The Times' correspondent at Belgrade states that arrange- ments have
been made for a meeting of the Princes of the States of the Bulgarian peninsula, and that arrangements for a league for mutual defence will shortly be completed. It is not likely that the meeting will come off as proposed, in October, or that the neighbouring Powers will as yet allow a strict league to be formed, but it is to this conclusion that everything Ought gradually to tend. The Balkan States, including Rou- mania, Servia, Bulgaria, Greece (as enlarged), and Montenegro, ought to be able to defend themselves very well. They could put 150,000 good and mobile troops into the field for defence, with a strong landwehr behind them, and such an army, organ- ised on the Roumanian plan, with good officers, and Prince Charles for commander-in-chief, could offer a stout resistance even to a first-class Power, and could defy Turkey. The difficulty of such a league would be the absence of a Federal Chief, who must be the Prince owning Constantinople, and the tendency of each individual State to strict alliance with some one great. Power.
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