Sir.—That question, unsolved in 1877, is no nearer a good solution in 1920! On the contrary, matters are even worse. In England. Mr. Gladstone and his friends, in Russia, Count Ignatieff and all the Slavophils, saw only one true settlement. May I recall the first conversation between Lord Salisbury and Count Ignatieff at the Constantinople Conference? The English plenipotentiary, who had been primed beforehand with every kind of suspicion with regard to Russia’s designs, remarked to the Count on first meeting him:—

“I am told that you are a terrible man, and that you have so many spies and agents all over the East.” Ignatieff replied:—“It is quite true that I have many helpers. But who are they? I wish you would go into the provinces and see for yourself about my agents. Paid agents I have not; not one rouble do I pay for help. But you will find that every one who fights for his country, who fights for his faith, who struggles for freedom in all these lands, is my friend, is my agent, is my helper. I have thousands of these—yes, 20,000—and they are my strength. But you are the support of the savagery and tyranny of the Turks.”

Lord Salisbury accepted this taunt in perfect good humour, and, strangely enough, a friendship seems to have sprung up between the two men from that hour. The small handful of Russians still remaining alive, and therefore faithful to the traditions of the Greek Orthodox Church, read with horror and indignation the announcement that the Turk should not be molested and that he deserves, on the contrary,  to be described аs the rightful and original owner of the greatest treasure Russia can conceive—Constantinople. Here may I quote the concluding passage in Gladstone’s letter to me, dated December 29, 1876:—

“Again, God send us a good deliverance at Constantinople, and a passage from the region of chicanery and fraud into the light of clear day.”

The protectorate to which the Russian aspired since the days of Sviatoslav, who died a glorious death in 972 (nearly 500 years before the Turks arrived on the scenes) a cruel fate has again denied. And is not Constantinople, when all is said, an older shrine of Christianity than ever it was of the Turkish interlopers? Already in 381 (nearly 200 years before Mahomet was born) the city was already assigned to a Patriarch, who gave her a religious position as the head of the Church in the East. It is therefore the true cradle of Eastern Christianity. Why should Turkey be preferable to the Byzantine, and Mahomedans to Christians?

I am, &c.,

OLGA NOVIKOFF.