The conquest of Constantinople had but little effect on the mass of the Turkish population. The Turks ceased to be mainly a nomadic people, and great numbers of them took possession of the arable lands of the conquered races. But in other respects their habits and characteristics remained unchanged. They had and have their virtues. They are brave and hardy, and, except when under the influence of religious fanaticism, are hospitable and kindly. Their religion inculcates cleanliness and sobriety. While its teaching must stand condemned in regard to the treatment of non-Islamic peoples and, judging by the universal experience of Moslem countries, in regard to the position, fatal to all progress, which it assigns to woman, it has nevertheless helped to diffuse courtesy and self-respect among its adherents. Unhappily, the Turkish race has never had sufficient continuous energy to be industrious nor enough intelligence to desire knowledge.
Fortunately for the populations under the rule of the Turk, his religious intolerance has only become virulent at intervals; for when his fanaticism is awakened, corruption and cruelty in the administration of government show themselves at their worst. It is so in Morocco now, where the fiercest Moslem intolerance and perhaps the most cruel and corrupt government in the world co-exist. It has been so at various periods under Turkish rule. Sultans have alternated in their government between periods of lethargy, sloth, and sensuality and those of spasmodic activity. But the periods of fanaticism have been those not only of massacre and exceptional cruelty but of want of patriotism, and the worst corruption in the administration of government.
In Greece and Italy more vigorous physical races in earlier times had triumphed over peoples further advanced in civilisation. But the conquerors profited by the civilisation of the vanquished and the latter became more virile. The two races coalesced and formed a united people. No such results followed 1453. The Turkish nation was unable to assimilate the civilisation of the peoples it subdued, and its work has been simply to destroy what it could not take to itself. It has fallen so far short of reconciling the conquered races and welding them to itself so as to form one people that the assertion may safely be made that every century since 1453 has widened the gulf between it and the Christians.
In one respect only has the Turk been able to appreciate the progress made by his neighbours and, in part at least, to appropriate their development—namely, in the art of war. He knows and cares nothing about art, science, or literature. He has made a miserable failure of government. His civil administration is probably more corrupt than it was four centuries ago. He admits that, since his defeat at Lepanto in 1571, Allah has given the dominion of the seas to the Giaours. But as a soldier he has always been ready to learn from European nations.
That the heavy weight of misrule has hindered and still continues to hinder the progress of the Christian races is attested by all who are acquainted with Turkey. Condemned to constant persecution and a sordid poverty which leaves on travellers an overpowering sense of human misery, and living amid a hopeless and dispiriting environment, they passed into the blackest night which ever overshadowed a Christian people. It is true that they were not utterly destroyed, as other Christian nations have been, but, except for the feeling of solidarity arising from community of race and of religious belief and for the hope which the Churches aided them to keep alive, their night was without a single ray of light. They and their countrymen who had escaped into foreign lands looked in despair and in vain for the signs that the night would pass. It is barely a century ago since the keener-sighted watchmen observed indications of dawn. The daylight has arisen upon Roumania, Serbia, Greece, Bulgaria, and other countries once under Turkish rule, and signs of dawn are visible, though with indications of blood-red, in Macedonia and Armenia. Sooner or later, but as surely as light overcomes darkness, the Christian and progressive elements in the Turkish empire will see the day and rejoice in it.
The friends of the liberated territories have often complained of the vagaries, the inconstancy, and the slow rate of progress of the re-established states. They are apt to forget that to shake off the effects of centuries of bondage is a task which has never been accomplished in a single generation. All historical precedents, from the time when Moses led the children of Israel into the desert, teach the same lesson. But it is satisfactory to note that while each of the states that have obtained emancipation was, a century ago, far behind the civilisation even of Constantinople, it is now far ahead of it. If the traveller who eighty years ago spoke contemptuously of the collection of mud huts which fanatics are pleased to call Athens, while they refer to their barbarian occupants as Greeks, could now be placed on the Acropolis, he would see the well-built and prosperous capital of a country which, in spite of financial difficulties, is flourishing in agriculture, trade, and commerce; the chief city of a people which has recovered its self-respect, is full of patriotism, of zeal for education, and of intellectual life, and whose Church has awakened to the necessity of an educated priesthood and a higher standard of morality. A like prosperity could be noted in every other land which has escaped from Turkish bondage. Wherever, indeed, the dead weight of Turkish misrule has been removed, the young Christian states have been fairly started on the path of civilisation and justify the reasonable expectations of the statesmen, historians, and scholars of the West who have sympathised with and aided them in their aspirations for freedom.