costs, and will always cost them, more than it yields.  Here they could concentrate Moslems where their co-religionists are already the great majority, and so have done with the everlasting friction and weakness entailed in jurisdiction over preponderant Christian elements.  Here they might throw off the remnants of their Byzantinism as a garment and, no longer forced to face two ways, live and govern with single minds as the Asiatics they are.

Vain illusion, as Osmanli imperialists know!  It is their empire that would fall away as a garment so soon as the Near East realized that they no longer ruled in the Imperial City.  Enver Pasha and the Committee were amply justified in straining the resources of the Ottoman Empire to cracking-point, not merely to retain Constantinople but also to recover Adrianople and a territory in Europe large enough to bulk as Roum.  Nothing that happened in that war made so greatly for the continuation of the old order in Asiatic Turkey as the reoccupation of Adrianople.  The one occasion on which Europeans in Syria had reason to expect a general explosion was when premature rumours of the entry of the Bulgarian army into Stambul gained currency for a few hours.  That explosion, had the news proved true or not been contradicted in time, would have been a panic-stricken, ungovernable impulse of anarchy—­of men conscious that an old world had passed away and ignorant what conceivable new world could come to be.

But the perilous moment passed, to be succeeded by general diffusion of a belief that the inevitable catastrophe was only postponed.  In the breathing-time allowed, Arabs, Kurds, and Armenians discussed and planned together revolt from the moribund Osmanli, and, separately, the mutual massacre and plundering of one another.  Arab national organizations and nationalist journals sprang to life at Beirut and elsewhere.  The revival of Arab empire was talked of, and names of possible capitals and kings were bandied about.  One Arab province, the Hasa, actually broke away.  Then men began to say that the Bulgarians would not advance beyond Chataldja:  the Balkan States were at war among themselves:  finally, Adrianople had been re-occupied.  And all was as in the beginning.  Budding life withered in the Arab movement, and the Near East settled down once more in the persistent shadow of Roum.

Such is the first element in Osmanli prestige, doomed to disappear the moment that the Ottoman state relinquishes Europe.  Meanwhile there it is for what it is worth; and it is actually worth a tradition of submission, natural and honourable, to a race of superior destiny, which is instinctive in some millions of savage simple hearts.

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