1908] Balkan Conspiracy against Turkey 215 



the discomfiture of the Poet Laureate, to whom Belloc paid scant defer- 

 ence, and whom he quite extinguished in talk. 



" 28th Sept. — They are all gone at last, I am glad to say, and ' silence 

 like a poultice came to heal the wounds of sound,' for we have had a 

 terribly noisy time. 



" Oliver Howard has died, of fever, in Nigeria. What a gratuitous 

 mischance. There was no call whatever for him to go to these malig- 

 nant countries, no necessity of money or his profession, only a perverse 

 desire for that worst madness which possesses young Englishmen, the 

 sport of arbitrary power in wild countries, with the occasional chance 

 of shooting black men — this is what attracted him. 



" 10th Oct. — I have been laid up all the week by a feverish attack 

 while great events have been taking place in the world. 



"On Tuesday Bulgaria declared itself an independent kingdom; on 

 Wednesday Austria annexed Bosnia and Herzegovina; on Thursday 

 Crete annexed itself to Greece ; and on Friday came news of Albania 

 having declared its independence. The fat is, therefore, very much 

 in the fire. The European situation, which was very difficult to under- 

 stand, has gradually become clearer. There has most undoubtedly been 

 a plot, instigated I imagine by Kaiser Wilhelm, hetwen Austria, Ger- 

 many, and Italy, having for its object to bring about the overthrow of 

 the Constitutional party at Constantinople, perhaps a partition of 

 Turkey. What puzzles me is the attitude of Russia in the affair. As' 

 things now appear, she is standing with England and France as the 

 upholders of Constitutional Turkey. It is probably in consequence of 

 some agreement of alliance between the three Powers, England, France, 

 and Russia, against Germany, initiated by our King at Reval last sum- 

 mer, suggested by the powerlessness of Russia to advance on Con- 

 stantinople at present. What probably will happen is that a confer- 

 ence will be proposed which will come to nothing. Then either there 

 will be an acceptance of the fait accompli, public opinion in England 

 having got tired of the thing, or there will be a war of coercion. It 

 is clear in all this that if our Government is to take up the high moral 

 line of respect for treaties and declarations, and for the letter of 

 international law, it cannot refuse any longer to keep public faith about 

 Egypt. It will be too absurd, if having strained at the Bosnian gnat 

 it declines to disgorge the Egyptian camel." 



This diagnosis of the situation, though not quite accurate, is near 

 the truth. The Balkan conspiracy against Turkey at that moment in 

 which Bulgaria took the lead was undoubtedly encouraged by Austria, 

 which viewed with disfavour the prospect of regeneration for the 

 Ottoman Empire opened by the revolution at Constantinople, which 

 saw in it. should it succeed, a permanent obstacle to its Drang nach 

 Osten, while Kaiser Wilhelm still regarded the Sultan Abdul Hamid 



