The Baneful Balkans

Extract

Monitor Wyndup swore, he, at least, would avoid swift generalizations when he started on his combined honeymoon and political trip to the Continent. As writer of a remarkable letter on Road .Transport to the Limechester Gazette, he felt called upon to apply his insight to a wider field; and the conditions of South Eastern Europe clearly demanded what light he could throw on their problems. He was not one of those lightning tourists who confound Bucarest and Budapest, or Teschen with Wreschen (the latter being, of course, the Polish name for Warsaw); and he understood that the Balkan and Baltic Republics were to be kept quite distinct. Their fusion, he declared, would endanger the peace of Europe almost as much as the German Reich had done. Now, however, casting a discouraged look at the monotonous chairs and tables of the stereotyped, modern restaurant in the twenty-fourth town he had inspected, he found he was a little too early on the scene to guage things properly.

The inhabitants had not yet acquired English in spite of the war; and the occasional waiter who could speak to him in his own tongue, was astray on international relations.

‘I wish to Heaven,’ he said to Alice, ‘you could remember the place where we had that nice omelet, and that other place where we were cheated! And I wonder where we had better go next, if we are to manage seven countries properly in three weeks. There doesn’t seem much use in going to Macedonia just now when the Letts are, so to speak, out of hand, and the Yugoslovaks and Czechoslavs at each other’s throats about the Iron Gates !