held it.
They stand not only for their own past but also for whatever still lives
of the prestige of Rome. Theirs is still the repute of the imperial people
_par excellence_, chosen and called to rule.

That this repute should continue, after the sweeping victories of Semites
and subsequent centuries of Ottoman retreat before other heirs of Rome, is
a paradox to be explained only by the fact that a large part of the
population of the Near East remains at this day in about the same stage of
civilization and knowledge as in the time of, say, Heraclius. The
Osmanlis, be it remembered, were and are foreigners in a great part of
their Asiatic empire equally with the Greeks of Byzantium or the Romans of
Italy; and their establishment in Constantinople nearly five centuries ago
did not mean to the indigenous peoples of the Near East what it meant to
Europe--a victory of the East over the West--so much as a continuation of
immemorial 'Roman' dominion still exercised from the same imperial centre.
Since Rome first spread its shadow over the Near East, many men of many
races, whose variety was imperfectly realised, if realised at all, by the
peasants of Asia Minor, Syria, Mesopotamia, and Egypt, have ruled in its
name; the Osmanlis, whose governmental system was in part the Byzantine,
made but one more change which meant the same old thing. The peasants
know, of course, about those Semitic victories; but they know also that if
the Semite has had his day of triumph and imposed, as was right and
proper, his God and his Prophet on Roum--even on all mankind as many
believed, and some may be found in remoter regions who still believe--he
has returned to his own place south of Taurus; and still Roum is Roum,
natural indefeasible Lord of the World.

Such a belief is dying now, of course; but it dies slowly and hard. It
still constitutes a real asset of the Osmanlis, and will not cease to have
value until they lose Constantinople. On the possession of the old
imperial city it depends for whatever vitality it has. You may
demonstrate, as you will, and as many publicists have done since the
Balkan War and before, what and how great economic, political, and social
advantages would accrue to the Osmanlis, if they could bring themselves to
transfer their capital to Asia. Here they would be rid of Rumelia, which
costs, and will always cost them, more than it yields. Here they could
concentrate Moslems where their co-religionists are already th