THE WAR OF GREEK INDEPENDENCE 1821 TO 1833 BY W.ALISON PHILLIPS 1897

400 THE WAK OF GREEK INDEPENDENCE
towards the Porte, English volunteers and English
gold were being poured into Greece, to aid the rebellious
rayahs; and that the British Government had no
power to prevent this, the Turks refused to believe.
Navarino, of course, confirmed the Porte in its rooted
distrust of English professions.
The open hostility of
Russia it could appreciate; but the hypocrisy of a
Power which illustrated its friend_ship by slaughtering,
in time of peace, six thousand of the true believers,
passed all understanding.
England, in fact, through her anxiety to maintain
Turkey as a barrier against Muscovite aggression,
played straight into the hands of Russia and it should
;
have been clear that if such a barrier was to be erected,
it was certainly not to be found in a Power which
viewed Great Britain with well-grounded distrust, and
had, since the Peace of Adrianople, surrendered itself
to Russian influence.
What Russia dreaded, and resisted
with all her power, was not the preservation of an
empire which was bound, sooner or later, to break up,
but the erection on its ruins of independent Christian
States strong enough to resist
her own advance, and
especially the creation of a Hellas sufficiently powerful
to stem the rising tide of Slavonic influence.
If, then,
it was essential for England to resist the establishment
of Russia as a Power in the Mediterranean, this could