TWO POSSIBLE SOLUTIONS FOR THE EASTERN 



PROBLEM 



By James Bryce 



Author of "The American Commonwealth," "South American Observa- 

 tions AND Impressions/' etc. 



The following article was written by Mr. James Bryce when a private citizen, 

 as an introduction to "The Balkan Question" {John Murray, London), and is 

 reprinted here without change. It summarizes the results of extensive travel in 

 the Balkan countries and of a long study of the problem which has tormented the 

 peace of Europe for generations. 



THE high-water mark of Turkish 

 conquest had been reached when 

 Vienna was saved by the Pohsh 

 King, John Sobieski, in A. D. 1683. 

 Ever since then the recession of the 

 water has been uninterrupted. Empires 

 may take a long time to die. Looking 

 back, we can see that the East Roman 

 Empire steadily lost ground from the 

 death of the Emperor Manuel Comnenus 

 in A. D. II 80, yet it was not destroyed 

 till the capture of Constantinople in 

 A. D. 1453. 



Much more rapid has been the decline 

 of the Turkish power. One by one its 

 European provinces have been stripped 

 away. Hungary was lost, and then in 

 succession Transylvania and Bessarabia, 

 and the two Danubian principalities 

 which now constitute the Rumanian 

 kingdom, and Greece, and Servia, and 

 Bosnia, and Bulgaria, and Thessaly, and 

 eastern Rumelia, and Crete. In Asia 

 also Russia has twice advanced her fron- 

 tiers over territory that was once Otto- 

 man. Egypt was long ago detached, and 

 in our own time so also has Cyprus been. 

 Everywhere in the modern world the 

 weak powers break up under the impact 

 of the strong, and the Turkish dominion 

 is exceptionally weak in proportion to 

 the vast area it covers. It would, in- 

 deed, have before now been torn to 

 pieces by revolt or absorbed by rapa- 

 cious neighbors had not the mutual jeal- 

 ousies of the European States interposed 

 a check, and had not the power of pur- 

 chasing modern arms of precision given 

 to the government, as it gives to every 

 government, advantages against insur- 



gents which did not exist in earlier days. 

 If during the last hundred years the 

 Turkish Empire had stood alone and un- 

 befriended, as the east Roman Empire 

 stood alone in the fourteenth and fif- 

 teenth centuries, it would before now 

 have perished from the earth. 



The process of decay goes steadily on 

 for the most obvious of all reasons. The 

 governing class in Turkey is incorrigible. 

 Its faults are always the same. It can- 

 not or will not change the policy which 

 has brought the country to ruin. Sul- 

 tans come and go ; one is abler or more 

 vigorous ; another is feeble and heed- 

 less, or perhaps a mere voluptuary. But, 

 so far as the administration goes, there 

 is no attempt at improvement. One 

 scheme of reform after another, ex- 

 torted by the European powers, is prom- 

 ised or formally enacted, but no step is 

 ever taken to carry out any of the prom- 

 ises. 



The conditions are such that even if 

 by some amazing chance such a man as 

 Soliman the Magnificent or Akbar the 

 Great were to come to the throne there 

 is little probability that the process of 

 decline could be arrested. It advances 

 with the steady march of a law of na- 

 ture. Every European statesman knows 

 this. Every thinking man in Turkey it- 

 self knows it. That hopefulness must be 

 blind indeed which does not recognize 

 that the problem now is not how to keep 

 the Turkish Empire permanently in be- 

 ing, but how to minimize the shock of its 

 fall and what to substitute for it. 



Not that its fall is necessarily close 

 at hand. It may be delayed for some 



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