The Montgomery advertiser., 1908-12-06
BY LRo W. lfAnBuRGER.

cedonia would be the death blow to
 Greece. Better to die fighting than to allow this to take place, and if the | powers at the conference refuse to lis-
 ten to the just reclamations of the Servians then spring will usher in q l war which will end either in the dis | ruption of Austria or the disappear | ance of Servta from the map of Eu- | rope. War between Servia and Aus | tria sounds but feeble chatter, but an insurrection of the sixteen millions
 Siav subjects of the Austrian Emperor Is not an evcntuality that Francis Jo- 1 seph will care to face.
 The Bulgarian question is easily l capable of solution; so. too, Is that of Crete. Turkey has long since known | that the island was lost to her for l ever. and that It's absorption by | Greece was only a matter of time. The time has now arrived and tho Porte must accept the inevitable. With regard to Bosnia and the Herze- | govina, the case is different. Their an-
 nexation by Austria destroys the last | hope for the formation of & United Servian Kingdom. which should act as the Balkan Peninsula. Servia and Montenegro see themselves cut on | from the sea, and they naturally re- 1 sent the perfidy of their hereditary | foe. Austria has swallowed the nor sel, but will she be able. to digest | 1t? The Serbssswhether they be sub | jects of King Peter, of tho Emperor
 Francis Joseph, or the Prince Mich olas, are determined that the process | of digestion shall be interfered | with. They are willing to await the decision of the conference before | which they will lay their case. They will demand compensation. Why" say they, should Austria take all the spoil? Take the sense of a plebis- cite. and let the people say under | which country they will serve. This | is no question of conquest"
 The question at issue is whether Austria Hungary has violated her en- gagement towards the Ottoman Em-' | pire severally. and towards the Eu- ropean concert collectively and 1t Is | so important that the facts relevant to | this question should be accurately known. The phraseology of Article | 25 of the Treaty of Berlin indicates | that something far less than trans ! fer of sovereignty was intended. Had this been intended, terms appropri- ate to express it would have been em- p1oyed.
 Meaning of It.
 To ascertain what meaning was put | by Austria Hungary upon the article | (we have her own word for it) we have only to turn to the secret pro- tocol. only quite recently divulged. of 1 July IS. 1878, and to the convention
 of April s1l 1879 to both of which | Austria Hungary and the Porte were the only parties. The protocol, upon the signature of which the Porte in-
 sisted as the condition precedent Nto her signature of the Treaty of Berlin,
 expressly state that 'the authority Of the Sultan shall be unaffected by the fact of the proposed occupation, that
 the occupation shall be considered to be provisional" and that the contract
 ing parties shall come to a subsequent understanding as to details. The con
 vention of 1879 begins by recittng that ''the fact of the occupation of Bosnia and Herzegovina does not affect the rights of sovereignty of his majesty
 the Sultan over those provinces" It
 then proceeds to safeguard freedom of worship, Mosiem prayers for the Sul-
 tan. hoisting of the Ottoman flag on minarets. and the currency of ottoman
 money throughout the provinces. The question of the conference, and, | with it. of @ definitely pacific solution | of the crisis, has been gradually nar- | rowing itself down to one crucial iS- sue whether the conference snail be | governed with regard to the annex ! | the principle of Impartial examina-
 ton" and perfectly free discussion" | which was laid down in 1871 as
 condition precedent to the meeting of | the London conference for the revis- ion of the Black Sea clauses of the Treaty of Paris. This principle, to
 which Russia herself subscribed under pressure from all the other powers, found no stouter advocate than Aus | A.-n- HVA placed 1t solemnly on record in his
 opening speech as president of the.
 London conference. Equally emphat-
 ic is the protocol signed on the same
 day by the plenipotentiaries of the powers, laying down as "an essential principle of the law of nations that no
 power can repudiate treaty engage l ments or modify treaty provisions ex-
 cept with the consent of the contract
 ing parties by mutual agreement"
 That both those principles are at
 stake at the present juncture seems
 as plain as the noon-day sun. Yet
 Austria seems absolutely determined to deny them. Her contention is that,
 whereas Russia then sought to be dis
 charged of certain treaty obligations,
 the object of Austria in annexing tho
 occupied provinces is only to be the
 better able to discharge the obliga-
 tions with regard to their good ad-
 ministration which she undertook un-
 der the Berlin Treaty, and, further
 whereas Russia's repudiatioD of the
 Black Sea clauses of the Treaty of
 Paris affected the prospective status
 of those waters and therefore requir-
 ed consultation and agreements con
 corning the measures to render it ef-
 fectiVe. Even if this were not the
 idlest sophistry, Austria cannot pos sibly deny that the substitution of the Emperor Francis Joseph's sovereign ty for that of the Sultan in Bosnia and Herzegovina Is a modification" of the
 Treaty of Berlin. and a very import ant one, since she herself alleges that without it the monarch could not have confered a constitution on those prov inces.
 Cannot Be Reversed.
 Not a single power harbors the hope that the accomplished fact can be re- versed at the conference any more than in 1871 there was any idea of uphold
 ing the Black Sea clauses in their or
 iginal shape. But an impartial ex- animation" and "a perfectly free dis cussion" of the questions are required in order not only to safe guard an "es- sential principle of international law" but to enable Austria to show that the annexation will be carried out, as she declares, in the spirit of the obliga- tions assumed by her at Berlin for the better government of the two prov inces This Is briefly the issue which | will presumably give r:se to the most | acute difference of opinion between | Russia and the Western Powers on | the one side. supported probably by |