Ashburton Guardian MAGNA EST VERITAS ET PREVALEBIT. WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 20, 1915. THE BALKANS RIDDLE.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume XXXV, Issue 8274, 20 October 1915, Page 4

Ashburton Guardian MAGNA EST VERITAS ET PREVALEBIT. WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 20, 1915. THE BALKANS RIDDLE.

It is no exaggeration to state that no other Power in history has known s.uch strange alterations in fortune as Bulgaria, and her latest adventure, will most probably add several pages to her topsy-turvy annals. When the first Balkan war came to an .end and the belligerents began to measure up the profit and loss of their inter-racial Donnybrook, it was Bulgaria that had most cause to survey the campaign with astonished and wrathful eyes. At the beginning, she came within striking distance of the Dardanelles ; at its close she had lost practically all the fruits of her dearly-bought victory. The Treaty of Bucharest brought the second stage of the war to a conclusion, and under the Treaty of London tho Great Powers repartitioned the Balkans. The treaty was duly signed, but before the ink upon it was. dry it proved to be little better than "a scrap of paper.'' The Balkan " Allies " flew at each other's throats, and Bulgaria, assailed by Greece on one flank, by Serbia and Montenegro on another, and threatened by Roumania in the rear, was beaten and plundered. Then with a craft and change of front that is a characteristic of the Balkan v". nations, Bulgaria made overtures to the late common enemy, Turkey, and a separate peace was arranged between them. This move cost Bulgaria the loss of_ Adrianople, tho one great prize of the war, and it enabled Turkey, without a single shot, to regain all she had lost in the war. The helplessness of European diplomacy when brought to bear upon nations such as these was never so graphically illustrated as in the case of this agreement between the two erstwhile enemies. After fighting themselves to a stand-

still, they put their heads together ! and arranged a treaty which entirely displaced the one which had the seven Great Powers of Europe as its authors. As the " Saturday | Review" -put it at the time: "Can any serious man suppose that a collection of unruly tribes, with no political .sense, can be unified by an international commission, ignorant of their languages, intolerant of their racial prejudices, arid seeking their pacification merely because their quarrels might possibly disturb the balance of power in Europe ?" Further complications ensued when Serbia and Albania commenced a war on their own acj count, and when Rournania, after Bulgaria's defeat by Serbia and Greece, insisted upon having a voice in the partition of the territory wrested from .Turkey, and declared war upon Bulgaria. The maelstrom into which the Balkan States are now being irresistibly drawn owes its origin to .the haphazard method adopted by the diplomats of the Powers in fixing the new boundaries. Serbia, according to the Treaty of London, was given 1,200,000 new subjects, of which a few were Serbs, half | Bulgars, and the rest Albanians ; Greece got 200,000 Bulgars and Roumania about the same number. Tiny Montenegro, whose strength;lay in her unity,, was given about 200,000 Albanians, and Bulgaria, probably the most fiery of all the Balkan States, took to her bosom such warring elements as a few thousand Greeks, Turks, and Armenians. It is therefore not hard to understand the utter impossibility of imposing upon such a human powder magazine the ethics of modern diplomacy. Roumania gained nothing from her invasion of Bulgaria, but the fact that she j still desires to obtain a portion of Bulgarian territory south of the Dobruds'cha River may influence her in joining the Entente. She has no love for Russia, it is true,

but she may conclude that this is no time for re-opening' old sores. In the war against Turkey in 1877-8, Roumania furnished a] large contingent of ' troops and! bore a far greater share of the burden of the joint campaign from Plevna to Adrianople than Russia did. Yet as a result of her cooperation she lost possession of the strip of Bessarabia lying north of the mouth of the Danube which had belonged to her since 1856. In compensation for this loss, the Treaty of Berlin took from Bulgaria and ceded to Roumania flio delta of the Danube and the Dobrudscha enclosed by the bend in the Danube and the Black Sea.' But this was unsatisfactory to her because it: was not nearly so valuable as Bessarabia and contained fewer Roumanians, and she has never ceased, her efforts to secure a further slice of Bulgarian territory. It will be seen from tins brief survey that the Allies have ventured upon an expedition that has all the elements of a tragedy : •no matter what the result may be. The success of Serbia, with the Allies' help, will be merely temporary. Whatever territory she may be awarded at the close of the" war she will have to defend against all the States, for it is not--at all likely that the old jealousies and racial hatreds are to-day less pronounced than they have been for hundreds of years.