If the sorry mess in the Near East is settled without war, we shall be told that a dreadful calamity has only been postponed; and for this doubtful victory France will have paid the price of loss of British support in wringing money out of Germany. If it leads to war, Great Britain fears the entry of Soviet Russia against her and uprisings in her Mohammedan possessions. The Bosphorus and the Dardanelles, so narrow that you can shoot an ordinary rifle from one continent to the other, so winding that cannon can rake a ship fore and aft as well as shell broadside at many places, afford the only outlet to the outside world for Bulgaria, Rumania, southern Russia, the Caucasus republics, and some of the largest and richest _vilayets_ of Turkey. For all Russia these waterways are the sole ice-free passage. They are the nearest and most practicable outlet for northern Persia and the khanates of central Asia. A considerable portion of the wheat supply of many European countries comes in normal times from southern Russia, while Europe learned to count upon the regular appearance on the market of the vast petroleum output of the Baku region of the Caucasus. The major portion of the trade of a region inhabited by one and a half times the population of the United States is carried through Black Sea ports. So important to the world’s well-being was the free passage between the Black Sea and the Mediterranean considered before the World War that Italy and the Balkan States, in their wars with Turkey, had to yield to the remonstrances of other nations and forego the advantage of bringing pressure to bear upon Turkey by attacking and blockading the Straits. Although during the nineteenth century the danger to the British Empire of the control of the Straits by an enemy power in time of war was never given a practical demonstration, it was vividly enough imagined for the British to have fought once (the Crimean War) and to have been ready to fight on two other occasions (Treaty of Unkiar-Skelessi, 1833, and Treaty of San Stefano, 1878) to prevent Russia from dominating the Straits.