LESSON OF THE BALKANS

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXVI, Issue 8295, 5 December 1912, Page 1

LESSON OF THE BALKANS

By H. W. Massingham,

Again war. Again its horrors, cruelties, follies, and crimes- Again wounds, and massacres of the wounded, again murderous fevers, agonising deaths, painful sufferings of starving and frostbitten men lying out on battlefields, broken homes, wholesale robberies, the destruction of crops and all the instruments of peaceful labor, thousands of men who escape the bullet or the shell made useless for civil life. Again crushing taxation for millions of peasants and workmen. Again glory for a few scores "or hundreds of princes and gentlemen. Again, maybe, a futile peace, gleaning a few grains of good from the harvest of evil and madness. Again solemn talk of diplomatists, ignorant, foolish, conscienceless men, neither able enough to suggest a remedy for -these errors, nor strong enough to apply it when discovered. Thus the round of State life in Christian, civilised Europe goes bn. What can one do but apply the reflection of the Latin poet, and say of the peasantry of tho Balkans that these innocent folk are atoning for the sins of their forefathers P For the old popular hate and dynastic quarrels pursued in the name of religion. For the incapacity, proved and proved again, of the Ottoman race to govern a people of an alien faith and stock. For the feckless handling of the Near Eastern question by the European Powers. For their senseless divisions, for which the statesmen of Britain bear their full and special responsibility. For the policy of Lord Beaconsfield and the much-ap-plauded feat by which ho tore up the Treaty of San Stefano and substituted the Treaty of Berlin. For the absence of all foresight of the inevitable consequences of the failure of the Young Turks, a failure for which we again are largely culpable. Thus we see for the hundredth time the need of constant criticism- of the men who work the machinery of foreign relationships, men who by the nature of things lose touch of common sense, of public morals, of the true interests of communities, of the obligations which they themselves contract and rarely attempt to fulfil until outside pressure is applied to them, or until the march of events overtakes their slow and plundering dispositions.