WAR versus PREDATORY GOVERNMENT. T HOSE statesmen and those journals which
comment on the recklessness of the humanitarianism that does not shrink even from war in the interest of a number of fearfully oppressed races, win of course an easy though a very superficial victory in the minds of careless and much-hurried readers, over their opponents. Especially when they add, as they always do add, that any war against Turkey would mean not only war on both sides, but also massacre on one, and a new outbreak of atrocities such as were seen on a comparatively small scale a year ago in Bulgaria, the argument from consequences is held to be final. And the Government which can arm its friends with such an in terroren: argument as this, derived from the frightful consequences of disturbing it, appears to reap nothing but prestige, not to say even additional respect in the eyes of its advocates, by being thus clothed with a reputation for potential horrors which rnake.all the horrors of the past seem trivial in comparison. As Mr. Ward Hunt says, "no one can help admiring the indomitable pluck" of men who, if their friends may be trusted, are capable of falling on the unarmed Christians of any village,—men, women, and children,--at an hour's notice, of butchering the former, and making those of the latter whom they spare, feel the full bitterness of that life which is worse than death. Now we confess we don't in the least believe in the applicability of this otherwise well-justified appeal to the unlimited possibilities of Turkish barbarity, to the case supposed. The atrocities of which we know most, have never been the result of either imminent danger or despair in the Turk, but on the con- trary, of well-calculated prudence. There was no despair or even serious alarm in Bulgaria this time last year. The rising of the Bulgarians was a feeble and impotent demonstration in a few villages which hardly frightened any one. It was not panic, but calculation, which led to the awful results we know. And so soon as the Turk believes that a real and formidable danger is at hand, the same prudent calculation would be most likely to produce a complete change of policy, instead of a vindictive mas- sacre. Oriental races are supple even when they are brave, and take very little delight in acts of vindictiveness which may bring trouble on themselves. But putting aside the doubtful question of probabilities, let us go at once to the heart of the outcry against the so-called humanitarian recklessness of those who believe that war—even if war were accompanied for the moment by new atrocities—is better than a prolonged regime of cruelty and misery.
The horror of war consists in this,—that it causes the death of many innocent persons, the severe suffering of very many more ; that it provides occasions which few armies in the world, ad certainly neither the Turkish nor the Rassian armies, a.re likely to forego, for a great deal of crime and brutality, of the same kind, more or less, as that which shocks us in the Turkish rulers of Christian provinces ; and that from the relaxation of national and social ties likely to result from any great war in a part of the world where the ties of country are very feeble, almost any chaos might follow which it would be a very difficult task indeed to reduce into anything like order. These are not dangers which any man with either 4 heart or a con- science would underrate. The Crimean war,—which lasted two years,—was calculated to have cost a million lives in all, be- sides all the torture it inflicted; and the Crimean war, being chiefly confined to a remote portion of the Russian Empire, did not contribute so much towards the relaxation of social and patriotic ties as the threatened war between Russia and Turkey might involve, if there were many such ties of any value to relax. But suppose even that the war, if it breaks out between Russia and Turkey, were to cost a million lives before it closed, and a correspondingly large margin of physical suffering ; sup- posing, to put the case as strongly as possible, that the war brought new horrors resembling the atrocities in Bulgaria in its train ; suppose provinces devastated by the march of troops, and cities bombarded by friends or foes. Still, what would be the result? Place the misery as high as you can, and what it would come to would be certainly far less than this,—that for the duration of the war, that is for months, or possibly a year or two, wherever the armies of the enemy went, the whole scene of war might possibly suffer all that a few villayetz of Bulgaria suffered in the spring of last year, and what a great part of Herzegovina and Bosnia have suffered for nearly two years already. The storm which we have watched with so much horror would undoubtedly spread over a considerably greater area, and might rage violently for the whole period of the war. Place that frightful sacrifice as high as you reasonably can, and then compare it with the evil which the war is undertaken to re- move, and which there is the best possible ground for supposing that it would remove. What is that evil? It is the existence of a so-called Government over at the very least six millions of Christians in Europe and three millions more in Asia, which so far from securing even tolerable peace for domestic and social life, and rendering it pro- bable that the human beings born in Christian communities should grow up with the ordinary confidence in industry, courage under wrong, self-respect in conduct, affections in their homes, and good- will towards their neighbours, of average men, actively prevents any such result, substitutes organised plunder for taxation, favouritism of the grossest kind for justice, cows all the manliness out of the men, and all the womanliness out of the women, replaces the noblest affections by the fiercest and the meanest passions, makes dread chronic, servility- the only assurance against wholesale wrong, and apathy the one remedy against outrage. And that, remember, is a regime which has been lasting for centuries, under which generation after generation grows up and withers, and leaves its inheritance of stunted and blighted life to its posterity. Take, as illustration of what we say, this private letter, printed on Wednesday, from a gentleman in Erzeroum, of whom the Constantinople corre- spondent of the Daily News says "it is written by one whose name and position would carry weight in England." In Armenia there have been none of the formal insurrections and wars and pretences for violence, which have excited the passions of both parties in European Turkey. The only cause of irritation has been the rumours of the Western struggle. But what does this gentleman, whose name and position would "carry weight in England," say of the incidents of the Turkish rule there ?— " Soldiers commanded by one Shuksi Effendi, while en route for Erzeroum, stopped at the village Ghelin Pdetek, district of Gumish Khaneh. Of these 125 were quartered on the Greek Christian houses of the village, and the remainder on the Mussulmans' houses. They demanded food, which was given them, and also money, which the villagers dared not refuse them, some 225 piastres. They then began wantonly to kill fowls and sheep, and to beat those who ventured a protest. Finally, they broke into the women's apartments and violated women and girls. Three women were so brutally treated by 60 soldiers that their lives were despaired of. They took a priest of the village named Theodore, and throwing the stomach of an animal over his head, put him on a donkey with his face to the tail, and drove him about the village, amidst the ribald and obscene jests of the sol- diery. They then went to Kielakhboon and defiled the church, and pulling down the bell, called to Mussnlman prayers from the bell - tower. They also outraged women, and continued their rascality at a third village named Hosbesek At Erzeroum, Christians are abused and beaten daily by military men, superior officers setting the example, and common soldiers imitating. Artisans are forced to work without pay, and traders are forced to give goods at one-fourth their value. Even Europeans are not secure. On the night of February 26, Dr. Pollassek and Bank], Australian subjects, were assaulted by a patrol of dismounted cavalry while entering their lodging. Dr. Pollassek was so roughly handled that most of his clothing WRB torn from his body, his left arm was dislocated at the shoulder, one thumb was badly injured, and his body covered with bruises. Both of them also lost most of their money. It was not until after several hours of incarceration that the wounded man could get release to return to his room. The case is now under trial in charge of Mr. Zohab, English consul, who also is Austrian acting consul."
That is a mere illustration of what the oppressions of this Govern- ment, in a peaceful province, mean. Now let us just try and con- ceive what life for generations upon generations under a Govern- ment whose subordinates act like the most lawless robbers, really means,—what it really means to feel sure that if you can't sneak through life so as to excite no one's avarice, no one's ill-will, no one's passions, you are lost, since Government is sure to rapport the caste which oppresses you. If the agents of the Revenue take three times as much as the State needs or gets, you must bear it without a word, lest they take more to punish your insolence, or lest you get so unmercifully beaten, as in a case mentioned in the Daily News letter from which we have already taken the last extract, that you die in twenty-four hours. If your wife or daughter is outraged, you must bear it, lest the outrage be repeated, and worse follow. If forced labour is demanded, it must be given, under pain of death. And all these are the normal conditions of life, though of course they come more into force in times of excitement than in times of repose. Government means not a power regulating and controlling the unsocial and destructive passions and appetites, but one stimulating the unsocial and destructive passions and appetites of one caste, and suppressing all the natural and wholesome impulses of domestic and political life in the inferior caste. In a word, life under such circumstances means either servility, hypocrisy, stolen pleasures, fierce vindictiveness sup- pressed by fear, a total absence of Manliness and self -respect,—the life of a slave ; or else a series of cruel punishments, probably ended shortly by a violent death. Now, taking into full account the horrors of war, and of the spasmodic outrages which would probably accompany war, and supposing them to be even of some little duration, we yet ask if it is not in every sense far more humane to buy the break-up of such a discipline of evil for generations, at the cost of a year or two of its spasmodic enhancement? A. Government under which the conditions of a true moral life hardly exist, under which the social virtues are something like miracles, and love for your neighbour, if he be of the oppressive caste, almost an infamy,—under which a race capable of many noble qualities becomes one of bullies and robbers, through a monopoly and abuse of power which no people of that kind could safely possess,—is a Government the destruction of which would be cheaply bought by a year or two of even more wide-spread- misery. Say that even a million of lives were lost, as in the Crimean war, that a still larger number of persons suffered cruelly by wounds, illness, and outrage, but that then an end came, and that a government under which there was at least hope,—an attempt at justice and improvement,—was substituted for a government under which there is nothing but the dull mono- tony of oppression, and would not the change have been well worth purchasing, even at the cost we have supposed? After all, the evil of the worst ills of human life must be measured more by duration than by any other element in them. Just as the enormous bulk of property destroyed in war is reproduced under favourable circumstances with a rapidity that startles even the economist, so the greatest destruction of life, the greatest lacera- tions of the affections, the worst outbursts of evil passions, if they are but sharply limited in duration, are soon partially effaced, and succeeded by anew generation of human beings, a new growth of domestic ties, a new atmosphere of hope and industry, through which the period of horrors soon becomes a dim memory of hardly credible anguish. But those who would continue the evil system under which even less frightful ills persist and maintain them- selves, so as to curse father and son and son's son with the same deadly blight, leaving a man's life, when it is over, little better than a bad dream which has engendered even worse dreams than itself, really incur the responsibility of turning a given thread of human history into a tradition of sin and misery, to which even complete desolation would have been prefer- able. The popular and very legitimate horror of war forgets to take into account that war, horrible as it is, lasts but for a short time ; and that even a lesser evil which afflicts genera- tion after generation, turning almost all sweetness into .bitter,-- ness, and good into evil, counts for infinitely more in the balance of history, than a fiercer spasm of anguish followed by long generations of steady ameliorat;cn.
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