t by humanizing
it but by Ottomanizing it. The Osmanli, the man of the sword, was the type
to which all others, who wished to be of the nation, were to conform. Such
as did not so wish must be eliminated by the rest.

The revolutionary Committee in Salonika, called 'of Union and Progress',
held up its cards at first, but by 1910 events had forced its hand on the
table. The definite annexation of Bosnia and Hercegovina by
Austria-Hungary in 1908, and the declaration of independence and
assumption of the title Tsar by the ruler of Bulgaria, since they were the
price to be paid by the revolutionaries for a success largely made in
Germany, were opposed officially only _pro forma_; but when uninformed
opinion in the empire was exasperated thereby against Christendom, the
Committee, to appease reactionaries, had to give premature proof of
pan-Osmanli and pro-Moslem intentions by taking drastic action against
_rayas_. The Greeks of the empire, never without suspicions, had failed to
testify the same enthusiasm for Ottoman fraternity which others, e.g. the
Armenians, had shown; now they resumed their separatist attitude, and made
it clear that they still aspired, not to Ottoman, but to Hellenic
nationality. Nor were even the Moslems of the empire unanimous for
fraternity among themselves. The Arab-speaking societies complained of
under-representation in the councils and offices of the state, and made no
secret of their intention not to be assimilated by the Turk-speaking
Osmanlis. To all suggestions, however, of local home-rule and conciliation
of particularist societies in the empire, the Committee was deaf. Without
union, it believed in no progress, and by union it understood the
assimilation of all societies in the empire to the Osmanli.

Logic was on the side of the Committee in its choice of both end and
means. In pan-Ottomanism, if it could be effected, lay certainly the
single chance of restoring Osmanli independence and power to anything like
the position they had once held. In rule by a militarist oligarchy for
some generations to come, lay the one hope of realizing the pan-Ottoman
idea and educating the resultant nation to self-government. That end,
however, it was impossible to realize under the circumstances in which
past history had involved the Ottoman Empire. There was too much bad blood
between different elements of its society which Osmanli rulers had been
labouring for centuries rather to keep apart than to un