My Lords, it has been said that while the Congress of Berlin decided upon a policy so bold as that of declaring the range of the Balkans as the frontier of what may now be called New Turkey, they have, in fact, furnished it with a frontier which, instead of being impregnable, is in some parts undefended, and is altogether one of an inadequate character.

The Russians mean to pass the Balkans with 60,000 men and march on Adrianople.

The phenomenon has been, unhappily, only too familiar in the Nearer East, and any one who travelled in the Balkans in 1882, or even so recently as 1912, must at once have become aware of it.

The Persians made radical changes in the stories and gave them the form in which they came to Europe by various routesthrough North Africa to Spain and France; through Constantinople, Venice, or Genoa to France; through Russian Turkestan to Russia, Finland, and Sweden; through Turkey and the Balkans to Hungary and Germany.

"Peace" in the Balkans under the Turkish SystemThe inadequacy of our termsThe repulsion of the Turkish

Here, again, it would be absurd to attempt any answer for the present, but we must at least be prepared for the possibility of a transformation as rapid and as overwhelming in Asiatic Turkey as that which freed the Balkans from the Turkish nightmare two short years ago.

His plan was to cross the Danube, and penetrate through the passes of the Balkan to Philippopolis, at that time the capital of the Sultan's dominions, where he kept the main body of his army.

The most important gain for either side in the Balkans up to the middle of September was the capture by the Bulgarians and Germans, on September 7, of the great fortress of Turtukai, fifty miles to the southeast of Bucharest, the Rumanian capital, and chief defense of the capital on that side.

The Servian Government hastened to fortify the passes of the Balkans between Bulgaria and the home territory, and the Servian army in Macedonia effected a junction with the Greek army from Salonika.

Moreover, its possession by Bulgaria was absolutely necessary were she to secure the hegemony in the Balkans at which she aimed.

Albania, since the formation of a great state in the Balkans by the union of all or the absorbing greatness of one, would overthrow the balance of power, and besides interpose an insurmountable obstacle between Austria and Russia, and the sea.

Russia and Austria-Hungary, the two 'most interested powers', who as far back as the eighteenth century had divided the Balkans into their respective spheres of interest, east and west, came to an agreement in 1897 regarding the final settlement of affairs in Turkey; but it never reached a conclusive stage and consequently was never applied.

He told me that if the sun had not set, I should have been able to see the summits of the Great and Little Balkans of Asia which rise above the bay of Krasnovodsk.