acrossasiaminoro00chiluoft

324 ACROSS ASIA MINOR ON FOOT
buy nothing there—that he would, in fact, rather
starve than eat Greek meat. He was determined on
this point, and thoug-h at last taking the coin, said he
would not spend it here to save his throat being cut.
He next made the strange request that he should
be allowed to sleep in my room. When he began
with me at Kaisariyeh he had proposed the same
accommodation for himself, but I refused it. I refused
again now, and with that he turned away like
one for whom all the world is awry. There was in
his manner this evening something that verged on
crankiness ; he came and went, came again and repeated
his request, and again being refused applied
to my next-door neighbour, a Turkish officer of some
rank, and asked the same favour of him. It indicates
no small amount of good feeling between Moslems of
all classes that the officer at once agreed to his proposal.
I could hear the two speaking until I fell
asleep, and caught references to myself, but more
about the Greek and the quarrel in the evening.
That dispute had stirred the Moslems deeply, and
drawn them together in the brotherhood of race and
religion. They had seen fellow -Moslems ejected by
Greeks, and though the Moslems were in the wrong
yet the spectacle excited the deepest instincts of the
Osmanlis, who are a tribe indeed in common aims and
faith and the consciousness of being surrounded by
hostile races. In the minds of all Moslems in this
khan to-night I seemed to detect a madness at work,
a train of feelings that without much further cause
would sweep away self-control and bring men quickly
to the point of killing. And killing in this mood, it
was clear, would be done not from personal motives
but religious, by Moslems as Moslems and nothing
else. This blind fanatical and racial fury goes to
the bottom of all their hideous massacres. It is
hard to comprehend until the first stirrings of it
are seen, and the age-long racial and religious hostility
between the various races is remembered, but
that being done the wonder ceases.