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With her flag thus firmly planted on the coasts of three continents, with her most dangerous rival finally disposed of, with the splendid industrial organization, born of the war, speeded up to its highest efficiency, and with vast new markets in Africa, in Asia, in the Balkans opened to her products, Italy dreams of wresting from France and England the overlordship of the Middle Sea.
People smiled at the declaration of the Powers some little time ago that the status quo in the Balkans should be maintained; but it should be remembered that the whole phrase is status quo ante bellum, and that, once war has broken out, the status, the position of affairs, is in a condition of solution, and that no new status can arise until the war is over and its consequences determined by treaties.
That is why I have suggested a note of nationalism rather than patriotism for the English; the power of seeing their nation as a nation and not as the nature of things. We say of some ballad from the Balkans or some peasant costume in the Netherlands that it is unique; but the good things of England really are unique.
They always promised to do their best to suppress revolt but they were none too certain of their success. The spirit of the people was beginning to be ugly and especially in France the position of the king was by no means satisfactory. The real trouble however began in the Balkans, the gateway to western Europe through which the invaders of that continent had passed since the beginning of time.
Well, I will suggest that the transformation of the heretic-hating and heretic-killing European is due mainly to economic forces; that it is because the drift of those forces has in such large part left the Balkans, where until yesterday the people lived the life not much different from that which they lived in the time of Abraham, to one side that war is now raging; that economic factors of a more immediate kind form a large part of the provoking cause of that war; and that a better understanding mainly of certain economic facts of their international relationship on the part of the great nations of Europe is essential before much progress towards solution can be made.
At the foot of the range we halt at a way-side mehana for dinner. A daily diligence, with horses four abreast, runs over the Balkans from Niseh to Sophia, Bulgaria, and one of them is halted at the mehana for refreshments and a change of horses. Refreshments at these mehanas are not always palatable to travellers, who almost invariably carry a supply of provisions along.
There are lots of small states, in the Balkans, you know, which could be turned inside out and upside down by a man with the amount of money you have." "There's something in that notion," said Conroy. "Get a map, will you?" Bob Power did not want to go wandering round the house at half-past one o'clock in the morning looking for a map of the Balkan States.
It is well to put on record that mental foundation on which I built up my impressions of the Balkans generally, and of the Bulgarian people particularly, for at the present time I think it may safely be said that the Bulgarian people are somewhat under a cloud, and are not standing too high in the opinion of the civilised world.
Later, however, the Service des Antiquites pronounced the place to be outside Garstang's borders, and it seemed that luck was coming our way. No one but we two Fenton and I had any inkling of what might lie hidden in the Mountain of the Golden Pyramid. That was the great secret! Then Fenton had gone to the Balkans, on a flying trip in every sense of the word.
Moreover, there are in that part only two or three passes that can be attempted by an army with artillery. The fortress of Widdin, where Osman Pasha was known to have an army of about 40,000 seasoned troops, dominated the west of Bulgaria and the roads leading to the easier passes of the Balkans near Sofia.
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