as ever scuttled a ship or cut a throat." On the other hand, the typical Turkish peasant is a simple-hearted farmer, said to be a brave soldier and a clean fighter.

Turkish officials insist that recurrent massacres are absolutely necessary if Ottoman rule is to be maintained. Only by violence, they say, can the varying elements be held in check. "To concede absolute equality would be to commit suicide." "In our reconstruction of the Ottoman Empire," declared Riza Bey, "administrative conformity must be absolute; autonomy is treason; it means separation. Our Christian compatriots shall be Ottomanized citizens. We shall be no longer conquerors and slaves but a nation of freemen." To this end, it was found necessary to insist on one language, one religion and one code of laws throughout the Empire, that being the program of the "Committee of Union and Progress" organized by the young Turks. Only terrorization and massacre could bring it about. A familiar proverb in Constantinople asserts: "Old Turk, young Turk ---old dog, new collar."

In the light of these things one comes to understand the motive of the several massacres and the animus of the several revolts which have marked the last century of Turkish history. Revolutions successively freed Greece, Serbia, Rumania, Bulgaria and East Rumelia (the latter becoming part of Bulgaria) and later permitted the detachment by Austria of Bosnia and Herzegovina. The war of 1912 further set free Albania and Macedonia with the ill-defined districts of Thessaly and Thrace. Montenegro, a little circle of limestone crags, with arable land only in sinkholes formed by the breaking of the crust over underground streams and caves, had held out against the Turks from the first. Settled by unconquered refugees from Serbia, this little state, very poor and very proud, had, until 1916, kept its land and freedom inviolate through the centuries. Only an attack on the eastern rear could have subdued their rocky fastnesses.

The woes of repressed nationalities spring mainly from wars of conquest. Unrest is usually the result of some past effort to bring about order by force. Old political wrongs

can be remedied in either of two ways, by restitution or by conciliation, the one looking back to causes, the other forward to effects. The first is not always possible, the second not customary. But one or both are necessary to permanent peace. If ancient wounds cannot be healed, they may perhaps be soothed in new tolerance and justice.

Balkan folk have suffered from every conceivable wrong. Slaves to the Turk, "small change of the Tsar," objects of intrigue by Austria, Russia and Germany-merciless towards one another, mismanaged and misunderstood by the Great Powers they and their affairs are today in the most hopeless tangle. The only final way out is through federation, notwithstanding the fact that every tendency toward union is opposed by a multitude of conflicting interests.

Federation, with equality before the law, would settle race problems almost at one stroke, because in removing racial domination, racial subservience would be wholly obliterated. For if all races came to have an equal stake in the common government, questions of nationality, language and religion would cease to be of first importance and would pass into the background, as in Switzerland and the United States. With the inextricable racial tangle in Macedonia and Thrace, no right of nationality, except equal right, can be made to apply.

The tragic history of the Balkans has been conditioned on five main elements: (1) emancipation long drawn out-the various districts which gained their freedom from time to time forming separate centers of population and rapidly developing national rivalries; (2) the placing over most of these states of German or Germanized princes, trained in the poisonous dynastic atmosphere; (3) the infesting of the new courts at all times by the secret agents of three unscrupulous dynasties; (4) the weakening of respect for human life by servitude through long generations, and finally (5) a confusions of tongues. As a matter of fact, the Balkan peoples speak at least seven distinct languages, five of them (Slavic, Rumanian, Greek, Hebrew and Turkish) using different alphabets and having scarcely a linguistic root in common. Furthermore, along the borders, in the courts and marts,

six world-tongues (French, German, English, Russian, Italian and Spanish) also crowd for recognition. Under these conditions, racial identity is confused, a man being known by the language he speaks.

Adding to the general complication, two further elements have had their part in creating dissension. First, there are four state hierarchies, or churches, each a political organization, three of them, at least, according to a prominent Bulgarian, being "unconcerned with either religion or morals." Second, under Turkish control, all ancient boundaries were obliterated and promiscuous migrations resulted in inextricable entanglement, especially along the sea-boards. Moreover, the absence of coherent law, with universal social subservience, reduced all races and all social ranks to a common level—at the bottom,1 a condition obliterating, for the most part, feudal nobilities, which might otherwise have led in racial self-assertion.

II

During the last twenty years, dynastic rivalries had turned Europe into a vast armed camp. Thanks mainly to the German emperor and his military caste, war was in the air. Meanwhile, however, other nations had carried the torch hither and thither throughout the still exploitable world. War was indeed becoming respectable, for almost every great nation had eventually engaged in it.

It seemed therefore a favorable moment to get rid of the Turk by setting fire to the Balkans. Accordingly in 1912, Hartwig, Russian Minister at Belgrade, "the evil genius of the Balkans," lined up the states in an effort to expel the Turk from Europe, even as France, Italy and Britain had driven him from Africa. Nevertheless, it was not understood among the allies that actual war should be the method of expulsion. A Bulgarian university official assured the writer that the premier, Gueschof, regarded the league as a "simulacrum" (to use his, Gueschof's own words) that is, as a

1 This fact has made for ultimate democracy particularly in Bulgaria and Serbia where hereditary orders of nobility were never revived.

kind of "bluff." Its supposed purpose was to exercise some sort of joint pressure which would move the Turk progressively from Albania and Macedonia. But the alliance once made, King Nicola of Montenegro took it seriously. With his whole army, about 50,000 strong, he came down from the mountains, crossed Lake Scutari and stormed the citadel of Scutari, largest and northernmost town of Albania. By this assault, he set the land in flames, and opened the first Balkan War, by which the Turks were finally expelled from Albania, Macedonia, Thessaly, and most of Thrace and of the islands of the Aegean. The fall of Adrianople brought . the contest practically to a close, and in London, soon after, was held a Conference which, under diplomatic pressure from Europe, ended in the unsatisfactory Treaty of London.

In this treaty, the western boundary of Turkey was fixed by a straight line drawn from Enos on the Aegean northeasterly to Midia on the Black Sea. As to the disposal of the lands won from Turkey, many embarrassments arose, due mainly to the conflicting interests of some of the Great Powers. By a special Serbo-Bulgarian treaty previously made, Bulgaria was to have that part of western Macedonia lying south of the ancient Serbian capital of Uskub, while Serbia was to receive, besides the Novi-Bazar, the greater part of Albania, including Durazzo, her coveted "window to the sea," of which, in default of customs agreements, she was really in sore need. Indeed, Serbia had long been grossly oppressed because of the prohibitive tariffs levied on all imports and exports by the greedy states which surrounded her, a fact affecting notably her special product of pork. Other agreements at this time seem to have been mainly informal. By them, it was understood, that Montenegro was to have Scutari itself, and certain barren crags to the southeast known locally as the "Accursed Mountains,"

2 Nicola's motives have been questioned. A stateman in a position to know assured me that the king had been selling stocks short on the Vienna Bourse, and therefore it was to his interest that prices should fall. If so, the royal purpose was accomplished, for it is said that stock-values in Europe fell $200,000,000 at once under this master-stroke. Moreover, most of them have been falling ever since.

together with the whole of the big lake, on the commerce of which Scutari and the Montenegrin villages of Virpazar and Rjeka mainly depend. Greece was apparently to have Epirus, Thessaly and the Islands of the Aegean, though this arrangement also seems to have been left undefined in the written agreements. The Greek premier, Venizelos (a resolute and resourceful statesman), did not ask in behalf of Greece (it is said) for anything east of the Struma River, as the strip along the sea from Demir-Hissar to Kavala "would have no backbone."

By the Concert of Powers in London which reviewed these adjustments, little heed was given to Balkan agreements." Albania was the chief "stone of stumbling and rock of offense." Both Austria and Italy had designs upon it, as well as Serbia and Greece. The town of Avlona, key to the Straits of Otranto, a potential "Gilbraltar" was especially claimed by Italy in order to "convert the Adriatic into an Italian Lake." For this demand there was, of course, no racial excuse, though reason enough in a military way, if the European anarchy of the past were to continue.

In view of the general deadlock concerning Albania, the Concert decided to make a separate kingdom of it, under a German princeling.

A word in regard to Albania. This strange, wild, roadless region is inhabited by an untamed people, broken into primitive clans, ruled by their own traditions, and subject to no common authority. Omitting the Greek-speaking Albanians of Epirus, the others constitute four main groups, known at sight by their headwear. The Arnauti wear a low white fez, the Meredites a high one, the Albaneser a low red fez, the Marisols a high one with a long black tassel. The Albane

'As to Greek claims, no decision at all seems to have been made by the Concert of Powers. Several of the islands desired by Greece were also coveted by Italy. Montenegro got a rather worthless extension of territory (largely of barren, "accursed" mountains) but was debarred from the city of Scutari, though the writer was informed in Cettinje of the existence of a special promise to lower the bed of the outlet to Lake Scutari by fifteen feet or so, thus redeeming some thousands of acres of land now submerged in shallow water.

THE JOURNAL OF RACE DEVELOPMENT, VOL. 9, No. 2, 1918