lfil it
remains to be seen. I do not myself anticipate any further intervention
on the part of England in defence of the Turkish-speaking lands. These,
from their geographical position, lie outside our effective military
control, and, dishonourable as a retreat from our engagements will be to
us, it may be a necessity.

It is difficult to understand how an English army could effectively
protect either Asia Minor or Mesopotamia from Russian invasion. The
occupation of Kars has given Russia the command of the Tigris and
Euphrates, and with them of Armenia, Kurdistan and Irak, so that our
protection could hardly be extended beyond the sea-coast of Asia Minor
and the Persian Gulf. No such inability, however, applies to Syria.
There, if we _will_, we certainly _can_ carry out our engagements. A
mere strip of seaboard, backed by the desert, and attackable only from
the north on a narrow frontier of some hundred miles, Syria is easily
defensible by a nation holding the sea. It is probable that a railway
run from the Gulf of Scanderun to the Euphrates, and supported by a
single important fortress, would be sufficient to effect its military
security at least for many years; and Syria might thus have given to it
a chance of self-government, and some compensation for misfortunes in
which we have had no inconsiderable share. But this is an interest of
honour rather than of political necessity to England; and he must
possess a sanguine mind who, in the present temper of Englishmen, would
count greatly on such motives as likely to determine the action of their
Government. If, however, it should be otherwise, it is evident that the
success of such a protectorate would depend principally upon the
Mohammedan element in Syria, which so greatly preponderates over any
other.

A fourth interest, also a moral one, but connected with an accepted fact
of English policy, is the attempted abolition of the African slave
trade. Now, though it is unquestionable that Mohammedanism permits, and
has hitherto encouraged, slavery as a natural condition of human
society, it is no less true that without the co-operation of the various
Mussulman princes of the African and Arabian coasts its abolition cannot
be effected. Short of the occupation by European garrisons of all the
villages of the Red Sea, and from Gardafui southwards to Mozambique, or,
on the other hand, of the subjection of all independent Moslem
communities in Arabia and elsewhere, a real e