ons, however, have until
now always been against this solution of the difficulty, and, even if it
solved in this sense, there would still remain the problem of the Greek
nationality, whose distribution along all the coasts of the Aegean, both
European and Asiatic, makes a delimitation of the Greek state on purely
ethnical lines virtually impossible. It is curious that the Slavs, though
masters of the interior of the peninsula and of parts of its eastern and
western coasts, have never made the shores of the Aegean (the White Sea,
as they call it) or the cities on them their own. The Adriatic is the only
sea on the shore of which any Slavonic race has ever made its home. In
view of this difficulty, namely, the interior of the peninsula being
Slavonic while the coastal fringe is Greek, and of the approximately equal
numerical strength of all three nations, it is almost inevitable that the
ultimate solution of the problem and delimitation of political boundaries
will have to be effected by means of territorial compromise. It can only
be hoped that this ultimate compromise will be agreed upon by the three
countries concerned, and will be more equitable than that which was forced
on them by Rumania in 1913 and laid down in the Treaty of Bucarest of that
year.

If no arrangement on a principle of give and take is made between them,
the road to the East, which from the point of view of the Germanic powers
lies through Serbia, will sooner or later inevitably be forced open, and
the independence, first of Serbia, Montenegro, and Albania, and later of
Bulgaria and Greece, will disappear, _de facto_ if not in appearance, and
both materially and morally they will become the slaves of the central
empires. If the Balkan League could be reconstituted, Germany and Austria
would never reach Salonika or Constantinople.

2

_The Balkan Peninsula in Classical Times_

400 B.C. - A.D. 500.

In the earlier historical times the whole of the eastern part of the
Balkan peninsula between the Danube and the Aegean was known as Thracia,
while the western part (north of the forty-first degree of latitude) was
termed Illyricum; the lower basin of the river Vardar (the classical
Axius) was called Macedonia. A number of the tribal and personal names of
the early Illyrians and Thracians have been preserved. Philip of Macedonia
subdued Thrace in the fourth century B.C. and in 342 founded the city of
Philippopolis. Alexander's first campaign was