When Russia in earlier days interfered between the Turk and his
Christian subjects, there is no sign of any sympathy felt or possessed
for Slavs as Slavs. Russia dealt with Montenegro, not, as far as one
can see, out of any Slavonic brotherhood, but because an independent
Orthodox state at enmity with the Turk could not fail to be a useful
ally. The earlier dealings of Russia with the subject nations were far
more busy among the Greeks than among the Slavs. In fact, till quite
lately, all the Orthodox subjects of the Turk were in most European eyes
looked on as alike Greeks. The Orthodox Church has been commonly known
as the Greek Church; and it has often been very hard to make people
understand that the vast mass of the members of that so-called Greek
Church are not Greek in any other sense. In truth we may doubt whether,
till comparatively lately, the subject nations themselves were fully
alive to the differences of race and speech among them. A man must in
all times and places know whether he speaks the same language as another
man; but he does not always go on to put his consciousness of difference
into the shape of a sharply drawn formula.
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