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materially possible for it to become. The guarantees provided for the accomplishment of these conditions by the new era which has dawned in the Ottoman Empire make it less desirable than ever for the Armenians to join their brethren under Russian rule-a third section of the race lives in Persia -which is the only other alternative to their aspirations. Maltreated they have been by the Turks, administratively and socially; but with the adoption of a sincerely fraternal attitude towards them by the latter, and the memory of the political liberality which their conquerors have shown them, and which has allowed them to retain their national individuality and develop a considerable measure of civilization, they cannot feel attracted to Russia, where, in addition to ill-treatment equal to that endured in Turkey, their compatriots have suffered and still suffer from legal disabilities, and are exposed to denationalization. Indeed, what is more likely to happen is that the Russian Armenians will emigrate en masse to Turkey, substituting for the religious centre of Etchmiadzin, in the Caucasus, which has been for centuries the seat of the "Catholicos," the supreme pastor of the forcibly disrupted race, some locality on Ottoman territory equally enshrined in national traditions and legends.

It will be seen from what precedes that the Armenians are destined to work in durable unison with the Turks in the remodelled Ottoman Empire. Their financial, commercial, and administrative aptitudes, which are of the highest order, will constitute a felicitous complement to the political and martial virtues which predominate in the Turks. The co-operation of the two peoples will act as a conservative factor of great importance in the new situation.

The Albanians and the Kurds, living respectively at the western and eastern

extremities of the Empire, and whose case, as subjects of the Porte, presents singular points of resemblance in that they have both been allowed to preserve a feudal system of organization, and to indulge their lawless and rapacious instincts at the expense of their Christian compatriots, while, at the same time, they are practically exempted from military service the socalled "Hamidic" regiments of Kurdish cavalry are a voluntary militia which has sprung out of an understanding between Abd-ul-Hamid and the hereditary enemies of the Armenians, the better to enable the former to exercise their sanguinary hostility against the latter-have not the same reasons as the Armenians for rejoicing at the reestablishment of the Constitution. To them this great event means the loss of very substantial privileges. And, although the new régime will provide them with compensations in the shape of administrative benefits such as roads, education, and other characteristics of civilization, in whose wake wealth will follow automatically and without violence, the more ignorant and thoughtless among them will not be in a position to appreciate them for some time to come, or, at all events, will consider that the enjoyment of lording it over others, pistol in hand, is far superior to that procured by progress and well-being under a system of equality with their former victims. But the Turkish soldier, disciplined, brave, and well armed, who has acted policeman throughout the empire with such stolid devotion to an effete and wicked central government of which he has been one of the principal sufferers, will resume this duty with an increased vigor and goodwill inspired by the improved conditions of service under the colors, and will restore order in the disaffected provinces even quicker than when he was asked to do so before the Sultan-which, in truth,

was not often. Eventually both races will settle down contentedly to the modern conception of citizenship which the constitutional government of Turkey will set before them, backed by Mauser rifles and Krupp guns of the latest pattern. This will happen much sooner in the case of the Albanians, who, though wild and ignorant, are a highly intelligent race with traits of nobility in their character which are entirely lacking in their "colleagues" on the other border of the Empire. The Shkipetars, as they call themselves, are destined, like the Armenians, to become a very valuable asset to the Empire whose councils have already benefited in the past, and will do so much more in the future, from their political genius-the famous Keuprullu dynasty of Grand-Vizirs was Albanian, as are so many of the Young Turks-and whose army will receive a considerable supplement of qualities from the dash and resourcefulness of these remarkable mountaineers whom ethnologists have been unable to classify any more than the Basques of the Pyrenees. As for any desire on their part to unite with Greece, which fanciful and complacent theorists of that country attribute to them, the notion is simply grotesque. Even more grotesque is the supposition that they will care to pass under Austro-Hungarian or Italian rule, either of which will not be content to deprive them of their privileges, but will condemn them to a condition of political inferiority in the midst of the communities which constitute the monarchies governed respectively by the Houses of Hapsburg and Savoy. The position of their country in the new combination would be that of BosniaHerzegovina, a portion of Turkey, al ready occupied by Austria-Hungary, excellently administered, no doubt, but kept in distinct subjection to the older political formation.

The Greeks, Bulgarians, and Servians

inhabiting the Empire have derived genuine satisfaction from the change brought about by the Young Turks. But how long will this feeling last? To live free from degradation and outrage is necessarily the unique preoccupation, for the present, of these races which, so far, have been the victims not only of the maladministration of Constantinople, but also, and in later times especially, of the armed bands vomited by the States formed around Macedonia by their emancipated congeners. These bands, of which Bulgaria was the first to conceive the notion, finding prompt imitators, or rather rivals, in Greece and Servia, bave not been in the least concerned to ameliorate the lot of their unredeemed brethren. Their only object has been either to bring back to the national fold what were, or what they considered to be, lost sheep, or to attract new ones from the neighboring enclosures. In their struggles to attain this object against one another, with a view to the establishment of favorable statistics to their plans at the expense of the "Sick Man" (what irony this name contains to-day!), they have had recourse to methods of such violence as must surely make the "Grand Old Man," who was such a staunch believer in the righteousness of all in Turkey except the "Unspeakable Turk." turn uneasily in his grave. The bestial intoxication caused to them by the fumes of the human blood they were spilling with such accompaniment of cruelty, and of the innumerable villages they were reducing to cinders in the districts inhabited by their rivals, finally overcame all sense of the human in them, and being at the same time pressed by the want of funds, especially the Bulgar and Servian bands, which, unlike the Greek, lacked the patronage of wealthy merchant-princes, they actually resorted to methods of extortion against their own kith and

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kin, showing as much savagery in this pursuit as in their enterprises against their opponents. No wonder that the settled Greeks, Bulgars, and Servians of Macedonia-I have left out of consideration the Koutzo-Vlachs or transBalcanic Roumanians as too insignificant a factor-overtaxed by the Ottoman authorities who gave them absolutely nothing in exchange, terrorized each by the bands of the two other sides, and even by those which had taken the field in the name of their own particular nationalism, celebrated the wonderful change, so full of promises of relief, which had taken place all of a sudden in the management of the Empire, by shouting "hosanna" and fraternizing indiscriminately with one another and the Turks. It is less easy to explain why the bands surrendered to the authorities, since they were composed of maniacs exclusively intent upon "pegging-out" claims at any cost for their respective nationalities, an operation which the reformation of government in Turkey is scarcely calculated to facilitate. But a reaction is bound to set in at no remote period in the case of all these populations, as has already happened in the case of the "Comitadjis." Emancipated Greece, Bulgaria, and Servia will act as irresistible magnets upon them. Secretly they will cherish the hope and foster the chance of amalgamating with their independent brethren across the frontier. No improvement in their condition will destroy this ideal, temporarily thrust back into some obscure corner of their hearts. On the contrary, as their well-being grows under the new Turkish rule, their national aspirations will develop in strength and impatience. I am not criticizing, je constate seulement. The whole range of history is there to prove that they will only be displaying a fundamental trait of human nature in going through this process. Unless the chemical composi

tion of their blood is modified, thanks to the invention of some Turkish savant of the future, so as to transform them into a new species of humanity, they will sooner or later resume, with renewed vigor, their subversive designs against the Ottoman State. If, in conjunction with their elder and politically "settled" brethren, they succeed in reconciling their antagonistic claims on the basis of some compromise, Turkey will have a great deal more to do than to govern well in order to retain Macedonia. However unlikely this contingency may appear in the present state of intense hatred which divides Bulgaria, Greece and Servia, it is one which Turkey has to take into serious consideration. Caveant consules. It is really her weakness which has brought about the intransigeant attitude assumed towards one another by these pretenders to the Macedonian territory. Her restoration to health may, and, according to the writer, will, effect a reconciliation and entente between them which will also include restless Montenegro. Fortunately for Turkey, other Powers are interested in the maintenance of the status quo. They may be relied upon to act as a counter-weight to a pan-Balcanic combination.

On the whole, without ever becoming a source of strength to Turkey, the Christians inhabiting her European territory will not be in a position to imperil her integrity until the time, just perceptible in the dim future, when Europe will enter into travail to bring forth a new system of political divisions based on the principle of pannationalist federations.

The Syrians, Arabs, and Egyptians wind up the list of races of importance which are included in Ottoman territory, and whose reaction to the touch of liberalism and its concomitantreform-it is necessary to examine. Numerically they constitute an ex

tremely important group-25,000,000 to 30,000,000-whose several sections, with the exception of 1,500,000 non-Musulman Syrians, profess the same religion as their conquerors, but whose tongue, racial characteristics, and civilization, being radically different, place them in a separate category. The Arab expansion which followed upon the advent of Islamism united them, with many other poeples, into a gigantic State the memory of whose power and glories. aided by Turkish maladministration and decadence, has kept up in the breasts of its dethroned founders-I am speaking of the inhabitants of the Arabian peninsula, of which the Turks have subdued only a small fraction-a keen spirit of opposition to Ottoman rule and the firm hope of a restoration. The one thing this people have in common with the Turks-Islamism, which as a rule acts as such a powerful bond between its adherents-constitutes an additional source of division between them, because of what the Arabs consider as a usurpation by the dynasty of Osman of the supreme dignity of Islam, which, according to them, should by right have remained vested in one of the families descended from the Prophet-in other words, in their own

race.

So far as the writer knows, no news of joyous manifestations such as those which greeted the re-establishment of the Constitution in other parts of the Empire has reached the outer world from Arabia. If any celebrations have taken place it can only be in those parts of the peninsula which are really under Turkish rule, and where maladministration has been even greater than in the less excentrically situated provinces of Turkey, and where, in consequence, the dawning era of reform must have come, in the first instance, as a welcome event to the inhabitants. But, as in the case of Macedonia, reaction is bound to follow, reaction in

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spired by the desire to see a unified Arabia under a national dynasty. wielding the supreme spiritual as well as temporal power, with, as a final goal, the re-inclusion in the sphere of its dominion of Syria and Egypt and -who knows?-the rest of the Arabicspeaking lands. Fortunately for Turkey, there is no feeling of solidarity between Arabia, Syria, and Egypt, notwithstanding the assertions to the contrary of the soi-distant "party" of Arab reconstitution whose manifestoes have constituted tissues of grandiloquent nonsense. In fact, Syria never seriously contemplated the severance her connection with Turkey, from whom she only demanded good government. Being assured of obtaining this now, she may be expected to become one of the most loyal portions of the Empire. But the fact remains that Turkish Arabia is disaffected, and, notwithstanding the particularist tendencies of the Arab race, will eventually aspire to reunion with independent Arabia, as preferable to association with an alien people. On the other hand, Egypt, which already enjoys considerable autonomy, and whose prosperity and political potentialities are rapidly increasing, will strive to throw off Turkish influence if it exceeds the form of nominal suzerainty. The solution of the ArabEgyptian problem, the most serious which confronts Turkish statesmen, seems to lie in the creation, in the fulness of time, of a dual monarchy on the Austro-Hungarian model, one half of which, with Constantinople as centre, would be composed of the Turkish, Armenian, Albanian, Greek, Bulgarian, Servian, and Kurdish elements occupying that part of the Empire which spreads to the north and west of a straight line drawn from Aleppo to the Persian frontier passing through Mossoul; and the other half of which, with Damascus as a centre, would comprise

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the Arabic-speaking peoples of the Empire, which, by reason of the very distinct geographical grouping of these peoples, could be organized on the federal system, so as to spare the susceptibilities of Egypt, who, besides tonomy, possess a line of hereditary sovereigns of her own-the dynasty of Osman, still invested with the Khalifate to remain the supreme and binding head of both portions. No insuperable difficulties lie ahead of Turkey in this direction either.

Thus it will be seen that, so far as internal action is concerned, liberal Nineteenth Century and After.

Turkey need not view the future with diffidence.

Some trouble there will probably be, at first, in Albania and Kurdistan, and later on the even course of the State may be considerably disturbed by Macedonian and Arabian intrigue. But, unles one or more of the Great Powers of Europe intervene to favor the separatist tendencies of some elements of the Empire, the latter will easily survive any commotion that may arise in its midst.

Alfred de Bilinski.

(To be continued.)

THE WELL OF ENGLISH DEFILED.

But,

It was rumored, a short time ago, that a Society was in process of formation for maintaining the purity of the English language, and the dignity of English style; and, in due course, it was understood that the names of an imposing array of writers supporting the aims of the Society had been printed, though not published. since then, nothing more has been heard of the praiseworthy intention, and it can only be inferred that its promoters were baulked in their project by being offered the co-operation of writers, notorious enough in publishers' lists and the catalogues of circulating libraries, but the very offenders against the purity of language and lucidity of style for the upholding of which the Society had been con ceived. The times proved to be out of joint for such an enterprise; and the Society, I conclude, lacked the moral courage to employ the means indispensable to its end. It is difficult to tell a popular and self-satisfied author whom you are continually meeting at dinner, at luncheon, or at the club, that he writes abominably.

That the evil against which the protest was to be directed does exist, will scarcely be denied by any one who accepts the dictum of Swift that "Proper words in their proper place is the definition of style." Words inappropriate or in the wrong place, though it would be hardly possible for such words to be in the right one, are much in favor just now, alike with readers, reviewers and critics. For this condition of things is any remedy possible? No direct remedy, as far as one can see. Spoken or written protest, made by no matter what number of serious authors, would be absolutely idle. The offenders are too well satisfied with themselves, and with the result of their labors, to be affected by the frowns of stately authority or appeals to tradition; and, while the bulk of readers would scarcely glance at the protest, critics and reviewers, for the most part, would make merry over it, as the brutem fulmen of a medley of classical prigs. Quite recently, one read in a well-known periodical, supposed to be devoted to the interests of Literature, a strikingly sound paper on

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