"Oh, yes, take it; it will be a pleasant souvenir!" The fact was, Russia had waged the war against Turkey not so much for the liberation of the Balkan peoples as for her own aggrandizement, and she now intended presently to absorb Bulgaria and so to push on to her long coveted goal at Constantinople, upon which her eye had been fixed for a thousand years. On the other hand, AustriaHungary was similarly intent upon absorbing Serbia and much of Macedonia, and so pushing down to Salonica, her goal on the Ægean Sea. Serbia and Bulgaria, with their former history of greatness, were ignored, or were used only as pawns in the game. And for many years thereafter, indeed down to half a dozen years ago, Russian and Austro-Hungarian diplomacy, intrigues, commercial influence and military threats were exercised to those same ends, to disturb the governments of Bulgaria and Serbia, to make their success as independent states impossible, and to compel them to fall into the hands of the two great powers.

MACEDONIA

The other capital error, which grew out of this first one, was in making no provision or in taking no steps for the enforcement of the European prescriptions of better government for Macedonia. The powers at the congress of Berlin demanded great reforms in that government and Turkey promised to grant them. But as a matter of fact immediately after the adjournment of the congress Turkish government in Macedonia and Albania became every whit as bad as it had been before, and atrocities similar to those which in Bulgaria had staggered humanity were of frequent occurrence. This disastrous policy had various results.

It maintained and intensified the age

long hostility of the Serbs, Bulgars and Greeks against Turkey. It kept Albania in a state of chronic disaffection and revolt. It made of Macedonia a land of benighted lawlessness. It provoked occasional remonstrances from the powers and some acts of intervention, which were futile and ineffectual. It also for many years gave rise to bitter jealousies and animosities among the three states of Serbia, Bulgaria and Greece, each of them seeking to advance its own interests in Macedonia and each claiming to be the rightful owner of that region.

DEMORALIZED STATES

Both these causes, moreover, had a demoralizing effect upon the Balkan States themselves. In Serbia the intrigues of Austria corrupted the court and filled its career with repeated scandals, until at last the people could endure that state of affairs no longer. A military conspiracy was formed, which resulted in one of the most shocking tragedies in modern history, when the palace was forcibly entered and the king and queen were butchered in cold blood and the dynasty exterminated. Then a prince of a former dynasty was called to the throne, and is now the king of Serbia. In Bulgaria there was a succession of outrages and tragedies similarly brought about by the malevolent intrigues of Russia. Prince Alexander was one night seized in his palace by Russian kidnappers and forcibly carried out of the country and compelled under threats of death to abdicate his throne. On regaining his liberty he returned and for a time resumed his wise and patriotic rule, but again was compelled to abdicate as an alternative to having his country crushed by the overwhelming force of Russia. In his place Ferdinand of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha was elected prince. He was a

grandson of Louis Philippe of France and related to four or five royal families, but at the time of his election he was a half-pay lieutenant in the Austrian army. A master

of intrigue, of boundless ambition, and of more than ordinary ability in statecraft, he set himself to the task of restoring the ancient greatness of Bulgaria and at the same time of exalting himself among the great rulers of Europe. Stephen Stambuloff, the greatest statesman of modern Bulgaria and the real creator of that country's independence, was known not unfittingly as the Bismarck of the Balkans and for a time as Prime Minister of Bulgaria he overshadowed the young prince. In Germany, the young Emperor William II got rid of Bismarck by forcing his resignation from the chancellorship. In Bulgaria, Stambuloff was disposed of through brutal assassination, and thereafter Prince Ferdinand was the unchallenged head of the state.

TURKISH REVOLUTION

At last the evils of Turkish misgovernment, not merely in Macedonia and Albania but in Thrace and Constantinople itself, accumulated until they could no longer be endured, and a formidable organization known as the Young Turks arose whose aim was revolution. For a time the Sultan, Abdul Hamid II, strove to suppress it and its members worked chiefly in exile in other lands; but at last finding it too strong, he affected to yield to its demands. In 1908 the world was astonished and gratified by the announcement that a constitution had been proclaimed in Turkey and that under it a popular liberal government was being organized. It seemed for a time as though the tyrant who for a generation had been one of the worst criminals that ever defiled even the Turkish

throne had transformed himself into a benevolent servant of the people. Religious freedom and equality were proclaimed, the people were no longer subjects but citizens, freedom of speech and of the press were guaranteed, universal suffrage and a representative legislature were established, and Turkey took its place for the first time among the free and enlightened nations of the earth. It was fondly thought that we should see the inspiring spectacle of a supposedly dying nation rising into newness of life. But the promise was not to be so easily fulfilled. The Sultan soon showed his lack of sympathy with the new era which he himself had inaugurated, and he was forcibly deposed and imprisoned and his kinsman, Mohammed V, who had spent many years in imprisonment, was placed upon the throne. After this, factional strife distracted the empire, old animosities between Moslem and Christian arose, old abuses were continued, and the experiment of popular government seemed to be in danger of failing.

THE RAPE OF THE PROVINCES

Meantime the great powers, or some of them, instead of encouraging the regeneration of Turkey, looked on with little sympathy and in some cases with actual hostility. One of them, Austria-Hungary, assumed an attitude of aggressive antagonism. It was evidently feared at Vienna and Budapest that Turkey might fully rehabilitate herself and become a great and enlightened power, and so might be entitled to reclaim the valuable provinces of Bosnia and Herzegovina which Austria-Hungary had been holding and governing in trust for her, and might so reform the government of Macedonia as to give no pretext for alien seizure of those provinces. Accordingly, with a

sordid determination to make sure of those provinces which she had in charge, and with a malevolent determination to discourage and discredit the new order of things in Turkey as much as possible and to cause the experiment of liberal government to fail, Austria-Hungary arbitrarily seized Bosnia and Herzegovina and annexed them to her own conglomerate domain. It was a flagrant violation of the Berlin Treaty of 1878 and a cynical application of the piratical old rule of the age of force, "that they shall take who have the power, and they shall keep who can." Turkey protested vigorously against the outrage, and so did Serbia, to which the reversion of the provinces logically belonged, but all in vain. The other powers passively assented to or condoned the wholesale theft, and Turkey and Serbia were powerless before the huge army with which Austria-Hungary backed up her morally indefensible act. There was then every prospect that Austria-Hungary would presently continue her career of aggression and spoliation, by pushing down the Vardar Valley through Macedonia and seizing the city and port of Salonica, which she had long coveted, and which indeed all Europe had regarded as destined to fall into her hands.

THE BALKAN LEAGUE

But the rape of the two provinces had another result, quite unexpected and undesired by the perpetrator of that crime. It caused Serbia and her neighbors to open their eyes to the manner in which they were being used as pawns and playthings, and to realize the actual designs of the great powers toward them. They took to themselves the warning of Byron to the Greeks, "Trust not for freedom to the Franks," and became persuaded that "who would be free, themselves must strike the blow."