Page:Christian Greece and Living Greek.djvu/143

 THE BYZANTINES. 12 1 side it was quite different. Between Constanti- nople, Christian, Hellenic and Imperial on the one hand, and the despotism of pagan or Moham- medan Asia on the other, there was a great gulf fixed. With them no community of life could ever be possible. The Arabs took the place of the Persians, and the Turks took the place of the Arabs. From the beginning to the end the Asiatic enemy, whoever it was, was always in- spired by an intense feeling of religious hatred; the motive, a rabid longing to annihilate that- Christian state which formed a barrier between them and the destruction of Europe. But it wasj due to that barrier that Christian Europe was! saved from extermination through persecution conducted by Persian fire-worshippers, and from slavery consequent on the propagation of the re- I ligion of the Koran by the sword of the Arabs. 1 And thus it was, thanks to that barrier, that West- ern Europe had the time given her so to develop her strength that long after Constantinople her- self had fallen in the struggle, a martyr in the cause of the human race, she was able to shatter the Turkish navies upon the waters of the Lepanto and to rout their hordes before the walls of Vien- na. Unhappily, however, the fall of Constanti- nople was in great part the work of that very