In Western Thrace the question is more difficult. The answer to it depends on whose statistics one thinks least unreliable, and largely on whether one counts the Pomaks as Bulgars or Turks. The Pomaks are rather less known to us than the tribes of Central Africa; but if one may judge of their sentiments today by what little is known of their behavior in the past, one would hesitate to put them down as Bulgarians. At any rate, one is faced here by Mr. Venizelos’ estimates: a total population of about 400,000, made up of 285,000 Turks, 70,000 Greeks, and 59,000 Bulgarians; and, on the other side, the Bulgarian census purporting to show 210,000 Turks, 185,000 Bulgarians (including 70,000 Pomaks) and only 32,000 Greeks. In fact the latest Bulgarian estimates do not admit the existence of any Greeks at all here: which leaves one free to make any one of several unpleasant conjectures as to what the Bulgars have done with them. A slight Greek majority over the Bulgarians is claimed by the one side, then; and a large Bulgarian preponderance is claimed by the other. The question also has an economic and a political aspect. If Bulgaria is deprived of Western Thrace, she will be shut off from the Aegean Sea, which certainly forms her shortest and most natural outlet to the Western world. It is true, as the Greeks point out, that Bulgaria has several ports on the Black Sea, and as the Straits are surely going to be placed under international control and freely opened to all nations, Bulgaria will not be cut off from external communications. Moreover, Greece is willing to offer her special commercial rights, to be defined by the Powers, in certain Greek ports on the Aegean. But this quite naturally does not satisfy the Bulgars. They maintain that if they were to be deprived of their one direct and secure access to the open sea, this would be a disaster and an affront from which their people would never recover. This raises, of course, the political question. From the standpoint of nationality, it would seem only just to award Eastern Thrace to Greece, and perhaps at least the southern half of Western Thrace as well. The Greeks ardently desire this, both for the sake of liberating their kinsmen, and also, doubtless, in order to build a bridge towards Constantinople, the glittering prize of the future, which is always dangling before Greek eyes. But beyond this narrow isthmus of Hellenism along the north Aegean coast, there would always be the lowering Bulgarian giant, thirsting to recover what he considers to be the key to his house. Whatever be the rights and wrongs in the case, a very severe strain is being put upon Bulgaria’s self-control by the present settlement of the Macedonian question. If, in addition, Bulgaria were to be permanently stripped of the territory she already possesses on the Aegean, the resulting dangers to the peace of the Balkans would be obvious.