The relations between the Greeks and Bulgarians have for a long time precluded any possibility of agreement which might bring them to terms about Constantinople; besides, the support and maintenance of such a great city demands such financial means as would be impossible for either of these two smaller States, even if they should combine to provide them. Greece would certainly have historical, ecclesiastical and nationalist claims to Constantinople, but Russia has folder and better-founded claims than the Germans.
A kind of international régime in some form or other has often been proposed; but that would be only a procrastination of the real solution of the question, and would even be dangerous to the relations of the States in whose joint administration the city would be placed. From some quarters there comes a demand that Constantinople, when Russian, should become a free port on the analogy of the proposed Trieste and Fiume.
The fate of Constantinople is bound up with that of the Turkish Empire. The Russians and the Slavs are directly interested in Turkey, much more so than the Germans, because it was Turkey who, for hundreds of years, was an enemy to the Slavs in the Balkans and in Russia, and because some of the Serbs and Bulgars have accepted Mohammedanism.
With their original centre at Kiev, the Russians were first driven by Asiatic invaders to Moscow, and then by European enemies to Petrograd; but the South has always remained the real heart of Russia. It is the South which to-day provides the economic centre; the black southern soil provides Russia and Europe with wheat. South of Moscow is to be found the industrial centre of modern Russia; hence it is that more than 70 % of the grain of Russia has, in recent years, been exported from the southern as opposed to the Baltic ports. The Black Sea and the Dardanelles are of vital interest to Russia.
6. The Germans and Magyars exaggerate the nationalist questions and difficulties of Russia. In a new German publication (“La Russie et les peoples allogenes, par Inorodetz,” 1917) it is claimed that Russia contains 111 different nationalities, which constitute for her a grave and threatening problem. But this is only an attempt on the part of the Germans and Magyars to render their own anti-national policy less conspicuous.
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