Page:Roger Casement - The crime against Ireland and how the war may right it.djvu/57

 Rh But whatever value to German development the possible chances of expansion in the Near East may have offered before the present Balkan War, those chances to-day. as the result of that war, scarcely exist. It is, probably the perception of this outcome of the victory of the Slav States that has influenced and accelerated the characteristic change of English public opinion that has accompanied with shouts of derision the dying agonies of the Turk. "In matters of mind," as a recent English writer says in the Saturday Review, "the national sporting instinct does not exist. The English public invariably backs the winner." And just as the English public invariably backs the winner, British policy invariably backs the anti-German, or supposedly anti-German side in all world issues. "What 191 2 seems to have effected is a vast aggrandizement of the Slavonic races in their secular struggle against the Teutonic races. Even a local and temporary triumph of Austria over Servia cannot conceal the fact that henceforth the way Southeast to the Black Sea and the Ægean Sea is barred to the Germans."

That is the outstanding fact that British public opinion perceives with growing pleasure from the breakup of Turkey.

No matter where the dispute or what the purpose of conflict may be, the supreme issue for England is "Where is Germany?"

Against that side the whole weight of Great Britain will, openly or covertly, be thrown. German expansion in the Near East has gone by the board, and in its place the development of Greek naval strength in the Mediterranean, to take its stand by the Triple Entente, comes to be jauntily considered, while the solid wedge of a Slav Empire or Federation, commanding in the near future 4*