The tzar indignantly inquires, “What title deed can the Turk show to the city of Constantine?” None but the dripping cimeter.  The annals of war can tell no sadder tale of woe than the rush of the barbaric Turk into Christian Greece.  He came, a merciless robber with gory hands, plundering and burning.  Fathers and mothers were butchered.  Christian maidens, shrieking with terror, were dragged to the Moslem harems.  Christian boys were compelled to adopt the Mohammedan faith, and then, crowded into the army, were compelled to fight the Mohammedan battles.  For centuries the Christians, thus trampled beneath the heel of oppression, have suffered every conceivable indignity from their cruel oppressors.  Earnestly have they appealed to their Christian brethren of Russia for protection.

It is so essential to the advancing civilization of Russia that she should possess a maritime port which may give her access to commerce, that it is not easy for us to withhold our sympathies from her in her endeavor to open a gateway to and from her vast territories through the Dardanelles.  When France, England and Turkey combined to batter down Sevastopol and burn the Russian fleet, that Russia might still be barred up in her northern wilds by Turkish forts, there was an instinct in the American heart which caused the sympathies of this country to flow in favor of Russia, notwithstanding all the eloquent pleadings of the French and English press.

The cabinet of St. James regards these encroachments of Russia with great apprehension.  The view England takes of the subject may be seen in the following extracts from the Quarterly Review: 

“The possession of the Dardanelles would give to Russia the means of creating and organizing an almost unlimited marine.  It would enable her to prepare in the Black Sea an armament of any extent, without its being possible for any power in Europe to interrupt her proceedings, or even to watch or discover her designs.  Our naval officers, of the highest authority, have declared that an effective blockade of the Dardanelles can not be maintained throughout the year.  Even supposing we could maintain permanently in those seas a fleet capable of encountering that of Russia, it is obvious that, in the event of a war, it would be in the power of Russia to throw the whole weight of her disposable forces on any point in the Mediterranean, without any probability of our being able to prevent it, and that the power of thus issuing forth with an overwhelming force, at any moment, would enable her to command the Mediterranean Sea for a limited time whenever it might please her so to do.  Her whole southern empire would be defended by a single impregnable fortress.  The road to India would then be open to her, with all Asia at her back.  The finest materials in the world for an army destined to serve in the East would be at her disposal.  Our power to overawe her in Europe would be gone, and by even a demonstration against India she could augment our national expenditure by many millions annually, and render the government of that country difficult beyond all calculation.”