The reconstruction of South-Eastern Europe

SOUTH-EASTERN EUROPE

guarding her interests. Salonica will be a free international port under British and French control. In that way the strength of the new national States will be fairly balanced, and as each one will be constituted within its own ethnical frontiers, they will have no incentive for war and will be without any ambition for conquest.

Some years will necessarily elapse before this new South-Eastern Europe will evolve its own consciousness. But not a generation will pass before we shall see a great change in the feelings and relations of those nations which are now so bitterly and desperately fighting one another. From Cesar to William II many a conqueror has attempted to weld by force South-Eastern Europe into one State. But the living forces of her nationalities claiming freedom and self-government tore all those schemes to pieces, and every one had to begin anew. It is time that the game should be given up.

When the turmoil of the war has passed away and the passions which blinded them have subsided, the nations of South-Eastern Europe must be ashamed of their present actions and firmly resolve that the ugly drama of our days will never recur. A better understanding of their own interests and a higher conscience must dawn upon them. They will see that they have so much in common that their mutual conflicts and jealousies crippled their power and opened the door to the

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