d an army.

Then the world saw the remarkable spectacle of fifteen thousand
Russians encamped on the Asiatic hills overlooking Constantinople,
ready to protect the Sultan in his seraglio against the Egyptians.
Among the Turks dissatisfaction was rampant. The Ulemas saw their
influence wane; the innovations had hurt countless interests, and the
new taxes incommoded all classes. Thousands of Janizaries, who were no
longer permitted to call themselves such, and the relatives and
friends of thousands of others who had been throttled, drowned, or
shot down, were scattered through the country and the capital. The
Armenians could not forget the persecution which they had recently
suffered, and the Greek Christians, who constituted half of the
populace of the original Turkish empire, looked upon their rulers as
their enemies, and upon the Russians as fellow-believers in the same
religion. Turkey at that time could not raise another army.

And just then France was laboring with her great event, England was
carrying a load in her public debts, while Prussia and Austria had
attached themselves more intimately than ever before to Russia,
compelled to do so by the conditions of Western Europe.

Foreign armies had brought the empire to the brink of destruction; a
foreign army had saved it. For this reason the Turks wished above
everything else to possess an army of their own of seventy thousand
regular troops. The inadequacy of this force for the protection of the
extensive possessions of the Porte is apparent after one glance at the
map. The very dimensions preclude the concentration of the troops,
scattered through so many places, when one particular spot is in
danger. The soldiers in Bagdad are 1,600 miles distant from those at
Ushkodra in Albania.

This shows the great importance of establishing in the Ottoman Empire
a well arranged system of militia. It presupposes, of course, that the
interests of those who rule and those who are ruled are not at
variance.

The present Turkish army is a new structure on an old and battered
foundation. At present the Porte would have to look for its safety to
its treaties rather than to its army; and the battles which will
decide the survival of this State may as well be fought in the
Ardennes or in the Waldai Mountains as in the Balkans.

The Ottoman monarchy needs above everything else a well ordered
administration, for under present conditions it will scarcely be able
to support even