Constantinople must dominate the Balkan peninsula

Nor is this all. In the hands of a first-class military and naval power, Constantinople must dominate the Balkan peninsula and the whole of Greece. With an impregnable capital, and the powerful navy which the wonderful marine opportunities of Constantinople render an inevitable pos-session to any great power, the rival races and petty kingdoms of the peninsula would all alike become mere dependencies or provinces. Here, then, we reach the full limit of the possible issue. Turkey is now no longer a maritime power of any account. Her magnificent soldiery forms no longer a menace to any European power, however small; and, if it suffices to hold the lines of Constantinople on the Balkan side (which is not absolutely certain), it is liable at any moment to be paralysed by an enemy on the, flank who could command the Black Sea or the Sea of Marmora.

Of course, the Bosphorus has lost its ancient importance as a defence; for a northern invader command-ing the Black -Sea could easily descend on the heights above Pera, and with Pera in the hands of an enemy, Stamboul is now indefensible. That is to say, Constantinople is no longer impregnable, or even defensible, without a first-class fleet. Therefore neither Turkey, nor Bulgaria, nor Greece, nor any other small power, could have any but a precarious hold on it, in the absence of a very powerful fleet of some ally.

From these conditions the following consequences result. Turkey can hold Constantinople as her capital with absolute security against any minor power. She could not hold it against Russia having a predominant fleet in the Black Sea, unless she received by alliance the support of a powerful navy. With the support of a powerful fleet guided turkey tours, and her own reconstituted army and restored financial and administrative condition, she might hold Constantinople indefinitely against all the resources of Russia.

Placed in Stamboul

It is perfectly plain that no minor power, even if placed in Stamboul, could hold it except by sufferance; certainly neither Bulgaria, nor Greece, nor Servia, perhaps hardly Austria, unless she enormously developed her fleet, and transformed her entire empire. Turkey, as planted at present on the Bosphorus, is not a menace to any other power. The powers with which she is surrounded are intensely jealous of each other; and by race, religion, traditions, and aspirations, incapable of permanent amalgamation.

From the national and religious side the problem is most complex and menacing. Even in Constantinople the Moslems are a minority of the population; and still more decidedly so in the other European provinces. But in jnost of the Asiatic provinces, Moslems are a majority, and in almost all they are enormously superior in effective strength to any other single community. To put aside Syrians, Arabs, Egyptians, Jews, and other non-Christian populations, there are, within the more western parts of the Turkish Empire, Bulgarians, Greeks, Albanians, various Slavonian peoples, Armenians, and Levantine Catholics, not so very unequally balanced in effective force and national ambition; all intensely averse to submit to the control of any one amongst the rest, and unwilling to combine with each other. Each watches the other with jealousy, suspicion, antipathy, and insatiable desire to domineer.