts discourage
all such foolhardy ventures ; and as the owners are
in nine cases out of ten governed by them with a
rod of iron, the crews generally contrive to pass the
yachting season either in sweet communion with
their wives and families, or in improving intercourse
with the public-houses ashore. To proclaim an in-
tention or even a desire to make anything like a
voyage in such a craft is to invoke the untying
hatred of every seaman on board; and if the project
is not summarily disposed of by open mutiny among
the crew, it will inevitably be frustrated by frequent
and ominous references to the " dirty" look of the
weather and by predictions, supported by any
amount of experience, of forthcoming hurricanes.
Thus those who go down to the sea in yachts are
kept during the whole of their cruise in a sort of
moral quarantine ; and, unless they are impressed
with the superior comfort and magnificence of liv-
ing on the water as compared with living in an hotel
or furnished lodgings ashore, they will probably come
to the conclusion that there is on the whole less plea-
sure and less excitement to be got for the money out
of that kind of amusement than any other that
ever was devised. There has, it is true, arisen an
intelligent race of owners who have discovered a
means of reducing to a minimum their own per-
sonal discomforts in the pursuit, and who, sending
their craft from one place to another on its native
element, go themselves by the railway to the port of
destination, and, by appearing in rough jackets and
tarpaulin hats, get all the required credit without
any of the inconveniences attending a voyage by
sea undertaken for the purpose of pleasure. This,
no doubt, is the most intelligent, as it is the most
recent, idea of the means of utilising a yacht ; but
then it requires the exercise of caution not to
arrive before the vessel, and it is necessary also to

be quite certain that she will not be forced by stress
of weather into another port, in either of which
cases the deserted owner is the victim of a painful
situation. Seriously, however, it is an unhappy fact
that in England yachts are, as a rule, kept for the
mere purpose of ostentation. and not by any means
with the object of indulging that love for the sea,
or of exercising practically that knowledge of nau-
tical affairs to which the taste for yachting is con-
ventionally supposed to be referable. It is pleasing,
therefore, to come across instances in which the pur-
suit is put to its proper and legitimate use, and which
shows that there are at least some owners of yachts
who are not positively afraid or ignorant of that for
which they profess to have a special affection. Such
an instance is certainly met with now and then.
There is the well-remembered case of the little
Spider, which crossed the Atlantic, and quite re-
cently an English gentleman has returned from a
cruise round the world ; but the latest achievement
in this way, and the most remarkable of all, is that
which has just been accomplished by our cousins
across the. water, and which is nothing less than a
yacht race across the Atlantic. Before this the
annual regatta • inside the Isle of Wight becomes
contemptible, and even the sea race to Cherbourg,
of which so much was thought at the time,
fades into insignificance. At one o'clock on Tues-
day, Dec. 11, there started from New York, bound
for Cowes, three yachts—the Henrietta, the Fleet-
wing, and the Vesta—the largest of which was only
204 tons hurthen, the other two being of nearly the
same size. The Henrietta reached Cowes at half-
past five o'clock on Christmas-day, having per-
formed the passage of over 3,000 miles in the incre-
dibly short time of fourteen days and four hours,
while the Fleetwing arrived only eight hours, and
the Vesta not more than ten hours, after. The fact
.of their having all performed the passage so very
nearly in the same time, and that so short a time,
shows what fine craft they must be, and how well
they must have been sailed, and it will behove our
yacht-builders and navigators to ask themselves if
they can turn out craft capable of such a perform-
ance, or so handle them as to have any chance
against any one of these three vessels. At present
it is much to be doubted whether anybody will be
found in England ready to accept the challenge
which, it is said, the Henrietta offers for another
ocean race ; and it is probable that, with all our
boasted knowledge of naval architecture and sea-
manship, we shall again, as we did when the America
first came over and took the conceit out of us, have
to recognise our inferiority in these matters to our
acute transatlantic cousins, and to set about making
such improvements as may be suggested by what
they have done. The log of the Henrietta shows
that a race across the Atlantic at this time of year
is no child's play. Throughout the passage she ap-
pears to have met with strong winds and heavy
squalls, which necessitated much work in setting and
taking in sail. On Wednesday, the 19th, she en-
countered a heavy gale of wind from the southward
and westward, but was still pressed on under a close-
reefed foresail until she was struck by " a heavy sea,
completely burying us, filling the forecastle and
staving the boat," when she was for the first time
hove to, and so continued for 10 hours. Notwith-
standing this, however, the average distance run per
day was as much as 218 miles, and on one occasion
she actually did 280 miles in 24shours. The other
two yachts appear also to have had their share of
foul weather ; and in the same gale as that which
delayed the Henrietta, the Fleetwing was struck by
a sea which unfortunately carried no less than six
men overboard, an event which casts a gloom over
what would else have been a most prosperous un-
dertaking. The Vesta, too, felt the gale, but does
not appear to have been so much delayed by it as
either of the others, and but for a blunder of her
pilot, who unaccountably mistook St. Katherine's
Light for the Needles, would probably have been
second instead of third in arriving. The value of
what has been accomplished, as showing what can
be done with small craft by good handling, is
great, and there is in it a lesson which is to be com-
mended not only to yachtsmen, but to navigators
in general, and which, if well learnt and properly
applied, may avail to prevent the perpetuation of
many blunders, both in the construction of vessels
and in their management.

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