one debris and black patches
of mountain fir, and towering bluffs and crags seem to pierce the sky
with their sharp peaks, bastions and jagged ridges, like gigantic
fortresses. Clouds of white mist, driven and torn by gusts of wind,
cling to the precipitous walls, and masses of eternal snow lie in the
many fissures and depressions, forming large, sharply outlined streaks
and patches.

The Magyars inhabit the great central plains of Hungary which
constitutes ethnologically a vast island of Magyars in a sea of Slavs.
The Carpathian slopes on the Hungarian side of the ranges, including the
mounts of the Tatra--with the exception of the Zips district, which is
peopled with German-Saxon colonists--are inhabited, in their western
parts, by two million Slovaks, in the eastern parts by half a million
Ruthenians or Little Russians, and on the Transylvanian side by nearly
three million Rumanians. The border lines between these Rumanians and
the Magyars and between the Hungaro-Slav groups (Slovaks and Ruthenians)
and the Magyars lie far down within the borders of the great central
Hungarian plains. This line at one point extends to within a few miles
of the Hungarian capital of Budapest.

CHAPTER XLIV

THE BALKANS--COUNTRIES AND PEOPLES

This survey of the fighting ground in eastern Europe brings us now to
the "cockpit of the war." From a military point of view, as well as from
the political, the Balkan theatre is of equal importance with other big
fronts in Europe. It is the gateway to the Orient for central Europe.
Here the armies engaged are numbered only by the hundred thousands, none
reach a million. But from the point of view of human interest and
political intrigue it is by far the most picturesque. Here the hatred
between the combatants is most bitter; indeed so bitter that when it
burst into flame a mad whirlwind of passion swept over half the world.
For here the great conflagration began.

A map of the Balkan Peninsula is almost, on the face of it, a full
explanation of the causes of the war. The military campaigns, studied in
connection with their physical environment, explain all the diplomatic
intrigues of the past fifty years, for they are the intrigues themselves
translated into action.

Geographically speaking, the Balkan nations are those situated in the
big peninsula of southern Europe which lies below the Danube River and
the northern border of Montenegro. Some authorities, however, include
Ruman