Page:Roger Casement - The crime against Ireland and how the war may right it.djvu/58

52 2,000,000 of armed men, is agreeably seen to be driven across Southeastern Europe between Austro-German efforts and the fallow lands of Asia Minor. These latter can safely be left in Turkish hands yet a while longer, until the day comes for their partition into "spheres of influence;" just as Persia and parts of China are to-day being apportioned between Russia and England. This happy consummation, moreover, has fallen from heaven. aid Turkey is being cut up for the further extension of British interests clearly by the act of God.

The victory of the Balkan States becomes another triumph for the British Bible; it is the victory of righteousness over wrongdoing.

The true virtue of the Balkan "Christians" lies in the possibility of their being moulded into an anti-German factor of great weight in the European conflict clearly impending, and in their offering a fresh obstacle, it is hoped, to German world policy.

Let us first inspect the moral argument on the lips of its professors. We are assured, by it, that the claim of the Balkan allies to expel Turkey from Europe rests upon a just and historic basis.

Briefly stated it is that the Turk has held his European provinces by a right or conquest only. What the sword took, the sword may take away. When the sword was struck from the Ottoman's grasp his right to anything it had given him fell, too. Thus Adrianople—a city he has held for over five hundred years—must be given up to a new conqueror, to a conqueror who never owned it in the past and who certainly has far less moral claim to be there to-day than the descendants of Selim's soldiers.

But the moral argument brings strange revenges.