TOPICS OF THE DAY.
THE DANGER IN GREECE.
THE mischief of this Greek affair is, that at first sight everybody concerned appears to be more or less in the right. The Greeks have for months been assisting their in- surgent countrymen in Crete, by every means in their power, short of declaring open war against Turkey, and Englishmen cannot wonder at and can hardly blame their conduct. We should most certainly assist any English-speaking race, whom we considered oppressed by a brutal Asiatic Mussul- man power, and if that power was so strong as to make war excessively inconvenient, we should assist them with as much secresy as the national temperament would permit us to main- tain. The Greeksi-rightly or wrongly—regard the Turks as our forefathers regarded the Spaniards, as enemies of the human race, to be injured and weakened, and, when expedient, slaughtered everywhere, on any excuse, and without any
particular legal or international sanction. There was "no peace South of the Line" between Spaniards and Englishmen, and outside the Embassies there is no peace anywhere between the Greek and the Turk. The Greek thinks himself a Christian and a European with a capacity for future civiliza- tion, and he thinks truly, though he tells lies as readily as his forefathers did when their civilization was the hope of mankind ; and he thinks the Turk a dangerous bar- barian, who ought to be driven out of Europe, and he thinks truly, though the Turk has received a whitewash of external civilization such as his forefathers would have despised. Unless we blame Cavour for plotting to rescue Tuscany from the German, we cannot blame the Greek for forwarding as many muskets as he can beg and as much gun- powder as he can get anybody to trust him with on very bad security, into Crete. Still less can we blame the Turk. Crete is his by every law except the divine one which prohibits slavery, he knows pretty accurately what is going on, and he has a distinct right, under the public law of Europe, to de- clare war on Greece and to occupy Athens if he can. Foreign interference with him is interference simply, for which any State strong enough to run risks would send the interfering ambassador his passports. Whether the Sultan has or has not secret assurances from Napoleon, eager to accept the exclu- sive protectorate resigned by Lord Stanley, or from Austria, anxious to maintain him against the Roumans, does not make any difference in his moral right, which is as unmistakable as our right would be were the Americans aiding the Aus- tralians to rise in open revolt. If the Sultan unassisted has still resolved on war, he is acting a part which the ordinary manliness of Sovereigns would have dictated a year ago. We have as little blame for him as for the Government of King George.
And, so far as we can see, just as little attaches to the Powers who are trying by diplomatic coercion to prevent the outbreak of actual hostilities. It is no business of theirs to prevent Greece from assisting Crete, or Turkey from punish- ing Greece ; but it is their business to provide that Russia shall not assume the protectorate of all Christian subjects of the Sultan, and with it the reversion of Constantinople, the one sovereign geographical position on the globe, the one spot on which a monarchy dangerous to mankind may by possi- bility be reared. Yet that Russia will assume this attitude if war breaks out is as certain as that Russians think baptism essential to salvation. No despatches forwarded from St. Petersburg, no assurances however solemn, no financial obstacles however great, would, in such an event, be suffi- cient to impede Russian action. If the Turks march into Greece, and begin depopulating, burning, and ravishing after their fashion, Russia from Odessa to Archangel will rise in a fury such as even the Romanoffs would be powerless to restrain. The Czar must protect the Orthodox Faith or lose his throne, and he would protect it at any hazard, and Europe would be once more reduced to its old alternatives, to hold Turkey back while she has a right to advance, to fight Russia, or to let Russia appear the one Power in Europe friendly to the enemies of the Sultan, the one Power on whose aid in the last resort the Christians of Turkey can implicitly rely. Either alternative involves a catastrophe, more especially in the existing situa- tion of Europe, with Prussia watching France, and France menacing Prussia, and England doubtful of her true interest, and Austria wild with fear lest Roumania and Transylvania should come to terms, and every power armed to the teeth,
and at once expecting and dreading war. Who can wonder that diplomatists, anxious first of all for time, to postpone, if they may not at last avert the cataclysm, should deem any means, however unusual, justifiable, if only they may prevent the first shot,—should menace Turkey, or summon fleets into' the harbour of the Pirmus ? When the results of any move- ment are so utterly beyond human calculation or official con- trol, it is always the nature, and sometimes the wisdom, of statesmen to arrest the movement itself, to insist as long as. they can that the earthquake shall not occur.
But suppose it does occur, what then ? It is more than conceivable, it is perfectly possible,—well-informed men say it is most probable,—that Turkey will not hold back, that the Sultan has reached the limit of patience, and that unless Greece yields Omar Pasha will march. It is more than. probable, it is certain, that if the question is left to the Greeks, they will fight; that they will not cease from assisting Crete, that they, aware of popular Russian feeling, aware of the plots by which the throne of the Sultan is honeycombed, aware of the intense reluctance of Europe to witness any extension of Ottoman power, will risk all in the hope that the general overturn will end at last in the destruction of a foe whom, on good grounds or bad grounds, they hate as priests hate heretics or heretics priests. What are we to do then ? Up to that point Lord Clarendon's course is clear. He will maintain peace if he can, with as little of committal as he can, but with little or much will, as far as may be, help to' keep the peace. It is only when it is clear that peace cannot be kept, that the hour has arrived, that the spark in the magazine is past treading out, that the difficulties of the British Government will become serious, very serious, as serious as they have ever been in any crisis of her history. It is nothing less than another Crimean war in which she may be asked to join, a Crimean war, with the old allies, but not with the old foes, a Crimean war, with North Germany, as the Czar's possible ally, limiting or baffling the efforts of France at every step. We cannot imagine a prospect more hopelessly disheartening, not only to those who, like ourselves, believe the Ottomans past hope, or help, or regeneration, but to those who, in spite of experience, still cling to them as the one tribe in South-Eastern Europe with visible capacity to repress.
In that phrase, "a second Crimean war," there lies, as it seems to us, the germs of a sound Radical Eastern policy,---a policy which will work, as the policy of defending Turkey will no longer do. That policy is to await the inevitable hour when Germany, relieved of her momentary difficulty, will for- bid further Russian advance. Let this country determine that under no circumstances will it enter on a second Crimean war, and its course becomes thenceforward, though painful, at least sufficiently clear. There will then be, should war after all break out between Greece and Turkey, but two practical dan- gers for Great Britain. Russia may win the game so completely as to menace Constantinople, may, that is, beat or bribe France, which is clearly intent on defending Turkey. In that event we can defend Constantinople without defending Turks, and with all Germany for an ally instead of Napoleon. The Germans are just now driven, as it were by force, into an unnatural alliance with the Czars, but they will no more allow Russia to possess herself of the Dardanelles or of the mouths of the Danube than of Berlin or Vienna. Russia will scarcely fight Germany alone, and Germany plus England would be an overmatch for any conceivable Continental league, so visible an overmatch that it is difficult to imagine a statesman adventuring the experiment. Or,—it is conceivable, though improbable,—France may single-handed defeat Russia, and claim from the grateful Turks not the remainder of their suzerainty on the South shore of the Mediterranean, a change of no moment to Great Britain, but Egypt, the key of our Indian house. Then, also, the course of Great Britain will be clear, and she will have two allies, the German people intent on working out their unity, and the one armed friend who never fails us, or betrays us, or interferes with us, or asks to share the spoil, the great military monarchy which we remember for one day once a year as the Indian Empire. The explosion has not yet occurred, and when it occurs it may be the duty of all patriotic Englishmen to support the policy on which the Cabinet may resolve ; but of all statesmen in Europe Lord Clarendon is the one most likely to forget that with the rise of Germany, the alliance of France and England ceased to be indispensable to the security of Constantinople.
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