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274 all their activity. One has only to look at any modern Greek newspaper to see the way they speak of each other; and since the Bulgarian schism (p. 316) especially, the Orthodox Church lifts up her voice and wails in the market-places; both sides, or rather all sides, for there are many, besiege any one who will hear them, even the Ambassadors of the Great Powers, with complaints of one another. The enemies of a man are of his own household, and now, although one still fairly often reads a violent digression against the perfidious Papic Church, the burden of their tale is one long recrimination against each other. No one will wish meanly to rejoice because of this: it is quite naturally explained by various unfortunate political circumstances, and it certainly does not prevent hundreds of their bishops and thousands of their priests from living the most zealous and Godfearing lives, and from generously devoting themselves to the cause of Christ among their people. But one cannot give even the shortest account of the Orthodox Church without noticing the quarrels that absorb her political activity.

An outline of the situation will help to explain what follows. First, the Greeks think that they ought to be the leading Christian race in the Balkans. They remember the old Empire, that was Roman in name but practically a Greek State: they are also full of vague memories of their past greatness. Marathon and Salamis, Homer, Plato, even Herakles and Apollo—every Greek schoolboy knows all about these. On the other hand, in the northern Balkans—now that the southern part has become a Greek kingdom—they are only a small minority. There are other nations who have no less strong a national feeling. These "barbarians" are Slavs of three races, Bulgars, Serbs, and Roumans.