April 12, 1782 243

Hughes and Suffren, July 6, 1782 243

Hughes and Suffren, September 3, 1782 249

* * * * *

THE MAJOR OPERATIONS OF THE NAVIES IN THE WAR OF AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE

INTRODUCTION

THE TENDENCY OF WARS TO SPREAD

Macaulay, in a striking passage of his Essay on Frederick the Great,
wrote, "The evils produced by his wickedness were felt in lands
where the name of Prussia was unknown. In order that he might rob
a neighbour whom he had promised to defend, black men fought on the
coast of Coromandel, and red men scalped each other by the Great Lakes
of North America."

Wars, like conflagrations, tend to spread; more than ever perhaps
in these days of close international entanglements and rapid
communications. Hence the anxiety aroused and the care exercised by
the governments of Europe, the most closely associated and the
most sensitive on the earth, to forestall the kindling of even the
slightest flame in regions where all alike are interested, though with
diverse objects; regions such as the Balkan group of States in their
exasperating relations with the Turkish empire, under which the Balkan
peoples see constantly the bitter oppression of men of their own blood
and religious faith by the tyranny of a government which can neither
assimilate nor protect. The condition of Turkish European provinces
is a perpetual lesson to those disposed to ignore or to depreciate
the immense difficulties of administering politically, under one
government, peoples traditionally and racially distinct, yet living
side by side; not that the situation is much better anywhere in the
Turkish empire. This still survives, though in an advanced state of
decay, simply because other States are not prepared to encounter the
risks of a disturbance which might end in a general bonfire, extending
its ravages to districts very far remote from the scene of the
original trouble.

Since these words were written, actual war has broken out in the
Balkans. The Powers, anxious each as to the effect upon its own
ambitions of any disturbance in European Turkey, have steadily
abstained from efficient interference in behalf of the downtrodden
Christians of Macedonia, surrounded by sympathetic kinsfolk.
Consequently, in thirty years past this underbrush has grown drier
and drier, fit kindling for fuel. In the Treaty of Berlin, in 1877,
stipulation was made for their betterme