DRYING UP | AdventAI

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Aug 22, 1878

DRYING UP.

The gradual “shrinkage” of Turkey, in spite of British support and sympathy, is well presented in the following from the Philadelphia Public Ledger:—

“Any one who will take the trouble to look at a map of Turkey in Europe dating back about sixty years, and compare that with the new map sketched by the treaty of San Stefano as modified by the Berlin Congress, will be able to form a judgment of a march of progress that is pressing the Ottoman power out of Europe. Then, the northern boundary of Turkey extended to the Carpathian Mountains, and eastward of the river Sereth it embraced Moldavia as far north nearly as the 47th degree of north latitude. That map embraced also what is now the kingdom of Greece. It covered all of Servia and Bosnia. But by the year 1830 the northern frontier of Turkey was driven back from the Carpathians to the south bank of the Danube; the principalities of Moldavia and Wallachia being emancipated from Turkish domination, and subject only to the payment of an annual tribute in money to the Porte. South of the Danube, the Servians had won a similar emancipation for their country. Greece also had been enabled to establish her independence. Then, as recently, the Turk was truculent and obstinate. Russia and Great Britain proposed to make Greece a tributary state, retaining the sovereignty of the Porte. This was refused, and the result was the utter destruction of the powerful Turkish fleet at Navarino, and the erection of the independent kingdom of Greece. Thus Turkey in Europe was pressed back on all sides. Now, the northern boundary, which was so recently at the Danube, has been driven south to the Balkans. Roumania and Servia have ceased even to be tributary, and have taken their place among independent States. Bosnia has gone under the protection of Austria, as Roumania did under that of Russia, in 1829. ‘Rectified’ boundaries give Turkish territory to Servia, Montenegro, and Greece. Bulgaria takes the place of Roumania as a self-governing principality, having no dependence on the Porte, and paying only an annual tribute. Even south of the Balkans the power of the Turk is crippled, for Roumelia is to have ‘home rule’ under a Christian governor. And so again the frontier of Turkey in Europe is pressed back on all sides, until the territory left is but the shadow of what it was sixty years ago. To produce this result has been the policy and the battle of Russia for more than half a century; for nearly that space of time it has been the struggle of some of the other ‘powers’ to maintain the ‘integrity’ of the Turkish empire. Which policy has succeeded, and which failed, the comparison of maps at intervals of twenty-five years will show. Turkey in Europe has been shriveled up in the last half century. It is shrinking back and back toward Asia, and, though all the ‘powers’ but Russia should unite their forces to maintain the Ottoman system in Europe, there is a manifest destiny visible in the history of the last fifty years that must defeat them.”