LETTERS TO THE EDITOR.
ONE WAY OF SAVING MACEDONIA. [To THE EDITOR OP THE "SPECTAT013.1
Szu,—Has Europe cast off its Christianity in all but the name? Year by year Christendom celebrates the anniversary of the massacre of the victims of Herod's jealousy in Bethlehem.
Yet the same Christendom has been for weeks a callous wit- ness of a tragedy infinitely more heinous,—the gradual exter-
mination of a whole population under every form of outrage which can add bitterness to death. Nay, more; the Great Powers, we are told, have given the Sultan "a free hand," and urged him to increased vigour in putting the insurrection down,—the insurrection of a population maddened by the daily torture of intolerable wrongs. And these Christian Powers turn up their eyes in horror at eve'', alleged outrage (mostly reported through Turkish sources) committed by the insurgents, especially if the lives of any European Christians should chance to be endangered. "The sympathy of Europe," forsooth, "will be alienated." What has the sympathy of Europe done for these victims of Turkish misrule that they need fear to alienate it? For my part, I believe that the Christian Powers are more guilty than the Sultan. He acts according to his creed and his convictions. They sacrifice their creed and their convictions to their ambitions and selfish ends. And of all the Powers England is in one sense the most guilty. For when the Macedonians were liberated in 1877 it was England in particular that forced them back under the Turkish yoke. The British Government, it is true, sought to mitigate that crime by pledging the nation, separately and in union with the other Powers, to see that the Sultan fulfilled his treaty obligations to carry out the prescribed reforms in Macedonia and Armenia. But from that day to this no Britieh Government, Tory or Liberal, has taken a single effeCtive step to redeem its pledge. It is related in a Book in which the Christian rowers still profess to believe that "the Lard looked unto the host of the Egyptians through the pillar of fire and of the cloud, and troubled the host of the Egyptians, and took off their chariot wheels, that they drave them heavily." There are more ways than one of troubling armies and taking off their chariot wheels, and the blunders and muddle and mess which paralysed a mighty British host in face of a comparatively puny foe may have been due, as its primary cause, to that righteous retribution which invariably dogs, and eventually overtakes, national apos- tasy. Drilled battalions and lines of battleships are of no avail for the protection of a nation that has repudiated the law of righteousness and forsaken its God. A nation that has gone over to the worship of Mammon, that has set its heart on making money, seeking pleasure, thirsting for the excitement of gambling, and cares not for the law of righteous- ness, is on the down grade that leads to ruin, and no reform of administration or change of fiscal policy can save it. And our betrayal of the Armenians and Macedonians was so entirely unnecessary. The Sultan is, of all Sovereigns, the easiest to manage if the right method is adopted. All that was necessary was the apparition of a few ironclads.—an iron- clad for each of the Great Powers—before Smyrna or Salonica, with a peremptory order to carry out the provisions of the Treaty of Berlin, and it would have been done without the need of firing a shot. The Sultan cannot fulfil his obliga- tions under the Treaty of Berlin without coercion, and he cannot refuse to fulfil them in presence of a real force meteors.
Any remedy short of that is an imposture and hypocrisy,—a fact which Austria and Russia know perfectly well. Their scheme of reforms, unbacked by coercion, was a mere blind to gain time for ends of their own which had no connection with the sufferings of the Christians of Macedonia. I respectfully submit that England, having taken the lead in restoring Macedonia to bondage, should now take the lead in sum- moning a Conference of the signatories of the Treaty of Berlin to call the Sultan to account for his violation of his treaty obligations. The other Powers could not refuse so reasonable a proposal. But I have no hope. England is in a state of moral catalepsy, and there is no leader to rouse it from its perilous torpor.—I am, Sir, &c., MALCOLM MAcCom.
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