South of Albania and around the Aegean the coastal fringe is dominated by the Greek element, and the new Greece claims to include all these coastal lands and to have the reversion of Constantinople, the great inter-continental city which at the same time commands the way from the steppe-lands to the Great Sea. Constantinople is the more maritime successor of the less maritime Troy of antiquity, and this, in conjunction with its history as the basis of the Eastern Empire, the head-quarters of the Eastern Church, and the seat of the Caliphate of Islam, all seems to argue against its absorption in a nation-state organization and its government by trustees acting not less for Islam than for Europe. The problem of Constantinople is also that of the coastal fringe, wherever the interior is non-Greek. On the language basis the Greek claim is strong; on the economic basis, again, the traders have rights of protection, but the cutting off of the coast from the interior must be prejudicial to the latter. Unfortunately, a trusteeship for government is almost put out of the question by the fact that practically every European Great Power has intrigued for a paramount influence, and all are justly suspect. Thus both the national and the international solution of the problem of a political and social organization of Balkan life seem fraught with difficulty, and one can but urge the old, old argument against preaching 'Peace, peace', where there is no peace. The present hope would seem to be in the smaller nations of Europe and perhaps in the American powers, for Latin America seems likely to wish to play such a part in the reorganization of the world as its growing economic importance justifies. The real difficulties of the Balkan peoples are enhanced in every way by their disastrous political history, for none have, for centuries past, had reasonable opportunities of self-expression. They therefore lack the experience and the discipline of government, and they {85} have little effective written tradition, with the result that what is written now is often very different from the spoken language of the peasantry, and is correspondingly artificial and lacking in healthy standardization. One may contrast the good fortune of the Norwegians in having relatively peaceful opportunities of revival of folk life and in having the wise and luminous Bjornsen to develop literary expression in continuity with folk tradition. Of the Turk in Europe one cannot at present say much that is definite. He is largely Europeanized in physique, and it is doubtful whether much that is truly Turk remains in Europe outside eastern Thrace. The Muslim elements in Albania and Bosnia have other origins for the most part, as has been discussed. Constantinople and Adrianople are markedly Turk.