The Mankato free press. [volume] (Mankato, Blue Earth County, Minn.) 1879-1924, 1897-06-04
THE EASTERN QUESTION.

In the current atlantic, Benjamin
Ide Wheeler, writing upon Greece and
Turkey, deals with the primary causes
for the eastern question, which he
says is struggle between Occidental
ism and Orientalism. OF it and of
Greece he says:
1.-The Eastern question is not a
question Of today nor of yesterday.
When European history first began to
be written, it was already there. 1t
had its being before there was any
Russia, or any Turkey, or any Eng
land. Indeed, it created the ancient
nationality of Greece so far as such
nationality ever existed. Greece
sprang into being as nationality out
of it's discOrdant elements ia order to
force the Eastern question. 1t is not
problem merely of possession Of Con-
|stantinople. This is only a phase of
greater problem, which one must
understand in order to have proper
perspective in the lesser. 1t is ques-
tion which in it's reality concerns the
perennial antiuhesis between Occi-
| dentalism and Orientalism, and which
in its practical statement for US and
ours means this: Who is to lead, who
is to champion, who is to represent
Occidentalism in it's inevitable con-
flicts with Orientalism? That is what
l call the greater Eastern question.
The Occident lives in time;
life is it's clock; heart-beats are its
ticks. Action followed by achiev-
ment is indissolubly joined with the
progress of time. Change, develop
ment, progress, are the certain pro-
ducts of the union. Action looks to
the combination of old materials for
the creation of the new. The East,
on the other hand, is timelesS. There
one day is as thousand years. In the
West, men have so much to do and so
little time in which to do it, that they
crowd time by deviceful effort to the
full. X 4 Why are the great ma
tions of Europe united in such appar-
ent earnestness of efforts to keep lit
tie Greece from her own? It certainly
does not seem likely that the addi-
tion of an island [Crete] containing
but quarter of a million of inhabi-
tants to a state containing only two
millions would seriously disturb the
balance of powers. But that is not
the whole Of the matter. The Greeks
are people that must, at least to
some extent, be reckOned with in the
future settlement of Eastern queS-
tions. Commercial interests around
the entire line of the Egean sea are
largely in Greek hands. One third
of the population of Constantinople
itself is Greek. Now that the Greek
state has been created, it constitutes
a rendevouz and point d. appui for the
sentiment of nationality among the
scattered millions of Greek blood and
language. The Greek nation itself is
bankrupt. The land offers no abund-
ant promise or greatness under pres
ent-day conditions. It'll not suited for
agriculture. 1t has neither water
power, minerals in abundance, nor
coal supply. But it has energetic,
active, optimistic, though restless and
, impulsive, and as yet half-educated
people They are abstemious and
thrifty. In foreign lands they accu-
mulate wealth. They are profoundly
patriotic. All the traditions of their
glorious past are moulded into the
4 substance of their modern national
life. They are thorough Occidentals
and their antagonism to Orientalism,
both in spirit and in the concrete
forms of Turkey and the Turks, is
: deep-seated. The conflict between
y the two is on, and it will last to the
death, because it is grounded in an
L indestructible difference of thought
mood and character. II all the terri
tory in which the Greek blood and the
y Greek speech predominant were to be
! formed into nation, we should have
y a Pan-Hellenic state ten million:
strong, that would surround the en-
tire Hgean and menace, if not con
troll, the waterways to the Black sea.