Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 87.djvu/68

64 of the entire community of European nations. In this a determining factor is obtained which may lead to the eventual formation of an independent political unit formed by the elongated zone of coastland enclosing the Dardanelles, the Sea of Marmora and the Bosporus. The boundary of this territory in the Balkans, if made to coincide with the line determined for Turkey's western boundary at the Treaty of London of May 30, 1913, would conform fairly accurately with natural divisions. On the Asiatic side the valley of the Sakaria and a long fault line revealed by the lakes east of the Marmora provides ready-made frontiers which could be conveniently extended to the Ægean. This line had constituted the Asiatic boundary of the Latin Empire of Constantinople in the period intervening between the years 1204 and 1261. To-day the establishment of an internationalized area or neutral zone in this region would be an added instance of conformity to geographical principles observable in many sections of the world.