was barely averted. The reforms in Armenia were not carried out, and frightful massacres ensued.

Before 1890, the chief factors in Turkish affairs had been England, France and Russia, but with the ascent of Kaiser William II to the throne, German influence grew, German officers trained the Turkish troops, the Kaiser found it to his interest to oppose Russia, and instead of weakening Turkey to strengthen her. As a sign of the growing favor toward the Germans, in 1899 they were granted the franchise to construct the Bagdad Railway connecting the Dardanelles at Constantinople with the Persian Gulf at Busra.

The interference of the Powers after the massacres in Armenia in 1894, led to further slaughter, and new promises of reform, which were never kept. Again a demand was made, but the wise Abdul Hamid, knowing that the Powers could not agree to interfere jointly, continued to delay. In Crete, during 1896, the laxity of the Porte ended in uprisings, and Greece, finding this another chance to advance Pan-Hellenism, declared war on Turkey in the cause of Crete, but was so badly beaten that again the Powers had to interfere to prevent her complete subjection. This was almost simultaneous with uprisings in Albania, Arabia and Macedonia.

Even under a strong rule it would be difficult to keep peace in Macedonia but under the weak hand of the Sultan riots only increased in violence. If a point in the Balkan states could be selected where racial and religious differences are most numerous and inharmonious, it would be Macedonia, which with Salonika its chief port, a veritable prize, is situated between Servia, Bulgaria and Greece, has been inhabited by the races of all three with an infiltration of Rumanians. The people of Macedonia had never been satisfied with the terms of the Treaty of Berlin, and their Bulgarian neighbors across the border also felt that they had been deprived of a right of union with their own people. Societies were formed on both sides of the frontier to oppose the Turks, and they in turn were met by countermovements among the Greeks and Servians, who feared Bulgarian supremacy in the peninsula. Austria and Russia intervened in the cause of humanity. Again Abdul Hamid assented

in principle to suggestions, but did not trouble to act until European fleets had made another demonstration off his shores.

In 1908 happened an event that made the stability of Turkey seem more secure than it had been for years. The Young Turk party got control of the government, forced the Sultan to grant a constitution and parliamentary government. Seizing this moment, Bulgaria announced that she was a free and independent kingdom (her second violation of the Treaty of Berlin); Austria-Hungary annexed Bosnia-Herzegovina (another violation), and Crete declared herself a part of the kingdom of Greece. In the midst of this chaos Abdul Hamid was forced to abdicate in favor of Mohammed V. The new government was soon busy putting down insurrections in Kurdistan, Albania and Armenia, where horrible massacres again occurred. Greece had gone to the aid of Crete, and was only forced to leave it by the warships of the Powers. Turkey and Rumania signed an entente against the aggressions of Greece in 1910.

The Young Turk government accomplished little real reform, for it no sooner quieted one part of its narrowing dominions than another arose. Moreover, the great Powers could do little for it, because of growing hostility between the Triple Alliance and the Triple Entente. It was to the interest of the first to strengthen Turkey, and of the latter to maintain the status quo or weaken it. The impression had been gradually growing in England that Turkey in Europe must go. Lord Salisbury, after the Treaty of Berlin claimed that "England had backed the wrong horse." Germany on the other hand found through Turkey her sole hope of reaching the East. Greater Europe was deadlocked and powerless to act.

Taking advantage of this fact, Greece, Servia, Montenegro, and Bulgaria determined to drive the Sultan out of Europe themselves. The Balkan League was formed; Bulgaria and Servia signed a secret treaty setting forth a division of Macedonia and Albania between them. Acting singly they might have been defeated by the Turks or cowed by the land and naval demonstrations of one of the great Powers, but united in the League they could defy almost any combination. Their chance came when Italy, without other cause than that she considered the Turk

unfit to rule Tripoli, declared war on the Sultan in 1911. As she had the silent encouragement of all the Great Powers, it was but a short time before the Turk had lost his last remaining African province. With Turkey weakened and defeated, the Balkan League moved against her armies the same year, and completely overwhelmed them, advancing to the very gates of Constantinople. The Turks sued for peace, but while negotiations were being conducted, Servia, Greece and Montenegro, fearing the predominance of Bulgaria, began to fight her, and while the allies were struggling among themselves, the Turks found their chance to reoccupy part of the conquered territory. They regained Adrianople, which had been taken by the Bulgars; but outside of Constantinople the Turk had been practically driven from Europe. By the treaty of peace, Albania, along the shores of the Adriatic, was made an autonomous state, Servia regained part of the lost empire of Stephen Dushan, Greece and Bulgaria divided Macedonia between them. The Turks still held Constantinople, for not one of the six Powers would have permitted a small Balkan state to hold the key to the Eastern Mediterranean. But as long as they continue in Constantinople the Turks are a force to be reckoned with in European affairs.

THE EXTERRITORIAL CAPITULATIONS

The Exterritorial Capitulations which have been revoked by the Porte were first granted to France in the sixteenth century. The Ottoman Empire had always been a refuge for religious exiles of other countries, and with easy tolerance the Turk had granted them special privileges. The sovereignty of the state was held in the middle ages to apply only to its own subjects, and as the Turks would not grant citizenship to aliens, they allowed them to remain under the practical control of their own governments. Until October 1, 1914, foreigners living in Turkey had been given the following privileges: freedom to travel, freedom to trade, inviolability of residence from search, freedom to worship, freedom from local jurisdiction and exclusive competence of the consular courts in litigation between two subjects of the same country.

THE BALKANS

For a century the key to the history of the Balkan States has been the gradual disintegration of the empire of Turkey in Europe. The Balkan peninsula, which the Turks overran from the fourteenth to the sixteenth century contains an active member or a vestige of practically every important race stock which has appeared on the European arena-the Greek, the Ruman, the Bulgar, the Serb, the Albanian, the German, the Magyar, the Turk, the Arab and the Russian-and with the loosening grip of the Sultan, who is kept in Europe by the jealousies of the Great Powers, the dominant races of the peninsula have been engaged in a constant struggle to get the lion's share of the spoils. Gradually, one race has freed itself from the grip of Turkey, found its boundaries unfitted to its ambitions, and driven the Turk further East. The frontiers have been arranged and re-arranged, but quarrels have arisen to which there seems no end.

The Balkans can be best understood by comparing their race mixture to America, where the tides of immigration meet, but whereas America is a melting pot and boils the various stocks down to a common broth, the Balkans are a mixing board where the races are being continually broken up and stirred into some new and surprising mixture-a sort of human gulash, but the mixture is physical, never chemical. There are certain well defined areas around which center the eddying race tides of the Bulgars, the Rumans, the Greeks, the Serbs and the Albanians, but on the outskirts of each are other areas where the races of various ambitions meet in such equal strength that the land they occupy can be peacefully held by no single power. The worst of these is Macedonia, the land of massacers, whence issues the cry "Come over into Macedonia and help us."

The situation is further complicated by the conflict of religious and trade interests. Here meet the discordant factions of the Greek church (including the Orthodox, the Bulgarian

Exarchate), Mohammedanism, Roman Catholicism and the missions of Anglican and American Protestant churches. For commercial reasons England, Germany and Russia find they must have control of the land and water routes to Asia, which can only be obtained through the Balkan peninsula. They have assumed protectorates, and in return for their interference in the purely Balkan quarrels have given the different Balkan states an interest in their greater world jealousies. And so various elements could be cited without end, until the Balkan relations have become a tangle too involved for the human mind to comprehend. No Balkan quarrel can arise without finding a reflex among the other states of Europe, and, conversely, each Balkan State is so bound to the two opposing camps of Europe, that a quarrel among the Great Powers immediately threatens a change of the status quo of the Balkans, and divides them into factions for and against the Triple Alliance and Triple Entente.

RUMANIA.

Rumania is fortunate in being north of the main body of the Balkan peninsula and having for its frontier the broad river Danube. So, in its comparative isolation from the marching armies it has been free to consult its own interest as to what wars it shall enter. Because of this it has become the largest and most prosperous of all Balkan states.

Rumania was the first state to establish its practical freedom and unity from the Turkish dominion when the principalities of Moldavia and Walachia became autonomous at the close of the Crimean War in 1856. Five years later the two parts joined peacefully and elected Prince Cuza, a Rumanian noble, to rule them. He was compelled to abdicate in 1866, and Prince Charles of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen was tendered the office which acting on the advice of Bismarck, he accepted.

Being of German extraction, the sympathies of Charles were always with Germany, though during the Franco-Prussian war many anti-German demonstrations occurred in the capital, which is strongly French in its sympathies.

Rumania's reward for her aid to Russia in the war with the Turk in 1878 was the recognition of her final independence from