Leon Dominian

“ One of the most remarkable instances of the influence of poetry on national destiny is found in Serbian nationality, which has been cast altogether in the mold of the country’s epic ballads or “pjesmes.” Although primarily inspired by the valorous deeds of legendary heroes, these indigenous compositions describe Serbian life and nature with extraordinary verisimilitude and beauty. They are national in a significant sense, not merely because the very soul of the Serbian people is displayed in their lines, but also because they have perpetuated Serbian history and language. ”

“ History, legend and myth, as well as language, testify to the Hellenic character of the Epirote land. These ties are too strong to allow the Greeks to relinquish complacently any portion of Epirus to Albania. Greece’s dawning consciousness of nationality was nursed in the mountains of Epirus long before the Christian era. Every step in the rugged country raises the dust of Hellenic antiquity. Among the fateful oaks of Dodona the land is aglow with tradition. ”

“ Then, like their nomad ancestors, who, from peaceful shepherds roaming leisurely from patch to patch of green, are transformed into fiends incarnate by the approach of a thief or a beast of prey, or whom a passing storm will throw into fits of uncontrollable rage which vents itself in passionate outbursts of shrieking and gesticulation, the Turkish peasants can cast their natural softness of character to the winds and become either bloodthirsty murderers smiting unarmed Christians or else heroes performing gallant deeds on the battlefield. ”

“ Again, the influence of the mountain home of the Armenians is expressed in their art. Poems and songs often extol the fairness of the valleys where rest will be found after descent along interminable slopes. Sometimes the beauty of lakes, embosomed in high plateaus, fires the poet’s fancy. Towering summits figure in legend as steeples from which melodious chimes send forth their tones. Armenian music, too, resounds with echoes that seem to reverberate from valleys cut deep in the sides of their mountains. ”

“ We therefore turn to the land for intimate acquaintance with man and his culture. His very character is shaped in the mold of his habitual haunt. And language is little more than the expression of his character. The earnest Scotchman and the steadfast Swede, both hardened by the schooling of a vigorous climate, contrast strikingly with the impulsive Andalusian or the fitful Sicilian trained to laxity and carelessness in the midst of plenty. ”

“ With a population reduced by the horrors of war, Belgium emerged from under the heel of Spanish oppression only to fall successively under Austrian, French and Dutch domination. But the seed of nationality, planted upon its uncertain soil when the valley of the Schelde became part of Burgundy, sheltered a smouldering vitality which, finally, in the nineteenth century was fanned to independence. ”

“ At Berlin, the center of Imperial Germany, the aim of every leader is to further the easterly expansion of the Empire. Austria, commanding the natural route to the southeast, figures as a precious asset in these imperial estimates. But success to German ambition spells defeat to the dreams of political independence cherished in the minds of the peoples of Austria-Hungary. A conflict of vital importance to each contestant is raging. The struggle is likely to be maintained wherever more than a single language continues to be spoken. ”

“ Patriotism pours unfaltering from the artless lines never intended for strangers’ eyes. It is as if the crowded consciousness of French nationality found constant release through its language. Every observant foreigner in France has been struck by this fact. In some instances where perception was more than usually attentive we find, as in E. Wharton’s “Fighting France,” that:
“It is not too much to say that the French are at this moment drawing a part of their national strength from their language. ”

“ A dominant fact recurs in every stage of the region’s history. Turkey is so placed that its possession is the goal of every nation which has risen to eminence in or around Turkish lands. Its control ushers in a period of great prosperity in every instance. Trade flows freely in the highways, carrying prosperity in its wake. The energy of the fortunate nation is spent to maintain the economic advantages secured. The loss of the highway zone is accompanied by national decline. A new nation rises and obtains the mastery of the road, and the cycle is repeated. ”

“ With the exception perhaps of the Circassians, the Greeks are the handsomest of the inhabitants of Asiatic Turkey. Classical forms of the head and of the general cast of countenance are met in every nook of the Anatolian seaboard. Their profiles are those of the gently curving lines of ancient Greek statues and medals. Among women graceful carriage of the head and neck adds to their charm. The men are erect and firm of gait.
Fishing and sailoring are the hereditary occupations of the coastal Greek populations of Asia Minor. Inland they become traders. ”

“ Turkish nationality is equally meaningless. The descendants of Asiatic nomads became masters of western Asia without ever conferring the boon of government or of nationality upon the land and its peoples. In Gibbon’s mordant words “the camp and not the soil is the country of the genuine Tatar.” And Turkey is still a vast field in which the Turk has pitched his tent and merely waits, knowing that the day is not far off when he will have to break camp and seek new pasturages for his herds and flocks. ”

“ The men who compose a single nation must think together. Their ideals and aims must be one and they must be conscious of a common destiny. Language, as the currency of thought, naturally becomes the unifier. To a notable degree areas of homogeneous language in Europe have been spared the havoc of battle or siege. On the other hand, linguistic borderlands have always been scenes of armed struggle and destruction.
Community of origin is not essential among members of the same nation. The bond of language and identity of historical destiny suffice for the creation of nationality. ”

“ To say that a man’s accent betrays his nationality is another way of stating that every language has a home of its own upon the surface of the earth. A word or an accent will thrive or wither like a tree according to region. In the earliest forms of Aryan languages, words for fish or sea appear to be wanting—a want which points to inland origins. The natives of the scorching equatorial lowlands have no word for ice in their dialects. A further glimpse into the past is required for a proper estimate of these facts. Man’s conquest of a region is achieved in two distinct stages. ”

“ Like the Belgicisms which abound delightfully in every Belgian writer’s works, they portray the soul of Belgian poetry as sincerely as they afford genuine glimpses of Belgian lands. The same subtle sensation of the living earth has been felt on the troubled surface of mountainous Switzerland. For of Swiss lands and life few descriptions will ever combine the charm and faithfulness which characterize the works of Gottfried Keller, foremost among the country’s writers who drew on the joint inspiration of flaming patriotism and the incomparable beauty of Swiss landscape. ”

“ Alsatians are French in spirit because they know how to laugh well, to laugh as civilized men with the cheer that brightens the good and the irony that draws out in full relief the ugliness of evil.
The spread of the French language in Alsace after the conquest of Strassburg by the soldiers of Louis XIV was slow. The French governors of the province never compelled the Alsatians to study their language. Up to the time of the French Revolution, French served as the medium of intercourse in official circles and among the nobility. The mass of the people, however, retained their vernacular. ”

“ The prevailing lack of race consciousness in Europe compels us to disregard it as a basis for nationality. In the existing nations, races are generally scattered unevenly throughout the map, and are nearly always grouped in classes, as originally race was the basis of all class, caste and social distinctions. Race therefore being not available as a test of nationality, we are compelled to resort to language. As a matter of fact, language is the essential factor in the creation of national unity, because national aspirations find their best expression through a national language. ”

“ The change is the dawn of their history as a European nation, and of the development of every manifestation of their culture. A more advanced language became the measure of the increasingly complex character of their needs—that is to say, of higher civilization. The whole story, traced from its origin, illustrates the superior civilizing power vested in European geography. In the sterile steppes of the northern half of Asia man led an easier life than in the cramped regions of diversified Europe. ”

“ Germany is composed of a combination of Nordic and Alpine, Italy of a mixture of Alpine and Mediterranean, while France unites within her boundaries the Nordic in the north, the Mediterranean in the south and the Alpine in the center. Spain and Portugal, however, are overwhelmingly of Mediterranean blood, while the Scandinavian races are purely Nordic. Thus it is quite evident that nationality and language are independent of race, and in fact the meaning of the word “race” as used not only by the man in the street, but also by the historian, is based on the spoken language. ”

“ With the most inaccessible parts of the Armenian mountains in Russian hands since 1878, further expansion through western Armenia into Anatolia cannot be delayed much longer.
The Russian viewpoint deserves every consideration. Russia lies benumbed by the cold of her frozen land. She has had one long winter since the dawn of her nationality. The chief reason why her sons have been laggards in the liberal progress of the past hundred years must be sought in this simple fact of geography. Russia does not need more land or fresh resources. She only seeks the warmth of the sun’s rays. ”

“ It is no exaggeration to say that this human tax has been levied on almost every family of the Caucasus, western Asia and the countries of the Balkan peninsula. Today the net result of this variegated intermixture is that the Tatar origin of the average Turk, so called, is entirely concealed by the mingling with Mediterranean, Armenoid-Alpine and even Nordic elements. Except in a few isolated instances the Turki type of central Asia is rarely met within Turkish boundaries. Clearly no valid claim to racial distinctiveness can be set up by the Turks.
In religion the Turk is no innovator. ”

“ Europe was stirred to the consciousness of nationality by the French Revolution. Nations began finding themselves when the doctrine of man’s equality, proclaimed on French soil, found responsive welcome among the peoples of the continent. But the new spirit caused dismay in every court circle. The inevitable reaction that followed was reflected in the treaty of Vienna of 1815, when national aspirations were ignominiously ignored and [316] peoples beheld themselves bartered as chattels. ”

“ The foundation of Turkey’s weakness as a nation and the failure of the cause of civilization within its boundaries lie in the country’s situation. The land staggers under the load of misfortune which its central position in the eastern hemisphere has heaped upon it. Its native populations have never been able to develop freely. The country is an open road alongside or at the ends of which nationalities have blossomed. It has been the prey of invaders by which it has been overrun. The Turks find themselves on this land today because they are descendants of wanderers. ”

“ The attention bestowed on the Turkish area has been determined by the bearing of the Turkish situation on European international affairs and in the earnest belief that the application of geographical knowledge could provide an acceptable settlement of the Eastern Question. Never has it been realized better than at the present time that an ill-adjusted boundary is a hatching-oven for war. A scientific boundary, on the other hand, prepares the way for permanent goodwill between peoples. ”

“ In speaking of the Turks it is necessary to carry two distinct types in mind. The pure Tatar vagrant, true to his native indolence, which unfits him for sedentary occupation, is in the minority. The mass of the Turkish population consists of a mixed element in which the racial strain of given localities persists along with characteristics imparted by fusion with Turki conquerors. This mingling is indicated further by the spirit which moves this people in the performance of their daily tasks. Its members are recruited among the plodding, gentle-mannered and kind-hearted peasants of the land. ”

“ From the last outliers of the hill system fringing the southern Taurus to the northern confines of the Arabian peninsula, the patriarchal state of society prevailing today differs little from the condition in which a dreamer well past middle age found it fourteen centuries ago and brought it within the pale of modern thought by inspiring it with the enthusiasm of his own belief in a single God. ”

“ The sovereign existence of Austria-Hungary to this day can be regarded only as an exceedingly marvelous feat of political jugglery. Its weakness lies in the presence of strong contingents of dissimilar races in its population. Struggle between the component masses is as unending as it is passionate. To the lack of linguistic or racial affinity must be added the want of a liberal form of government in the strictly representative or federative sense. ”

“ Should the Bagdad railroad be destined to remain German property the line is bound to become the backbone of German supremacy in western Asia. Germania, helmeted and carrying sword and shield, will ride over its rails to conquer Palestine and to wrest the wealth of the Nile and Ganges from British grip. But the foreign interests of every European nation are affected by the construction of this celebrated railway. It is the most direct route to Asia for all of Europe. ”

“ By its geography, no less than racially, Bosnia is an integral portion of Serbia. For over a thousand years Bosnians and Serbians have had a mutually common civilization. The same historical and political vicissitudes have been shared by the two peoples. Common economic aims and the identity of inhabited territory have furthermore acted as unifying factors. Whatever be the name applied to Croats, Dalmatians, Slavonians, Bosnians or Serbs, all speak the Serbian language. All have striven for centuries to promote their individuality as a nation. ”

“ Creative art found a home upon a site so eminently favored by nature. The heart and mind of its inhabitants throbbed responsively to the stirring events which were the result of their country’s situation at the junction of the most important sea and land highways of the then known world. There the antagonism between east and west, out of which so much world history has been made, broke into violent clashes after periods of commercial interchange. Talent was spurred to high achievement under the stimulus of foreign contact, wealthy patronage and genial environment. ”

“ A literary history of a country is, in great measure, the mirror of its political growth. The development of social aptitudes, of intellectual faculties or of material wants within a given area is, in the last resort, an expansion of the living forces which make for nationality and which, ultimately, find their way to literary records. Nationality and literature are thus bound together by geography and history. ”

“ As a land-bridge of early humanity Syria was necessarily the scene of much coming and going at a time when the civilization of the world was largely confined to what is now known as Asiatic Turkey. Its population therefore presents a mixed character. Hittites, Arameans, Assyrians, Egyptians, Greeks, Romans, Arabs and Turks conquered the land in turn and imparted their native customs to its inhabitants. The inhabitants of its southern area are now transformed almost beyond the possibility of analysis. ”