Secret of the Orient.

Gisborne Times, Volume VI, Issue 221, 25 September 1901, Page 3

Secret of the Orient.

VAST PLANS OF RUSSIAN AMBITION. (Daily Express.) Chbistendom reverences Easter as the greate of its festivals. Es -vwhere, mingled wil a sense of rejoicing, it* celebration is marke by a fervour which Be ether festival of tt Christian Church can c- 'm in quite equ* 'measure. Among the more f rvid religiou 1 communities enthusiasm reaches a high pitc during this festival, but at no place does i culminate in such frenzied excitement a upon the spot which priestly tradition ha made the scene of the first great Easte Resurrection. There are very grave doubt 1 as to the authenticity of this spot, which i, covered by the splendid church of the Hoi; Sepulchre. But none exists in the minds o the numerous devotees who crowd up t< Jerusalem at the time of the great Easte; Festival. It is with reference to this ceremony which, as each year comes round, takes place in the Holy City, that I am about to tell a story of interest as strange as it would seem to be momentous. You will have to imagine a weird scene. It is the interior of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre on Easter Day of the year 1894. From wall to wall it is packed with a mass of deeply-stirred and semifrenzied devotees belonging to the rival Greek and Latin churches, who, after many weary miles of travel by land and sea, have at length arrived at the long-imagined goal of their pilgrimage. Within that motley cosmopolitan assembly, with its countless eye 3 strained ecstatically upon the sacred shrine, there is a force of pent-up emotion ready in a moment to break from all control, and capable of any excess under the jealous, ungovernable passion which dominates each unit, careless of aught but the attainment at all hazards of his own desire. It seems a strange satire that the only measures of precaution available to cope with the situation, consists of a guard of Ottoman soldiery, who have to do their best in a Christian place of worship to keep the peace between these rival worshippers of the Cross.

A''>7.ii;x<. i Miracle. Aid can we wonder at the excitement ol i je i ffgrims ? For are they not momentarily exp:tong the apparition of the holy fire, wh'.b will descend from heaven itself in the great archangel Michael? And have they not the ame ran cm of their priests that these who are iirst to light torch or candle in the sacred ilatne are thereby assorted of eternal ] salvation ? Surely, to secure such a tlessiri; is worth a tight to the death ? and the poor hord-'- of ignorant worshippers, trembling with expectation longing, are prepared for any sacrifice. At length the supreme moment of priestly jugglery arrives. A bright flame flares forth in the darkened shrine. At once the tense anxiety of the preceding moments bursts into wild riot. There is a forward rush, in which the hindmost furiously strive to become the foremost. Many go to the ground who never lise again, and but for the ruthless measures of the Turkish guard, the mad scene would have ended in a general holocaust. On the occasion which I am describing, the rifle butts flew into the air and came down with sickening thuds and bangs on heads and shoulders, as the Mohammedan soldiery beat back the frenzied and hysterical Christian multitude in an effort to maintain some semblance of order. The sequel to this scene, provided by a conversation with the presiding Greek priest, was a strange one. The ecclesiastic, a high official of the Orthodox Church, and a most intelligent man, listened very quietly to a remonstrance by my friend, who, knowing him well, asked' him how it was that a man of his learning and attainments could lend himself to such a shocking imposture. Frankly an Imposture. With a strange frankness lie acknowledged that it was what his interrogator called it—an imposture; “but,” he added, " the cause of its continuance is so powerful that it could | never be put an end to. i " You will hardly credit me, perhaps,” he i continued, “when I tell you that were this I ceremony put an end to it would not only | strike an irreparable blow at the Orthodox religion, but would even shake the throne of the Czars. Not only,” he went on,“ does this pilgrimage form the holiest and dearest aspiration in the life of every true Russian, but what he clings to quite as closely is the firm belief and fervent hope that one day in this Church of the Holy Sepulchre in .Jerusalem, the city of the Lords, the Cz.ar of all the Russias will bring to fulfilment the final destiny of his race by crowning himself King of Palestine and the East, when, as possessor and protector of the holy places, he will straightway proclaim universal peace and disarmament to all nations upon earth.” Thus spake the Russian high priest, and, this, indeed, is the great corner-stone of Russia’s political religion, the great end-all of her ambition, to which through all the ages her steps have restlessly tended. Call it mere religious superstition if you will. This ‘ ambition of the Muscovite, which is centred in the possession of the holy places—the cause before now of a mighty struggle—is allied to political strategy of a high order. For the occupasion of Palestine by Russia would mean the severance -in twain of the British Empire, her most formidable rival, and her capture of a position from which the hegemony of the world could hardly ' escape her. Not China, hut xearkk Hast.

Russians arc quite outspoken upon the subject of their ambitions. Only the other day a leading Russian journal was deprecating too deep an entanglement in China on the ground that Russia's interests were vastly greater and more vital in the near East. And on the occasion of the Easter ceremony 1 have described above the Russian priest pointed out, close to the spot where the holy fire is produced, a throne and footstool with the Russian Eagle earvetl thereon. This throne, lie declared, was always held ready for the great day of Muscovite triumph. : while the jewels and costly ceremonial maintained in the church were provided by the liberal and constant contributions of 'tbo Russian Royal Family. The pilgrims, who come from all parts of the Russian Empire, are encouraged to make the journey by every sort of inducement. Thus, in the country-side near Moscow, imitations of flic holy places have been devised to stir the onthuiasm of the people ; while liberal contributions from the Russian Government ancl from the Orthodox Society of Palestine enable the pilgrimage to be made at only a trilling personal expense. We shall make a dire mistake if we scoff at what looks to us like an element of romance in Russian policy here. To her it all has a very real meaning, and is being assisted by measures of an extremely practical and useful description. The big Russian monastery at Jerusalem, placed so as to command the whole city, is nothing else than a Inigo fortress in disguise, well known to be stored with arms and ammunition, brought thither at different times in small quantities and under various convenient disguises. Again, there is the church with the lofty tower on Blount Olivet, which one of the Grand Dukes came down to inaugurate with much pomp and ceremony some years back. The elevation of this erection has always seemed such an enigma. Rut men say that from the topmost platform of the tower a signal can be flashed into the Mediterranean. We should notice, too, that Russia has been constantly buying up land in Palestine, and it is somewhat strange what a

e preference slio has always exhibited for those spots whose strategical value the military instincts of former ages has emphasized by the erection of castle and ' fortalice. The secret but determined policy of liussia in the Levant supplies ns with a ready clue to that gigantic and mysterious piece of hypocrisy, the Czar's Peace Congress, by which specious pretence the most aggressive and militant Power in the , world did not blush to subserve its ends. ‘ The appearance of Germany in Syria , and Palestine was a sufficient blow to ; Russia by itself, but when it leaked out that the versatile Kaiser had conceived the brilliant idea of addressing to the nations of the world from the city of the Prince of Peace an appeal for general disarmament and the inauguration of an ora of universal peace on earth, tile statesmen of Russia at once took alarm at the certain moral effect of such a blow upon the political religion of the Russian people, Check to the Kaiser. Such a usurpation by the Kaiser of the ultimate destiny of the Czar in the Holy City had to be prevented at all costs. Consequently, without delay, they decided upon a premature rehearsal of the role which, in the fulness of time, is intended to be the great triumphant final act of Russia’s tremendous foreign polic3’. Russia’s sole object, be it remembered, oegan and ended with the issue of the Czar's proclamation to an astounded world. The Kaiser was anticipated, and his pilgrimage, deprived of this intended coup do theatre, was reduced to the level of a mere Cook’s tour. The farcical conference at the Hague was an unavoidable consequence, from which Russia reaped as much credit as possible. But while she laughed in her sleeve at her eager dupes, all desperately anxious to be deceived, she never once ceased to push on the increase of her armaments with the most barefaced j perseverance. The deadening conventionality of our modernised surroundings pre-eminently unfits our minds to grasp the almost romantic trend and evolution of international diplomacy and politics. And to the narrow-minded workaday world there is often little else than the attraction of a fairy story in that most wonderful of a ! romances —the destiny of the universe and the late of nations. Romantic as the details of my story may seem, they are nevertheless familiar facts to the inner arcana of British statesmanship, as well as to those wqo, like the writer, have had the advantage of studying this great question of the Levant by years of residence upon the promised scene of action. A daring attempt was made to blow up a powder magazine near Vienna. A man crept in to within ten yards of the magazine, when he was perceived by two sentries. both of whom fired, and lulled him on the spot. The war office authorities are making a thorough investigation of the cubicle system, which is adopted in the Rowton houses, with the object of applying it to the new barrack system contemplated in the Army Bill. The full strength of Great Britain’s Indian army is 1100,000 men. of whom 230,000 are native and 70,000 British soldiers. In addition to this military force there are about 20,000 enrolled European volunteers, and a native police, officered by white men, nearly 200,000 strong. Pine sawdust contains, when dried, 94 per cent, of oxalic acid, and oak 83 per cent.