RUSSIAN AGGRESSION: 



205 



RUSSIAN AGGRESSION, 



AS SPECIALLY AFFECTING AUSTRIA-HUNGARY AND TURKEY. 



Br LOUIS KOSSUTH. 



IT will not be amis3 to ventilate a little the 

 Eastern question. Not as if I could say 

 anything new, but because purified notions may 

 consolidate instinctive aspirations into convic- 

 tions, and longings into purposes. 



The Eastern question is a European question. 

 There is no power in Europe that would not feel 

 that the phases of that question are connected 

 more or less, mediately or immediately, with its 

 own interests. 



Whence comes the importance of this question ? 



How and when did the Eastern question be- 

 come a European question ? 



By the increase of the Russian power, and 

 since the time when Russia — by the diminution of 

 the Turkish Empire and the dismemberment of 

 Poland — increased to formidable proportions, and 

 thus became dangerous to the freedom of Europe. 



I feel thankfully indebted to the Porte ; and 

 I do not, like many people, consider gratitude to 

 be a burden, but to be a dear obligation. I 

 learned to esteem highly the noble qualities of 

 the Turkish national character ; and I learned it 

 the more from the admirable phenomenon that 

 this people of tenacious morals could not be cor- 

 rupted in their rich social virtues even by the 

 pestiferous air which has floated over them from 

 Constantinople through a period of several cen- 

 turies, during which this capital has been con- 

 verted into a witch-kettle of European intrigues, 

 fighting for the maintenance of the equilibrium. 

 This corrupt influence has found among the 

 higher circles around that kettle individuals ac- 

 cessible to bribery; but the country people re- 

 main attached to the moral feelings and to the 

 holy relics of social virtues, in the same way as 

 in Hungary the eternal holy flame of nationality 

 has been kept burning around the hearths of our 

 people, while it has been extinguished in the 

 palaces. It is true that the Turkish people re- 

 main still far behind in what we call civilization. 

 This is not the fault of their susceptibilities, nor 

 of their willingness; but it is quite certain that 

 only national morality can supply a good soil for 

 the roots of liberal institutions, and that they 

 decay or become false without it. Quite as cer- 

 tain is it that the world would admiringly con- 



template how easily the most liberal institutions 

 would take root, how naturally they would be- 

 come acclimatized among the Turkish people, if 

 Europe would but prevent the hereditary foe of 

 the Turkish Empire from interfering with the 

 spread of endeavors inspired by the warnings of 

 time. 



But these are my personal views, my indi- 

 vidual sympathies. Sympathies, however, are no 

 centre of attraction for the politics of the world, 

 but self-interest is ; and, though for a long time 

 the conservation of the Turkish Empire was a 

 dogma of the politics of the European equilib- 

 rium, and is still so in foro conscientia?, it does 

 not follow that Europe is in love with the Turks, 

 but only that it abhors the increase of Russian 

 preponderance. And rightly so. 



The Eastern question is a question of Russian 

 power. " Hinc omne principium, hue refer ex- 

 itum." This is the summary of European in- 

 terests, considered from the European point of 

 view. Every policy is either a cheat or a fallacy 

 which does not take this fact as a starting-point. 



The Eastern question is a question of Russian 

 power. If this line be struck out, the Eastern 

 question ceases, ipso facto, to be a European 

 question. It descends at once to the level of in- 

 ternal questions, whose changing phases may be 

 followed sympathetically or antipathetically, ac- 

 cording to the inspiration of political principles 

 or instinctive feelings ; but they will never dis- 

 turb the sleep of any European power. The 

 Turkish Porte may succeed (and I wish from my 

 innermost soul that she may succeed) in concil- 

 iating all her nationalities of diverse races and 

 creeds, either on the ground of equality of rights, 

 surrounded by constitutional institutions, or by 

 personal union, or on the ground of a strict fed- 

 erative system ; or, if she does not succeed, and 

 on the ruins of her fallen power the nationalities 

 of her empire should rise to autonomy, assert- 

 ing their national individuality, all this will not 

 threaten the peace or the liberty of Europe — all 

 this will never be converted by anybody into a 

 European question. 



On the contrary, the Eastern question lies in 

 the actual situation. Every aggression, either on 



