THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 12, 1908. ORDER IN THE BALKANS.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXI, Issue 3042, 12 November 1908, Page 4

THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 12, 1908. ORDER IN THE BALKANS.

The Balkans upheaval promises, after all, to become a nine-days' wonder. And the key to its prospective peaceful settlement is apparently to be found in the unexpected spirit of sweet reasonableness in which Turkey and Bulgaria have come through the crisi3 created by the latter's galvanic declaration of independence. That difficulty composed—and there is now indication that it will be, owing to the professed readiness of Bulgaria to try to arrive at a settlement and the disposition of a constitutionally reconstructed Turkey to facilitate it—there is practically nothing to make cause upon. For if Bulgaria may quit the shade of the Turk at will, it would bo difficult to justify interference with Bosnia and Herzeguvina doing the same, especially after Austria has been administering those provinces so long; and as for Servia, whatever sympathy she might enlist under other circumstances is mitigated by the deplorable recent history of the country, and the fact that King Peter still occupies the throne which he

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tioiisj. it is quite podsiljlo, therefore, that the Vienna report that no European conference will be held will be verified by events. Russia will not sanction the Austrian annexations, certainly, but all she offers Servia is moral support, a form of encouragement which usually means sympathy with a lost cause. In.any case, an outstanding object of the Conference was to settle the question of compensations to Turkey, and if that settles itself otherwise there is practically nothing left to do. What the ultimate effect may be of Bulgarian expansion, Turkish curtailment, and the enlargement of Austria by two provinces, is for the future to disclose. The present only reveals that these changes seem likely to be accomplished in peace.