The Ocala banner. (Ocala, Marion County, Fla.) 1883-194?, 1914-08-21
SHALL GREAT BRITAIN RETAIN
CONTROL or THE MEDlTER-
RANEAN?

Germany and Austria of the Triple
Alliance, perhaps also with Italy, their
third partner in the pace of nations,
stands on one side of the European
battlefield.
Russia with England and France,
bound together in the more elastic un
ion of the Triple Entente, have UNI
sheathehd their swords in the face OF
the Triple Alliance.
1t is now a war of giants. They
will fight to the death, unless all
signs fail. 1t will be the most stu
pendous war mankind has ever
known. The mind is staggered in
contemplating its stupendous POSSIBLE
tiles in carnage, in devastation. in
ruin of commerce and international
profit-making, in the final wounds OF
war which a century may not heal.
Little Servia is lost sight of. She
is but cipher in the game, pawn
upon the checkerboard. Her wrongs
of the past, her crimes of the present
are of small importance in this Her
culean struggle OF titantic Forces.
We shall hear much of encounters
on land and sea if the cOnfiagration
of a great war sweeps over Europe
lighting its torch in the nations OF
the Triple Alliance and the ATriple
Entente. But two vital questions
will be uppermost in the minds
of the statesmen who sit at the helm
of government in the capitals of st
Petersburg. London, Vienna, Berlin
Paris and Rome, directing the affairs
of their different states. They have
the heritage of the past to guide
them, the wise counsels left by
statesmen long since dead and gone
but who knew how to govern and
how to guide, who learned it by sue
sess and defeat. They have the
| future in their minds, and policies
that are worked out slowly, little by
little, now gain, now loss. The
objective points remain ever the
same.
The two vital questions of this
war will be:
The possibility of Russia, becom
ing SO powerful that she can go to
Constantinople and stay there.
The possibility of England becom
ing so weakened that she can nc
longer adequately guard her passage
to and fro through the Mediterran
can sea.
These are questions, both of them
older than either the Triple Alliance
of the Triple Entente. They are re
sponsible, as primary motives, for
the formation of both of these di
visions of national powers. They
will inevitably become ultimately af
fected one way or the other by the
consequences of this war.
The arraying of Germany and Aus
tria against Russia, with whatever
assistance Russia will get from her
allies, is spoken of as a conflict for
the supremacy of the Saxon or the
Slav in Europe. But the supremacy
of the Slav means nothing more or
less than that the mighty Slav nation
Of the north, ever winged like a
huge bird ready for fight to the
sea, shall have freedom to make its
way to Constantinople, and from
thence, through the Bosphorus and
the Black sea to Asia.
And the supremacy of the Saxon,
in other words, the victory of Aus
tria and Germany, means nothing
more or less than that England
shall lose her liberty of passage
through the Mediterranean.
Russia must needs go through the
Bosphorus and the Black sea to get
close to hdr Asiatic possessions.
England must needs have free pass
age through the Mediterranean in
order to be able to obtain food for
sustenance.
Austria and Germany may fight to-
gether against Russia on one pre-
text or another, but what they want
finally as their reward is control of
the Mediterranean sea. Germany
has to place upon it to call her own.
With an enormous fleet, Germany
has no Mediterranean port Austria
has the port of Trieste and that of
Flume upon the Adriatic, an arm OF
the Mediterranean sea. Could the
two Saxon powers prevail in this
war they could bottle up England's
food supplies, coming to her from all
part of the world through the Suez
canal and from there to the Mediter-
ranean, from Egypt, over which Eng
land has protectorate, from Aus
tralia New Iceland and from India