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In these Balkan Mountains their costumes are a truly wonderful blending of colors, to say nothing of fantastic patterns, apparently a medley of ideas borrowed from Occident and Orient.

Poor King Edward may have thought he was peace-making, but he little knew the Balkans. In June 1906, England formally resumed relations with Serbia, an event of far higher import than any one but Russia realized at the time. It is a date that ends a chapter of Balkan history.

The Eastern colossus had been dwindling so fast for nearly a century that a Macedonian king, who had already subdued the Balkan peninsula, loomed at least as large in the world's eye, when he crossed the Hellespont, as the titular Emperor of contumacious satraps and ever-rebelling provinces of western Asia.

This was, in fact, the situation of all the Balkan States when the Great War began, with the exception, of course, of Serbia, which had been directly attacked. Rumania, Bulgaria, and Greece very hastily announced their complete neutrality to each other as well as to the world at large, though Greece was in the very awkward position of having signed a defensive treaty with Serbia.

In two of the four chief Balkan states German princes occupied the thrones, a Hohenzollern in Rumania, a Coburger in Bulgaria; in a third, the heir-apparent to the Greek throne was honoured with the hand of the Kaiser's own sister.

Their projects for creating a vast and powerful economic organization, to be known as Central Europe, with its first appendix in the Balkan Peninsula, have been carefully woven, and will be duly embellished when the hour for unfolding them has struck.

Her feeling was well known to the Allies, and every effort was made to obtain her friendship and, if possible, her aid. Viviani, then Premier of France, in an address before the French Chamber of Deputies, said: The Balkan question was raised at the outset of the war, even before it came to the attention of the world. The Bucharest Treaty had left in Bulgaria profound heartburnings.

He went on with the general pacification of the world as if the Balkan submission was made in absolute good faith, and he announced the disbandment of the force of aeroplanes that hitherto guarded the council at Brissago upon the approaching fifteenth of July. But instead he doubled the number upon duty on that eventful day, and made various arrangements for their disposition.

Paul leaned back in his chair, twiddling the letter between his fingers, and looked smilingly out on the grey autumn rack of clouds. There was a pleasant and flattering intimacy in the invitation: pleasant because it came from a pretty woman; flattering because the woman was a princess, widow of a younger son of a Royal Balkan house. She lived at Chetwood.

The Balkan States are watching events with attention. Although they congratulated the new Turkish Government, they have no interest in Turkey's regeneration, and they are bound to oppose the Ottomanization of their compatriots in Turkey.