Page:Littell's Living Age - Volume 128.djvu/82

72 , men know better what Turkish promises are worth. We are told here of the stainless good faith of the Turk; they see with their own eyes that Turkish faith is much the same now as it was when Bragadino capitulated on the promise of life and liberty and was flayed alive as his reward. We are told that the nations now under the foreign yoke must be kept under some foreign yoke or other, lest everything should fall into chaos. They look up to the mountains above their heads, and see there a native State under a native prince, where life and property are as safe as they are in any Western land, where even the Mussulman refugee finds a sure shelter. The Slave under Austrian rule himself enjoys, if not a national government, yet at least a government which protects life and property and family honour, and does common justice between man and man. He sees in Montenegro men of his own race and speech enjoying all this and something more. It is therefore not so easy to persuade him as it is to persuade people here that it can anyhow be for the common good of mankind that a third class of men of the same race and speech, differing in nothing from the Dalmatian and the Montenegrin save in the ill luck of their history, should be kept down any longer under the yoke of a power in whose mouth government means brigandage, under whose rule no justice can be had by the weak against the strong, whose promises are, as schoolboys used to say, like pie-crust, made to be broken. Perhaps they are wrong in their conclusions; perhaps the advantages of all these things may be more clearly seen at a distance than they are at a man's own door. But it is at least hard to make men who see these things at their own doors think otherwise than as they do. In Dalmatia and Montenegro in short men think very much as men would think in Hampshire, if, while Hampshire was under a civilized government, Berkshire was under a power from which no redress could be had for the bitterest wrong if a Berkshire man were the sufferer. Perhaps they are quite wrong; perhaps they need to be enlightened as to the blessings of Turkish independence, as to the existence of Turkish integrity. But at least their mistake is natural, and, in the lands where the mistake is natural, it is also beyond doubt universal.

This then at least I can say, that Dalmatian feeling is unanimous for the insurgents and against the Turks. And surely the feeling of those who see what is going on without being immediately touched by it is worth something. There is at least a chance that it may come nearer to the truth than the theories of men who sit in London or elsewhere, and say that a thing must be so and so because it suits their preconceived theories that it should be so and so. Here people simply go on repeating a number of stock phrases, which, if they ever had any meaning, have ceased to have any meaning now. They repeat them as if they had a kind of opus operatum efficacy; as if something was proved by merely saying the same form of words over again. A diplomatist or a newspaper-writer says that the "Eastern question must not be opened;" and perhaps he really thinks that, in so saying, he has proved something or settled something. But if he is asked what is meant by "opening the Eastern question," he will not find it easy to explain. Most likely, however, he will say something about Russia; it is the received traditional rule that he should say something about Russia. Now what the "Eastern question" really means is the question whether a horde of invading barbarians shall still be allowed to hold the nations of South-Eastern Europe in bondage. It means whether insolent oppressors shall still refuse to them, not only political freedom, but those common personal rights which even a decent despotism secures to its subjects. It means whether England and other European powers which have hitherto agreed, for their own supposed interests, to back up this fabric of oppression shall any longer go on doing so. That is the real "Eastern question." No one thinks that the Turk can stand by his own strength. He stands, because hitherto the powers of Europe have fancied that it suits their purpose to let him stand. England, France, and Sardinia went to war one and twenty years ago with the avowed purpose of keeping him standing. By so doing they made themselves accomplices in the doings of the power whose existence they undertook to prolong. The true Eastern question is whether European powers shall go on condemning the nations of South-Eastern Europe to remain under barbarian bondage. Diplomatists and newspaper-writers may sit and say that the Eastern question shall not be reopened. But the Eastern question has been reopened by the swords of the patriots of Bosnia and Herzegovina. With one voice they say, "Come what may, we will never again submit to the Turk. He may kill us; he may lay the land 