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

srnur OF THE PU'BLIO JOURNALS.

TIMES.—The lull iu 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 be
perfectly superfluous on either side. Between
Athens and Constantinople there has been, indeed,
for weeks and months, more than sufficient ground
for an 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
Greek army, or over 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 ho 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 which 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 fer 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 (now 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 au in-
tention or even a desire to make anything like a
voyage in such a craft is to invoke the undying
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