ips to pass through upon any pretext. There was
indignation in Europe when this was known, and out of the whole
imbroglio there came just what Nicholas and his minister Nesselrode had
intended--a joint protection of Turkey by the Great Powers, from which
France was excluded on account of her avowed sympathy for the Khedive
in the recent troubles.

The great game of diplomacy had begun. Nicholas, for the sake of
humiliating France, had allied himself with England, his natural enemy,
and had assumed the part of Protector of an Ottoman integrity which he
more than anyone else had tried to destroy! There were to be many
strange roles played in this Eastern drama--many surprises for
Christendom; and for Nicholas the surprise of a crushing defeat a few
years later to which France contributed, possibly in retaliation for
this humiliation.

The Ottoman Empire had reached its zenith in 1550 under Suleyman the
Magnificent, when, with its eastern frontier in the heart of Asia, its
European frontier touching Russia and Austria, it held in its grasp
Egypt, the northern coast of Africa, and almost every city famous in
biblical and classical history. Then commenced a decline; and when its
terrible Janizaries were a source of danger instead of defense, when
its own Sultan was compelled to destroy them in 1826 for the protection
of his empire, it was only a helpless mass in the throes of dissolution.

But Turkey as a living and advancing power was less alarming to Europe
than Turkey as a perishing one. Lying at the gateway between the East
and the West, it occupied the most commanding strategic position in
Europe. If that position were held by a living instead of a dying
power, that power would be master of the Continent. No one state would
ever be permitted by the rest to reach such an ascendency; and the next
alternative of a division of the territory after the manner of Poland,
was fraught with almost as much danger. The only hope for the peace of
Europe was to keep in its integrity this crumbling wreck of a wicked,
crime-stained old empire. Such was the policy now inaugurated by
Russia, Great Britain, Austria, and Prussia; and such in brief is the
"Eastern Question," which for more than half a century has overshadowed
all others in European diplomacy, and more than any other has strained
the conscience and the moral sense of Christian nations. We wish we
might say that one nation had been able to resist this invitation t