Dnieper,
the Don and the Cuban. These streams, rolling through unmeasured
leagues of Russian territory, open them to the commerce of the world.
This brief sketch reveals the infinite importance of the Dardanelles
and the Bosporus to Russia. This great empire, "leaning against the
north pole," touches the Baltic Sea only far away amidst the ices of
the North. St. Petersburg, during a large portion of the year, is
blockaded by ice. Ninety millions of people are thus excluded from all
the benefits of foreign commerce for a large portion of the year
unless they can open a gateway to distant shores through the Bosporus
and the Dardanelles.

America, with thousands of miles of Atlantic coast, manifests the
greatest uneasiness in having the island of Cuba in the hands of a
foreign power, lest, in case of war, her commerce in the Gulf should
be embarrassed. But the Dardanelles are, in reality, the only gateway
for the commerce of nearly all Russia. All her great navigable
rivers, without exception, flow into the Black Sea, and thence through
the Bosporus, the Marmora and the Hellespont, into the Mediterranean.
And yet Russia, with her ninety millions of population--three times
that of the United States--can not send a boat load of corn into the
Mediterranean without bowing her flag to all the Turkish forts which
frown along her pathway. And in case of war with Turkey her commerce
is entirely cut off. Russia is evidently unembarrassed with any very
troublesome scruples of conscience in reference to reclaiming those
beautiful realms, once the home of the Christian, which the Turk has
so ruthlessly and bloodily invaded. In assailing the Turk, the Russian
feels that he is fighting for his religion.

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 Ch