THE WEEK.

Otago Witness, Issue 3215, 27 October 1915, Page 67

THE WEEK.

There are times when, in spite of the deeper issues involved in it, one cannot help regarding a war such as this as something in the nature of a gigantic melodrama, with nations for the principal actors, and half the world for a stage. The piece has its villains and its heroes, and we follow their fortunes with bated breath, seeking to unravel the mysteries of all the plots and counter-plots, and living in a state of thrilling uncertainty as to the exact nature of the denouement, though we take it for granted that, as usual, virtue will triumph and villany be worsted. As in a melodrama, also, we are treated to a perepetual and bewildering change of scene, for we are whisked from Flanders to Poland, from Poland to the Dardanelles and back again, with an occasional glimpse at Italy, Africa, or the Persian Gulf. Now the stage is set for the great Balkan act, which threatens to be the grand climax of the piece. The machinations of the villain seem to grow more successful, the hero needs all his wit as well as his courage to overcome them, and each continues to gain fresh adherents to his cause, until all the subsidiary characters seem to be ranged on either one side or the other. Truly, the plot thickens, and one feels that there could be no better setting for this dramatic moment than the turbulent lands of the Balkan Peninsula, with Macedonia, rich in historical associations and the scene of many a battleground, in the centre of the stage. To me there is something really aweinspiring in the thought that our New Zealanders may possibly land upon those shores, treading in the footsteps of many famous ones of bygone ages. As it is they can see from Gallipoli the island of Samothrace, wdiere St. Paul touched on his journey into Macedonia, and if they go to Salonika they will actually follow the way he went. Macedonia is full of memories of Paul. John Foster Fraser describes how he sat among the ruins of Philippi and read in the Acts the accounts of Paul’s three visits there. He also tells how there is built into one side of the stable of the tumbledown inn which is now the only habitation there a block of marble inscribed with an account of the battle of Philippi, when Octavius Cresar and Marc Antony defeated Brutus and Cassius. For Marcus Brutus bad been appointed Governor of Macedonia by Julius Caesar shortly before his death, and after the murder it was to Macedonia that lie fled, and after the battle at Philippi that be died. And this same Philippi was founded by Philip of Macedonia, father of that Alexander the Great who, some three centuries before Christ, ruled from Greece to the plains of India. So link by link the chain is forged through the centuries from the British soldier back to Alexander, who, as Miss Edith Durham quaintly pnts it, is still the talk of the town in his native land. In my endeavours to arrive at some dim comprehension of the Balkan Question I have waded through much literature on the subject, but I find one of Miss Durham’s hooks, “The Burden of the Balkans,” quite the most enlightening. Sire writes not as a passing traveller, hut as one who knows the country, and loves the strange, fierce peoples dwelling there, and her introductory historical sketch enables one to grasp some idea of the different nations comprising the queer hotch-potch. Long, long ago the, country between Greece and the Danube was in habited by Thracians, Macedonians, and Illyrians, “ a mass of savage tribes, each led by its chicftian.” These wild fighting

folk were temporarily welded into a power by Philip of Macedon and Alexander, but the Balkan Peninsula is a land of “onewar empires,” and Alexander’s did not long survive him. Then Rome swept down on the struggling mass of peoples and parcelled out the peninsula into Roman provinces, and dotted it with Roman colonies, though scarce a trace of them now remains, except in Rumania, whose language is still a form of Latin. In the third century the barbarian invasions had begun, and Slavs from the unknown lands to the north came across the Danube, and settled in Serbia, and they are the an cestors of all the Serbian-speaking peoples. After them came the Bulgars, whoso origin is unknown, though they are believed to have been allied to the Kuns, a fact which makes their alliance with Ihe modern Huns seem only the proper thing. They adopted the Slav language and customs, and they and the Slavs between them drove back the original inhabitants into the mountains of what is now Albania, and the Albians are all that is left of these primitive tribes. All these different races, including the Greeks, hated one another with a fierce and deadly hatred, and the whole history of the Balkan Peninsula is nothing but the story of their struggles with each other, varied only by the occasional rise of some leader strong enough to hold some of the waring elements together, until, to use Miss Durham’s picturesque phrases, “the allconquering Ottoman sweeps down upon them, and' for four centuries they are blotted out from the world’s history. When after that long night they awoke—the Rip Van Winkle of Europe, animated only with the desire of going on from the point at which they had left off—they found, the face of the world had changed, and new powers had arisen. Internally, there were the problems of the fourteenth century still unsolved. Externally they were faced with those of the twentieth century, western and insistent.” Serbia was the first to break free from Turkish rule, followed bv Greece, after that struggle in which George Gordon, Lord Byron, played a part that redeemed the rest of his life. Then Rumania and Bulgaria, assisted by Russia, also threw off the yoke, and since then the story has been one of the gradual decay of the Turkish power and the growth of its once vassal State?. Ever since Miss Durham's book was published things have greatly changed, for she wrote before the Balkan wars of a year or two ago, and the greater part of the country which she describes as under Turkish rule is now divided between Serbia, Greece, Bulgaria, and the new kingdom of Albania. Unfortunately this country has at different times been ■possessed by each of the different races in turn, so that each can put in a claim to “Macedonia,” “a conveniently elastic term,” fays MBs Durham, “which is made to include all the territory anyone wishes to annex.” Crowd these six still halfprimitive nations, each with antagonistic interests, into this one small corner of the world, put on their thrones kings of foreign birth, mostly Hohenzollerns, or, what is worse, married to Hohenzollerns. set three great Powers, Austria, Germany, and Russia, working behind the scenes, and yon may then get some idea of the glorious confusion of the “Balkan problem,” and the apparent hopelessness of any attempt to disentangle it. One thing emerges clearly, and that is. that the Turk must go. Without his dead weight of oppression and corruption the Balkan peoples may in time achieve their own salvation, if left to find it for themselves. Also there are two things for our comfort just now: first, that after Turkey Bulgaria is the most hated by the other nations, so that none are likelv to join hands with her. kings or no kings; and second, that amidst all their hatred one thing common to the different races is a deep respect for Britain. ELIZABETH.