RUSSIA AND THE WAR IN TURKEY.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume IV, Issue 182, 22 September 1876, Page 12

RUSSIA AND THE WAR IN TURKEY.

I I The Eastern Question has at last led to the outbreak of a war, the extent or end of which it is not easy to foresee, unless Europe or England has made up its mind to sit down quietly whilst Russia carries out its long-cherished designs against the integrity of Turkey. The war which Servia has commenced alarms or disturbs the minds of statesmen to a far greater degree than it has as yet influenced public opinion in Europe. The hope is that the war will be localized, and an opinion has been industriously put about that its object is merely the redress of grievances suffered by Christians under Turkish misrule. But this optimist view of the war is by no means shared by the diplomatists and statesmen who have been so busy at work during the last few months either in promoting or attempting to avert the calamity which is now upon us. Prince Bismarck, for instance, sees that his work for the present is over, and he has retired to a German watering-place to nurse his health and to watch the turn of events. A like inaction attends the policy of France. War in Europe has its chances as well as its dangers for these two foes, who now stand apart — to borrow a Rimile from Mr. Disraeli — like exhausted volcanoes. We may be certain that the English Cabinet has but little hope that such a war as that now commenced will be, as its promoters pretend, localized. The real interests at stake, the real passions at work are such as to portend a European war in which, indeed, the antagonisms of race and religion will be invoked, and it is to be feared with too fatal a success, as a means for advancing designs of political aggrandizement. It is of the last importance that the English public should not for a moment allow their generous instincts and their natural sympathies to be entrapped on false pretences. The war to be waged against Turkey, it is pretended, is a war on behalf of Christians oppressed by the Mussulman, a war waged in the name of humanity, a war of nationalities. This pretext is a sham, a mere cloak to hide the ambitious designs of Russia. The insurrection in Turkey is not a rising of the native populations, but an insurrection fomented by Russian agents and carried on by adventurers from the districts of the adjoining States. Ever} means has bepn made use of by unscrupulous hands to render redress of the gri«#ances complained of impossible on the part of Turkey. Russii^. diplomacy has surpassed itself in duplicity during the last few months, for the sham attempts at pacification from the Andrassy Note to the Berlin Memorandum had but one object — the destruction of the Ottoman Empire. But for the action of England Russian diplomacy would have accomplished its designs, perhaps without war. Baffled by England's bold and honest policy, it wasfor a time doubtful whether Russia would submit with a good grace to the defeat it had suffered, or whether it would venture on the hazardous enterprise of letting loose Servia and Montenegro on Turkey. ' This time of doubt was diplomacy's opportunity, as future Blue-Books will amply testify. But diplomacy has failed, and Russia seeks to gain by force and bloodshed what it failed to obtain by the arts of duplicity. But its duplicity is not at an end, though war has begun; for now Russian agents are at work tohide the ugly and immoral ends of this unjust and cruel war. Men are to be made believe that this is no common war of political ambition but a holy crusade in which the Cross is to be raised against the Crescent ; it is to be a war of religion and race, but not a war in which the political interests of Europe are at all involved, for it is in no wise to alter the relations between the Great Powers. It may, indeed, excite the sympathies of Europe, but the sympathies of civilised Europe must all be on the side of the Christians, ground to dust under the rule of the barbarous Turk. Such is the language, in various modifications, addressed by the author of this, unjust and immoral war which may, and most likely will, before it

ends, bring about a general conflagration in Europe. What surprises us, however, is that political writers in England — writers like those in the ' Daily News,' for instance— should be so easily duped by the cunningly devised, watchwords that have been set up by Russia. Such want of common sense and sober judgment is most deplorable, at a time when public justice, international law, the rights of treaties, and the interests of England, and all that these involve, impose upon all the duty,, not only of condemning ; with one voice the policy of Russia, but of standing shoulder to shoulder in resisting its aggressive designs in what may, perhaps, prove as deadly a conflict as any in which England has ever been engaged. We will not stop now to inquire how far at the present moment Russia is a willing agent in the war, for which, during the time it was acting in agreement with its Northern Allies, it had prepared the way. It may be that it cannot now with safety control the hopes it has raised, the passions it has excited; baffled fanaticism has deposed or assassinated Czars as well as Sultans. But of all the characters which Ruesia has assumed in the pursuit of its designs upon Turkey, the one it has least title to, is that of defender of Christian Liberty. How can Russia have the unblushing effrontery to appear before Europe in such a character, when its hands are still red with the blood of the Catholics of Poland ? Does it think that Europe, that the Catholic World, has forgotten its sanguinary extermination of the Catholic religion, as far as its power went, in Poland ? At this moment Russia keeps in exile, working in the mines of Siberia, or dispersed in villages, no fewer than three hundred Polish Priests; last year these victims of Russian persecution numbered over four hundred, but, during the winter, one hundred died from, the cruel treatment which they were exposed to, from hunger and from forced marches through the plains of Siberia. The blood of these Polish priests calls to heaven for vengeance, and this inhuman persecution of the Catholics of Poland makes Russia's protest on behalf of the liberty of Christians in Turkey a mockery before God and Man.—' Westminster Gazette.'