One further remark on this very interesting subject may be made.  M. Millet, in the article to which allusion has already been made, says, “The Algerian natives will look more and more to France as their natural protector against the colonists.”  It will, it is to be hoped, not be thought over-presumptuous to sound a note of warning against trusting too much to this argument.  That for the present the natives should look to France rather than to the colonists is natural enough.  It is manifestly their interest to do so.  But it may be doubted whether they will be “more and more” inspired by such sentiments as time goes on.  There is an Arabic proverb to the effect that “all Christians are of one tribe.”  That is the spirit which in reality inspires the whole Moslem world.  It is illustrated by the author of that very remarkable work, Turkey in Europe, in an amusing apologue.  Let once some semi-religious, semi-patriotic leader arise, who will play skilfully on the passions of the masses, and it will be somewhat surprising if the distinction which now exists will long survive.  All Frenchmen, those in France equally with those in Algeria, will then, it may confidently be expected, be speedily confounded in one general anathema.

[Footnote 80:  Aspects of Algeria.  By Mrs. Devereux Roy.  London:  Dent and Son. 10s. 6d.]

XIV

THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE[81]

"The Spectator,” June 14, 1913

Although proverbial philosophy warns us never to prophesy unless we know, experience has shown that political prophets have often made singularly correct forecasts of the future.  Lord Chesterfield, and at a much earlier period Marshal Vauban, foretold the French Revolution, whilst the impending ruin of the Ottoman Empire has formed the theme of numerous prophecies made by close observers of contemporaneous events from the days of Horace Walpole downwards.  “It is of no use,” Napoleon wrote to the Directory, “to try to maintain the Turkish Empire; we shall witness its fall in our time.”  During the War of Greek Independence the Duke of Wellington believed that the end of Turkey was at hand.  Where the prophets have for the most part failed is not so much in making a mistaken estimate of the effects likely to be produced by the causes which they saw were acting on the body politic, as in not allowing sufficient time for the operation of those causes.  Political evolution in its early stages is generally very slow.  It is only after long internal travail that it moves with vertiginous rapidity.  De Tocqueville cast a remarkably accurate horoscope of the course which would be run by the Second Empire, but it took some seventeen years to bring about results which he thought would be accomplished in a much shorter period.  It has been reserved for the present generation to witness the fulfilment of prophecy in the case of European Turkey.  The blindness displayed by Turkish