alone what the Crusades had failed to accomplish. And for days Europe
and the great powers were thunderstruck, again and yet again, by the
news of Turkish forts falling, Turkish cohorts collapsing, the
unconquerable Crescent going down in blood. The Serbians, the
Bulgarians, the Greeks had gathered and risen from their lairs; and men
knew that these peasants had done what all the politicians had long
despaired of doing, and that the spirit of the first Christian Emperor
was already standing over the city that is named after his name.

For Germany this quite unexpected rush was a reversal of the whole tide
of the world. It was as if the Rhine itself had returned from the ocean
and retired into the Alps. For a long time past every important
political process in Europe had been produced or permitted by Prussia.
She had pulled down ministers in France and arrested reforms in Russia.
Her ruler was acclaimed by Englishmen like Rhodes, and Americans like
Roosevelt, as the great prince of the age. One of the most famous and
brilliant of our journalists called him "the Lord Chief Justice of
Europe." He was the strongest man in Christendom; and he had confirmed
and consecrated the Crescent. And when he had consecrated it a few hill
tribes had risen and trampled it like mire. One or two other things
about the same time, less important in themselves, struck in the
Prussian's ear the same new note of warning and doubt. He sought to
obtain a small advantage on the north-west coast of Africa; and England
seemed to show a certain strange stiffness in insisting on its
abandonment. In the councils over Morocco, England agreed with France
with what did not seem altogether an accidental agreement. But we shall
not be wrong if we put the crucial point of the German surprise and
anger at the attack from the Balkans and the fall of Adrianople. Not
only did it menace the key of Asia and the whole Eastern dream of German
commerce; not only did it offer the picture of one army trained by