It is simply the
result of a century of warfare, from Sobieski to Joseph the Second,
which fixed the boundary which only yesterday seemed eternal to
diplomatists, but which now seems to have vanished. That boundary has
advanced and gone back over and over again. As Buda once was Turkish,
Belgrade has more than once been Austrian. The whole of the southeastern
lands, Austrian, Turkish, and independent, from the Carpathian Mountains
southward, present the same characteristic of permanence and
distinctness among the several races which occupy them. The several
races may lie, here in large continuous masses, there in small detached
settlements; but there they all are in their distinctness. There is
among them plenty of living and active national feeling; but while in
the West political arrangements for the most part follow the great lines
of national feeling, in the East the only way in which national feeling
can show itself is by protesting, whether in arms or otherwise,
against existing political arrangements. Save the Magyars alone, the
ruling race in the Hungarian kingdom, there is no case in those lands in
which the whole continuous territory inhabited by speakers of the same
tongue is placed under a separate national government of its own.
Pages:
126
127
128
129
130
131
132
133
134
135
136
137
138
139
140
141
142
143
144
145
146
147
148
149
150