The Kumara Times. Published Every Evening. WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 13, 1878.

Kumara Times, Issue 432, 13 February 1878, Page 2

The Kumara Times. Published Every Evening. WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 13, 1878.

If Reuter's despatches published by us to day are to be depended upon, the Eastern Question has assumed a phase which, we venture to say, no diplomatist or journalist has had the penetration to anticipate or the courage to predict. It simply amounts to this that Russia and Turkey, yesterday sworn enemies grappling each other by the throat, are to-day firm allies, and have arrayed their joint armies against Western and Central Europe. This, we say, if the Associated Press telegrams are to be depended upon, is the present state of affairs, and the change of front is sufficiently startling to take, as it were, one’s breath away. Pending fuller Intelligence the question can only be treated of speculatively; and it at once presents itself in two distinct lights—one as to the probability of the correctness of the news, and the other, assuming it to be correct, as to the immediately impending consequences. Taking the message as a whole there is, it appears to us, internal evidence that, if, not absolutely correct in every detail, it has sufficient basis. There is in the first' place the general statement that “ there are rumors of a close alliance between Turkey and Russia, assuring the Protocol,” followed by the specific one that “Gortschakoff has notified to the Powers that consequent upon England sending its fleet to Siamboul for the protection of Christians, Russia will occupy the shore defences for the same object." In connection with these there is the positive, and, under the circumstances, very significant statement that “the Porte his directed all foreign officers in its service to resign, and the fact that a combined English, French, German, Austrian, and Italian fleet is assembling at Stamtoul. Now, as Russia:could hot at

this juncture occupy the shore defences of Constantinople without the connivance of the Porte, and as the dismissal of all foreign officers in the Turkish service is, on the face of it, at the instigation of the Czar—these facts, we repeat, taken in conjunction with the naval movements in the Mediterranean, must be received as internal evidence tending to prove the correctness of the assumption that Russia and Turkey are about to make, or rather have already made, common cause against the other Great Powers of Europe. The limited space at our disposal will not permit us to-day to enter minutely into the external evidences of the probability of such an offensive alliance; but in a general way it may be presumed that Russia, having Turkey at her feet, has conceived—or would it be more correct to say, matured I —the idea of holding out to the Porte the alternative of extermination, or such an alliance as is indicated in our telegrams. Duplicity is another name for Russia diplomacy; the Turk, we all know, has been aptly described as “unspeakable;” and, taking into consideration that it has long been a mere matter of time as to whether Constantinople should fall into the hands of an Eastern or a Western Christian European Power, there are more unlikely things than that the Porte, having Hobson’s choice, should have acceded to the Czar’s ambitious and peremptory demands. The results of such an alliance no man can foretell. The contest—for contest there must be—may prove short, sharp, and decisive, or it may be extended beyond the limits of any war of which the present generation has personal cognizance. The struggle will be for the possession of Constantinople. So far as its present occupiers are concerned the fiat has gone forth. For whatever fliag may henceforth wave over the palace of the Sultans, the day is fast approaching when the Osraanli shall have departed from the fairest portion ot Europe polluted by their presence, and when the melancholy chant of the muezzin will no longer be heard from the minarets of the temples, of the Father of the Faithful. . It may be that in time to come the Cross of St. George will wave from the Eastern, as it now does from the Western g‘ite of the great tideless highway to the East; it may be that Autocrats of Russia will in the future, as they have been in the past, be crowned beneath the dome of St. Sophia; but whether Briton, Russian, Frank, or Teuton hold the keys of Asia on the Bosphorus, Ichabod is written against the doors of the followers of Mahomet, and the place that now knows them will soon know them no more.