Mr. George Macaulay Trevelyan, speaking in the Union last night, gave a brilliant description of present social and political conditions in the Balkan peninsula. Coming almost directly from Servia, where he has travelled and studied conditions during the past few months, Mr. Trevelyan told of the terrible epidemic of typhus fever which is now raging there, and of the courageous work which is being done to combat it by British and American doctors and nurses.

The fact that racial and political boundaries differ widely is one of the great causes of disturbance in the Balkan countries and their neighbors today. This distortion of boundaries is due to historical causes. Since Austria drove the Turks from Hungary, she has continually attempted to check the southern Slav, grasping territory whenever possible. During the nineteenth century, Servia, Greece, Roumania, and Bulgaria freed themselves from the Turk, and by a concerted effort in 1912, almost drove him from Europe.

Although greatly oppressed in the past, the Serbs are a splendid people. The people are very democratic (there is no gentry or merchant class), and there is no industrialism, owing to the absence of routes for trade with the outside world. The spirit of nationality in them was brought to a head by the annexation of Bosnia by Austria in 1908, and resulted in the training of an army which has defeated Turkey, Bulgaria and Austria.