Year: 1875

Montenegro and Albania-are kicking and
| pounding and raising shindy generally al
the door (Porte) of the Grand Signior. But
the old Lady Diplomacy stops their fun
to point out to them giant ogre sleep
ing with one eye open in darkened
corner, his frightful scaly hand loosely
grasping a badly hacked but dangerous
looking sword of enormous proportions.
She tells the youngsters that that fellow is
called the Eastern Question, and warns them
that if they continue their rumpus they will


wake him up-a contingency that she evil


IDENTIFY contemplates with dismay.


In the common opinion of Europe this is


the salient feature of the insurrection of the


subjects of the Sultan in the nlyrfan


triangle. It's most obvious and most dreaded


consequence is that it may call up the


Eastern question. No difference between


government and people that occurs in that


district can be examined or settled on the
merits of the case but it must be settled
on the merits of quite another case If the
people rise against horrible misrule they
must not be permitted to fight out their
| quarrel till they either secure their indie
pendence or compel authority to con-
cede the reforms they demand. Other
people, it is true may do this. In all the
/ quarters of the globe this is recognized
method of national progress, and in some
! countries this right Of resistance is even sup
| posed to be sacred but in the country be-
| tween the crest of the Balkan, the Danube
and the Adriatic this must not happen. Not
| but what the expressions there are great ;
not but what the revolt is pre-eminently
| just not but what the people can fight the
| government so etfectually as to force it to
terms Their struggle is neither unjust nor
| hopeless only it is inconvenient to some
persons in some other countries and all the
right and justice and political morality of
| the case, as regards the people in the prov
inces, must give way to this convenience
POLITICAL diplomatic commercial, of the
great Powers at distance


Once upon time man fell down
in the street in London with apoplexy
Two great men near by instantly made
his fate the subject of wager One bet
he would i've the other that he would
die. Somebody called surgeon to tend
| the afflicted mortal but the man who
had bet that he would die objected to any
application of the surgeons art as likely to
affect the result, and therefore to have a
prejudicial effect on his interest in the mans
fate. This is just the position of the great
Powers in Europe toward the stricken people
in the herzegovina


In the Eastern question slumbers the
possibility of a gigantic war, involving at
once the revival of the conflict between
Christianity and Islamism, closed in favor
of Islam at Varna in 1444, and the set
tlement of the supremacy of European
nations in the East. Turkey in Europe is
an original part of Christendom. Its people
are Greeks, Sclavs and Roumans but it was
conquered by the Ottoman Turks in the
fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, and has
remained in their hands ever since. That
| tide of barbaric invasion, which swept to the
gates of Vienna and which taxed the warlike
capacity of the German nations even more
severely than Rome had done, never COM
pletely ebbed. Sweeping from time to time
further into the Christian countries and
driven from them again by such victories as
that which Montecucuh gained at st.
Gotthard in 1864, it held as its permanent
advanced stronghold the Servian mountains,
and all the Turkish armies that went into
Hungary or Germany marched by Belgrade.
And that country remains now, with little
change, as it was at the end of those wars,
and its Christian people are under the foot
of an Asiatic conqueror In the mere fact
that Christian people were subject to Mo-
hammedan rulers there might be no fair
cause of complaint politically for in these
days there is no religion in politics, and it is
conceivable that Mohammedans might
govern as well as Russians or Ger
mans. But the real grievance is more
tangible. 1t is that these conquerors remain
politically just what they were when they
went into the country, and they go out and
conquer it every year when the taxes are
due Moslem political ideas are just what
they were in the fourteenth century and
earlier centuries "God is God and Mo-
hammed is His prophet" That is the whole
of their political science, as it is of every other
science. But the people in the provinces
have grown side by side with other Christian
peoples. They have conceptions of political
rights, of justice and order and their
thoughts move in sympathy with the prog
ress of the world and that they should rise
against their barbaric masters is as natural
as for the sun to rise in the East


Now these barbarous Asiatics do not hold
dominion over their Christian subjects in
virtue of their strength, for the people can
drive them out. 1t is, moreover, the natural
impulse of the neighboring Christian nations
to help them, and Russia which is most in
| sympathy with the subject races, could, act
ing with the people, move the Turks out of
the country in any six mouths Of any year.


Her traditional policy, moreover, impels her