* * * * *

In 1850 Nicholas, the Czar of Russia, determined to take the Christians in Turkey under his own protection.  This gave to Russia a virtual Protectorate over the Turkish dominions, and excited the jealousy of England and France.

Affecting to think it was an unfair advantage, and an infringement upon the rights of Turkey, those two countries united in a great war upon Russia.  This was known as the Crimean War, which ended disastrously for Russia and placed the persecuted Christians under the combined protection of Europe.

England and France have made little use since of a right which they purchased with thousands of precious lives!

The present Sultan, Abdul Hamid, is the thirty-fifth in descent from Othman.

He is the most luxurious and the most powerful barbarian in the world!

As he sits surrounded by six thousand attendants, eating his pancakes without table or plate or knife and fork, he is sovereign over lands in three Continents.

Absolute lord over some of the richest provinces in the world, surrounded by a fabulous luxury at Constantinople, he is still one of the most abject and miserable of beings.

This man, known as the “Great Assassin,” whose will is law, and whose nod is death to millions of people, is as ignorant as a child, as nervously timid as an hysterical woman, and as he cowers in the palace of his ancestors, he trembles at an approaching footstep.

It is his own subjects that he really fears.  The Powers could depose—­but his subjects can assassinate.

The Sultan knows, and the Powers know, that when they demand a vigorous policy in defence of the Christians they are asking and he is assenting to an impossibility.

The millions of wild, turbulent people whom he rules only endure his authority because he stands to them in the place of the Prophet.  But the Prophet taught death to non-Mussulmans.

Should he really be true to his word, and try to bring Kurds and Arnauts to justice, in defence of Christians, his army would revolt, and his subjects would depose him in an hour—­and deposition would mean death!

It needs all his inherited craft and cunning to keep his head upon his shoulders at the best of times.  And the talk of reforms in the Ottoman Empire is an idle and diplomatic fiction.

The last stage is reached.  The question is whether this Empire, reeking with crimes, red-handed from the blood of Christians in Armenia, a scourge in the past, and an offence to the moral sense of humanity in the present,—­shall be permitted longer to exist?

Shall I tell you how this question is being answered to-day?

I am ashamed to write it!

Six Christian Powers, after exhausting the resources of diplomacy, are bombarding Christians in Crete in defence of “the Integrity of the Ottoman Empire”!

MaryPlatt Parmele.