THE DOOM OF THE TURK.

Auckland Star, Volume XLVI, Issue 60, 11 March 1915, Page 4

THE DOOM OF THE TURK.

For the third time within the last hnlfcentury the long-expected fall of Constantinople seems imminent. And this- time there, will be no rival nations holding each others' hands to ward off the merited doom. The Porte had its last chance when Europe galvanised it into spasmodic life and a constitution, was set up in it. That night, So an eye-witness tells us, the hills of Stamboul (usually plunged in darkness after nightfall) were a blaze of light, but an hour before midnight the lights had all guttered out, and the dogs were howling again in the empty streets. Three years later the city, with its new Parliament reduced ton, mere mockery, was mad with panic of the Bulgarians and their allies close upon their last walls of defence. Those Ottomans who had passed the middle term of life well; remembered a former day of threatened destruction, when '"Russia's victorious soldiers of the Cross were encamped upon .the shores' of the Sea of Marmora, in view

of the dome and minarets of the .city, waiting in anticipation of their triumphant .entry. Once- again the sublime Porte and the Ottoman populace'is distracted between -rage- and terror, now threatening fearful massacres of the Christians, now seeking for some place to flee to. But now there is no place where it can hope to gather together the. remnants of its-Empire.- The Russians are within the borders of- its Asiatic"-terri-tories, the battleships of France and England arc thundering-it the entrance to its harbour. Never has any other tyranny becn-endured with such culpable tolerance by-Europe, and never-has any Power: so well merited extinction.

More than four and a-lialf centuries have passed irway ]since the last Constantino fell at the gates of his capital, and Mohammed tlnr Conqueror, giving the city up to hideous slaughter, rode on his charger into Sancta Sophia, the high altar, and, in the words of a Greek historian, "the sanctuary of the wisdom of God," the throne of His glory, the wonder of the'earth, was changed into a place of abominations and horrors:" Since that day the palaces of Constantinople, its dungeons, and its surrounding waters have been repeatedly the scene Of f resli crimes and" atrocities, and its streets have bren reddened with blood. The last' occasion was within our own memory, when, in the time of peace,' the corpses-of 7,000 unarmed- men, women and children were heaped together-' and carted away under the.eyes'of European residents. The wild beast of the desert and waste spaces of Asia has never been subdued in the Turks, and when any cause rouses it he runs mad and commits unspeakable atrocities. But for the most part he sits in repose, "mildly smoking —his' cheroot." The result is dust, ruin, decay and barren wastes' where' there were "once- gardens. His Empire would never have kept alive till this -day Jf it had not been vitalised by races. Even under - "that"" fanatical maniac Abdul Hamid it was the. despised and hated Christians who occupied-the highest positions in_Constantinople,. not, indeed, from" but. f.Ep|B necessity, -oeeatise the, Turka^were.incapable : of .administer-ing-any--civH offices.-.-. They themselves ; were, aware .of .their impotence,, and. this very consciousness increases their- hatred of -the more- highly-gifted people. Tctday all the realities of power are ..in the hands oil"the"Germans" —r German railway and industrial; companies, German -Bjercaantsj officials, officers, advisers, organisers. "Already the author▼"of the sublime Forte is a mere shadow.

. When - Constantinople falls, as fall it must before long, there will be no'manifestation of the paction of patriotism that has often made citizens of other capitals choose to be buried under the nuns of their town rather than curvive it. The Turks know nothing of the spirit which inspired the last Constantine and'his followers or the defenders of Jerusalem at. its latter end. Stamboul is not their Holy City. They, have no.t..eyen been thoroughly at home in it, as the Frenchman is in Paris or the Englishman in London. The devout wish of the Moslem, even if he has been born in Stamboul, is to be. buried in tlie. soil of Asia. There his Prophet was born and conceived a. new faith "and went forth to victory. Therearc the scenes xif all his life, and there is his great tomb, to which thousands of the" faithful make .pilgrimages every year. And Mecca and Medina are not to him remote and almost imaginary places as the-sacred spots' of Palestihe are tti the Western Christian. Asia is at his door and part of his own Empire. Baron de Tott once inquired of the Grand Vizier whether the Turks would greatly regret, leaving Constantinople if they were forced to evacuate it. "Not at all," replied the Vizier, "Asia is very beautiful, and yonder shores beyond Scutari offer delightful spots where to build our konaks." The Turks may fight hard before they yteld Constantinople up, for their empire .in Asia is now shaking, but they will 'be fighting out of the national pride of the conqueror, not the inborn love of the patriot.. They have turned Sancta Sophia into a mosque, disfigured its once magnificent exterior by minarets stuck on to it, and painted it with alternate stripes of light and dark red, but they have never quite obliterated the traces of its origin. It never could be to them what the Tomb of their Prophet is, nor what, even in its defilement, the great Christian Church still is to the Orthodox. Greek or Russian. The Moslems themselves believe in the Christian prophecies that tbe city and church must one day be theirs no longer. They, accept the legends -that on Easter morn the angels sing carols' within.the vast dome, and the other tradition that

whea„tho Turkish-soldiers-burst in-upon the last mass celebrated there, the walls miraculously opened to receive the officiating priest and the consecrated ele-

raents and closed upon them, to reopen only when the Crescent is hurled from the su«mit-of-the-d6me-and the Cross once

more stands above it. But for him these. Christian legends are ominous, and he and his fathers for generations back have j felt themselves- to be living- insecurely in ' a city won and held by the sword and. destined to be wrested from them by tlie ! sword.