Page:Christian Greece and Living Greek.djvu/20

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A POLITICAL RETROSPECT ON GREECE.

for the accomplishment of their own designs. They are acting thus not from love for Turkey, but from hostility toward Greece. The Austrian men-of-war were about to bombard Mersina the other day, merely because some Turkish zaptiehs maltreated an Austrian subject. But when a whole Christian population of two hundred and fifty thousand souls in Crete were menaced with massacre, and some hundreds of them were actually butchered by the Turks at Canea, the powers found fault with Greece for sending men-of-war and soldiers for their protection. They evidently have different weights and measures for the small and large states. The application of this pernicious principle means assuredly the annihilation of the independence of the small states in favor of the large ones.

Nothing is heard any more about the promised reforms by the Sultan. The massacre of the Armenians seems forgotten. Abdul Hamid knows that the so-called concert of the powers is a sham and that they mistrust and are afraid of each other. He has succeeded in rendering the celebrated concert the laughing-stock of the civilized world. Turkey is safe, not because she is guarded by the Turkish army, but because she is supported by European bayonets. It is really a