Still less does he always
make the difference the ground of any practical course of action. The
Englishman in the first days of the Norman Conquest felt the hardships
of foreign rule, and he knew that those hardships were owing to foreign
rule. But he had not learned to put his sense of hardship into any
formula about an oppressed nationality. So, when the policy of the Turk
found that the subtle intellect of the Greek could be made use of as an
instrument of dominion over the other subject nations, the Bulgarian
felt the hardship of the state of things in which, as it was
proverbially said, his body was in bondage to the Turk and his soul in
bondage to the Greek. But we may suspect that this neatly turned proverb
dates only from the awakening of a distinctly national Bulgarian feeling
in modern times. The Turk was felt to be an intruder and an enemy,
because his rule was that of an open oppressor belonging to another
creed. The Greek, on the other hand, though his spiritual dominion
brought undoubted practical evils with it, was not felt to be an
intruder and an enemy in the same sense.
Pages:
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
74
75