LETTER FROM CONSTANTINOPLE.
The following letter we take from the Vallejo, Cal., Chronicle. It is written by a man of education, who is a close observer of European affairs. It is more than ordinarily interesting:— Constantinople, Nov. 28, 1879. Under ordinary circumstances it is not probable that the politics of Constantinople would possess any very great interest for the readers of your paper at Vallejo, but events are transpiring here which would seem likely to lead, ere long, to complications which will have a world-wide interest; for sooner or later Turkey must become again the battle-field of races and religions. It is here that the first collision between the East and the West must culminate—a collision to which the Turko-Russian war was a mere prelude. For no one here is so sanguine as to imagine that the Eastern question was settled at the Congress of Berlin, or that the treaty, which was its result, was more than a temporary expedient to patch up the question for the time, and afford the Powers chiefly interested in its solution opportunities for fresh combinations. Russia was exhausted; England was not ready; Germany was afraid of socialism; France was afraid of Germany; Austria was isolated, and all desired to postpone the evil hour—for all regard the possibilities of the future with apprehension and dismay, and yet all feel that a crash is inevitable, and that it behooves each to prepare for it. So England takes Cypress and Afghanistan. Russia meets her by advancing her legions into Central Asia, Germany and Austria strengthen themselves by a mutual alliance, and France husbands her resources and strains every nerve to increase her power for defense, and offense, if need be. Meantime Turkey, the theater upon which the great drama is to be played, is rapidly crumbling to pieces. Her exchequer is thinned to its utmost para, so that a week ago there was actually not enough money in the Palace to pay the butcher’s bill, and that worthy, tired of remaining longer out of pocket, refused the daily supply of meat, and the Sultan thus received a most indisputable testimony of the poverty of his resources. To-day we hear that the garrison of Galtipoli is without rations, and on the point of mutiny. Officers in the army have been arrested for trying to earn an honest penny by acting as posters in the street in full uniform, and justify their conduct by the fact that their wives and children are literally starving. The clerks in the public offices are dependent for their subsistence almost entirely upon bribes, and the final catastrophe cannot be postponed much longer. The country is in fact on the verge of revolution. A wide-spread feeling of discontent exists throughout the army and the navy, neither of which service has received any pay for nearly two years. The peasantry, Moslem and Christian alike, are tired of being squeezed for taxes, which are no sooner paid than more are called for, while the sums received by the Treasury are at once appropriated by its numerous and voracious creditors. Bankers are getting tired of advancing loans, for already every source of revenue is pledged and hypothecated, and there is no more security to be found. Meantime the Sultan has come under solemn engagements to reform his administration, but there is no money with which to inaugurate such reforms. There is one active insurrection going on in Kurdutan, which the Government is powerless to repress. The whole of Armenia is a prey to brigandage and violence, which renders existence there almost insupportable. In Europe border warfare is perpetually going on upon the Greek frontier. The Albanians have formed a league for their independence, and only remain quiet because the Turkish Government refrains from exercising its authority, and allows the people to be as lawless as they please. The foreign consuls at Prisrend, the chief town in Albania, have for weeks past been prisoners in their own houses, and are unable even to venture into the streets, having been threatened with assassination should they dare to do so. In all parts of the Empire the elements of disturbance are seething, and when the explosion comes, the Foreign Powers will be compelled to interpose. Then will come the struggle for the fragments. Servia, Bulgaria and Montenegro already threaten to form a league, in defiance of the Treaty of Berlin, to resist the advance of Austria. Austria will push foward for Salonica and the Ægean, possibly for Constantinople itself. Albania and Eastern Roumania will make a strike for their independence; Greece will overflow its borders into Thessaly and Epirus, where it will find itself in collision with Albania. The Slavs, the Greeks and the Latins, all antagonistic, will struggle for the supremacy, while the Moslems will find themselves opposed to all three, and driven to a war of desperation for existence. Thus the whole of Turkey in Europe will be turned into a battle-field, on which it is impossible now to predict how the opposing parties will range themselves, or what will be the result. One thing alone seems certain, and that is that the Moslem rule in Europe will terminate. In Asiatic Turkey matters will not be much better. Prussia geographically barred from interference in the affairs of European Turkey, and politically unable to meet the combinations formed by the Treaty of Berlin against her there, will direct her attention to resist the advance of England in Asia Minor, and endeavor to occupy Syria and Palestine, thereby securing a seaport on the Mediterranean and threatening Egypt and the highway to India. England will meet it by the expedition of troops to Cypress and by the creation of an army composed of the warlike population of Syria and Asia Minor organized under British officers. It is probable too that France, finding her interests in Syria threatened, will ally herself with England in this region, or she may seek to obtain guarantees for them from Russia by peaceable means, on condition of her abstaining from the quarrel. The future battle-field between England and Russia will be the plains and highlands of Syria and all things tend to show that the day of the conflict cannot be very remote. It is probable that Germany will take advantage of the moment when Russia has her hands full in the East to obtain possession of the German provinces on the Baltic, which still remain outside of German unity, and upon which Prince Bismarck has long cast covetous eyes. We are now in the lull before the storm. The traveler arriving here, and finding in Constantinople the quintessence of all that is dull, dirty, monotonous and disagreeable, can with difficulty realize that it may before long become the center of the ponderous struggle which is destined to shake the old world to its foundation.