Norwich bulletin., 1914-12-17
CHARACTERISTICS OF
 THE BALKAN REGIt
War Continuous Experience Of Its Peopie-Law and Order Matter of Much Uncertainty.
Especial to The Bulletin. ]

l0Q6C1dl 10 1no l.l
 Washington. D. c. Dec, 16.-Soms of the leading characteristics of the Balkan region, that part of the world which confusion of races, languages, customs. nations, religions and tradi- tionS has caused to be the centuries long theatre of seething, incessant re- ligious struggles are described in a statement given to the press today by the National Geographic Society. It says:
 on the fringe between the East and the West, the Balkan peninsHIa, and each of these peoples clings tenac- iously to it's language, its traditions, its religion, a51d to the manners and ways of its kind. Several familieS of the SlaEonic people, each with it's own tongue and patriotism. are there The Turks, the Greeks, and a sprinkling of Germans, together with many fra gralnentaFy types of peoples, from West and East, survivals of nations and tribes of yesterdays history add to the kaleidoscopic bewilderment. The Balkan lands are a Babel through which no ordinary master of tongues may hope to go without the aid of an occasional interpreter and much use of sign language.
 Tn the hearts of most of these peo- ples. no matter how small their land or how little the world may know of them, there is kept alive a fiery con Sciousness of their nationality. The Montenegrin is as devoted a native of his small bowl of a country among the mountains as is the citizen of our own United States, the difference be- ing, where any, that the Montenegrin reminds himself much more often of his nationality and it's advantages than does the average American With the sharp racial tribual and liugua1 divisions of the Balkan peoples, re- Hgious divisions exert far z more powerful distinctive influence there, than is the case with us. Greek Protestant confession, and the Mo- hammedan faith have served to segre- gate these people from one another.
 All the energy, destruction and many contrary types of people and l ideals has occasioned, has retarded the development of the Balkan peninsula so that it is some generations behind
 the achievements of the West; and | the traveller in the byways of this same. inconveniences which he would encounter in undeveloped Asia. The roads in the Balkans are bad, in nose cases mere cattle and footpaths.
 The villages are squalid, il-kept. | without improvements, without com forts, without conveniences. The means of transportation are uncer- l tain; the mules are undependabIe, the railway trains are capricious, boats move according to the tempers of their
 captains and the moods of their en- l gineers. while the treacherous roads II make horse and cart a risky adven- | ture. Furthermore the law and order l of much of the Balkan lands st at
 best a matter of considerable uncer- | tainty.
 "The Balloan peninsula has been J war-torn for nineteen hundred years | or more. War became a continuous | experience of its people with the com
 ing of the Romans, and, under the | 1000 years of the rule of Byzantium. | when this east Roman empire did
 yearly outpost duty for Christendoru
 until it's destruction by the Turk, the
 Balkan peoples definitely took the | place which they hold today, that of benig buffer people between an | upper and neither mffistone. An out | post Of the West fin the East; they have been everiastingly employed l with fighting both the East and the | West or among themselves, which has | helped to make the Balkan peninsula
 the poorest stretch of land in Eu-
 rope'