The attitude of the German and Austrian Press towards British
policy in the Levant continues to be hostile, and denials circulated by Reuter that dynastic considerations have caused a change in England's policy towards the Cretan question have been met with neglect or incredulity. The prospect that an outbreak of hostilities may be provoked by the substitution of Mahmud Shevket Pasha for Hakki Pasha as Grand Vizier is discussed by most of the Viennese papers with something more than equanimity. Thus we read in the New Freie Freese that "if this change of Grand Vizier should really take place, the protecting Powers would be confronted by a new situation, and by a new Turkey determined to help herself and to take a short cut to the solution of the Cretan question." The Times correspondent at Vienna notes, however, an exception in the Conservative Catholic Vaterland. This organ, so far from playing into the hands of the Turkish Chauvinists, charges them with having blown the war-trumpet somewhat prematurely, and argues that England and France are the less to be scared by the clanking of the Ottoman sabre in that Turkey herself stands on tottering feet.
