But if Turkey deserves to fall, and must fall, it must not fall by our
treachery. Its sins will surely be avenged upon it: but wrong must not
avenge wrong, or the penalty is only passed on from one sinner to
another. Whatsoever element of good is left in the Turk, to that we
must appeal as our only means, if not of saving him, still of helping
him to a quiet euthanasia, and absorption into a worthier race of
successors. He is said (I know not how truly) to have one virtue left;
that of faithfulness to his word. Only by showing him that we too abhor
treachery and bad faith, can we either do him good, or take a safe
standing-ground in our own peril. And this we have done; and for this
we shall be rewarded. But this is surely not all our duty. Even if we
should be able to make the civil and religious freedom of the Eastern
Christians the price of our assistance to the Mussulman, the struggle
will not be over; for Russia will still be what she has always been, and
the northern Anarch will be checked, only to return to the contest with
fiercer lust of aggrandisement, to enact the part of a new Macedon,
against a new Greece, divided, not united, by the treacherous bond of
that balance of power, which is but war under the guise of peace.
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