Gladstone was an intense believer in the principle of nationality, and
he had a special sympathy with the struggles of small and materially
feeble States. "Let us recognize," he said, "and recognize with
frankness, the equality of the weak with the strong, the principles
of brotherhood among nations, and of their sacred independence.
When we are asking for the maintenance of the rights which belong
to our fellow-subjects, resident abroad, let us do as we would be
done by, and let us pay that respect to a feeble State, and to
the infancy of free institutions, which we would desire and should
exact from others, towards their maturity and their strength."
He was passionately Phil-Hellene. Greece, he said in 1897, is not
a State "equipped with powerful fleets, large armies, and boundless
treasure supplied by uncounted millions. It is a petty Power, hardly
counting in the list of European States. But it is a Power representing
the race that fought the battles of Thermopylæ and Salamis, and
hurled back the hordes of Asia from European shores."
Of the Christian populations in Eastern Europe which had the misfortune
to live under "the black hoof of the Turkish invader," he was the
chivalrous and indefatigable champion, from the days of the Bulgarian
atrocities in 1875 to the Armenian massacres of twenty years later.
"If only," he exclaimed, "the spirit of little Montenegro had animated
the body of big Bulgaria," very different would have been the fate
of Freedom and Humanity in those distracted regions. The fact that
Ireland is so distinctly a nation--not a mere province of Great
Britain--and the fact that she is economically poor, reinforced
that effort to give her self-government which had originated in
his late-acquired love of political freedom.