, kept
in the foreground, were that the head of the Russian Orthodox Church was
at Constantinople, that Russia was the kinsman of the Slav populations
in the Balkans, and that her duty and right was to liberate
co-religionists who were suffering from religious persecution.

Great Britain was the great obstacle to the desire of Russia to march
down upon Constantinople. Her real objection was that with Russia on the
Bosphorus the control of the Mediterranean might pass into the hands of
the rival who seemed to wish to dispute with her for the mastery of
India. Her expressed reasons had some vague declarations about the
"chivalry of the Turk." Austria developed her ambition to suzerainty
over the Balkan Peninsula mainly on the strength of a claim to be the
heir of the old Holy Roman Empire, and as such possessing an hereditary
right to rule over the old seat of that Empire in the East. Italy was
forced into a Balkan policy by the impossibility of allowing a rival
Power to settle on the other side of the Adriatic, threatening her whole
east coast. Germany and France came into Balkan politics chiefly as
allies of Powers with more direct interests, although both have now
fears and hopes regarding the Asiatic dominions of the Sublime Porte and
shape their Balkan policy accordingly.

[Illustration: A YOUNG WOMAN OF THE ROUSTCHOUK DISTRICT]

The way in which, by the Congress of Berlin, the Treaty of San Stefano
was changed illustrated well the fact that, as regards the Balkan
Peninsula, Europe was far more concerned to advance the ambitions of the
Western Powers than to ameliorate the condition of the Near Eastern
peoples under Turkish government. The other Powers' jealousy of Russia
vetoed the creation of the big Bulgaria suggested then, because it was
feared that Bulgarian gratitude to the Power which had been responsible
for her liberation would make the new kingdom a mere appanage of
Russia. When it was manifest afterwards that Bulgarian gratitude was not
of that high and disinterested quality, and that the young Bulgarian
nation was, though semi-Eastern in origin, sufficiently European to play
for her own hand, and her own hand only, in national affairs, Europe had
a spasm of remorse and approved when Bulgaria took advantage of a
Turkish misfortune to gather to herself Eastern Roumelia. The only Power
that objected to that acquisition was Russia. Her eagerness for a big
Bulgaria had faded away with the knowledge that Bulg