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movement or eventually guide its course. The essence of that movement was

militant nationalism. The empire was to be regenerated, not by humanizing

it but by Ottomanizing it. The Osmanli, the man of the sword, was the type

to which all others, who wished to be of the nation, were to conform. Such

as did not so wish must be eliminated by the rest.



The revolutionary Committee in Salonika, called 'of Union and Progress',

held up its cards at first, but by 1910 events had forced its hand on the

table. The definite annexation of Bosnia and Hercegovina by

Austria-Hungary in 1908, and the declaration of independence and

assumption of the title Tsar by the ruler of Bulgaria, since they were the

price to be paid by the revolutionaries for a success largely made in

Germany, were opposed officially only pro forma; but when uninformed

opinion in the empire was exasperated thereby against Christendom, the

Committee, to appease reactionaries, had to give premature proof of

pan-Osmanli and pro-Moslem intentions by taking drastic action against

rayas. The Greeks of the empire, never without suspicions, had failed to

testify the same enthusiasm for Ottoman fraternity which others, e.g. the

Armenians, had shown; now they resumed their separatist attitude, and made

it clear that they still aspired, not to Ottoman, but to Hellenic

nationality. Nor were even the Moslems of the empire unanimous for

fraternity among themselves. The Arab-speaking societies complained of

under-representation in the councils and offices of the state, and made no

secret of their intention not to be assimilated by the Turk-speaking

Osmanlis. To all suggestions, however, of local home-rule and conciliation

of particularist societies in the empire, the Committee was deaf. Without

union, it believed in no progress, and by union it understood the

assimilation of all societies in the empire to the Osmanli.



Logic was on the side of the Committee in its choice of both end and

means. In pan-Ottomanism, if it could be effected, lay certainly the

single chance of restoring Osmanli independence and power to anything like

the position they had once held. In rule by a militarist oligarchy for

some generations to come, lay the one hope of realizing the pan-Ottoman

idea and educating the resultant nation to self-government. That end,

however, it was impossible to realize under the circumstances in which

past history had involved the Ottoman Empire. There was too much bad blood

between different elements of its society which Osmanli rulers had been

labouring for centuries rather to keep apart than to unite; and certain

important elements, both Moslem and Christian, had already developed too

mature ideas of separate nationality. With all its defects, however, the

new order did undoubtedly rest on a wider basis than the old, and its

organization was better conceived and executed. It retained some of the

sympathy of Europe which its beginnings had excited, and the western

powers, regarding its representative institutions as earnests of good

government, however ill they might work at the first, were disposed to

give it every chance.



Unfortunately the Young Turks were in a hurry to bring on their

millennium, and careless of certain neighbouring powers, not formidable

individually but to be reckoned with if united, to whom the prospect of

regenerated Osmanlis assimilating their nationals could not be welcome.

Had the Young Turks been content to put their policy of Ottomanization in

the background for awhile, had they made no more than a show of accepting

local distinctions of creed and politics, keeping in the meantime a tight

rein on the Old Turks, they might long have avoided the union of those

neighbours, and been in a better position to resist, should that union

eventually be arrayed against themselves.



But a considerable and energetic element among them belonged to the

nervous Levantine type of Osmanli, which is as little minded to compromise

as any Old Turk, though from a different motive. It elected to deal

drastically and at once with Macedonia, the peculiar object not only of

European solicitude but also of the interest of Bulgaria, Serbia, and

Greece. If ever a province required delicate handling it was this. It did

not get it. The interested neighbours, each beset by fugitives of its

oppressed nationals, protested only to be ignored or browbeaten. They drew

towards one another; old feuds and jealousies were put on one side; and at

last, in the summer of 1912, a Holy League of Balkan States, inspired by

Venezelos, the new Kretan Prime Minister of Greece, and by Ferdinand of

Bulgaria, was formed with a view to common action against the oppressor of

Greek, Serbian, and Bulgarian nationals in Macedonia. Montenegro, always

spoiling for a fight, was deputed to fire the train, and at the approach

of autumn the first Balkan war blazed up.