nd that neither wants to be absorbed by the other any more
than we want to be compelled to speak Spanish or be absorbed by the
Mexicans.

The "aspirations" of both these little countries have realities behind
them. It is a fact that one gets a whiff of French clarity and verve in
Rumania, though it comes from a small minority educated in France, and
the Rumanian people may be no more "Latin" than we are. And it is an
interesting notion--though perhaps only a notion--that Rumania should be
the outpost or rear-guard of Latinism in this part of the world; a bit
of the restless West on the edge of the Orient.

For virility and earnestness like that of the Bulgars there is a place,
not only in the Balkans, but everywhere. The qualities they have shown
in their short life as an independent nation are those which deserve to
be encouraged and preserved. And if it were true that this war were
being fought to establish the right of little nations to live, one of
the tasks it ought to accomplish, it seemed then, was to give the
Bulgars back at least part of what was taken from them.

Chapter X

The Adventure Of The Fifty Hostages

Gallipoli lies by the Sea of Marmora, and looks out across it to the
green hills of Asia, just where the blue Marmora narrows into the
Dardanelles. It is one of those crowded little Turkish towns set on a
blazing hillside--tangled streets, unpainted, gray, weather-warped frame
houses, with overhanging latticed windows and roofs of red tiles; little
walled-in gardens with dark cedars or cypresses and a few dusty roses;
fountains with Turkish inscriptions, where the streets fork and women
come to fill their water-jars--a dreamy, smelly, sun-drenched little
town, drowsing on as it has drowsed for hundreds of years. Nothing ever
happens in Gallipoli--I speak as if the war hadn't happened! The
graceful Greek sloops, with their bellying sails and turned-up stems and
sterns, come sailing in much as they must have come when the Persians,
instead of the English and the French, were battering away at the
Hellespont. The grave, long-nosed old Turks pull at their bubble pipes
and sip their little cups of sweet, black coffee; the camel trains,
dusty and tinkling, come winding down the narrow streets from the
Thracian wheat country and go back with oversea merchandise done up in
faded carpets and boxes of Standard Oil. The wind blows from the north,
and it is cold, and the Marmora gray; it blows f