In due course, the Treaty of Bucharest was signed by the contracting parties. It has never been officially recognized by the Great Powers, yet by many it is accepted as a basis for future readjustments in the Balkan Peninsula. Fallacies are of rapid growth, they none the less die hard. The negotiations had been, in fact, a diplomatic duel between Russia and Austria-Hungary, the first clash between two mighty movements--the “Drang nach Osten”[19] and Pan-Slavism. Austria-Hungary had won. The new frontiers were a triumph for her diplomacy. Servia, though victorious, was enclosed as in a net; on the East an irreconcilable Bulgaria; on the West, Albania torn by internal discord, and fast becoming an outpost of the Central Empires; on the South Greece, where German influence was daily gaining ground. Killed by its authors, the Balkan “Bloc” was dead. A new element had been introduced into the balance of power in Europe. Servia and Bulgaria were doubtful States no longer, they were in opposite camps, and, when the lassitude caused by two cruel wars had passed, they could be set at each other’s throats again to fight for interests not their own. Great Britain had held aloof from the proceedings of the Conference. Our Minister in Bucharest had received instructions to take neither part nor lot in the negotiations; if called upon for an opinion he was to endorse that of his Russian colleague. If the British Government had any Balkan policy at all it was, apparently, a Russian policy, a vicarious partnership, an acquiescence in the pernicious doctrine that two wrongs may make a right. A gaping wound had been made in Europe’s side, the surgeons had met together at Bucharest, and fearing to probe had sewn it up with clumsy stitches. Wounds are not healed by surgery such as this, not only do they open up again, their poison spreads, attains some vital organ, and causes death. Good surgery needs knowledge, foresight, courage, the power and will to act. The men, who from ignorance or inertia neglected and dallied with the Balkan problem, were scarcely less guilty than the criminals who, of set purpose, made a peace which sowed the seeds of war. During the summer of 1913 a spell of intense heat occurred in the fertile plains of the Danube valley. In every village dirt and insanitary conditions encouraged flies, winged insects swarmed by night and day, revelling in filth and carrying disease. The Rumanian peasants who had marched into Bulgaria had been attacked by a more deadly enemy than the Bulgarian hosts--the cholera microbe pursued them to their homes; the malady assumed an epidemic form and raged at first unchecked.