hed revolutionary literature which was smuggled into their
homelands and eagerly read by their oppressed brethren.[115]

As the years passed, the cry for liberty grew steadily in strength. A
young Turkish poet wrote at this time: "All that we admire in European
culture as the fruit of science and art is simply the outcome of
liberty. Everything derives its light from the bright star of liberty.
Without liberty a nation has no power, no prosperity; without liberty
there is no happiness; and without happiness, existence, true life,
eternal life, is impossible. Everlasting praise and glory to the shining
light of freedom!"[116] By the close of the nineteenth century
keen-sighted European observers noted the working of the liberal ferment
under the surface calm of absolutist repression. Thus, Arminius Vambery,
revisiting Constantinople in 1896, was astounded by the liberal
evolution that had taken place since his first sojourn in Turkey forty
years before. Although Constantinople was subjected to the severest
phase of Hamidian despotism, Vambery wrote, "The old attachment of
Turkey for the absolute regime is done for. We hear much in Europe of
the 'Young-Turk' Party; we hear even of a constitutional movement,
political emigres, revolutionary pamphlets. But what we do not realize
is the ferment which exists in the different social classes, and which
gives us the conviction that the Turk is in progress and is no longer
clay in the hands of his despotic potter. In Turkey, therefore, it is
not a question of a Young-Turk Party, because every civilized Ottoman
belongs to this party."[117]

In this connection we should note the stirrings of unrest that were now
rapidly developing in the Eastern lands subject to European political
control. By the close of the nineteenth century only four considerable
Moslem states--Turkey, Persia, Morocco, and Afghanistan--retained
anything like independence from European domination. Since Afghanistan
and Morocco were so backward that they could hardly be reckoned as
civilized countries, it was only in Turkey and Persia that genuine
liberal movements against native despotism could arise. But in
European-ruled countries like India, Egypt, and Algeria, the cultural
level of the inhabitants was high enough to engender liberal political
aspirations as well as that mere dislike of foreign rule which may be
felt by savages as well as by civilized peoples.

These liberal aspirations were of course stimu