THE GLOBE AND THE ISLAND.

ACHILTIBUIE, COIGACH, September 18.

It is good to look upon public questions at least once a year from surroundings the reverse of political or metropolitan. One's information may not be up to date, but one's sympathies are much more likely to be well-placed. A Highland solitude invites the emergence of the natural man in oneself; the air of the moor blows away many cobwebs, including some of those which one passes one's life in spinning industriously elsewhere. That is, one's holiday reflections are probably nearer to the views and feelings of most of one's fellow-citizens than the laborious conclusions one reaches in the course of daily work.

The

If I am right in this, the present agitation in Great Britain against the Sultan has every chance of success. For anger here, and shamed stupefaction, grow a hundredfold. spectacle of all the great Christian Powers of Europe, with a single exception, forming a ring round the Sultan while he deliberately pursues his policy of exterminating the Armenians, is strange and horrible beyond the power of expression. To future generations of children, the histories they study in school will hold it up as the great historic example of decadence and hypocrisy. No writer in the past, trying to consider all possible developments of the eternal Eastern Question, ever dreamed of what is passing to-day. The two men who have .wielded the strongest pens about Turkey, Stratford de Redcliffe and Freeman, never went beyond the discussion of what would be best for Turkey-beyond the attempt to convince the Powers that under certain circumstances a certain course

of action would be best. They never imagined that when the bed-rock of Turkish savagery was reached, the Christian nations would all know quite well what course of action duty and civilisation imposed upon them, and would with almost entire unanimity refuse to adopt it. One trembles to think of the Athanasian language of Freeman, were he alive to-day. For one thing, he would probably be broken-hearted at the total failure of his entire polemic. Open Freeman where you will, and you find an almost brutal denunciation of exactly what the British Government has been engaged in doing for the past year, and a Jeremian prophecy of exactly the evils which have been brought about. For instance, here is literally the first sentence upon which my eye falls when I open one of his volumes: "It appears, then, that on March 31, 1877, Lord Derby still believed that the Turk was going to reform; he still believed that, in watching his doings, there would be something else to watch than the kind of doings which the Turk has always done for the last five hundred years." For "Derby" read "Salisbury," and you have a perfect commentary upon our recent foreign policy. We have corresponded diplomatically with the Sublime Porte; we have written the Sultan notes; our representatives have called upon him and expostulated; we have invented schemes of "reform," and thrust them under his nose; we have glowed with satisfaction when some part of these was "accepted"; we have expressed the belief that he is at heart a "humane man"; we have sympathised with his difficulties and accepted his promises. And all this is exactly what Freeman devoted his vast learning, his burning sympathy, and his scathing pen to teach us was utter folly. Listen to what he said—I make no apology for quoting him again and again, as he has been unaccountably neglected in this connection of late :--

The whole mistake lies in dealing with the Turk as the civilised nations of Europe deal with one another. He should be dealt with as we deal with any other barbarian. We have already seen that certain Turks have learned to talk European languages, and to dress themselves up in European clothes. It must always be remembered that this makes no difference. The men who ordered the massacres in Bulgaria wear tight coats and jabber French, and expect to be called Highnesses and Excellencies, But they ordered the massacres in Bulgaria all the same. They ought to be dealt with, not as Highnesses and Excellencies, but as the men who ordered

the massacres in Bulgaria. Their tight coats and French ought not to save them from being treated as what they are, as wild beasts who have put themselves out of the pale of human fellowship.

For "Bulgaria" read "Sassun" or "Trebizond" or "Urfa," and what Freeman vainly inculcated in 1877 strikes to-day's nail upon the head. The great triumph of diplomacy, acclaimed in the Tory Press, proudly announced by Ministers in Parliament, boasted about in public speeches, was the Scheme of May, 1895, "accepted" by the Sultan after months of whittling down, under which the Armenians were at last to secure some measure of decent government and personal right. The result of it has been that whereas before it, the Armenians were secretly massacred in remote parts of Asia Minor, this month they have been publicly massacred in the streets of Constantinople, under the very eyes of Ambassadors and dragomans. Read Freeman's comment again :

The Turk should be made to feel that his most solemn assertions, his most solemn promises, the pledges of this or that Excellency, of this or that Highness, or of his Imperial Majesty himself, are simply words without meaning. He should be told that his Irades and his Tanzimats, his Hatti-sheriffs and his Hatti-humayouns, are all so many names which the copiousness of the Turkish language has devised to express the single idea of waste paper.

We seem as far as ever from the preception of these facts. Yet it would appear that the most modestly equipped observer should by this time have discovered them as surely as the great historian himself.

When it was first stated that Abdul Hamid had decided upon solving the Armenian question by the simple method of exterminating the Armenians, most people regarded the assertion as extravagant. Nobody doubts it now. The Armenians of Asia Minor are not exterminated, it is true, but they are in the state of the worm when the foot of the careless passer-by is lifted. They are not likely to give the Sultan much trouble for a generation or two. There remained the Armenians of Constantinople, a more redoubtable set of folk. One day's massacre, organised like a Hyde Park procession, reduced their number by six thousand; the cemeteries are poisoned by their rotting bodies; ship-loads of living have been taken to be drowned at sea, or shot like rubbish into some fanatical

province where the Turks are waiting for them like wolves. Constantinople will soon be cleared of them, as one clears a pond of pike. There is no longer any pretence at concealment or attempt at denial. The Sultan justifies his acts by a document of insolent lies. The six Christian Ambassadors charge him to his face with deliberate murder, backing up their statements by irrefutable proofs. They even venture, by a piece of courage which in view of the past seems almost rash, to refuse to put candles in their windows on his birthday, and there the matter stands. Abdul Hamid is doubtless preparing another blow; the Tsar goes on his triumphal way, assuring the world of peace; Europe looks on in inactivity; and Freeman's bones rattle in his neglected grave.

There is precisely one Christian European Power which keenly, almost desperately, desires to strike down "the Great Assassin." That is Great Britain. There is precisely one Christian European Power which protects him. That is Russia. Everybody knows this. If these two could only agree upon a course of action, the other four would follow quietly enough to its realisation. Let us be just to Russia-it is difficult but eminently desirable. In Constantinople centre the vastest ambitions of the race of Tsars. For over a century the great White Power has descended toward the Queen of Cities. Over mountains has she come, hostile peoples has she subdued, treaties has she made and treaties has she torn up, armies has she raised and navies built, wars has she waged and countries has she absorbed in her march. On the surface her policy has changed so often that the story of them would be a tapestry for variegation; at heart it has never altered one iota. She is coming to the Mediterranean, and she is coming there through the Bosphorus and the Dardanelles. Her purpose is as fixed as Fate, and she is prepared to be as patient as Providence in its accomplishment. But so long as she exists she will never relinquish it. Bit by bit Turkey has rotted; step by step the Cossack with his Cross has advanced. To-day he is almost within striking distance. He has learned a lesson, too. He freed Bulgaria to help him: Bulgaria turned and blocked his path. He does not propose to free anybody else. To weaken Turkey he fostered the Armenian revolt at the beginning-the

first revolutionaries in Anatolia were Russian Armenians; as soon as Great Britain sympathised and spoke of autonomy for Armenia, he drew back and left the Armenians to the Sultan's wolves. "No more Bulgarias," he said. England, with the rest of Europe well-disposed, prepared to coerce the Sultan to restore order. M. de Nelidoff stated openly in Constantinople that Russia would not permit interference by a single Power. That settled it, for the statement meant war, and before the grim prospect the other nations promptly stepped down and out. The Sultan, feeling more secure than ever, organised this latest massacre. Now England wishes to see him dethroned, and would gladly enforce the re-establishment of the suppressed Turkish Constitution. That would mean order and prosperity in Turkey but it would put back for a century the fulfilment of Russia's ambition. She will not have it. "Let the Turk rot-Europe is almost ready to welcome any solution with gratitude. A few more years, a few more massacres, a few more acts of bankruptcy, a few more alarms elsewhere, and Russia will positively be invited to step in." So she reasons, and justly. Then the long march will be over, the vision of the Tsars will be accomplished, the long-haired priests will chant as the Cross rises over St. Sophia; and while the tired Cossack sleeps upon his arms awhile to range afar in fresh dreams, the cartographers will mix their colours for a new map of Europe.

A policy like this has recently been characterised as "diabolical." It may be, from a disinterested point of view, but what when the observer is a Russian? What would you say of it if you were a patriotic Russian yourself? You would say that already far more Russians have died for this ideal than there have been Armenians massacred; that the splendid march of Russia is worth the sacrifice of every Armenian, if need be; that the spread of the Russian Church, the "Russianising" of a vast territory, is a sacred gain which infinitely outweighs all other considerations; that you are not responsible for the Sultan's wickedness, and that you would willingly check it, but not at the cost of the chief Russian ideal; that if the Powers consider the lives of Armenians so important, Russia is quite ready to save them