The Balkan Situation

Pacific Press Publishing Association · Mountain View, California · Mar 31, 1909

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 36, No. 13.

The Balkan Situation.

THE Balkan situation is not making rapid progress toward permanent settlement. The London Times of Feb. 25 thinks that the present condition (at that time),—and it has not changed for the better up to this writing,—is “more serious perhaps than at any moment since the action of Austria-Hungary and of Bulgaria suddenly disturbed the status quo now nearly six months ago. On both sides an uncompromising position has been taken up. In Servia claims have been put forward for territorial compensation which Austria is determined not to grant, and which, we admit, she can hardly be expected to grant.” Last autumn it was stated that Austria-Hungary representatives held out prospects of economic compensation for the Serb States, but now it is contended that Servia, having no real title to any concession whatever, must change her bearing and drop her inadmissible claims before Austria-Hungary can approach the question of the favors eventually to be granted to her.

Then, too, Austria has been making great military preparations for six months; partly with a view to overawe the recalcitrant Serb population of the annexed provinces, and partly with a view to immediate action against Servia and Montenegro, should it become necessary to punish them.

It is expected, too, that after the Franco-German agreement with regard to Morocco, Germany would cooperate in all things in the Near East for the maintenance of peace, but Germany has once more not seen her way to act with the other powers; and The London Times suggests that the language used by the organ of the German foreign office is certainly not the language of a peacemaker. Although diplomacy has exhausted its normal methods, still the Times believes that there is less danger in meeting together and talking it over than to allow it to drift on into war as the present seems to indicate that it may.