The outbreak of the war could scarcely have been prevented by the European Powers.  It was bound to come.  It was as inevitable as was the breakdown of the Young Turkish regime.  Since the earliest times the Turks have been a race of nomadic warriors.  Their policy has always been to conquer nations, to settle among the conquered, and to rule them, keeping them in strict and humiliating subjection.  They have always treated the subject peoples harshly and contemptuously.  Unlike other conquerors, they have never tried to create among the conquered a great and homogeneous State which would have promised permanence, but, nomad-like, have merely created military settlement among aliens.  Therefore, the alien subjects of the Turks have remained aliens in Turkey.  They have not become citizens of the Empire.  As the Turks did not try to convert the conquered to Islam—­the Koran forbids proselytism by force—­and to nationalize them, the subjected and ill-treated alien masses never amalgamated with the ruling Turks, but always strove to regain their liberty by rebellion.  Owing to the mistakes made in its creation, the Turkish Empire has been for a long time an Empire in the process of disintegration.  Its later history consists of a long series of revolts, of which the present outbreak is the latest, but scarcely the last, instance.

The failure of the new Turkish regime has increased to the utmost the century-old antagonism between the ruling Turks and their Christian subjects.  The accounts of the sufferings of their brothers across the borderline, inflicted upon them by Constitutional Turkey, which had promised such great things, had raised the indignation of the Balkan peoples to fever heat and had made an explosion of popular fury inevitable.  The war fever increased when it was discovered that Servians, Bulgarians, and Greeks were at last of one mind, and that Turkey’s strength had been undermined by revolts in all parts of the Empire and by the Turkish-Italian war.  The Turks, on the other hand, were not unnaturally indignant with the perfidy of the Christian Powers, which, instead of supporting Turkey in her attempts at reform, had snatched valuable territories from her immediately after her revolution.  Not unnaturally, they attributed the failure of the new regime and the revolts of their subjects to the machinations of the Christian States, and the Balkan troubles to the hostile policy of the Balkan States.  The tension on both sides became intolerable.  If the Balkan States had not mobilized, a revolution would have broken out in Sofia and Belgrade, for the people demanded war.  If the Turkish Government had given way to the Balkan States, a revolution would have broken out in Constantinople.  The instinct of self-preservation forced the Balkan Governments and Turkey into war.  The passions of race-hatred had become uncontrollable.

FREDERICK PALMER[1]