ice of the
Sublime Porte and reorganise the power of Turkey. The crumbling away of
the power of the Turkish Empire, which had given centuries of anxiety to
Christian Europe, was at that time apparent. A great genius might then
have restored the fighting power and the prestige of Islam. But Napoleon
turned to other work and Turkey went on decaying. There soon arose a
question as to who should be the legatee of the "Sick Man of Europe,"
and legacy hunters, some fawning, some clamorous, gathered at his
bedside. To some of these it soon occurred that there would be wisdom in
hastening the process of division, and that a means to do this was to
question the moral right of the Turk to the Christian provinces over
which he ruled. In the state of public feeling in Europe at the time it
was most convenient to question this right on the ground of the
religious intolerance of the Turk.

Without joining the party of the "pro-Turks" it is clear that that
ground was more of a pretext than a reality. The Turk is not a religious
persecutor to anything like the extent to which the Christian has been a
religious persecutor. On coming into Europe he never sought, for
example, to destroy the Greek Church, and I do not think that there is
any clear evidence that Turkish misrule was founded at any period on
intolerance carried to the degree of murder for faith's sake. The fault
rather of the Porte's rule was the dreadful corruption and incompetence
of the Turk as an administrator and the Turkish ideas of the status of
women-folk--ideas which gave to Moslem women rights derived from their
Moslem men-relatives, but regarded Christian women as if they were
cattle without owners. I think that it was the adoption by European
Powers of religion as a pretext for interfering in the Balkans which has
been largely responsible for the religious bitterness there. It would
make the situation more clear and give a better hope for the future if
Western Europe would frankly recognise that the fervid interest taken
in the Balkan Peninsula for about a century has had no other reason
generally than territory-hunger.

When Turkey began showing signs of falling to pieces, Russia made an
early claim to the succession of "the Sick Man's" estate. Russia wanted
a warm water-port; and her territories would have been nicely rounded
off by the acquisition of Turkey in Europe. These were the real reasons,
not publicly expressed, for her Balkan policy. Less real reasons