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THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE 



prepared to bring their armies and navies 

 to bear on the discussion, so Russia finally 

 acquiesced ; and the territory that Russia 

 had wrung from the Turk the Congress 

 took over fo'r the purpose of building up 

 a group of Balkan States. 



whe;els within whehIvS 



Bulgaria was made an autonomous 

 principality under Turkish suzerainty. 

 Eastern Rumelia was to continue under 

 Turkish rule, but was given administra- 

 live autonomy. Bosnia and Herzegovina 

 were to be occupied and administered by 

 Austria-Hungary, but the sanjak of Novi- 

 bazar was to be under Turkish control, 

 with the recognized right of Austria- 

 Hungary to station troops and maintain 

 roads there. Montenegrin independence 

 was provided for, as was that of Servia, 

 while Rumania's declaration of independ- 

 ence was recognized. 



The result of this new situation was to 

 inject an entirely new element into the 

 Near Eastern question. Thereafter the 

 nations that had ambitions and counter- 

 ambitions, with Constantinople and an 

 outlet to the Mediterranean as their cen- 

 ter, had to deal through the little buffer 

 States of the Balkans, and it has been 

 through that relation that Servia has ac- 

 quired her prominence in Near Eastern 

 affairs. 



It is Avell here to recall the fact that 

 in the basin of the Nish is the junction 

 of the two great valleys that form today, 

 as they have formed from the earliest 

 ages, the shortest and most direct road- 

 way between Europe and Asia. 



How the game of Balkan politics has 

 been played in the years that have inter- 

 vened since Servia became a member of 

 the family of nations, with all of the mu- 

 tual jealousies and fears and ambitions 

 of the nations of Europe exerting their 

 full force on the devoted little peninsula, 

 constitutes one of the most thrilling tales 

 of diplomatic history, and no man can 

 understand the deeper-lying causes of the 

 present situation who is unacquainted 

 with these events. 



Within the lifetime of men yet on the 

 right side of threescore and ten, all of 

 the great Powers have changed alliances 

 from once to half a dozen times, and 



historians point out that little Servia at 

 one time loved Austria as her savior and 

 at another came to hate that country as 

 her bitterest foe. 



In all these international alignments 

 and realignments doubtless every nation 

 participating has developed an excuse 

 satisfactory in its own eyes at least that 

 its course was justified because self-pres- 

 ervation required it ! 



Russia's possible outlets 



Russia has had six possible outlets to 

 free water — the Baltic Sea. the Black 

 Sea, the White Sea, the Yellow Sea, the 

 Persian Gulf, and the Adriatic. Yet 

 Germany stood across her path to the 

 Baltic, and though Peter the Great built 

 Petrograd with the purpose of bringing 

 Russia in contact with the outside world, 

 it came to profit his country little when 

 Germany rose to power. Likewise, after 

 the slow and painful process of conquer- 

 ing the wilderness and the plain, to say 

 nothing of the Mongols, Russia found 

 her dreams of Dalney and Port Arthur 

 rudely shattered by the Japanese. Still 

 later, when her aspirations led her toward 

 the Persian Gulf, and she had fought her 

 way across the Caucasus and taken the 

 Caspian Sea, England stepped in and 

 said her nay, for that would have been 

 an ideal land route to India for a poten- 

 tial enemy. 



King Winter habitually bottles up the 

 White Sea outlet for so many months in 

 the year that there is no promise there ; 

 while all Europe has for a century sternly 

 repressed Russia's desires toward the 

 Dardanelles and the Adriatic. 



And so today it happens that Russia 

 is as completely cut oft' from the outside 

 world as Germany, with only a treacher- 

 ous White Sea outlet and a way out over 

 the Trans-Siberian Railroad, and that is 

 open only during the pleasure of the 

 Japanese. It is no wonder, then, that 

 Russia, landlocked for three centuries, 

 refused an outlet every way she has 

 turned, has set her heart on Constanti- 

 nople, determined to exhaust every dip- 

 lomatic resource in getting possession of 

 an outlet to the Mediterranean. 



On the other hand, England could not 



