The Tory journalists, and even some statesmen, keep repeating that
if Turkey is to live, she must have financial assistance, with- out which she can make no "regenerating reforms." Why ? Turkey has at this moment, by her own account, an ample revenue, 214,000,000 a year, and nothing to do with it, except pay her wonderfully cheap army and her civil establishments. Her Debt is dead, and might be buried with perfect impunity, and her coasts are protected by the fear of the British Fleet. The sum is far greater than her needs, and with decent manage- ment would suffice in two years for the withdrawal of the paper- money, the payment of arrears to the garrison of Constanti- nople, and the organisation of an obedient gendarmerie. There Is no need, if Turkey is capable of doing anything properly, of advancing to her one sixpence, and the real reason why advances are asked comes out in every successive programme. Half the revenue is always to be stopped en route for the Bondholders. In other words, the advance so urgently pressed on Great Britain is intended not to reinvigorate Turkey, but to revive the fictitious value of her bonds. It is a grant, not to a Power assumed to be useful to 'the world, but to the syndicates and speculators who, in Paris and London, hold her bonds.
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