The reconstruction of South-Eastern Europe

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SOUTH-EASTERN EUROPE

quered Southern Slav lands brought only misery to themselves and imperilled their own independence. Their foolish ambition to rule over the Adriatic or to have free access to Salonica, and at the same time to treat the Southern Slavs, to whom those shores rightly belong, as thirdclass citizens, must be definitely abandoned. Then the shores of the Adriatic and the port of Salonica will be spontaneously open to them. Only in alliance and friendly co-operation with the Southern Slavs can the Magyars without sacrifice attain the goal which for a thousand years they were unable to reach or to fully enjoy. The Czechs, the Magyars, and the Southern Slavs are natural allies on the field of economic progress and national defence. The hope to see them before long co-operating together is not one whit exaggerated, and then a new South-Eastern Europe as a moral entity will be—however incompletely —constituted. _Roumania would derive many advantages from joining in this fellowship of Bohemia, Hungary, and the Southern Slav State. But Roumania will not feel the pressing need for it. Although Hungary and the Southern Slav State will offer her the shortest road to Central and Western Europe, she may prefer to keep aloof and to use the sea route through the Straits or Bulgaria. Much, indeed, will depend upon what will be the future relations between Hungary and Roumania. The Magyars cannot so soon forget the loss of Tran275