THE EASTERN WAR by Uriah Smith

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Oct 18, 1877

THE EASTERN WAR.

By Uriah Smith

A ruler stronger than Turk or Russian, more powerful than armies or empires, has bidden the belligerents of the East suspend, for a time, their active hostilities. The approach of winter is considered virtually to have closed the present campaign, and postponed all further essential movements till spring.

The close of the season’s operations finds both parties in a position that precludes all prospect of peace till the condition of one or the other shall be materially changed. Turkey will not accept mediation, since, encouraged by recent successes, she hopes for better terms in the end than mediation would now be likely to secure. And Russia will not accept of mediation, as she is unwilling to have the struggle close with the shadow of disaster and defeat in any measure resting on her arms. Meanwhile events are preparing the way for larger claims on the part of Russia as indemnity for the treasures of means and blood which the struggle has cost, when she shall gain that ascendency in the war which she seeks and expects.

Nothing has thus far occurred to throw any particular uncertainty over the issue of this gigantic contest. The results indicated in the extracts which we present below, though for a while postponed, are rendered none the less improbable.

The first is an extract from the will of Peter the Great of Russia, as published in the London Times:—

FROM THE WILL OF PETER THE GREAT.

“9. We must progress as much as possible in the direction of Constantinople and India. He who can once get possession of these places is the real ruler of the world. With this view we must provoke constant quarrels at one time with Turkey, and at another with Persia. We must establish wharfs and docks in the Euxine, and by degrees make ourselves masters of that sea as well as of the Baltic, which is a doubly important element in the success of our plan. We must hasten the downfall of Persia, push on to the Persian Gulf, and if possible re-establish the ancient commercial intercourse with the Levant through Syria, and force our way into the Indies, which are the store-houses of the world. Once there, we can dispense with the English gold.”

OPINION OF NAPOLEON BONAPARTE.

The remarks of Napoleon I. on the Turkish crisis, expressed while an exile in St. Helena, are as follows:—

“In the course of a few years, Russia will have Constantinople, part of Turkey, and all Greece. This I hold to be as certain as if it had already taken place; all the cajolery and flattery that Alexander practiced upon me was to gain my consent to effect that object. I would not give it, foreseeing that the equilibrium of Europe would be destroyed. In the natural course of things Turkey must fall to Russia; the powers it would injure, and who would oppose it, are England, France, Austria, and Prussia. Now, as to Austria, it would be very easy to secure her assistance by giving her Servia, and other provinces bordering on the Austrian dominions, reaching near to Constantinople. The only hypothesis upon which France and England will ever be allied with anything like sincerity will be to prevent this; but even this alliance will not avail. France, England, and Prussia united cannot prevent it. Russia and Austria can at any time effect it; once mistress of Constantinople, Russia gets all the commerce of the Mediterranean, becomes a great naval power, and God knows what may happen. The object of my invasion of Russia was to prevent this, by the interposition between her and Turkey of a new State which I meant to call into existence as a barrier to her eastern encroachments.”

Nothing could more plainly show the great sagacity and far-reaching policy of Napoleon, than the foregoing statements read in the light of the events now occurring in the East.

The following items of history throw some additional light on the course and aims of Russia.

RUSSIAN DESIGNS.

“In 1696, Peter the Great wrested the sea of Azof from the Turks, and kept it. Next, Catharine the Great won the Crimea. In 1812, by the peace of Bucharest, Alexander I. obtained Moldavia and the prettily named province of Bessarabia, with its apples, peaches, and cherries. Then came the great Nicholas, who won the right of the free navigation of the Black Sea, the Dardanelles and the Danube, but whose inordinate greed led him into the Crimean war, by which he lost Moldavia, and the right of navigating the Danube, and the unrestricted navigation of the Black Sea.”

“This was, no doubt, a severe repulse to Russia, but it did not extinguish the designs upon the Ottoman power, nor did it contribute in any essential degree to the stability of the Ottoman empire. Patiently biding her time, Russia has been watching and waiting, and in 1870, when all the western nations were watching the Franco-Prussian war, she announced to the powers that she would be no longer bound by the treaty of 1856, which restricted her use of the Black Sea; and since that time that sea has been as it was one thousand years ago, to all intents and purposes, a mare Russicum.”

England has every pecuniary and worldly motive to make the prospect for Turkey as favorable as possible; yet England is forced to admit that the odds are against her as shown by the following:—

TURKEY OVERMATCHED.

“LONDON, June 5.—The Times, in a leading article, says: So far as can be judged the fortune of war will be adverse to the Turks. The operations may not have the rapidity of recent wars, but the Turks are overmatched and must succumb in the end. This catastrophe Europe will accept. No nation will go to war again to support that which cannot be supported. No real statesman will cling to the dead element in a system instead of looking for its living forces. We know we must seek for that which is to replace the parting power. To this we cannot too soon direct our attention.”

Will not other powers come to the assistance of the Turks, as in 1798, in 1838, and in 1853, and help her out of her present struggle? A dispatch from London some months since foreshadowed the neutral policy of England in the following words:—

“England has never undertaken to interfere in the concerns of the continent without continental allies. There is no good ground for believing that we should have real support from any power in a war for the defense of the Turkish state.”

A later, and more official statement, as published in the San Francisco Daily Post, reads as follows:—

“It is stated that Minister Layard informed the Porte that England had guaranteed the integrity and independence of the Ottoman empire only under the conditions laid down by the treaties stipulating for the exercise of control by the powers. The Porte having contested this right has forfeited the benefits guaranteed by these treaties, and England could not intervene with arms in its behalf.”

France has taken a similar position of neutrality. The prophecy says that this king of the north of Dan. 11:40–45, which many at the present time even of different denominations, agree in applying to the Turkish power, shall come to his end and none shall help him. The “help” is certainly so far withheld, and his end cannot be far in the future.

A dispatch from Washington to the Daily Graphic of New York, speaking of Russia’s operations in the East says:—

“The occupation of Armenia also means eventually the total destruction of the Ottoman power.”

U. S.