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Evening Star, Issue 15072, 2 January 1913, Page 4

The New Year opens with the irar clouds still hanging heavy and Peace or threatening over SouthWar? eastern Europe. 'The amaze-

ment and enthusiasm that were born of the triumphs of the Balkan Allies in the opening weeks of the war have giyen place to grave anxiety as to the final outcome. The change, we suspect, is due rather to a belief in the> weakness of the Allies than to any misconception as to the strength of Turkey. When the Porte sued for an armistice and asked for conditions of peace it was too hastily assumed that all was over but the signing of the terms of a peace treaty. And in ordinary circumstances it should have. been. The fall of Adrianopla was a matter of days or weeks at most, and nothing but the ill-manned Chatalja, lines stood between the Allies and Constantinople. Why, then, should the Federation have stayed their hands? The answer has to be sought primarily in. the knowledge of their own inability to maintain the appalling losses that they were paying as the price of' victory. A breathing space was as vital to them as to the Turk, and it is the mutual exhaustion of the belligerents, even at this late hour when there are ominous rumors of a resumption of hostilities, which is regarded by competent critics ia Vienna and elsewhere as the surest guarantee that peace will eventuate. W T hat the Allies demand in the way of territorial rearrangement would confine the Ottoman Power in Europe to the City of the Golden Horn and its environs, and what the Porte puts forward by way of counter-proposal would, to all intents, leave the vexed Eastern Question as eternal and as unsettled as it was before the war. At the same time, it is possible that the Allies -would not have waited as long as they have for a definite understanding were they in complete agreement among themselves. How much, or how little truth there may be in the reports of strained relations it is impossible to say. But, apart from street squabbling among the troops, it does not seem reasonable that ihe Alliss, who, so far, have worked in harmonious accord, should deliberately throw away in the hour of victory the fruits of their mutual sacri-

fices. The most menacing report from the standpoint of the Allies and their continued credit with the peoples and Governments of Europe, if not of the world, is that which tells of wholesale slaughter and foul massacre of many thousands of Moslem, men, women, and children by Servian and Bulgarian troops, acting on instructions from their officers. Should thess reports be confirmed, then anything may happen. Public sympathy will scorn to tolerate in the nominal Christian that which it has denounced in the infidel Turk. Meanwhile, a few hours should decide the diead issue of peace or war.