From The Fortnightly Review. THE FUTURE OF ASIATIC TURKEY.

of Turkey 'which the war has brought about. Her treasury is now empty, and having lost her credit she can no longer borrow in the West. Her richest territories have been ravaged by war, and in many parts denuded of their inhabitants. A considerable part of them is lost forever. The conscription has in Asia been scarcely less ruinous than the war in Europe. Nearly the whole male Mohammedan population of military age has been carried off, most of them to perish on Bulgarian or Roumelian battle-fields, others to return home sick or wounded, many to be scattered through districts whence they will fail to find their way back to their own villages. The fields are lying untilled: the industries of peace have stopped: just when the need for taxes is greatest, the springs of taxation have run dry. If the army is kept on foot, how is it to be paid? If it is disbanded, the soldiers dispersed over the country may become a dangerous element, the raw material for brigands whom there will be no regular force to hold in check. Turkey is threatened with a paralysis of the most necessary machinery of government from the want of money to support the civil officials, the police, the troops, all of whom were, even before the war, inadequate and underpaid.

BEHIND all the discussions, controversies, and recriminations to which the war in the East and the treaty of San Stefano have given rise, behind all the schemes for the deliverance of Slavs or Greeks, for the aggrandizement of Russia or the protection of England, there stands one question, for the moment cast into the shade and almost forgotten, but sure to reappear ultimately as the widest and gravest of all the questions which civilized Europe has to confront. That question is, What is to become of the territories left to the Turks? Whether a war comes now between England and Russia or not, and whatever may be the issue of such a war if it does come, this question will only be adjourned, but not solved. After war, peace must return some day, and as surely as peace returns, so surely will this question press itself forward for solution. Longer delay will make it none the easier nor smaller. Some part of Europe -a bit of Thrace, probably Bosnia and part of Epirus and Macedonia will remain under the immediate rule of the sultan. All his Asiatic dominions, except a slice of Armenia, are apparently to be left untouched. What is to be the condition of these vast and noble territories? Is it desirable, is it even possible, to do anything to improve the government of them and prevent their wretch-time rested more upon opinion and habit edness from being in the future, as it has been for so long in the past, a scandal to the world, a ground for interferences by one or other of the neighboring powers, a source of jealousy which may at any time break out into open war?

To put the difficulty thus is, indeed, to understate it. For in one respect the condition of the subjects of Turkey, Mohammedan as well as Christian, is likely to be far worse now than it has been heretofore. The incurable vice of Turkish sway has been rather its weakness than its wickedness. It is not the laws that have been most in fault, but their administration; and it was not want of will nearly so much as want of strength that made their administration so bad. Now this weakness will necessarily increase with that total collapse of the military and civil resources

An evil not less serious remains. The government of the Porte has for a long

than upon material force. Travellers have often expressed their surprise that there was not greater disorder in a country where the means of repressing it were so slender, and have concluded that it was the traditional awe inspired by the name of the sultan, and the veneration that had come down from the great days of conquest, which secured such measure of obedience as was rendered to the laws. If these feelings are not utterly destroyed, they must have been grievously shaken by the events of the last year. The knowl edge that a crushing blow has been dealt to the padishah, that he has submitted to harsh terms, that sacred Stamboul lies at the mercy of the conqueror, cannot long be kept concealed, even from the most remote and ignorant part of the subject populations, from the Druses of Lebanon,

from the Bedouin of the desert, from the | take the place of the pillage which was savage tribes of Kurdistan. One may well organized, and more or less regularized unfear an increasing encouragement to law-der the name of taxation? What is passlessness, a more terrible disorganization of ing in Epirus and Thessaly proves that all the structure of civil society. Already already the pashas in the local administrathe signs are not wanting, both in Albania tion are obliged to let the Bashi-Bazooks and in Bulgaria, and in more than one re- do what they like with the Christian popugion of Asia, that an outbreak of the pas-lation. But this is but the beginning, for sions of plunder and religious hatred is at hand which may plunge whole provinces into anarchy. For it has been a most deplorable, though a most natural result of the past struggle, to embitter every animosity of faith and race.

such as Europe can with difficulty conceive. But with these primitive races the progress even of dissolution is so slow that it may still be averted if the civilized nations of Europe take up the government before the total failure of the Turkish rule is felt."

as the fact comes home to the people generally that the sultan has been overthrown, and as the extenuation and the demoralization of his government is brought to its fullest extent by the natural course of the malady, i.e., by the prostration inevitable The impending danger cannot be better after the feverish energy with which the described than in the words of a letter Turks have struggled during the past six lately received by the present writer from months, the half-subjected races will rean acute and experienced observer (neither assert their independence, the authorities Englishman nor Russian), who has lived will have less vigor to make head against long in Turkey: "I follow with interest local disorganization, and the whole empire any movement which bids for a prepara- will by degrees sink into a state of dissotion against that collapse into utter bar-lution of all social and political restraint barism and blank anarchy which menaces the whole of Turkey, where there is not some foreign authority introduced in the place of that hard and petrifying rule which was, however, in one sense government, and did restrain the worst excesses of the worst of the barbarians. This is all that could be said for the Turkish government. Bad as it was, it will be worse for all the subject lands if the Koord and the Circassian, the Bey and the Bashi Bazook are allowed, with all their awe of Stamboul removed, to work their will on the classes of the population always under terror and never accustomed to self-defence. No one who has not known the rayah of various races on the spot, can imagine the utter helplessness of these wretched people, and their incapacity for offering any resistance to the least for midable of their old oppressors. The negroes in the Southern States of America were hardly more devoid of manhood. You know what they are in Asia, and I know them of several races in Europe; but does England in general conceive what is likely to be the fate of all those provinces which are not to be occupied by Austria, Russia, or some other strong government, now that the moral influence of the sultan has been destroyed, how pillage by every one that has strength to pillage will

These anticipations (one hopes they may be overcharged, but those who know Turkey best, will be least disposed to make light of them) apply equally to European and to Asiatic Turkey. It is, however, only of Asiatic Turkey that I propose to speak: not only because it now forms a far larger problem (seeing how much the European dominions of the Porte are likely to be cut down), but also because it has received scarcely any attention in comparison to that bestowed on the resettlement of Europe. These Asiatic provinces were once the wealthiest and most flourishing portion of the ancient world. Their geographical position, their harbors, their soil, their minerals, would soon enable them, under a good government, to recover no small measure of prosperity, and to double or treble their population. What sort of a political future can be predicted for them? And is there any possibility of averting that utter disorganization which the collapse of the Turkish power seems likely to bring about?

Let us begin by frankly admitting that

Europe, and where there is a considerable Christian population, as in Armenia, the massacres perpetrated upon it are just as atrocious. That the Turks when relegated to Asia Minor may reconstitute themselves into a respectable power, is an idea which (though I see it is entertained by so judicious an enquirer as Sir George Campbell) seems to have the probabilities entirely against it. What are the grounds of such a hope? Local institutions are all but extinct. The central government is hopelessly weak, the ruling class hopelessly corrupt, the reigning family hopelessly effete. It is in the interest of the Turkish population itself, whose welfare ought to be regarded equally with that of the Christians, that we should emphasize the distinction between them and the knot of palace favorites and low-born adventurers who govern them, and that we should recognize how little can be expected from these latter.

Turkey is dead — dead beyond all hopes | jects is no less ruinous in Asia than in of revival. That is to say, she is no longer an independent, but a protected State, existing on the sufferance of neighbors who could crush her with scarcely an effort; and, in fact, left in existence only because no one of those neighbors would be permitted by the others to absorb her. What spirit and life there ever was in the Turks- it was never anything more than a spirit of conquest, not of civilization or government is gone out of them and seems most unlikely to return. Acknowledging fully and heartily the solid virtues of the peasantry, virtues which have made many European observers prefer them to the slavish Christian populations, they have no power of assimilating new ideas, no turn for civilization, no capacity for intellectual or moral progress. That they cannot receive it when imposed on them from without it would happily be premature to affirm, for the experiment has never been fairly tried. But they cannot do it for themselves. It would be an error to attribute this to any natural stupidity of the Turkish race, for there is really only a small Turkish element in the population of these countries. Probably it is rather due to the bare, hard, sterile character of Mohammedanism, to its fatalistic tendencies, and above all, to the state of degradation and ignorance in which it keeps women. The history of Mohammedan | of the present evils. Whether by the apempires shows that no development of the arts of government or society, no advance in thought or industry, is to be looked for under them.* Nor will matters be at all mended when the Moslem population is (as it may probably now become) in a more decided majority. People have talked of driving the Turks out of Europe into Asia, as if that was a solution of the difficulty. But why? They have ruled Asia just as ill as Europe; the only difference being that we have not heard so much about the misfortunes of regions more remote and less frequently visited. The misgovernment of both Moslem and Christian sub

The apparent exceptions furnished by the Abbaside khalifs at Bagdad, the Spanish Mussulmans, and the great Akbar in India, are seen, when closely examined, to be no exceptions to this proposition, but in

reality rather to illustrate it.

There is of course no question of abol ishing the sultanate at present. It must be suffered to subsist, because there is nothing as yet to put in its place, because the subject races seem incapable of free institutions. The immediate duty of the powers of Europe would appear to be to suggest, or rather to insist upon, such reforms as may alleviate the more crying

pointment of a European commission, or by any other means which may supply that lack of initiative and of administrative vigor to which the failure of all previous efforts has been due, something must be done, or the state of Asia will become worse than that of Europe has been. When the powers take counsel together, be it in congress or out of congress, they must needs provide some remedies, some safeguard against these perils. Such remedies, however, can only be temporary. Let us endeavor to look farther ahead, and enquire, by the light which history affords, what the remoter future may have in store for the Asiatic provinces of the empire, when the decay of its present government has ended in dissolution. Three alternatives present themselves as possible. The first is the rise of some new Mohammedan

State or dynasty. The second is annex- | misfortune for the territories she might ation by one or more of the European annex. She is not herself sufficiently civpowers. The third is the rise of a Chris-ilized or open-minded to be fit to rule and tian race, embodying itself in a Christian educate other races. In trying to impose State. its own most imperfect type of culture, her bureaucracy would stifle the chances of any other form of national life.

There remains the third alternative, the growth of a native Christian race possess industrial progress as may enable it to become a civilizing and organizing influence in these neglected countries, and ultimately the nucleus of an independent State. The only Christian race in the East that offers any promise of this kind is the Armenian; and it is to a consideration of their condition and prospects, that I desire to devote the remaining pages of this article.

The first of these three is suggested by the history of the earlier ages of Mohammedanism. When one race or dynasty had become effete, another, more vigorous if not otherwise superior, emerged to sup-ing such a capability for intellectual and plant it and reigned in its stead. Thus the Abbaside khalifs succeeded to the throne of the Ommiades; thus the Fatimides sprang into power in north Africa and Egypt; thus the Seljukian Turks established mighty kingdoms on the ruins of the Saracenic empire; thus finally the Ottoman dominion itself rose out of the midst of the Seljukian principalities. But things have changed greatly since those times. Asiatic Turkey falls naturally into three There is no longer a reservoir of warlike divisions. First, there is the Turkish, connations in the steppes of Turkestan, nor sisting of the centre and west of Asia Miany such evidences of vitality in the Mos-nor, where the majority of the rural populem population of western Asia as can lation is Mohammedan, though there are make us expect a new dynasty to rise from plenty of Greeks, especially in the seaamong them. By its system of continually ports, and Armenians both there and in changing the provincial governors, the Porte has even succeeded in preventing any of them from making himself independent, as satraps so frequently did in earlier centuries, and has thereby destroyed such slight chance as there used to be of some new forcible tyrant.

the inland cities. Turkish is the language commonly spoken over all this region. Secondly, we have the Arab portion, embracing large districts of Syria and the lower valleys of the Tigris and Euphrates, where the inhabitants are almost entirely Mohammedan, and Arabic is the prevailing tongue. Thirdly, there is the Armenian division, lying north of Mesopotamia and north-east of Asia Minor.

The second alternative is more proba ble, but just as little desirable. The tendency through all recent history has been for the larger states to go on absorbing Now Armenia is not, strictly speaking, a the smaller and weaker ones on their bor- country; it is rather, as used to be said of ders. And thus it may seem natural that Italy, a geographical expression. It has Russia should swallow up part of Asiatic no definite boundaries, either natural or Turkey, and that England, who by her political. Its name denotes the region command of the sea is everybody's neigh- which once formed the Armenian kingbor, should annex the rest. But this is dom, and which is still largely inhabited by exactly what we seek to prevent. En- Armenian Christians, although politically gland has no wish, with India already on divided between the empires of Persia, her hands, to become liable to govern and Russia, and Turkey, whose frontiers meet defend fresh territories, though there is in the peak of Ararat. Speaking roughly, no doubt much to be said in favor of her one may say that it extends from Trebiassuming the protectorate of Syria, zond on the Black Sea to Tavriz in Persia, whence, better and more easily than in and from Delijan (a little south of Tiflis) on Egypt, she could defend the Suez route. the north-east to near Diarbekir on the And we are all, even those who do not south-west. This would give it about three conceive the interests of England to be hundred and fifty miles in length by two specially affected, agreed in resisting any hundred and fifty in breadth. It is high farther advance of Russia to the south. and generally mountainous; a country of It may well be thought that such an ad- great natural strength, and withal naturally vance would overtax her own strength, and fertile, though, owing to the want of roads, tend to her internal disruption. But this of capital, and of security, the resources is mere matter of speculation, and suppos- of its soil and its mineral wealth reing aggression to be successful, it would main undeveloped. Of its inhabitants not only give her a dangerously dominant nearly two millions are Armenian Chrisinfluence in the Levant, but would be a tians. A possibly larger, but quite uncer

tain, number are Mohammedans, but as these Mohammedans belong to different races, speaking different tongues, and as nearly half of them are savage nomads, the Armenians constitute the most important element in the population. They are more numerous than any single section of the Moslem inhabitants, and they are infinitely superior to the great bulk of the Mohammedans in industry as well as in intelligence. Nearly all the trade of the country is in their hands; and in some districts, where the Moslems are pastoral nomads or mere robbers, they are the only tillers of the soil. Unlike their neighbors, the Nestorian Christians, many of whom are warlike mountaineers, the Armenians are a quiet and peaceable folk in these ancient seats of theirs. But in the foreign countries to which so many of them have emigrated, they are, as everybody knows, singularly enterprising and successful merchants, showing wherever they help. The peaceable Moslem inhabitants settle in Calcutta, in Java, in Constantinople, in Manchester- a keenness and tenacity not inferior to that of Scotchmen or Yankees. Both in Asiatic Russia and in Turkey they form a large part, and (as one hears) by far the most valuable part of the subordinate officials. In the Russian army there are said to be thirty Armenian generals, including Loris Melikoff, Tergukaseff, and Lazareff. Nubar Pasha, the ablest man in Egypt, is an Armenian Christian; so is the present Persian minister in London, who is one of the foremost statesmen of Persia.* And the exploits of the tribes of the Cilician mountains, who have maintained themselves in practical independence since the fourteenth century, repelling the attacks of vastly superior Turkish armies with a valor comparable to that of the Montenegrins, prove that there is no want of courage or spirit, any more than of intelligence, in the Armenian race.

|tatives of England or Russia in the cities that cruelties and exactions pass unheeded. But the pre-eminence of suffering which belongs to Armenia is chiefly due to a cause absent in the other provinces (though something like it exists in Syria), the pres ence of the marauding tribes of Koords. These robbers are the scourge of the country. Constantly in arms, and scorning all labor, they carry on a perpetual guerilla war against their peaceable neighbors. They fall upon the villages of the plain, destroy their crops, plunder and burn their houses, kill them if they attempt to resist, carry off their women into captivity. Complaints are useless, for the local gov ernor, even when he desires to do justice and punish the offender, has no sufficient force at his command. If he attempts to interfere the Koords will probably take vengeance on him, and certainly on the village which has ventured to invoke his

suffer from these ruffians (who are very lax Mussulmans, and care nothing for the sultan) almost as much as the Christians do. But as they are permitted to carry arms, and their testimony is admissible in the courts, they are less helpless both for defence and redress. Not to repeat the tale of horrors which we have heard so often during the last two years, I will content myself with extracting from the last published blue-book on the affairs of Turkey, an account, touching in its sad simplicity, of the massacre which the Koords perpetrated at Van, hitherto the most prosperous part of Armenia, early in last summer. The Porte had summoned these wild warriors to its aid, but instead of fighting the Russians, they fell upon their innocent neighbors, who lived far from the scene of war, and had given no sign of disaffection. The account (whose details have been amply confirmed from other sources) is written in July last, and headed, Now, of all the districts of Asiatic Tur-“Letter from an Armenian in Van to a key, Armenia is that where the misery of bishop in Bitlis " (another city of Armenia). the subjects is the greatest. Both in the HONORABLE AND HOLY FATHER, Arabic portion, and in what I have called the Turkish portion proper (i.e., Asia Minor), the number of Christians is comparatively small, and they inhabit the towns, where oppression is not so easy, and can be sooner brought to the notice of a European consul. Here, however, the Christians are a rural as well as an urban population, and there are so few represen

It is worth remarking that the Armenians played a great part among the generals and administrators of the Eastern Roman Empire from the sixth century onwards.

The condition of this city is most distressing. For the distance of three days' journey on all sides of it the Christian villages have been despoiled. Not a sheep, not an ox, not a vestige of movable property remains; neither is there safety of life. Every Christian village on the road from Van to Bayazid has been destroyed by the cruel Koords. They have robbed the people of everything; desecrated the churches and carried away the church treasure. The pitiable villagers, utterly destitute and helpless, have fled to the mountains and caves, are hungry, thirsty, and naked, having no shelter from the scorching