Page:Littell's Living Age - Volume 128.djvu/89

78  of an oppressed people. They have their reward. The Turk, true to his traditions, has broken faith; the pleasures of the sultan's court have been found too costly; the resources of his victims have been found too scanty; and the men who strove to prop up wrong by gold have found that gold is no longer forthcoming out of the abyss of Turkish misrule.

While I write, the news comes that the deputations from the insurgents have gone to the three courts of Berlin, Vienna, and Saint Petersburg, to "formulate," as the telegram runs, their demands. Later still come other rumours that their deputations are not likely to be attended with much success because the demands of the insurgents "menace the integrity of the Ottoman Empire." Let them ask for reforms, let them ask for "decentralization;" these the great powers may perhaps be inclined to guarantee; but freedom they must not hope for. Later again come, one after another, utterances from Vienna and Saint Petersburg, each one darker and more meaningless than the one which went before it. I know not what truth there may be in all this. I know not what may be the shape taken either by the demands of the insurgents or by the answer of the powers; but I do know that all talk about reforms and decentralization and guaranteeing this and that is simply childish. The three powers can guarantee reform in one way, and in one way only; but that is a way which is certainly menacing to the integrity of the Ottoman Empire. The only way in which any reform can be guaranteed is by giving the lands which are to be reformed full practical emancipation from the Turkish yoke. Talk about new divisions of provinces, about giving Christians a greater share in the local administration, even about putting this or that district under a Christian governor, is not to be listened to. A Christian governor is not necessarily better than a Mahometan governor. A Christian who stoops to be the agent of the sultan is not likely to be among the most high-minded of Christians, or among those who enjoy the greatest confidence among their brethren. The one thing which is needed, the one thing which will meet the wishes of the revolted provinces, the one thing which will ease the powers of the thankless labour of propping up the sick man, will be to give each province, as it demands it, full practical emancipation from the Turkish yoke. Thus the Eastern question may be solved. Such a solution is doubtless inconsistent with the integrity of the Ottoman Empire; but no other solution can be righteous; no other solution is possible.

I just now used the words, "full practical emancipation." I made the qualification advisedly. If practical independence is to be had only at the cost of a nominal homage, or even of a fixed tribute, to the tottering despot of Constantinople, I do not think that practical independence should be refused on those terms. Servia, I believe, still keeps some forms of vassalage, and I have always held it to be one of the misfortunes of Greece that she was at once cumbered with the trappings of an absolutely independent kingdom instead of being allowed to march gradually towards the crown of perfect independence. The nations of the Byzantine peninsula must never be allowed to become wholly isolated from one another. They must never lose the tradition of looking to the New Rome as their natural centre. As long as the Turk sits in New Rome, he may well be the overlord of all of them, provided his overlordship remains as purely formal as it now is over Servia and Roumania. I twill be enough if the lands which are striving for their freedom are put under some government which shall secure to them, if full political freedom, so much the better, but at any rate the common rights of human beings. Everything else is a matter of detail. The most obvious course would be to attach the revolted lands to Montenegro or to Servia, or to divide them between Montenegro and Servia. A glance at the map will show how near independent Montenegro and practically independent Servia come together. The Slave provinces which are still under the yoke are all but isolated from the mass of the Turkish dominions; they form a kind of peninsula of bondage. The main difficulty either in attaching them to Servia or Montenegro, or in forming them into a third Slave principality, lies in this. In Servia, at the time of its emancipation, there were very few settled Mahometan inhabitants. When the Turkish soldiers and officials had marched out, the land was left wholly Christian. In Montenegro of course there never were any Mahometan inhabitants at all. In Bosnia and Herzegovina, on the other hand, there is both a Mahometan and a Catholic minority; and, in setting free the great Orthodox majority, care must be taken not to perpetuate wrong, by giving the Orthodox any undue supremacy over the Catholic and the Mahometan. It might be feared that, either in a newly-