New Zealand Tablet. Fiat Justitia. FRIDAY, JANUARY 5, 1877. RUSSIA. AND TURKEY.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume IV, Issue 196, 5 January 1877, Page 10

New Zealand Tablet. Fiat Justitia. FRIDAY, JANUARY 5, 1877. RUSSIA. AND TURKEY.

\\ hilst Russia is preparing to make war on Turkey for the ostensible purpose of protecting, or rather>ecuring, the religious liberty of the Christian subjects of the Sultan news reaches us of an apprehended rising in Poland. This if true is very suggestive. A rising, or even an attempt at insurrection in Poland, would be an eloquent comment on the naturof the Russian Government in that plundered and down"trodden country. It would be retributive too. In the history of nations, there is not a greater instance of hypocrisy than the present action of Russia in reference to the sublime Porte Russia assumes the role of a disinterested lover of religious liberty and hater of oppression generally, at the very moment when she is actually engaged in destroying the religious liberty of her Polish subjects, and^exercisingja savage tyranny over their consciences.

It appears that the impending struggle will be, most probably, cononed to Russia and Turkey, at least for the present. England will take no active part, further than to prevent Constantinople and the Bosphorous from falling into, the hands of Russia. The other nations of Europe are too much afraid of each other to interfere by force of arms France is girding herself for the inevitable war with Prussia and the other States which are comprised within the limits of the new German Empire. Bismarck wishes to obtain the credit of localising the warjbetween Russia and Turkey • and he would try to make the world believe that he is not as ambitious as some other members of the German Parliament and that he neither contemplates nor desires to wrest the South German States from Austria. It is doubtful if a single politician in Europe believes one word of this. But all know that were Prussia, or Germany, to engage in a war azainsfc Austria or any other of the Great Powers, her doing so would be the moment chosen by France to march a million of welldisciplined soldiers into Alsace and Lorraine, and perhaps as far even as Berlin. This it is, in reality, that keeps Germany in peaceful dispositions. Though powerful in trained soldiers and war material, Germany, through her well-grounded fear of France, is at this moment the European State least to be feared. France will be her sentinel till the ignominy of 1870-71 shall be wiped out. Till then, both Tus^and Austria may pursue iv peace, so far as Germany is concerned their own policy in dealing with Turkey. '" In the struggle between Russia and Turkey, our sympathies are entirely on the side of the latter. There is more religious liberty amongst the followers of Mahomet than is to be found in Russia, and if it is thought advisable in the interests of humanity and liberty to banish the Turk from. Europe, or, at least, to take secure guarantees from the Porte that buth shall be respected in the future, it is surprising similar action has not been thought necessary in the case of Russia. The conduct of Russia has been to the full as inhuman and tyrannical in Poland, as has been that of the Turks in any part of the territories subject to the sublime Porte Ihe conduct of the Russian Government there may be truly described as a series of lying, hypocrisy, brutality religious persecution, cruelty, meanness, and truculent violence that has hardly a parallel m the history of the world The crimes of the Turk are almost venial compared with the savageiy of the Russian in Poland, and yet it is Russia, more than any other nation, that puts herself forward as the protector of down-trodden peoples; and whilst driving her own subjects by club and bayonet into apostacv in their own homes, and as a punishment of having a conscience, into the horrors of Siberian exile abroad, actually sends hundreds of thousands of armedmen toprotect theliberties (!) of the subiects of another power, who are much freer and more humanely treated than her own Polish subjects. This is a scandal and. the reproach of Europe.