AMERICAN INFLUENCE IN THE EAST.

Patea Mail, 25 January 1881, Page 4

AMERICAN INFLUENCE IN THE EAST.

According to the Turkish Vakit the American Government is about to place its army and its navy at the disposal of the Sultan, in order to enable him to punish the European Powers for interfering in the affairs of the Ottoman Empire. That report is too preposterous even to deceive the Turks; but according to the correspondent of the New York Herald, who is now travelling in the Balkan peninsula, the influence of America is much more considerable in the East than is commonly supposed. He says that the original authors of the idea of the Big Bulgaria, which filled the late Government with such ungovernable indignation, were the American missionaries at Constantinople, who suggested it to General Ignatieff 12 months before he embodied it in the

Treaty of San Stefano. Not only did the notion of a Bulgaria including within its boundaries all the Bulgarian race, originate in an American brain, but the present constitution of the Bulgarian principality was practically remodelled by an American war correspondent. The project transmitted to Tirnova from St Petersburg for the approval of the Bulgarian constituent assembly, was totally recast by the Bulgarian deputies in compliance with the advice of a General Grant, an American who was acting as correspondent to the Times in those regions. This circumstance, combined with the influence exerted by the Robert College at Constantinople, the circulation of the American newspaper the Zarnitza, and the labours of the American missionaries, lead the correspondent of the New York Herald to declare, on the authority of an English friend, that there are only two parties in Bulgaria, the Russian and the American, and that the American have now the best of it.