And what country, indeed, has passed through more and greater disasters than Serbia? For it is not too much to say that during the past twenty-five centuries of its history it has been almost continually in a condition of social unrest and political chaos. Times without number the tides of invasion and devastation have swept over this unfortunate land. The general poverty and intellectual stagnation of the people were aggravated by the follies of their rulers and by dynastic scandals that shocked the civilized world. For generations at a time the administration of the country was little better than organized brigandage. Unscrupulous officials, living in Oriental indolence, prospered on the life-blood of the down-trodden peasantry, for whom justice was but a myth. Blood feuds, political murders and internecine strife were long endemic, and guaranties for life and property were, consequently, impossible. And this was true not only for Serbia but also for the whole of the Balkan peninsula--for Bulgaria, for Macedonia, for Roumania and for the half-barbarous principalities along the Adriatic. So completely separated were they from the rest of the world that little was known of them in western Europe until less than a century ago, when they began to give stronger evidence of national consciousness than they had previously exhibited, and to manifest a united purpose to liberate themselves from the Ottoman yoke, under which they had suffered for so many centuries. But it would be contrary to the teaching of history to assert that all the disorders endured and all the cruelties suffered by the inhabitants of the Balkans during the long period when they were deprived of their independence were due to the Turks. Nothing is farther from the truth. The fact is that the various Balkan races--the Greeks and Bulgars for instance--hated one another far more than they--either individually or collectively--hated the Turks. * * * * * From the point of view of humanitarianism [as has been well said] it is beyond a doubt that much less blood was spilt in the Balkan Peninsula during the five hundred years of Turkish rule than during the five hundred years of Christian rule which preceded them; indeed it would have been difficult to spill more. It is also a pure illusion to think of the Turks as exceptionally brutal or cruel; they are just as good-natured and as good-humored as anybody else; it is only when their military and religious passions are aroused that they become more reckless and ferocious than other people. It was not the Turks who taught cruelty to the Christians of the Balkan Peninsula; the latter had nothing to learn in this respect.[14] * * * * *