Russia in the Balkan peninsula

We are accustomed, again, to treat the position of Russia in the Balkan peninsula as one of influence more or less continuous, but as not practically affecting the Eastern Mediterranean and its lands. Russia has not yet effected any real footing on the peninsula. She finds it occupied by Roumania, Bulgaria, Servia, Austria, Turkey, and Greece. Over these Russia exercises an intermittent influence, but never controls them all at the same time; and she often finds one or more of them in direct opposition.

Accordingly, we do not regard the Muscovite as dominant in the Balkan peninsula, much less in the Archipelago. But place Russia on the wonderful throne of the Bosphorus, with the inevitable addition of Adrianople and the Maritza Valley, at the very least, in Southern Rou- melia, and the whole situation is transformed. The possession of Constantinople by Russia, with her enormous resources and grand navy, means the control by Russia of the Bosphorus, the Marmora, the Hellespont, and, at least, of South-Eastern Roumelia.

Could it stop there? Would the absolute chief of an army of two millions and a half, with the third great navy of the world, fall into slumber in his new and resplendent capital, rebuild the Seraglio, or amuse himself in Yildiz Kiosk? He would immediately create the second great navy of the world, and for all Mediterranean purposes his navy would be at least the rival of the first guided turkey tours. How long would Roumania and Bulgaria remain their own masters when they found themselves between his countless legions on the Pruth and his great fleet in the Golden Horn? What would Servia say to the change — or Austria?

Musulmans in Roumelia

Would the Albanians be content? And what would become of the Musulmans in Roumelia? The prospect opens at least five or six international imbroglios with knotty problems of race, religion, patriotism, and political sympathies and antipathies. Any one of these is enough to cause a European crisis — and even an embittered war.

In the long run, though it might be a struggle prolonged for a century, Russia would in some form or other command or control the entire peninsula from the Danube to Cape Matapan; not, perhaps, counting it all strictly in Russian territory, but being dominant therein as is Victoria in the Indian peninsula. The geographical conditions of Constantinople are so extraordinary; they offer such boundless opportunities to a first-class military and naval power; they lie so curiously ready to promote the ambition of Russia, that the advent of the Czar to the capital of the Sultan would produce a change in Europe greater than any witnessed in the nineteenth century.

The absolute monarch of a hundred millions, with an army of two and a half millions, possessing sole command of the Black Sea, Bosphorus, Marmora, and Hellespont, together with the incomparable naval basis which is afforded by this chain of four inland seas, would unquestionably be supreme master of the whole of Eastern Europe, which would then extend under one sceptre from the Arctic Ocean to the Greek Archipelago.