"I have received my passports and the note of your excellency. The fine conditions (those stipulated by the Turkish ultimatum) not having been officially communicated to me, I have no right to discuss them. The whole world will soon have to decide as to who is responsible for the present rupture of relations between Turkey and Greece, just declared by the Sublime Porte. The government of the king, my august sovereign, has spared nothing in order to avoid this crisis. Not only has it kept itself on a footing of legal neutrality with regard to the Cretan insurrection, etc., etc., but has, moreover, for two years past, patiently supported all sorts of acts of hostility, violence, and oppression committed in the different Ottoman provinces, to the prejudice of Hellenic co-nationalists and their interests. For the past six months I have constantly been witness to acts of this nationarbitrary and illegal arrests, scandalous banishments, seizure of Hellenic vessels in open sea, and a constant and systematic denial of justice in all matters in which my co-nationalists were concerned. In the face of so many infractions of existing treaties, the Hellenic government has given proofs of the greatest moderation. Its representative at Constantinople confined himself to pointing out all these illegalities to the Sublime Porte, and asking a separation, which he never obtained. The Porte, misunderstanding this conciliatory disposition on the part of the Hellenic Government, has thought proper to break off, the fourth time in thirty years, its diplomatic and commercial relations with Greece-without any new circumstances having occurred different from what already existed, to justify, in the slightest degree, this rigorous proceeding, and without giving the time to bring about an arrangement. It devolves, therefore, upon the Porte, before the civilized world, to justify this harshness and the consequences. Having confided the protection of my co-nationalists to the legation of the United States of North America, etc., I beg to inform your excellency that I shall quit Constantinople," etc., etc.

One question at once suggests itself. If the Turks had been so brutally and uniformly severe upon the Greek residents in their dominions, as M. Delyanni asserts-why have they remained so pertinaciously in Turkey to make fortunes, become influential rayahs, and endure kindred torments? The Greek rayahs absorb the internal trade of Turkey, as Greek merchants and vessels almost entirely monopolize its external commerce.

Perhaps in none of the Eastern disputes had the great powers been so unanimous in their fault-finding with the domestic and foreign policy of a country as in the present Turko-Greek affair, and with the pretensions of MM. Bulgaris and Delyanni, for their government was pronounced to be positively in the wrong. By the despatches of the Greck foreign minister, the most zealous Philhellene could but per

ceive that the Athens cabinet was, by its own account, substantially guilty of all that Photiades Bey, the Turkish mouthpiece, had laid to its charge. M. Delyanni abdicated all control by a nation over its own citizens, and made each brigand a potentate with the right to levy war and declare peace. No better proof of the hallucination of the Greek government was needed than the utterances of its own minister. In his reply, M. Delyanni had, more or less, begged the principal questions, to enlarge upon the threat by Turkey to expel in case of rupture, from her realm, Hellenic subjects settled there, who did not own the jurisdiction of the Porte, said to be some 200,000 in all. M. Delyanni also made an elaborate defence of his government, regarding its course toward the Cretan refugees, denying Greek ill-treatment, etc. He adverted to the matter of openly levying, at Athens, and drilling and equipping bands of soldiers to attack the sultan's authority in Crete, as though it were an insignificant question of a few individual Hellenes, at the same time that he tacitly admitted the complaint of wholesale connivance made by the Sultan's representatives. The unscrupulous conduct of the Greek government its minister did not deny, but sought to justify it by documents subversive of all national security.

A cordial understanding upon the Turko-Greek difference seemed, then, to exist among the great powers in their advice given at Athens and Constantinople; yet, in the face of the persistence of the Greek ministers in their course, public speculation became alive again touching the moral countenance which was sustaining King George, as the only explanation of his policy. For two years, it was alleged, the Hellenic cabinet had heard but flippantly noticed-warnings addressed to it by England, France, and Austria on this very subject of support given to the Cretan insurrection. It was averred that M. Bulgaris and his colleagues did not believe that all the powers acting in concert were in earnest. About three of them, above named, there could be no doubt, but the Greek cabinet, it was thought, did not deem that Russia really meant what she joined the others in counselling King George. Russia, doubtless, saw with satisfaction the prolongation of the strife in Crete, as it

added to the embarrassments of the Porte; still Europe could not conceive the czar as ready to renew the struggle in which he was defeated twelve years ago, or that, in case of an outbreak between Turkey and Greece, he would grant the latter solid aid. The cabinet of St. Petersburg by public voice was called upon to give the Greeks a positive and open intimation to that effect.

Some there were who declared that Greece had only acted toward Turkey as Piedmont acted toward the two Sicilies, or as Italy, under the administration of Ratazzi, acted toward the pontifical government. There were others, perhaps, who fancied that the Moslem should recross the Hellespont, and that the European continent should contain no state not professing the Christian religion.

If Europe had freely condoned elsewhere conduct that was not easily distinguishable from that of Greece in Crete, except in point of success, the great powers seemed, in the present case, to have an acute perception of the evil of such precedents to the peace of the Continent. Such futile violations of international comity were to be discountenanced, as anarchy in Europe might be the result-whilst the Moslem of late had certainly shown himself to be a more peaceable neighbor than some of the more ambitious Christian nations.

The aggressors in the present affair were the Greeks. Their notion has been that they could play a great part in Europe and form a governing class over all the Eastern Christians in a revived Byzantine empire. It is, however, worthy of remark that the Christians of Turkey have been more eager to shake off Greek influence than Ottoman rule. The Bulgarians, for instance, thought more of being rid of Greek ecclesiastics than of bearing the civil and military authority of the Pasha. The struggles of the Greek race and Christian populations of Europe against the Mussulman did not begin with that sentimental enterprise the creation of the Hellenic kingdom, nor need they end should the Greek be devoured by the Turk to-morrow. The Mussulman power would continue to be honey-combed in Europe, and the restless and encroaching genius of the Hellene might be as active as ever in the Levant, so, simply war, or simply no war, would not permanently remedy the situation.

A project to summon a conference of the great powers on the subject of the dispute between the Porte and Greece naturally, then, found favor among diplomatists, especially as the third of the three protecting powers had been unwilling, or unable, alone, to address to Greece such a remonstrance as would have brought her to a sense of her duties, or even to join England and France in their most urgent representations. What little plea could be made for Greece was now put forward by one or two journals out of the hundreds in England and France. "Greece as a nationality was small, scarcely strong enough to stand alone," hence a natural, even excusable, desire for territory and increased population. Her classical origin and benefactions to the civilized world were stereotyped claims. Then the peoples surrounding her, and which she had tried to seduce, had more in common with the nationality of Greece than that of Turkey-almost kin in blood, they possessed the same religion. If a bit of underhand Greek. policy was plausible and not without admitted precedent, and it was simply fair to give the government of King George the benefit of all that could be said in mitigation of its procedure. Napoleon the First protested against the sittings of royal committees in London, and their warlike preparations, and the English government replied that its constitution prevented its interfering with such bodies, though England and France were at the time at peace-just what M. Delyanni replied!" wrote Mr. Xenos to the Times. "Garibaldian bands with smart uniforms and colors flying left London in larger numbers than Greek volunteers left Athens, (?) still England did not stop them any more than did the cabinet at Washington suppress the bellicose declarations of the Fenians."

But Mr. Xenos knows that those royal committees despatched no Englishmen to stir up the Chouans of Brittany; had they, the Emperor would have made quick work of them, and possibly have turned upon England to stop the nuisance. Certainly he would not, like Turkey, have deferred to foreign meddling, powerful as was Great Britain. The English, too, did eventually put a stop to the Garibaldian recruitment, and the President of the United States would arrest an open Fenian invasion movement, or, in the impossibility, leave the expedi

tion to its fate with the greatest unconcern, as in the Walker and Lopez cases.

And at the same time it was asked for the Porte why that government should consent to defer its differences with Greece to the arbitration of the great powers. It insisted upon nothing which every one of them did not admit as its due, nothing which it had not the right and means to enforce, nothing which Europe could ask it to abate, even for the sake of peace. Turkey's wish, at heart, was to be left alone to be permitted to compel the Greeks to discontinue their malpractice. A conference under such circumstances seemed intended to impose upon the Sultan submission to the insolence of the Athens cabinet, which appeared to believe itself backed up by Russia, and perhaps by Prussia, when members of it coolly talked of the diplomatic rupture as being a warlike one, and of a continued invasion of the Ottoman territory. It was the Greeks, in truth, who threatened war; and to propose a conference to decide whether Turkey or Greece was in the wrong, and to devise an arrangement for reconciling them, was very like taking part with Greece in the gross violation of neutrality she had so long committed and announced her intention of persisting in.

To sum up the case for a conference, the situation was thus: Greece had interfered, in a manner which her insignificance rendered worse than inexcusable, in the affairs of Turkey. The latter power demanded abstinence from future intermeddling. Moderation, the consistent policy of the Sultan, had appeared to be timidity in the eyes of the Greeks. The realizing of that mistake and the expression of European opinion might, with time, qualify the pretensions of the Hellenic ministers and calm the turbulence of the Greek people behind them, who, it was asserted, were fast pushing their government to a conflict. A conference, then, gained time, and afforded an opportunity for King George to retract.

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Prussia, or Prussia and Russia, proposed the conference, 'only to protect Greece against the punishment she has so well merited, and to compel, if possible, the Sultan to sacrifice to the falsely called interests of peace something more of his own independence," cried the London Standard, with much truth if