16 NOVEMBER 1907, Page 13

THE EASTERN QUESTION.

Europe and the Turks. By Noel Buxton. (John Murray. 2s. 6d.)—Mr. Buxton tells us that the issue of his small and useful handbook is "prompted by a desire to reason with those who, like myself, are suspicions of sensational appeals, who pride themselves on caution and abhor sentimentality." At the same time, there is—there could not help being—a good deal of sup- pressed passion in a volume which advocates European control as the sole hope of Macedonia and the Near East, and which does not spare vacillating British statesmen and veering British public opinion. Mr. Buxton's meaning is clear. "This volume is a call to bring to an end what is perhaps the greatest of chronic scandals which still disgrace the human family. It is not a mere matter of relieving pain, as in the case of some famine or earthquake; it is a matter of making the barest necessities of decent life, even family morality itself, possible to great populations, and those too not ignorant or savage, but of the type which has made civilisa- tion." We may add that Mr. Buxton's little book contains a truly wonderful amount of information under such easily intelligible titles as "The Past," "The Cause of the Trouble," and "The Real Question," which, though not of course devoid of spirit, is quite devoid of party bias.