Yet the Ottoman answer was as
brim full 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.
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