28 DECEMBER 1901, Page 14

RUSSIA AND• THE SULTAN.

[To THE EDITOR OP THE " EWHOTATOR."]

SIR,—Will you allow me to make two comments on your article on this subject? First, it is surely not true to say that it does not matter to the Sultan what Christians are massacred. On the contrary, he makes a nice discrimination, selecting those Christians who have no outside backing. Thus there has been no massacre of Greeks in Turkey since the establishment of a Greek kingdom, none of Serbs since Servia became independent, none of Bulgarians since 1878, none of Montenegrins for the same reason. These various nationalities, all represented in the Sultan's dominions, can all appeal- to their respective fellow-countrymen at Athens, Belgrade, Sofia, and Cettinje. But the Armenians have no such support in the shape of an Armenian State ; they have only the waste paper of Article 61 of the Berlin Treaty. There is nothing new in the protection of Turkey by Russia, as your article seems to imply. Since the first conflict took place between those two States in the sixteenth century, Russia has had two main policies in regard to Turkey. The more frequent and obvious one was that open hostility exem- plified by the four Russo-Turkish Wars of the nineteenth century. The other, that of nursing Turkey as a Russian preserve, found its most striking development in the Treaty of Unkiar-Skelessi.—I am, Sir, &c., W. MILLER. 10 Cheyne Gardens, Chelsea.