Something of its spirit
will linger perhaps for a while in the old charmed regions where it bore
sway; the Greek villagers will doubtless be restless and turbulent and
unhappy where the Bulgars rule, and the Bulgars will certainly be
restless and turbulent and unhappy under Greek administration, and the
rival flocks of the Exarchate and Patriarchate will make themselves
intensely disagreeable to one another wherever the opportunity offers;
the habits of a lifetime, of several lifetimes, are not laid aside all at
once. And the Albanians, of course, we shall have with us still, a
troubled Moslem pool left by the receding wave of Islam in Europe. But
the old atmosphere will have changed, the glamour will have gone; the
dust of formality and bureaucratic neatness will slowly settle down over
the time-honoured landmarks; the Sanjak of Novi Bazar, the Muersteg
Agreement, the Komitadje bands, the Vilayet of Adrianople, all those
familiar outlandish names and things and places, that we have known so
long as part and parcel of the Balkan Question, will have passed away
into the cupboard of yesterdays, as completely as the Hansa League and
the wars of the Guises.
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