WHY ENGLAND HESITATES

International Religious Liberty Association · Chicago, Illinois · Jun 28, 1900

FromThe American Sentinel, The Sentinel of Liberty, Vol. 15, No. 25.

WHY ENGLAND HESITATES.

“The times have been when such an advantage as Russia has gained by the virtual admission of her influence over the whole northern part of the Turkish Empire,” says Mr. Brice, to say nothing of the advantage she is now gaining in China, “would have filled the English with alarm and aroused them to opposition. Even so late as 1878, Lord Salisbury’s Anglo-Turkish convention bound England to defend by arms the Turkish frontiers against the Czar. But England is now so absorbed in her South African troubles as to have no thought of those interests in the Orient which were lately held so precious.”

From Mr. Brice’s viewpoint at the time he wrote, “sudden and startling as this change in English policy is, it” did not seem to him then a thing to be regretted. “It had become impossible,” he says, “for England to support the Turks, and it was impossible for her to replace their bad government by a better one of her own. She was too far off—she has her hands already too full in other places. She may see without disquiet the partitionment of Asia Minor between Germany and Russia, for she was not in a position to claim a share, even would it have been to her interest to do so. Egypt, which she has got already, which she has done much to improve, and which she seems now likely to keep, is really a burden rather than a source of strength. The influence of Germany cannot fail to better the lot of the unfortunate Christian subjects of the Turk, nor will she show herself unfriendly to American missions and to Western education, as the Russians sometimes do. And if England wishes to keep Russia from coming down to the coasts of the Levant, the interposition of Germany is, from the English point of view, to be regarded as an absolute gain.”

“These, however,” he concludes, “may be deemed minor matters. The great fact which stands out is the admission which Russia has at last secured of her exclusive influence over the whole northeast of the Turkish dominions, and the acquiescence of her three old antagonists of Crimean War days. France is silent, because she must have the alliance of Russia at all costs. England is silent for the reasons already set forth. Austria and Italy follow Germany, and Germany has got her own share. We seem at last to see, in dim foreshadowings of the future, the outlines of a settlement of that ‘Eastern Question’ which has so grievously perplexed English and Continental statesmen for more than a century.”