un. The
few movements that have taken place in the contrary direction have
but emphasized the universality of this rule, from the days of the
overthrow of Rome, if we seek no earlier date. The Crusades furnished,
doubtless, the classic example. The later contrary instance, that of
Russia towards Siberia, scarcely, if at all affects the argument, for
there the Russian overthrow is filling up Northern rather than Eastern
lands, and the movement involves to the Russian emigrant no change
of climate, soil, law, language or environment while that emigrant
himself belongs, perhaps, as much to Asia as to Europe.

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 s