n horseback" is
stamped deep all over the palimpsest of history.

Glorious or sinister according to the point of view, Turan's is
certainly a stirring past. Of course one may query whether these diverse
peoples actually do form one genuine race. But, as we have already seen,
so far as practical politics go, that makes no difference. Possessed of
kindred tongues and temperaments, and dowered with such a wealth of
soul-stirring tradition, it would suffice for them to _think_ themselves
racially one to form a nationalist dynamic of truly appalling potency.

Until about a generation ago, to be sure, no signs of such a movement
were visible. Not only were distant stocks like Finns and Manchus quite
unaware of any common Turanian bond, but even obvious kindred like
Ottoman Turks and Central Asian Turkomans regarded one another with
indifference or contempt. Certainly the Ottoman Turks were almost as
devoid of racial as they were of national feeling. Arminius Vambery
tells how, when he first visited Constantinople in 1856, "the word
_Turkluk_ (_i. e._, 'Turk') was considered an opprobrious synonym of
grossness and savagery, and when I used to call people's attention to
the racial importance of the Turkish stock (stretching from Adrianople
to the Pacific) they answered: 'But you are surely not classing us with
Kirghiz and with the gross nomads of Tartary.' ... With a few
exceptions, I found no one in Constantinople who was seriously
interested in the questions of Turkish nationality or language."[160]

It was, in fact, the labours of Western ethnologists like the Hungarian
Vambery and the Frenchman Leon Cahun that first cleared away the mists
which enshrouded Turan. These labours disclosed the unexpected vastness
of the Turanian world. And this presently acquired a most unacademic
significance. The writings of Vambery and his colleagues spread far and
wide through Turan and were there devoured by receptive minds already
stirring to the obscure promptings of a new time. The normality of the
Turanian movement is shown by its simultaneous appearance at such widely
sundered points as Turkish Constantinople and the Tartar centres along
the Russian Volga. Indeed, if anything, the leaven began its working on
the Volga sooner than on the Bosphorus. This Tartar revival, though
little known, is one of the most extraordinary phenomena in all
nationalist history. The Tartars, once masters of Russia, though long
since fallen from their hi