ahometan."

"But no one has ever conquered these people."

"Any one could, the Servians, the Bulgarians, the Greeks, the Italians,
the Austrians. Why, they can't even shoot! It's just the balance of
power and all that foolery keeps this country a roadless wilderness.
Good God, how I tire of it! These men who swagger and stink, their
brawling dogs, their greasy priests and dervishes, the down-at-heel
soldiers, the bribery and robbery, the cheating over the money...."

He slipped off the parapet, too impatient to sit any longer, and began
to pace up and down in the road.

"One marvels that no one comes to clear up this country, one itches to
be at the job, and then one realizes that before one can begin here, one
must get to work back there, where the fools and pedants of WELT POLITIK
scheme mischief one against another. This country frets me. I can't see
any fun in it, can't see the humour of it. And the people away there
know no better than to play off tribe against tribe, sect against sect,
one peasant prejudice against another. Over this pass the foolery grows
grimmer and viler. We shall come to where the Servian plots against
the Bulgarian and the Greek against both, and the Turk, with spasmodic
massacres and indulgences, broods over the brew. Every division is
subdivided. There are two sorts of Greek church, Exarchic, Patriarchic,
both teaching by threat and massacre. And there is no one, no one, with
the sense to over-ride all these squalid hostilities. All those fools
away there in London and Vienna and St. Petersburg and Rome take sides
as though these beastly tribes and leagues and superstitions meant
anything but blank, black, damnable ignorance. One fool stands up for
the Catholic Albanians, another finds heroes in the Servians, another
talks of Brave Little Montenegro, or the Sturdy Bulgarian, or the Heroic
Turk. There isn't a religion in the whole Balkan peninsula, there isn't
a tribal or national sentiment that deserves a moment's respect from
a sane man. They're things like niggers' nose-rings and Chinese secret
societies; childish things, idiot things that have to go. Yet there is
no one who will preach the only possible peace, which is the peace of
the world-state, the open conspiracy of all the sane men in the world
against the things that break us up into wars and futilities. And here
am I--who have the light--WANDERING! Just wandering!"

He shrugged his shoulders and came to stare at the torrent u