under similar conditions, and even
in these days such a manoeuvre seems still to appeal to some types of
religious fanaticism, judging by certain passages between our sister
isle and the modern Hun. On the above occasion, however, it was
practised once too often. Hulaku Khan, the fierce Mongol chief, had long
had his eye on Baghdad as holding princely loot in all too slack a grip,
for the Caliphate had been relying on Tartar mercenaries for years.

He approached that queen of cities, as she then was, with a great host,
lured the Caliph out to meet him by the promise of an alliance, and
murdered the whole party, the Caliph being trampled to death. Then
Baghdad was given over to sack and massacre for more than a month, by
which time 1,800,000 people are said to have perished.

The Caliphate was transplanted to Cairo, where it dragged out an anaemic
existence until Selim I seized it, with the person of the then Caliph,
by right of conquest, and it has been an appanage of the Ottoman
reigning house ever since.

Selim the Magnificent may be called the Turkish top-note. After him the
Ottoman Empire gradually declined. It has generally taken advantage of
disaster or dissension to extend its borders--a precarious method of
empire-building unless consolidated by benevolent and sound
administration, which is not a feature of Turkish rule. Add to this the
facts that Turks are slack Moslems, that the national party which ousted
Abdul Hamid (himself most orthodox) is not religious at all, with all
its barbarian, totemistic nonsense of the "White Wolf," and that they
_would_ pose as conquerors on insufficient grounds, and we begin to see
why they have been kicked out of their Asiatic empire bit by bit.

If Turk and Mongol had been capable of dynastic evolution and
co-ordinate policy they might have shared most of the Eastern Hemisphere
between them. We have seen the high-water mark of the Ottoman Empire;
Marco Polo has told us of Kubla Khan's Chinese Empire, and the Moguls
did much for India in their prime. But the wolf-taint was in their
blood, and just as a pet wolf gets fat and degenerate, so it has been
with these Tartars. Their undoubted soldierly qualities are sapped by
luxury, and they possess no constructive gifts which peace and
prosperity might develop. Hence it is that every empire they have
founded has risen to a culminating point of conquest and then dwindled
away in sloth and corruption.

The Turk is not fit to be