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piecemeal to the territory of her allies or to Egypt, as the Japanese did to Korea. Her military policy need not therefore be complicated by the organisation of her forces for the defensive as well as the offensive, which has been the ruin of her army from time immemorial. In other words, we have gained the great object of war preparation both for the army and the navy in the ability to organise on a purely offensive basis. It is hard to think that the country which is so favourably circumstanced will permit a government to throw all its advantages into the lap of a rival Power, by an inadequate standard of preparation for her Navy. And yet the spectacle of political parties, turning eyes inwards to social questions instead of outwards to world issues, when joined to the timidity of statesmen and publicists who have stimulated a cult for defensive rather than offensive warfare, is a melancholy reminder of the partial truth of Lord Palmerston's aphorism that opinions are stronger than armies, since within a nation they can overthrow its fighting force.

Art. 9.-THE RUMANIAN FACTOR IN THE BALKAN PROBLEM.

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THE grounds upon which the Rumanian Government bases its claim to territorial compensation from Bulgaria are of an entirely practical nature. The rectification of the Dobrudja frontier is described as indispensable to the security of the trans-Danubian kingdom. The necessity for such a demand, it is affirmed, is not of Rumania's own creation, but the logical consequence of a political crime committed against her by Russia in 1878, when the valuable assistance rendered by the Rumanian army to Russia in her war against Turkey was rewarded by the loss of Bessarabia-a Rumanian province of which the Russians, with a cynicism rare even in Eastern Europe, robbed their allies-and the grant, in exchange, of the Bulgarian district of Dobrudja, which Rumania did not covet. the time the trans-Danubian kingdom was obliged to bow to the will of the Powers, as expressed in the Treaty of Berlin, and it tried to make the best of a very bad bargain by constructing the port of Constantza at an immense cost. In the absence, however, of a defensible frontier, and in view of the fear that Bulgaria will one day endeavour to recover the territory taken from her in 1878, the Bucharest Government cannot but feel its position precarious; and it is the duty of the Powers which have placed it in that position to strengthen it by a new delimitation. As long as the status quo established by the Treaty of Berlin remained in substance inviolate, Rumania refrained from raising a question calculated to cause a disturbance. But since the order of things has been completely altered by the Balkan Allies, and to their enormous advantage, equity, expediency and necessity alike dictate the voluntary compensation which Rumania, but for her deference to the Powers and her regard for peace, could have seized by force of arms.

Such is the Rumanian case as set forth by the Rumanian Government. But, in addition to this official plea, there is another claim which the Rumanian press has loudly advocated during the last fifty years, and perhaps never more loudly than at the present moment. It is a claim based on the argument that, owing to the

conquests effected by Bulgars, Serbs, and Greeks, the Rumanians are losing a large section of their own racenamely, the Kutzo-Vlachs; a Romance-speaking population scattered along the mountain ranges and valleys of the Balkan Peninsula from Olympus to Rhodope in one direction, from Pindus to Shar Dagh in another. The most important groups of this population to be found at the present day are in Ætolia and Acarnania, in Thessaly, in Western Macedonia, and in Epirus; but smaller detachments dot Albania, Servia, and Bulgaria. All these fragmentary colonies, though widely separated in space, present in their character and mode of living a uniformity that marks them out as a homogeneous branch of the semi-Latinised family of nations which at one time inhabited the Eastern Roman Empire. They live partly as hardy shepherds who wander with their flocks and herds over the plains in winter, and over the green uplands in summer, partly as settled communities engaged in commerce and industry. Whether nomad or stationary, they are distinguished by a spirit of enterprise and thrift which secures to them a degree of prosperity quite out of proportion to their numbers.

What their exact numbers are, in a part of the globe where a census in the western sense of the word is practically unknown, and where people prefer to go to their imagination for their figures as for their facts, it would be hazardous to say; and the difficulty is increased, first, by the erratic habits of the race, and secondly, by the gross disingenuousness of such statistics as are available. The British Minister at Bucharest a few years ago tried to obtain some light on the subject, and the measure of his success is recorded in a letter to Lord Lansdowne which runs as follows: The Kutzo-Vlachs are generally stated by Rumanians of the kingdom to number from 400,000 to 800,000; but I learn from a good Bulgarian authority that they number at most 100,000.'

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Greek authorities, while differing from the Bulgarian on every other disputable point, agree with them in this matter, and many private observers who have endeavoured to solve the problem have arrived at results approximating the Greco-Bulgarian rather than the Rumanian figure. However, the truth usually lies between extremes; and by halving the lowest estimate

put forward by the Rumanians and doubling the highest conceded by their rivals, we get a probable maximum of some 200,000 souls.

Everything about the race, beyond its existence, is as nebulous and vague as its numbers are uncertain. The very name by which they are known to the outside world is unknown to themselves; Vlach (or Wallach) being only a Slavonic modification of a Germanic term (philologically identical with our familiar 'Welsh') by which the Teutonic invaders of the Roman Empire designated impartially all the Latin-speaking regions of Europe, including Italy herself. Kutzo-Vlach is a specific variety of that generic term, and is variously derived from the Albanian kutzi ('little') or from the modern Greek kutzos ('lame'). If the former etymology is accepted, the Kutzo-Vlachs of to-day would seem to inherit the name of 'Little Vlachia' (Mixpoßraxía) by which the Vlach colonies in Etolia and Acarnania were designated by Byzantine writers in contradistinction to the 'Great Vlachia' (Meyaλoßraxía) in Thessaly. If, however, the second derivation is preferred, the term may be either a nickname alluding to the lisping pronunciation of the southern Vlachs, or a diminutive; kutzo in composite words denoting in Modern what the preposition Tò denoted in Ancient Greek-'somewhat,' 'little.' In that case Kutzo-Vlach would mean a 'Vlach in a small degree,' as distinguished from the pure Vlach of the north.

The historic antecedents of this mysterious population are, like its name and its numbers, a matter of speculation. The Vlachs flit across the pages of medieval literature one moment only to disappear the next. In the earliest mention made of them by the Byzantine writer Kedrenos (about A.D. 970), Vlach wayfarers are described as murdering the brother of the Bulgarian Tsar Samuel near Prespa in Western Macedonia. A hundred years later Anna Komnena speaks of the race as dominating the Pindus glens; and in the middle of the following century the Jewish traveller Benjamin of Tudela finds it established as an independent principality in the plain of Thessaly. About the same time we are told by the Byzantine historian, Niketas Khoniates, that the Vlachs were making their presence felt on the Balkan highlands.

In 1185 this branch of the family rose in revolt against the Eastern Emperor and, in alliance with the Bulgars, established a Vlacho-Bulgarian empire which endured till 1257. Meantime, their brethren in Thessaly, after having been for a time absorbed by the despotate of Epirus and then having regained their independence, were incorporated in the Servian Empire of Stephan Dushan (1336-56) which was overthrown by the Turks.

Such, in bare outline, is the fitful and meagre record of the southern Vlachs in that long period during which the Balkan Peninsula afforded a theatre for a perpetual warfare between Greek, Slav, Bulgar, Latin and Turk. From the final subjugation of the Peninsula in the 15th century till the middle of the 19th, they remained an integral portion of the conglomerate Orthodox community, under the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople, which was officially designated by the Ottoman conqueror as 'Millet Rûm,' or 'the Greek Nation.'

For the rest, that momentous political revolution did not affect the social status of the Kutzo-Vlachs. The more primitive members of the race continued to lead the pastoral existence which had long been theirs, changing their abode with the seasons and roaming up and down with their sheep and goats in search of pasture. The more progressive elements took a conspicuous part in the intellectual and economic revival which stirred the Greek rayahs in the 18th century and prepared the way for their national emancipation. The Kutzo-Vlach settlement of Moskhopolis in Epirus offers a brilliant illustration of that revival. From an obscure colony of shepherds it rose to the rank of a wealthy commercial and literary centre, boasting not only extensive trade with Western Europe, but also flourishing schools, a public library, and a printing press. Yannina, the capital of Epirus, also owed much of its contemporary fame as a seat of culture to Vlach energy, enterprise and intelligence. After the destruction of Moskhopolis by the Turco-Albanians, Metzovo, Krushevo, and especially Monastir, took its place and, despite all the unfavourable conditions created by maladministration and unrest, continue to prosper to this day.

Throughout the four centuries mentioned, the KutzoVlachs, while retaining their Latin idiom in varying

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