ng than ever before, and it was in a suburb of
Constantinople itself that the final armistice was arranged. But action by
rival powers, both before the peace and in the revision of it at Berlin,
gave fresh assurance that the end would not be suffered to come yet; and,
moreover, through the long series of disasters, much latent strength of
the empire and its peoples had been revealed.

When that empire had emerged, shorn of several provinces--in Europe, of
Rumania, Serbia, and northern Greece, with Bulgaria also well on the road
they had travelled to emancipation, and in Asia, of a broad slice of
Caucasia--Abdul Hamid cut his losses, and, under the new guarantee of the
Berlin Treaty, took heart to try his hand at reviving Osmanli power. He
and his advisers had their idea, the contrary of the idea of Midhat and
all the sultans since Mahmud. The empire must be made, not more European,
but more Asiatic. In the development of Islamic spirit to pan-Islamic
unity it would find new strength; and towards this end in the early
eighties, while he was yet comparatively young, with intelligence
unclouded and courage sufficient, Abdul Hamid patiently set himself. In
Asia, naturally sympathetic to autocracy, and the home of the faith of his
fathers, he set on foot a pan-Islamic propaganda. He exalted his caliphate;
he wooed the Arabs, and he plotted with extraneous Moslems against
whatever foreign government they might have to endure.

It cannot be denied that this idea was based on the logic of facts, and,
if it could be realized, promised better than Midhat's for escape from
shameful dependence. Indeed, Abdul Hamid, an autocrat bent on remaining
one, could hardly have acted upon any other. By far the greater part of
the territorial empire remaining to him lay in Asia. The little left in
Europe would obviously soon be reduced to less. The Balkan lands were
waking, or already awake, to a sense of separate nationality, and what
chance did the Osmanli element, less progressive than any, stand in them?
The acceptance of the Ottoman power into the Concert of Europe, though
formally notified to Abdul Mejid, had proved an empty thing. In that
galley there was no place for a sultan except as a dependent or a slave.
As an Asiatic power, however, exerting temporal sway over some eighteen
million bodies and religious influence over many times more souls, the
Osmanli caliph might command a place in the sun.

The result belied these hopes. Abdul