proportions conducive to luxury, and sharply mark off one generation from the preceding, a sudden and catastrophic shattering of moral standards is the result. But such a general increase in prosperity as we have noticed is not likely to be so luxurious, and, except in individual cases, may not be baneful in this way. What is more likely to happen in such a general advance is an accentuation of the very tendency which made it possible; the strictness of code is not a whit relaxed as the pace is not diminished-only there is this difference, that as the struggle is less elemental than heretofore the character becomes more materialistic, and the code is in consequence interpreted more and more by the letter. For the desirable thing to happen is of course very, very difficult. The desirable thing in that precisely as and when it becomes safe for such a society, now slacking its fierce struggle against Nature, to take a holiday from its resoluteness also, and thus insensibly to discover that not the stern qualities alone in man are virtuous-that, as this becomes safe (previously it was not safe) there shall be to hand an employment for the energy before expended in a Spartan discipline, and a philosophy of life for the mind hitherto cramped in a Spartan superstition. The philosophy attempted in such transitions is unfortunately generally worse than the superstition. Witness Miss Margaret Fuller of Massachusetts. But we must not deviate to individual cases. What seems to happen, then, under the circumstances we have been describing is as follows: Monotony attempts suicide, and merely mangles itself. Sectarianism more fissiparous than ever grows more and more like itself. Jumpers, Feet-washers and Faith-healers endlessly distinguish themselves, and each earns for title 'Another of the Same'. At the same time dogmatism grows harsher and more strident, and a non-sectarian becomes a veritable pariah. It may be thought that the very excess of the tendency would cure itself, but, as we have seen, all the antecedent causes still operate and the movement continually gathers strength. In older countries the narrow teaching of the sects never goes near to monopolize the whole mind of the community; there, as a man feels the struggle for existence grow easier, he finds already established an easier and more genial

theory of life and the universe than he had heard from the ignorant preacher of the dingy meeting-house. Society is not so homogeneous that he thinks there is only one way of life. Intellectual amusements are open to him, if he is capable of enjoying them; and whereas he had previously regarded all amusements as sinful he now sees that they were merely impossible, or at least unwise, in his previous circumstances, but that at present relaxation is wisdom. The poor are told in their meeting-houses that to witness one of Shakespeare's plays in a theatre is a sin. They are right in thinking it, that is, so long as they think only in terms of themselves. Theatre-going would ruin them, it is therefore a sin for them, but it is not so qualitatively, as they believe it is. But in an older country it is easy to draw away from the creed of the meeting-house. In a new country it is not easy. The meetinghouse takes the whole community under its jurisdiction, and indeed legislates for it.

Now such Leviticism is peculiarly trying to the temper of the wiser portion of the community, and yet if they are wise enough they will not rail against it. It has served an excellent purpose in the past, and at present it must not be swept away with such suddenness and derision as to bring scorn upon true religion, of which we must admit it is one phase. It has become exaggerated through materialism, which is a sort of too literal interpretation of life, and it is not by luxurious and loose living on the part of the wealthywhich is only another kind of materialism-that the true example of relaxation will be given. Nor is there much help from adopting the old watchword 'Education is the Remedy'. 'Education' is perhaps the most pernicious rallying cry in North America to-day. For there education means largely the agricultural or business 'college', the technical school, the over-specialized and professionalizing university. All these things merely engrain the materialistic and intolerant tendency already so evident. There is nothing liberal and enfranchizing about any of them; they are created by practical, intolerant people, and they in turn help to mould such a character. So the difficulty is increased; we cannot get outside of ourselves, it seems, by any efforts of our own, and

our character is such that we are likely to be jealous of alien aid. It is a task to convert a man who thinks he should convert you!

It is but one of the evils of a community which can congratulate itself on being 'happily exempt from the ills attendant on older civilizations'. Politics is a hard science to understand, and one of the last things students of it learn is that no society can gather to itself all the blessings of the world. Tolerance is one of the blessings that come, alas! when other blessings have begun to abate.

CARLETON W. STANLEY.

SOME CAUSES OF TURKEY'S PRESENT CONDITION1

A

MONG the various factors that have led to the present political situation of the Ottoman Empire are to be reckoned: (a) the possession by the Ottoman Empire of territories coveted by other nations; and (b) the presence within the Empire of a heterogeneous and unassimilable population whom the ruling race sought to hold within bounds by military force. We will deal first with the problem of Turkey's possession of territories which for various reasons other countries have coveted. It was the imperial policies of Britain, Germany and Russia, and to a less degree of Austria and France, which in the past determined their attitude to Turkey. Britain, by the fortune of arms, came into possession of India, but her only route to India was by the sea. To sail around Africa was a very long voyage, hence it became Britain's policy to secure a shorter route to India through the Mediterranean and the Red Seas. Gibraltar at one end of the Mediterranean and the Suez canal at the other came into her possession in pursuance of this policy, and the terms on which autonomy was granted to Egypt involve the retention by Britain of military control of the Suez. Britain has also secured control of coaling and naval bases at Malta and Cyprus in the Mediterranean, and Aden and the Islands of Perim and Socotra at the extreme end of the Red Sea, and has a virtual protectorate over Abyssinia. But it was not sufficient for her to secure her own route to India: it was also necessary to bar the road to India to possible rivals, hence her policy of maintaining Persia and Afghanistan as buffer states between India and the Russian Empire.

Russian foreign policy can be explained by her need for an outlet to the sea. Petrograd and Vladivostock are frozen in during a large part of the year, so she has looked covetously towards Constantinople, or failing that sought to construct across the Balkan peninsula a series of Slavic states which should be beholden to her for their independence and should

1This paper was written in Constantinople before the recent Turkish victory.

accord her an outlet on the Adriatic. Italy, however, has opposed consistently the formation of a strong state on the eastern shore of the Adriatic, her own Adriatic shore being so vulnerable. And the Austrian Empire, finding Trieste insufficient and considering the ease with which Italy could close the Adriatic, hoped some day to possess Salonica and thus secure an outlet into the Aegean. Hence it came about that when, after the Russian war of 1877-8, Rumania, Bulgaria, Serbia and Montenegro were accorded independence, Austria took Bosnia and Herzegovina under her own protection while nominally recognizing Turkey's sovereign rights to these territories and securing to Turkey a strip of territory, the Sanjak of Novi Bazar, presumably to allow Turkey access to these districts; but this in reality served to separate Montenegro from Serbia, and thus kept a possible route open for Austria to Salonica; at the same time cutting off Russia from the Adriatic. Failing to secure Constantinople or a port on the Adriatic, Russia considered the possibility of securing an outlet at Alexandretta, for which purpose she has taken more than a humanitarian interest in the fate of Armenia.

Meantime Germany also looked longingly towards Constantinople. The colonizable parts of the world had already been largely occupied by Britain, France and others when Germany began to dream of a colonial empire, but the Near East was still in ferment, and by judicious policy she might secure a predominating influence in Asia Minor, perhaps make it virtually a German colony, and, at least, by the construction of the Baghdad railway, linking up with the European Transcontinental railway, secure rail route to the Persian Gulf, whence she could menace India. For this reason Britain employed all her influence at Constantinople to check Germany's Baghdad railway scheme, and also has opposed both Russia's and Germany's possession of Constantinople which is the key to the Near East. Turkey she did not fear as a rival. Russia and Germany she did. But Russia, equally with Britain, viewed with alarm Germany's growing influence in Turkey, for the Berlin to Baghdad railway scheme would, if completed, cut across her three possible outlets to the Mediterranean. To these rival policies of Britain, Germany and