Russia and Turkey by Uriah Smith

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Nov 7, 1871

Russia and Turkey.

By Uriah Smith

A CORRESPONDENT from Boston sends us the following significant paragraph clipped from an eastern paper:

“The determination of the Russian government to call in all its officers and soldiers who are on furlough, in order to test the efficiency of its new military organization, will excite alarm in Germany, and revive both in England and Turkey the suspicion that Russia still contemplates the conquest of European Turkey.”

Mr. G. A. Townsend (Old World and New, p. 583) says:

“A large portion of the people of Turkey, all the Greeks, Cretans, and other islanders are Greek Christians, which is one of the three great Christian families. They want to build up the Christian Confederation of Greece, to include the whole of Turkey, and drive the Turk into Asia again. In this desire they have only two friends, Russia and the United States; because the Catholic powers have no more sympathy with the Greek church than with the Mohammedan. The Russian royal family invariably intermarry with Protestant Princes. It is for this Panhellenic idea that all south-eastern Europe is in ferment, and on this question all Europe may be involved in war. Western Europe fears in the expulsion of the Turk the advance of Russia to the Mediterranean.”

But Western Europe is, through the humiliation of France, in no condition now to check the advance of Russia against Turkey. Hence we look for significant events in that quarter. U. S.