ands which he calls Turcia and Francia; only we no
longer speak of them as Turks and Franks. The Turks of Constantine are
Magyars; the Franks of Constantine are Germans. The Magyar students
may not unlikely have turned over the Imperial pages, and they may have
seen how their forefathers stand described there. We can hardly fancy
that the Ottoman general is likely to have given much time to lore of
such a kind. Yet the Ottoman answer was as brimful of ethnological and
antiquarian sympathy as the Magyar address. It is hardly to be
believed that a Turk, left to himself, would by his own efforts have
found out the primeval kindred between Turk and Magyar. He might
remember that Magyar exiles had found a safe shelter on Ottoman
territory; he might look deep enough into the politics of the present
moment to see that the rule of Turk and Magyar alike is threatened by
the growth of Slavonic national life. But the idea that Magyar and
Turk owe each other any love or any duty, directly on the ground of
primeval kindred, is certainly not likely to have presented itself to
the untutored Ottoman mind. In short, it sounds, as some one said at
the time, rather like the dream of a professor who has run wild with an
ethnological craze, than like the serious thought of a practical man of
any nation. Yet the Magyar students seem to have meant their address
quite seriously. And the Turkish general, if he did not take it
seriously, at least thought it wise to shape his answer as if he did.
As a piece of practical politics, it sounds like Frederick Barbarossa
threatening to avenge the defeat of Crassus upon Saladin, or like the
French of the revolutionary wars making the Pope Pius of those days
answerable for the wrongs of Vercingetorix. The thing sounds like
comedy, almost like conscious comedy. But it is a kind of comedy which
may become tragedy, if the idea from which it springs get so deeply
rooted in men's minds as to lead to any practical consequences. As
long as talk of this kind does not get beyond the world of hot-headed
students, it may pass for a craze. It would be more than a craze, if
it should be so widely taken up on either side that the statesmen on
either side find it expedient to profess to take it up also.

To allege the real or supposed primeval kindred between Magyars and
Ottomans as a ground for political action, or at least for political
sympathy, in the affairs of the present moment, is an extreme
case-