Untitled article | AdventAI

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Third-day, September 24, 1867

FromAdvent Review and Sabbath Herald, Vol. XXX, No. 15

The Russian Ultimatum.

THE crisis in the Eastern question has come at last. The Ambassador of Russia at Constantinople, Ignatieff, as we learn by a special Cable dispatch to the Tribune, has, in the name of his Government, made a formal demand for the cession of Crete to Greece, and for the bestowal of equal rights upon all the Christian subjects of the Porte. These demands are declared to be the ultimatum of the Russian Government, and an answer is asked for within ten days.

Supposing the Cable dispatch to be entirely correct, as we have no doubt it is, the great turning point in the history of Eastern Europe has been reached. Whatever answer the Porte may give to the Russian ultimatum, the power of the last Mohammedan dynasty in Europe will be forever broken. Should the demand be granted, Crete be united with Greece, and the equality of political rights for Christians and Mohammedans be established, European Turkey, in which there are over 11,000,000 Christians against only 4,000,000 of Mohammedans, will at once assert itself as a predominantly Christian people, which will soon use this newly-gained influence for the establishment of its entire independence. A submission to the Russian demands involves, moreover, so great a humiliation that it will hardly prove any respite for the downfall of the Turkish rule; but Greece increased by Crete, and now governed by a king who is nearly related to the Czar, will at once make undisguised efforts for the annexation of the Southern Provinces of European Turkey, Thessaly and Epirus, in which the Greek race prevails, and for instigating the semi-independent princes of Roumania and Servia to co-operate with her in expelling the Turks from Europe, and in partitioning the European dominions of the Sultan. The Government of Constantinople is fully aware that no reforms whatever can prevent these movements from taking place, for they are now more than a struggle for religious equality; they are like the similar movements in Italy and Germany, the yearning of a nation for self-government and National Consolidation.

Will the Turkish Government, to which this character of the national movements among its Christian subjects is by no means unknown, gather up courage for precipitating the decisive contest? A single-handed war against Russia would, of course, be ended almost as soon as it was commenced. The only possible help for the Turks would again be foreign aid. The Governments of England, France, and Austria undoubtedly sympathize with Turkey against Russia; but will they dare to help Turkey? In England, since the Crimean war, the popular aversion to interference in foreign quarrels has been steadily on the increase, and it is not probable that the Tories are willing to defy this popular sentiment, now especially when the passage of the Reform bill has so largely strengthened the Radical party, which is almost a unit in its opposition to a new Eastern war. The emperors of Austria and France have but recently exchanged views on the present aspects of the Eastern question. The step now taken by Russia was undoubtedly anticipated, and formed one of the subjects of their conversations. If we could rely on the boastful language of some semi-official organs of the two Empires, France and Austria are determined to make a stand against a really aggressive policy of Russia in the East. Whether their boast will be carried out must soon become apparent. Any move of this kind on the part of Austria and France would at once bring Prussia to the side of Russia. Thus a war of the grandest dimensions may break out, with Turkey, Austria, and France on the one hand, and Russia and Prussia on the other.

The further development of this Russian-Turkish complication will be awaited with intense anxiety. If Turkey declines to comply with the Russian demand, and if Russia, in return, threatens with war, efforts will undoubtedly be made, as was the case before the German-Italian war, and in the Luxemburg question, to attempt a peaceable solution by a new European Congress. New delays may thus be caused, but the tide of events will not be turned. Isolated movements in European politics may be novel and surprising in their origin, and uncertain as to their end; side issues may for some time draw off attention from the great questions of the Old World, and lead to strange, ephemeral combinations; but the final goal toward which European society is drifting with irresistible force, appears in ever greater clearness to the eyes of the interested nations. We have no longer an isolated Italian, or German, or Austrian, or Turkish question, but one central question of the reconstruction of Europe. What wise seers predicted as many as fifty years ago, is now becoming a fact. The people which were so haughtily looked down upon and despised by the council of monarchs and statesmen at the Vienna Congress in 1815, have learned to understand its power. It summons the heirs of its oppressors before the bar of universal, eternal principles, and demands to know on what authority princes can dismember nations and dispose of them as of chattels, according to their will and pleasure. The decisions of 1815 are declared null and void; the right of every nation to restore its national unity is more and more acknowledged, and thus the way prepared for a reconstruction of all Europe on the basis of the nationality principle.—N. Y. Tribune.