“The political situation, which has evolved so rapidly, plainly shows it is not enough for the Americans to keep aloof from the present events. Their national honour is at stake.
“Public opinion in Great Britain would unanimously side with France in her operations in Asia Minor, provided France declares herself willing to accept our co-operation.
“We easily understand that the occupation of Constantinople came rather as a surprise to France and Italy, especially if we take into account that this action closely followed another measure of a similar kind taken by England within the last fortnight.
“It seems that this time our Allies have assumed a slightly different attitude: official France is still hesitating; public opinion has changed completely, and the pro-Turkish feeling is on the wane. If France wants to maintain her prestige in the East unimpaired, she must associate with any political, naval, or military measure taken by England.
“The Italian standpoint and interests do not differ much from ours, or from those of France, but Italian circles plainly advocate a policy of non-intervention, or an intervention restricted to a diplomatic action.”
If such proceedings emanating from some American or English circles were hardly a matter of surprise, the attitude of some Frenchmen of note was not so easily accounted for.
M. Hanotaux[23] was led by a strange political aberration and a curious oblivion of all the traditional policy of France—unless he deliberately meant to break off with it, or was blinded by prejudice—when he assigned Constantinople to Greece, because, according to him, to give Constantinople to Greece was “to give it to Europe, and to her worthiest, noblest offspring.”
Now Hellenism owes nothing to Byzantium, and Byzantinism, imbued with Christianity, is but remotely and indirectly connected with the magnificent pagan bloom of Hellenism. Byzantium, as has been shown, was not only the continuation of Rome in its decay: it had also a character of its own. Neither was Byzantinism a mere continuation of Hellenism. It was rather the propagator of Orthodoxy, so that when the Greeks claimed Byzantium, they could not do so on behalf of Hellenism, but merely on behalf of Christianity. There is a confusion here that many people have sought to perpetuate because it serves numerous interests, those of the Greeks, and also those of the Slavs, who owe their culture to Byzantium. But whereas Byzantium chiefly taught barbarous Russia a religion together with the rudiments of knowledge, and opened for her a door to the Old World, she imparted to Arabian civilisation knowledge of the works and traditions of antiquity. Russia, who only borrowed the rites of the Byzantine Church and exaggerated them, did not derive much profit from that initiation; the Turks and Arabs, on the contrary, thanks to their own culture, were able to imbibe the old knowledge bequeathed and handed down to them by Byzantium—leaving aside the religious bequest. Thus they were enabled to exercise a wholesome influence, driving out of Constantinople both Orthodoxy and the Slavs who aimed at the possession of that town.
As to the so-called Hellenism of Asia Minor, it is true that the civilisation of ancient Greece spread over several districts on the coast; but it should be borne in mind that, long before the Greeks, the Egyptians and various Semitic peoples had settled on the coast of Lydia—which up to the seventh century B.C. bore the name of Meonia—and fought there for a long time; and that the Lydians, a hybrid race akin to the Thracians and Pelasgi commingled with ethnic elements coming from Syria and Cappadocia, kept up an intercourse between the Greeks of the coast and Asia[24] till the Cimmerian invasion convulsed Asia Minor in the eighth century. Lastly, the Medes, against whom the Greeks waged three wars, are considered by Oppert,[25] owing to the etymology of the name, to be of Turanian descent.
In fact, the relations between the Turks and the Greeks and the Byzantians are really most involved. We know to-day that some Turkish elements, who were converted to the Greek Church long before the Ottoman Turks embraced Islam, and whose origin is anterior by far to the establishment of the Seljukian Empire and the Ottoman Empire, faithfully served the Byzantine Empire from the fifth century onwards, and were utilised by Justinian for the defence of the Asiatic boundaries of the Empire—which were also the boundaries of Christianity—against the attacks of Eastern nations.