The Turco-Russian war is partly a conflict of religions and partly one of politics.  The Turks came into Europe as the religious emissaries of the Mohammedan religion.  In all the provinces of Turkey in Europe which they conquered, the Christians of the Greek, Armenian and Catholic churches were the victims of a bitter persecution.  The Czar of Russia is the head of the Greek church.  He has made repeated wars in defense of the children of his faith.  There have been many wars and long sieges which, like the present, were said to be only in defense of the faith of the Greek church—­a crusade and a holy war,

But if “Neb” will only look at the map of Russia, he will see, if he will study climate a little, that the vast empire of Russia has one thing lacking.  It has no good outlet to the Atlantic Ocean, no power upon the seas.  The Baltic Sea is closed half the year by ice.  The great wheat trade of Russia concentrates at Odessa, on the Black Sea, and to get her grain to market she must pass through the Turkish lanes of the Bosphorus and the Dardanelles.  Russia is a prisoner as to access to the Mediterranean, and so to the Atlantic, and so to the world at large.  If she is at war, she cannot float her fleets.  If she is at peace, she cannot sell her grain without going roundabout through her neighbors’ lots.  Turkey stands the tollman at the turnpike-gate, controlling and usurping the highway of all nations.

Maps are fascinating reading.  “Neb” must not think that religious faith ever occasioned a war.  Russia sincerely desires the protection of Greek Christians in Roumania and Bulgaria in Europe, and Armenia in Asia, but she wants also to send her ships free to the winds through from the Black Sea to the Mediterranean.  Look at the map once more, “Neb,” and see how much of a great country, fertile, strong, and industrious, is closed and shut against the outer world by the absolute Turkish control of the Bosphorus and the Dardanelles.

* * * * *

    Indianapolis, 1877.

    DEAR ST. NICHOLAS:  I have taken every number of your splendid
    magazine, and I will now try to do my share to entertain the
    others.

    My papa was a soldier in the great civil war, and I was born in
    camp just after the close of the war, and am now nearly twelve
    years old.

General Sherman, who made the great “march to the sea,” wrote me a letter, which is very much too good for one boy alone, so I send it to you to publish, so that other children may have the benefit of it too.—­Your reader,

    BERNIE M.

  “Head-quarters Army of the United States,
  “Washington, D.C., April 21, 1877.

  “MASTER BERNIE M. 
  “Indianapolis: