Happily, “the fear of Russia,” as of a strange and unknown colossus, is dying out, vague fancies inevitably yielding to the hard logic of facts.  The Disraeli policy in the Near East must give place once and for all to the broader conceptions of Gladstone, tempered by the cautious statesmanship of Salisbury.  The greatest of the Christian Powers must be allowed to replace the cross upon the dome of Saint Sofia.  The religious appeal of such a change is clear enough, nor need there be any anxiety on economic grounds.  There is nothing to prevent Constantinople from becoming a free port under the Russian flag, and filling a similar place to that which the free port of Trieste would occupy under the flag of United Italy.  Indeed it may be confidently assumed that the change would give an extraordinary impetus to trade in the whole eastern Mediterranean.  The recent history of Batum and Baku is a faint indication of what might be expected.

The fate of the Dardanelles cannot be separated from that of the capital; both must be in the same hands.  At the same time a reasonable compensation for their cession to Russia would be the dismantlement of their forts.  In any case, whatever their fate may be, it is clear that an end must be put to the galling restrictions upon Russia’s Black Sea fleet.  The essential point to bear in mind is that if the war goes well with the Allies, and if Russia expresses a definite desire to occupy Constantinople and the straits, resistance on our part would be alike difficult, pointless, and undesirable.  Those who oppose have no arguments, so long as the special international needs and conditions of the city are properly recognised and guaranteed.  With true Oriental fatalism, the Turk has always regarded his ultimate disappearance from Europe as a certainty; the superstition which led the inhabitants of Stamboul to prefer burial across the straits in Asia has its parallel in the alarm aroused in the bazaars by the Young Turks’ decision to exterminate the pariah dogs which have for centuries supplied the place of scavengers in the streets of the capital.  To-day the prophecy which made their removal the prelude to the departure of their masters seems on the point of fulfillment, and all who believe in the retributive justice of history will re-echo Mr. Asquith’s hope that the fall of Ottoman rule will remove “the blight which for generations has withered some of the fairest regions of the world.”

Sec.15. Asiatic Turkey.—­What then will be the subsequent fate of the Turks if they are once driven “bag and baggage” across the straits.  The Sultan will doubtless transfer his capital to Brussa, or even to Konieh.  But can the Khalifate survive such a loss of prestige on the part of the Ottoman dynasty?  It would be altogether premature to discuss in anything approaching detail the vast issues of the fate of Turkey’s Asiatic dominions, but it is necessary to indicate that even after settling the fate of the straits we shall still