The New York herald. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1840-1920, 1876-04-23
what Shall Be Done with Turkey
I'm Europss


cupation Of all the provinces north Of the
Balkan by the troops of Russia and Austria
is the objective point of the diplomatic
game now on hand in the various capitals
but the parties to the game, for reasons
doubtless satisfactory to themselves, choose
to contemplate the case rs if such conse-
quence were to be deprecated or regarded
with dismay. Russia. however, is rather
franker in this respect than her neighbors
and allies. She does not pretend to respect
the Ottoman Power, nor to believe that it
can maintain itself or should be assisted and
encouraged by Christian governments in its
oppression of Christian people. 1t is
true Russia has two aspects in tho case.
She runs with the hare and hunts
with the hounds. Rightly typified for once
by her imperial eagle, she has one eye on the
round of secular sovereignty and another on
the emblem Of Christian faith. In the con-
fabulations of the diplomats she seems to
recognize tho Sultan's rights as she might
those of any other potentate, and to deal with
them strictly on political grounds; but when
she turns to the down-trodden. Slavs on the
Danube she speaks like crusader.
Constantinople is the capital city Of the
Russian religion. Just as the Christian
people of all countries in the ages before
Luther turned their eyes to Rome just as
the Catholic people of every country still
turn their eyes thither, SO the Russian
people turn their eyes toward Constantine
pie as a sacred city-the Rome of the Eastern
Church-and they regard the presence of
the Moslem there precisely as the crusaders
regarded his presence in Jerusalem. AL
though the crusading spirit has been dead
in Western Europe ever since poll
tical economy has been studied, and
though religion in our part of the world
is in great degree free from oil the deep
attachments of locality-since Catholics re-
gard the head of their Church and not SO
much the city in which he dwells-it must
be remembered that the primitive condition
with respect to ideas of this class persists in
Russia, and that the people there are emo
tionally and intellectually very near what
the people Of France and England were in
the Middle Ages. Every Russian govern
ment, therefore, that would not entirely cut
free from sympathetic relation with the
people must keep this fact in view, and
must respect the prejudices and the
passions in the light Of which the
nation regards the intruding infdel with
his foot on the necks of men whom the Rus
slams contemplate as brothers because they
are both Christians and Slavs. 1t is not
~. hot fba Rr,cc
ment speaks encouragingly to the revolving
people and let's the Russian nation hear
only menaces of its wrath at Moslem mis-
rule, while in Berlin and Vienna, where it
must remember that balance of power is
still believed in, it adopts different tone
and demeanor. That the st. Petersburg
government plays this role of necessary and
perhaps unwilling hypocrisy on grand
scale is one of the evident facts of European
politics. Doubtless every government as
sumcs in the presence of other governments
very different attitude from that it holds
before its own people; but tins is only
fragrant in the case of Russia.
Austria is no fonder of the Sultan than
Russia is ; but her assumption of faith in his
future possibilities, her superserviceable
readiness to construct protocols and pro-
grammes of reform, to put him in the
moral straitjacket of Western political
ideas, is her admission that she is not alto
gether ready to meet the case of his final fall
in any other way. 1t is her cue to stand as
the Sultan's next friend Every Power sit
uated as Austria is must have peace on her
frontiers if possible; and with this neces-
sity guaranteed it is her interest to have for
a neighbor just such State as Turkey. At
in the light of the policy that governs mon
archical States in Europe, where the pros
perity of the people is less regarded than
the contingency of foreign war. At the time
that Louis Napoleon assented to those
projects Of Cavour which resulted in the
unity of Italy NJ. Theirs pointed
out that the sovereign of France was
constructing on his frontiers power
that might prove dangerous. In the
progress of the warlike and diplomatic
dramas that ended in putting the armed
force of Germany ut the command of Berlin
the old politician continued lis admonitions
on this key, but was answered with rubbish
conceived in spirit of sentimental politics,
until the Empire and France fell in COM
mon ruin. So long as States must have more
reason to fear the growth Of their neighbors
than to desire the advancement of their own
people this policy will be good one; it is
therefore the natural policy of every monar-
chical State that has not gone so far
in the development of restraints, limita-
tions and other constitutional contrivances
as to approach the republican system. Aus
trim, therefore, acts naturally in her assump-
ton that all that the Sultans government
needs is little patching up-a few paper
programmes-a little reform in the collec-
ton of the taxes. If 10y this friendly atti-