But to clear eyes, looking into the future, more even than this appears to be necessary. Austria will be required to bring with her, not merely all her present possessions, but also her reversionary prospects, contingent remainders, and all and sundry her rights of action throughout the whole Balkan peninsula, which sooner or later must either accept the hegemony of the German Empire or submit to annexation at the sword's point. Advantageous as it would be for the Fatherland to obtain great harbours for her commerce at the head of the Adriatic, these acquisitions might easily become valueless in practice if some rival barred the right of entry through the Straits of Otranto. Salonica again, in her snug and sheltered corner of the Aegean, is essential as the natural entrepôt for the trade of Asia Minor and the East; while there can be no hope, until the mouths of the Danube, as well as the Dardanelles and the Bosphorus, are firmly held, of turning the Black Sea into a Germanic lake. The absorption of the Balkan peninsula, involving {100} as it must the occupation of Constantinople and European Turkey, would carry with it, as a natural consequence, the custody of the Sultan and the control of his Asiatic dominions. These vast territories which extend from Smyrna to the Caucasus, from Syria to the Persian Gulf, from the Black Sea to the Gulf of Aden, contain some of the richest and most fertile tracts upon the surface of the globe. Massacre, misrule, and oppression have indeed converted the greater part of these regions into a state hardly to be distinguished from the barest deserts of Arabia. But a culture which has lapsed through long neglect may be reclaimed by new enterprise. All that is required to this end is such shelter and encouragement as a stable government would afford. What more suitable instrument for this beneficent recovery than the peculiar genius of the Teuton race? Would not the whole world gain by the substitution of settled order for a murderous anarchy, of tilth and industry for a barren desolation? The waters of Tigris and Euphrates are still sweet. It needs but the energy and art of man to lead them in channelled courses, quenching the longings of a thirsty land, and filling the Mesopotamian waste with the music of a myriad streams. The doom of Babylon is no curse eternal. It awaits but the sword of Siegfried to end the slumbers of two thousand years. Where great cities and an ancient civilisation lie buried under drifted sand, great cities may be raised once more, the habitations of a hardier race, the seminaries of a nobler civilisation.