Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker Politics volume 4 .djvu/298

286 Still more, all this wickedness is the work of very few men. If a hundred politicians in Europe had said, "There shall be no war," there would have been no war; nay, if ten men in Europe had distinctly said, "There shall be no war against Turkey, "there would have been none; if two men in the cabinets of each of the five great powers had said so, all this immense outlay would have been spared.

Such are the Causes. On so narrow a hinge turns the dreadful gate of war! Look now at the Results. Some are good. The intervention of France and England has shown that national hatred can be overcome; that difference of religion does not separate the Turk from Christian sympathy. The bloody valour of France and England has checked the Westward and Southward progress of Russian despotism for the next fifty years; and that fillibustering nation is weakened in her purse, her army, and her navy, and restrained from immediate encroachment on other European States. She will now turn her immense power to develop the material resources of her own territory. And let me say, that the Russian People have grand and magnificent qualities; and whoso stands here three hundred years hence will tell a history of them which few sanguine scholars would dare prophesy at this day. The Russian Government is another matter ; of that I do not wish to say anything. That is the first good that has been done; it was done wholly by France and England. You do not forget the "perfidious " conduct of Austria.

Then, the war has led Russia to open her ports, and establish free trade with all the world; and that will not only increase the material riches of Russia, but it will be in some measure a guaranty against future wars between her and other nations. For those fortresses which at this day most effectually keep war from a nation are not built of stone and earth: they are the warehouses in the great commercial streets, bales of goods, boxes of sugar, money on deposit in the great cities of the world. Free trade will help that. Again, Turkey is delivered from her worst foe; and a secret treaty between Austria, England, and France, guarantees the independence of that State. It seems the Allies