And yet, with their minds centred on material aims, immersed in the humdrum conditions of life which this all-absorbing activity indicates, accustomed to subdue their feelings until many of them have lost the faculty of expressing, let alone giving way to, strong passion, how difficult it is for Europeans to form an idea, to realize what unrestrained human passions are like when they flare up in fierce hearts, and to make allowance for them. This must be more particularly the case when they are called into play by those traditional antagonisms of race to which many of the harrowing tragedies of the East are due; for other forms of crime, or rather instigations to crime, are probably fewer among the Turks than among Europeans. I was once a witness to a desperate encounter between some Montenegrins and Greeks in a German beer-house in Pera, and the memory of the diabolical fury of the Montenegrins is still present to my mind, together with the quiet self-control of the proprietor, an old Prussian soldier of ’66 and of ’70, who at last succeeded in calming the disputants. The passionate hatreds of the Near East are practically unknown to us. With due reservation regarding these fierce outbursts, commonly, but in my humble opinion most unjustly, attributed to religious fanaticism, I am still of opinion that the Turk is far from being inclined by nature to cruelty. His kind treatment of animals, of horses and dogs, and of the birds in the air, which he takes no pleasure in shooting, speaks volumes for the humane attributes of the Turk, whose deep attachment to his own family and kindness to dependents nobody who knows the East can call into question. For instance, English governesses in Turkish families are treated with such consideration that they endeavour to avoid meeting their own countrymen and countrywomen, for fear that the difference in our treatment of dependents should expose them to humiliation in the eyes of their Turkish masters and mistresses.