al future in
the East. The armed protests of Crete, of Epirus, of Thessaly, and of
Macedonia, were but the commencement of a general participation of
Hellenism in the struggle between the Slavs and the Turks, and doubtless
of a more serious complication of the Eastern Question, to the great
dismay of European diplomacy, which can not or will not re-establish the
equilibrium between the different national elements which struggle
fiercely with each other in the Balkan Peninsula. It was only the demand
made on Greece by united European diplomacy, at the commencement of the
war in the East, that she should remain neutral, and the promises made
to her that she should not be forgotten in a Congress of the Powers
relative to the improvement of the state of things in the Ottoman
Empire, which induced her to restrain her national aspirations, and to
await that justice from a European Congress, which she was on the point
of claiming by arms. However, the delay which has occurred up to the
present time in the solution of the question of the delimitation of the
Hellenic frontiers--which is still pending between the Greek Government
and the Sublime Porte--is a sad sign of the blindness of the Turkish
Government, and equally hurtful to both peoples, paralyzing their
progress in civilization. For if this question were once settled, they
would be able to turn their attention to another quarter--that, namely,
where the common interests and dangers of the two peoples meet. For not
only the Sublime Porte, but Europe also, should well understand that a
predominance of the Hellenic element in the East has in nowise for its
object to satisfy the ambitious tendencies of a race. Modern
civilization is in danger of being overrun by the furious waves which
threaten to carry away everything in the Russian Empire. Those
fundamental principles of Russian Society, those ideas (extravagant and
anti-social in all points of view) of a Panslavist Caesarism, and the
principles of Nihilism, and of other social and religious sects, so
absurd and so contrary to human nature, between which there is just now
raging a combat so keen and so barbarous, are symptoms fatal to
civilization and to the peace of Europe, and the forerunners of a
catastrophe near at hand. Slavism, which is as ancient as the Latin and
German nationalities, has not, up to the present time, personified any
civilizing element in European history. Its proper character is
despotism, and in rec