The Balkans | Page 3

centre of gravity of the Serbian
nation would, as is ethnically just, move north-westwards. Political
considerations, 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
devoted to securing control of the peninsula, but during the Third
century B.C. Thrace was invaded from the north and laid waste by the
Celts, who had already visited Illyria. The Celts vanished by the end of
that century, leaving a few place-names to mark their passage. The city
of Belgrade was known until the seventh century A.D. by its Celtic
name of Singidunum. Naissus, the modern Nish, is also possibly of
Celtic origin. It was towards 230 B.C. that Rome came into contact
with Illyricum, owing to the piratical proclivities of its inhabitants, but
for a long time it only controlled the Dalmatian coast, so called after
the Delmati or Dalmati, an Illyrian tribe. The reason for this was the
formidable character of the mountains of Illyria, which run in several
parallel and almost unbroken lines the whole length of the shore of the
Adriatic and have always formed an effective barrier to invasion from
the west. The interior was only very gradually subdued by the Romans
after Macedonia had been occupied by them in 146 B.C. Throughout
the first century B.C. conflicts raged with varying fortune between the
invaders and all the native races living between the Adriatic and the
Danube. They were attacked both from Aquileia in the north and from
Macedonia in the south, but it was not till the early years of our era that
the Danube became the frontier of the Roman Empire.
In the year A.D. 6 Moesia, which included a large part of the modern
kingdom of Serbia and the northern half of that of Bulgaria between the
Danube and the Balkan range (the classical Haemus), became an
imperial province, and twenty years later Thrace, the country between
the Balkan range and the Aegean, was incorporated in the empire, and
was made a province by the Emperor Claudius in A.D. 46. The
province of Illyricum or Dalmatia stretched between the Save and the
Adriatic, and Pannonia lay between the Danube and the Save. In 107
A.D. the Emperor Trajan conquered the Dacians beyond the lower
Danube, and organized a province of Dacia out of territory roughly

equivalent to the modern Wallachia and Transylvania, This
trans-Danubian territory did not remain attached to