724
she enters into a campaign has to ask her-
self whether she can support a second or third
campaign. She enters into a campaign which
she will not terminate till right is done.
But nevertheless, as afore stated, Rus-
sia went to war with the Turk. The
event of the war was disastrous to
Turkey. Though making a brave fight
she was in the end beaten to her knees
and forced to sue for peace and for the
mediation of the Powers. Finally an
armistice was declared, so that terms of
peace could be arranged, and an agree-
ment to this effect was signed at Adri-
anople. Right on the heels of this an-
nouncment, came the word that the Rus-
sians, in spite of the armistice, were about
to occupy Tchataldja, an outpost of the
last line of defense of Constantinople.
The writer well remembers the memora-
ble night when the news reached London
and the House of Commons. To say
that the House lost its head is to put it
mildly. The lobbies, the corridors, St.
Stephen’s Hall, the great and historic
Westminister Hall itself, and the palace
yard beyond it became packed with
wildly excited and tumultuous crowds.
For a while it looked as if nothing could
prevent a declaration of war against Rus-
sia. The report of the Russian advance,
however, proved unfounded; neverthe-
less the British fleet in the Mediterranean
was sent through the Dardanelles, and
ordered to come to anchor a few miles
below Constantinople. Russia protested,
but so thoroughly aroused was the British
government that it would not recede
from its position, and it was finally
agreed that English troops would not be
disembarked as long as the Russian le-
gions made no further advance. Clearly
Russia and Great Britain were within a
hair’s breadth of war.
THE TREATY OF SAN STEFANO
Immediately after this Russia entered
into a treaty with Turkey — the famous
THE WATCHMAN
treaty of San Stefano,— signed by the
great Ignatief and Nelidof on the part
of Russia and Sayfet and Sadullah on
the part -of Turkey. This treaty was
signed March 3rd, 1878. It will not be
necessary here to go into the details
of this treaty beyond some of the most
important provisions,— important as far
as the subject of this article is concerned.
To get this before the reader in concise
form I append the summary of this part
of the document as made by Fyffe and
I underscore some points which will need
further treatment later :—
By this Treaty the Porte recognized the
independence of Servia, Montenegro, and Ru-
mania, and made considerable cessions of ter-
ritory to the two former States. Bulgaria
was constituted an autonomous tributary prin-
cipality, with a Christian government and a
national militia. Its frontier, which was made
$0 extensive as to include the greater part of
European Turkey, was defined as beginning
near Midia on the Black Sea, not sixty miles
from the Bosphorus: passing thence westward
just to the north of Adrianople; descending to
the Zigean Sea, and following the coast as far
as the Thracian Chersonese; then passing in-
land westward, so as barely to exclude Sa-
lonika; running on to the border of Albania
within fifty miles of the Adriatic, and from this
point following the Albanian border up to the
new Servian frontier.—Fyffe, History of Mod-
evn Europe, Vol. 3, pp. 510, 5I1.
It will be noted that in brief this treaty
created a great new Bulgarian State
WITH A SEAPORT ON THE
AGEAN SEA. Tt will further be
noted that at Midia its frontier was only
sixty miles from the Bosphorus, and that
the line barely excluded Salonika, and ran
within fifty miles of the Adriatic. Now
the Bulgarians are Slavic in origin like
the Russians, and for the most part of
the same religious creed, and Russia in
this case was clearly their liberator. It
is easy enough to understand from all of
this how that Russia through the crea-
tion of this great Bulgaria was about to