BALKAN QUESTION

Wairarapa Times-Age, 12 January 1940, Page 6

BALKAN QUESTION

GERMAN-RUSSIAN ACCORD. Fifty years ago Albert Borel was telling his students in France that settlement of the Turkish question in Europe would involve the break-up of the Austrian Empire, which, in turn would imperil the British Empire, writes “Argus” in the “Christian Science Monitor.” The accuracy of the warning has been only too well established. Turkey was practically bundled out of Europe in 1913; Austria went into liquidation in 1919, and today the British Empire js fighting for its existence. So long as the decrepit Turkish Empire and the ill-assorted empire of the Hapsburgs were maintaining their precarious holds in Europe, they afforded means of keeping Russia and Germany out of the Balkans and therefore out of the Eastern Mediterranean, where either one might have crippled Britain's sea power and placed itself in a position to threaten domination of Europe. With onlv Austria left, and coming more and’ more under Germany’s influence since the formation of the Triple Alliance in 1882. the struggle between Germany and Russia for the Balkans became inevitable. It was one of the determining factors in the World War of 1914. Britain and America, at Versailles, proposed to re-create the disintegrating Austria in the shape of a Danubian federation. But Austria, like Humpty-Dumpty, had fallen i n pieces —Czech. Croat. Tyrolean and the rest —and not all the 58 technical commissions of the Versailles Conference could put it together again. A cluster of small defenceless nations was put in its place—an open invitation to Germany and Russia to resume their old ambitions. So long as Germany kept the anti-Communist banner flying there was reason to believe that the one dictatorship would help to hold the other back from adventures in the south-east. But the German-Russian accords of the past two months have eliminated this safeguard. The problem now, therefore, as far as the peace proponents are concerned, is whether this very serious menace can be held off until a new European order may be evolved, ruling out all policy of national aggrandisement.