EASTERN AFFAIRS | AdventAI

The Seventh-Day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Nov 20, 1879

FromThe Advent Review and Sabbath Herald, Vol. 54, No. 21

EASTERN AFFAIRS.

BEACONSFIELD, in his speech at the Lord Mayor's banquet Nov. 10, preserved a marked reticence in regard to the Eastern question, though this is a subject on which there is universal curiosity. A St. Petersburg journal does not hesitate to say that his silence marked his failure at Constantinople. The dogged persistence of the Turks in refusing or neglecting to carry out the reforms recommended by the British government, leads the Christian Weekly of Nov. 15 to say:—

The “sick man's” case is again attracting European anxiety. The promised reforms in Asiatic Turkey have not been carried out. Turkish supineness or hostility has stood in the way. Patience has ceased to be longer a virtue, and England now notifies the Porte that the requirements of the Berlin treaty must no longer be a dead letter. A crisis is imminent. Whether the patient has vitality enough to withstand another vigorous treatment is more than doubtful.

THE Christian sentiment of England is again shocked by the appointment as governor of the provinces in South Africa conquered in the recent war against the Zulus of an apostate Englishman. Certainly a man deserves such a stigma who has been converted to heathenism, and is living, like the heathen about him, with a score of wives. Of course, he is an enemy of Christianity and of missionary efforts, and it is not surprising that one of his first official acts is—a decree that missionaries will not be tolerated in that country. We much mistake the character of Bible-loving Englishmen if they do not demand that the government shall at once remove one who, as their representative, is a disgrace to Christianity and civilization.—Christian Weekly.

THE alarm which, it is reported, is felt in Belgium at the commencement of work upon the immense fortifications upon her borders, is not ill-timed. But what can that power do about it, or to avert the fate which these vast military works so situate as to be turned upon her, presage? Her attitude, like that of the other lesser powers, is, perforce, simply that of waiting for events and possibly accepting the situation, which signifies waiting to be absorbed so soon as it can be arranged among the great powers how that shall be done.—Inter-Ocean.