ersecuted indiscriminately and simultaneously all
non-Turkish races, Albanians, Bulgarians, Servians, and Greeks, and
thus they brought about the union of the Balkan States against
themselves.

The outbreak of the war could scarcely have been prevented by the
European Powers. It was bound to come. It was as inevitable as was the
breakdown of the Young Turkish _regime_. Since the earliest times the
Turks have been a race of nomadic warriors. Their policy has always
been to conquer nations, to settle among the conquered, and to rule
them, keeping them in strict and humiliating subjection. They have
always treated the subject peoples harshly and contemptuously. Unlike
other conquerors, they have never tried to create among the conquered a
great and homogeneous State which would have promised permanence, but,
nomad-like, have merely created military settlement among aliens.
Therefore, the alien subjects of the Turks have remained aliens in
Turkey. They have not become citizens of the Empire. As the Turks did
not try to convert the conquered to Islam--the Koran forbids
proselytism by force--and to nationalize them, the subjected and
ill-treated alien masses never amalgamated with the ruling Turks, but
always strove to regain their liberty by rebellion. Owing to the
mistakes made in its creation, the Turkish Empire has been for a long
time an Empire in the process of disintegration. Its later history
consists of a long series of revolts, of which the present outbreak is
the latest, but scarcely the last, instance.

The failure of the new Turkish _regime_ has increased to the utmost the
century-old antagonism between the ruling Turks and their Christian
subjects. The accounts of the sufferings of their brothers across the
borderline, inflicted upon them by Constitutional Turkey, which had
promised such great things, had raised the indignation of the Balkan
peoples to fever heat and had made an explosion of popular fury
inevitable. The war fever increased when it was discovered that
Servians, Bulgarians, and Greeks were at last of one mind, and that
Turkey's strength had been undermined by revolts in all parts of the
Empire and by the Turkish-Italian war. The Turks, on the other hand,
were not unnaturally indignant with the perfidy of the Christian
Powers, which, instead of supporting Turkey in her attempts at reform,
had snatched valuable territories from her immediately after her
revolution. Not unnaturally, they attributed