the Balkans; and, in those cases where I have rashly ventured to indulge
in prophecy, it is more than likely that future events will show that as
a prophet I am not an unqualified success. In spite of these
shortcomings, however, I would like my readers to believe that I have
made a conscientious effort to place before them, in the following
pages, a plain and unprejudiced account of how the essays in map-making
of the lawyer, the doctor and the college professor in Paris have
affected the peoples, problems and politics of that vast region which
stretches from the Alps to the Ægean.

The Queen of the Adriatic never looked more radiantly beautiful than on
the July morning when, from the landing-stage in front of the Danieli,
we boarded the _vapore_ which, after an hour's steaming up the teeming
Guidecca and across the outlying lagoons, set us down at the road-head,
on the mainland, where young Captain Tron, of the Comando Supremo, was
awaiting us with a big gray staff-car. Captain Tron, who had been born
on the Riviera and spoke English like an Oxonian, had been aide-de-camp
to the Prince of Wales during that young gentleman's prolonged stay on
the Italian front. He was selected by the Italian High Command to
accompany us, I imagine, because of his ability to give intelligent
answers to every conceivable sort of question, his tact, and his
unfailing discretion. His chief weakness was his proclivity for
road-burning, in which he was enthusiastically abetted by our Sicilian
chauffeur, who, before attaining to the dignity of driving a staff-car,
had spent an apprenticeship of two years in piloting ammunition-laden
_camions_ over the narrow and perilous roads which led to the positions
held by the Alpini amid the higher peaks, during which he learned to
save his tires and his brake-linings by taking on two wheels instead of
four the hairpin mountain turns. Now I am perfectly willing to travel as
fast as any one, if necessity demands it, but to tear through a region