The Balkans eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 396 pages of information about The Balkans.

The Balkans eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 396 pages of information about The Balkans.
synonym for failure; Belgrade became the cynosure and the rallying-centre of the whole Serbo-Croatian race.  But Vienna and Budapest could only lose courage and presence of mind for the moment, and the undeniable success of the Serbian arms merely sharpened their appetite for revenge.  In August 1913 Austria-Hungary, as is now known, secretly prepared an aggression on Serbia, but was restrained, partly by the refusal of Italy to grant its approval of such action, partly because the preparations of Germany at that time were not complete.  The fortunate Albanian question provided, for the time being, a more convenient rod with which to beat Serbia.  Some Serbian troops had remained in possession of certain frontier towns and districts which were included in the territory of the infant state of Albania pending the final settlement of the frontiers by a commission.  On October 18, 1913, Austria addressed an ultimatum to Serbia to evacuate these, as its continued occupation of them caused offence and disquiet to the Dual Monarchy.  Serbia meekly obeyed.  Thus passed away the last rumble of the storms which had filled the years 1912-13 in south-eastern Europe.

The credulous believed that the Treaty of Bucarest had at last brought peace to that distracted part of the world.  Those who knew their central Europe realized that Berlin had only forced Vienna to acquiesce in the Treaty of Bucarest because the time had not yet come.  But come what might, Serbia and Montenegro, by having linked up their territory and by forming a mountain barrier from the Danube to the Adriatic, made it far more difficult for the invader to push his way through to the East than it would have been before the battles of Kumanovo and Bregalnica.

GREECE

1

From Ancient to Modern Greece

The name of Greece has two entirely different associations in our minds.  Sometimes it calls up a wonderful literature enshrined in a ’dead language’, and exquisite works of a vanished art recovered by the spade; at other times it is connected with the currant-trade returns quoted on the financial page of our newspapers or with the ‘Balance of Power’ discussed in their leading articles.  Ancient and Modern Greece both mean much to us, but usually we are content to accept them as independent phenomena, and we seldom pause to wonder whether there is any deeper connexion between them than their name.  It is the purpose of these pages to ask and give some answer to this question.

The thought that his own Greece might perish, to be succeeded by another Greece after the lapse of more than two thousand years, would have caused an Ancient Greek surprise.  In the middle of the fifth century B.C., Ancient Greek civilization seemed triumphantly vigorous and secure.  A generation before, it had flung back the onset of a political power which combined all the momentum of all the other contemporary

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The Balkans from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.