TOPICS OF THE DAY.
OUR FAILURE IN TURKEY. THE success of the Sultan in the affair of Said Pasha will be a great triumph for him in his own people's eyes, so great that his concession in the matter of the guard- ships will be at once forgotten. The subjects of a despotic Monarch are always interested first of all in personal questions; and to Mussulmans in Constantinople the Sultan must seem like 'Ka,' the mighty python of Rudyard Kipling's "Jungle Book," whose motionless gaze compels the monkeys to approach him. It is vain for a European to attempt to discuss the motives which govern the acts of an Oriental like Said Pasha. He fled to the British Embassy no doubt in an ordinary impulse of human fear for his life ; but why, having mortally affronted a master who never forgives those he fears, Said Pasha has once more placed himself in that master's power, it is impossible to guess. He may have dreaded poverty, for he had no fortune ; he may have been tempted by the splendid bribe offered him, £4,000 a year for life, for Said is a Turk ; he may have been afraid for his family, left at the mercy of his enemies ; or he may have been dominated by the true Mussulman's shame at seeming to side with infidels against the faith ; it is all a mystery, the two things certain being that he did not believe the pro- mises made him, and that he will disappear, probably not into a grave, but into a remote lunatic asylum. Already among Turks the mot d'ordre is that Said is mad—an opinion which will shelter his life, even the Khalif sparing the afflicted of God, but will paralyse any " influence" he may have possessed. That influence, however, cannot be much, for in a Mussulnian country there are but three sources of power,—the ruler, the preacher, and the army ; and while he reigns, the first is strongest of all. Even in Afghanistan, where there are clan chiefs, and birth has a meaning unknown in most Mahommedan States, the frown of the Ameer means ruin ; and, as Dr. Gray relates in a remarkable book published to-day, the noble who in the morning rides out in cloth of gold, in the evening begs a little food in the street of the passer-by. A Grand Vizier is great while the Sultan speaks to him with a smile, then disappears like a man's shadow when night begins to descend.
The incident and the struggle about the guard ships have broken the dreadful monotony of the news from Turkey, which, like a funeral too long protracted, has a benumbing as well as a moving effect upon the sympathies ; but Englishmen should not lose sight of the main issue. A Christian people is being extirpated because in its misery it appealed for the help which English Ministers pledged themselves to give. Every week the evidence that the orders for massacre came from the Palace clique, that the regulars were instructed not to interfere, and that the irregulars were let loose to plunder and kill, grows stronger and more perfect. The process is always the same. If the Armenians reside in a village it is burned and the men killed ; if they live in a town their quarter is fired, their men are slain, the Mahommedan priest utters the call to prayer from the ruined church, which can then never be entered by Christians again, the plunder, includ- ing often the women, is distributed, and the officials in Constantinople state that Armenians having attacked a mosque disturbances have occurred, but " tranquillity has been restored." In the single district of Van, a German writes, the irregular cavalry have destroyed two hundred villages. A Turkish merchant relates to his firm, not to the Press, how he saw in one ride in Anatolia two hundred Armenian women and children cut to pieces, under his horse's feet. A correspondent reports that in Trebizond a Bishop and five others who sought refuge in a church have been burned alive. These are but incidents, unimportant incidents in face of the fact that in six great counties—the six where the Sultan pledged his honour to Lord Salisbury to carry out his reforms— the Armenian population of the country-side is wandering homeless and starving, awaiting death from the winter on the mountains, or crowding into cities which have neither food nor shelter for so many. The Patriarch of Etchmiadzin declares that half a million of his people are homeless—remember, in Armenia snow falls as heavily as in our own Highlands — and though no Oriental, whether Christian or Mussulman, ever knows how to count heads, the number cannot be less than many tens of thousands. It is ruin which has fallen on these unhappy people, ruin such as followed the sack of Jerusalem, ruin such as the Western world, in its, security and comfort as of a chestnut in its pod, has ceased even to be able to bring home to its own thoughts ; and though the English are sinless, for they did not mean it., the ruin is due to them. But for the fear- of an Armenian question, even this Asiatic Philip II. would net have dreamed of surrendering a million of taxpayers from whom he could have demanded a ransom, that would have made Yildiz Kiosk all sunshine, to bands of irregulars who will never give up one piastre. It is is reliance on our promises, in hope of our assistance, that the wretched people have ventured on the murmurs, it may even be on the boastings, which have brought on them so horrible a doom. We are unable to believe that in failing to protect them, even to our own hurt, we are not shrinking from a responsibility which, whether we voluntarily assumed it or not, it has pleased Providence to fasten on us as a trial of conscience. It is not any opponents of this Government, but the Spectator, which knows as well as the Embassies how immense the diffi- culties are, which says that we are shrinking from a plain duty.
But what can Lord Salisbury do ? This, for one thing, —it may very well be not the best thing. The source of all the mischief as acknowledged by all the serious and capable Turks is the Sultan himself. Let Lord Salisbury, therefore, inform the Powers that if England is not to act alone—as she can do without moving a man, by recognising the independence of Arabia and stopping the conveyance of Turkish soldiers thither by sea, and so shattering the Khalifate at a blow—the six Powers must announce that they consider Abd-ul-Hamid unfitted to reign, and that with him as Sovereign they will hold no further communication. There is precedent for that, for the same Powers in the same concert proclaimed the same decision about Napoleon. The Turks will compre- hend that demand at once, will understand that the Christian Powers threaten neither the Turkish Empire nor Mahommedanism, but that if there is to be peace, the head of the Turkish Government must be changed. They are writhing under their oppressions as much as the Christians ; they have the power of changing their ruler —such a change is in accord with every tradition of Con- stantinople—and they would, as we believe, exercise it at once, calling to the throne any Prince of the House of Othman in whom they have not had the opportunity of losing confidence. He might be no better than his predecessor, but he would have no quarrel with the Armenians ; he would be compelled to rely on soldiers instead of favourites ; and he would bring in a new group of men, among whom there might be one fairly competent to govern. Real power was trusted by the great Sultans to their Grand Viziers, who were often, like the Kiuprils, of foreign descent, and it is only this man who refuses to leave to Ministers an initia- tive. We cannot see that this course need irritate any of the Powers, for it would postpone the struggle which they all dread, and the partition which they all are willing to delay. It is folly to think, as some of our Liberal contemporaries think, that Russia will favour or tolerate a constitutional revolt in Turkey—even if such a movement is possible, which we disbelieve—but she has no attachment to one Sultan more than another, and her statesmen must be well aware, from M. de Nelidoff's reports, that the present misgovernment will end sooner or later—and by later we mean before next midsummer —in some grand catastrophe. The winds have been unchained in Turkey, and they will not go back to their caves till they have caused a wreck. It is not however our business to suggest. Lord Salisbury has probably a dozen plans before him, each of them more practicable than ours; the only contention on which we insist is that he, the author of the Treaty of Berlin, has no right, even for the sake of peace, to suffer the extinction of the Armenian people. That they will be saved at the eleventh hour we are unable to doubt ; but if they are not saved by Britain she will be disgraced, and, scattered throughout Asia, there will be one more race which will bear, and bear justifiably, a permanent enmity to the British name.
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