Lancaster Standard and County Advertiser. — 1903-04-17 (Lancaster, Lancashire, England)

THE CLOUD IN THE EAST.  A recent reminder by the Premier that there are two sides to the Eastern question is worthy of the careful attention of all who are disposed to run recklessly into an atrocity agitation. With the memory of what took place during the war in Africa, we ought to be very reserved in regard to the stories of wholesale atrocities by the Turks in Macedonia. When we wire at war, blood-curdling stories of massacre and outrage committed by British troops were circulated on the Continent, and gacrally believed. They were told by persona who protessed to have seen what they descrilxxl, and what is more, the authors and dissentinaters of these slander', were able to quote the statetnents of mean-minded partisans in Britain, who, in the hope of damaging the Government, accrptisi, adoptca and repeated the most odious slanders on the army. It was all summed up in that deplorable phrase of the leader of the Opposition, " methods of berbarism." Yet all these stories of British atrocities. invented on the Ointinent, and greedily absorbed by the anti-British group at home, were false from beginning to end-false right through and all round.  Raving dm, been the victims of international slander, we ought to be chary in accepting atrocity accumticns against the Turks in connection with the unrest prevailing in the near East. The state. ',lents in this connection which have reached England have come from Russia. That is notoriously a contaminated amuse of origin. As far as a dispaasionate consideration of the material available will carry WI, it appears that the annual attempt to provoke disturbance and unrest in European Turkey is this spring of a more serious character than usual. A current example is the murder of the Russian Consul, Etcherhints. To begin with it was a wanton provoration to appoint a Russian Consul at all at Mitrovitza, a district where no other European Power had a consul. It was still worse to appoint an ambitious, brilliant. rettlea young diplomatist who had already incurred the hitter emnity of the Albanian population. From the first his murder was threatened, and it was at length achieved. Poople as that crime is to be regretted. it is impossible to deny that, in the appointment and the work of U. Ekeherbina, there  was a deplorable exasperation of an excitahle population, and an incitement to din 1 turbance.  Again we read. as if it were an incident of everyday life, that Bulgarian Christian pea.sants are killing the Moliamno-slans in order to obtain their arms. In Albania itself the Mohammedan landed proprietors aro unable to attend to their estates, and the provocative charaeSer of the situation may be suminivl up in the remark of one of the consuLs, that it was greatly to be wondered at that the IMoslents had not yet had recourse to reprisals. There have been Mohanimistan outrages, without question, but. as far as our knee ledge at present carries us. it appears that the outrages by Christians have been in the nature of provocations, while the outrages by Mohammedans have been in the nature of reprisals. But even this has to be assumed ; the situation is so complicated by conflicting interests that truth is choked. There is the original and centuries; old quarrel between Turks and Christians. Then the Christians are in conflict, as between Orthodox Russians and Roman Catholics. Russia and Austria, which are ostensibly acting in union to establish reforms in government, are actually in direct opposition, and are secretly opposing each other. The Kingdom of Greece, hitherto the keen enemy of Turkey, has now, by the instinct of prose. vation, become its friend. recognising that the achievement of Russian designs would involve the absorption of the -v as well as of Turkey. In short, the political situation, like the social condition of Macedonia, is at sixes and sevens. Public opinion in this country would do well to wait until definite and trustworthy information can be obtained from the diplomatic reports which we are assured His Majesty's Government has ordered to be prepared, and which will be given to the public as soon as they are ready. In the meantime, we may safely trust to the prudence of the Marquis of Lansdowne to preserve Britain from being involved in any wild-cat policy, such as the Opposition would appear to favour, a rushing into the field with a flaming sword to attack Turkey for the sins into which Albanians_have been goaded by unscrupulous incitements. To do this would be to play the worst game for the worst influences in European polities.