[J.A.R. Marriott, The Eastern Question: An Historical Study of European Diplomacy. Oxford University: The Clarendon Press, 1919. Pp. 18-35]
CHAPTER II
PHYSICS AND POLITICS
"No other site in the world enjoys equal advantages nor perhaps ever will enjoy them."-D. G. HOGARTH (of Constantinople).
"It is the Empire of the world."-NAPOLEON (on Constantinople).
"When the Turks threw themselves across the ancient paths in the fifteenth century A.D., a great necessity arose in Christendom for searching out new lines of approach to India. From that quest the history of modern commerce dates."-SIB W. W. HUNTER.
"By whichever way we approach the problems before us we are brought back to the unique importance of the position occupied by Belgrade. It is in several ways the most commanding of any European city.... Belgrade lies at the only available gateway on the road to Salonica and the Piraeus as well as to Constantinople."-SIR ARTHUR EVANS.
Physical conditions. This book will be concerned, as the introductory pages should have made clear, primarily with Politics; with the history of the Near East as the home of man; as the cockpit of nations, and as the arena of international rivalries. But there is no region in the world where physical conditions have played a more dominating part in shaping the destinies of individual men or of those political aggregations which we know as Nations and States. This is demonstrably true whether we have regard to the region as a whole, or to that segment of it with which this book is more particularly concerned, the lands which the geographers of the last generation described as Turkey in Europe, but for which political changes have compelled us to seek a new name. The name generally given to that segment is The Balkan Peninsula, or simply The Balkans. In strictness the description applies only to the lands to the south of the great Divide formed by the Shar mountains and the Balkan range. It excludes, therefore, a great part of Serbia and the Southern Slav provinces, and the whole of Roumania In the following pages The Balkans will, however, be used as synonymous with the Turkey in Europe of our forefathers.
The "Near East". Only a few words can be spared for the geographical significance of the general region of the Near East. Nor, indeed, is it necessary to labour a commonplace. A glance at a map of the world-more particularly of the known world of A. D. 1450-can hardly fail to carry conviction even to those who are not wont to cultivate the historical or geographical imagination. The lands which fringe the Eastern Mediterranean-roughly the region bounded on the west by the Adriatic and the island of Crete, to the north by the Danube, to the east by Asia Minor and Mesopotamia, and to the south by Syria and Egypt-have possessed a significance in world-history incomparably greater than any other. If it be objected that the definition excludes all the lands dominated by the Anglo-Saxon race it is sufficient to reply, first that this statement refers to the past, not to the future; and secondly, that indications are not wanting that, in the future, the region may play a part in determining the fate of world-empires hardly less important than that which it has played in the past.
The old Trade routes. Until the establishment of the Ottoman Empire the region thus defined formed the nerve-centre of the world's commerce. From time immemorial the trade between the East and the West has followed well-defined routes. The most ancient is the caravan route which, from the dawn of history down to the sixteenth century, was commanded by the Semites. From the Far East goods found their way to the head of the Persian Gulf, thence by caravan they ultimately reached the Syrian sea-board, and from Tyre and Sidon were distributed by the Phoenicians to the peoples of the West. Basra, Bagdad, and Jerusalem were the dominating stations on this trunk-line. The Mongol invasions of the thirteenth century gravely impaired the security of the Mesopotamia-Syria route, and proportionately increased the importance of the northern and southern routes. The former reached Europe by the Oxus, the Caspian, and the Black Sea, its outer gate being commanded, of course, by Constantinople; the latter came by way of the Indian Ocean the Red Sea, and the valley of the Nile, debouching from 332 B.C. onwards at Alexandria.
Every one of these Mediterranean outlets, Constantinople, Alexandria, and the Syrian coast, passed into the hands of the Ottoman Turks between 1453 and 1516. One after another the great trade-routes were blocked by a Power, inimical to commerce, and still more inimical to those Christian nations for whose benefit intercourse between East and West was mainly carried on. It will, therefore, be readily understood that the Ottoman conquest of the Near East constitutes one of the decisive events in world-history. After that conquest the Western world found itself confronted by three alternatives: to forgo the profits and conveniences of its trade with the East; or to expel the Ottomans from the "nodal-points ", or to discover a new route to the East with the continuity of which the Ottomans could not interfere. Europe preferred the last. Hence the abnormal activity displayed at Cadiz, Bristol, and above all at Lisbon, in the latter half of the fifteenth century. Portugal, thanks to Prince Henry the Navigator, had indeed long been a centre of maritime activity and scientific research. It was fitting, therefore, that the first prize in the quest for a new route to the East should fall to the Portuguese explorers.
The new routes. The rounding of the Cape of Good Hope by Vasco da Gama in 1498 opened a sea-route to India which was successively dominated by the Portuguese, the Dutch, and the English. Columbus setting forth on a similar quest a few years earlier had stumbled upon the West Indies, and had thus opened to his Spanish patrons a path to Empire in South America. The Cabots, sailing from Bristol, under the English flag, discovered and explored the coast of North America Plainly, then, the geographical renaissance of the later fifteenth century was due primarily, though not exclusively, to the advent of the Ottomans in South-Eastern Europe and the consequent blocking of the old established trade-routes.
Results to Europe. The opening of the new route to the East Indies, together with the discovery of America and the West Indies, had a profound and far-reaching influence upon the European polity. The centre of gravity, commercial, political, and intellectual, rapidly shifted from the south-east of Europe to the north-west; from the cities on the Mediterranean littoral to those on the Atlantic. Constantinople, Alexandria, Venice, Genoa, and Marseilles were deprived, almost at one fell swoop, of the economic and political pre-eminence which had for centuries belonged to them. Four of the five cities have regained a large measure of importance, and at least one of them may be destined to pre-eminence in the near future; but for four centuries the Mediterranean, which had been the greatest of commercial highways, was reduced almost to the position of a backwater. Commercial supremacy passed to the Atlantic. The Thalassic Age, to adopt the terminology rendered classical by Sir John Seeley, was superseded by the Oceanic. To Western Europe, as a whole, and to England in particular, these changes were of the highest possible significance; but it is neither necessary, nor in this connexion pertinent, to elaborate a commonplace of historical generalization.
The Suez Canal. Towards the end of the nineteenth century the great enterprise of M. de Lesseps, the cutting of the Isthmus of Suez by a canal, restored in large measure the commercial significance of the Mediterranean. Hardly less important has been the influence excited in the same direction by the political reorganization and the economic development of Egypt under Lord Cromer. Genoa and Marseilles have responded superbly to the new demands made upon them, Alexandria has regained much of its importance.
The Bagdadbahn. The twentieth century has witnessed the initiation of an enterprise which, if it be carried through to a successful issue, may possibly have consequences, political and economic, hardly inferior to those which have accrued from the cutting of the Suez Canal. Just as at the close of the fifteenth century the Western Powers were intent upon securing for the eastern trade a route beyond the control of the Ottomans, so at the present day Mitteleeuropa is straining every nerve to obtain command of a great trunk-line which, by the dominant sea-power of Great Britain, shall carry the commerce and the influence of the Teutonic Empires from the shores of the North Sea to the Persian Gulf undisturbed. The Bagdad railway is not yet completed, nor is it by any means certain that if and when it is completed the control will be vested in Berlin or Hamburg. But the mere initiation of the enterprise affords one more indication of the commanding geographical situation of the lands which still form part of the Ottoman Empire, and in particular the incomparable significance of Constantinople. The convergence of all the great trade-routes of the ancient and the mediaeval worlds upon the Eastern Mediterranean, the importance attached in the modern world to Egypt, Syria, Mesopotamia, and Constantinople, are conclusive proof of the propositions advanced in the opening paragraphs of this chapter. England would not be in Egypt to-day, the German Emperor would not have courted the Sultan Abdul Hamid and Enver Pasha, had not the Near East retained all the significance which in all previous ages of world-history has been conferred upon it by a geographical situation pre-eminently and perhaps uniquely advantageous.
The Balkans: physical features. Not less obvious is the influence which physics have exercised upon the history of the Balkan lands. Before this proposition can be accepted it is necessary to discriminate with some nicety the outstanding geographical features of this region. For the first impression is one of almost hopeless confusion.
The mountain system. The orographical relief is, indeed, singularly complex. At first sight the peninsula seems, with small exceptions, to be covered by a series of mountain ranges, subject to no law save that of caprice, starting from nowhere in particular, ending nowhere in particular, now running north and south, now east and west, with no obvious purpose or well-defined trend. Closer scrutiny corrects the first impression, though not fundamentally. Still, where all had seemed chaotic, certain features emerge: the lower Danube basin, the two valleys of the Maritza, the plain of Thessaly, and the lower Vardar valley. These are the most obvious exceptions to the mountain ranges and the high uplands. Still closer observation reveals a gap between the southern end of the Dinaric Alps and the northern terminus of the mountains of Albania. This "Albanian Gap", created by the Drin river and extending on the Adriatic coast from Scutari to Alessio or S. Juan di Medua, has already played a considerable political rôle, and may be destined to play a much larger one. It is, indeed, hardly too much to say that the whole political future of Serbia depends upon the economic potentialities of this break in the coastal mountains. Another feature, of hardly less significance to Serbia, is the passage-way between the western coastal mountain chains and the central upland, a passage which opens at the northern end into the great Hungarian plain, and at the southern into the lower Vardar valley, connecting, in fact, Belgrade and Salonica. "Within this belt id concentrated", as a recent writer has admirably said, "most of the drama and most of the tragedy of the peninsula"[1]
A third feature which disentangles itself from the confused mountainous mass is the Rhodope upland, a fairly defined central earth-block of triangular shape, based upon Salonica -and Constantinople, and stretching in a north-westerly direction towards an apex at Belgrade. Along the sides of this triangular upland run the main lines of communication, with their junction at Nish (see maps below).
The west coastal mountains. The most pronounced features of the mountain system still remain to be summarily noted. The first is the prolongation of the Alpine chain which, starting between Nice and Genoa, forms the northern boundary of the great Lombard plain, then sweeping round the head of the Adriatic begins to run down its eastern shore, first as the Julian and then as the Dinaric Alps. There is a fairly wide gap north-east of Fiume, and a well-marked one, already referred to, where the Drin has forced its way to the sea Otherwise the coastal range runs almost continuously parallel with the shore, and, what is more important, generally close to it. These geographical facts are not without significance in relation to the claim put forward by Italy to the eastern shore of the Adriatic. The Venetian character of the Dalmatian cities is as indisputable as is the Slavonic blood of the vast majority of the inhabitants, and if it be true that a mountain range affords a more scientific frontier than a river bank or even a sea-coast line, geographical symmetry might seem to argue in favour of Italy's claim to the ancient Illyria and modern Dalmatia. But here, as elsewhere in the Balkans, ethnography conflicts sharply with geography, agreeing with it only so far as to assert that whoever "the rightful claimant may be it is not the present occupant '. Once past the Bocche di Cattaro the coastal mountains recede from the sea-coast until they reach Valona From Valona they have a south-westerly trend until, in the Pindus range, they form the spinal cord of Greece.
The central watershed. From the west-coastal mountains there runs almost to the Black Sea an horizontal range. It starts with the Shar mountains just south of the Albanian Gap; and broken once or twice, notably by the Belgrade-Salonica gangway, it continues as the Balkan range almost due east, stopping short of Varna on the Black Sea coast. This forms the great central watershed of the peninsula. North of it all the rivers, such as the northern or white Drin, the Morava, the Isker, and the Vid, empty into the Danube; south of it the Vardar, the Struma, and the great Maritza system all flow into the Aegean.
The Carpathians. Finally, we have to note the position of the Carpathians They belong, in a sense, rather to the Central European than to the Balkan system. But the Balkan range itself may almost as well be regarded as a continuation of the Carpathian folds as of the central watershed, and apart from this the Carpathians have a paradoxical significance of their own which cannot be ignored. In one sense they form an obvious and formidable barrier between the Hungarian plain and the basin of the lower Danube, which in its turn marks, from the Iron Gates almost to the Black Sea, the southern frontier of Roumania. But the physiographic frontier, in the case of the Danubian principalities, conflicts curiously with the ethnographic. If there are some nine million Roumanians dwelling to the east of the Carpathians, there are four million people of the same race to be found on the western side of the mountains. In this fact lies the core of the political problem of Roumania, a problem deliberately created, it would seem, by a capricious but obstinate geography.
The river system. Caprice is, indeed, the obtrusive characteristic of Balkan' physiography. If anything could be more confusingly capricious than the orographical relief, it is the river system of the peninsula Why does the Danube, after a prolonged, regular, orthodox, west to east course from :Belgrade to beyond Silistria, take a sudden tilt due north as far as Galatz before it is content to empty itself into the Black Sea ? Its only purpose seems to be the purely malicious one of involving Roumania and Bulgaria in disputes over the unattractive marshes of the Dobrudja If the Danube had only persevered a little longer in its eastward course and reached the sea -as the railway line from Bucharest does-at the port of Constanza, there would be practically nothing to prevent unbroken amity between the Roumanians and their Bulgarian neighbors. But that again would be so contrary to every Balkanic principle and tradition that perhaps, after all, the Danube, under an outer cloak of perversity, is only attempting to preserve spiritual conformity with the circumstances of its political environment.
Further south, the Maritza plays us an almost identical trick with political results hardly less embarrassing. This great liver drains the valley which intervenes between the Balkans and the Rhodope block of central uplands; it maintains a south-easterly course from Philippopolis to Adrianople, and then, instead of continuing its orthodox course to the Black Sea, or even to the Sea of Marmora, it takes a sudden turn to the south and finally, by a course decidedly southwesterly, reaches the Aegean at Enos. The curious deflection of this great river system is due to the geological process known as "river capture ". The sinking of land below what is now the surface of the Aegean Sea-a process the incompleteness of which is manifested by the existence of the Aegean archipelago-has increased the velocity and therefore the erosive power of the streams flowing southward to such a degree that the watershed has been thrust northward, and the Aegean streams have "captured" the head-waters of systems which did not originally belong to them. Geologically the Aegean has thus excited a very powerful attractive force. The Maritza, the Mista, the Struma, to say nothing of the Vardar and the Vistritza, all flow into the Aegean. Politics have followed the lead of Physics. Men, like streams, have been attracted towards the Aegean littoral, and thus Macedonia has become the "key to the history of the whole peninsula".[2] Nowhere in the Balkans has physiography more obviously dictated the course of history than in this difficult and debatable region. Macedonia consists of a string of basins more or less connected by the threads of the Vardar and the Vistritza. But here, as in Roumelia, geography has made it much easier for the northern peoples to come south than for the southern peoples to go north.[3] Therein lies, perhaps, the primary cause of the outbreak of the Second Balkan War in 1913, though the monitions of nature were in that case powerfully assisted by the promptings of diplomacy. Apart, however, from this particular instance history shows the continuous attraction of the Aegean littoral for the several peoples of the peninsula.
Closely connected with the geological process to which reference has been made is the uncertainty of the watershed between the upper waters of the Vardar and those of the Morava. That physical phenomenon finds its political reflection in the position of the Southern Slavs. By which route will they ultimately obtain access to the sea ? By the Vardar valley to the Aegean or by the Albanian Gap to the Adriatic ? But for the malicious interposition of the Central European Powers the Serbians would, without question, be on the Adriatic to-day.[4] Whether that or the Aegean is their "natural" destiny is a point upon which nature has not very decisively pronounced. It is, however, worthy of note that there is no such "pull" to the Adriatic as there is to the Aegean. To Italy the strategical value of the Dalmatian and Albanian coast is unquestionable. It has still to be demonstrated that it is for the Southern Slavs a "natural" outlet either in a commercial or in a political sense. If the dictates of ethnography are to be accepted as final the award cannot be in doubt. The claim of the Southern Slavs is indisputable. But race is not the only factor of which account must be taken.
A conspectus of the physical features of the peninsula seems, indeed, to suggest the conclusion that the main structural lines are not horizontal but vertical. The general trend is north to south, not east to west nor west to east.
It would be unwise to lay exaggerated emphasis upon this physiographic tendency. To do so might supply a physical justification for the Drang nach Südosten of the Central European Empires. But it may not, on this account, be ignored. The conclusions suggested by the main lines of communication are indeed irresistible.
Roads and Railways. In a country such as has been described above it would be l ridiculous to look for elaborate means of communication. In l the Balkans, at any rate, they will be looked for in vain. Neither by road nor rail is communication easy. The difficulties interposed by nature may be gauged by a comparison, extraordinarily suggestive, between the Roman road map and a modern railway map of the peninsula A glance at the maps on pp. 28 and 29 will show that only in one respect is there any conspicuous divergence between the two. The primary purpose of the Roman roadmaker was to secure a direct line of communication between the old Rome on the Tiber and the new Rome on the Bosphorus. This purpose was achieved by the construction of the famous Via Egnatia, which, starting from Durazzo on the Adriatic, ran by-way of Lake Ochrida to Monastir and thence to Salonica From Salonica it ran parallel to, but at some little distance from, the Aegean littoral to Kavala, and thence down to the shore at Dedeagatch, from which point it made straight for Constantinople. A second trunk-road from Belgrade to Constantinople via Nish, Sofia, Philippopolis, and Adrianople-the precise route of the line now traversed by the Berlin to Constantinople express. A third, starting from Metkovitch, followed the stream of the Narenta, and thence ran up to Serajevo, and linked Serajevo with Salonica by way of Novi Bazar, the plain of Kossovo, and Uskub. Subsidiary roads connected Scutari with the Danube via Nish, and Monastir with the Danube via Sofia.
The modern lines of communication are, with one exception, far less systematic. Bucharest now is connected by different lines with the Roumanian port of Constanza, the Bulgarian port of Varna, with Sofia, and, via Philippopolis, with Constantinople. Otherwise, the advantage lay with the Roman roads. Besides the trunk-line already mentioned between Belgrade and Constantinople, a second connects Belgrade with Nish, Uskub, and Salonica, and a branch line runs from Salonica to Constantinople. But, with the exception of a line from Ragusa to Serajevo, there is not a single railway running westward from or eastward to the Adriatic. There is nothing to connect either Durazzo or Valona with Monastir and Salonica; nor Serajevo with anything to the south of it. The outbreak of the European War interrupted various projects for supplying the more obvious of these deficiencies, but many repairs will have to be effected before any large schemes of construction are likely to be resumed. Meanwhile, the main lines of communication remain much as the Romans left them. Now, as then, they are dictated by the triangular central upland which, based upon Constantinople and Salonica, reaches its apex at Belgrade. Now, as then, these three cities hold the keys of the peninsula
Political deductions: impossibility of centralization. The foregoing survey of the geographical features of the Balkans, summary as it has been, is sufficient to indicate the "exceptional degree of influence which in this interesting region Physics has exercised upon Politics. In such a country i it would be vain to expect the establishment of a strong l centralized State, such as was possible in England, and still more obviously in France. Nor, in fact, has there ever been such a State in the Balkans. The Greek city States represent the antithesis of centralization, and neither Macedon nor Rome was foolish enough to attempt the impossible. The Ottoman Empire, though in a sense despotic, has never been a centralized despotism. Subsequent chapters will make it clear that in practice a very considerable amount of local autonomy was permitted to the conquered peoples even throughout the most oppressive periods of Ottoman dominion. Centralization is indeed prohibited by nature.
Kleinstaaterei. Even a closely knit federal State would seem to be outside ] the realm of possibilities for the Balkans. Nature points E imperiously to a congeries of relatively small States, and the geographical presuppositions are re-enforced by the principle of ethnography. The present distribution of States and races is, on the whole, tolerably scientific. As usual, however, nature has done her political work in a slovenly fashion, and has left a number of very ragged edges. Or perhaps it would be more modest and more true to say that man has been too stupid to interpret with precision the monitions of nature. But wherever the blame lies, the fact remains that there are in the Balkans a good many intermediate or debatable districts, the political destiny of which cannot easily be determined. As we have already seen nature has not made it quite clear whether she means Serbia to expand towards the Adriatic or towards the Aegean. Politically, the former alternative would be the less inconvenient, for it might untie one of the many knots in which the Macedonian problem is involved.
Inter-State rivalry. Of all the debatable areas Macedonia is the most conspicuous. If the Moslems are to evacuate it, upon whom is the inheritance to devolve ? Upon Greece, Serbia, or Bulgaria? If upon all three, how will the lines of a satisfactory frontier be drawn? That Bulgaria cannot be permanently content with the present arrangement is frankly admitted by the most prescient of Greek statesmen. But if Greece makes room for Bulgaria at Kavala, ought Serbia to keep Monastir ? Does not the road system of the Romans, however, suggest a connexion between Monastir and Durazzo? Again, is not Salonica the obvious port of Belgrade? Or possibly, horresco referens, of Buda-Pesth, or even of Berlin ? It is much easier to ask these questions than to answer them. And they are far from being exhaustive. They may serve as samples of the problems propounded by Physics to Politics in the Balkans.
Two conclusions would seem, however, to emerge with tolerable clearness, and there is some danger of our being compelled to accept a third. It will always be difficult to maintain in the Balkans a single centralized State; unless, therefore, the ingenuity of man can triumphantly overcome the dispositions of nature there will always be a congeries of relatively small States. Must we also conclude that these States will remain to all time in a condition of rivalry; is an armed peace the best that is to be hoped for in the Balkans ? This question cannot in any case be disposed of summarily, and an attempt at a considered answer may conveniently be deferred to a later chapter. But this much may be said at once. It would be hazardous to draw conclusions either from the "miracle" of 1912 or from the grotesquely disappointing sequel of 1913. Grossly exaggerated were the hopes founded upon the formation of the Balkan League; perversely pessimistic were the opposite conclusions derived from its melodramatic dissolution.
Confederation v. Federalism. Two inferences seem to be justified by recent events. First that the utmost degree of centralization which may be reasonably looked for in the Balkans is a somewhat loose confederation of the Christian States. Unification is prohibited alike by geography and by ethnography. Even federalism presupposes the existence of unifying forces which have not as yet manifested themselves in this region. Things being as they are, a Staatenbund would therefore be preferable to a Bundesstaat: Switzerland is a model more appropriate to the Balkans than Germany or the Australian Commonwealth; and the Switzerland ante 1848 rather than that of to-day. Secondly, even this measure of union is unattainable without a thorough territorial readjustment. No confederation, however loose in structure, could be expected to endure for six months, unless a fairly satisfactory settlement of outstanding difficulties can be previously effected. And that settlement must come from within. The Treaties of London and Bucharest (May and August, 1913) are a sufficient warning against the futility of European intervention in Balkan affairs. Even assuming complete disinterestedness and goodwill, the event is only too likely to defeat benevolent intentions; where, as at Bucharest, such an assumption is forbidden by notorious facts, intervention can issue only in disaster
Europe and the Near East. The above reflections suggest irresistibly a further conclusion. Physiography, as we have seen, denies to the Balkan 4 lands any pre-eminent importance from the productive point ] of view. In this respect the Danubian principalities are the most favourably circumstanced among the States of the peninsula The external commerce of Roumania is approximately equal to that of the rest of the States put together, and Roumanian oil and cereals have undoubtedly a great future in the European markets. But only on one condition- that the egress of Roumanian merchandise through the narrow straits is unimpeded. The future of Constantinople is therefore of vital consequence to Roumania Bulgaria, with an Aegean sea-board, is obviously less interested, but only in one degree. Bulgaria, like Roumania, is giving evidence of improvement in the methods of cultivation by the exportation of cereals. Nor are the exports of Greece and Serbia insignificant, though Greece ministers chiefly to luxuries.
It is not, however; in its productive capacity that the economic importance of the Near East consists. That is to be sought in its general geographical situation regarded from the point of view of Weltpolitik and Weltökonomie. Throughout the ages this region has possessed an incomparable importance in relation to the commercial lines of communication. Temporarily diverted by the discovery of America and of the Cape route to India, commerce, always conservative in its instincts, has lately regained the accustomed paths. The Balkans, Egypt, Mesopotamia, are again to-day, what from the dawn of history they have been, objects of jealous desire to all economically minded peoples. Less from the point of view of occupation than of control; less for their intrinsic importance than as a means of access to other lands. Hence the concentration of international rivalries upon the lands which fringe the Eastern Mediterranean. That rivalry has not exhausted itself during the last twenty centuries; on the contrary, it seems possible that we may be about to witness its manifestation on a scale without precedent in the history of the world. Nor can there be any doubt that the lands which form part, or until recently did form part, of the Ottoman Empire will provide the arena. Enough has been already said on the importance of Egypt, Syria, and Constantinople as guarding the lines of communication, but we must not fail to notice that the geographical formation of the peninsula itself has rendered it exceptionally open to incursions. Unlike the Iberian peninsula, that of the Balkans is widest where it joins the European continent. Neither to the north-east nor to the north-west is there any natural line of separation, still less is there any substantial obstacle to the advance of a hostile incursion.[5] Over and over again has Roumania offered a convenient high road for the passage of invading hosts: Goths, Huns, Lombards, Avars, and Slavs traversed it in turn, though only the last tarried in Roumania itself. Between Bucharest and Constantinople there is no serious impediment, still less between Belgrade on the one hand and either the Aegean or the Bosphorus on the other.
Relatively small and weak as the States of the Balkans are, and must necessarily be, what hope is there of their being able to offer any effective resistance to similar incursions in the future? There would seem to be none except in the adoption of safeguards similar to those which for more than a century have maintained inviolate the neutrality and independence of the Swiss Confederation: constitutional readjustment, neutralization under an international guarantee, and a confederate citizen army, well trained and well equipped, and prepared, if need be, to extort the respect of powerful neighbours. Before these conditions can be attained there will have to be a good deal of give and take among the Balkan States; irreconcilable claims in Macedonia and elsewhere will have to be compromised. This will be no easy task, but it may perhaps be accomplished if once the contending parties can be convinced that there are only two other alternatives. Either the peninsula will, in the future as in the past, be the prey of any sufficiently powerful invader, or it will find protection by common subordination to an alien empire, drawing upon resources external to the peninsula, and imposing its will by irresistible military strength. These alternatives to a domestic accommodation are not attractive, but they are exhaustive. Physiography excludes a third.
For further reference: D. G. Hogarth, The Near East; Miss Newbiggin, Geographical Aspects of the Balkan Problem; Sir W. W. Hunter, History of British India, vol. i; E. Himly, La formation territoriale; E. A. Freeman, Historical Geography of Europe; Sir Arthur Evans, The Adriatic Slavs and the Overland Route to Constantinople.
Notes.
1. Newbiggin, Geographical Aspects of Balkan Problems, p. 9.
2. Newbiggin, op. cit., p. 10. On the whole subject of "river capture" of. chap. v in the same illuminating work.
3. Hogarth, Nearer East, pp. 170-1.
4. Cf. Evans, The Adriatic Slavs.
5. Cf. Newbiggin, Op. Cit., p. 16.
