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19X2] FERDINAND’S ELATION 117
province). And now "what a change of destiny by the
grace of God!" The fate of Turkey seemed to be in
Ferdinand’s hands as it had once been in the hands of
the Bulgarian Tsar Simeon, who approached the
walls of Constantinople with his army, with the
object of cutting a way through and being proclaimed
Emperor of the East. And Ferdinand with his vivid and
prompt imagination foresaw himself playing the part
of Simeon.
The objects assigned to the war with Turkey seemed
to him to have been left far behind, and all his thoughts,
all his projects were centred now on the town so near
at hand. He pictured himself making his entry into the
Imperial City, having obliterated the last traces of
Ottoman domination in Europe. And then on his skill,
his subtle diplomacy an unexpected solution of the
Straits question might depend—a solution in favour of
the Bulgarians, this people who forty short years ago
had been ignored by the whole world.
There is Russia, it is true, who for two centuries
has been aspiring to the possession of the Straits and
dreams of erecting the cross on the dome of St. Sophia.
But these political ambitions of the Tsars, these
traditional aspirations of the Russian people have always
met with and will continue to meet with irreconcilable
opposition from the rest of Europe. Even in allied
France the Russians would scarcely find a handful of
politicians willing to accept the installation of the
Empire of the Tsars in Constantinople and in the
Dardanelles. The possession of the Straits by a Power
like Russia would increase her might to such an extent
that she would become a real danger to the balance of
power in Europe. The old formula of Napoleon I. that
the Power which possessed the Straits would acquire
world-wide supremacy has not yet lost its meaning.
For Austria it would be the signal for the disintegration
and the secession of her Slav dominions ; for Germany,
the overthrow of all her projects of commercial and
" Kultur" supremacy in the Near East; for England the
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