The Chronicle PUBLISHED DAILY LEVIN. WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 20, 1915. THE TROUBLOUS BALKANS.

Horowhenua Chronicle, 20 October 1915, Page 2

The Chronicle PUBLISHED DAILY LEVIN. WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 20, 1915. THE TROUBLOUS BALKANS.

! he Balkans ioriu a perplexing problem lor students ot world politics, even in unices oi peace, la tlio.se days of inleinatioiial disturbance throughout Eniope the people ol' the troubled peninsular are still harder to appraise in a national souse. Anyone who remembers the long years ol oppression thai Bulgaria underwent at the hands ol Turkey must marvel to see her ranged now on the side ol the Turk. Yet, in the light ol later happenings, the reafeou i& not hart! to find. The disatisfaction dates from the time of the dismemberment, of the Greater Turkish. Empire in Europe, wiicn for various causes the great powers and the lesser combined to give to others ol the Balkan States Turkish territories that the Bulgans regarded as their own in right of conquest. Still fresh in the memories of most followers of European events is tho fact that Bulgaria turned her forces against those of her fate allies amongst the Balkan States and fiiii'ther widened the broach occasioned by diplomatic ruptures arising out of the "spoils to the victors'' division. Rumania, we are afraid, is likely to side with Germany or at best remain neuitral, and a like predilection seems to be apparent in Greece. The Balkans, in short, appear to bo an unsafe theatre of war lor Great Britain and her Allies at present, and those leaders of thought in Europe scorn to bo good ndvisei'B who say that the election of Germany to transfer the chief scene of combat to that peninsula should not be backed by any great degree of fighting on Che part of the Anglo-Fran coKnsso combination. Of the methods of G!erman diplomacy during this waj? there is room for unfavourable opinion, hut by the results to date it scorns clear that the advantago has been with them, and that the cabled protests of the more outspoken critics in England against a perpetuation ot some of the Allies apparent blunders is timely.