er
apparent than real, and may even in the end prove a source of new
strength.

Nor must we lose sight of the possibility of a French defeat I believe
that at no time during the past forty years has the military position of
"our allies" been in a graver peril in their colony than now, or the
resources of their antagonists greater. It is a weakness of the French
system in Africa that it has made no attempt to assimilate the native
population; and it is the strength of that population, in as far as it
is Arab, that it does assimilate French thought to its own advantage. It
is far from certain whether the conquest of Algiers may not some day
have for its effect the renewal of Mohammedan political vitality in all
the Barbary Coast.

A more absolute and immediate loss must be anticipated in Europe and
Western Asia. There it is pretty certain that in a very few years
Ottoman rule will have ceased, and the Turkish-speaking lands composing
the Empire been absorbed by one or other of the powerful neighbours who
have so long coveted their possession. Austria, in person or by deputy,
may be expected by the end of the present century to have inherited the
European, and Russia the Asiatic, provinces of Turkey proper, while the
fate of Syria and Egypt will only have been averted, if averted it be,
by the intervention of England. That a dissolution of the Empire may
and will be easily accomplished I have myself little doubt. The military
power of Constantinople, though still considerable for the purposes of
internal control, will hardly again venture to cope single-handed with
any European State, nor is it in the least probable that the Sultan will
receive further Christian support from without. The fall of Kars has
laid Asia Minor open to the Russian arms, and the territorial cessions
of San Stefano and Berlin have laid Roumelia open to the Austrian. On
the first occasion of a quarrel with the Porte a simultaneous advance
from both quarters would preclude the chance of even a serious struggle,
and the subjugation of the Turkish-speaking races would be effected
without more difficulty.

The weakness of the Empire from a military point of view is, that it is
dependent wholly on its command of the sea, a position which enables it
to mass what troops it has rapidly on the points required, but which
even a second-rate Mediterranean power could wrest from it. Its
communication cut by a naval blockade, the Empire would almost without
fu