The reconstruction of South-Eastern Europe

SOUTH-EASTERN EUROPE

would tend to cheapen the price of raw material necessary for British industries as well as to diminish the cost of living, and this by itself would be a new source of British wealth and power.

Independently but parallel with the construction of railway lines there is another project which has of late been broached in the governing circles of Serbia, realisation of which might greatly stimulate the economic development of New Serbia and of all neighbouring countries. It is the project of building a navigable waterway through Serbia connecting the Danube with Salonica. As every student of Balkan geography knows, Nature has provided, in this otherwise mountainous country, the easiest passage from the basin of the Mediterranean Sea into Central Europe. The tributaries of the rivers Moraya and Vardar running in two opposite directions have their head sources on a low plateau, forming the watershed between the Black Sea and the Augean Sea, only 1500 feet above sea-level, quite indistinctly marked, thus affording the easiest passage for any road from Belgrade to Salonica naturally turning Serbia to the Agean.

It is believed that the projected waterway should, of course, follow these rivers, running parallel with railway lines Smederevo—NishSalonica. In the Middle Ages, before the arrival of the Turks, the Morava was navigable, and it

239