TOPICS OF THE DAY.
THE RUSSIAN ADVANCE IN ASIA.
THE friends of Turkey in England evidently think they can make much of the Russian advance in Asia. They are nearly hopeless of their case in Europe, where Englishmen see too much of the realities of Turkish rule, and where other Powers are much more directly interested ; but they think that if they use the word " Asia " cabalistically, they may conjure up a sufficient storm of fear and hatred to evoke the war for which their leader, Lord Beaconsfield, is so passionately longing. They know that Englishmen are at once proud beyond measure of their country's position as a great Asiatic Power, and unreason- ably nervous as to the vulnerability of their Asiatic dominion ; they have confidence in the depth of English ignorance of geography, and they remember with delight that almost all Asiatic experts have a preconceived dread and hatred of the great Power which holds all Northern Asia in its hand. They intend, therefore, to rouse England by appealing to her fears for India, by reiterating statements about possible routes to the Persian Gulf, and by adroitly using that wonderful word the "Euphrates," which, to Englishmen, calls up images at once of India, of the Desert, and of the Garden of Eden. It is a Scriptural word and a political one, and one to Englishmen gloriously indefinite, and the war party, therefore, have resolved to use it as a sort of newly-discovered shell, before which every
decent person will shrink appalled. It may burst, and kill them all.
It is a clever idea, and if the Anglo-Turks could but keep their tempers, and refrain from pointing every argument with an insult, and use their geographical knowledge to purpose, instead of talking nonsense about railways in the air, they might confuse the judgment of the majority until they made resistance to a foolish war seem unpatriotic, and so doubled the labours of those who nevertheless would continue to per- form their duty of resistance. Fortunately, however, they are so white-lipped with rage, and so contemptuous of any argu- ment not contained in that very vague phrase, the "interests of our Indian Empire," that they will provoke the British public into examining the question for themselves, and the question once examined, their influence will be gone. The British public, when it goes to its maps and to its measuring- tapes, and to open-eyed reading of Sir Henry Rawlinson's arguments, will not, of course, learn that the Russians on the Euphrates will be pleasant neighbours, or that Persia will be the stronger because its western frontier is in Russian hands, or that a march from the Black Sea to Bushire is absolutely impossible. On the contrary, it will learn that a Russian on the Euphrates might make himself a nuisance, that Persia enclosed east and west will be very weak, and that a march from Erzeroum to the Persian Gulf is within the limits of possibility to an army sufficiently provided. But then it will learn also, in addition to these truisms, that not one of them constitutes any new danger, that Russia possesses now at this minute all the advantages, the prospect of which frightens them out of their serenity. Her new base on the Black Sea, supposing her to get it, is not half as formidable a danger to India as her present one upon the Caspian. That sea is a Russian dock, which no other Power can even approach, and its southern shore, now protected by a dying Power of about a tenth of the strength of Turkey, is only five hundred miles distant from' the Persian Gulf. Persia can be no weaker than she is, whatever frontier may be threatened, nor can any Russian position deprive us of the power of coercing or defending Persia, if we choose. If Russia wants to fight Great Britain on that line, she has only to march across the Persian isthmus, where resistance, except from Great Britain, is impossible, and she is on the Gulf in full strength, resting on posts stretching through a splendid country to her own land- locked dock, the Caspian. No conceivable position which she can acquire in Turkey in Asia—we do not say Turkey in Africa—could be so dangerous to India as the one she already holds upon the Caspian, yet Englishmen and Anglo-Indians sleep quite peaceably, and are mainly interested in accumulat- ing profits or securing promotion. They know that Russia, with all her position, cannot approach the Gulf without fight- ing Great Britain, under the exact circumstances which a British Von Moltke would choose,—namely, on a shore where England and India could both put 'out their extreme strength without being hampered by geographical difficulties, a shore whither the resources of both countries oould be transported
by sea with as little difficulty as British troops could be trans- ported to the Norwegian coast. Suppose the rumours of the day literally true in their widest sense, and Russia mistress of Bars and Erzeroum and Bayezid, and still she is no nearer India than she always was, and has no additional power of compelling the Government of Calcutta to waste its resources upon precautionary armaments. She remains, as before, the one Power which, after much delay and full warning, can risk extinction by attacking the British Empire in India. by a long and inordinately dangerous land march. She can do it now if she pleases, and she can do it then, and between then and now, there would not be one iota of differ- ence in her favour. The whole story is an utter delusion, pro- pagated to induce Englishmen to try and arrest the natural and beneficial result of a just and necessary war,—namely, the final extinction of the Osmanli caste as a governing power.
But Russia may threaten our communications ? What communications? "Oh, we shall one day build a Railway which will pass by Erzeroum, and bring our Indian Empire within seven days of London." It is pure nonsense. That we may one day build a mercantile railway through Turkey to con- nect India with the Railway system of Europe is, of course, pos- sible, though the date may be distant ; but that railway can be of no conceivable military advantage to Great Britain, for unless we take Turkish Asia ourselves—a course to which we have no sort of objection, except that such a possession might prove too burdensome—we could not send a soldier, or a horse, or a gun by that route, because such despatch would involve the consent of half the Powers of Europe to a violation of neutrality. Just imagine a British army going by railway from Calais through Constantinople to Calcutta! If it did not go by railway, but by sea to Scutari, it might just as well go. through the Canal to Bombay., and there be landed, un- wearied and in unbroken order, just seven days later. Egypt is our true military route to India, not Erzeroum, and the alternative route is through Syria to the Euphrates—a short. railway running from the mouth of the Orontes to the great river —not through Armenia, or any point whatever on the Black Sea, with which we have, and shall always have, from the military point of view, nothing whatever to do. The argument that we shall, even if it were true would not justify a war, any more than the argument that true, is growing strong justifies a. German invasion of France but there no truth in it what- ever, except that a hot-headed id party wants to fight Russia upon any terms, and for any reason, or none. She must be "checked," or they will look ridiculous, and if there is no other excuse, her insolence in talking so harsh a language as the Russian and using so offensive an alphabet will do as well as another.
But Russia may take all the eastern coast of the Mediter- ranean, and what should we do then ? Just what we do in the Mediterranean, now that France, Austria, and Italy own its northern coast, with ability to form a league to drive us out of those waters,—that is, go about our business as tranquilly as may be, with a serene consciousness that nobody will meddle with us without grave reason, and that anybody who does meddle with us will get the worst of it. There is not a corner of the world where some great Power cannot "arrest our communications," if it chooses, and if it thinks the interference worth a twenty years' war and a series of great defeats. We could not move in the Channel, if France chose to stop us, till she was beaten ; or enter the Mediter- ranean if Spain were insolent ; could not pass the Sound without the consent of Germany, and could not trade in the Black Sea under menace of hostilities from Russia. Even if Russia were in Syria we should be as safe as we are now,— that is, we should be liable to fight a great war whenever Russia thought it worth while; and Russia is no more in Syria than she is at Hammerfest, and not nearly so likely to get there. Even if she overact the Ottoman Empire till no one could any longer be said to own anything in it, she could not occupy so vast a country as Asiatic Turkey without leaving ample time for England and France to decide whether their interests were im- perilled, and to act upon a coast where Russia, after six weeks of war, would not be able to produce a ship. The Russian army in Asia Minor, without railways, without posts, without a contented population, would, as against Western Europe, be as badly off as it was in the Crimea,—would, that is, be half-exhausted by the mere effort to reach a battle-ground a thousand miles from the bases of its strength. We are ashamed to write about such dreams, though they are quoted by sane men as argu- ments for a war which would cost England and India a
ficness, amid which anybody in Europe with an army might do anything he pleased. That if Russia crushes the Turkish Empire we may be compelled to occupy Egypt, we have re- peatedly admitted ; but to fight Russia because she is crushing it, whether in Europe or Asia, is to waste our strength on behalf of a State which, but for Tory imbecility, we should be now aiding Russia to redistribute, to the general benefit of mankind
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