The Eastern Question by B. E. Connerly

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park, Washington, D. C. · May 23, 1912

The Eastern Question

By B. E. Connerly

B. E. CONNERLY

DURING the past half-decade the ever-changing Ottoman régime in European politics has so affected the territories of the eastern Mediterranean basin that the present aspect of the Eastern question, as it centers in the Near East, has been somewhat changed.

For years it has been the studied foreign policy of the great powers to divide and appropriate the decadent Moslem countries, but, notwithstanding the alarming decrepitude of the Ottoman empire (which has for fifty years been known as the Sick Man of the East), there has not been a time when the Turkish empire could have been dismembered by the jealous powers without the greatest danger of involving all Europe in a great and calamitous war of conquest. Thus, ostensibly for the peace of Christendom, the powers, at great cost to themselves, have supported the Sublime Porte in its European capital on the Golden Horn.

True, the Young Turks have made great reforms in their country, but the Eastern question is not settled. This Ottoman question, now latent, now open, is viewed by diplomats with uncertainty and alarm. Statesmen, journalists, and students of prophecy know well that the danger-point of the world's peace still lies in western Asia. Properly read, the signs of the times indicate that this struggle of more than a thousand years between European Catholics and Asiatic Mohammedans—a struggle without parallel in the annals of human warfare—will not cease until all Europe and Asia are forced into the impending interracial life-and-death struggle for the supremacy of the world. And this for three reasons:—

First, Europe is politically divided into two groups,—Germany, Austria, and Italy, known as the Triple Alliance; and France, England, and Russia, the triple entente,—the one hostile to the interests of the other in Mohammedan territory, and thus practically giving Turkey a balance of power in all European schemes of aggression in the Levant.

Second, the wary Turk has finally awakened to the fact that by the European brotherhood of nations he is considered as only a dusky foreign infidel, and that whatever help has been offered during his decrepitude has had as an object the widening of their already overlapping spheres of influence in his territory. But the Turk sees forces of untold strength beyond the limited confines of Europe organizing for a desperate conflict, and the recently adopted proposition, "Asia for the Asiatics," is rapidly becoming a Turkish slogan. Today, after two years of constitutional liberty, the Turk dares to propose a foreign policy of his own, and suggests that Turkey become a power to be reckoned with on the chess-board of world politics.

Third, there is a mighty awakening in the Mohammedan world; and 210,000,000 followers of the desert prophet in Europe, Africa, and Asia propose to restore Islam to her former glory. These are ready to follow the star and crescent, and to make Turkey to the West what Japan is to the East.

But Turkey is not again to become a world power. She has in a remarkable manner fulfilled prophecy, till today only the great climax remains, in which the Ottoman empire is to be a prime factor in preparing the way of the "kings of the East" to join in that great intercontinental struggle.

How interesting is the study of the Eastern question! Mohammedanism's long and desolating career has minutely responded to the voice of prophecy, and now the storm is brewing. The shadow of Europe that is stealthily creeping over Asia is to be met with terrible resistance. Soon the Ottoman problem is to be forever settled. In this great drama the nations have played well their part. Arabia, Egypt, Persia, Russia, England, and France have followed the lines foretold. Soon Turkey and the other warring nations will meet their Waterloo, and this wicked world its Armageddon.

Cristobal, Canal Zone.