and Persian diplomacy poking the fire. In the extreme north was Byzantium, that strange mixture of sere, civilized, Classical, with vernal and chevaleresque which is manifested above all in the bewildering history of the Byzantine army system. Into this world Islam at last — and far too late — brought a consciousness of unity, and this accounts for the self-evident character of its victorious progress and the almost unresisting adhesion of Christians, Jews, and Persians alike. Out of Islam in due course arose the Arabian Civilization which was at the peak of its intellectual completeness when the barbarians from the West broke in for a moment, marching on Jerusalem. How, we may ask ourselves, did this inroad appear in the eyes of cultivated Arabians of the time? Somewhat like Bolshevism, perhaps? For the statecraft of the Arabian World the political relations of "Frankistan" were something on a lower plane. Even in our Thirty Years' War — from that point of view a drama of the "Far West" — when an English envoy[1] strove to stir up the Porte against the house of Habsburg, the statesman who handled policy over a field stretching from Morocco to India, evidently judged that the little predatory states on the horizon were of no real interest. And even when Napoleon landed in Egypt, there were still many without an inkling of the future.
Meantime yet another new Culture developed in Mexico. This lay so remote from the rest that no word even passed between them. All the more astonishing, therefore, is the similarity of its development to that of the Classical. No doubt the archæologist standing before a teocalli would be horrified to think of his Doric temple in such a connexion; yet it was a thoroughly Classical trait — feebleness of the will-to-power in the matter of technics — that kept the Aztecs ill armed and so made possible their catastrophe.
For, as it happens, this is the one example of a Culture ended by violent death. It was not starved, suppressed, or thwarted, but murdered in the full glory of its unfolding, destroyed like a sunflower whose head is struck off by one passing. All these states — including a world-power and more than one federation — with an extent and resources far superior to those of the Greek and Roman states of Hannibal's day; with a comprehensive policy, a carefully ordered financial system, and a highly developed legislation; with administrative ideas and economic tradition such as the ministers of Charles V could never have imagined; with a wealth of literature in several languages, an intellectually brilliant and polite society in great cities to which the West could not show one single parallel — all this was not broken down in some desperate war, but washed out by a handful of bandits in a few years, and so
- ↑ Sir Thomas Roe, 1620. A similar mission went to Turkey on the part of Frederick and the Bohemian nobles to ask for assistance and to justify to the Turk their action in deposing the Habsburg King. The answer they received was what might be expected of a great imperialist power asked to intervene in the affairs of lesser neighbours — namely, material guarantees of the reality of the movement it was asked to support and pledges that no settlement would be made without its agreement. — Tr.
