In taking leave of the Balkan peoples, we may note the strange tendency of events towards equipoise in the Europe of the present age.  Thirty years ago the Turkish Empire seemed at the point of dissolution.  To-day it is stronger than ever; and this cause is to be found, not so much in the watchful cunning of Abdul Hamid, as in the vivifying principle of nationality, which has made of Bulgaria and Roumania two strong barriers against Russian aggression in that quarter.  The feuds of those States have been replaced by something like friendship, which in its turn will probably ripen into alliance.  Together they could put 250,000 good troops in the field—­that is, a larger force than that which the Turks had in Europe during the war with Russia.  Turkey is therefore fully as safe as she was under Abdul Aziz.

An enlightened ruler could consolidate her position still further.  Just as Austria has gained in strength by having Venetia as a friendly and allied land, rather than a subject province heaving with discontent, so, too, it is open to the Porte to secure the alliance of the Balkan States by treating them in an honourable way, and by according good government to Macedonia.

Possibly the future may see the formation of a federation of all the States of European Turkey.  If so, Russia will lose all foothold in a quarter where she formerly had the active support of three-fourths of the population.  However that may be, it is certain that her mistakes in and after the year 1878 have profoundly modified the Eastern Question.  They have served to cancel those which, as it seems to the present writer, Lord Beaconsfield committed in the years 1876-77; and the skilful diplomacy of Lord Salisbury and Sir William White has regained for England the prestige which she then lost among the rising peoples of the Peninsula.

The final solution of the tangled racial problems of Mace donia cannot be long deferred, in spite of the timorous selfishness of the Powers who incurred treaty obligations for the welfare of that land; and, when that question can be no longer postponed or explained away, it is to be hoped that the British people, taking heed of the lessons of the past, will insist on a solution that will conform to the claims of humanity, which have been proved to be those of enlightened statesmanship[221].

[Footnote 221:  For the recent developments of the Macedonian Question, see Turkey in Europe, by “Odysseus” (1900); the Middle Eastern Question, by V. Chirol, 18s. net (Murray); A Tour in Macedonia, by G.F.  Abbot (1903); The Burden of the Balkans, by Miss Edith Durham (1904); The Balkans from Within, by R. Wyon (1904); The Balkan Question, edited by L. Villari (1904); Critical Times in Turkey, by G. King-Lewis (1904); Pro Macedonia, by V. Berard (Paris, 1904); La Peninsule balkanique, by Capitaine Lamouche (Paris, 1899).]

CHAPTER XI