Evening Post. MONDAY, DECEMBER 2, ]895 THE SULTAN AND THE POWERS.

Evening Post, Volume L, Issue 132, 2 December 1895, Page 2

Evening Post. MONDAY, DECEMBER 2, ]895 THE SULTAN AND THE POWERS.

The Sultan aiill temporises, promising to do the behests of the Powers at one moment and abandoning himself to the harpies of his palaoe the next, until tha Turkish situation is becoming chaos confounded. Meanwhile, at the present rate of destruction, the Armenian question will settle itself in so far as the wretched inhabitants are concerned , for the country has been so laid waste by firo and Bword that the survivors are literally like to die of want of sustenance. News, says the cable, haa been received that 150,000 Armenians are starving in Anatolia. This is probably true enough, for months ago the special commissioner of one of tho great New York dailies wrote from the plaoo itself that of the 145,000 Armenians in the province of Van alone fully 100,000 were in want of food. More than half of the foodlesa ones wore living then on roots and herbs and a sort of bread made of clover seed, or flax, mixed with edible sprouts and grass. In one district only one-fourth of the people were left in their village homes, the others having been driven out by the Kurds and Turks to beg thoir bread, or die of starvation on the mountains. In another district named only one-third of the population clung to their ruined homes, the rest being homeleas wanderera, dropping dead of hunger and despair. The crisis must surely be near, and Sir Philip Currie seems to be the man— with bia Cabinet behind him, no doubt— destined to preoipitate it. As we write we learn that he has sought the Sultan in the palace that he haa surrendered to the control, as of himself, of bis eunuchs, his women, and his soldiery, and there personally insisted that H.M.S. Dryad shall anchor within range of the capital. Every Cabinet in Europe will be perturbed at thia determination, and tho fleets of the Powers may at any moment follow the example of the British niin-of-war. What will probably follow will be the rising of the Young Turkish party, who are prepared to depose the Sultan, and exterminate the vile brood of Palace parasites, who have boon chiefly responsible for all the human butchery that for months baa disgraced the civilised world. The Haniadio regiments— the trained Kurds whom the Sultan has made a power— will be upon the side of the Palace, for they must fight for their existence. Tho streeti of Constantinople will run red with Moslem blood, and the once prond capital of the world may find its destroyer within rather than without its gates. Suoh a catastrophe the allied fleets may be lexpeoted to prevent by a forced occupation; but even supposing thia to come to pass, the nations will be only upon the threshold of the danger that has been the ooming terror of Europe for half a century.