THE FUTURE OF CYPRUS.
THE Daily Telegraph of Tuesday gives currency to a rumour which we have heard before, and which we shall not be altogether sorry to find true. It intimates that in the course of the Negotiations now pending the Island of Cyprus will be transferred to Great Britain. This is not, as we have said, improbable, as apart from any settlement of the Eastern Question or any scheme for a Turkish Protectorate, Great Britain and France will not submit for ever to be deprived of the £200,000 a year which the Ottoman Government, with cynical scorn for their credulity, now leaves them to pay as interest on the guaranteed loan. Turkey must make good that claim in some way, and the assignment of Cyprus for the British share would be as good as any other. The loss to Turkey would be one of revenue only, and of revenue not equal to the amount due, while the acquisition is one to which we think neither Liberals nor Tories would object. The liberation of any province whatever, large or small, from Turkish rule is a gain to the world. Greece has not the claim to Cyprus which she certainly has to Crete, Cyprus being geographically Syrian, and historically a nondescript State, governed by any one who could master it ; and Cyprus in British hands might regain something of its old prosperity. Situated just on the coast of Syria, commanding the sea-way to the Gulf of Seanderoon and the mouth of the Orontes, and therefore the Mediterranean entrance to the Valley of the Euphrates, Cyprus, with its deep harbours, offers singular advantages to a Power interested in India, but unable for the moment to secure possession of its natural gateway, the Valley of the Nile. It would be impossible, if England were once seated there, for any Power to attack Egypt or Syria by sea without her full -consent ; while the island itself as a possession offers some singular advantages. It is probably the one place in the world which could be easily turned into a storehouse of timber for the national Dockyards. Much of its mountain ranges is already clothed with forests, which belong, we believe, to the State ; the oak grows in profusion, and the cedar of Lebanon would be in a home where it would need no acclimatisation. The forests could be protected by the State with any needful care, without interfering with the people, who have been reduced by oppression and misgovernment to a hundred thousand, perhaps a twelfth of their proper number, and who for years to come would be employed in repeopling and resubduing the beautiful valleys, where every cereal and every known fruit will reach perfection. The tobacco plant and the apple will grow in Cyprus almost side by side. With a little care and energy in the formation of tanks, on the South-Indian plan, to be filled by the torrents which now waste themselves down the hills,Cyprus would have all the natural advantages of Jamaica, a better climate, and a population now degraded indeed, but once among the most industrious and enterprising in the world. Within ten years, in Anglo-Indian hands, the island would pay all expenses, provide much of the wood needed for the Dockyards, and be in a fair way towards that prosperity which to be full must wait for the recovery of the population, now depressed by misgovernment, debased by want of freedom, and declining in number through want of the means of subsistence. It is use- less to be industrious when, if a man prospers, his prosperity enriches a Pasha ; but under British rule, Cyprus would supply half the cities of Eastern Europe with cut marbles, fine tobacco, fruit, and the liqueurs for which the sweet grapes of the island, now used to make abominable wine, are so well suited.
The Island might be a splendid garden, thrice the size of Suffolk, and from the extraordinary variety of its climates a sanitarium for the wealthy invalids of Europe, even if we could not succeed in the very interesting experiment it invites, —the formation, for the first time in our history, of a European Colony. Nothing is stranger in history than the present position of the" Emigration question," the prosaic phrase under which Englishmen conceal the most marvellous of all historic movements,—the endless march of the surplus population of Europe upon certain unfilled districts of the world, a march which, if we estimated time by historic divisions, instead of by the motions of the earth, might be said to create States day by day. That march, which has been slackening of late, as emi- gration agents tell us, has recommenced, till its influence is felt in the furthest regions of the American West, where lands are being" taken up" by the million acres in a month. If it were possible for the Governments of only three States—England, Germany, and Italy—or for their experienced men, to guide this march, to direct this outflow, to utilise this marvellous over-spill of humanity, half the standing problems of politics might be solved within a century. What would the Turks signify, or any other race in Asiatic Turkey, if for only ten years those three States could send the children who will leave them, to cultivate the splendid soil of Asia Minor, found cities among the ruins of Greek civilisation, and tell week by week a story of progress which three nations could under- stand, as we all understand the progress of Melbourne or Ontario? The Turks have been three centuries desolating islands which Berlin, London, and Rome could fill up in a year, and never lose a taxpayer not already resolved to seek a foreign soil. Place a million Englishmen and Germans in Armenia, a work of five years, and how many miles would Russia advance south-eastward in a century? Such a direction of emigration on a great scale, or indeed on any scale, is of course a dream, but we are not so sure that a single island like Cyprus could not be filled up. There is no climatic difficulty. Indeed we are not sure that there is a climatic difficulty anywhere, for Englishmen swarm to places like Sydney, where for six months in .the year the heat would be pronounced, a priori, too great for Northern Europeans to work ; and they seem, at all events, equal to house-building in New Orleans, and tree-felling in Florida, the latter a singularly exhausting form of manual labour. Cyprus would suit English gardeners as well as the Isle of Wight. There would be no religious difficulty, for the Greeks would not be strong enough for social exclusiveness ; and no difficulty about laws, for the laws would be English in
principle and administered by Judges trained at home. This is usually the greatest difficulty of all, for, as we believe we have pointed out before, while Italians pour in thousands into a Spanish State, and Germans count their people by millions in an English Republic, and Frenchmen are contentedly loyal to an English "Dominion," there is no corner of earth where ten thousand Englishmen consent to remain under a foreign Power. They upset the Spaniards in Texas, the moment they were strong enough ; they utterly refuse, in spite of the most tempting offers, to remain in Brazil ; and they glided out of Java as soon as it was c2ded, so rapidly and completely that we believe there is not a British family in the island—British by race, we mean —which has been there since the days when Sir Stamford Raffles wrote the despatch which Castlereagh forgot to open. It is, nevertheless, quite possible that they might try Cyprus, and in a half-a-century show us what an English people could do in a climate like that of the Eastern Mediterranean, a climate where nothing perishes, and the habits of men are adapted to life in the open air. If they were as obstinate as usual, and longed for life among the snow-storms of Minne- sota, or the hot winds of New South Wales, or the dry frosti- ness of Ontario the experiment would fail ; but Cyprus would not, for it is the very place to attract two of the most indus- trious peoples of Europe, the Sicilians and the Maltese. With common justice, complete security, and a reasonable tenure, Cyprus ought in a generation to be a happy as well as a splendid possession of the Crown.
We can see no solid argument against accepting the Island, more especially if it could be obtained, as it could be obtained, in satisfaction of a just debt. The Cypriotes, who for a thousand years have never disposed of their own destiny, have no especial desire for independence ; and even if they wish to be transferred to Greece, may well postpone the wish until they have enjoyed half a century of the security which Great Britain can ensure them. It will take that time at least, and stronger hands than Athens has at her disposal, to undo the effects of two hundred years of the destroying Turkish rule. The island will require no subsidies beyond, perhaps, a loan for roads ; and no garrison beyond a regiment, which may better be stationed there than on the heat-stricken Rock. Its protection will cost nothing while our Fleet remains the strongest in the Mediterranean, and there would be no objec- tion that we know of to a garrison from India, which could be re- lieved, vici the Euphrates or the Canal, as easily as the garrison of Aden. This country would undertake no responsibility which it could not fulfil, and which, in the case of Corfu, it felt only too lightly ; and it would give no new cause of jealousy to any Power, not even France, which is already seeking compensation for her own loss in Tunis. The popular cry that we ought to claim nothing from Turkey does not apply to an estate ceded in payment of an admitted debt, and is' moreover, a bit of rubbish, invented because the Tories are for a moment in a fit of fancy for Mahommedanism. If we can terminate, in the general interest of civilisation, the existence of a free Dutch Republic, we need have no sentimental qualms about lifting off from a European island the curse of Asiatic rule. Every province we can take from Turkey, and govern ourselves, is a possession added to the world's reservoir of resources, just as completely as if it had tumbled from some volcano-stricken planet. Turkey destroys, we vivify • and in those four words is the statement of an unimpeachable moral claim.
Previous page
