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Show M WHY THE BALKAN STATES DIVIDE. "I The .lealpusies and hatreds of the people of the Balkan states explain: why tho different races ar0 divided in the European struggle Hi now on. Prof. W. F. Harris of Harvard University, in. tracing thc history of the Balkan races, says : "Bitter war has for thc most part brought them to the spots they now inhabit, and only by the sword have thc survivors managed to exist. They have not simply maintained an armed camp; they have been continually on the firing line to maintain existence by holding fheir foes in check or by destroying them. And their churches have always been militant to a superlative degree. Their God has always been a God of battles, and each race has thought he would be highly outraged if worshiped in any other way than the one and only orthodox ortho-dox fashion; orthodox, of curse, 'meaning thc way approved by the individual race. That he could be a god of love so broad as to include in-clude all mankind has not yet appealed to peoples whose ancestors worshiped a tribal divinity whose chief function was to protect only his own folk. "It is not in religion alone that thc Balkannations may bo said to be the victims of their historic tradition. Their intense racial jealousy jeal-ousy has come down to t'hom from time immemorial. The Greeks have thc most glorious traditions; but, despite the splendor of Greek intelligence, even at its zenith their race could never conceive the idea of a united nation in which might be merged the rival tribes and small states for the general good of all. When the Persians made their great attempts to subduo the Greclcs and the Balkans, it was only br superhuman astuteness that Themistocles could bring together a part of the various tribes to resist the invasion, and only by subtle diplomacy could he hold them together for thc final victory. When once the external compulsion was gone, thc various states of the peninsula fell, apart again and resorted to thc internecine strife which not even thc mighty empire of Alexander the Great could keep down. The natural condition of the Balkan qtatcs has been strife and jealousy, jeal-ousy, racial as well as religious, from the beginning of history, and generally the principle has been carried to its logical extreme; strife between thc several races was not enough; each race has had bitter opposing parties within itself. Most of the states have chosen foreign rulers because they were too jealous to choose them from among themselves. them-selves. Those who have first-hand knowledge of the Balkans believe that Eleuthcrois Venizelos accomplished tho impossible when he created cre-ated the first union against the Turks. Even his diplomatic genius could not maintain that union intact. He is repeating the bitter experience ex-perience of Themistocles. At the present time his zeal for the cause of the alLics is probably no less than it was before he was triumphantly triumph-antly returned to power. He knows, as does King Constantino and tho Greek people, that thc Greek general staff is perfectly right in its opinion that they cannot send an army to aid thc allies at thc Dardanelles or in Asia Minor. The moment they divide their forces, the Bulgarians will be upon them. Tin's alono accounts for the mysterious my-sterious hesitation of the Greeks in recent months, and the change in Venizelos' policy. It is not King Constantine and his German wife who have been holding the Greeks from following out the ideas of their great statesman, but thc natural jealousy and fear which govern gov-ern the Balkans." |