THE AMERICAN PRESS ON THE OUTBREAK OF WAR.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXII, Issue 5044, 24 May 1877, Page 3

THE AMERICAN PRESS ON THE OUTBREAK OF WAR.

The h'nn Francisco Chronicle says :—The real purpose of the war which now seems to be certain between Russia and Turkey, is to secure a naval expansion for the former. Russia lias no outlet for communication with the rest of the world but the Baltic, and its ports there are usually frozen up in winter. Its dream for centuries has been commercial development in tiie Black Sea. But tile Turk, keeping watch and ward at the .Dardanelles, has stood in tlic way of its realisation. England has aided him, for she did not want so powerful a nation as Russia planted on the route to India. Austria, has inclined the same way, because it the Turks should be expelled from Europe, some of this European territory would fall to her share, which it is said would disturb the equilibrium between Slav and Magyar, which constitutes what is known as Austrian dualism. In a general sort of way Italy, because she lies wholly in the Mediterranean, and Franco, because she abuts upon it, sided with England and Austria, considering that Russia ought be an undesirable neighbor. It was for these reasons that three of these nations, England, France, and made common cause with the Turks in 1351, and laid siege to Sebastopol. But with the groat mass of the people who will deploy in line of battle, if war should really come, those commercial and material considerations will not have much weight. Perhaps in a general way it may be said that they are scarcely known to them. The exciting cries on one side will not he commercial expansion and free navigation of the

Black Sea, but Holy Russia and St. Sophia. In the Turkish Hues the slogan of battle will be that which has often resounded ominously through Europe —God is God, and Mohammed is Jtis prophet.” The ostensible cause of the war in 1854, according to Kiuglake, was a quarrel between the Greek and Batin monks at the Holy Sepulchre, in which the former suffered injustice at the hands of the Sultan, who is sovereign of Jerusalem and the Holy places. In like manner, the ostensible cause of the war now impending is the harsh treatment of the Greek or Christian subjects of the Caliphate. In this way a cause of quarrel which dates back to the tenth century bears fruit in the nineteenth. Lawrence, writing of the Greek Church, says ;—“ Its language is still that in which tile Gospels were written and Polycarp and Ignatius preached ; its melodious ritual reaches back to the days of Constantine and Athanasius.” It was the Church founded by Constantine when he set up the Eastern Empire at Constantinople. “ Under Justiuiau,” says the same author, “arose that tall and graceful dome of St. Sophia, the most wonderful of the inventions of the later architects, whose fair proportions still rise over the Moslem city and reproach the Eastern Church with the spectacle of its desecrated shrine." It was from this source that Russia derived its Christianity. Vladimir, in 988, who is described as a rude and simple savage, cruel and terrible, became a convert to the faith of Constantine. The Envoys of various religions argued their cases before him. “ The Mussulmans of the Volga,” it is written, “pressed him to believe in their prophet, the Western Christians in the Pope, the Jews in Moses, the Greek philosophers in Attic culture.” The ferocious ruler listened, but sent an embassy to Constantinople to observe the manners and the faith of the city of the Csesars. Their report induced the Sclavonic prince to get baptised. He then went to work to convert the people, hut by a system of proselytising not common in these days. He ordered the whole population of Ins capital of Kief to be immersed in the Hneiper, while priests read prayers on the banks. But not long after these events, Constantinople fell into the hands of the Turks, and St. Sophia was converted into a Mosque. “ Amidst the groans and cries,” writes Lawrence, “of the host of dyiugGreoks, Mohammed 11. strode up the blood - stained nave and proclaimed from its high altar the God and prophet of an accursed faith. A golden crescent was raised above the dome of St. Sophia. The Greek Church, fallen and powerless, yet wept over the desecration of its central shrine, as the chief of its humiliations; nor in all its wide domain is there to-day a priest or layman who does nof’remember that St. Sophia was torn from his ancestors by the savage Turk, or long for the day of its restoration. These are the sentiments which animate the vast hosts which the Czar lias been mustering for the onset. Moscow, since the fall of Constantinople, has been the sacred city of the Greek Church. In the Kremlin some of the glories of St. Sophia are reproduced. But it has never been regarded in any other light but as a f -muorary substitute for Constantinople. There, is no son of Rurik anywhere who does not fervently believe that the Cross is again to replace the Crescent on the central fane of his faith, and that Constantinople is to be the capital of Holy Russia. It is in this way that the tenth century comes to project itself into the nineteenth. A nine hundred year old quarrel is now, to all appearance, about to seek a final adjustment. But from the elements of fanaticism which so largely enter into it, the chances are that it will be prolonged till one side or the other is wholly exhausted. The Turk will fight with as much tenacity—perhaps, from the peculiarity of his religious belief, with more heroism than the Russian. But the weight of men and material of war is against him. The time for retirement of the Moslem from Europe has apparently arrived.