THE RUSSIAN AND THE TURK 491 



handed. He can shoot your game, kill and cut up an 

 ox, or do any plain cooking you may require. He is the 

 soul of punctuality ; and if you order him to wake you at 

 four o'clock in the morning you may sleep soundly to the 

 last moment in the full confidence that, at five minutes 

 past that hour, it will be your own fault if you have not 

 made considerable progress with your toilet. He is 

 honest if you trust him ; but for all that, to earn a glass 

 of vodka he will lie without shame, and commit a petty 

 theft without remorse. 



There must be a great future in store for a nation with 

 so many virtues. The Russians surely will not always 

 remain children. At present we may consider them to 

 be in a state of arrested development. A generation 

 or two of education would doubtless develop both the 

 intellectual and moral possibilities of the Russian, as it 

 has developed those of his Western cousins. Russia is 

 at this moment only beginning to rise out of the darkness 

 of the Middle Ages. The Russian can at least con- 

 gratulate himself upon the fact that there are two worse 

 governments than his own in Europe, the Turkish and 

 the Greek. The former government is probably the 

 worst in the world, and it is a scandal to Europe and a 

 shame to England that it should have been propped up 

 so lonof. The Turkish government is nothing" but a band 

 of robbers, plundering Moslem and Christian alike, a 

 horde of banditti whose only desert is the gallows. The 

 Turk himself, on the other hand, is in some respects the 

 best Christian in Europe. He is, in fact, too Christian. 

 No other nation, unless it be the Russian, would submit 

 to such misgovernment without a revolution. 



Like the Russians, the Turks are extraordinarily 

 hospitable ; and, as in Russia, so in Turkey or Asia 

 Minor you may travel in safety into the remotest corners 



