TOPICS OF THE DAY.
THE PROPOSED CONFERENCE.
WE wonder if anybody thought the Athenians excessively impertinent for risking Marathon. The Times would have done so if it had existed in that day, and so we fancy would the British public, only it happened just then to consist of tattooed pagans, instead of Philistines in broadcloth. Greece is small, nearly as small as she was when she hurled Asia back from Europe ; and being small, she cannot pay her debts,—which might be paid in five years, were Thessaly and Epirus added to her dominion,—and consequently she has no right to fight, or to make treaties, or to sympathize with insurgents of her own blood, creed, and language, even when they are being tortured by African mercenaries hired by the power which for centuries enslaved herself. We lent Garibaldi ships, and sent munitions of war by thousands of tons to the South, and fRed Kossuth, and aided the American rebels against Spain to the utmost of our means ; but then Britain is a strong power, and does pay her debts, and only destroys Musgulman empires—sending their Emperors into penal servitude—in the "interests of Christianity and civilization." Consequently, we are right, and Greece is wrong, and is " insolent," and "reckless," and "troublesome," and all manner of bad things besides,—things most obnoxious to a meek race like our own,—and Lord Clarendon, as all the world says, is going to take part in a Conference, to be assembled next week, in Paris, of all places on earth, to settle how the Christian may best be compelled to abstain from defending himself against the Caliph. To make the grotesquerie of the affair complete, the question of Crete, on which the dispute has arisen, is not to be so much as mentioned, and Greece herself is not to be admitted to a seat at the board which will decide her destinies. The tribunal is summoned to hear the claimant, but the claim is not to be discussed, and the defendant is expressly prohibited from putting in any defence. The Conference is to be rigidly confined to the "Five Points" of the Turkish ultimatum—namely, that Greece disperse her volunteers ; that she disarm the Enosis, Crete, and Panhellenicon ; that she "allow" Cretan emigrants to return home ; that she punish all persons guilty of aggressions against Turks, and compensate the sufferers ; and that she promise to adhere for the future to international law. Considering that the first point involves the passing of an internal law in deference to an external command, that the third is a formal surrender of the right of asylum, that the fourth would compel the Greek Ministry to punish men instigated by their own agents, and that the fifth is a formal confession by an independent State that she has broken international law,— these terms appear, to say the least, sufficiently severe. We should be sorry to guarantee the head of a Premier who proposed them to Great Britain under any circumstances whatever ; but then, of course, the people of little States have no right to national pride, even if they did found literature, politics, and art in Europe, and evolve from themselves all the thoughts which still make statesmen wise. These " points " and no others are to be considered and carried,—so far as Napoleon may choose. The Powers concerned are Turkey, who will vote for all the points ; England and Austria, who will support the Sultan ; Russia and Prussia, who will favour Greece; Italy, who will side with Bismarck or Napoleon as she sees best for her own interest ; and Napoleon, who in any case will possess the casting-vote. It is rumoured that the Emperor of the French, not liking to appear an enemy of the nationalities, or to affront the Reds, who throughout Europe are on the side of civilization, will try to induce Turkey to remain content with three of her five demands. Perhaps she will, perhaps she will not,—for all in Turkey depends on the Sultan's digestion,—but suppose she does, what is next to be attempted? Are the Powers who have resisted each other in Congress to combine to coerce Greece, or are the friends of Turkey to act while the friends of Greece sit still, or era the two sides to clash at once, and so begin the general war which everybody is trying to avoid ? Greece of course may yield, but we do not see why she should until the combined fleets are off the Pirmus, or have occupied Athens, for the conferring Governments will neither annex, nor tax her, nor pillage her, and it is, on the whole, more honourable to yield to actual force than to menaced force, to a knock-down blow than to a threat of kicking. Suppose Greece to resist thus far, what will Mr. Gladstone, as one of the conferring Powers, actually do ? Will he, of all men, commit an act which will terminate the independence of Greece, dethrone King George, who reigns as representative of the "Great Idea," drive Mr.
Bright out of the Cabinet, and irritate every Radical in the kingdom The "integrity of Turkey," of which so much is made, is not guaranteed against Greece, any more than against revolt in Turkey itself; and if we come to guarantees, that of Greek independence is at least the first in order. We utterly refuse to believe that the Cabinet will sanction any action of the kind, and if it is not prepared for this course, what is the use of entering into a Conference prohibited from considering any reasonable compromise,—such, for example, as the one proposed by the protecting Powers two years ago—the erection of Candia into a hereditary Pashalic, with a Christian Pasha,—a Conference which can only choose one of two alternatives, the coercion of Turkey into a surrender of herdemands, or a coercion of Greece into an acceptance of them.
But, say the makers of paragraphs, the Powers may inform Greece that unless she yields, their protection will be withdrawn, and Turkey must work her will, even if a State is blotted out from Europe. That sounds very solemn, and will read very well in a despatch ; but then, unfortunately, that is precisely what the Greek nation desires, is the very determination which will produce war. People in the City who cannot imagine how Timour conquered Asia without raising loans, or how the Sepoys could defend Delhi without issuing inconvertible paper, will have it that as Greece does not pay her debts, Turkey will conquer her "in a few days." Why has she not conquered Crete in two years of incessant warfare ? She has troops enough, and bullets enough, and English capital enough to have done the work ten times over; but she has not done it, because every Cretaggipaows by experience, as every Greek knows by tradition, that iris easier when attacked by Turks to die fighting than to die by the tortures, mental and bodily, the victors will inflict. Grant that all the evidence of Turkish atrocities is false, or exaggerated till it becomes false, and that immense concession will still have no influence on the result. The Greeks believe those stories, and will fight as, when pressed too far, they have always fought, like rats, who will fly if they can ; but who,. if duty fasten, can never be dislodged. Omar Pasha may be all his friends believe ; but before he can march from Thessaly to Athens he will have had to kill a nation of riflemen, posted on mountains, in ravines, and by passes as wild as those of Abyssinia. We English are decent soldiers in our way ; but we do not find the conquest of Afghanistan easy, and the Indian Viceroy is as much stronger than the Sultan as the Greeks are stronger than the Afghans. At sea the Turks are said to be "very strong," and so they are in ironclads ; but they are obliged to hire an Admiral and engineers from England, and have no maritime population which can compare with the sailors of the islands. Greece is poor, no doubt, though if ironclads owned by Greeks do not make their appearance a week after war is declared, we shall be greatly surprised ; but Greece has enough for rifles, and since when has Turkey been rich, or how much would it cost the Fanar to bring her credit crashing to the ground, so turning all Bourses into her irre concilable enemies The Greeks do not believe in the least that they can be conquered, and do believe that they can give the signal for insurrection throughout the Sultan's dominions,—a signal which will be heard in Asia as well as Europe,—and will throw the Orthodox from Odessa to St.. Petersburg into a fever of excitement. The Greeks may be utterly wrong, may be hot-headed fanatics, victims of an idea, or anything else, but as long as they do not think so they will fight ; and the solemn diplomatic threats of leaving them to their fats will be met with the ridicule they deserve, and the war the Conference is to prevent will rage all the more fiercely, because it will have inspired in the Greeks a just belief that diplomatists would like to condemn them unheard. If the Conference will produce peace, well and good ; we can understand, though we heartily dislike the policy of peace at any price ; but it seems to us much more likely to land us in a position from which we must either retreat with more or less of opprobrium, or coerce a free State in Turkish interests, or allow ourselves to be dragged into a very serious war, waged to compel unwilling populations to remain submissive to Ottoman rule.
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