THE PEOPLES OF THE BALKAN PENINSULA. 617 



guages and religions upon his map proved too complicated for 

 our imitative abilities. We were obliged to limit our cartogra- 

 phy to languages alone. The reader who would gain a true con- 

 ception of the ethnic heterogeneity of Turkey should consult his 

 original map. 



The word Turk was for several centuries taken in a religious sense 

 as synonymous with Mohammedan,* as in the Collect for Good Fri- 

 day in its reference to " Jews, Turks, infidels, and heretics." Thus in 

 Bosnia, where in the fifteenth century many Slavs were converted to 

 Mohammedanism, their descendants are still known as Turks, espe- 

 cially where they use the Turkish speech in their religion. Obviously 

 in this case no Turkish blood need flow in their veins. It is the re- 

 ligion of Islam, acting in this way, which has served to keep the Turks 

 as distinct from the Slavs and Greeks as they are to-day. Freeman 

 has drawn an instructive comparison in this connection between the 

 fate of the Bulgars, who, as we shall see, are merely Slavonized Finns, 

 and the Turks, who have steadily resisted all attempts at assimilation. 

 The first came, he says, as " mere heathen savages (who) could be 

 Christianized, Europeanized, assimilated," because no antipathy save 

 that of race and speech had to be overcome. The Turks, in contradis- 

 tinction, came " burdened with the half-truth of Islam, with the half- 

 civilization of the East." By the aid of these, especially the former, 

 the Turk has been enabled to maintain an independent existence as 

 " an unnatural excrescence " on this corner of Europe. 



Even using this word as in a measure synonymous with religious 

 affiliations, the Turks form but a small and decreasing minority in 

 the Balkan Peninsula. Couvreur affirms that not over one third of 

 the population profess the religion of Islam, all the remainder being 

 Greek Catholics. This being so, the query at once suggests itself as 

 to the reason for the continued political domination of this Turkish 

 minority, Asiatic alike in race, in speech, and in religion. The 

 answer is certain. It depends upon that subtle principle, the balance 

 of power in Europe. Is it not clear that to allow the Turk to go 

 under, as numerically he ought to do, would mean to add strength 

 to the great Slavic majority, affiliated as it is with Kussia both by 

 speech and religion? This, with the consent of the Anglo-Saxon and 

 other Teutonic rivals of the Slav, could never be allowed. Thus does 

 it come about that the poor Greek is ground between the upper Turk- 

 ish and the nether Slavic millstone. " Unnatural disunion is the fate 

 of the whole land, and the cuckoo-cry about the independence and 

 integrity of the Ottoman Empire means, among the other evil things 

 that it means, the continuance of this disunion." Let us turn from this 



* Consult Taylor, 1890, p. 48 ; Von Luschan, 1889, p. 198 ; Sax, 1863, p. 91. 



VOL. LIV.— 46 



