THOSE TURKS.

Patea Mail, 13 November 1880, Page 2

THOSE TURKS.

The trouble with Turkey about the cession of territory to Montenegro is not at an end. The cession of a new frontier to Greece is a trouble that is only beginning. The combined fleet has done

nothing, except combine. The Turks see that as a menace the fleet is ineffective, for its presence in the Mediterranean has no effect on a lazy, sulky, cunning, deadly-lively Government such as that which misgoverns and blights the fairest portion of Europe and Asia Minor. The combined fleet has seized no ships, has bombarded no towns, has taken no obstreperous pashas under arrest. What has it done ? What was it intended to do ? The Turks have been coerced before, and will probably have to be coerced again. They stick like political leeches, and have to be treated according to their kind. Governing Turks yield to nothing but force. The average population is virtuous, frugal, and thrifty after a lazy spiritless fashion : but their rulers are a development of the unfittest, and all enterprise withers under their bloodsucking oppression. The Ottoman Empire is the “ Sick Man” of Europe. He cannot be cured, and must not bo killed. The political doctors consult about his “ case,” and prescribe different remedies. All their remedies cannot be tried, and so the patient lingers on because the doctors do not agree to give him one drastic dose. If they try a blister, some of the consulting physicians stipulate that it must be a mild one, or his constitution will give way. They are trying a mild blister now, and it seems to distress the doctors more than the patient. He is in a comatose condition, a sort of death-sleep in which the pulse beats sluggishly, but docs not quite stop. He is too feeble for rough treatment, and is too much alive to be left to die outright. His is a very chronic malady—may last for centuries: is likely to last as long as the political physicians of Europe continue jealous of each other’s u practice.”