Sri Aurobindo
Karmayogin
Political Writings and Speeches — 1909-1910
Karmayogin: A Weekly Review
Saturday 28th August 1909 — No.10
Facts and Comments
The Cretan Difficulty
Foreign affairs are as a rule lightly and unsubstantially dealt with by Indian journals.
This is partly due to want of the necessary information, partly to the parochial habit of mind encouraged by a cabined and subject national life which cannot enlarge its imagination outside the sphere of those immediate and daily events directly touching ourselves.
And yet the happenings of today in Asia, Europe and Africa are of great moment to the future of India and full of encouragement and stimulus to the spirit of Nationalism.
The recent events in Turkey are an instance.
It is not the methods of the Young Turks which have any lesson for India.
The circumstances are too dissimilar to warrant any fanciful theories of that kind.
It is rather the character of the party of freedom which bears a lesson to all struggling nationalities.
The dominant qualities of the democratic leaders — and these are the qualities they have imparted to the movement,— are strength, manhood, a bold heart, a clear brain, a virile efficiency.
The Government they have established has been showing these qualities to the full in its treatment of the Cretan difficulty.
It has shown that free Turkey, while not rashly oblivious of the circumstances created by an unfortunate past, will not tolerate any attempt to be treated as Sultan Abdul Hamid suffered himself to be treated.
Sultan Abdul Hamid, afraid of his subjects, afraid of the world, afraid even of his spies and informers, followed the weak and cowardly policy of a dishonest, intriguing and evasive Machiavellianism.
He conducted that policy with a certain skill and statecraft in details which eventually evoked admiration, but it could neither save Turkey from ignominy and weakness nor permanently protect a throne based upon cruelty, falsehood and despicable meanness.
All that it did, for Satan must be given his due, was to stave off a final disruption of Turkey and expulsion of the Ottoman from Europe.
But true freedom is always conscious of strength and knows that it is better to perish than to live for a short while longer at the cost of continual insult, degradation and weakness.
The first efforts of the new Government have been to save what remained of the outskirts of Turkish empire in Europe, the suzerainty in Crete, the supreme control in Macedonia.
Their diplomacy has been strong, outspoken and fearless.
It did not flinch nor in any way draw back a step or lower its tone until it forced Greece to a satisfactory attitude and obliged the Powers to baffle the tortuous Greek methods by lowering the Greek flag in Canea.
It has quietly ignored the attempt of the Powers to interfere even by a suggestion in the direct question between itself and Greece; for we read that Turkey is not going to give any formal answer to the Powers' Note recommending pacific counsels as that Note did not call for any reply.
It has been supported by the newly liberated nation by means of a Boycott which would have alarmed into reason a stronger Government than that of Athens.
And as strength, when firm and able, can never be ignored, it has secured the sympathy of the Powers in the shape of concessions which would never have been yielded to a weak or overcautious Government.
Strength attracts strength; firm and clear-minded courage commands success and respect; strong and straight dealing can dispense with the methods of dissimulation and intrigue.
All these are signs of character and it is only character that can give freedom and greatness to nations.