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THE DAWN OF A BETTER DAY 427 except for the feeling of solidarity arising from community of race and of religious belief and for the hope which the Churches aided them to keep alive, their night was without a single ray of light. They and their country- men who had escaped into foreign lands looked in despair and in vain for the signs that the night would pass. It is barely a century ago since the keener-sighted watchmen observed indications of dawn. The daylight has arisen upon Koumania, Serbia, Greece, Bulgaria, and other countries once under Turkish rule, and signs of dawn are visible, though with indications of blood-red, in Macedonia and Armenia. Sooner or later, but as surely as light over- comes darkness, the Christian and progressive elements in the Turkish empire will see the day and rejoice in it. The friends of the liberated territories have often com- plained of the vagaries, the inconstancy, and the slow rate of progress of the re-established states. They are apt to forget that to shake off the effects of centuries of bondage is a task which has never been accomplished in a single generation. All historical precedents, from the time when Moses led the children of Israel into the desert, teach the same lesson. But it is satisfactory to note that while each of the states that have obtained emancipation was, a century ago, far behind the civilisation even of Constanti- nople, it is now far ahead of it. If the traveller who eighty years ago spoke contemptuously of the collection of mud huts which fanatics are pleased to call Athens, while they refer to their barbarian occupants as Greeks, could now be placed on the Acropolis, he would see the well-built and prosperous capital of a country which, in spite of financial difficulties, is flourishing in agriculture, trade, and commerce ; the chief city of a people which has recovered its self-respect, is full of patriotism, of zeal for education, and of intellectual life, and whose Church has awakened to the necessity of an educated priesthood and a higher standard of morality. A like prosperity could be noted in every other land which has escaped from Turkish bondage.