s, whose setting has been the Balkans peninsula. There is
not a close student of European history and politics who has not
predicted the "Great European War." Indeed, it required no special
powers of prophecy to foresee that this constantly smoldering, and
sometimes blazing corner of Europe, would one day burst into a
sweeping conflagration. The chief cause of this constant turmoil and
conflict in the Balkans lay in its geographical relation to the
expansion plan of Austria and Germany and all the other European
states, the Balkans being the gate and roadway to the Orient. The
first essential to an understanding of the situation is a general
knowledge of the races and nations that inhabit this portion of the
European Continent.

As the reader of ancient history knows, it was within this territory
that the Macedon of Philip and Alexander was situated, their capital
being not far from the present city of Saloniki. Then came the great
eastern Roman Empire, which later developed into the Byzantine
Empire, whose inhabitants were the degenerated descendants of the
ancient Greeks. Western Rome was constantly threatened by the
northern barbarian tribes, so the Greek emperors of Byzantium were
in perpetual conflict with barbarian hordes that pressed down on
them from the north, more than once driving them within the walls of
their capital, the present Constantinople.

These northern barbarians were wild Slavic tribes which had come out
of the steppes of Russia and swept down the Balkan peninsula,
penetrating as far as Mt. Olympus itself. After them came a tribe of
Asiatic origin, the Volgars, so called because they had for a period
inhabited the banks of the Volga, and they first conquered and then
mixed with the Slavs who lived in that section which is now
Bulgaria.

And finally came the Moslem Turks, who first conquered Asia Minor
from the degenerated Greeks, then took Constantinople from them in
1453. After that the Turks swept up the entire Balkan peninsula,
conquering all except that little mountainous corner up against the
Adriatic, which is now Montenegro, and subjugating all the peoples,
Greeks and Slavs alike. Nor did the Turkish conquest stop here; it
swept onward, up into Europe, and was not definitely checked until
it had advanced as far as Vienna itself. Then the tide turned, and
little by little the Turks were driven back, until now they are on
the very verge of being forced across the Bosphorus. And as the
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