DWINDLING TURKISH EMPIRE.

King Country Chronicle, Volume III, Issue 118, 24 December 1908, Page 3

DWINDLING TURKISH EMPIRE.

It is difficult to tell which is the more wonderful story —how Turkey once grew, or how Turkey is now shrinking. The Ottomans were once a tiny clan---a clan of nomads- -with their camping ground in Khorasan. In the thirteenth century they were squeezed out by the Mongol wave, and drifted to Armenia. The secret of their strength lay partly in a certain fighting genius, but chiefly in the fact that the ra<"e is the channel through which the strong wine of Mohammedanism has flowed. History- -or, rather, tradition--reports that thirty-five Sultans followed the original founder of the Ottoman Empire -a male line without a break; and it is certain thatafter six centuries the political heirs of the chief of that tiny clan stand lord over wide territories and diverse races.

But the Ottoman Empire of today is a fast dwindling thing. Its boundaries once stretched from the Danube to the cataracts of the Nile, from the Euphrates to the borders of Morocco; but there has been a long, tragical, and even quickning ebb in the tide of Turkish history. One great province after another broke loose from the Turkish Empire: Hungary in 1723, Bessarabia in 1770, Roumania in 1577, Servia and Montenegro in 1878. Greece in 1529, etc. It is easy to analyse the forces which have led to the disintegration of an Empire. The Mohammedanism which was once the strength of Turkey is now its political weakness. How can a non-Christian power be allowed to hold in subjection wide territories in Christian Europe? Turkey, again, has had the misfortune to hold under its flag wide stretches of sea-coast which arc essential to the development of some of the great European Powers. The disintegration of Turkey is a quickening process. Turkey has lost Egypt owing to English policy, Algiers and Tunis by French policy. Algiers has belonged to France since 1830, Tunis has been practically a French province since ISSI. The Berlin Congress of IS7B, while in one sense it saved Turkey for the moment from utter overthrow, yet threw her Balkan provinces into the melting pot. Roumania and Servia became independent kingdoms; the independence of Montenegro was recognised, Austria took Bosnia and Herzegovina under her protection ; Bulgaria was cutoff, enlarged, and made h tributary principality under the guarantee of the Great Powers ; Greece was allowed to absorb Thessaly. As a result, Turkey in Europe today consists merely of a strip of territory stretching from the Black Sea to the Adriatic, and squeezed in betwixt Greece and the Balkans. Its European territory simply includes ancient I Tharce, Macedon, Epirus, and Illyria