Page:Littell's Living Age - Volume 128.djvu/85

Rh the people to shake off the hateful yoke. The immediate occasion of the outbreak was of that kind which has been the immediate occasion of so many outbreaks, the old tale of the Sicilian Vespers and of the daughters of Skedasos of Leuktra. One necessary accompaniment of Turkish rule is what the Greek poet sang of in Byron's day —

"Every pretty girl," so I heard at Ragusa, "is carried off as a matter of course." It was a specially foul outrage of this kind which immediately led to the revolt. The Eastern question then simply means whether this kind of thing is to last; it means whether men are to be left under a form of local administration which, when the doer of a murder or suspected murder is not at hand, at once puts all his kinsfolk to the torture. And all this comes on the top of the grinding fiscal exactions both of the local landowners and of the sultan's tax-gatherers. These last, it is well known, have been raised in defiance, as usual, of a distinct promise made by our knight of Saint George to the European powers. Something more was wanted for the vices and follies of a barbarian palace, and the subject Christians had to pay. Men suffering under wrongs like these see but one answer to the question whether such things are to be any longer endured. They do not take things quite so calmly as a writer in the last number of this review. To drive the doers of such deeds beyond the Bosporus or anywhere else may seem "wild and sensational" to gentlemen sitting at their ease in London; to those who have to endure their presence, the attempt to get rid of them seems at once a right and a duty. It is easy calmly to tell the Christians of the East that "they have but to marry and give in marriage to settle the Eastern question." The encouragement to marry and give in marriage must indeed be specially great, as long as those who are given in marriage are likely to be dealt with as they are dealt with by the Turkish masters of Bosnia and Herzegovina.

And now I shall perhaps be taken to task for the use of the phrase "Turkish masters." I shall be told that the Mahometan inhabitants of Bosnia and Herzegovina are not Turkish but Slave. I shall perhaps further be told that, even in the other provinces, the Turks are really no Turks, but Europeans, descendants of European mothers, in many cases of European fathers. I know all this as well as any man. I have myself put forward these facts over and over again; but I am quite prepared to be told them over again as a great piece of news. I use the word "Turkish," because it serves, better than any other word, to express the dominion of men who, if not Turks naturally, have become Turks artificially. The Turks in Europe are an artificial nation, just as the modern Greeks are. That is to say, there is a Turkish kernel and a Greek kernel, round which a number of other elements have gathered and have been assimilated. Multitudes of men who are not Turks or Greeks by natural descent have, in this way, become Turks or Greeks for all practical purposes. Nothing is more certain than that, during the great days of Ottoman dominion, the bravest soldiers and the wisest ministers of the sultans were hardly ever Turks by blood. They were renegade Greeks, Slaves, not uncommonly western Europeans. The tribute of children paid by the subject nations formed the strength of the empire. As long as it was paid, the subject nations could not revolt; those who would have been their natural leaders in revolt were taken from them in their childhood. But renegades of all these classes practically became Turks. There were few indeed among them who, like Scanderbeg, ever went back to the nationality and religion of their childhood. And in Bosnia and Herzegovina, the case is, as is well known, a special one. At the time of the Turkish conquest, the bulk of the landowners in those countries apostatized in order to keep their lands, while the mass of the nation remained faithful. In these provinces then the immediate oppressors are not Turks by blood, but men of the same race as the oppressed. But this in no way makes matters better, but rather worse. A foreign conqueror may command a certain kind of respect which a native renegade certainly cannot. In some cases it is a certain softening of tyranny when one's tyrants are one's countrymen; but that rule can hardly apply to the domination of such a caste as this. It is said that among the Bosnian oligarchy there are many who speak nothing but Slave, to whom Turkish and Arabic are unknown tongues, and who are not remarkable for any deep knowledge of the Koran. In this there may be an element of hope. In the case of a revolution the right way, such men may turn back again as easily as their forefathers turned in the first instance. But for the present they are practically Turks. They are a part, 