Shall we then achieve our national unity, or will our Balkan neighbours encroach upon the inheritance which is justly ours?'

Clearly the Balkan nations could find no better moment for striking the blow to settle that implacable 'preliminary question.' of national unity which had dogged them all since their birth.

Greece and Bulgaria agreed to shelve all territorial questions till the war had been brought to a successful close; and with the negotiation of this understanding (another case in which Venezelos achieved what Trikoupis had attempted only to fail) the Balkan League was complete.

The Balkan allies opened the campaign in October, and the Turks collapsed before an impetuous attack.

The negotiations proved abortive, and the result of the renewed hostilities justified the action of the Balkan plenipotentiaries in breaking them off.

By the spring of 1913 the three fortresses had fallen, and, under the treaty finally signed at London, Turkey ceded to the Balkan League, as a whole, all her European territories west of a line drawn from Ainos on the Aegean to Midía on the Black Sea, including Adrianople and the lower basin of the river Maritsa.

She enjoyed autonomy under Turkish suzerainty for fifteen years before the Balkan War, and at its outbreak she once more proclaimed her union with Greece.

The alternative is subjection, both political and economic; and neither the exhaustion of the Central Powers in the present struggle nor the individual consolidation of the Balkan States in the subsequent settlement will suffice by themselves to avert it in the end.

The awakening of the nation and the consolidation of the state, which we have traced in these pages, must accordingly lead on to the confederation of the Balkans, if all that has been so painfully won is not to perish again without result; and we are confronted with the question: Will Balkan nationalism rise to the occasion and transcend itself?

The Balkan peoples have suffered one shattering experience in commonthe Turk, and the waters of Ottoman oppression that have gone over their souls have not been waters of Lethe.

In the West he has learnt that men of every language and religion can live in the same city and work at the same shops and sheds and mills and switch-yards without desecrating each other's churches or even suppressing each other's newspapers, not to speak of cutting each other's throats; and when next he meets Albanian or Bulgar on Balkan ground, he may remember that he has once dwelt with him in fraternity at Omaha or St. Louis or Chicago.

But with the coming of the Slavs, who settled in the Balkan peninsula about the beginning of the seventh century, certain fundamental changes took place in the ethnical conditions prevailing on the Danube.

The formation of the Balkan League, and especially the collapse of Turkey, had meant a serious blow to the Central Powers' policy of peaceful penetration.

Rumania having refused, however, to conclude a separate peace, Bulgaria had to give way, and the Balkan premiers met in conference at Bucarest to discuss terms.

The way in which Bulgaria had conducted previous negotiations, and especially the attack upon her former allies, had exasperated the Rumanians and the Balkan peoples, and the pressure of public opinion hindered from the outset a fair consideration of the Bulgarian point of view.

Her policy will, in its consequences, certainly react to the detriment of the position acquired by the country two years ago, when independent action made her arbiter not only among the smaller Balkan States, but also among those and her late suzerain, Turkey.

Such, indeed, must inevitably be the fate of Balkan politics in general.

Passing from Turkish domination to nominal Turkish suzerainty, and thence to independence within the sphere of influence of a power or group of powers, this gradual emancipation of the states of south-eastern Europe found its highest expression in the Balkan League.

By their greed the Balkan States again opened up a way to the intrusion of foreign diplomacy, and even, as we now see, of foreign troops.

The first Balkan war marked the zenith of Balkan political emancipation; the second Balkan war was the first act in the tragic débâcle out of which the present situation developed.

The first Balkan war marked the zenith of Balkan political emancipation; the second Balkan war was the first act in the tragic débâcle out of which the present situation developed.

The first Balkan war marked the zenith of Balkan political emancipation; the second Balkan war was the first act in the tragic débâcle out of which the present situation developed.

Instead, they had to battle, with the help now of one section of the Balkan peoples, now of another, till forced to make an end of all their feuds and treacheries by annexations after the victories of Kosovo in 1389 and Nikopolis in 1396.

You may demonstrate, as you will, and as many publicists have done since the Balkan War and before, what and how great economic, political, and social advantages would accrue to the Osmanlis, if they could bring themselves to transfer their capital to Asia.

Attempts to inspire Anatolian troops with religious rage in the Balkan War were failures.