s to have secured as a share of the conquered territory a portion of
Albania, on the Adriatic. This would have compensated her for the loss
of Bosnia, but the great powers, led by Austria, stepped in, and a plan
was devised of making Albania an independent state or principality, with
a German prince to rule over it.

The Servians were bitter, and both Servia and Greece demanded of
Bulgaria portions of the territory acquired in the war and which had
originally been assigned to Bulgaria as her share. Bulgaria stood upon
her technical rights and precipitated the last Balkan war, which was
really made possible, or probable, by the Austrian policy. When the war
was concluded Servia had acquired more territory to the south, but she
remained a landlocked country, with Bosnia, Montenegro and Albania
stretching between her and the Adriatic sea.

This was the situation when the assassination of the Archduke Ferdinand
and his wife occurred in Bosnia. The Archduke was, in effect, a joint
ruler with the Emperor Franz Joseph, who was nearly 84 years of age, and
the entire world realized that great events were likely to follow the
killing of the heir apparent to the Austro-Hungarian throne. The murder
was committed by a young Servian fanatic, and Austria determined to hold
Servia responsible for the murder, and therefore presented her
now-famous ultimatum.

NO CAUSE FOR WAR.

Students of history hold that if there had been a proper respect for the
commendable desire of the Christian peoples in European Turkey to throw
off the Turkish yoke and become self-governing states, there would have
been no cause for war, so far as relates to Servia and the situation
which precipitated the conflict. There would have been developed a
series of peaceful and progressive countries of the non-military type of
Denmark, Sweden and Holland.

A wiser treatment of the Balkan problem might have averted the war, but
it could not have set aside racial differences, nor could it have ended
the curse of militarism or set at rest the distrust and fear which it
promotes.

The end of European militarism might have come about, however, through a
better understanding between Germany and France. This might have been
arrived at years ago if Germany had opened the Alsace-Lorraine question,
and had rearranged the boundary line between the two countries so that
the French-speaking communities lost in the Franco-Prussian war be ceded
back to France. The cost of m