The record-union., 1897-02-23
A NOBLE SIGHT.

What a beautiful and inspiring sight
it must have been when the combined
navies of England, Germany, Italy,
France and Russia fired upon the Gre
tan insurgents and their Greek allies,
threw dynamite shells into their midst
and scattered death and destruction
among them. For what. pray? Why
these aspiring ''vermin of earth" dare
to assert their right to self government.
They have the impertinence to say that
the bestial Turk has no right to possess
their land, rule over and tax them and
set up the standard of the crescent as
the Representative of national religion
in their midst.
Greece came 10 the aid of these Chris
tian revolters against the tyranny Of
the Turk, and though herself king
dom, because of the ties of common
humanity she has extended her arm in
their defense And for this the Chris
tian powers cast shot and shell into
their midst and uphold the claim of the
Turk who with fire and sword seized
the little island two hundred and twenty
years ago and more and ever since has
held it in bondage.
This is not the political story of the
aside the contentious, jealousies and in
tricacies of the Eastern question, tear
| off the mask of diplomacy and strip
the matter of its illusions, and the plain
unvarnished truth is that the Cretans
are simply asserting the right to have
their own and choose the Governors
that shall administer over them. Out
side of that simple fact of indefensible
| human right there is nothing in the
whole case worthy of the consideration
of a nation or human being moved to
action by "a sense of justice and COM
mon decency.
We do not care the flip of finger and
| thumb for the alliances, treaties and
agreements of the powers under which
they have parceled out the States of
Asia Minor and some of the countries
of Europe, and under which they have
agreed in solemn but not the less in
famous contract, to stand by the Sultan
of Turkey and his fanatical hordes of
semi -barbarians.
Far and away above and beyond all
these matters and considerations We
see only a small band of struggling
people. captured and held in bondage,
their native soil taxed, their household
gods levied on, their religion condemned
and their affairs spit upon. We see them
asserting the right to be free and TAX
ing up the sword, with some excesses
and outrages, tits true, as the natural
outcome of a war of race and religion;
right which backed our protest against
British rule and gave us that for which
the Cretans are struggling.
When the impartial pages of history
are written outside of the atmosphere
of the present, it Will be recorded that
| in the latter days Of the nineteenth
century, when all the world was ablaze
with intelligence and freedom was as
serting it's sway in nearly every quar-
ter of the globe, there was crushed out
| by the strong hand of monarchial pow
er and the turbulence of one republic,
| the effort of a handful of Mediterra-
mean islanders to be free as men and
to choose their own form of govern
ment.
| 1t will be written that this suppress
| sion Of natural right was accomplished
| in the interest of one who came from
afar and selling these people took their
| lands and desecrated their affairs, and
! for no better reason than that in the
| long ago this bronzed barbarian bore
"a crescent upon a spear point, and with
advancing hordeS intended to sweep
across the continent of Europe and
| through all the islands of the seas, and
establish what he proclaimed to be
truth that Allah is great and Mahomet
| is his prophet, and that a Christian dog
| deserves only to die.