would
be more useful to him than Italy, especially since the Abyssinian
episode had so seriously discredited the latter. Then, of a sudden,
with a poetic justice that is delicious, Italy turns around and
humiliates the nation that was to take its place The whole comic
situation resembles nothing more nearly than a supposedly defunct
spouse rising from his death-bed to thrash the expectant second husband
of his wife.

Here "the great game" digresses in another direction, that takes no
account of Turkey. Of course, it was more than a self-respecting desire
to avenge affronts that led Italy to declare war against Turkey; and
also more than a hunger for the territory of Tripoli. Italy needed to
solidify her national sentiment at home, in the face of growing
socialism and clever clericalism. Even more did she need to show the
world that she is still a first-class power. There has been a
disposition of late years to leave her out of the international
reckoning. Now, at one skilful jump, she is back in the game--and on
better terms than ever with the Vatican, for she will look well to all
the numerous Latin missions in the Turkish Empire, and especially in
Palestine. These once were France's special care, and are yet, to a
degree; but France is out of favor with the Church, and steadily
declining from her former place in the Levant, although French
continues to be the "_lingua franca"_ of merchandising, of polite
society, and of diplomacy, in the Near East.

Let nobody think that this is lugging religion by the ears into "the
great game." Religion, even more than national or racial consciousness,
is one of the principal players. In America politicians try to steer
clear of religion; although even here a cherry cocktail mixed with
Methodism has been known to cost a man the possible nomination for the
Presidency. In the Levant, however, religion _is_ politics. The
ambitions and policies of Germany, Russia, and Britain are less potent
factors in the ultimate and inevitable dissolution of Turkey than the
deep-seated resolution of some tens of millions of people to see the
cross once more planted upon St. Sophia's. Ask anybody in Greece or the
Balkans or European Russia what "the great idea" is, and you will get
for an answer, "The return of the cross to St. Sophia's." Backward and
even benighted Christians these Eastern churchmen may be, but they hold
a few fundamental ideas pretty fast, and are readier to fight for them
than