But whatever value to German development the possible chances of expansion in the Near East may have offered before the present Balkan war, those chances to-day, as the result of that war, scarcely exist.  It is probably the perception of this outcome of the victory of the Slav States that has influenced and accelerated the characteristic change of English public opinion that has accompanied with shouts of derision the dying agonies of the Turk.  “In matters of mind,” as a recent English writer says in the Saturday Review, “the national sporting instinct does not exist.  The English public invariably backs the winner.”  And just as the English public invariably backs the winner, British policy invariably backs the anti-German, or supposedly anti-German side in all world issues.  “What 1912 seems to have effected is a vast aggrandizement of the Slavonic races in their secular struggle against the Teutonic races.  Even a local and temporary triumph of Austria over Servia cannot conceal the fact that henceforth the way south-east to the Black Sea and the Aegean Sea is barred to the Germans."[5]

[Footnote 5:  Mr. Frederick Harrison in the English Review, Jan., 1913.]

That is the outstanding fact that British public opinion perceives with growing pleasure from the break up of Turkey.

No matter where the dispute or what the purpose of conflict may be, the supreme issue for England is “Where is Germany?”

Against that side the whole weight of Great Britain will, openly or covertly, be thrown.  German expansion in the Near East has gone by the board, and in its place the development of Greek naval strength in the Mediterranean, to take its stand by the Triple Entente, comes to be jauntily considered, while the solid wedge of a Slav Empire or Federation, commanding in the near future 2,000,000 of armed men is agreeably seen to be driven across South-eastern Europe between Austro-German efforts and the fallow lands of Asia Minor.  These latter can safely be left in Turkish hands yet a while longer, until the day comes for their partition into “spheres of influence,” just as Persia and parts of China are to-day being apportioned between Russia and England.  This happy consummation, moreover, has fallen from heaven, and Turkey is being cut up for the further extension of British interests clearly by the act of God.

The victory of the Balkan States becomes another triumph for the British Bible; it is the victory of righteousness over wrong-doing.

The true virtue of the Balkan “Christians” lies in the possibility of their being moulded into an anti-German factor of great weight in the European conflict, clearly impending, and in their offering a fresh obstacle, it is hoped, to German world policy.

Let us first inspect the moral argument on the lips of these professors.  We are assured, by it, that the claim of the Balkan Allies to expel Turkey from Europe rests upon a just and historic basis.