Page:Russian Realities and Problems - ed. James Duff (1917).djvu/36

 of the sentiment of nationality. It divides the Balkan territories on the principle on which the treaty of Vienna divided national regions in Europe in 1815. This historical example suggests that here, too, national reaction will follow on the work of diplomatic and political reaction. Those who won claimed that a balance in the Balkans had been secured, an end made of pretensions to hegemony, and peace thus secured for the future. Unhappily, a nearer examination leads rather to the conclusion that the treaty of Bucharest has created a state of things that is far from being durable." While writing these hues, I was far from foreseeing that this prophecy was to be accomplished during that very year and the next.

You can see now the bearing of the events of 1913, and of the mistaken policy of a fictitious equilibrium in the Balkans, on the events which brought about the present war. If the partition of Christian populations in the European provinces of Turkey had been made according to the treaty of March 13, 1912, and in accordance with the actual ethnographic frontiers, the Balkan League would have been kept in existence and Austria-Hungary would not have dared, would not even have thought of sending her ultimatum to Serbia. I do not mean to say that in that case there would have been no European war. What I mean is that, probably, there would have been no war in July, 1914, on the pretext of a Serbian danger for Austria.

Still, when this war began, not everything was lost in the Balkans. On September 17, 1915, the diplomatic representatives of the entente powers visited the Bulgarian premier, Mr Radoslavov, and handed to him