The Redwood gazette. [volume] (Redwood Falls, Minn.) 1873-1940, 1881-04-14
Greece and Turkey.

The European stssss viii sh.r. .ts
responsibility for tho outbreak of hos
tilities between Greece aud Turkey.
The original mistake of making the
Hellenic Kingdom 20 small that. after
iifty years OF creditable progress, it il
barely sef-supporting has never been
repaired. The population of the
Capital has increased from 10000 to
%. 900, the provincial towns. and villages
have been partially restored, and the
peasantry ranks. among. the most in
dustrious and temperate agricultural
classes on the Continent. This king
dom only requires more revenue and
more territory in order to fulfill its
mission. The Greeks might be already
replanting the ancient olive groves
of Epirus and Thessaly if they had not
followed the advice of the Cabinets. If
they had joined the Gordon of alliances
against the Turks in 1877 they would
have shared in the fruits of the Russian
victory. They put trust in European
diplomatists and their own good fortune,
and when the conditions of peace were
ratified at Berlin they got nothing but
. vague promise. Three years of
diplomacy have left them precisely
where they were when they made their
light-hearted but belated advance to
the Thessalian frontier. Their troops
have been kept under arms month after
month, their financial burdens have be-
come almost intolerable, and in the end
they find that they cannot get what has
been pledged to them unless they fight
for it. They must either fight or dis
arm, and for dynastic reasons neither
the King nor his Ministers ventures to
suggest the latter course.
The Sultan, on the other hand, is
making preparations forwar as actively
as bankrupt treasury and National
impoverishment will permit. The CEN
trail idea of his state policy has been to
avoid making concessions to any Power,
great or small, until he is absolutely
compelled to do so; and campaign, in
which he can put in the field as many
troops as the enemy and ravage de-
fenseless coast at his own pleasure, has
few terrors for him. He is harassed,
moreover, by the conviction that the
last concession made to Europe was I'M
necessary. With all the arts of which
a crafty Eastern despot is mas,er-pre-
varication, delay, dissimulation, false
promises and menace--he had deferred
ceding to Montenegro the territory
which her valor had won and a Euro
pean Congress had awarded to her.
Finally he openly defied the Powers,
and an international fleet anchored off
Dulcigno. Even then he waited for
weeks in the hope that something
might occur to break up the European
concert, and only surrendered when he
received tidings that portion of the
fleet was to sail for Smyrna and cut
off large part of his revenues.
When it was too late to draw back
he learned that the proposal with re-
spect to Smyrna had only received the
assent of three Powers. that the other
three were opposed to coercion, and
that the naval demonstration would
have been as harmless and meaningless
as q naval review if he had not given
way to momentary alarm and coded
Dulcigno. much to the astonishment
and relief of the Cabinets. He knows
that the coalition, which might have
gone to pieces of itself if he had cheated
the Powers with few more promises or
worn out their patience by hesitation
and delay, cannot be formed again. A
European Congress has advised terrific
rial cessions TO the Greeks; a supple
mentary conference has marked out a
frontier and invited the Cabinets at Con-
stantinople and Athens to accept it; but
an international fleet will not be dis
patched to the Egean to enforce the
wishes of the Cabinets. Europe SYM
pathizes with the Greeks, and tells the
Sultan he would better give up Janina,
Larissa and MetZOvO. The Sultan
knows the difference between "would
better" and "must. IN. Y. Tribune.