But though the popular feeling had been largely poetical, the same thing did in its degree occur in the political realm that was purely practical.
The Moslem had been checked, but he had not been checked enough.
The whole story of what was called the Eastern Question, and three-quarters of the wars of the modern world, were due to the fact that he was not checked enough.
The only thing to do with unconquerable things is to conquer them.
That alone will cure them of invincibility; or what is worse, their own vision of invincibility.

That was the conviction of those of us who would not accept what we considered a premature peace with Prussia.
That is why we would not listen either to the Tory Pro-Germanism of Lord Lansdowne or the Socialist Pro-Germanism of Mr.Macdonald.
If a lunatic believes in his luck so fixedly as to feel sure be cannot be caught, he will not only believe in it still, but believe in it more and more, until the actual instant when he is caught.
The longer the chase, the more certain he will be of escaping; the more narrow the escapes, the more certain will be the escape.
And indeed if he does escape it will seem a miracle, and almost a divine intervention, not only to the pursued but to the pursuers.
The evil thing will chiefly appear unconquerable to those who try to conquer it.

It will seem after all to have a secret of success; and those who failed against it will hide in their hearts a secret of failure.

It was that secret of failure, I fancy, that slowly withered from within the high hopes of the Middle Ages.
Christianity and chivalry had measured their force against Mahound, and Mahound had not fallen; the shadow of his horned helmet, the crest of the Crescent, still lay across their sunnier lands; the Horns of Hattin.

The streams of life that flowed to guilds and schools and orders of knighthood and brotherhoods of friars were strangely changed and chilled.