last drop had to be absorbed or Bulgaria would not be satisfied. When the Turkish delegates were thus startled away and all the pressure of European diplomacy was being brought to bear upon the Turkish Government to bring them back to the point, Bulgaria threatened publicly to break up the Conference and resume the war. Europe was given a short time-limit in which to act. M. Venizuelos, Prime Minister of Greece, has proved in his own country a great capacity for good government and wise diplomacy. There was a strong movement made at the outset of the Balkan Peace Conference to have him appointed head of the Balkan delegation. Success in that would have made the chances of peace better; and probably he had an expectation of being chosen as being the senior in official rank of all those present. But the jealousy and distrust of Greece was great: and M. Venizuelos did not prove himself the man of genius who could overcome the handicap which his nationality imposed. True, the task was almost impossible. But still nearer to the impossible would it be now to unite again the warring factions in the Balkans. M. Venizuelos, of the highest talent though he be, will not be the maker of a Balkan Confederation. M. Nikolitch, President of the Serbian Parliament, is an amiable and clever man with far more culture than is usual in the Balkans. He has translated English classics into the Serbian tongue, and is an industrious student of social and political philosophy. But he has nothing of the brute force that is needed to control the warring passions of the Balkan States. As the Minister of a Balkan Union to a great Power he would be admirable, for he has tact and wit, and a knowledge of the value of truth. When it was made plain that Austria was to have her way and Serbia no territory on the Adriatic, the disappointment of Serbia was bitter: and there was some special blame of Great Britain that she "had not considered her obvious interests," and brought this friendly little state to the sea. M. Nikolitch had the diplomat's faculty of taking a defeat smilingly. "The most unhappy thing about it," he said to me, "is that now Serbia will not have England on her frontier." It was a neat touch to speak of the sea as British territory. There remains to be considered M. Take Jonescu, who is credited with the chief share in the unscrupulous diplomacy which has made Roumania for the while paramount in the Balkans. It was certainly a masterpiece of Machiavellianism, applying the tenets of "The Prince" with cold precision, and marks its author as the master mind of the Balkans to-day. Give such a man a good soldier people to follow him and an honest purpose, and a Balkan Confederation might be achieved, with some further blood-letting perhaps. But it is not possible to believe that the Roumanians, frivolous, pleasure-loving, untenacious, could impose their will for long upon the coarser-fibred but more virile Slavs of the Peninsula.