Page:A thousand years hence. Being personal experiences (IA thousandyearshen00gree).djvu/142

 Turkish ruins, all that her race and history could claim, and to start afresh upon a career of national greatness, denied to her heretofore in her constrained narrow quarters. Constantinople, by the mutual jealousies of Europe, was safeguarded into a free city, which, with an adequate territorial surrounding, was once more a conspicuous object and a busy centre of the world.

The defunct empire had yet many other pickings in its wake. Not the least interesting of restitutional claims was that of the Jew for his ancient heritage. The movement was so considerable and so effective, promoted as it was alike by the cordial good-will in general as by the occasional antipathies of his whole world acquaintanceship, and not least by the aroused ambition and boundless resources of the race, as at length to remove the Syrian difficulty at least from the heritage of problems which Turkey's break up had left for Europe.

Still more interesting and even less expected was the bearing of the case on the restoration of Poland, that happy national rectification and restitution which honoured the opening twentieth century. This was not, however, in fulfilment of the old ditty that when certain parties fall out, certain others come by their due, although that particular turn of the matter had once seemed not unlikely some short time before. The causes at work were more creditable to the improving national sentiment of the time, which could appreciate the national wrongs of the case, as well as the doubtful advantage to any nation of really alien elements coercively retained. Possibly these higher arguments might have been less effec-