Evening star., 1941-01-31
Balkan States
Are Important
Writer ExpIuins How
Mountain Nations
Influence America
BIZ Bertrdnl Benedict.

jutting out from the mainland of Europe.
Italy, the third the Balkan Peninsula.
Spain and Italy are each cut of from
the remainder of Europe by high noun
tain ranges, and each is inhabited by q
people more or less homogeneous, speak
ing more or less the same language,
united (more or leSs) under single gov
eminent But the Balkan Peninsula
In the first place, the Balkan Peninsula
is not separated from the remainder of
Europe by any natural boundaries, so
that no one really knows where it begins,
or should begin, on the north. If you
put the northern boundary at the Danube
and its tributary, the Save, and thence
due west to the Adriatic, you would be
leaving out all of Rumania, yet Rumania
is indisputably Balkan state. Or If
you included Rumania, you would be
projecting the northern boundary of the
Balkan Peninsula well into Central
Europe, on about the same latitude as
Vienna, Munich and Paris
Even the word Balkan" itself has no
special significance. 1t seems to be de-
rived from a Turkish word meaning
simply mountain"
The bulk of the Balkan population is
Slavic, but there are all kinds of Slavs.
There are the South (Yugo) Slavs Chem
selves divided into the Serbs, the Croats
and the Slovenes), the Bulgarian Slavs,
the Macedonian SlavS. There are the
GraekS the Turks the IeWS
Rumania sometimes spelled "Ro-
maniaD was originally Roman colony,
and some of its people like to think Of
themselves as Latin race. Here and
there in the Balkans are even to be found
territorial islands of Germans. The AL
banians feel themselves separate by rea-
son of being, for the greater part,
| MohammedanS.
All this racial hodge -podge was for
some hundreds of years prior to the 18th
century under Turkish rule. That did
give it.a kind of political unity. Greece
was the first state to break away from
Turkey. Other Balkan states became
really independent while still technically
acknowledging Turkish sovereignty. For
| instance, Bulgaria was really constituted
an independent nation in 1878, but was
supposed to be Turkish protectorate as
| late as 1908.
Today the Balkan Peninsula is divided
among six states. If you landed at the
southern tip of the peninsula, you would
be in Greece. If you proceeded due east
| of Greece toward the Black Sea, you'd
| find yourself in Turkey, of which the
capital, Ankara, is located in Asia Minor.
If you went north from Turkey in
Europe, you'd be in Bulgaria. If you
went north from Bulgaria, you'd pass
into Rumania
If you went back to Greece and
Travelled due north, you'd be in Yugo-
| slavia. The state was built up around
! the pre- World War nations of Serbia and
Montenegro. If you had gone northwest
from Greece, you'd have been in Albania,
| now occupied by Italy. And Russia also
| is now in the Balkans by dint of having
annexed Bessarabia recently from Ru-
mania.
| Each of these six Balkan states mis-
trusts and hates the other five, usually
with good cause. In 1918 Greece, Ru-
mania and Serbia made war against
Bulgaria. In the World War OF 1914
| 1918, Turkey and Bulgaria lined up with
Germany; Serbia and Rumania lined up
with France and England. Greece tried
to remain neutral, but finally was forced
by France and England to join them.
After the World War, Turkey defeated
Greece in a terribly bloodthirsty war
There are few families in any Balkan
nation who do not recall, with a deep
desire for vengeance, horrible atrocities
perpetrated upon some of their members
by invading troops from another Balkan
nation.
The boundaries of the six Balkan states
do not follow, even loosely, the lines OF
nationality. Each of the six is incessantly
plotting to draw unto itself 'unre-
| deemed" members of its race who live
under the flag of some other Balkan
state. At the same time, each of the six
will fight to the death Cor says it wild
! to hold on to "unredeemed" members OF
other Balkan states who are within its
own boundaries.
At this point you may yawn and COM
plain: well, what has all this to dc
with me?" Just so, people in England
asked themselves in 1888, What has
Czecho- -Slovakia to do with me?" Yet as
a result of the Munich, settlement on
Czecho-Slovakia in 1888, some of these
people are now dead, others have had
near relatives killed, all are in danger OF
death from the air.
Or perhaps you were in the last war.
Even if you weren't, you are poignantly
| feeling today many of its results. And
the present war, also Americas prepa-
rations today in connection with 1t, are
the direct aftermath of that last war
And that one not only broke out in 1914
in the Balkans, but also might have been
avoided if the Balkan setup had been
different.
In 1914 Russia was trying to dominate
the Balkan Peninsula. Not only was
Russia a Slavic nation, and hence the
natural" protector of the Slavic peo-
pies in the Balkans; not only was Russia
Gin those days. the center of the Greek
| Catholicism, the dominant Balkan re-
ligion, but also Russia had aimed for
decades at control of Constantinople
as a port free from ice for all II months
and hence of inestimable economic im-
portance to Russia.
But Austria Hungary also had designs
on the Balkans-in large part because