The Daily News. TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 26, 1912. THE CRISIS.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LV, Issue 162, 26 November 1912, Page 4

The Daily News. TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 26, 1912. THE CRISIS.

When the last mail left England the war it the Balkans had commenced properly, and there was grave concern felt as to the outcome, not so much of the immediate conflict between the Allies and Turkey, but of. attempts at settlement. As the Times put it: "Grave though the present position may be, it will be.far graver when battles have been lost and won. The veal clanger is not to-day, but hereafter." The Pall Mall Gazetteput the same idea in different words: "It is not the contingencies of immediate conflict between the Porte and the League that are shaking the Stock Exchanges, but the shadow of that greater conflict whereof, once begun, no man

can forecast the end. It has always been recognised that the clearing-up of even a 'localised' war in the Balkans may bring the rival interests of Austria and Russia into insoluble antagonism. But it is beginning to dawn upon the consciousness of Europe that the flash-point may be reached long before the narrower struggle has come to its conclusion. Some strategical situation may arise which might seem to prejudice interests of a vital character to one of the onlookers, or might instigate popular emotion to convulsive depths. The shrewdest prophets are evidently convinced that when next the Powers meet to review the Balkan situation, it will be with their swords upon the table." Said the Daily Telegraph: "If the Concert of Europe lasts all may yet be well, But if the course of events accentuates the divergent interests of Austria and Russia—or, for the matter of that, of Germany, Great Britain and Francethen we are on the verge of a new and sinister epoch, we are confronting a menacing panorama of tremendous possibilities, which will leave ineffaceable traces on the future annals of the world." H. W. Massingham, in the Daily News, wrote: "Again war. Again its horrors, cruelties, follies and crimes. Again wounds, and massacres of the wounded, again murderous fevers, agonising deaths, painful sufferings of starving and frost-bitten men lying out on battlefields, broken homes, wholesale robberies, the destruction of crops and all the instruments of peaceful labor, thousands of men who escape the. bullet or the shell made useless for civil life. Thus the round of State life in Christian,

civilised Europe goes on. What can one do but apply the reflection of the Latin poet, and say of the peasantry of the Balkans that these innocent folk are atoning for the sins of their forefathers." "Whatever happens," said the Spectator, "the status quo cannot be restored. It is this fact which, in the last resort, makes the future so dark and precarious. If we presume a victory for the Balkan States, the prospect, though dark and difficult, is, it must be admitted, less black. If we imagine the Bulgarians as able to defeat the Turks and turn them out of Adrianople and the greater part of Thrace; if Servia gets possession of Old Servia; and if Montenegro overruns the province of Scutari; and if at the same time Turkish rule, partly by the pressure of arms and partly by internal revolts, becomes destroyed throughout Macedonia and a part of Albania, the Turks would probably be brought to consent to a peace something of the nature of that of San Stefano. Then, no doubt, history w'ould repeat itself, and the Powers, backed by Roumania, whose troops would be standing to arms on the Bulgarian frontier ready to claim compensation, would be able to insist on a congress similar to the Congress of Berlin. We may imagine an autonomous Macedonia, an autonomous Albania, and possible an autonomous Thrace, which would in fact, if not in name, leave Turkey nothing in Europe except Constantinople. Curiously enough, it looks as though the Constantinople problem would turn out.the least difficult of all the points to be ■ adjusted," continues the Spectator. "We do not suppose that either Greece, Bulgaria or Servia. dreams of getting hold of the city for herself. The task is too . big and too bably suit all of 'them best that; the Turks, for the time at any rate, should remain in possession of Constantinople and of the country within a radius of, say, some ten or twelve miles. Possibly, indeed, the whole of the European shores oE the Sea of Marmora and of the Bosphorus and Dardanelles might go ' with Constantinople. Turkey would thus become in fact though not in name

an Asiatic Empire, but with a capital situated geographically though not morally in Europe." "In the presence of the one heroic act which our present history will have any reason to remember, the challenge of'unconquered Montenegro tc : all-conquering Islam, it may seem absurd to turn back to the study of our own trivial hut indeterminable tyrannies," says G. K. Chesterton, in'the Daily News. "Those who blame the men of the Black Mountain for rashness do riot deserve t« have been so often saved by the rashness of their fathers. Suppose the society papers should write about 'The Prime Minister's Wives,' instead of 'The Prime Minister's wife.' Suppose we all talked of going to Charing Crescent instead of Charing Cross. These are obviously under-stsitements of what would have really happened if Oriental Imperialism had not been stopped here and there by some strong action by some small European garrison. If Athens, if Venice, if all the little republics had not acted again and again incessantly, exactly as Montenegro is acting now, not one of us would be feeling about women or statuary or food or freedom as we all feel to-day." That there is justification for these apprehensive utterances has been shown by the cables recently, and particularly "by those of the past two or three days. Both Eussia and Austria, despite their pacific and reassuring statements, are, it seems, steadily preparing for possible eventualities. Big armies are being mobilised and stationed near the frontiers, whilst the military and political heads of Austria and Germany are in closest consultation. The position undoubtedly is one of peril, and the statesmen of the various countries concerned will have to walk very warily indeed in order to preserve peace among the Great Powers.