The Daily News. WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 20, 1912. THE GATE OF EUROPE.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LV, Issue 157, 20 November 1912, Page 4

The Daily News. WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 20, 1912. THE GATE OF EUROPE.

The desire of the Bulgarians to set the seal on their victory hy making a triumphal entry into Constantinople is very easy to understand, although it seems to he the principal stumbling block in the way of an armistice and a possible subsequent adjustment of the differences that have caused the present pitiable war. The heroic sacrifices of the Bulgarian soldiers have earned them a full measure of success, and have awakened the world very emphatically to their sterling ability as soldiers. The bitter wrongs suffered by the twenty generations of Bulgars at the hands of Turkish oppressors demand, from their point of view, that the flag of a free people should wave over the gateway by which the Turks entered Europe. They cannot be blamed for thus wishing to vindicate their victory. But it is to be hoped that the paiallel drawn by a cablegram which mentions the entry of the Germans into Paris in 1871 will not prove to be a true one. We have already had sufficient horrors without a repetition of this. Paris suffered a long and terrible siege before the Prussians tramped nonily through the Champs Elysees, the Hessians smoked their pipes on the Trocadero, and the Bavarians slacked their arms in the Place de la Concord. More than 40,000 of her citizens had succumbed to the privations brought about by the efforts of the Germans to starve the French Garrison into submission, and the armed men on each side had suffered severely during the nineteen weeks of close fighting. Even then the terms of the original armistice included a provision that the German troops should not occupy Paris. But there was a long delay ia the completion of the preliminaries of peace brought about by the efforts of the French Government to secure less severe conditions thin the Germans were prepared to offer, and the invaders claimed that they were entitled to some compensation for the extension of time which they had granted to a beaten enemy. The right to enter Paris was the payment demanded, and on the appointed day a selected force, representing the various divisions of the Germany army, marched into the capital, and the Ger-

man general staff took quarters in the palace of. the Elysee. History has an unfortunate habit of repeating itself, and should the Bulgarians enter Constantinople, even from purely theoreticallysentimental reasons, there is no knowing when they will leave it, for the Eastern temperament is an unknown entity that even Jack Hamlin, prince of gamblers, would not care to bet about. Nobody, however, will wish to see the long-drawn-out agony of the siege of Paris repeated at Constantinople. There is, we believe, every hope that an early intervention of the Power*, with a mediatory scheme of adjustment, will still prevent this imminent calamity.