linger perhaps for a while in the old charmed regions where it bore
sway; the Greek villagers will doubtless be restless and turbulent and
unhappy where the Bulgars rule, and the Bulgars will certainly be
restless and turbulent and unhappy under Greek administration, and the
rival flocks of the Exarchate and Patriarchate will make themselves
intensely disagreeable to one another wherever the opportunity offers;
the habits of a lifetime, of several lifetimes, are not laid aside all at
once. And the Albanians, of course, we shall have with us still, a
troubled Moslem pool left by the receding wave of Islam in Europe. But
the old atmosphere will have changed, the glamour will have gone; the
dust of formality and bureaucratic neatness will slowly settle down over
the time-honoured landmarks; the Sanjak of Novi Bazar, the Muersteg
Agreement, the Komitadje bands, the Vilayet of Adrianople, all those
familiar outlandish names and things and places, that we have known so
long as part and parcel of the Balkan Question, will have passed away
into the cupboard of yesterdays, as completely as the Hansa League and
the wars of the Guises.

"They were the heritage that history handed down to us, spoiled and
diminished no doubt, in comparison with yet earlier days that we never
knew, but still something to thrill and enliven one little corner of our
Continent, something to help us to conjure up in our imagination the days
when the Turk was thundering at the gates of Vienna. And what shall we
have to hand down to our children? Think of what their news from the
Balkans will be in the course of another ten or fifteen years. Socialist
Congress at Uskub, election riot at Monastir, great dock strike at
Salonika, visit of the Y.M.C.A. to Varna. Varna--on the coast of that
enchanted sea! They will drive out to some suburb to tea, and write home
about it as the Bexhill of the East.

"War is a wickedly destructive thing."

"Still, you must admit--" began the Merchant. But the Wanderer was not
in the mood to admit anything. He rose impatiently and walked to where
the tape-machine was busy with the news from Adrianople.

FOR THE DURATION OF THE WAR

The Rev. Wilfrid Gaspilton, in one of those clerical migrations
inconsequent-seeming to the lay mind, had removed from the moderately
fashionable parish of St. Luke's, Kensingate, to the immoderately rural
parish of St. Chuddocks, somewhere in Yondershire. There were doubtless
s