"Balkans" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... itself to most English Liberals. But, as an ambassador paid to watch over British interests, he was guided by expediency rather than by sentiment. These interests, he was convinced, were more vitally affected in Central Asia than in the Balkans. He believed that, if British statesmen would recognize Russia's peculiar position in Bulgaria, the advance of Russian outposts towards India might be stayed, and the two great powers might work together all along the line. ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore
... with sorry humor in his face. "Do I need to make surer?" He nodded in the direction of the giant gateway. "They've had time to settle the divisions of the Balkans up there." ...
— The Palace of Darkened Windows • Mary Hastings Bradley
... voted among frantic disorder, the French and Dutch standing uproarious against eighteen nationalities. For on important points they vote so. And in this there is great cunning, for the organisers hold pocket boroughs among the Swiss, and Bulgarians, and Servians and other European kidlings of the Balkans. So one delegate may equal a hundred; Servia and Bulgaria may outvote France; a solitary Russian ...
— A Tramp's Notebook • Morley Roberts
... several divisions, to Great Britain, against a definite treaty, to hasten the Mesopotamian campaign would be a master-stroke of policy, we have to recall that Japan herself refused to send contingents to the Balkans, and is therefore looked upon as a semi-belligerent whose stature can at once be overtopped by the Chinese giant merely rising to ...
— Peking Dust • Ellen N. La Motte
... the accession of Italy to her enemies. Though Russia had won her freedom for Bulgaria in '76, no sentiment drew her to Russia's assistance when Russia was losing. No statesmanship is more matter of fact than that of the Balkans. Bulgaria had an old score to settle with Serbia, which had joined Rumania and Greece against her in making the Second Balkan War, after she had borne the brunt of the first against Turkey. Then, besides, the military temptation offered the Bulgarian staff was irresistible. Serbia ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume I (of 8) - Introductions; Special Articles; Causes of War; Diplomatic and State Papers • Various
... from the birth of the needle-gun. Saving only his ally, Keneu the Great War Eagle, there was no man higher in the craft than he, and he always opened his conversation with the news that there would be trouble in the Balkans in the spring. ...
— The Light That Failed • Rudyard Kipling
... dark-bearded man, big for the North-West Police. He had two hobbies. One was trouble in the Balkans, which he was always prophesying. The other was a passion for Sophocles, which he read in the original from a pocket edition. Start him on the chariot race in "Elektra" and he would spout it while he paced the cabin and gestured with flashing ...
— Man Size • William MacLeod Raine
... that pleasant person. There he is—Echt Deutsch—if anything ever was. Look at my son there! Do you see the two of them engaged in mortal combat? The thing's too ridiculous. The world grows sane. They may fight in the Balkans still; in many ways the Balkan States are in the very rear of civilisation; but to imagine decent countries like this or Germany going back to bloodshed! No.... When I see Rendezvous keeping it up and keeping it up, I begin to see just how poor ...
— Mr. Britling Sees It Through • H. G. Wells
... Maximum Expansion of the First World War—1918"—showed the black area trebled in size, crowding into the pale gold of France, thrusting a hungry arm across the Hellespont towards Bagdad, and, from the Balkans to the Baltic, blotting out all else save the flaming red of Bolshevist Russia, which spread over the Eastern half of Europe like a pool ...
— City of Endless Night • Milo Hastings
... a great country and I want to ask all the natives if they know "Stenie" Bonsal. They are all his friends and so are the "Balkans," and all the little Balkans. Nobody wears European clothes here. They are all as foreign and native and picturesque as they can be, the women with big silver plates over their stomachs and the men in sheepskin ...
— Adventures and Letters • Richard Harding Davis
... into you. It has done me no end of good. I leave for the East to-morrow. Is there any possibility of seeing you in the Balkans this fall?" ...
— A Splendid Hazard • Harold MacGrath
... was as follows. Before the War he had had no briefs, but had always had a conscience. A hopeless state of affairs. Then he went to the War and shed his conscience somewhere in the Balkans. So far so good. But, when he was demobilised and began to take stock of what had been happening at home in the meanwhile, he found to his horror that a conscience had again been thrust upon him by the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, June 11, 1919 • Various
... entry: "K—— is absolutely opposed to taking any part in this business.... Will not raise a hand without the sanction of CHARLES.... Looks as though I'll have to bring pressure on these despairing creatures.... They wanted the Balkans,—that was the deal in the Black Forest,—and because some one doesn't hand it to them on a silver platter they complain of der Grosse General Stab's neglect!... At two I get my answer.... If O.K. I'll be in Odessa in 48 hours unless that veiled minx of ...
— Rescuing the Czar - Two authentic Diaries arranged and translated • James P. Smythe
... the Balkans. Notes of a Visit to the District of Philippopolis in 1876. With a Map and Illustrations from Photographs. Crown ...
— Legends of the Saxon Saints • Aubrey de Vere
... broke out with Persia, the result of which was that the latter power was compelled to cede Erivan and the country as far as the Araxes (or Aras). Russia also made further additions to her territory by the treaty of Adrianople in 1829, after Diebich had crossed the Balkans. In 1830, the great Polish rebellion broke out, which was crushed after much bloodshed in Sept. 1831, by the capture of Warsaw. In 1849, the Russians assisted Austria in crushing the revolt of her Hungarian ...
— Russia - As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Various
... possibly have liked Gorman's manner. No public men discuss serious and confidential matters with this kind of flippancy. But he had been obliged to meet even more disconcerting people in the Balkans. He prided himself on being able to negotiate with men of any ...
— The Island Mystery • George A. Birmingham
... Bulgars, a Central Asian Turkic tribe, merged with the local Slavic inhabitants in the late 7th century to form the first Bulgarian state. In succeeding centuries, Bulgaria struggled with the Byzantine Empire to assert its place in the Balkans, but by the end of the 14th century the country was overrun by the Ottoman Turks. Bulgaria regained its independence in 1878, but having fought on the losing side in both World Wars, it fell within the Soviet sphere of influence and became a People's Republic in 1946. ...
— The 2003 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... whole length of Hungary and Transylvania; I shall only stay a few days in Bucharest and shall then dash off straight for Constantinople; I have no time to lose as there is a high ridge of mountains to cross called the Balkans, where the winter commences at the beginning of September. I thought you would be glad to hear from me, on which account I write. I sent off a letter about a week ago from Klausenburg, which I hope you will receive. I have written various times from Hungary, though ...
— George Borrow and His Circle - Wherein May Be Found Many Hitherto Unpublished Letters Of - Borrow And His Friends • Clement King Shorter
... semi-speculative kind, the prospects of which have not been so well tested that the shareholders are at least bound to have a fair chance of success. The ideals of the issuing houses have so far advanced since the days of the Honduras scandal, that in the time of the late war in the Balkans none could be found to father any financial operation in London on behalf of any of the warring peoples. It only remains for the education of the investor to continue the progress that it has lately made, for the waste of ...
— International Finance • Hartley Withers
... miles. It says, "All European Turkey could now be accommodated comfortably between the Landsend and the Tamar, Cornawal alone exceeding its total area and but for its alliance with Germany, Turkey could have been assured of retaining at least sixty thousand square miles of the Eastern Balkans." I do not know whether the Chronicle view is generally shared. Is it by way of punishment that Turkey is to undergo such shrinkage, or is it because justice demands it? If Turkey had not made the mistake of joining Germany, would ...
— Freedom's Battle - Being a Comprehensive Collection of Writings and Speeches on the Present Situation • Mahatma Gandhi
... Servia, Herzegovina, and Montenegro. In the month of April, 1877, the Russian army crossed the frontier. Then came the capture of Nikopolis, the repulse at Plevna, the battle of Shipka Pass, another and successful battle of Plevna, the storming of Kars, and then, the Balkans passed,—an advance upon Constantinople. On the 29th of January the last shot was fired. The Ottoman Empire had been shaken into submission, and was absolutely at the mercy of the Tsar, who dictated the following terms: The erection of Bulgaria into an autonomous tributary ...
— A Short History of Russia • Mary Platt Parmele
... like them in the world. That is why I have suggested a note of nationalism rather than patriotism for the English; the power of seeing their nation as a nation and not as the nature of things. We say of some ballad from the Balkans or some peasant costume in the Netherlands that it is unique; but the good things of England really are unique. Our very isolation from continental wars and revolutionary reconstructions have kept them unique. The particular kind of beauty there ...
— What I Saw in America • G. K. Chesterton
... has ceased to be controlled by her Teutonic population. She is at the mercy of the Slavs, both inside and outside of her empire. She is abandoned by Roumania, who is seeking the support of Russia. She is detested by the Serbians, who have the best organized army in the Balkans. It would have been the vital interest of Austria to win over Serbia, and it would have been so easy to win her over. An equitable treaty of commerce, the concession of a port on the Adriatic, and Serbia would have become the ally of Austria. Serbia was prepared ...
— German Problems and Personalities • Charles Sarolea
... had the Balkans to do with the thoughts that must have been rolling at the back of the man's mind? I was both disappointed and relieved. I expected him to resume the personal talk, and I dreaded lest he should entrust me with embarrassing confidences. After ...
— The Red Planet • William J. Locke
... by accident, happen to be thrust into the position of leaders, when at the most they only guide to the least harm forces which can no more be resisted permanently than can gravitation. Such would have been the role of Nicholas, guiding to a timely end the irresistible course of events in the Balkans, which his opponents sought to withstand, but succeeded only in prolonging and aggravating. He is honored now by those who see folly in the imperial aspirations of Mr. Joseph Chamberlain, and piracy in Mr. Cecil Rhodes; ...
— The Interest of America in Sea Power, Present and Future • A. T. Mahan
... Mecklenburg cross-country? Hadn't she flirted outrageously with the French attache and deliberately turned her back on the Russian minister, at the very moment, too, when negotiations were going on between Russia and Barscheit relative to a small piece of land in the Balkans? And, most terrible of all to relate, hadn't she ridden a shining bicycle up the Koenigsstrasse, in broad daylight, and in bifurcated skirts, besides? I shall never forget the indignation of the press at the ...
— The Princess Elopes • Harold MacGrath
... advance for two weeks and gave time to the English and French armies to rally. For her pains she has been conquered and ruined. Servia began the war by an atrocious crime, and as reparation for it might weaken Russia's aims in the Balkans, she was encouraged to resist. She, too, has played her temporary role and has followed in the wake of Belgium. Montenegro is the next to go; and it would seem that the great belligerent nations look to themselves only, and ...
— Six days of the Irish Republic - A Narrative and Critical Account of the Latest Phase of Irish Politics • Louis Redmond-Howard
... II fought his famous battle at Kadesh the Hittite king included among his allies the Aramaeans from Arabia, and other mercenaries like the Dardanui and Masa, who represented the Thraco-Phrygian peoples who had overrun the Balkans, occupied Thrace and Macedonia, and crossed into Asia Minor. In time the Hittite confederacy was broken up by the migrating Europeans, and their dominant tribe, the Muski[416]—the Moschoi of the Greeks and the ...
— Myths of Babylonia and Assyria • Donald A. Mackenzie
... history, the Jugo-Slav movement is a miracle. It is the story of a nation which entered its new home in the Balkans in the seventh century and became divided geographically and politically, in faith and written language, and in economic and social life, until at last its spokesmen could truthfully say that it was divided into thirteen separate administrative units dependent upon fifteen legislative ...
— The Russian Revolution; The Jugo-Slav Movement • Alexander Petrunkevitch, Samuel Northrup Harper,
... the end yet, of all this death and dying: for the Crimson Tide, washing through Russia, eastward, seethed and eddied among the wrecks of empires, lapping Poland's bones, splashing over the charred threshold of the huns, creeping into the Balkans, crawling toward Greece and Italy, menacing Scandinavia, and arousing the stern watchers along the French frontier—the ultimate eastward barrier ...
— The Crimson Tide • Robert W. Chambers
... college professor who saw war service in France and relief administration work in the Balkans. His gifts as a delightful writer will be apparent now that his book of travels, Old Morocco and the Forbidden Atlas, is out. This book, unlike the conventional travel book, has the qualities of a good story. There is colour and adventure. There ...
— When Winter Comes to Main Street • Grant Martin Overton
... world thinks thus of things. The sinister events in the Balkans convey no suggestions of danger, and only matter in that they could upset a Carlsbad cure! Alas! how sound asleep these splendid ...
— The Price of Things • Elinor Glyn
... Landi, across the table. 'Politics, and geography! Fancy, Meetchel, Mrs Ottley doesn't know anything about the Balkans!' ...
— Love at Second Sight • Ada Leverson
... started a revolt against the Turks, but he had been defeated by his enemies and had been murdered by one of his supposed friends, the rival Servian leader, called Milosh Obrenovich, (who became the founder of the Obrenovich dynasty) and the Turks had continued to be the undisputed masters of the Balkans. ...
— The Story of Mankind • Hendrik van Loon
... submerged under a deluge of heathenism, and the old Latin culture was swept away. The tradition of ancient Greece still lingered at Constantinople behind the wall of the Balkans, but it had no influence at all on the northern nations beyond the wall. Ireland was thus the one exception, the ark of safety for the old wisdom and beauty of classical days. And from Ireland, when the tide of heathen invasion slackened, the light ...
— Ireland, Historic and Picturesque • Charles Johnston
... a bland youth named Maynard, who was always in high spirits at breakfast, bored at lunch, 'frightfully bucked' by a cup of tea at four, and invariably sentimental after dinner; 'it would do these nasty little Balkans a lot of good to hold 'em all under ...
— The Parts Men Play • Arthur Beverley Baxter
... and I told him that at St. Petersburg the opinion very general among the more thoughtful members of the diplomatic corps was that war was not imminent; that the Czar, having himself seen the cruelties of war during the late struggle in the Balkans, had acquired an invincible repugnance to it. He acquiesced in this, but said that it seemed monstrous to him that the peace of the empire and of Europe should depend upon so slender a thread as the will ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White Volume II • Andrew Dickson White
... and hated. The peace we make must remedy that wrong. It must deliver the once fair lands and happy peoples of Belgium and Northern France from the Prussian conquest and the Prussian menace, but it must deliver also the peoples of Austria-Hungary, the peoples of the Balkans and the peoples of Turkey, alike in Europe and Asia, from the impudent and alien dominion of the Prussian military ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Woodrow Wilson • Woodrow Wilson
... of the seven seas and giving new masters to the most ancient of empires. We see to-day fifteen nations engaged in the most terrific war in the history of the human race and trace its origin to the bullet of a madman fired in the Balkans. It is true that the flintlock gun at Lexington was not the first, nor yet the last, to fire a "shot heard round the world." It was not the distance it travelled, but the message it carried which has marked it out above all other human events. It was the character of ...
— Have faith in Massachusetts; 2d ed. - A Collection of Speeches and Messages • Calvin Coolidge
... ethical principle, and which involved the hegemony of Europe. Germany's domination of Europe had been established when by the rattling of its saber it compelled Russia in 1908 to permit Austria to disturb the then existing status in the Balkans by the forcible annexation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and behind the Austrian-Servian question of 1914, arising out of the murder of the Crown Prince of Austria at Serajevo, was the determination of Germany and Austria to reassert that dominant position by compelling Russia to submit ...
— The Evidence in the Case • James M. Beck
... more arose. Modern civilization suits the Greek much more than it does the Turk. He can understand it and utilize it. Because of it he has risen and perchance will rise. The Greeks are by far the cleverest people in the Balkans, and are perhaps the cleverest of the ...
— Europe—Whither Bound? - Being Letters of Travel from the Capitals of Europe in the Year 1921 • Stephen Graham
... is—and I think he'll want it, too—you'd better work together on the main line of stuff, as we do here. Your letters on the side should be better than his, because you're a better writer. As for war stuff, Boylan is the old master— Peking, Manchuria and the Balkans—that I think of; also the Schmedding Polar Failure. That last was war—a spectacular ...
— Red Fleece • Will Levington Comfort
... replenished whenever necessary. It will be remembered that I had come unexpectedly and that I was not being entertained in a wealthy home, and this at a time when the only counter-attack on Germany's success in the Balkans was an increased amount of stories that ...
— The Land of Deepening Shadow - Germany-at-War • D. Thomas Curtin
... to be careful crossing the Balkans. I understand there are some British and French aircraft with the Serbians and Montenegrins. Look out ...
— The Boy Allies in the Balkan Campaign - The Struggle to Save a Nation • Clair W. Hayes
... Herzegovina, two Christian provinces under Turkish rule. The rebellious sentiment spread to Bulgaria, and in 1876 Turkey began a policy of repression so cruel as to make all Europe quiver with horror. Thousands of its most savage soldiery were let loose upon the Christian populations south of the Balkans, with full license to murder and burn, and a frightful carnival of torture and massacre began. More than a hundred towns were destroyed, and their inhabitants treated with revolting inhumanity. In the month of June, 1876, ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 8 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... Belgium. The balance of power still existed, but statesmen were ever uncertain as to whether such a relation of states was really conducive to peace or to war. A concert of the Great Powers resembling the Quadruple Alliance sought to regulate such vexing problems as were presented by the Balkans and China, but their concord was not loud enough to drown the notes ...
— The Path of Empire - A Chronicle of the United States as a World Power, Volume - 46 in The Chronicles of America Series • Carl Russell Fish
... counted the loss?" said the other. "The Balkans have long been the last surviving shred of happy hunting-ground for the adventurous, a playground for passions that are fast becoming atrophied for want of exercise. In old bygone days we had the wars in the Low Countries always at our doors, ...
— The Toys of Peace • Saki
... well-known authoress, whose works have attained a world-wide reputation, and, in addition to her travels in almost every corner of the globe, she has had actual experience of warfare at the bombardment of Rio, in the Balkans, the South African War, and, since September last, in Belgium and Flanders. In her capacity as ministrant to wounded soldiers she has gained a unique experience of the horrors of war, and in order to bring home the realities of the situation, at the instigation of Lady Bute, ...
— My War Experiences in Two Continents • Sarah Macnaughtan
... our Government to that point, the anti-British Pashas and the Gallic set in Egypt were jubilant. The Turkish Pashas and Beys were openly chuckling and romancing about unheard-of things. It is in Egypt, as it is in Armenia and was in the Balkans: the Turk is the enemy of good government and freedom for the people. A check to British policy and rule meant to them a possible return of the old corrupt days when they did as they liked, treating fellaheen and negroes as ...
— Khartoum Campaign, 1898 - or the Re-Conquest of the Soudan • Bennet Burleigh
... important source of otto of roses is a circumscribed patch of ancient Thrace or modern Bulgaria, stretching along the southern slopes of the central Balkans, and approximately included between the 25th and 26th degrees of east longitude, and the 42d and 43d of north latitude. The chief rose-growing districts are Philippopoli, Chirpan, Giopcu, Karadshah-Dagh, Kojun-Tepe, Eski-Sara, Jeni-Sara, ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 275 • Various
... met her. Then he cast himself, with a sort of frenzy, into the dissipation of Paris, trying to forget, to forget at any cost: failing in this, he resigned his position at the embassy, and went away to seek adventure, going to fight in the Balkans against the Russians, only to return weary and bored as he had departed, always invincibly and eternally haunted by the image of Marsa, an image sad as a lost love, and grave ...
— Prince Zilah, Complete • Jules Claretie
... Launay, late of the French army operating in the Balkans and, before that, of considerable distinction on the western front, leaned forward in his chair as he sat in the Franco-American banking house of Doolittle, Rambaud & Cie. in Paris. His booted and spurred heels were hooked over the rung of the chair, and his elbows, ...
— Louisiana Lou • William West Winter
... been removed. No better illustration could be given of the inadequate grasp of politics possessed by those whose peculiar business it should be to become expert in the science of cause and effect. In China, as in the Balkans, professional diplomacy errs so constantly because it has in the main neither the desire nor the training to study dispassionately from day to day all those complex phenomena which go to make up modern nationalism. Guided in its conduct almost entirely by a policy of personal predilections, ...
— The Fight For The Republic In China • B.L. Putnam Weale
... was now full of men fresh from the front. The casualties were endless. A thousand a night often along the French front—and yet no real advance. The far-flung battle was practically at a stand-still. And beyond, the chaos in the Balkans, the Serbian debacle! No—the world was full of lamentation, mourning and woe; and who could tell how Armageddon would turn? His quick mind travelled through all the alternative possibilities ahead, on fire for his country. But always, after each ...
— Missing • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... the wars through which we have lived in the last decade: in German Africa, in British Nigeria, in French and Spanish Morocco, in China, in Persia, in the Balkans, in Tripoli, in Mexico, and in a dozen lesser places—were not these horrible, too? Mind you, there were for most of these wars no ...
— Darkwater - Voices From Within The Veil • W. E. B. Du Bois
... Petersburg and made preparations to leave for the Balkans. The Russian Red Cross was sending out units to the Bulgarian Army. After returning from Kasan, Nelka stayed for a while at my mother's place in the country. This was a time when I was preparing for my entry examinations to the Lycee and she ...
— Nelka - Mrs. Helen de Smirnoff Moukhanoff, 1878-1963, a Biographical Sketch • Michael Moukhanoff
... delicate tact and a good deal of courage and resource, but which would, if successful, Rayne had said, mean that a loan of three millions would be raised in London, and that British influence would become paramount in that go-ahead country, which ere long must be the power of the Balkans. ...
— The Golden Face - A Great 'Crook' Romance • William Le Queux
... races of the Balkan Peninsula are a few Wallachs in Central Macedonia, and Greeks; these last inhabit Thessaly and the seaboard of Macedonia and of part of Roumelia. It is well said that Greek influence in the Balkans extends no further inland than ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose
... caused her by the termination of the World War, just as she was about to start for Europe as a canteen expert. She had even pined away for a time, and Braddock Washington had taken steps to promote a new war in the Balkans—but she had seen a photograph of some wounded Serbian soldiers and lost interest in the whole proceedings. But Percy and Kismine seemed to have inherited the arrogant attitude in all its harsh magnificence from their father. A chaste ...
— Tales of the Jazz Age • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... in the first six months of the war, from August 4, 1914, to February 1, 1915, includes the scenes of the fighting in the historic Balkans and in the Caucasus. But the eastern front proper is really that region where the Teutonic allies and the Russians opposed each other, forming a fighting line almost a thousand miles long. It stretches from rugged old Riga on the shores of the Baltic Sea in the far north, ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume II (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... Balkans; translated by Edna Worthley Underwood (Marshall Jones Company). This volume should be set beside the collection of "Czecho-Slovak Stories," which I have mentioned on an earlier page. Here will ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... Boche aviators on this front have had several months' experience in Russia or the Balkans. They train them there before they send them to the ...
— High Adventure - A Narrative of Air Fighting in France • James Norman Hall
... inheritance in an empire if he can be senior partner, but the struggles of Irish, Poles, Czechs, and South Slavs, the Zionist movement, the nationalistic stirrings in India, with their literary revivals, their fierce self-assertions, seem to point away from internationalism rather than toward it. The Balkans, in which Serb, Bulgar, Roumanian, and Greek have been developing this national consciousness, have been the ...
— The Ethics of Coperation • James Hayden Tufts
... the world counts things, not dishonestly; for more than one great minister in a notable country in Europe had commissioned him, more than one ruler and crowned head had used him when "there was trouble in the Balkans," or the "sick man of Europe" was worse, or the Russian Bear came prowling. His service had ever been secret service, when he lived the life of the caravan and the open highway. He had no stable place among the men of all nations, and yet secret rites and ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker |
