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And it proved a foreign land. The workers of the soil teemed by thousands, yet Saxon and Billy knew what it was to go a whole day without finding any one who spoke English. They encountered sometimes in whole villages Chinese, Japanese, Italians, Portuguese, Swiss, Hindus, Koreans, Norwegians, Danes, French, Armenians, Slavs, almost every nationality save American.
They assert, and with sound reasoning, that the Slavs of the hinterland, and probably the Germans and Magyars as well, would ship through Fiume, were it under Slav or international control, instead of through Trieste, which is Italian.
If Italy were asking only what was beyond all shadow of question Italian, I should sympathize with her unreservedly. But to place 10,000 Slavs under Italian rule would be as unjust and as provocative of future trouble as to place 30,000 Italians under the rule of Belgrade.
Russia, seeing her influence in the peninsula imperiled, hastened to the support of her fellow Slavs but Russia has gone down in red ruin, and the Romanoffs are dead. Germany, seeking a gateway to the warm water, and a highway to the East, seized on the excuse thus offered to launch her waiting armies and the empire reared by the Hohenzollerns is bankrupt and broken.
A constitutional kingship of Poland and a sort of Caliphate of the Slavs in remapped southeastern Europe, with that access to warm sea water which is Russia's common human right, valid against all Balances of Power and Keys to India and the like, must be her reward for her share in the war, even if we have to nationalize Constantinople to secure it to her.
The rapidity with which it spread shows the very slight hold Christianity had as yet taken. The sun and the moon, which figured prominently in it, probably appealed to the old pre-Christian nature-worship of the Slavs. Alexius Comnenus vainly tried to extirpate the heresy by savage persecution. Basil, its high priest, was burnt alive. The sect fled westward and Bosnia became its stronghold.
The Russian successes were, however, only temporary and the remainder of the winter campaign was marked by repeated efforts on the part of the Germans to break down the Russian defenses of Riga on the north, and to push the Slavs still further back on the south.
The German temperament is perhaps broader, neglecting sensuous beauty for beauty of idea, developing the scholarly side. Sarasate, the Spaniard, is a unique national figure. The Slavs seem to have a natural gift for the violin perhaps because of centuries of repression and are passionately temperamental.
As Slavs these two missionaries were disliked by the Germans, but both Popes Adrian I and John VIII approved of them; we have heard how Methodius converted that stubborn pagan Prince Bořivoj. Another couple of saints whom I have mentioned before, Cosmas and Damian, have always been most popular in Bohemia.
The influence of the Latin tongue on the south of Europe. The many Slavic peoples. The map as divided by kings without regard to peoples and languages. The strange mixture in Austria-Hungary. The southeast of Europe. The Greeks and Dacians. The Roman colonists. The Slavs. The Volgars. The Skipetars. A hopeless mixture.
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