; some
authorities hold that justice was better served under the Sultan than
under any contemporary Christian king. A hierarchy of officials,
administrative, ecclesiastical, secretarial and military, held office
directly under the Sultan, being wisely granted by him sufficient
liberty to allow initiative, and yet kept under control direct enough
to prevent the secession of distant provinces.

The international position of the infidel power was an anomalous one.
Almost every pope tried to revive the crusading spirit against the
arch-enemy of Christ, and the greatest epic poet of the sixteenth
century chose for his subject the Delivery of Jerusalem in a holy war.
On the other hand the Most Christian King found no difficulty in making
alliances with the Sublime Porte, and the same course was advocated,
though not adopted, by some of the Protestant states of Germany.
Finally, that champion of the church, Philip {450} II, for the first
time in the history of his country, [Sidenote: 1580] made a peace with
the infidel Sultan recognizing his right to exist in the society of
nations.

The sixteenth century, which in so much else marked a transition from
medieval to modern times, in this also saw the turning-point of events,
inasmuch as the tide drawn by the Half Moon to its flood about 1529,
from that time onwards has steadily, if very slowly, ebbed.

[1] Allowing $2.40 to a ducat this would be $10,800,000 intrinsically
at a time when money had ten times the purchasing power that it has
today.

{451}

CHAPTER X

SOCIAL CONDITIONS

SECTION 1. POPULATION

[Sidenote: Unity of civilized world]

Political history is that of the state; economic and intellectual
history that of a different group. In modern times this group includes
all civilized nations. Even in political history there are many
striking parallels, but in social development and in culture the recent
evolution of civilized peoples has been nearly identical. This
fundamental unity of the nations has grown stronger with the centuries
on account of improving methods of transport and communication.
Formally it might seem that in the Middle Ages the white nations were
more closely bound together than they are now. They had one church, a
nearly identical jurisprudence, one great literature and one language
for the educated classes; they even inherited from Rome the ideal of a
single world-state. But if the growth of national pride, the division
of