of men, women, and children were massacred and scores of
villages destroyed. I remember vividly--for I was then in
England--how Gladstone's denunciation of those atrocities aroused a
wave of moral indignation and wrath which swept furiously from one
end of Great Britain to the other, and even aroused the governments
and peoples of the Continent of Europe. The Porte refusing to adopt
satisfactory measures of reform, Russia declared war and her
victorious army advanced to the very gates of Constantinople. The
Treaty of San Stefano, which Russia then enforced upon Turkey,
created a "Big Bulgaria" that extended from the Black Sea to the
Albanian Mountains and from the Danube to the Aegean, leaving to
Turkey, however, Adrianople, Saloniki, and the Chalcidician
Peninsula. But this treaty was torn to pieces by the Powers, who
feared that "Big Bulgaria" would become a mere Russian dependency,
and they substituted for it the Treaty of Berlin. Under this
memorable instrument, which dashed to the ground the racial and
national aspirations of the Bulgarians which the Treaty of San
Stefano had so completely satisfied, their country was restricted to
a "tributary principality" lying between the Danube and the Balkans,
Eastern Roumelia to the south being excluded from it and made an
autonomous province of Turkey. This breach in the political life of
the race was healed in 1885 by the union of Eastern Roumelia with
Bulgaria; and the Ottoman sovereignty, which had become little more
than a form, was completely ended in 1908 when the ruler of the
enlarged principality of Bulgaria publicly proclaimed it an
independent kingdom. In spite of a protest from the Porte the
independence of Bulgaria was at once recognized by the Powers.

If Bulgaria owed the freedom with which the Treaty of Berlin dowered
her to the swords, and also to the pens, of foreigners, her complete
independence was her own achievement. But it was not brought about
till a generation after the Treaty of Berlin had recognized the
independence of Servia, Montenegro, and Roumania and delegated to
Austria-Hungary the administration of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Yet
the progress made by Bulgaria first under Prince Alexander and
especially since 1887 under Prince Ferdinand (who subsequently
assumed the title of King and later of Czar) is one of the most
astonishing phenomena in the history of Modern Europe.

THE BALKAN COUNTRIES

Thus in consequence of the events we have here