Nelson Evening Mail. MONDAY, DECEMBER 28,1806.

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume XXX, Issue 305, 28 December 1896, Page 2

Nelson Evening Mail. MONDAY, DECEMBER 28, 1806.

At the Christmas season, when the whole of the Christian world ia celebrating its great festival, it is interesting to tnrn to a part of the universe where the season brings only more fear and trembling, and by its very associations arouses the bitterness of Moslem fanaticism. While Europe and America rejoice in the universality of faith whioh, no matter how sects msy dift'er, converges on a common basis of belief : while even in heathen countries Christianity has at least the protection of powerful States ; the Armenian Christian - are subjected to a cruel and persists ent persecution from which there seems to be no escape. 'Ihe Christian in the most savage South Sea Island may claim the seourity of the European warship, and practise his religion unmolested, because his enemy fears reprisals should he interfere. The fanaticism of the Hindoo, the Moslem, the Confucian, and the Buddhist has to hold its hand in dread of swift retribution everywhere but in Turkey ; but in the Ottoman Empire diplomacy haß given Christianity over to its foes, a bonnden slave. Mingled with the hymuß of the world last Friday there arose to Heaven the cry of Armenia, praying for help ; but help is with-held yet awhile, because Christian nations distrust eaoh other, and because the Bible may be thrown aside for the fratioidal sword at any moment.

A narrative of the events and pauses leading up to the peculiar impunity enjoyed by the persecuting Turns appears in. a recent number of the "Nineteenth Gestury" from the pen of Mr Wilfrid Blunt. Mr Blunt traces the present condition lo the Treaty of Berlin of the Cyprus Convention. This international agreement was the crowning glory of Lord Beaconsfield's career ; and it is a curious commentary on Mr Gladstone's recent emergence from retirement with- his usual shriek that while he has persistently denounced the treaties when out of office he has as persistently upheld and used them when ia power. In some directions he has oven intensified theij 1 consequences. Mr Blunt' points .out that an act of apparent bad faith at the outsat put England in a false position from the beginning. On the opening of the Berlin Congress in 1878 the Ambassadors mady a declaration that they w,ere not bound by any understanding with any natjon represented at the gathering.. Lord Beaconsfield and Lord Salisbury subscribed to this declaration ; but subsequently it transpired that England had already ■" cut and dried " the Berlin treaty, France and Russia all but left the confeiv enoe, but eventually a compromise was effeoted as follows ;— (I). That France, as a Bet-oiJ: for Cyprus, shonld be allowed on the first convenient pretext, and with~ put opposition from England, to occupy fnnjs, (2).. That, in the appointments ' '- making in Egypf; by the the*. "'"imi«flion,franceshoul4 Finance Oo^ -"'th England; march pari passu „. and (3) That the old French claim of protecting the Latin Church in a Syria should be acknowledged. 1 To these concessions Mr Blunt b traces most of the subsequent ? trouble in the Ottoman Empire. <j' The first event was the establish- - mend of the Anglo-Frenuh oontrol ° In Egypt, with ita constant fric- J tion; the next was, violation of £ Ottoman territory in Tunia ; and tl

the third was the destruction of Britain's moral influence with Turkey. England was left by all the other powers as the custodian of Asia Minor — and yet she was impotent to control it for Rood. The Eastern policy of Mr Gladstone in office could not be appreciably distinguished from the policy of Lord H eaconsfield. He did not ■withdraw from Egypt, or rpfnse connivance with the French encroachmentH in Tunis, or abrogate the Cyprus engagement! All he did W9B to relax the vigilance of supervision in the Ottoman Empire by the withdrawal of the " perambulating consuls " appointed by Lord Beaconsfield . By the latter course Mr Gladstone and his fol lowers " left the Armenian and other Ottoman subjects more completely than ever at the Sultan's mercy.'' By degrees each European Power has come to regard its neighbour with suspicion, and as a result (he Sultan is enabled to exercise the historic diplomacy )>y which the old rulers of the earth "divided and' conquered." The smallest and least important European armament could compel Turkey to obey the command to institute reforms — but all Europe is powerless. Constantinople would (remble before a small gunboatyet the fleets of Europe, though within a day's sail of the i osphorus, may be and are defied ! It is feared that if the Ottoman Empire fell to pieces there would be a European scramble for the fragments, and each nation is watching the other lest it secure more than its share. The Sultan, the " Great Assassin," is poised secure on the balance of power, and he laughs at the Christian peoples below him. To use another simile, the Sultan stands with a lighted match in one hand on a powder magazine, which is Europe, and with the other he devastates with impunity Christian Armenia. Mr Blunt sets forth the cause 3 ot the European paralysis, while in the same number of the " Nineteenth Century," " Diian Kelekian" suggests a remedy. He urgeß that a new European congress should be called, and that England should enter it with absolutely clean hands and without reservation. The only stipulation by England, he thinks, should be the ameliorition of the condition of Armenia. " All we have to do," says the writer, " is to persuade our fellowcountrymen to keep their promises about Egypt, and face the truth that we cannot remain there for ever, and arrange the terma of our going. The rest will come easily and pleasantly. . . . While if, on the contrary, we harden our hearts in the face of a pretty well united world, which laughs angrily at our fine moral talk and points contemptuously at Cyprus and hgypt hanging out of our coat-tail puckets, it may well happen that we shall not only lose these and our honour before many years are over, but the whole of our overgrown Empire besides,"