THE SITUATION LN THE EAST.
1111Eindications of the week have been few but they have not been peaceful. The preliminary Conference has been fixed for December 8", and the formal Conference for December
15, but Russia continues arming, as if her rulers had little belief in the results of negotiation ; and the Turks are evidently gaining courage during the delay. The Porte has issued a
Circular, stating that it will in no case listen to a proposal of foreign occupation, and its statesmen appear to rely entirely on their conviction that in the last resort an independent Turkey is too essential to Europe to be suffered to fight unassisted. This impression is no doubt greatly strengthened by the tone of a part of the English Press, which never ceases assert- ing three things,—that Russia is weak ; that Turkey is strong; and that Austria and England will in the end be convened to resist Russian advance. The statements published about Russia are of the most extraordinary kind. She is said to be threatening all Europe, and to be rousing, " most imprudently," her entire population, yet she cannot, it.is alleged, enter Turkey with more than 50,000 men, and 'cannot find money for her immediate military expenses. On the other hand, Turkey will have half-a-million of men under arms, and as she will take payment of taxes in kind, will have little necessity for money. Both statements are, of coulee, almost grotesque in their inaccuracy, the Russians being at least as strong as before the Crimean war, and with the advantage of railways for transport to the south, while the Tail's have far less means of feeding masses of men than in 1856. Their provinces have endured twenty more years of plunder. Taxes paid in kind are useful when an army is camtoned in a province, but in a war on the frontiers of an empire like Turkey they are useless, as the difficulty of transport from province to province is insuperable. Then the action of foreign Powers is represented as most favourable to the Ottomans. The Turks are told every day that Con- stantinople cannot be allowed to fall into Russian hands, that the Indian Mussalmans are full of excitement in their favour, and that Lord Beaconsfield, who is definitively on their side, never enjoyed so fully the confidence of his countrymen. They are encouraged, in fact, by the despatch of English engineers and English artillerymen, to hope that England, though averse from war, will at the last moment strike in to their aid. It is added that the Italians intend to resist the occupation of Bulgaria by Russia, and that the Austro-Hun- garian Government may yet see fit to protest against a Russian advance. Indeed, the Viennese correspondent of the Telegraph, who is well informed from the Hungarian point of view, affirms distinctly that the Monarchy is swaying more and more towards the English alliance. All these statements, and many more like them, are received at Constantinople with the fullest because the most willing credence, until the Pashas imagine, or, at all events, say they imagine, that they are quite ready for war, and will concede nothing. Whether they are merely attempting to frighten Russia, or they really believe in their own strength, their language must have the same effect,—that of making it increasingly difficult for the Sultan to grant any large or visible concessions, in the face of a population taught to imagine that it has only to resist, in order to maintain the ascendancy which it is instructed by its creed to believe part of the divine order of the world. It has• therefore become increasingly probable that the Con- ference- will arrive at no conclusion which the Turks will bring themselves to accept, or in other words, that Russia will be compelled either to retire, and own herself unable to pro- tect her kinsfolk, or to employ force to secure the guarantees which, as the Czar has informed his people, he has a right to demand.
The only one of all these statements which is of any serious moment is the one 'which represents the Austrian Government as inclined to break away from the alliance of the Three Empires, and defend Turkey against a Russian invasion. Such a policy, if adopted, would no doubt be most menacing for Russia, and these statements are in all probability made in good faith, and represent the wishes of the present managers of Austrian foreign policy. There can be no doubt that the Magyars sympathise strongly with the Turks; nor that Count Andrassy, who is a Magyar, will support the Turks strongly in the Conference. The true question, however, is not what the
Magyars wish, or what Count Andrassy will arrange in Council, but what the Emperor will decide when finally called upon to use his Slav Army to put dawn the Slavic aspiration to be free from Mahonimedan oppression. We believe it will be found that he will not decide against the Slavic side. It is said he will be tempted by an English alliance, but he has secured- no such alliance yet, and cannot secure one of any substantial value until the British Parliament has met, and decided that it means to spend fifty millions in order to enable the Ottomans to misgovern the European populations of Turkey, a contingency too uncertain to tempt Francis Joseph to risk for the third time all the future of his House. It is said that he dreads the rise of Slavic States in European Turkey, lest they should attract his Slavic subjects, and this may be true in a degree; but he has to decide between the attraction which the South Slays will exercise when free and when divided by creed from his own Slays, and the attraction they exercise new, when enslaved and miserable, till all distinctions of creed are merged in pity and race-excitement. We do not believe that he will move at all, except for his own interest, which is to share in the provinces of Turkey ; and hold that in spreading these reports, the ltussulman papers are doing their best to tempt Turkey to a resistance which can only end in the war which they say they do not desire.
There is still a month to elapse before 'the hope of an ar- rangement expires, and there are still,two unknown quantities in the situation,. Nobody knows outside the Cabinet how far Lord Salisbury has-been permitted to go in protecting the Christians of the East, and nobody knows whether General Ignatieff has or has not any guarantee to suggest which he would consider equivalent to an occupation of Bulgaria. Lord Salisbury, when he arrives at'Constantinople, will have seen diplomatists of every nation except the important one, and may find that Russian demands, when frankly stated, are much more to his taste than he expects. Russia and Great Britain may come to an agree- ment before which Turkey will yield, and peace may be again restored to a distracted Stock Exchange ; but as yet, on the face of the known facts, and with every allowance for the facts which may still remain unknown, the dtift of the hour is towards war in Eastern Europe.
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