And for days Europe and the great powers were thunderstruck, again and yet again, by the news of Turkish forts falling, Turkish cohorts collapsing, the unconquerable Crescent going down in blood.

The Serbians, the Bulgarians, the Greeks had gathered and risen from their lairs; and men knew that these peasants had done what all the politicians had long despaired of doing, and that the spirit of the first Christian Emperor was already standing over the city that is named after his name.
For Germany this quite unexpected rush was a reversal of the whole tide of the world.

It was as if the Rhine itself had returned from the ocean and retired into the Alps.

For a long time past every important political process in Europe had been produced or permitted by Prussia.
She had pulled down ministers in France and arrested reforms in Russia.
Her ruler was acclaimed by Englishmen like Rhodes, and Americans like Roosevelt, as the great prince of the age.

One of the most famous and brilliant of our journalists called him "the Lord Chief Justice of Europe." He was the strongest man in Christendom; and he had confirmed and consecrated the Crescent.