THE BALKAN SHAMBLES.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLIX, Issue 15169, 7 December 1912, Page 6

THE BALKAN SHAMBLES.

Writing at the commencement of the

Balkan "war, a special correspondent of the London Times in Constantinople indulged in the following reflections :When has history seen such a war ? Was there ever an issue precipitated with a smaller horizon? The opaque mists of international greed, ambition, subtlety, and pusillanimity hang so close around the combatants that one can eee no definite horizon for any of the present belligerents. It is for them a war in which the vials of vengeance, pent up for years—it might be said for centuries will be freely, savagely poured forth. Will it be enough that Turk, Slav, or Greek, ■when each. has drunk his fill, shall return, to his own border and sheath the sword ? This is not what the writer reads in the bearing of the thousands of fighting men that are daily pouring through this cosmopolitan town. This is not the spirit of ■which those who know the. confederates speak. None of them admit that they yearn to extend their frontiers. None apparently desire aught else but to taste the ecstacy of a deep national passion. This brings us very near the great danger tb,at

underlies the ferocity with wttMjg paign mußfc in. all conscience be inducted In the struggle that is upon ■»,«*££ no room ft? sentimentality. A g£»g blood feud is about to he definitefc. d* cided. Much blood will flow. ■ Even much blood innocent of the" fierce P^ 10n *Jf the combatants must of necessity ewcll this fatal stream. Foreign sentimentality in the past has done something >to prepare the theatre for the coming shambles. Few are better qualified than the writer to make this statement, since he has been an intimate witness of the methods by j which Christian sentimentality was exploited by those who have wooed bloodshed by bloodshed. There is a certain hypnotism in that wretched word -a hypnotism that, when there is a difference in creed, destroys the balance of judgment between men and nations. Europe is upon the eve of the most awful reckoning that has been seen for generations between Slav and Ottoman. Let the struggle be fought out on the merits of the combatants. Ae such it is a natural function'in the course of the evolution of States and peoples. Nature is cruel. There is no reason .why this cruelty should be accentuated by a sentimentality born of a religious intolerance as subtly vicious as was ever the fanatical impetus' of' the Crescent.