the Protecting Powers of the Kingdom. These Powers demand of the
Greek government that the army shall be completely and immediately
demobilized, that the present cabinet shall be replaced by another
which shall guarantee benevolent neutrality toward the Entente
Powers, that the Chamber shall be immediately dissolved and new
elections held, and that certain public functionaries obnoxious to
the legations of the Allies shall be replaced. And statements from
Athens dated June 21 announce that Greece, under the menace of an
embargo maintained by the allied navies, has yielded to these
demands. With Greece humiliated by the Protecting Powers and her
territory occupied by Bulgaria, with Servia and Montenegro overrun
and occupied by the German-Austrian-Bulgarian forces, with Roumania
waiting to see which of the belligerent groups will be finally
victorious, with Bulgaria now basking in the sunshine of the Central
Powers but an object of hatred to all the Allied Powers and
especially to Russia, one may be pardoned for refusing to make any
guess whatever as to the way in which the resultant diagonal of the
parallelogram of European forces will ultimately run through the
Balkans. Fortunately also such prediction has no place in an account
of the Balkan Wars of 1912-1913.

To-day the Balkan nations are the pawns of the Great Powers who are
directly responsible for the deplorable conditions that now exist
among them. Yet in a very real sense their present tragic situation
is the nemesis of the political sins of the Balkan nations
themselves. These sins are those of all undeveloped political
communities. Even the most highly civilized nations may temporarily
fall under their sway, and then civilization reverts to barbarism,
as the terrible condition of Europe to-day actually demonstrates.
But the acute disease from which Europe suffers is more or less