The Balkan Situation.

New York Times 100 years ago today, October 16, 1912:
    Two Important facts in connection with the situation in European Turkey are reported this morning. One is that the preliminary treaty of peace between Turkey and Italy has been signed at Ouchy in Switzerland, where negotiations have been going on for some weeks. The second is that France has proposed to the other European Powers an immediate conference to deal with the pending war.
    Peace with Italy at this moment is of immense importance to Turkey. It formally closes a struggle that has been in the last degree mortifying and that at one time seriously threatened the very existence of the Government. Owing to the timely action of the Balkan Governments and Greece, the attention of the Turkish people was completely drawn from the situation in Tripoli and excitedly centred on the efforts of the Government to defend the country from threatened attack. A settlement which would a few weeks since have been humiliating to the Turkish Government and highly irritating to its subjects is now accepted with enthusiasm by the latter. It was doubtless in full consciousness of what was coming in the Italian direction and of the effect that it would have that Turkey made her courteous but proud answer to the collective note of the Powers.
    In this note the Turkish Government absolutely declined to accept foreign intervention in the matter of reforms, referred to the change in régime which resulted from the late revolution, attributed to the efforts of agitators much of the disorders that had taken place, and expressed its ability to deal adequately with the matter. It is not easy to see how the Government of Turkey could have taken any other stand. It must be remembered that the demands of the Balkan States had been submitted before the note of the Powers, and that the Powers had been entirely unable to prevent or postpone these demands. They were extreme. They began with the demobilization of the Turkish troops, went on to require the organization of the Christians in European Turkey in separate military divisions, the appointment of foreign Christian Governors, and the reorganization of the European provinces on a basis of ethnical unity. This amounts, in the actual distribution of the various races, to the erection of chaos into a system. So far as Turkey is concerned, it is simply an invitation to national suicide. Such terms might be accepted from a conqueror after a disastrous and complete defeat, but certainly not in advance of any struggle.
    The nature of the demands made on Turkey, despite all attempts to defer or modify them, with the determined rejection of these and of the note of the Powers, creates a situation of very grave character. It is so recognized in the proposition of France that it shall be dealt with at once by a general conference, before any new entanglements have arisen; in other words, before any new temptations have made themselves felt among the Powers.