I have attempted elsewhere to make these two points--that it is on the
one hand the false economics of the Turks, and on the other hand the
false economics of the powers of Europe, colouring the policy and
Statecraft of both, which have played an enormous, in all human
probability, a determining role in the immediate provoking cause of the
war; and, of course, a further and more remote cause of the whole
difficulty is the fact that the Balkan peoples never having been
subjected to the discipline of that complex social life which arises
from trade and commerce have never grown out of (or to a less degree)
those primitive racial and religious hostilities which at one time in
Europe as a whole provoked conflicts like that now raging in the
Balkans. The following article which appeared[4] at the outbreak of the
war may summarise some of the points with which we have been dealing.

Polite and good-natured people think it rude to say "Balkans" if a
Pacifist be present. Yet I never understood why, and I understand now
less than ever. It carries the implication that because war has broken
out that fact disposes of all objection to it. The armies are at grips,
therefore peace is a mistake. Passion reigns on the Balkans, therefore
passion is preferable to reason.

I suppose cannibalism and infanticide, polygamy, judicial torture,
religious persecution, witchcraft, during all the years we did these
"inevitable" things, were defended in the same way, and those who
resented all criticism of them pointed in triumph to the cannibal feast,
the dead child, the maimed witness, the slain heretic, or the burned
witch. But the fact did not prove the wisdom of those habits, still less
their inevitability; for we have them no more.

We are all agreed as to the fundamental cause of the Balkan trouble: the