e Balkan
peoples can only hope to hold their own in this perilous but essential
intercourse with a stronger neighbour, if they take more active and
deliberate steps towards co-operation among themselves, and find in
railway conventions the basis for a Balkan zollverein. A zollverein should
be the first goal of Balkan statesmanship in the new phase of history that
is opening for Europe; but economic relations on this scale involve the
political factor, and the Balkans will not be able to deal with their
great neighbours on equal terms till the zollverein has ripened into a
federation. The alternative is subjection, both political and economic;
and neither the exhaustion of the Central Powers in the present struggle
nor the individual consolidation of the Balkan States in the subsequent
settlement will suffice by themselves to avert it in the end.

The awakening of the nation and the consolidation of the state, which we
have traced in these pages, must accordingly lead on to the confederation
of the Balkans, if all that has been so painfully won is not to perish
again without result; and we are confronted with the question: Will Balkan
nationalism rise to the occasion and transcend itself?

Many spectators of recent history will dismiss the suggestion as Utopian.
'Nationality', they will say, 'revealed itself first as a constructive
force, and Europe staked its future upon it; but now that we are committed
to it, it has developed a sinister destructiveness which we cannot remedy.
Nationality brought the Balkan States into being and led them to final
victory over the Turk in 1912, only to set them tearing one another to
pieces again in 1913. In the present catastrophe the curse of the Balkans
has descended upon the whole of Europe, and laid bare unsuspected depths
of chaotic hatred; yet Balkan antagonisms still remain more ineradicable
than ours. The cure for nationality is forgetfulness, but Balkan
nationalism is rooted altogether in the past. The Balkan peoples have
suffered one shattering experience in common--the Turk, and the waters of
Ottoman oppression that have gone over their souls have not been waters of
Lethe. They have endured long centuries of spiritual exile by the
passionate remembrance of their Sion, and when they have vindicated their
heritage at last, and returned to build up the walls of their city and the
temple of their national god, they have resented each other's
neighbourhood as the repatriated Jew