Since 1886 the two Bulgarias have been united under Prince Ferdinand, but union could not completely satisfy their political aspirations so long as they remained tributary to the Sultan. The last remaining bond was broken, and the most recent step in the process of state building at the expense of the Turkish Empire took place on October 5, when Prince Ferdinand proclaimed the independence of his country and assumed the title of Bulgarian Czar. Two days later Austria announced her formal annexation of Bosnia and Herzegovina.

The chancelleries of Europe were thrown into great excitement by the news of these two acts, so near in point of time as to excite a lively suspicion that they were not chronological accidents, and their best endeavors have been exerted to secure the calling of a new congress to consider anew the Balkan questions. The press has been filled with charges of gross breaches of the Treaty of Berlin by Austria and Bulgaria, and the safety of all international obligations and the future security of the peace of Europe have been regarded as assailed by their actions. Much that has been said seems hysterical and even hypocritical in the face of the facts of the past thirty years. Whatever assurances may have been given Turkey respecting the temporary character of the Austrian occupation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, it cannot be questioned that subsequent events have looked only to its permanent character. For thirty years the process of assimilation has gone on unquestioned, and only a deluded hope could ever have looked forward to the possibility of a peaceable surrender by Austria. The demands of Servia and Montenegro, therefore, for compensation for the loss of the possibility of ever incorporating the Serb elements of the provinces within their own territories border on the absurd.

If the proposed conference has been agreed to-as now seems highly probable-only upon the basis of a recognition of the faits accomplis and is limited in its programme to compensations, it would seem that much the same course is being pursued as in 1871 with regard to the rejection of the neutralization of the Black Sea by Russia. It is not, however, as yet quite clear what Austria's motive may have been in pursuing the course she did; that the occupation would naturally have become permanent may be admitted, but the need at present of putting herself in

the position of a technical violator of the Treaty of Berlin has not been apparent.

It can hardly be questioned that Bulgarian independence was the natural and anticipated result of the international acts of 1878 and 1886, or that from the standpoint of international law she has a right to be independent, for the legitimacy or illegitimacy of state parentage is no concern of international law.

It would seem, then, that the course of events in the Balkans has taken its natural and logical way, a way that must have been foreseen in the Congress of Berlin; though the immediate occasion may have been the introduction of a constitutional form of government in Turkey, the ultimate causes are still religion and nationality. The proposed conference, therefore, can scarcely be looked to for so much as a condemnation of the action of Bulgaria, much less for an attempt to undo what has been done.

Backward or Forward?

BY EDGAR GARDNER MURPHY

"Things at the South seem to be getting worse,"-such, in these days, is the not unfamiliar comment. The phrase "things at the South" is intended as a vague but not unkindly "summary of a civilization;"-a civilization in which, popularly speaking, white men and black men divide the land, and in which the question of supreme importance is according to the same popular assumption-the issue of inter-racial peace. In so far as the recent record of "things at the South" has been a story of race antagonism and of popular irritations it is supposed to represent a history of failure.

It would be idle to deny that there have been many things in the recent history of our country, both North and South, to test the creed of a legitimate optimism. And yet the testing of the true creed, whether it be religious or political or social, will bring to light its deeper value:-and the observation is not the less sound because it happens to be commonplace.

Certainly before yielding ourselves to even a momentary hopelessness there are a few suggestions which may well be given their corrective weight. In the first place, it is important to remember that the recent development of the South-industrially, socially, politically-has so increased the scope and variety of its interests that it may no longer be classified, in the language of ignorant generalization, as just the land of the negro question. If such a description were ever accurate, it is accurate no longer. The South today is conspicuously the land of many questions. The morning paper now provides, in its telegraphic news from the Southern States, something more than the street duel and the negro lynching. From Texas there is the story of the oil fields of Beaumont, of the engineering achievements at Galveston, of the new method of the government of cities by "commission," -now generally regarded as one of the most interesting contributions to the problem of municipal administration. From Alabama there is the romance of Birmingham, the story of the Southern Pittsburg; from the Carolinas, the record of the cotton

factories-North Carolina and South Carolina operating together a total number of spindles in excess of the combined aggregate for any other two States in the country; from Arkansas, a plan by which the State Education Fund has bought the bonds of the State so that the interest upon the public debt becomes a contribution to the public schools; from Georgia, the story of a new movement against the liquor traffic,-a movement now extending from Virginia to Texas-which has placed under the rule of statutory prohibition the largest area within which the policy of exclusion has ever been attempted.*

But one may not dwell upon details. All the questions of American life are becoming Southern questions, just as our Southern questions have become broadly and humanly American. The "railroad rate" issue is as familiar a topic in Alabama, North Carolina, and Tennessee as in Minnesota or New York. Certain of the current federal endeavors to secure the data for the physical valuation of railroad properties are frankly based, whether wisely or unwisely, on the Texas precedents. The Southern struggles for legislation restricting and regulating the labor of women and children-inadequate as the present results may be -have been reflected in an increase of popular interest in such legislation throughout the North; and the popular struggle at the South in behalf of a more adequate system of public education has been regarded, not infrequently, as the most interesting and inspiring movement in the educational history of our generation.t

*"With the addition of North Carolina to Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi, an unbroken tier of Central Southern States 1,500 miles long, involving over one-half of the cotton-producing area and in strategic relation to all that is homogeneous in Southern life, will invest the heart of the South in the common cause of prohibition. In contact with these States and overlapping them are six others-in four of these prohibition is at hand with only 40 counties out of 336 in which there are any licensed saloons remaining. (Within this territory also there is a record of consistent gains.) It is this situation which on its face indicates the logic of the general conviction that the South as a section will soon present a solid prohibition front to the world."-The Rev. John EWhite, D. D., in THE SOUTH ATLANTIC QUARTERLY, April, 1908.

"Throughout the South a movement is going on which has all the enthusi. asm, the diversified agencies, the massing of forces, the raising and expenditure of money, the distribution of literature, the organization of conferences, the utilization of the press, which mark a great political campaign. Out of this united effort are coming increased appropriations by the States, a great extension of local taxation, improved schoolhouses, consolidated schools, great free summer schoools for teachers, improved courses, lengthened terms, higher

Upon some of these factors in our Southern situation I have spoken at length elsewhere. I make reference to them here only to illustrate the relevancy of the protest. The South is no longer a section with a single problem and an exclusive issue. The negro is here. His presence does touch and does particularly affect every custom and activity of the community or the State; for he is among us not as a negligible individual, but as an unforgetable and conspicuous multitude. He is not merely a man, he is a population. The issues which he touches-and there are few which he does not touch-arise within our thinking, and must so arise, not solely as issues of the person, but as also the issues of race, as principles both of private right and of public policy. That, fortunately or unfortunately, is his fate; and it should not be forgotten that it is also ours.

While, therefore, the negro population is one of the larger factors in our situation, and while its presence gives a distinctive form to many of the customs and policies of the South, yet the relative, almost overshadowing, significance of the negro is not what it once was. That the change is of advantage to both our populations it would not be difficult to show. I now pause only to dwell upon the fact itself. Race friction, such as now exists, is not an evidence that "things at the South" are "getting worse," for there are other things at the South, broader and more varied issues than the familiar antagonisms between race and race. Even though the friction between white man and black man may be upon the increase, "things at the South" may, upon the whole, be doing well; the total movement of our social and political changes may be forward rather than backward. If so, if the deeper movement of the total current be outward, be into a region of broader margins and happier horizons, then the chafing and corroding elements upon its surface may find a just detachment, a wholesome peace in the very largeness of our more varied life. If the South, in this broader view, represent a move

salaries, better teaching, expert supervision. This is the most hopeful feature of the educational progress for the year; and at the meeting of the National Educational Association in New England, here in this city of the Puritans, it is an especial privilege to award the well-earned palm of greatest educational progress during the year to the splendid labors of our brothers and sisters of the South."-William DeWitt Hyde, D. D., President of Bowdoin College, on the Educational Progress of the Year, National Educational Association, Boston, Mass., 1903.