264 



EASTERN QUESTION, THE. 



no great Power shall succeed Turkey, either at 

 Constantinople or in the provinces, and it is un- 

 derstood with especial unanimity and stress 

 that Russia must not be allowed to make any 

 important acquisition in Europe. Further than 

 this, counsels are divided and confused. The 

 scheme for the formation of independent states, 

 according to national or provincial lines, which 

 some have proposed, has to encounter the ob- 

 jection that all of such states would be weak, 

 and would either from the beginning, or event- 

 ually, have to fall under the protectorate of 

 some powerful neighbor. This would be equiv- 

 alent to giving them to one of the great Pow- 

 ers, or to the solution which has been rejected 

 as not to be thought of. Moreover, the task of 

 adjusting the claims of the rival nationalities 

 would be a perplexing one. There are Rou- 

 manians in northern Bulgaria, as there are 

 Greeks in southern Bulgaria, and Bulgarians 

 among the Greeks in Macedonia, whose inter- 

 ests would have to be conciliated and the in- 

 terests of the Greeks and the Bulgarians seem 

 almost irreconcilable. 



Any settlement which does away with the 

 existing condition of affairs will be resisted 

 by Austro-Hungary with all its strength ; for 

 any possible settlement involves danger to the 

 integrity, and even to the existence, of the em- 

 pire and kingdom. If the settlement adds to 

 Russia, it will strengthen Austria's most pow- 

 erful and most dangerous enemy, and will 

 weaken the attachment of some of the Slavic 

 provinces. If new states are created, in what- 

 ever form, the whole Austro-Hungarian state 

 will be in danger of falling to pieces; for 

 some of its subject populations will be inter- 

 ested with their freed kindred, and desire to 

 be joined with them, or to receive similar priv- 

 ileges. The Roumanians of Bukovina and 

 Transylvania will wish to become part of the 

 independent Roumania; the Croats and Ser- 

 vians of the Banat and Military Frontier will 

 seek association with their fellow-Slavs in Ser- 

 via and Bosnia ; the Czechs and Poles will re- 

 new with increased vigor the demand for au- 

 tonomy which they have hardly ceased to 

 press since the Hungarian compromise went 

 into operation. Steps would immediately be 

 taken to carry into effect the idea of a great 

 Servian or great Croatian kingdom, to embrace 

 all the Servians and Croatians, which has 

 gained much strength on both sides of the 

 Danube. Propositions have been mentioned 

 to conciliate Austria to some of the schemes 

 for a division of the provinces, by offering it a 

 part of the territory, as Bosnia; but they have 

 been repelled by the Austrians, for the reason 

 that the empire has already all the Slavs it can 

 get along with, and does not wish to be weak- 

 ened with any more. The disposition of Con- 

 stantinople is another point on which the 

 Powers cannot agree. Regarding it as the 

 most important single political and commercial 

 point of the Eastern waters, the present ar- 

 rangement seems to be the one best adapted 



to prevent any state requiring an undue ascen- 

 dency there. Any new arrangement, how- 

 ever cautiously contrived, would be accom- 

 panied by the danger that it might leave an 

 opening for some Power eventually to acquire 

 influence at the expense of the others. Earl 

 Derby, when he notified the Russian Govern- 

 ment, at the beginning of the war, that the 

 British Government was not prepared to wit- 

 ness with indifference its passage into the 

 hands of any other than its present possessors, 

 expressed a feeling which was common to all 

 parties interested in its future. 



These difficulties have not been overlooked 

 by the statesmen and thinkers who have given 

 their attention to the solution of the Eastern 

 question, nor has their magnitude or importance 

 been underestimated. A number of schemes 

 have been proposed to obviate them, among 

 the most feasible of which have been those 

 which contemplated the erection of indepen- 

 dent states, or a confederacy of states, under the 

 joint protection of all the Powers, in European 

 Turkey, and the establishment of Constanti- 

 nople as the capital of a confederacy, or as a 

 free city, under the same protection. 



Count Capo d'Istria, an eminent Russian 

 statesman, proposed the following plan in 

 1828 : The Ottoman Empire in Europe should 

 be replaced by five states of the second rank. 

 These states should be : 1. The duchy or king- 

 dom of Dacia, consisting of the principalities 

 of Wallachia and Moldavia. . 2. The kingdom of 

 Servia, to include Bulgaria, Servia, and Bosnia. 

 3. The kingdom of Macedonia, to consist of 

 Macedonia proper, with the islands of the Pro- ' 

 pontis and the islands of Imbros, Samothrace, 

 and Thasos. 4. The kingdom of Epirus, to be 

 formed out of Epirus, with the provinces of 

 Upper and Lower Albania. 5. The Hellenic 

 state, to include Greece proper, from the river 

 Peneus in Thessaly to the city of Arta. Maz- 

 zini expressed the belief, several years ago, that 

 the maintenance of the Austro-Hungarian and 

 Ottoman Empires in their present shape was 

 an impossibility, and that their place would 

 be taken by four Slavic states or confedera- 

 tions. 



Garibaldi has proposed the erection of a re- 

 publican confederation of all the races, like 

 that of Switzerland, in which each nationality 

 should enjoy a provincial autonomy. 



Signer Crispi, President of the Italian Cham- 

 ber of Deputies, and afterward Minister of the 

 Interior, visited Vienna and Pesth in October, 

 and in a speech at a banquet given him by a 

 number of Hungarian deputies, suggested an 

 extension of Greece to the Balkans and a Slavic 

 confederation, as a possible solution. His views 

 were received with great disfavor by the Hun- 

 garian journals. 



Mr. Foster, the English Liberal statesman, 

 hinted at a possible disposition of Constantino- 

 ple, when, in a speech made at Bristol, in No- 

 vember, 1877, he said that he should be glad 

 to see it given to the Greeks. 



