NICHOLAS I, SURROUNDED BY A GROUP OF HIS HANDSOME MONTENEGRIN SUBJECTS, LAYING THE FOUNDATION STONE OF THE For more than five hundred years a group of Serbians maintained their independence against all assailants in the fastnesses of the Tserna velopment and is of military importance, Turks, Tatars, and Circassians are numerous in its heterogeneous population. In Rumania are found a great number of Hungarian, German, Bulgarian, and Serbian settlers. The entire population is 7,508,000. In the adjacent provinces of Bessarabia, Bukovina and Transylvania, Rumanians predominate. In Bulgaria, Greece, Hungary proper and Serbia are many more. Their entire number, in and outside the kingdom, is probably about 13,000,000. The excess at birth of males over females is greater among the Rumanians than among any other European people except the Greeks. Tendency to such excess is noticeable among most Greco-Latins. The Rumanians have special fondness for the French. They are not displeased when their country is spoken of as an Eastern France, and they themselves call their capital, Bucharest, "the Eastern Paris." Rumania, like Belgium, Montenegro, and Serbia, has had her full share in the tragedy of the just-ended war. Surrounded by foes, isolated as she has always been, further struggle only intensifying the horrors of the defeat, she submitted for a time to her conquerors. THE RACES OF THE BALKAN PENINSULA * The Balkan Peninsula is the most eastern of the great peninsulas of southern Europe It derives its name from the Balkan Mountains, its central and most distinctive feature. Along the Danube, its northern boundary, ran the natural route of migratory peoples, many of whom were diverted southward by the fertile and extensive plain which slopes from the Baikans to the river. To the west and south sharply defined mountain ranges offered abode or asylum in their limited plateaus and fostered the growth of individual communities. No other equal area of 185,000 square miles in Europe presents equal variety of contour and surface and natural resources and, in consequence, such diversity of person and occupation among its inhabitants. The occupants of the peninsula could be held together only if they constituted a single people, united by common sentiments, or if all were under the control of a single supreme authority which none of them could resist. As far as history knows, no united people has ever dwelt upon it. Seldom and only for a time, has any supreme authority existed in it. In every age the Balkan Peninsula is a maelstrom of races, peoples, languages, religions, and of all conceivable ambitions and passions, dashing and breaking themselves upon one another. The Balkan Peninsula includes Turks, Albanians, Greeks, Dulgarians, Serbians, and Montenegrins. *See also, in NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE, "The Changing Map of the Balkans," by Frederick Moore (February, 1913). The early life of no other Eastern people is so definitely known as that of the Ottoman Turks. Led by Ertogrul, a Tatar chief, nearly four hundred pagan nomad families wandered into Asia Minor about 1230. They had fled from Khorassan at the invasion of Jenghiz Khan. Asia Minor at that time was broken up into numerous petty States and feudal districts, of which the moribund Seljuk Sultanate of Iconium, or Roum, was the most considerable. Becoming voluntary converts to Islam and faithful allies of the Sultan Ala-Eddin, the four hundred saw their prestige and power rapidly increase. Moslems and Christian and Jewish renegades flocked to their tents. In 1281 Osman, or Othman, succeeded to leadership. His name, signifying "Breaker of Bones," was of happy omen to his ferocious followers. On the death of Ala-Eddin, last of the Seljuks, his kingdom broke into many fragments. Osman undertook to conquer them all and proclaimed himself "Padiskhahi ali Osmani," sovereign of the Ottomans. His people have ever since called themselves Ottomans, regarding as insult or injury the name Turk or barbarian, applied to them by the Arabs and by the Europeans in general. The Arabs, who disdain the Turks, employ the name with design. The gradual extension of the Ottoman Empire was due to its first seven sultans, each succeeded by his son, all ruthless destroyers. The seventh, Mohammed II, the Conqueror, captured Constantinople in 1453. Continuous subsequent conquests, reaching from Persia to the Atlantic and the Straits of Bab-el-Mandeb, terrified Europe. The English prayer-book to this day, in its Good Friday Collect, makes deprecatory intercession against the "Turks." Constantly receding since the defeat at Vienna by the Polish John Sobieski, in 1683, *See also, in NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE, "The Young Turk," by Rear Admiral Colby M. Chester (January, 1912); "Grass Never Grows Where the Turkish Hoof Has Trod," by Sir Edwin Pears (November, 1912); "The Possible Solutions for the Eastern Problem," by Viscount James Bryce (November, 1912); "Life in Constantinople," by H. G. Dwight (December, 1914), and "Constantinople and Sancta Sophia," by Dr. E. A. Grosvenor (May, 1915). To unite all the Jugo-Slavs has long been the aspiration of leaders among the Croats and Slavonians as well as those in the Kingdom of Serbia. The ambitious program of these nation builders includes the union of Croats, Slavonians, Dalmatians, Bosnians, Helvats, Montenegrins, and Serbs into one State. One of the greatest obstacles to the proposed federation is the religious antagonism evidenced toward one another by adherents of the Eastern Orthodox Church, the Roman Catholics, and the Moslems. Powerful factors exist which are favorable to cooperation, however. The peoples are racially one, and they are confronted everywhere by foreigners. It remains to be seen whether the bonds of race and of language are sufficiently strong to overcome the disruptive forces of internal political jealousies and religious animosities. Another serious difficulty which the statesmen of Jugo-Slavia must face is their own inexperience in practical statecraft and the inexperience of their people in self-government (see page 486). Photograph by D. W. Iddings, © Keystone View Company IN JUGO-SLAVIA-THE HUSREF BEG MOSQUE AND BAZAAR, SERAJEVO, BOSNIA Except the Montenegrins and the Serbians in the larger part of royal Serbia, all the groups which are to compose the nation of Jugo-Slavia have been under the blighting domination of alternating foreign masters since the Middle Ages (see page 485). the empire of the Ottoman Turks now embraces hardly more than Asia Minor. No accurate figures exist, but under the scepter of the Sultan are not more than 20,000,000 people, among whom about three-fifths may be reckoned as Ottoman Turks. Very small, however, is the proportion of original Ottomans, members of the Turkish group of the Ural-Altaian family. The harem, constantly replenished by women from every nation, and the continuous accession of Christian and Jewish apostates have changed their blood and transformed their Tatar type. The majority of Grand Vizirs and Capoudan Pashas or heads of the navy during their first five hundred years were of Christian or Jewish ancestry. The few unmodified Ottomans are, whether pasha or peasant, of stately and dignified presence, conservative, contemptuous of everything foreign. The "young Turks" affect European customs and simulate European ideas, but manifest few of the virtues of the West. The Turk in general is merciless in victory and in A GROUP OF JUGO-SLAVS IN NATIVE COSTUME These people of the eastern shores of the Adriatic, who formerly were subjects of Austria-Hungary (see page 485), are strongly attached by sympathy and common interests to their blood brothers of the Kingdom of Serbia. They have the same love for romance, poetry, and music, the same pride of race, and many of the same customs and superstitions. |