United States or French Guiana ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
The settlement of the Balkans described in this article will probably last for at least a generation, not because all the parties to the settlement are content, but because it will take at least a generation for the dissatisfied States to recuperate. Bulgaria is in far worse condition than she was before the war with Turkey.
From 1466 to 1878 the Balkans was in the dominion of the Turks. In the early days while the Turks were warring against Hungary, their armies marched through the Balkan hills. The natives kept apart, and preserved their language, religion and customs. In the nineteenth century, as the Turks grew weaker, their subject people began to seek independence.
When we review history from the beginning of human existence to the present age in which we live, it is evident all war and conflict, bloodshed and battle, every form of sedition has been due to some form of prejudice—whether religious, racial or national—to partisan bias and selfish prejudice of some sort. Even today we witness an upheaval in the Balkans, a war of religious prejudice.
Thus the beginning of the second year of the war opened in the Balkans very favorably in aspect to the Allies. After nearly ten months of kaleidoscopic changes in the diplomatic situation, which kept the outside world constantly uncertain as to her ultimate determination, Italy declared war upon Austria May 23, 1915.
The interest of Russia in the Balkans is partly one of racial sympathy, partly one of territorial ambition, for the road to Constantinople lies through Rumania and Bulgaria.
If she could have made a fair arrangement with Bulgaria she would have preferred that. But it seemed to be destined that Bulgaria should add another to the long list of her frustrated hopes. The early part of 1914 saw the Balkans in the throes of a war which eclipsed in bitterness and bloodshed the campaign of 1913.
It is known that this tribe came from the Volga and, crossing Russia, proceeded towards ancient Moesia, where it took possession of the whole north-east territory of the Balkans between the Danube and the Black Sea. These were the Bulgars, or Bolgars. The Slavs had already imposed on the races they had found in the Peninsula their language and customs.
So highly was he thought of there that when, after the unsuccessful attempt on Plevna in the September of the war, the Guard Corps was arriving from Russia and there was the temporary intention to use it with other troops in an immediate offensive movement across the Balkans, he was named to take the command of the enterprise.
Mesopotamia From Egypt the Turks had been diverted, since their defeat in February 1915, by the attack on the Dardanelles; but the German advance in the Balkans had synchronized with attempts to disturb us on the western borders of Egypt by German and Turkish intrigues with the Senussi federation of Moslem tribes, and in Tripoli, which the Italians had never succeeded in completely subjugating.
This, of course, had been suspected by the cabinets of Germany and Austria. But how far and how thorough the actuality was, I had been sent to find out. The results of my mission showed beyond all doubt the urgent need for Germany and Austria to begin their machinations to off-set the rising power of Russia in the Balkans.
Word Of The Day