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--some
may be inclined to call it a _reductio ad absurdum_--of a whole range of
doctrines and sentiments which have in modern days gained a great power
over men's minds.
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