The Balkan Wars 1912-1913

Project Gutenberg's The Balkan Wars: 1912-1913, by Jacob Gould Schurman

THE BALKAN WARS 1912-1913

JACOB GOULD SCHURMAN

THIRD EDITION 1916

Η Βαλκανική συμμαχία - σκίτσο εποχής

PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION

The interest in the Balkan Wars of 1912-1913 has exceeded the

expectations of the publishers of this volume. The first edition,

which was published five months ago, is already exhausted and a

second is now called for. Meanwhile there has broken out and is now

in progress a war which is generally regarded as the greatest of all

time--a war already involving five of the six Great Powers and three

of the smaller nations of Europe as well as Japan and Turkey and

likely at any time to embroil other countries in Europe, Asia, and

Africa, which are already embraced in the area of military

operations.

This War of Many Nations had its origin in Balkan situation. It

began on July 28 with the declaration of the Dual Monarchy to the

effect that from that moment Austria-Hungary was in a state of war

with Servia. And the fundamental reason for this declaration as

given in the note or ultimatum to Servia was the charge that the

Servian authorities had encouraged the Pan-Serb agitation which

seriously menaced the integrity of Austria-Hungary and had already

caused the assassination at Serajevo of the Heir to the Throne.

No one could have observed at close range the Balkan Wars of

1912-1913 without perceiving, always in the background and

occasionally in the foreground, the colossal rival figures of Russia

and Austria-Hungary. Attention was called to the phenomenon at

various points in this volume and especially in the concluding

pages.

The issue of the Balkan struggles of 1912-1913 was undoubtedly

favorable to Russia. By her constant diplomatic support she retained

the friendship and earned the gratitude of Greece, Montenegro, and

Servia; and through her championship, belated though it was, of the

claims of Roumania to territorial compensation for benevolent

neutrality during the war of the Allies against Turkey, she won the

friendship of the predominant Balkan power which had hitherto been

regarded as the immovable eastern outpost of the Triple Alliance.

But while Russia was victorious she did not gain all that she had

planned and hoped for. Her very triumph at Bukarest was a proof

that she had lost her influence over Bulgaria. This Slav state after

the war against Turkey came under the influence of Austria-Hungary,

by whom she was undoubtedly incited to strife with Servia and her

other partners in the late war against Turkey. Russia was unable to

prevent the second Balkan war between the Allies. The Czar's summons

to the Kings of Bulgaria and Servia on June 9, 1913, to submit, in

the name of Pan-Slavism, their disputes to his decision failed to

produce the desired effect, while this assumption of Russian

hegemony in Balkan affairs greatly exacerbated Austro-Hungarian

sentiment. That action of the Czar, however, was clear notification

and proof to all the world that Russia regarded the Slav States in

the Balkans as objects of her peculiar concern and protection.

The first Balkan War--the war of the Allies against Turkey--ended in

a way that surprised all the world. Everybody expected a victory for

the Turks. That the Turks should one day be driven out of Europe was

the universal assumption, but it was the equally fixed belief that

the agents of their expulsion would be the Great Powers or some of

the Great Powers. That the little independent States of the Balkans

should themselves be equal to the task no one imagined,--no one with

the possible exception of the government of Russia. And as Russia

rejoiced over the victory of the Balkan States and the defeat of her

secular Mohammedan neighbor, Austria-Hungary looked on not only with

amazement but with disappointment and chagrin.

For the contemporaneous diplomacy of the Austro-Hungarian government

was based on the assumption that the Balkan States would be

vanquished by Turkey. And its standing policy had been on the one

hand to keep the Kingdom of Servia small and weak (for the Dual

Monarchy was itself an important Serb state) and on the other hand

to broaden her Adriatic possessions and also to make her way through

Novi Bazar and Macedonia to Saloniki and the Aegean, when the time

came to secure this concession from the Sultan without provoking a

European war. It seemed in 1908 as though the favorable moment had

arrived to make a first move, and the Austro-Hungarian government

put forward a project for connecting the Bosnian and Macedonian

railway systems. But the only result was to bring to an end the

co-operation which had for some years been maintained between the

Austrian and Russian governments in the enforcement upon the Porte

of the adoption of reforms in Macedonia.

And now the result of the Balkan Wars of 1912-1913 was the practical

expulsion of Turkey from Europe and the territorial aggrandizement

of Servia and the sister state of Montenegro through the annexation

of those very Turkish domains which lay between the Austro-Hungarian

frontier and the Aegean. At every point Austro-Hungarian policies

had met with reverses.

Only one success could possibly be attributed to the diplomacy of

the Ballplatz. The exclusion of Servia from the Adriatic Sea and the

establishment of the independent State of Albania was the

achievement of Count Berchtold, the Austro-Hungarian Minister of

Foreign Affairs. The new State has been a powder magazine from the

beginning, and since the withdrawal of Prince William of Wied, the

government, always powerless, has fallen into chaos. Intervention on

the part of neighboring states is inevitable. And only last month

the southern part of Albania--that is, Northern Epirus--was occupied

by a Greek army for the purpose of ending the sanguinary anarchy

which has hitherto prevailed. This action will be no surprise to the

readers of this volume. The occupation, or rather re-occupation, is

declared by the Greek Government to be provisional and it is

apparently approved by all the Great Powers. Throughout the rest of

Albania similar intervention will be necessary to establish order,

and to protect the life and property of the inhabitants without

distinction of race, tribe, or creed. Servia might perhaps have

governed the country, had she not been compelled by the Great

Powers, at the instigation of Austria-Hungary, to withdraw her

forces. And her extrusion from the Adriatic threw her back toward

the Aegean, with the result of shutting Bulgaria out of Central

Macedonia, which was annexed by Greece and Servia presumably under

arrangements satisfactory to the latter for an outlet to the sea at

Saloniki. The war declared by Austria-Hungary against Servia may be

regarded to some extent as an effort to nullify in the interests of

the former the enormous advantages which accrued directly to Servia

and indirectly to Russia from the Balkan Wars of 1912-1913. That

Russia should have come to the support of Servia was as easy to

foresee as any future political event whatever. And the action of

Germany and France once war had broken out between their respective

allies followed as a matter of course. If the Austro-German

Alliance wins in the War of Many Nations it will doubtless control

the eastern Adriatic and open up a way for itself to the Aegean.

Indeed, in that event, German trade and German political influence

would spread unchallenged across the continents from the North Sea

to the Persian Gulf and the Indian Ocean. Turkey is a friend and

ally; but even if Turkey were hostile she would have no strength to

resist such victorious powers. And the Balkan States, with the

defeat of Russia, would be compelled to recognize Germanic

supremacy.

If on the other hand the Allies come out victorious in the War of

Many Nations, Servia and perhaps Roumania would be permitted to

annex the provinces occupied by their brethren in the Dual Monarchy

and Servian expansion to the Adriatic would be assured. The Balkan

States would almost inevitably fall under the controlling influence

of Russia, who would become mistress of Constantinople and gain an

unrestricted outlet to the Mediterranean through the Bosphorus, the

Sea of Marmora, and the Dardanelles.

In spite of themselves the destiny of the peoples of the Balkans is

once more set on the issue of war. It is not inconceivable,

therefore, that some or all of those States may be drawn into the

present colossal conflict. In 1912-1913 the first war showed

Bulgaria, Greece, Montenegro, and Servia allied against Turkey; and

in the second war Greece, Montenegro, and Servia were joined by

Roumania in the war against Bulgaria, who was also independently

attacked by Turkey. What may happen in 1914 or 1915 no one can

predict. But if this terrible conflagration, which is already

devastating Europe and convulsing all the continents and vexing all

the oceans of the globe, spreads to the Balkans, one may hazard the

guess that Greece, Montenegro, Servia, and Roumania will stand

together on the side of the Allies and that Bulgaria if she is not

carried away by marked Austro-German victories will remain

neutral,--unless indeed the other Balkan States win her over, as

they not inconceivably might do, if they rose to the heights of

unwonted statesmanship by recognizing her claim to that part of

Macedonia in which the Bulgarian element predominates but which was

ceded to her rivals by the Treaty of Bukarest.

But I have said enough to indicate that as in its origin so also in

its results this awful cataclysm under which the civilized world is

now reeling will be found to be vitally connected with the Balkan

Wars of 1912-1913. And I conclude with the hope that the present

volume, which devotes indeed but little space to military matters

and none at all to atrocities and massacres, may prove helpful to

readers who seek light on the underlying conditions, the causes, and

the consequences of those historic struggles. The favor already

accorded to the work and the rapid exhaustion of the first edition*

seem to furnish some justification of this hope.

JACOB GOULD SCHURMAN.

November 26, 1914.

* The present work is rather, a reprint than a new edition, few

changes having been made except the correction of typographical

errors.

INTRODUCTION

The changes made in the map of Europe by the Balkan Wars of

1912-1913 were not merely the occasion but a cause and probably the

most potent, and certainly the most urgent, of all the causes that

led to the World War which has been raging with such titanic fury

since the summer of 1914.

Had the Balkan Allies after their triumph over Turkey not fallen out

amongst themselves, had there been no second Balkan War in 1913, had

the Turkish provinces wrested from the Porte by the united arms of

Bulgaria, Greece, Servia, and Montenegro been divided amongst the

victors either by diplomacy or arbitration substantial justice would

have been done to all, none of them would have been humiliated, and

their moderation and concord would have commended their achievement

to the Great Powers who might perhaps have secured the acquiescence

of Austria-Hungary in the necessary enlargement of Servia and the

expansion of Greece to Saloniki and beyond.

But the outbreak of the second Balkan War nullified all these fair

prospects. And Bulgaria, who brought it on, found herself encircled

by enemies, including not only all her recent Allies against Turkey,

but also Turkey herself, and even Roumania, who had remained a

neutral spectator of the first Balkan War. Of course Bulgaria was

defeated. And a terrible punishment was inflicted on her. She was

stripped of a large part of the territory she had just conquered

from Turkey, including her most glorious battle-fields; her original

provinces were dismembered; her extension to the Aegean Sea was

seriously obstructed, if not practically blocked; and, bitterest and

most tragic of all, the redemption of the Bulgarians in Macedonia,

which was the principal object and motive of her war against Turkey

in 1912, was frustrated and rendered hopeless by Greek and Servian

annexations of Macedonian territory extending from the Mesta to the

Drin with the great cities of Saloniki, Kavala, and Monastir, which

in the patriotic national consciousness had long loomed up as fixed

points in the "manifest destiny" of Bulgaria.

That the responsibility for precipitating the second Balkan War

rests on Bulgaria is demonstrated in the latter portion of this

volume. Yet the intransigent and bellicose policy of Bulgaria was

from the point of view of her own interests so short-sighted, so

perilous, so foolish and insane that it seemed, even at the time, to

be directed by some external power and for some ulterior purpose. No

proof, however, was then available. But hints of that suspicion were

clearly conveyed even in the first edition of this volume, which, it

may be recalled, antedates the outbreak of the great European War.

Thus, on page 103, the question was put:

"Must we assume that there is some ground for suspecting that

Austria-Hungary was inciting Bulgaria to war?"

And again, on page 108, with reference to General Savoff's order

directing the attack on the Greek and Servian forces which initiated

the second Balkan War, the inquiry was made:

"Did General Savoff act on his own responsibility? Or is there

any truth in the charge that King Ferdinand, after a long

consultation with the Austro-Hungarian Minister, instructed the

General to issue the order?"

These questions may now be answered with positive assurance. What

was only surmise when this volume was written is to-day indubitable

certainty. The proof is furnished by the highest authorities both

Italian and Russian.

When the second Balkan War broke out San Giuliano was Prime Minister

of Italy. And he has recently published the fact that at that

time--the summer of 1913--the Austro-Hungarian government

communicated to the Italian government its intention of making war

on Servia and claimed under the terms of the Triple Alliance the

co-operation of Italy and Germany. The Italian government repudiated

the obligation imputed to it by Austria-Hungary and flatly declared

that the Triple Alliance had nothing to do with a war of aggression.

That Austria-Hungary did not proceed to declare war against Servia

at that time--perhaps because she was discouraged by Germany as well

as by Italy--makes it all the more intelligible, in view of her

bellicose attitude, that she should have been urgent and insistent

in pushing Bulgaria forward to smite their common rival.

This conclusion is confirmed by the positive statement of the

Russian government. The communication accompanying the declaration

of war against Bulgaria, dated October 18, contains the following

passage:

"The victorious war of the united Balkan people against their

ancient enemy, Turkey, assured to Bulgaria an honorable place in

the Slavic family. But under Austro-German suggestion, contrary

to the advice of the Russian Emperor and without the knowledge of

the Bulgarian government, the Coburg Prince on June 29, 1913,

moved Bulgarian armies against the Serbians."

The "Coburg Prince" is of course Ferdinand, King of Bulgaria. That

he acted under Austro-Hungarian influences in attacking his Balkan

Allies on that fateful Sunday, June 29, 1913, is no longer

susceptible of doubt. But whatever other inferences may be drawn

from that conclusion it certainly makes the course of Bulgaria in

launching the second Balkan War, though its moral character remains

unchanged, look less hopeless and desperate than it otherwise

appeared. Had she not Austria-Hungary behind her? And had not

Austria-Hungary at that very time informed her Italian ally that she

intended making war against Servia?

But, whatever the explanation, the thunderbolt forged in 1913 was

not launched till July 28, 1914, when Austria-Hungary formally

declared war on Servia. The occasion was the assassination, a month

earlier, of the heir to the throne, Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his

wife, the Duchess of Hohenburg, in the streets of Sarajevo. The

occasion, however, was not the cause of the war. The cause was that

which moved the Dual Monarchy to announce a war on Servia in the

summer of 1913, namely, dissatisfaction with the territorial

aggrandizement of Servia as a result of the first Balkan War and

alarm at the Pan-Serb agitation and propaganda which followed the

Servian victories over Turkey. These motives had subsequently been

much intensified by the triumph of Servia over Bulgaria in the

second Balkan War. The relations of Austria-Hungary to Servia had

been acutely strained since October, 1908, when the former annexed

the Turkish provinces of Bosnia and Herzegovina, which under the

terms of the treaty of Berlin she had been administering since 1878.

The inhabitants of Bosnia and Herzegovina are Serb, and Serb also

are the inhabitants of Dalmatia on the west and Croatia on the

north, which the Dual Monarchy had already brought under its

sceptre. The new annexation therefore seemed a fatal and a final

blow to the national aspirations of the Serb race and it was

bitterly resented by those who had already been gathered together

and "redeemed" in the Kingdom of Servia. A second disastrous

consequence of the annexation was that it left Servia hopelessly

land-locked. The Serb population of Dalmatia and Herzegovina looked

out on the Adriatic along a considerable section of its eastern

coast, but Servia's long-cherished hope of becoming a maritime state

by the annexation of the Serb provinces of Bosnia and Herzegovina

was now definitively at an end. She protested, she appealed, she

threatened; but with Germany behind the Dual Monarchy and Russia

still weak from the effects of the war with Japan, she was quickly

compelled to submit to superior force.

During the war of the Balkan Allies against Turkey Servia made one

more effort to get to the Adriatic,--this time by way of Albania.

She marched her forces over the mountains of that almost impassable

country and reached the sea at Durazzo. But she was forced back by

the European powers at the demand of Austria-Hungary, as some weeks

later on the same compulsion she had to withdraw from the siege of

Scutari. Then she turned toward the Aegean, and the second Balkan

War gave her a new opportunity. The treaty of Bukarest and the

convention with Greece assured her of an outlet to the sea at

Saloniki. But this settlement proved scarcely less objectionable to

Austria-Hungary than the earlier dream of Servian expansion to the

Adriatic by the annexation of the Turkish provinces of Bosnia and

Herzegovina.

The fact is that, if we look at the matter dispassionately and in a

purely objective spirit, we shall find that there really was a

hopeless incompatibility between the ideals, aims, policies, and

interests of the Servians and the Serb race and those of the

Austrians and Hungarians. Any aggrandizement of the Kingdom of

Servia, any enlargement of its territory, any extension to the sea

and especially to the Adriatic, any heightening and intensifying of

the national consciousness of its people involved some danger to the

Dual Monarchy. For besides the Germans who control Austria, and the

Hungarians who control Hungary, the Austro-Hungarian Empire embraces

many millions of Slavs, and the South Slavs are of the same family

and speak practically the same language as the inhabitants of the

Kingdom of Servia. And Austria and Hungary can not get to their

outlets on the Adriatic--Trieste and Fiume--without passing through

territory inhabited by these South Slavs.

If, therefore, Austria and Hungary were not to be left land-locked

they must at all hazards prevent the absorption of their South Slav

subjects by the Kingdom of Servia. Pan-Serbism at once menaced the

integrity of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and jeopardized its

position on the Adriatic. Hence the cardinal features in the Balkan

policy of Austria-Hungary were a ruthless repression of national

aspiration among its South Slav subjects--the inhabitants of

Croatia, Dalmatia, Bosnia, and Herzegovina; a watchful and jealous

opposition to any increase of the territory or resources of the

Kingdom of Servia; and a stern and unalterable determination to

prevent Servian expansion to the Adriatic.

The new Servia which emerged from the Balkan Wars of 1912-1913 was

an object of anxiety and even of alarm to the statesmen of Vienna

and Buda-Pesth. The racial and national aspirations already astir

among the South Slavs of the Dual Monarchy were quickened and

intensified by the great victories won by their Servian brethren

over both Turks and Bulgarians and by the spectacle of the

territorial aggrandizement which accrued from those victories to the

independent Kingdom of Servia. Might not this Greater Servia prove a

magnet to draw the kindred Slavs of Bosnia, Herzegovina, Dalmatia,

and Croatia away from their allegiance to an alien empire? The

diplomacy of Vienna had indeed succeeded in excluding Servia from

the Adriatic but it had neither prevented its territorial

aggrandizement nor blocked its access to the Aegean.

Access to the Aegean was not, however, as serious a matter as access

to the Adriatic. Yet the expansion of Servia to the south over the

Macedonian territory she had wrested from Turkey, as legalized in

the Treaty of Bukarest, nullified the Austro-Hungarian dream of

expansion through Novi Bazar and Macedonia to the Aegean and the

development from Saloniki as a base of a great and profitable

commerce with all the Near and Middle East.

Here were the conditions of a national tragedy. They have developed

into a great international war, the greatest and most terrible ever

waged on this planet.

It may be worth while in concluding to note the relations of the

Balkan belligerents of 1912-1913 to the two groups of belligerents

in the present world-conflict.

The nemesis of the treaties of London and Bukarest and the fear of

the Great Powers pursue the Balkan nations and determine their

alignments. The declaration of war by Austria-Hungary against

Servia, which started the present cataclysm, fixed the enemy status

of Servia and also Montenegro. The good relations long subsisting

between Emperor William and the Porte were a guarantee to the

Central Powers of the support of Turkey, which quickly declared in

their favor. The desire of avenging the injury done her by the

treaty of Bukarest and the prospect of territorial aggrandizement at

the expense of her sister Slav nation on the west drew Bulgaria

(which was influenced also by the victories of the Germanic forces)

into the same group in company with Turkey, her enemy in both the

Balkan Wars of 1912-1913. Bulgaria's opportunity for revenge soon

arrived. It was the Bulgarian army, in cooperation with the

Austro-German forces, that overran Servia and Montenegro and drove

the national armies beyond their own boundaries into foreign

territory. If the fortunes of war turn and the Entente Powers get

the upper hand in the Balkans, these expelled armies of Servia and

Montenegro, who after rest and reorganization and re-equipping in

Corfu have this summer been transported by France and England to

Saloniki, may have the satisfaction of devastating the territory of

the sister Slav state of Bulgaria, quite in the divisive and

internecine spirit of all Balkan history. The fate and future of

Bulgaria, Servia, and Montenegro now depend on the issue of the

great European conflict. The same thing is true of Turkey, into

which meanwhile Russian forces, traversing the Caucasus, have driven

a dangerous wedge through Armenia towards Mesopotamia. Roumania has

thus far maintained the policy of neutrality to which she adhered so

successfully in the first Balkan war--a policy which in view of her

geographical situation, with Bulgaria to the south, Russia to the

north, and Austria-Hungary to the west, she cannot safely abandon

till fortune has declared more decisively for one or the other group

of belligerents. The only remaining party to the Balkan Wars is

Greece, and the situation of Greece, though not tragic like that of

Servia, must be exceedingly humiliating to the Greek nation and to

the whole Hellenic race.

When the war broke out, Mr. Venizelos was still prime minister of

Greece. His policy was to go loyally to the assistance of Servia, as

required by the treaty between the two countries; to defend New

Greece against Bulgaria, to whom, however, he was ready to make some

concessions on the basis of a quid pro quo; and to join and

co-operate actively with the Entente Powers on the assurance of

receiving territorial compensation in Asia Minor. King Constantine,

on the other hand, seems to have held that the war of the Great

Powers in the Balkans practically abrogated the treaty between

Greece and Servia and that, in any event, Greek resistance to the

Central Powers was useless. The positive programme of the King was

to maintain neutrality between the two groups of belligerents and at

the same time to keep the Greek army mobilized. Between these two

policies the Greek nation wavered and hesitated; but the King, who

enjoyed the complete confidence of the general staff, had his way

and the cabinet of Mr. Venizelos was replaced by another in

sympathy with the policy of the neutrality of Greece and the

mobilization of the Greek army.

It was, under all the circumstances of the case, an exceedingly

difficult policy to carry out successfully. Each group of the

belligerents wanted special favors; the nation was divided on the

subject of neutrality; the expense of keeping the army mobilized was

ruinous to the country; and the views and sympathies of the greatest

statesman Modern Greece had ever had remained out of office, as they

had been in office, diametrically opposed to those of the victorious

warrior-King and doubtless also of the Queen, the sister of the

German Emperor. This condition was one of unstable equilibrium which

could not long continue. It was upset on May 26, 1916, by a

Bulgarian invasion of Greek territory and the seizure of Fort Rupel,

one of the keys to the Struma Valley and to eastern Macedonia. The

cities of Seres and Drama with their large Greek Population, and

even Kavala are now in danger, and the Greek people seem greatly

stirred by the situation. Mr. Venizelos in a newspaper article

bitterly asks:

"Who could have imagined a Greek army witnessing the Bulgarian

flag replacing that of Greece? Is it for this that our

mobilization is maintained?"

But, while Greece has been invaded by Bulgaria, with the support of

Germany (who, however, has given a written promise that the Greek

territory now occupied shall be restored), Greek sovereignty has

since suffered another severe shock by the intervention of Great

Britain, France, and Russia, who, under the Protocol of London, are

the Protecting Powers of the Kingdom. These Powers demand of the

Greek government that the army shall be completely and immediately

demobilized, that the present cabinet shall be replaced by another

which shall guarantee benevolent neutrality toward the Entente

Powers, that the Chamber shall be immediately dissolved and new

elections held, and that certain public functionaries obnoxious to

the legations of the Allies shall be replaced. And statements from

Athens dated June 21 announce that Greece, under the menace of an

embargo maintained by the allied navies, has yielded to these

demands. With Greece humiliated by the Protecting Powers and her

territory occupied by Bulgaria, with Servia and Montenegro overrun

and occupied by the German-Austrian-Bulgarian forces, with Roumania

waiting to see which of the belligerent groups will be finally

victorious, with Bulgaria now basking in the sunshine of the Central

Powers but an object of hatred to all the Allied Powers and

especially to Russia, one may be pardoned for refusing to make any

guess whatever as to the way in which the resultant diagonal of the

parallelogram of European forces will ultimately run through the

Balkans. Fortunately also such prediction has no place in an account

of the Balkan Wars of 1912-1913.

To-day the Balkan nations are the pawns of the Great Powers who are

directly responsible for the deplorable conditions that now exist

among them. Yet in a very real sense their present tragic situation

is the nemesis of the political sins of the Balkan nations

themselves. These sins are those of all undeveloped political

communities. Even the most highly civilized nations may temporarily

fall under their sway, and then civilization reverts to barbarism,

as the terrible condition of Europe to-day actually demonstrates.

But the acute disease from which Europe suffers is more or less

chronic in the Balkans, where elemental human nature has never been

thoroughly disciplined and chastened in the school of peaceful

political life and experience. Each for himself without regard to

others or even without thought of a future day of reckoning seems to

be the maxim of national conduct among the Balkan peoples. The

spirit of strife and division possesses them; they are dominated by

the uncontrolled instinct of national egoism and greed. The second

Balkan War, alike in its origin, course, and conclusion, was a bald

exhibition of the play of these primitive and hateful passions.

The history of the world, which is also the high tribunal of the

world, proves that no nation can with impunity ignore the rights of

other nations or repudiate the ideal of a common good or defy the

rule of righteousness by which political communities achieve

it--justice, moderation, and the spirit of hopeful and unwearying

conciliation. In their war against Turkey in 1912 the Balkan

nations, for the first time in history, laid aside their mutual

antagonisms and co-operated in a common cause. This union and

concord marked at least the beginning of political wisdom. And it

was vindicated, if ever any policy was vindicated, by the surprise

and splendor of the results.

My hope for the Balkan nations is that they may return to this path

from which they were too easily diverted in 1913. They must learn,

while asserting each its own interests and advancing each its own

welfare, to pay scrupulous regard to the rights and just claims of

others and to co-operate wisely for the common good in a spirit of

mutual confidence and good will. This high policy, as expedient as

it is sound, was to a considerable extent embodied in the leadership

of Venizelos and Pashitch and Gueshoff. And where there is a leader

with vision the people in the end will follow him. May the final

settlement of the European War put no unnecessary obstacle in the

way of the normal political development of all the Balkan Nations!

J. G. S.

President's Office Cornell University July 13, 1916

_Postscript_. I remarked in the foregoing Introduction, that

Roumania would not abandon her neutrality till fortune had declared

more decisively for one or the other group of belligerents. That was

written seven weeks ago. And within the last few days Roumania has

joined the Allies and declared war against Austria-Hungary. I also

noted that the unstable equilibrium which had been maintained in

Greece between the party of King Constantine and the party of

Venizelos had already been upset to the disadvantage of the former.

Roumania's adhesion to the cause of the Allies is bound to

accelerate this movement. It would not be surprising if Greece were

any day now to follow the example of Roumania. Had Greece in 1914

stood by Venizelos and joined the Allies the chances are that

Roumania would at that time have adopted the same course. But the

opposition of King Constantine delayed that consummation, directly

in the case of Greece, and indirectly in the case of Roumania. Now

that the latter has cast in her lot with the Allies and the former

is likely at any tune to follow her example, I may be permitted to

quote the forecast which I made in the Preface to the Second Edition

of this volume under date of November 26, 1914:

"If this terrible conflagration, which is already devastating

Europe and convulsing all the continents and vexing all the

oceans of the globe, spreads to the Balkans, one may hazard the

guess that Greece, Montenegro, Servia, and Roumania will stand

together on the side of the Allies and that Bulgaria if she is

not carried away by marked Austro-German victories will remain

neutral."

J. G. S.

September 1, 1916.

I

TURKEY AND THE BALKAN STATES

The expulsion of the Turks from Europe was long ago written in the

book of fate. There was nothing uncertain about it except the date

and the agency of destiny.

THE TURKISH EMPIRE IN EUROPE

A little clan of oriental shepherds, the Turks had in two

generations gained possession of the whole of the northwest corner

of Asia Minor and established themselves on the eastern shore of the

Bosphorus. The great city of Brusa, whose groves to-day enshrine the

stately beauty of their mosques and sultans' tombs, capitulated to

Orkhan, the son of the first Sultan, in 1326; and Nicaea, the cradle

of the Greek church and temporary capital of the Greek Empire,

surrendered in 1330. On the other side of the Bosphorus Orkhan could

see the domes and palaces of Constantinople which, however, for

another century was to remain the seat of the Byzantine Empire.

The Turks crossed the Hellespont and, favored by an earthquake,

marched in 1358 over the fallen walls and fortifications into the

city of Gallipoli. In 1361 Adrianople succumbed to the attacks of

Orkhan's son, Murad I, whose sway was soon acknowledged in Thrace

and Macedonia, and who was destined to lead the victorious Ottoman

armies as far north as the Danube.

But though the provinces of the corrupt and effete Byzantine Empire

were falling into the hands of the Turks, the Slavs were still

unsubdued. Lazar the Serb threw down the gauntlet to Murad. On the

memorable field of Kossovo, in 1389, the opposing forces met--Murad

supported by his Asiatic and European vassals and allies, and Lazar

with his formidable army of Serbs, Bosnians, Albanians, Poles,

Magyars, and Vlachs. Few battles in the world have produced such a

deep and lasting impression as this battle of Kossovo, in which the

Christian nations after long and stubborn resistance were vanquished

by the Moslems. The Servians still sing ballads which cast a halo of

pathetic romance round their great disaster. And after more than

five centuries the Montenegrins continue to wear black on their caps

in mourning for that fatal day.

In the next two centuries the Ottoman Empire moved on toward the

zenith of its glory. Mohammed II conquered Constantinople in 1453.

And in 1529 Suleyman the Magnificent was at the gates of Vienna.

Suleyman's reign forms the climax of Turkish history. The Turks had

become a central European power occupying Hungary and menacing

Austria. Suleyman's dominions extended from Mecca to Buda-Pesth and

from Bagdad to Algiers. He commanded the Mediterranean, the

Euxine, and the Red Sea, and his navies threatened the coasts of

India and Spain.

But the conquests of the Turks were purely military. They did

nothing for their subjects, whom they treated with contempt, and

they wanted nothing from them but tribute and plunder. As the Turks

were always numerically inferior to the aggregate number of the

peoples under their sway, their one standing policy was to keep them

divided--divide et impera. To fan racial and religious differences

among their subjects was to perpetuate the rule of the masters. The

whole task of government, as the Turks conceived it, was to collect

tribute from the conquered and keep them in subjection by playing

off their differences against one another.

But a deterioration of Turkish rulers set in soon after the time of

Suleyman with a corresponding decline in the character and

efficiency of the army. And the growth of Russia and the reassertion

of Hungary, Poland, and Austria were fatal to the maintenance of an

alien and detested empire founded on military domination alone. By

the end of the seventeenth century the Turks had been driven out of

Austria, Hungary, Transylvania, and Podolia, and the northern

boundaries of their Empire were fixed by the Carpathians, the

Danube, and the Save. How marked and rapid was the further decline

of the Ottoman Empire may be inferred from the fact that twice in

the eighteenth century Austria and Russia discussed the project of

dividing it between them. But the inevitable disintegration of the

Turkish dominion was not to inure to the glorification of any of the

Great Powers, though Russia certainly contributed to the weakening

of the common enemy. The decline and diminution of the Ottoman

Empire continued throughout the nineteenth century. What happened,

however, was the revolt of subject provinces and the creation out of

the territory of European Turkey of the independent states of

Greece, Servia, Roumania, and Bulgaria. And it was Bulgarians,

Greeks, and Servians, with the active assistance of the Montenegrins

and the benevolent neutrality of the Roumanians, who, in the war of

1912-1913, drove the Turk out of Europe, leaving him nothing but the

city of Constantinople and a territorial fringe bordered by the

Chataldja line of fortifications.

THE EARLIER SLAV EMPIRES

There is historic justice in the circumstance that the Turkish

Empire in Europe met its doom at the hands of the Balkan nations

themselves. For these nationalities had been completely submerged

and even their national consciousness annihilated under centuries of

Moslem intolerance, misgovernment, oppression, and cruelty.

None suffered worse than Bulgaria, which lay nearest to the capital

of the Mohammedan conqueror. Yet Bulgaria had had a glorious, if

checkered, history long before there existed any Ottoman Empire

either in Europe or in Asia. From the day their sovereign Boris

accepted Christianity in 864 the Bulgarians had made rapid and

conspicuous progress in their ceaseless conflicts with the Byzantine

Empire. The Bulgarian church was recognized as independent by the

Greek patriarch at Constantinople; its primates subsequently

received the title of patriarch, and their see was established at

Preslav, and then successively westward at Sofia, Vodena, Presba,

and finally Ochrida, which looks out on the mountains of Albania.

Under Czar Simeon, the son of Boris, "Bulgaria," says Gibbon,

"assumed a rank among the civilized powers of the earth." His

dominions extended from the Black Sea to the Adriatic and comprised

the greater part of Macedonia, Greece, Albania, Servia, and

Dalmatia; leaving only to the Byzantine Empire--whose civilization

he introduced and sedulously promoted among the Bulgarians--the

cities of Constantinople, Saloniki, and Adrianople with the

territory immediately surrounding them. But this first Bulgarian

Empire was shortlived, though the western part remained independent

under Samuel, who reigned, with Ochrida as his capital, from 976 to

1014. Four years later the Byzantine Emperor, Basil II, annihilated

the power of Samuel, and for a hundred and fifty years the Bulgarian

people remained subject to the rule of Constantinople. In 1186 under

the leadership of the brothers Asen they regained their

independence. And the reign of Czar Asen II (1218-1240) was the most

prosperous period of all Bulgarian history. He restored the Empire

of Simeon, his boast being that he had left to the Byzantines

nothing but Constantinople and the cities round it, and he

encouraged commerce, cultivated arts and letters, founded and

endowed churches and monasteries, and embellished his capital,

Trnovo, with beautiful and magnificent buildings. After Asen came a

period of decline culminating in a humiliating defeat by the

Servians in 1330. The quarrels of the Christian races of the Balkans

facilitated the advance of the Moslem invader, who overwhelmed the

Serbs and their allies on the memorable field of Kossovo in 1389,

and four years later captured and burned the Bulgarian capital,

Trnovo, Czar Shishman himself perishing obscurely in the common

destruction. For five centuries Bulgaria remained under Moslem

despotism, we ourselves being the witnesses of her emancipation in

the last thirty-five years.

The fate of the Serbs differed only in degree from that of the

Bulgarians. Converted to Christianity in the middle of the ninth

century, the major portion of the race remained till the twelfth

century under either Bulgarian or Byzantine sovereignty. But Stephen

Nemanyo bought under his rule Herzegovina, Montenegro and part of

modern Servia and old Servia, and on his abdication in 1195 in favor

of his son launched a royal dynasty which reigned over the Serb

people for two centuries. Of that line the most distinguished

member was Stephen Dushan, who reigned from 1331 to 1355. He wrested

the whole of the Balkan Peninsula from the Byzantine Emperor, and

took Belgrade, Bosnia, and Herzegovina from the King of Hungary. He

encouraged literature, gave to his country a highly advanced code of

laws, and protected the church whose head--the Archbishop of

Ipek--he raised to the dignity of patriarch. On Easter Day 1346 he

had himself crowned at Uskub as "Emperor of the Greeks and Serbs." A

few years later he embarked on an enterprise by which, had he been

successful, he might have changed the course of European history. It

was nothing less than the capture of Constantinople and the union of

Serbs, Bulgarians, and Greeks into an empire which might defend

Christendom against the rising power of Islam. Dushan was within

forty miles of his goal with an army of 80,000 men when he died

suddenly in camp on the 20th of December, 1355. Thirty-four years

later Dushan's countrymen were annihilated by the Turks at Kossovo!

All the Slavonic peoples of the Balkan Peninsula save the brave

mountaineers of Montenegro came under Moslem subjection. And under

Moslem subjection they remained till the nineteenth century.

TURKISH OPPRESSION OF SLAVS

It is impossible to give any adequate description of the horrors of

Turkish rule in these Christian countries of the Balkans. Their

people, disqualified from holding even the smallest office, were

absolutely helpless under the oppression of their foreign masters,

who ground them down under an intolerable load of taxation and

plunder. The culminating cruelty was the tribute of Christian

children from ten to twelve years of age who were sent to

Constantinople to recruit the corps of janissaries. It is not

surprising that for the protection of wives and children and the

safeguarding of interests the nobles of Bosnia and the Pomaks of

Southeastern Bulgaria embraced the creed of their conquerors; the

wonder is that the people as a whole remained true to their

Christian faith even at the cost of daily martyrdom from generation

to generation. Their fate too grew worse as the Turkish power

declined after the unsuccessful siege of Vienna in 1683. For at

first Ottoman troops ravaged Bulgaria as they marched through the

land on their way to Austria; and later disbanded soldiers in

defiance of Turkish authority plundered the country and committed

nameless atrocities. Servia was to some extent protected by her

remote location, but that very circumstance bred insubordination in

the janissaries, who refused to obey the local Turkish governors and

gave themselves up to looting, brigandage, and massacre. The

national spirt of the subject races was completely crushed. The

Servians and Bulgarians for three or four centuries lost all

consciousness of a fatherland. The countrymen of Simeon and Dushan

became mere hewers of wood and drawers of water for their foreign

masters. Servia and Bulgaria simply disappeared. As late as 1834

Kinglake in travelling to Constantinople from Belgrade must have

passed straight across Bulgaria. Yet in "Eothen," in which he

describes his travels, he never even mentions that country or its

people.

It is easy to understand that this history of Turkish horrors should

have burned itself into the heart and soul of the resurrected Servia

and Bulgaria of our own day. But there is another circumstance

connected with the ruthless destruction and long entombment of these

nationalities which it is difficult for foreigners, even the most

intelligent foreigners, to understand or at any rate to grasp in its

full significance. Yet the sentiments to which that circumstance has

given rise and which it still nourishes are as potent a factor in

contemporary Balkan politics as the antipathy of the Christian

nations to their former Moslem oppressors.

GREEK ECCLESIASTICAL DOMINATION OF SLAV

I refer to the special and exceptional position held by the Greeks

in the Turkish dominions. Though the Moslems had possessed themselves

of the Greek Empire from the Bosphorus to the Danube, Greek

domination still survived as an intellectual, ecclesiastical, and

commercial force. The nature and effects of that supremacy, and its

results upon the fortunes of other Balkan nations, we must now

proceed to consider.

The Turkish government classifies its subjects not on the basis of

nationality but on the basis of religion. A homogeneous religious

group is designated a millet or nation. Thus the Moslems form the

millet of Islam. And at the present time there are among others a

Greek millet, a Catholic millet, and a Jewish millet. But from the

first days of the Ottoman conquest until very recent times all the

Christian population, irrespective of denominational differences,

was assigned by the Sultans to the Greek millet, of which the

patriarch of Constantinople was the head. The members of this

millet were all called Greeks; the bishops and higher clergy were

exclusively Greek; and the language of their churches and schools

was Greek, which was also the language of literature, commerce, and

polite society. But the jurisdiction of the patriarch was not

restricted even to ecclesiastical and educational matters. It

extended to a considerable part of civil law--notably to questions

of marriage, divorce, and inheritance when they concerned Christians

only.

It is obvious that the possession by the Greek patriarch of

Constantinople of this enormous power over the Christian subjects of

the Turks enabled him to carry on a propaganda of hellenization.

The disappearance for three centuries of the national consciousness

in Servia and Bulgaria was not the sole work of the Moslem invader;

a more fatal blight to the national languages and culture were the

Greek bishops and clergy who conducted their churches and schools.

And if Kinglake knew nothing of Bulgaria as late as 1834 it was

because every educated person in that country called himself a

Greek. For it cannot be too strongly emphasized that until

comparatively recent times all Christians of whatever nation or sect

were officially recognized by the Turks as members of the Greek

millet and were therefore designated Greeks.

The hostility of the Slavonic peoples in the Balkans, and especially

of the Bulgarians, to the Greeks, grows out of the ecclesiastical

and educational domination which the Greek clergy and bishops so

long and so relentlessly exercised over them. Of course the Turkish

Sultans are responsible for the arrangement. But there is no

evidence that they had any other intention than to rid themselves of

a disagreeable task. For the rest they regarded Greeks and Slavs

with equal contempt. But the Greeks quickly recognized the racial

advantage of their ecclesiastical hegemony. And it was not in human

nature to give it up without a struggle. The patriarchate retained

its exclusive jurisdiction over all orthodox populations till 1870,

when the Sultan issued a firman establishing the Bulgarian

exarchate.

There were two other spheres in which Greek influence was paramount

in the Turkish Empire. The Turk is a soldier and farmer; the Greek

is pre-eminent as a trader, and his ability secured him a

disproportionate share of the trade of the empire. Again, the Greeks

of Constantinople and other large cities gradually won the

confidence of the Turks and attained political importance. During

the eighteenth century the highest officials in the empire were

invariably Phanariots, as the Constantinople Greeks were termed from

the quarter of the city in which they resided.

In speaking of the Greeks I have not had in mind the inhabitants of

the present kingdom of Greece. Their subjection by the Turks was as

complete as that of the Serbs and Bulgaria though of course they

were exempt from ecclesiastical domination at the hands of an alien

clergy speaking a foreign language. The enmity of the Bulgarians may

to-day be visited upon the subjects of King Constantine, but it was

not their ancestors who imposed upon Bulgaria foreign schools and

churches but the Greeks of Constantinople and Thrace, over whom the

government of Athens has never had jurisdiction.

SERVIAN INDEPENDENCE

So much of the Balkan countries under Turkish rule. Their emancipation

did not come till the nineteenth century. The first to throw off the

yoke was Servia. Taking advantage of the disorganization and anarchy

prevailing in the Ottoman Empire the Servian people rose in a body

against their oppressors in January, 1804. Under the able leadership

first of Kara-George and afterward of Milosh Obrenovich, Servian

autonomy was definitely established in 1817. The complete independence

of the country was recognized by the Treaty of Berlin in 1878. The

boundaries of the new state, however, fell far short of Servian

aspirations, excluding as they did large numbers of the Servian

population. The first ruling prince of modern Servia was Milosh

Obrenovich; and the subsequent rulers have belonged either to the

Obrenovich dynasty or to its rival the dynasty of Kara-George. King

Peter, who came to the throne in 1903, is a member of the latter

family.

GREEK INDEPENDENCE

Scarcely had Servia won her freedom when the Greek war of

independence broke out. Archbishop Germanos called the Christian

population of the Morea under the standard of the cross in 1821. For

three years the Greeks, with the assistance of European money and

volunteers (of whom Lord Byron was the most illustrious), conducted

a successful campaign against the Turkish forces; but after the

Sultan had in 1824 summoned to his aid Mehemet Ali, Pasha of Egypt,

with his powerful fleet and disciplined army, the laurels which the

Greek patriots had won were recovered by the oppressor; and, with

the recapture of Athens in May, 1827, the whole country once more

lay under the dominion of the Turks. The Powers now recognized that

nothing but intervention could save Greece for European

civilization. The Egyptian fleet was annihilated at Navarino in

October, 1828, by the fleets of England, France, and Russia. Greece

was constituted an independent monarchy, though the Powers who

recognized its independence traced the frontier of the emancipated

country in a jealous and niggardly spirit. Prince Otto of Bavaria

was designated the first King and reigned for thirty years. He was

succeeded in 1863 by King George who lived to see the northern

boundary of his kingdom advanced to Saloniki, where, like a faithful

sentinel at his post, he fell, on March 18, 1913, by the hand of an

assassin just as he had attained the glorious fruition of a reign of

fifty years.

BULGARIAN INDEPENDENCE

There had been a literary revival preceding the dawn of independence

in Greece. In Bulgaria, which was the last of the Balkan states to

become independent, the national regeneration was also fostered by a

literary and educational movement, of which the founding of the

first Bulgarian school--that of Gabrovo--in 1835 was undoubtedly the

most important event. In the next five years more than fifty

Bulgarian schools were established and five Bulgarian

printing-presses set up. The Bulgarians were beginning to

re-discover their own nationality. Bulgarian schools and books

produced a reaction against Greek culture and the Greek clergy who

maintained it. Not much longer would Greek remain the language of

the upper classes in Bulgarian cities; not much longer would

ignorant peasants, who spoke only Bulgarian, call themselves Greek.

The days of the spiritual domination of the Greek patriarchate were

numbered. The ecclesiastical ascendency of the Greeks had crushed

Bulgarian nationality more completely than even the civil power of

the Turks. The abolition of the spiritual rule of foreigners and the

restoration of the independent Bulgarian church became the leading

object of the literary reformers, educators, and patriots. It was a

long and arduous campaign--a campaign of education and awakening at

home and of appeal and discussion in Constantinople. Finally the

Sultan intervened and in 1870 issued a firman establishing the

Bulgarian exarchate, conferring on it immediate jurisdiction over

fifteen dioceses, and providing for the addition of other dioceses

on a vote of two-thirds of their Christian population. The new

Bulgarian exarch was immediately excommunicated by the Greek

patriarch. But the first and most important official step had been

taken in the development of Bulgarian nationality.

The revolt against the Turks followed in 1876. It was suppressed by

acts of cruelty and horror unparalleled even in the Balkans. Many

thousands of men, women, and children were massacred and scores of

villages destroyed. I remember vividly--for I was then in

England--how Gladstone's denunciation of those atrocities aroused a

wave of moral indignation and wrath which swept furiously from one

end of Great Britain to the other, and even aroused the governments

and peoples of the Continent of Europe. The Porte refusing to adopt

satisfactory measures of reform, Russia declared war and her

victorious army advanced to the very gates of Constantinople. The

Treaty of San Stefano, which Russia then enforced upon Turkey,

created a "Big Bulgaria" that extended from the Black Sea to the

Albanian Mountains and from the Danube to the Aegean, leaving to

Turkey, however, Adrianople, Saloniki, and the Chalcidician

Peninsula. But this treaty was torn to pieces by the Powers, who

feared that "Big Bulgaria" would become a mere Russian dependency,

and they substituted for it the Treaty of Berlin. Under this

memorable instrument, which dashed to the ground the racial and

national aspirations of the Bulgarians which the Treaty of San

Stefano had so completely satisfied, their country was restricted to

a "tributary principality" lying between the Danube and the Balkans,

Eastern Roumelia to the south being excluded from it and made an

autonomous province of Turkey. This breach in the political life of

the race was healed in 1885 by the union of Eastern Roumelia with

Bulgaria; and the Ottoman sovereignty, which had become little more

than a form, was completely ended in 1908 when the ruler of the

enlarged principality of Bulgaria publicly proclaimed it an

independent kingdom. In spite of a protest from the Porte the

independence of Bulgaria was at once recognized by the Powers.

If Bulgaria owed the freedom with which the Treaty of Berlin dowered

her to the swords, and also to the pens, of foreigners, her complete

independence was her own achievement. But it was not brought about

till a generation after the Treaty of Berlin had recognized the

independence of Servia, Montenegro, and Roumania and delegated to

Austria-Hungary the administration of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Yet

the progress made by Bulgaria first under Prince Alexander and

especially since 1887 under Prince Ferdinand (who subsequently

assumed the title of King and later of Czar) is one of the most

astonishing phenomena in the history of Modern Europe.

THE BALKAN COUNTRIES

Thus in consequence of the events we have here so hastily sketched

Turkey had lost since the nineteenth century opened a large portion

of the Balkan Peninsula. Along the Danube and the Save at the north

Bulgaria and Servia had become independent kingdoms and Bosnia and

Herzegovina had at first practically and later formally been annexed

to Austria-Hungary. At the extreme southern end of the Balkan

Peninsula the Greeks had carved out an independent kingdom extending

from Cape Matapan to the Vale of Tempe and the Gulf of Arta. All

that remained of European Turkey was the territory lying between

Greece and the Slav countries of Montenegro, Bosnia, Servia, and

Bulgaria. The Porte has divided this domain into six provinces or

vilayets, besides Constantinople and its environs. These vilayets

are Scutari and Janina on the Adriatic; Kossovo and Monastir,

adjoining them on the east; next Saloniki, embracing the centre of

the area; and finally Adrianople, extending from the Mesta River to

the Black Sea. In ordinary language the ancient classical names are

generally used to designate these divisions. The vilayet of

Adrianople roughly corresponds to Thrace, the Adriatic vilayets to

Epirus, and the intervening territory to Macedonia. Parts of the

domain in question are, however, also known under other names. The

district immediately south of Servia is often called Old Servia; and

the Adriatic coast lands between Montenegro and Greece are generally

designated Albania on the north and Epirus on the south.

The area of Turkey in Europe in 1912 was 169,300 square kilometers;

of Bulgaria 96,300; of Greece 64,600; of Servia 48,300; and of

Montenegro 9,000. The population of European Turkey at the same date

was 6,130,000; of Bulgaria 4,329,000; of Greece 2,632,000; of Servia

2,912,000; and of Montenegro 250,000. To the north of the Balkan

states, with the Danube on the south and the Black Sea on the east,

lay Roumania having an area of 131,350 square kilometers and a

population of 7,070,000.

CAUSES OF THE FIRST BALKAN WAR

What was the occasion of the war between Turkey and the Balkan

states in 1912? The most general answer that can be given to that

question is contained in the one word Macedonia. Geographically

Macedonia lies between Greece, Servia, and Bulgaria.

Ethnographically it is an extension of their races. And if, as

Matthew Arnold declared, the primary impulse both of individuals and

of nations is the tendency to expansion, Macedonia both in virtue of

its location and of its population was foreordained to be a magnet

to the emancipated Christian nations of the Balkans. Of course the

expansion of Greeks and Slavs meant the expulsion of Turks. Hence

the Macedonian question was the quintessence of the Near Eastern

Question.

But apart altogether from the expansionist ambitions and the racial

sympathies of their kindred in Bulgaria, Servia, and Greece, the

population of Macedonia had the same right to emancipation from

Turkish domination and oppression as their brethren in these

neighboring states. The Moslems had forfeited their sovereign rights

in Europe by their unutterable incapacity to govern their Christian

subjects. Had the Treaty of Berlin sanctioned, instead of undoing,

the Treaty of San Stefano, the whole of Macedonia would have come

under Bulgarian sovereignty; and although Servia and especially

Greece would have protested against the Bulgarian absorption of

their Macedonian brethren (whom they had always hoped to bring under

their own jurisdiction when the Turk was expelled) the result would

certainly have been better for all the Christian inhabitants of

Macedonia as well as for the Mohammedans (who number 800,000 persons

or nearly one third of the entire population of Macedonia). As it

was these, people were all doomed to a continuation of Turkish

misgovernment, oppression, and slaughter. The Treaty of Berlin

indeed provided for reforms, but the Porte through diplomacy and

delay frustrated all the efforts of Europe to have them put into

effect. For fifteen years the people waited for the fulfilment of

the European promise of an amelioration of their condition, enduring

meanwhile the scandalous misgovernment of Abdul Hamid II. But after

1893 revolutionary societies became active. The Internal

Organization was a local body whose programme was "Macedonia for the

Macedonians." But both in Bulgaria and in Greece there were

organized societies which sent insurgent bands into Macedonia to

maintain and assert their respective national interests. This was

one of the causes of the war between Turkey and Greece in 1897, and

the reverses of the Greeks in that war inured to the advantage of

the Bulgarian propaganda in Macedonia. Servian bands soon after

began to appear on the scene. These hostile activities in Macedonia

naturally produced reprisals at the hands of the Turkish

authorities. In one district alone 100 villages were burned, over

8,000 houses destroyed, and 60,000 peasants left without homes at

the beginning of winter. Meanwhile the Austrian and Russian

governments intervened and drew up elaborate schemes of reform, but

their plans could not be adequately enforced and the result was

failure. The Austro-Russian entente came to an end in 1908, and in

the same year England joined Russia in a project aiming at a better

administration of justice and involving more effective European

supervision. Scarcely had this programme been announced when the

revolution under the Young Turk party broke out which promised to

the world a regeneration of the Ottoman Empire. Hopeful of these

constitutional reformers of Turkey, Europe withdrew from Macedonia

and entrusted its destinies to its new master. Never was there a

more bitter disappointment. If autocratic Sultans had punished the

poor Macedonians with whips, the Young Turks flayed them with

scorpions.

Sympathy, indignation, and horror conspired with nationalistic

aspirations and territorial interests to arouse the kindred

populations of the surrounding states. And in October, 1912, war was

declared against Turkey by Bulgaria, Servia, Montenegro, and Greece.

THE BALKAN LEAGUE

This brings us to the so-called Balkan Alliance about which much has

been written and many errors ignorantly propagated. For months after

the outbreak of the war against Turkey the development of this

Alliance into a Confederation of the Balkan states, on the model of

the American or the German constitution, was a theme of constant

discussion in Europe and America. As a matter of fact there existed

no juridical ground for this expectation, and the sentiments of the

peoples of the four Christian nations, even while they fought

together against the Moslem, were saturated with such an infusion of

suspicion and hostility as to render nugatory any programme of

Balkan confederation. An alliance had indeed been concluded between

Greece and Bulgaria in May, 1912, but it was a defensive, not an

offensive alliance. It provided that in case Turkey attacked either

of these states, the other should come to its assistance with all

its forces, and that whether the object of the attack were the

territorial integrity of the nation or the rights guaranteed it by

international law or special conventions. Without the knowledge of

the Greek government, an offensive alliance against Turkey had in

March, 1912, been concluded between Servia and Bulgaria which

determined their respective military obligations in case of war and

the partition between them, in the event of victory, of the

conquered Turkish provinces in Europe. A similar offensive and

defensive alliance between Greece and Turkey was under

consideration, but before the plan was matured Bulgaria and Servia

had decided to declare war against Turkey. This decision had been

hastened by the Turkish massacres at Kochana and Berane, which

aroused the deepest indignation, especially in Bulgaria. Servia and

Bulgaria informed Greece that in three days they would mobilize

their forces for the purpose of imposing reforms on Turkey, and, if

within a specified time they did not receive a satisfactory reply,

they would invade the Ottoman territory and declare war. They

invited Greece on this short notice to co-operate with them by a

simultaneous mobilization. It was a critical moment not only for the

little kingdom of King George, but for that great cause of Hellenism

which for thousands of years had animated, and which still animated,

the souls of the Greek population in all Aegean lands.

GREECE AND THE LEAGUE

King George himself was a ruler of large experience, of great

practical wisdom, and of fine diplomatic skill. He had shortly

before selected as prime minister the former Cretan insurgent, Mr.

Eleutherios Venizelos. It is significant that the new premier had

also taken the War portfolio. He foresaw the impending conflict--as

every wise statesman in Europe had foreseen it--and began to make

preparations for it. For the reorganization of the army and navy he

secured French and English experts, the former headed by General

Eydoux, the latter by Admiral Tufnel. By 1914 it was estimated that

the military and naval forces of the country would be thoroughly

trained and equipped, and war was not expected before that date. But

now in 1912 the hand of the Greek government was forced. And a

decision one way or the other was inevitable.

Mr. Venizelos had already proved himself an agitator, an orator, and

a politician. He was now to reveal himself not only to Greece but to

Europe as a wise statesman and an effective leader of his people.

The first test came in his answer to the invitation to join Bulgaria

and Servia within three days in a war against Turkey. Of all

possibilities open to him Mr. Venizelos rejected the programme of

continued isolation for Greece. There were those who glorified it as

splendid and majestic: to him under the existing circumstances it

seemed stupid in itself and certain to prove disastrous in its

results. Greece alone would never have been able to wage a war

against Turkey. And if Greece declined to participate in the

inevitable conflict, which the action of the two Slav states had

only hastened, then whether they won or Turkey won, Greece was bound

to lose. It was improbable that the Ottoman power should come out of

the contest victorious; but, if the unexpected happened, what would

be the position, not only of the millions of Greeks in the Turkish

Empire, but of the little kingdom of Greece itself on whose northern

boundary the insolent Moslem oppressor, flushed with his triumph

over Bulgaria, Servia, and Montenegro, would be immovably

entrenched? On the other hand if these Christian states themselves

should succeed, as seemed likely, in destroying the Ottoman Empire

in Europe, the Kingdom of Greece, if she now remained a passive

spectator of their struggles, would find in the end that Macedonia

had come into the possession of the victorious Slavs, and the Great

Idea of the Greeks--the idea of expansion into Hellenic lands

eastward toward Constantinople--exploded as an empty bubble. It was

Mr. Venizelos's conclusion that Greece could not avoid participating

in the struggle. Neutrality would have entailed the complete

bankruptcy of Hellenism in the Orient. There remained only the

alternative of co-operation--co-operation with Turkey or

co-operation with the Christian states of the Balkans.

GREEK AND BULGARIAN ANTIPATHIES

How near Greece was to an alliance with Turkey the world may never

know. At the nothing of the sort was even suspected. It was not

until Turkey had been overpowered by the forces of the four

Christian states and the attitude of Bulgaria toward the other three

on the question of the division of the conquered territories had

become irreconcilable and menacing that Mr. Venizelos felt it proper

to communicate to the Greek people the history of the negotiations

by which the Greek government had bound their country to a partner

now felt to be so unreasonable and greedy. Feeling in Greece was

running high against Bulgaria. The attacks on Mr. Venizelos's

government were numerous and bitter. He was getting little or no

credit for the victory that had been won against Turkey, while his

opponents denounced him for sacrificing the fruits of that victory

to Bulgaria. The Greek nation especially resented the occupation by

Bulgarian troops of the Aegean coast lands with their large Hellenic

population which lay between the Struma and the Mesta including the

cities of Seres and Drama and especially Kavala with its fine harbor

and its hinterland famed for crops of choice tobacco.

It was on the fourth of July, 1913, a few days after the outbreak of

the war between Bulgaria and her late allies, that Mr. Venizelos

made his defence in an eloquent and powerful speech at a special

session of the Greek parliament. The accusation against him was not

only that during the late war he had sacrificed Greek interests to

Bulgaria but that he had committed a fatal blunder in joining her in

the campaign against Turkey. His reply was that since Greece could

not stand alone he had to seek allies in the Balkans, and that it

was not his fault if the choice had fallen on Bulgaria. He had

endeavored to maintain peace with Turkey. Listen to his own words:

"I did not seek war against the Ottoman Empire. I would not have

sought war at a later date if I could have obtained any

adjustment of the Cretan question--that thorn in the side of

Greece which can no longer be left as it is without rendering a

normal political life absolutely impossible for us. I endeavored

to adjust this question, to continue the policy of a close

understanding with the neighboring empire, in the hope of

obtaining in this way the introduction of reforms which would

render existence tolerable to the millions of Greeks within the

Ottoman Empire."

THE CRETAN PROBLEM

It was this Cretan question, even more than the Macedonian question,

which in 1897 had driven Greece, single-handed and unprepared, into

a war with Turkey in which she was destined to meet speedy and

overwhelming defeat. It was this same "accursed Cretan question," as

Mr. Venizelos called it, which now drew the country into a military

alliance against her Ottoman neighbor who, until too late, refused

to make any concession either to the just claims of the Cretans or

to the conciliatory proposals of the Greek government.

Lying midway between three continents, the island of Crete has

played a large part both in ancient and modern history. The

explorations and excavations of Sir Arthur Evans at Cnossus seem to

prove that the Homeric civilization of Tiryns and Mycenae was

derived from Crete, whose earliest remains carry us back three

thousand years before the Christian era. And if Crete gave to

ancient Greece her earliest civilization she has insisted on giving

herself to modern Greece. It is a natural union; for the Cretans are

Greeks, undiluted with Turk, Albanian, or Slav blood, though with

some admixture of Italian. The one obstacle to this marriage of

kindred souls has been Turkey. For Crete was taken from the

Venetians by the Turks in 1669, after a twenty years' siege of

Candia, the capital. A portion of the inhabitants embraced the creed

of their conquerors, so that at the present time perhaps two-thirds

of the population are Christian and one-third Moslem. The result has

been to make Crete the worst governed province of the Ottoman

Empire. In Turkey in Europe diversity of race has kept the

Christians quarreling with one another; in Crete diversity of

religion plunges the same race into internecine war as often as once

in ten years. The island had been the scene of chronic insurrections

all through the nineteenth century. Each ended as a rule with a

promise of the Sultan to confer upon the Cretans some form of local

self-government, with additional privileges, financial or other. But

these promises were never fulfilled. Things went from bad to worse.

The military intervention of Greece in 1897 led to war with Turkey

in which she was disastrously defeated. The European Powers had

meantime intervened and they decided that Crete should be endowed

with autonomy under the sovereignty of the Sultan, and in 1898 they

appointed Prince George of Greece as High Commissioner. Between the

political parties of the island and the representatives of the

Powers the Prince, who worked steadily for the welfare of Crete, had

a difficult task, and in 1906 he withdrew, his successor being Mr.

Zaimis, a former prime minister of Greece. The new commissioner was

able to report to the protecting Powers in 1908 that a gendarmerie

had been established, that tranquility was being maintained, and

that the Moslem population enjoyed safety and security. Thereupon

the Powers began to withdraw their forces from the island. And the

project for annexation with Greece, which had been proclaimed by the

Cretan insurgents under Mr. Venizelos in 1905 and which the insular

assembly had hastened to endorse, was once more voted by the

assembly, who went on to provide for the government of the island in

the name of the King of Greece. I have not time to follow in detail

the history of this programme of annexation. Suffice it to say that

the Cretans ultimately went so far as to elect members to sit in the

Greek Parliament at Athens, and that Turkey had given notice that

their admission to the chamber would be regarded as a casus belli. I

saw them on their arrival in Athens in October 1912, where they

received a most enthusiastic welcome from the Greeks, while

everybody stopped to admire their picturesque dress, their superb

physique, and their dignified demeanor. If Mr. Venizelos excluded

these delegates from the chamber he would defy the sentiments of the

Greek people. If he admitted them, Turkey would proclaim war.

MR. VENIZELOS'S SOLUTION

The course actually pursued by Mr. Venizelos in this predicament he

himself explained to the parliament in the speech delivered at the

close of the war against Turkey from which I have already quoted. He

declared to his astonished countrymen that in his desire to reach a

close understanding with Turkey he had arrived at the point where he

no longer demanded a union of Crete with Greece, "knowing it was too

much for the Ottoman Empire." What he did ask for was the

recognition of the right of the Cretan deputies to sit in the Greek

chamber, while Crete itself should remain an autonomous state under

the sovereignty of the Sultan. Nay, Mr. Venizelos was so anxious to

prevent war with Turkey that he made another concession, for which,

he frankly confessed, his political opponents if things had turned

out differently would have impeached him for high treason. He

actually proposed, in return for the recognition of the right of the

Cretan deputies to sit in the Greek chamber, that Greece should pay

on behalf of Crete an annual tribute to the Porte.

Happily for Mr. Venizelos's government the Young Turk party who then

governed the Ottoman Empire rejected all these proposals. Meanwhile

their misgovernment and massacre of Christians in Macedonia were

inflaming the red Slav nations and driving them into War against

Turkey. When matters had reached a crisis, the reactionary and

incompetent Young Turk party were forced out of power and a wise and

prudent statesman, the venerable Kiamil Pasha, succeeded to the

office of Grand Vizier. He was all for conciliation and compromise

with the Greek government, whom he had often warned against an

alliance with Bulgaria, and he had in readiness a solution of the

Cretan question which he was certain would be satisfactory to both

Greece and Turkey. But these concessions were now too late. Greece

had decided to throw in her lot with Servia and Bulgaria. And a

decree was issued for the mobilization of the Greek troops.

THE WAR

There is not time, nor have I the qualifications, to describe the

military operations which followed. In Greece the Crown Prince was

appointed commanding general, and the eve proved him one of the

great captains of our day. The prime minister, who was also minister

of war, furnished him with troops and munitions and supplies. The

plains and hills about Athens were turned into mock battlefields for

the training of raw recruits; and young Greeks from all parts of the

world--tens of thousands of them from America--poured in to protect

the fatherland and to fight the secular enemy of Europe. The Greek

government had undertaken to raise an army of 125,000 men to

co-operate with the Allies; it was twice as large a number as even

the friends of Greece dreamed possible; yet before the war closed

King Constantine had under his banner an army of 250,000 men

admirably armed, clothed, and equipped;--each soldier indeed having

munitions fifty per cent in excess of the figure fixed by the

general staff.

GREEK MILITARY AND NAVAL OPERATIONS

The Greek army, which had been concentrated at Larissa, entered

Macedonia by the Pass and the valley of the Xerias River. The Turks

met the advancing force at Elassona but retired after a few hours'

fighting. They took their stand at the pass of Sarandaporon, from

which they were driven by a day's hard fighting on the part of the

Greek army and the masterly tactics of the Crown Prince. On October

23 the Greeks were in possession of Serndje. Thence they pushed

forward on both sides of the Aliakmon River toward Veria, which the

Crown Prince entered with his staff on the morning of October 30.

They had covered 150 miles from Larissa, with no facilities but

wagons for feeding the army and supplying ammunition. But at Veria

they struck the line of railway from Monastir to Saloniki. Not far

away was Jenitsa, where the Turkish army numbering from 35,000 to

40,000 had concentrated to make a stand for the protection of

Saloniki. The battle of Jenitsa was fiercely contested but the

Greeks were victorious though they lost about 2000 men. This victory

opened the way to Saloniki. The Turkish armies which defended it

having been scattered by the Greek forces, that city surrendered to

Crown Prince Constantine on the eighth of November. It was only

three weeks since the Greek army had left Larissa and it had

disposed of about 60,000 Turks on the way.

On the outbreak of war Greece had declared a blockade of all Turkish

ports. To the usual list of contraband articles there were added not

only coal, concerning which the practice of belligerent nations had

varied, but also machine oil, which so far as I know was then for

the first time declared contraband of war. As Turkey imported both

coal and lubricants, the purpose of this policy was of course to

paralyze transportation in the Ottoman Empire. Incidentally I may

say the prohibition of lubricating oil caused much inconvenience to

American commerce; not, however, primarily on its own account, but

because of its confusion, in the minds of Greek officials, with such

harmless substances as cotton seed oil and oleo. The Greek navy not

only maintained a very effective blockade but also took possession of

all the Aegean Islands under Turkish rule, excepting Rhodes and the

Dodecanese, which Italy held as a temporary pledge for the

fulfilment by Turkey of some of the conditions of the treaty by

which they had closed their recent war. It will be seen, therefore,

that the navy was a most important agent in the campaign, and Greece

was the only one of the Allies that had a navy. The Greek navy was

sufficient not only to terrorize the Turkish navy, which it reduced

to complete impotence, but also to paralyze Turkish trade and

commerce with the outside world, to embarrass railway transportation

within the Empire, to prevent the sending of reinforcements to

Macedonia or the Aegean coast of Thrace, and to detach from Turkey

those Aegean Islands over which she still exercised effective

jurisdiction.

SERB MILITARY OPERATIONS

On land the other Allies had been not less active than Greece.

Montenegro had fired the first shot of the war. And the brave

soldiers of King Nicholas, the illustrious ruler of the one Balkan

state which the Turks had never conquered, were dealing deadly blows

to their secular enemy both in Novi Bazar and Albania.

As the Greeks had pressed into southern Macedonia, so the Servian

armies advanced through old Servia into northern and central

Macedonia. In their great victory over the Turkish forces at

Kumanovo they avenged the defeat of their ancestors at Kossovo five

hundred years before. Still marching southward they again defeated

the enemy in two great engagements, the one at Prilip and the other

at Monastir. The latter city had been the object of the Greek

advance to Florina, but when the prize fell to Servia, though the

Greeks were appointed, it made no breach in the friendship of the

two Allies. Already no doubt they were both gratified that the

spheres of their military occupation were conterminous and that no

Turkish territory remained for Bulgaria to occupy west of the Vardar

River.

BULGARIAN MILITARY OPERATIONS

While Greece and Servia were scattering, capturing, or destroying

the Turkish troops stationed in Macedonia, and closing in on that

province from north and south like an irresistible vise, it fell to

Bulgaria to meet the enemy's main army in the plains of Eastern

Thrace. The distribution of the forces of the Allies was the natural

result of their respective geographical location. Macedonia to the

west of the Vardar and Bregalnitza Rivers was the only part of

Turkey which adjoined Greece and Servia. Thrace, on the other hand,

marched with the southern boundary of Bulgaria from the sources of

the Mesta River to the Black Sea, and its eastern half was

intersected diagonally by the main road from Sofia to Adrianople and

Constantinople. Along this line the Bulgarians sent their forces

against the common enemy as soon as war was declared. The swift

story of their military exploits, the record of their brilliant

victories, struck Europe with amazement. Here was a country which

only thirty-five years earlier had been an unknown and despised

province of Turkey in Europe now overwhelming the armies of the

Ottoman Empire in the great victories of Kirk Kilisse, Lule Burgas,

and Chorlu. In a few weeks the irresistible troops of King Ferdinand

had reached the Chataldja line of fortifications. Only twenty-five

miles beyond lay Constantinople where they hoped to celebrate their

final triumph.

THE COLLAPSE OF TURKEY

The Great Powers of Europe had other views. Even if the Bulgarian

delay at Chataldja--a delay probably due to exhaustion--had not

given the Turks time to strengthen their defences and reorganize

their forces, it is practically certain that the Bulgarian army

would not have been permitted to enter Constantinople. But with the

exception of the capital and its fortified fringe, all Turkey in

Europe now lay at the mercy of the Allies. The entire territory was

either already occupied by their troops or could be occupied at

leisure. Only at three isolated points was the Ottoman power

unsubdued. The city of Adrianople, though closely besieged by the

Bulgarians, still held out, and the great fortresses of Scutari in

Northern Albania and Janina in Epirus remained in the hands of their

Turkish garrisons.

The power of Turkey had collapsed in a few weeks. Whether the ruin

was due to inefficiency and corruption in government or the

injection by the Young Turk party of politics into the army or

exhaustion resulting from the recent war with Italy or to other

causes more obscure, we need not pause to inquire. The disaster

itself, however, had spread far enough in the opinion of Europe, and

a Peace Conference was summoned in December. Delegates from the

belligerent states and ambassadors from the Great Powers came

together in London. But their labors in the cause of peace proved

unavailing. Turkey was unwilling to surrender Adrianople and

Bulgaria insisted on it as a sine qua non. The Peace Conference

broke up and hostilities were resumed. The siege of Adrianople was

pressed by the Bulgarians with the aid of 60,000 Servian troops. It

was taken by storm on March 26. Already, on March 6, Janina had

yielded to the well directed attacks of King Constantine. And the

fighting ended with the spectacular surrender on April 23 of Scutari

to King Nicholas, who for a day at least defied the united will of

Europe.

Turkey was finally compelled to accept terms of peace. In January,

while the London Peace Conference was still in session, Kiamil

Pasha, who had endeavored to prepare the nation for the territorial

sacrifice he had all along recognized as inevitable, was driven from

power and his war minister, Nazim Pasha, murdered through an

uprising of the Young Turk party executed by Enver Bey, who himself

demanded the resignation of Kiamil and carried it to the Sultan and

secured its acceptance. The insurgents set up Mahmud Shevket Pasha

as Grand Vizier and made the retention of Adrianople their cardinal

policy. But the same inexorable fate overtook the new government in

April as faced Kiamil in January. The Powers were insistent on

peace, and the successes of the Allies left no alternative and no

excuse for delay. The Young Turk party who had come to power on the

Adrianople issue were accordingly compelled to ratify the cession to

the allies of the city with all its mosques and tombs and historic

souvenirs. The Treaty of London, which proved to be short-lived, was

signed on May 30.

THE TERMS OF PEACE

The treaty of peace provided that beyond a line drawn from Enos near

the mouth of the Maritza River on the Aegean Sea to Midia on the

coast of the Black Sea all Turkey should be ceded to the Allies

except Albania, whose boundaries were to be fixed by the Great

Powers. It was also stipulated that the Great Powers should

determine the destiny of the Aegean Islands belonging to Turkey

which Greece now claimed by right of military occupation and the

vote of their inhabitants (nearly all of whom were Greek). A more

direct concession to Greece was the withdrawal of Turkish

sovereignty over Crete. The treaty also contained financial and

other provisions, but they do not concern us here. The essential

point is that, with the exception of Constantinople and a narrow

hinterland for its protection, the Moslems after more than five

centuries of possession had been driven out of Europe.

This great and memorable consummation was the achievement of the

united nations of the Balkans. It was not a happy augury for the

immediate future to recall the historic fact that the past successes

of the Moslems had been due to dissensions and divisions among their

Christian neighbors.

II

THE WAR BETWEEN THE ALLIES

The Treaty of London officially eliminated Turkey from the further

settlement of the Balkan question. Thanks to the good will of the

Great Powers toward herself or to their rising jealousy of Bulgaria

she was not stripped of her entire European possessions west of the

Chataldja lines where the victorious Bulgarians had planted their

standards. The Enos-Midia frontier not only guaranteed to her a

considerable portion of territory which the Bulgarians had occupied

but extended her coast line, from the point where the Chataldja

lines strike the Sea of Marmora, out through the Dardanelles and

along the Aegean littoral to the mouth of the Maritza River. To that

extent the Great Powers may be said to have re-established the Turks

once more in Europe from which they had been practically driven by

the Balkan Allies and especially the Bulgarians. All the rest of her

European possessions, however, Turkey was forced to surrender either

in trust to the Great Powers or absolutely to the Balkan Allies.

The great question now was how the Allies should divide among

themselves the spoils of war.

RIVAL AMBITIONS OF THE ALLIES

This was a difficult matter to adjust. Before the war began, as we

have already seen, a Treaty of Partition had been negotiated between

Bulgaria and Servia, but conditions had changed materially in the

interval and Servia now demanded a revision of the treaty and

refused to withdraw her troops from Central Macedonia, which the

treaty had marked for reversion to Bulgaria. In consequence the

relations between the governments and peoples of Servia and Bulgaria

were dangerously strained. The Bulgarians denounced the Servians as

perfidious and faithless and the Servians responded by excoriating

the colossal greed and intolerance of the Bulgarians. The immemorial

mutual hatred of the two Slav nations was stirred to its lowest

depths, and it boiled and sputtered like a witches' cauldron.

In Eastern Macedonia Bulgarians and Greeks were each eagerly pushing

their respective spheres of occupation without much regard to the

rights or feeling of the other Ally. Though the Bulgarians had not

forgiven the Greeks for anticipating them in the capture of Saloniki

in the month of November, the rivalry between them in the following

winter and spring had for its stage the territory between the Struma

and the Mesta Rivers--and especially the quadrilateral marked by

Kavala and Orphani on the coast and Seres and Drama on the line of

railway from Saloniki to Adrianople. They had one advantage over the

Bulgarians: their troops could be employed to secure extensions of

territory for the Hellenic kingdom at a time when Bulgaria still

needed the bulk of her forces to fight the Turks at Chataldja and

Adrianople. Hence the Greeks occupied towns in the district from

which Bulgarian troops had been recalled. Nor did they hesitate to

dislodge scattered Bulgarian troops which their ally had left behind

to establish a claim of occupation. Naturally disputes arose between

the military commanders and these led to repeated armed encounters.

On March 5 Greeks and Bulgarians fought at Nigrita as they

subsequently fought at Pravishta, Leftera, Panghaion, and Anghista.

This conduct of the Allies toward one another while the common enemy

was still in the field boded ill for their future relations. "Our

next war will be with Bulgaria," said the man on the street in

Athens, and this bellicose sentiment was reciprocated alike by the

Bulgarian people and the Bulgarian army. The secular mutual enmities

and animosities of the Greeks and Bulgarians, which self-interest

had suppressed long enough to enable the Balkan Allies to make

European Turkey their own, burst forth with redoubled violence under

the stimulus of the imperious demand which the occasion now made

upon them all for an equitable distribution of the conquered

territory. For ages the fatal vice of the Balkan nations has been

the immoderate and intolerant assertion by each of its own claims

coupled with contemptuous disregard of the rights of others.

ALBANIA A CAUSE OF FRICTION

There were also external causes which contributed to the deepening

tragedy in the Balkans. Undoubtedly the most potent was the

dislocation of the plans of the Allies by the creation of an

independent Albania. This new kingdom was called into being by the

voice of the European concert at the demand of Austria-Hungary

supported by Italy.

The controlling force in politics, though not the only force, is

self-interest. Austria-Hungary had long sought an outlet through

Macedonia to the Aegean by way of Saloniki. It was also the aim of

Servia to reach the Adriatic. But the foreign policy of

Austria-Hungary, which has millions of Serbs under its dominion, has

steadily opposed the aggrandizement of Servia. And now that Servia

and her allies had taken possession of Macedonia and blocked the

path of Austria-Hungary to Saloniki, it was not merely revenge, it

was self-interest pursuing a consistent foreign policy, which moved

the Dual Monarchy to make the cardinal feature of its Balkan

programme the exclusion of Servia from access to the Adriatic Sea.

Before the first Balkan war began the Adriatic littoral was under

the dominion of Austria-Hungary and Italy, for though Montenegro and

European Turkey were their maritime neighbors neither of them had

any naval strength. Naturally these two dominant powers desired that

after the close of the Balkan war they should not be in a worse

position in the Adriatic than heretofore. But if Servia were allowed

to expand westward to the Adriatic, their supremacy might in the

future be challenged. For Servia might enter into special relations

with her great sister Slav state, Russia, or a confederation might

be formed embracing all the Balkan states between the Black Sea and

the Adriatic: and, in either event, Austria-Hungary and Italy would

no longer enjoy the unchallenged supremacy on the Adriatic coasts

which was theirs so long as Turkey held dominion over the maritime

country lying between Greece and Montenegro. As a necessity of

practical politics, therefore, there emerged the Austro-Italian

policy of an independent Albania. But natural and essential as this

policy was for Italy and Austria-Hungary, it was fatal to Servia's

dream of expansion to the Adriatic; it set narrow limits to the

northward extension of Greece into Epirus, and the southward

extension of Montenegro below Scutari; it impelled these Allies to

seek compensation in territory that Bulgaria had regarded as her

peculiar preserve; and as a consequence it seriously menaced the

existence of the Balkan Alliance torn as it already was by mutual

jealousies, enmities, aggressions, and recriminations.

RECOIL OF SERVIA TOWARD THE AEGEAN

The first effect of the European fiat regarding an independent

Albania was the recoil of Servia against Bulgaria. Confronted by the

force majeure of the Great Powers which estopped her advance to the

Adriatic, Servia turned her anxious regard toward the Gulf of

Saloniki and the Aegean Sea. Already her victorious armies had

occupied Macedonia from the Albanian frontier eastward beyond the

Vardar River to Strumnitza, Istib, and Kochana, and southward below

Monastir and Ghevgheli, where they touched the boundary of the Greek

occupation of Southern Macedonia. An agreement with the Greeks, who

held the city of Saloniki and its hinterland as well as the whole

Chalcidician Peninsula, would ensure Servia an outlet to the sea.

And the merchants of Saloniki--mostly the descendants of Jews

expelled from Spain in the fifteenth century--were shrewd enough to

recognize the advantage to their city of securing the commerce of

Servia, especially as they were destined to lose, in consequence of

hostile tariffs certain to be established by the conquerors, a

considerable portion of the trade which had formerly flowed to them

without let or hindrance from a large section of European Turkey.

The government of Greece was equally favorably disposed to this

programme; for, in the first place, it was to its interest to

cultivate friendly relations with Servia, in view of possible

embroilments with Bulgaria; and, in the second place, it had to

countercheck the game of those who wanted either to make Saloniki a

free city or to incorporate it in a Big Bulgaria, and who were using

with some effect the argument that the annexation of the city to

Greece meant the throttling of its trade and the annihilation of its

prosperity. The interests of the city of Saloniki, the interests of

Greece, and the interests of Servia all combined to demand the free

flow of Servian trade by way of Saloniki. And if no other power

obtained jurisdiction over any Macedonian territory through which

that trade passed, it would be easy for the Greek and Servian

governments to come to an understanding.

TREATY RESTRICTIONS

Just here, however, was the rub. The secret treaty of March, 1912,

providing for the offensive and defensive alliance of Bulgaria and

Servia against the Ottoman Empire regulated, in case of victory, the

division of the conquered territory between the Allies. And the

extreme limit, on the south and east, of Turkish territory assigned

to Servia by this treaty was fixed by a line starting from Ochrida

on the borders of Albania and running northeastward across the

Vardar River a few miles above Veles and thence, following the same

general direction, through Ovcepolje and Egri Palanka to Golema Vreh

on the frontier of Bulgaria--a terminus some twenty miles southeast

of the meeting point of Servia, Macedonia, and Bulgaria. During the

war with Turkey the Servian armies had paid no attention to the

Ochrida-Golema Vreh line. The great victory over the Turks at

Kumanovo, by which the Slav defeat at Kossovo five hundred years

earlier was avenged, was, it is true, won at a point north of the

line in question. But the subsequent victories of Prilip and

Monastir were gained to the south of it--far, indeed, into the heart

of the Macedonian territory recognized by the treaty as Bulgarian.

If you look at a map you will see that the boundary between Servia

and Bulgaria, starting from the Danube, runs in a slightly

undulating line due south. Now what the military forces of King

Peter did during the war of the Balkan states with the Ottoman

Empire was to occupy all European Turkey south of Servia between the

prolongation of that boundary line and the new Kingdom of Albania

till they met the Hellenic army advancing northward under Crown

Prince Constantine, when the two governments agreed on a common

boundary for New Servia and New Greece along a line starting from

Lake Presba and running eastward between Monastir and Florina to the

Vardar River a little to the south of Ghevgheli.

THE APPLE OF DISCORD

But this arrangement between Greece and Servia would leave no

territory for Bulgaria in Central and Western Macedonia! Yet Servia

had solemnly bound herself by treaty not to ask for any Turkish

territory below the Ochrida-Golema Vreh line. There was no similar

treaty with Greece, but Bulgaria regarded the northern frontier of

New Greece as a matter for adjustment between the two governments.

Servia, withdrawn behind the Ochrida-Golema Vreh line in accordance

with the terms of the treaty, would at any rate have nothing to say

about the matter. And, although the Bulgarian government never

communicated, officially or unofficially, its own views to Greece or

Servia, I believe we should not make much mistake in asserting that

a line drawn from Ochrida to Saloniki (which Bulgaria in spite of

the Greek occupation continued to claim) would roughly represent the

limit of its voluntary concession. Now if you imagine a base line

drawn from Saloniki to Golema Vreh, you have an equilateral triangle

resting on Ochrida as apex. And this equilateral triangle represents

approximately what Bulgaria claimed in the western half of Macedonia

as her own.

O Βασιλιάς των Ελλήνων Γεώργιος Α στην Θεσσαλονίκη με τον Τσάρο της Βουλγαρίας το 1912

The war between the Allies was fought over the possession of this

triangle. The larger portion of it had in the war against Turkey

been occupied by the forces of Servia; and the nation, inflamed by

the military spirit of the army, had made up its mind that, treaty

or no treaty, it should not be evacuated. On the south, especially

above Vodena, the Greeks had occupied a section of the fatal

triangle. And the two governments had decided that they would not

tolerate the driving of a Bulgarian wedge between New Servia and New

Greece. Bulgaria, on the other hand, was inexorable in her demands

on Servia for the fulfilment of the terms of the Treaty of

Partition. At the same time she worried the Greek government about

the future of Saloniki, and that at a time when the Greek people

were criticizing Mr. Venizelos for having allowed the Bulgarians to

occupy regions in Macedonia and Thrace inhabited by Greeks, notably

Seres, Drama, and Kavala, and the adjacent country between the

Struma and the Mesta. These were additional causes of dissension

between the Allies. But the primary disruptive force was the

attraction, the incompatible attraction, exerted on them all by that

central Macedonian triangle whose apex rested on the ruins of Czar

Samuel's palace at Ochrida and whose base extended from Saloniki to

Golema Vreh.

THE CLAIM OF BULGARIA

From that base line to the Black Sea nearly all European Turkey

(with the exception of the Chalcidician Peninsula, including

Saloniki and its hinterland) had been occupied by the military

forces of Bulgaria. Why then was Bulgaria so insistent on getting

beyond that base line, crossing the Vardar, and possessing herself

of Central Macedonia up to Ochrida and the eastern frontier of

Albania?

The answer, in brief, is that it has been the undeviating policy of

Bulgaria, ever since her own emancipation by Russia in 1877, to free

the Bulgarians still under the Ottoman yoke and unite them in a

common fatherland. The Great Bulgaria which was created by Russia in

the treaty she forced on Turkey--the Treaty of San Stefano--was

constructed under the influence of the idea of a union of the

Bulgarian race in a single state under a common government. This

treaty was afterward torn to pieces by the Congress of Berlin, which

set up for the Bulgarians a very diminutive principality. But the

Bulgarians, from the palace down to the meanest hut, have always

been animated by that racial and national idea. The annexation of

Eastern Roumelia in 1885 was a great step in the direction of its

realization. And it was to carry that programme to completion that

Bulgaria made war against Turkey in 1912. Her primary object was the

liberation of the Bulgarians in Macedonia and their incorporation in

a Great Bulgaria. And the Treaty of Partition with Servia seemed, in

the event of victory over Turkey, to afford a guarantee of the

accomplishment of her long-cherished purpose. It was a strange irony

of fate that while as a result of the geographical situation of the

belligerents Bulgaria, at the close of the war with Turkey, found

herself in actual occupation of all European Turkey from the Black

Sea up to the River Struma and beyond,--that is, all Thrace to

Chataldja as well as Eastern Macedonia--her allies were in

possession of the bulk of Macedonia, including the entire triangle

she had planned to inject between the frontiers of New Servia and

New Greece!

The Bulgarians claimed this triangle on ethnological grounds. Its

inhabitants, they asseverated, were their brethren, as genuinely

Bulgarian as the subjects of King Ferdinand.

RACIAL PROPAGANDA IN MACEDONIA

Of all perplexing subjects in the world few can be more baffling

than the distribution of races in Macedonia. The Turks classify the

population, not by language or by physical characteristics, but by

religion. A Greek is a member of the Orthodox Church who recognizes

the patriarch of Constantinople; a Bulgarian, on the other hand, is

one of the same religious faith who recognizes the exarch; and since

the Servians in Turkey have no independent church but recognize the

patriarchate they are often, as opposed to Bulgarians, called

Greeks. Race, being thus merged in religion--in something that rests

on the human will and not on physical characteristics fixed by

nature--can in that part of the world be changed as easily as

religion. A Macedonian may be a Greek to-day, a Bulgarian to-morrow,

and a Servian next day. We have all heard of the captain in the

comic opera who "in spite of all temptations to belong to other

nations" remained an Englishman. There would have been nothing comic

in this assertion had the redoubtable captain lived in Macedonia. In

that land a race is a political party composed of members with

common customs and religion who stand for a "national idea" which

they strenuously endeavor to force on others.

Macedonia is the land of such racial propaganda. As the Turkish

government forbids public meetings for political purposes, the

propaganda takes an ecclesiastical and linguistic form. Each "race"

seeks to convert the people to its faith by the agency of schools

and churches, which teach and use its own language. Up to the middle

of the nineteenth century the Greeks, owing to their privileged

ecclesiastical position in the Ottoman Empire, had exclusive

spiritual and educational jurisdiction over the members of the

Orthodox Church in Macedonia. The opposition of the Bulgarians led,

as we have already seen, to the establishment in 1870 of the

exarchate, that is, of an independent Bulgarian Orthodox Church with

the exarch at its head. The Bulgarian propaganda in Macedonia

demanded the appointment of bishops to conduct churches and schools

under the authority of the exarchate. In 1891 the Porte conceded

Bulgarian bishops to Ochrida and Uskub, in 1894 to Veles and

Nevrokop, and in 1898 to Monastir, Strumnitza, and Dibra. As has

been well said, the church of the exarchate was really occupied in

creating Bulgarians: it offered to the Slavonic population of

Macedonia services and schools conducted in a language which they

understood and showed a genuine interest in their education. By 1900

Macedonia had 785 Bulgarian schools, 39,892 pupils, and 1,250

teachers.

The Servian propaganda in Macedonia was at a disadvantage in

comparison with the Bulgarian because it had not a separate

ecclesiastical organization. As we have already seen, the orthodox

Serbs owe allegiance to the Greek patriarch in Constantinople. And

at first they did not push their propaganda as zealously or as

successfully as the Bulgarians. In fact the national aspirations of

the people of Servia had been in the direction of Bosnia and

Herzegovina; but after these provinces were assigned to Austria by

the Treaty of Berlin, a marked change of attitude occurred in the

Servian government and nation. They now claimed as Servian the

Slavonic population of Macedonia which hitherto Bulgaria had

cultivated as her own. The course of politics in Bulgaria, notably

her embroilment with Russia, inured to the advantage of the Servian

propaganda in Macedonia, which after 1890 made great headway. The

Servian government made liberal contributions for Macedonian

schools. And before the nineteenth century closed the Servian

propaganda could claim 178 schools in the vilayets of Saloniki and

Monastir and in Uskub with 321 teachers and 7,200 pupils.

These Slav propagandists made serious encroachments upon the Greek

cause, which, only a generation earlier, had possessed a practical

monopoly in Macedonia. Greek efforts too were for a time almost

paralyzed in consequence of the disastrous issue of the

Greco-Turkish war in 1897. Nevertheless in 1901 the Greeks claimed

927 schools in the vilayets of Saloniki and Monastir with 1,397

teachers and 57,607 pupils.

RACIAL FACTS AND FALLACIES

The more bishops, churches, and schools a nationality could show,

the stronger its claim on the reversion of Macedonia when the Turk

should be driven out of Europe! There was no doubt much juggling

with statistics. And though schools and churches were provided by

Greeks, Servians, and Bulgarians to satisfy the spiritual and

intellectual needs of their kinsmen in Macedonia, there was always

the ulterior (which was generally the dominant) object of staking

out claims in the domain soon to drop from the paralyzed hand of the

Turk. The bishops may have been good shepherds of their flocks, but

the primary qualification for the office was, I imagine, the gift of

aggressive political leadership. The Turkish government now favored

one nationality and now another as the interests of the moment

seemed to suggest. With an impish delight in playing off Slav

against Greek and Servian against Bulgarian, its action on

applications for bishoprics was generally taken with a view to

embarrassing the rival Christian nationalities. And it could when

necessary keep the propagandists within severe limits. The

Bulgarians grew bold after securing so many bishoprics in the

nineties and the bishop at Uskub thought to open new schools and

churches. But the Turkish governor--the Vali--summoned him and

delivered this warning: "O Bulgarian, sit upon the eggs you have,

and do not burst your belly by trying to lay more."

How are we to determine the racial complexion of a country in which

race is certified by religion, in which religion is measured by the

number of bishops and churches and schools, in which bishops and

churches and schools are created and maintained by a propaganda

conducted by competing external powers, and in which the results of

the propaganda are determined largely by money and men sent from

Sofia, Athens, and Belgrade, subject always to the caprice and

manipulation of the Sultan's government at Constantinople?

In Southern Macedonia from the Thessalian frontier as far north as

the parallel of Saloniki, the population is almost exclusively

Greek, as is also the whole of the Chalcidician Peninsula, while

further east the coast region between the Struma and the Mesta is

also predominantly Greek. Eastern Macedonia to the north of the line

of Seres and Drama and south of the Kingdom of Bulgaria is generally

Bulgarian. On the northwest from the city of Uskub up to the

confines of Servia and Bosnia, Macedonia is mixed Serb, Bulgarian,

and Albanian, with the Serb element preponderating as you travel

northward and the Albanian westward.

PERSONAL OBSERVATIONS AND EXPERIENCES

The difficulty comes when we attempt to give the racial character of

Central Macedonia, which is equally remote from Greece, Bulgaria,

and Servia. I travelled through this district last summer. On June

29, when the war broke out between the Allies I found myself in

Uskub. Through the courtesy of the Servian authorities I was

permitted to ride on the first military train which left the city.

Descending at Veles I drove across Central Macedonia by way of

Prilip to Monastir, spending the first night, for lack of a better

bed, in the carriage, which was guarded by Servian sentries. From

Monastir I motored over execrable roads to Lake Presba and Lake

Ochrida and thence beyond the city of Ochrida to Struga on the Black

Drin, from which I looked out on the mountains of Albania.

Coming from Athens where for many months I had listened to patriotic

stories of the thorough permeation of Macedonia by Greek settlements

my first surprise was my inability to discover a Greek majority in

Central Macedonia. In most of the cities a fraction of the

population indeed is Greek and as a rule the colony is prosperous.

This is especially true in Monastir, which is a stronghold of Greek

influence. But while half the population of Monastir is Mohammedan

the so-called Bulgarians form the majority of the Christian

population, though both Servians and Roumanians have conducted

energetic propaganda. In Veles two-thirds of the population are

Christians and nearly all of these are called Bulgarians. In Ochrida

the lower town is Mohammedan and the upper Christian, and the

Christian population is almost exclusively of the Bulgarian Church.

It does not follow, however, that the people of Central Macedonia,

even if Bulgarian churches are in the ascendant among them, are

really connected by ties of blood and language with Bulgaria rather

than with Servia. If history is invoked we shall have to admit that

under Dushan this region was a part of the Serb empire as under

Simeon and Asen it was part of the Bulgarian. If an appeal is made

to anthropology the answer is still uncertain. For while the

Mongolian features--broad flat faces, narrow eyes, and straight

black hair--which characterize the subjects of King Ferdinand can be

seen--I myself have seen them--as far west as Ochrida, they may also

be found all over Northern Servia as far as Belgrade though the

Servian physical type is entirely different. There is no fixed

connection between the anthropological unit and the linguistic or

political unit. Furthermore, while there are well-marked groups who

call themselves Serbs or Bulgarians there is a larger population not

so clearly differentiated by physique or language. Undoubtedly they

are Slavs. But whether Serb or Bulgarian, or intermediate between

the two, no one to-day can demonstrate. Central Macedonia has its

own dialects, any one of which under happy literary auspices might

have developed into a separate language. And the men who speak them

to-day can more or less understand either Servian or Bulgarian.

Hence as the anonymous and highly authoritative author of "Turkey in

Europe," who calls himself Odysseus, declares:

"The practical conclusion is that neither Greeks, Servians, nor

Bulgarians have a right to claim Central Macedonia. The fact that

they all do so shows how weak each claim must be."

Yet it was Bulgaria's intransigent assertion of her claim to Central

Macedonia which led to the war between the Allies.

It will be instructive to consider the attitude of each of the

governments concerned on the eve of the conflict. I hope I am in a

position correctly to report it. Certainly I had unusual

opportunities to learn it. For besides the official position I held

in Athens during the entire course of both Balkan wars I visited the

Balkan states in June and was accorded the privilege of discussing

the then pending crisis with the prime ministers of Roumania,

Servia, and Bulgaria. It would of course be improper to quote them;

nay more, I feel myself under special obligation sacredly to respect

the confidence they reposed in me. But the frank disclosures they

made in these conversations gave me a point of view for the

comprehension of the situation and the estimate of facts which I

have found simply invaluable. And if Mr. Venizelos in Athens, or Mr.

Maioresco in Bukarest, or Mr. Pashitch in Belgrade, or Dr. Daneff,

who is no longer prime minister of Bulgaria, should ever chance to

read what I am saying, I hope each will feel that I have fairly and

impartially presented the attitude which their respective

governments had taken at this critical moment on the vital issue

then confronting them.

THE ATTITUDE OF SERVIA

I have already indicated the situation of Servia. Compelled by the

Great Powers to withdraw her troops from Albania, after they had

triumphantly made their way to the Adriatic, she was now requested

by Bulgaria to evacuate Central Macedonia up to the Ochrida-Golema

Vreh line in accordance with the terms of the treaty between the two

countries which was ratified in March, 1912. The Servian government

believed that for the loss of Albania, which the treaty assumed

would be annexed to Servia, they were entitled to compensation in

Macedonia. And if now, instead of compensation for the loss of an

outlet on the Adriatic, they were to withdraw their forces from

Central Macedonia and allow Bulgaria to establish herself between

New Servia and New Greece, they would block their own way to

Saloniki, which was the only prospect now left of a Servian outlet

to the sea. Nor was this the whole story by any means. The army,

which comprised all able-bodied Servians, was in possession of

Central Macedonia; and the military leaders, with the usual

professional bias in favor of imperialism, dictated their

expansionist views to the government at Belgrade. If Bulgaria would

not voluntarily grant compensation for the loss of Albania, the

Servian people were ready to take it by force. They had also a

direct claim against Bulgaria. They had sent 60,000 soldiers to the

siege of Adrianople, which the Bulgarians had hitherto failed to

capture. And the Servians were now asking, in bitter irony, whether

they had gone to war solely for the benefit of Bulgaria; whether

besides helping her to win all Thrace and Eastern Macedonia they

were now to present her with Central Macedonia, and that at a time

when the European Concert had stripped them of the expected prize of

Albania with its much desired Adriatic littoral! This argument was

graphically presented on a map of which I secured a copy in

Belgrade. The legend on this map reads as follows:

"Territories occupied by Servia 55,000 square miles. Servia cedes

to her allies in the east and south 3,800 square miles. Servia

cedes to Albania 15,200 square miles. Servia retains 36,000

square miles. Territories occupied by Bulgaria to Enos-Midia,

51,200 square miles. The Bulgarians demand from the Servians

still 10,240 square miles. According to Bulgarian pretensions

Bulgaria should get 61,520 square miles and Servia only 25,760!"

PROPOSED REVISION OF TREATY AND ARBITRATION

When the treaty between Servia and Bulgaria was negotiated, it seems

to have been assumed that the theatre of a war with Turkey would be

Macedonia and that Thrace--the country from the Mesta to the Black

Sea--would remain intact to Turkey. And if the rest of Turkey in

Europe up to the Adriatic were conquered by the two Allies, the

Ochrida-Golema Vreh line would make a fairly equitable division

between them of the spoils of war. But with Albania denied to

Servia and Thrace occupied by Bulgaria, conditions had wholly

changed. The Servian government declared that the changed conditions

had abrogated the Treaty of Partition and that it was for the two

governments now to adjust themselves to the logic of events! On May

28 Mr. Pashitch, the Servian prime minister, formally demanded a

revision of the treaty. A personal interview with the Bulgarian

prime minister, Mr. Gueshoff, followed on June 2 at Tsaribrod. And

Mr. Gueshoff accepted Mr. Pashitch's suggestion (which originated

with Mr. Venizelos, the Greek prime minister) of a conference of

representatives of the four Allies at St. Petersburg. For it should

be added that, in the Treaty of Partition, the Czar had been named

as arbiter in case of any territorial dispute between the two

parties.

What followed in the next few days has never been clearly disclosed.

But it was of transcendent importance. I have always thought that if

Mr. Gueshoff, one of the authors of the Balkan Alliance, had been

allowed like Mr. Venizelos and Mr. Pashitch, to finish his work,

there would have been no war between the Allies. I did not enjoy the

personal acquaintance of Mr. Gueshoff, but I regarded him as a wise

statesman of moderate views, who was disposed to make reasonable

concessions for the sake of peace. But a whole nation in arms,

flushed with the sense of victory, is always dangerous to the

authority of civil government. If Mr. Gueshoff was ready to arrange

some accommodation with Mr. Pashitch, the military party in Bulgaria

was all the more insistent in its demands on Servia for the

evacuation of Central Macedonia. Even in Servia Mr. Pashitch had

great difficulty in repressing the jingo ardor of the army, whose

bellicose spirit was believed to find expression in the attitude of

the Crown Prince. But the provocation in Bulgaria was greater,

because, when all was said and done, Servia was actually violating

an agreement with Bulgaria to which she had solemnly set her name.

Possibly the military party gained the ear of King Ferdinand.

Certainly it was reported that he was consulting with leaders of the

opposition. Presumably they were all dissatisfied with the

conciliatory attitude which Mr. Gueshoff had shown in the Tsaribrod

conference. Whatever the explanation, Mr. Gueshoff resigned on June

9.

DELAY AND OPPOSITION OF BULGARIA

On that very day the Czar summoned the Kings of Bulgaria and Servia

to submit their disputes to his decision. While this demand was

based on a specific provision of the Servo-Bulgarian treaty, His

Majesty also urged it on the ground of devotion to the Slav cause.

This pro-Slav argument provoked much criticism in Austro-Hungarian

circles which resented bitterly the assumption of Slav hegemony in

Balkan affairs. However, on June 12 Bulgaria and Servia accepted

Russian arbitration. But the terms were not agreed upon. While Mr.

Venizelos and Mr. Pashitch impatiently awaited the summons to St.

Petersburg they could get no definite information of the intentions

of the Bulgarian government. And the rivalry of Austria-Hungary and

Russia for predominance in the Balkans was never more intense than

at this critical moment.

On June 14 Dr. Daneff was appointed prime minister in succession to

Mr. Gueshoff. He had represented Bulgaria in the London Peace

Conference where his aggressive and uncompromising attitude had

perturbed his fellow delegates from the other Balkan states and

provoked some criticism in the European press. He was known as a

Russophil. And he seems now to have got assurance from Russia that

she would maintain the Bulgarian view of the treaty with Servia,

although she had at one time favored the Servian demand for an

extensive revision of it. Certainly Dr. Daneff voiced the views and

sentiments of the Bulgarian army and nation. I was in Sofia the week

before the outbreak of the war between the Allies. And the two

points on which everybody insisted were, first, that Servia must be

compelled to observe the Treaty of Partition, and, secondly, that

Central Macedonia must be annexed to Bulgaria. For these things all

Bulgarians were ready to fight. And flushed with their great

victories over the main army of Turkey they believed it would be an

easy task to overpower the forces of Servia and Greece. For the

Greeks they entertained a sort of contempt; and as for the Servians,

had they not already defeated them completely at Slivnitza in 1886?

Men high in the military service of the nation assured me that the

Bulgarian army would be in Belgrade in eight days after war was

declared. The Greeks too would quickly be driven out of Saloniki.

The idea of a conference to decide the territorial question in

dispute between the Allies found no favor in any quarter.

Now it is important that full justice should be done to Bulgaria. As

against Servia, if Servia had stood alone, she might have appealed

to the sanctity and inviolability of treaties. Circumstances had

indeed changed since the treaty was negotiated. But was that a good

reason, Bulgaria might have asked, why she should be excluded from

Central Macedonia which the treaty guaranteed to her? Was that a

good reason why she should not emancipate her Macedonian brethren

for whose sake she had waged a bloody and costly war with Turkey?

The Bulgarians saw nothing in the problem but their treaty with

Servia and apparently cared for no territorial compensation without

Central Macedonia.

BULGARIA'S UNCOMPROMISING POLICY

The Bulgarians were blind to all facts and considerations but the

abstract terms of the treaty with Servia. It was a fact, however,

that the war against Turkey had been fought by four Allies. It was a

fact that the Ottoman government had ceded European Turkey (except

Albania) to these four Allies. No two of the Allies could divide

between themselves the common possession. A division made by the

four Allies might contravene the terms of a treaty which existed

between any two of the Allies prior to the outbreak of the war. In

any event it was for the four Allies together to effect a

distribution of the territory ceded to them by Turkey. For that

purpose a conference was an essential organ. How otherwise could the

four nations reach any agreement? Yet the Bulgarians--army,

government, and nation--were obsessed by the fixed idea that

Bulgaria enjoyed not only a primacy in this matter but a sort of

sovereign monopoly by virtue of which it was her right and privilege

to determine how much of the common spoils she should assign Servia

(with whom she had an ante-bellum treaty), and, after Servia had

been eliminated, how much she could spare to Greece (with whom no

treaty of partition existed), and, when Greece had been disposed of,

whether any crumbs could be flung to Montenegro, who had indeed very

little to hope for from the Bulgarian government. And so Bulgaria

opposed a conference of the four prime ministers though a conference

was the natural, obvious, and necessary method of disposing of the

common business pressing upon them.

The attitude of Bulgaria left no alternative but war. Yet the

Bulgarian government failed to reckon the cost of war. Was it not

madness for Bulgaria to force war upon Greece, Servia, and

Montenegro on the west at a time when Roumania was making demands

for territorial compensation on the north and Turkey was sure to

seize the occasion to win back territory which Bulgaria had just

wrested from her on the south? Never was a government blinder to the

significant facts of a critical situation. All circumstances

conspired to prescribe peace as the manifest policy for Bulgaria,

yet nearly every step taken by the government was provocative of

war. The Bulgarian army had covered itself with glory in the

victorious campaign against the Moslem. A large part of European

Turkey was already in Bulgarian hands. To imperil that glory and

those possessions by the risk of a new war, when the country was

exhausted and new enemies lay in wait, was as foolish as it was

criminal. That way madness lay. Yet that way the policy pursued by

the Bulgarian government infallibly led. Must we assume that there

is some ground for suspecting that Austria-Hungary was inciting

Bulgaria to war? We must leave it to history to answer. If the

result was a terrible disaster, that was only the old Greek Nemesis

of the gods for the outraged principles of reason and moderation.

THE CONCILIATORY SPIRIT OF GREECE

Those principles, thanks to the conciliatory spirit of Mr.

Venizelos, the prime minister, and the steady support of King

Constantine, who was also commander-in-chief, were loyally followed

in Greece. A few days after the declaration of war against the

Ottoman Empire, into which Greece was precipitately hastened by the

unexpected action of Servia and Bulgaria, the Greek foreign minister

addressed a communication to the Allies on the subject of the

division of conquered territory. He traced the line of Greek claims,

as based on ethnological grounds, and added that, as he foresaw

difficulties in the way of a direct adjustment, he thought the

disputed points should be submitted to arbitration. But months

followed months without bringing from Bulgaria any clear reply to

this just and reasonable proposal of the Greek government.

Nevertheless, Mr. Venizelos persisted in his attitude of

conciliation toward Bulgaria. He made concessions, not only in

Thrace but in Eastern Macedonia, for which he was bitterly

criticized on the ground of sacrificing vital Greek interests to

Bulgaria. He recognized, as his critics refused to do, that the

Balkan question could not be settled on ethnological principles

alone; one had to take account also of geographical necessities. He

saw that the Greeks in Thrace must be handed over to Bulgaria. He

demanded only the Macedonian territory which the Greek forces had

actually occupied, including Saloniki with an adequate hinterland.

As the attitude of Bulgaria became more uncompromising, as she

pushed her army of occupation further westward, Mr. Venizelos was

even ready to make the River Struma the eastern boundary of New

Greece, and to abandon to Bulgaria the Aegean Httoral between the

Struma and the Mesta Rivers including Greek cities like Kavala,

Seres, and Drama. But these new concessions of Mr. Venizelos were in

danger of alienating from him the support of the Greek nation

without yielding anything in return from Bulgaria. The outbreak of

the war between the Allies saved him from a difficult political

position. Yet against that war Mr. Venizelos strove resolutely to

the end. And when in despite of all his efforts war came, he was

justified in saying, as he did say to the national parliament, that

the Greeks had the right to present themselves before the civilized

world with head erect because this new war which was bathing with

blood the Balkan Peninsula had not been provoked by Greece or

brought about by the demand of Greece to receive satisfaction for

all her ethnological claims. And this position in which he had

placed his country was, he proudly declared, a "moral capital" of

the greatest value.

BULGARIA BEGINS HOSTILITIES

Bulgaria's belated acceptance of Russian arbitration was not

destined to establish peace. Yet Dr. Daneff, the prime minister, who

received me on June 27 and talked freely of the Balkan situation

(perhaps the more freely because in this conversation it transpired

that we had been fellow students together at the University of

Heidelberg), decided on June 28 not to go to war with the Allies.

Yet that very evening at eight o'clock, unknown to Dr. Daneff, an

order in cipher and marked "very urgent" was issued by General

Savoff to the commander of the fourth army directing him on the

following evening to attack the Servians "most vigorously along the

whole front." On the following afternoon, the 29th, General Savoff

issued another order to the army commanders giving further

instructions for attacks on the Servians and Greeks, including an

attack on Saloniki, stating that these attacks were taking place

"without any official declaration of war," and that they were

undertaken in order to accustom the Bulgarian army to regard their

former allies as enemies, to hasten the activities of the Russian

government, to compel the former allies to be more conciliatory, and

to secure new territories for Bulgaria! Who was responsible for this

deplorable lack of harmony between the civil government and the

military authorities has not yet been officially disclosed. Did

General Savoff act on his own responsibility? Or is there any truth

in the charge that King Ferdinand after a long consultation with the

Austro-Hungarian Minister instructed the General to issue the order?

Dr. Daneff knew nothing of it, and though he made every effort to

stop the resulting hostilities, the dogs of war had been let loose

and could not now be torn from one another's throats.

There had been sporadic fighting in Macedonia between the Allies for

some months past. Greece and Servia had concluded an anti-Bulgarian

alliance on June 1. They also entered into a convention with

Roumania by which that power agreed to intervene in case of war

between the late Allies. And war having been declared, Roumania

seized Silistria at midnight, July 10. Meanwhile the Servian and

Greek forces were fighting the Bulgarians hard at Kilkis, Doiran,

and other points between the Vardar and the Struma. And, as if

Bulgaria had not enemies enough on her back already, the Turkish

Army on July 12 left the Chataldja fortifications, crossed the

Enos-Midia line, and in less than two weeks, with Enver Bey at its

head, re-occupied Adrianople. Bulgaria was powerless to stop the

further advance of the Turks, nor had she forces to send against the

Roumanians who marched unopposed through the neighboring country

till Sofia itself was within their power.

No nation could stand up against such fearful odds. Dr. Daneff

resigned on July 15. And the new ministry had to make the best terms

it could.

TERMS OF PEACE

A Peace Conference met at Bukarest on July 28, and peace was signed

on August 10. By this Treaty of Bukarest Servia secured not only all

that part of Macedonia already under her occupation but gained also

an eastward extension beyond the Doiran-Istib-Kochana line into

purely Bulgarian territory. Greece fared still better under the

treaty; for it gave her not only all the Macedonian lands she had

already occupied but extended her domain on the Aegean littoral as

far east as the mouth of the Mesta and away into the interior as far

above Seres and Drama as they are from the sea,--thus establishing

the northern frontier of New Greece from Lake Presba (near the

eastern boundary of Albania) on a northward-ascending line past

Ghevgheli and Doiran to Kainchal in Thrace on the other side of the

Mesta River. This assignment of territory conquered from Turkey had

the effect of shutting out Bulgaria from the Western Aegean; and the

littoral left to Bulgaria between the Mesta River and the Turkish

boundary has no harbor of any consequence but Dedeagach, which is

much inferior to Kavala.

The new Turkish boundary was arranged by negotiations between the

Bulgarian and Ottoman governments. The terminus on the Black Sea was

pushed north from Midia almost up to the southern boundary of

Bulgaria. Enos remained the terminus on the Aegean. But the two

termini were connected by a curved line which after following the

Maritza River to a point between Sufli and Dimotika then swung in a

semicircle well beyond Adrianople to Bulgaria and the Black Sea.

Thus Bulgaria was compelled to cede back to the Asiatic enemy not

only Adrianople but the battlefields of Kirk Kilisse, Lule Burgas,

and Chorlu on which her brave soldiers had won such magnificent

victories over the Moslems.

THE ATTITUDE OF ROUMANIA

The Treaty of Bukarest marked the predominance of Roumania in Balkan

affairs. And of course Roumania had her own reward. She had long

coveted the northeastern corner of Bulgaria, from Turtukai on the

Danube to Baltchik on the Black Sea. And this territory, even some

miles beyond that line, Bulgaria was now compelled to cede to her by

the treaty. It is a fertile area with a population of some 300,000

souls, many of whom are Turks.

The claim of Roumania to compensation for her neutrality during the

first Balkan war was severely criticized by the independent press of

western Europe. It was first put forward in the London Peace

Conference, but rejected by Dr. Daneff, the Bulgarian delegate. But

the Roumanian government persisted in pressing the claim, and the

Powers finally decided to mediate, with the result that the city of

Silistria and the immediately adjoining territory were assigned to

Roumania. Neither state was satisfied with the award and the second

Balkan war broke out before the transfer had been effected. This

gave Roumania the opportunity to enforce her original claim, and,

despite the advice of Austria-Hungary, she used it, as we have

already seen.

The Roumanian government justifies its position in this matter by

two considerations. In the first place, as Roumania was larger and

more populous than any of the Balkan states, the Roumanian nation

could not sit still with folded arms while Bulgaria wrested this

preeminence from her. And if Bulgaria had not precipitated a war

among the Allies, if she had been content with annexing the portion

of European Turkey which she held under military occupation, New

Bulgaria would have contained a greater area and a larger population

than Roumania. The Roumanians claim, accordingly, that the course

they pursued was dictated by a legitimate and vital national

interest. And, in the second place, as Greeks, Servians, and

Bulgarians based their respective claims to Macedonian territory on

the racial character of the inhabitants, Roumania asserted that the

presence of a large Roumanian (or Vlach) population in that disputed

region gave her an equally valid claim to a share in the common

estate.

In all Macedonia there may be some 100,000 Vlachs, though Roumanian

officials put the number much higher. Many of them are highland

shepherds; others engage in transportation with trains of horses or

mules; those in the lowlands are good farmers. They are found

especially in the mountains and valleys between Thessaly and

Albania. They are generally favorable to the Greek cause. Most of

them speak Greek as well as Roumanian; and they are all devoted

members of the Greek Orthodox Church. Yet there has been a Roumanian

propaganda in Macedonia since 1886, and the government at Bukarest

has devoted large sums to the maintenance of Roumanian schools, of

which the maximum number at any time has perhaps not exceeded forty.

Now if every other nation--Greek, Servian, Bulgarian--which had

hitherto maintained its propaganda of schools and churches in

Macedonia, was to bring its now emancipated children under the

benign sway of the home government and also was to annex the

Macedonian lands which they occupied, why, Roumania asked, should

she be excluded from participation in the arrangement? She did not,

it is true, join the Allies in fighting the common Moslem oppressor.

But she maintained a benevolent neutrality. And since Macedonia is

not conterminous with Roumania, she was not seeking to annex any

portion of it. Yet the rights those Roumanians in Macedonia gave her

should be satisfied. And so arguing, the Roumanian government

claimed as a quid pro quo the adjoining northeastern corner of

Bulgaria, permitting Bulgaria to recoup herself by the uncontested

annexation of Thrace and Eastern Macedonia.

Such was the Roumanian reasoning. Certainly it bore hard on

Bulgaria. But none of the belligerents showed any mercy on Bulgaria.

War is a game of ruthless self-interest. It was Bulgaria who

appealed to arms and she now had to pay the penalty. Her losses

enriched all her neighbors. What Lord Bacon says of individuals is

still more true of nations: the folly of one is the fortune of

another, and none prospers so suddenly as by others' errors.

THE WORK AND REWARD OF MONTENEGRO

I have already sufficiently described the territorial gains of

Roumania, Servia, and Greece. But I must not pass over Montenegro in

silence. As the invincible warriors of King Nicholas opened the war

against the Ottoman Empire, so they joined Servia and Greece in the

struggle against Bulgaria. On Sunday, June 29, I saw encamped across

the street from my hotel in Uskub 15,000 of these Montenegrin

soldiers who had arrived only a day or two before by train from

Mitrowitza, into which they had marched across Novi Bazar. Tall,

lithe, daring, with countenances bespeaking clean lives, they looked

as fine a body of men as one could find anywhere in the world, and

their commanding figures and manly bearing were set off to great

advantage by their striking and picturesque uniforms. The officers

told me next day that in a few hours they would be fighting at

Ghevgheli. Their splendid appearance seemed an augury of victory for

the Serbs.

Montenegro too received her reward by an extension of territory on

the south to the frontier of Albania (as fixed by the Great Powers)

and a still more liberal extension on the east in the sandjak of

Novi Bazar. This patriarchal kingdom will probably remain unchanged

so long as the present King lives, the much-beloved King Nicholas, a

genuinely Homeric Father of his People. But forces of an economic,

social, and political character are already at work tending to draw

it into closer union with Servia, and the Balkan wars have given a

great impetus to these forces. A united Serb state, with an Adriatic

littoral which would include the harbors of Antivari and Dulcigno,

may be the future which destiny has in store for the sister kingdoms

of Servia and Montenegro. If so, it is likely to be a mutually

voluntary union; and neither Austria-Hungary nor Italy, the warders

of the Adriatic, would seem to have any good ground to object to

such a purely domestic arrangement.

THE PROBLEM OF ALBANIA

The Albanians, though they rather opposed than assisted the Allies

in the war against Turkey, were set off as an independent nation by

the Great Powers at the instigation of Austria-Hungary with the

support of Italy. The determination of the boundaries of the new

state was the resultant of conflicting forces in operation in the

European concert. On the north while Scutari was retained for

Albania through the insistence of Austria-Hungary, Russian influence

was strong enough to secure the Albanian centres of Ipek and Djakova

and Prisrend, as well as Dibra on the east, for the allied Serb

states. This was a sort of compensation to Servia for her loss of an

Adriatic outlet at a time when the war between the Allies, which was

destined so greatly to extend her territories, was not foreseen. But

while in this way Albanians were excluded from the new state on the

north and east, an incongruous compensation was afforded it on the

south by an unjustifiable extension into northern Epirus, whose

population is prevailingly Greek.

The location of the boundary between Albania and New Greece was

forced upon the Great Powers by the stand of Italy. During the first

war the Greeks had occupied Epirus or southern Albania as far north

as a line drawn from a point a little above Khimara on the coast due

east toward Lake Presba, so that the cities of Tepeleni and Koritza

were included in the Greek area. But Italy protested that the Greek

occupation of territory on both sides of the Straits of Corfu would

menace the control of the Adriatic and insisted that the boundary

between Albania and Greece should start from a point on the coast

opposite the southern part of the island of Corfu, Greece,

accordingly, was compelled to evacuate most of the territory she had

occupied above Janina. And Albania subsequently attempted to assert

her jurisdiction over it.

But the task of Albania is bound to be difficult. For though the

Great Powers have provided it with a ruler--the German Prince

William of Wied--there is no organized state. The Albanians are one

of the oldest races in Europe, if not the oldest. But they have

never created a state. And to-day they are hopelessly divided. It is

a land of universal opposition--north against south, tribe against

tribe, bey against bey. The majority of the population are

Mohammedan but there are many Roman Catholics in the north and in

the south the Greek Orthodox Church is predominant. The inhabitants

of the north, who are called Ghegs, are divided into numerous tribes

whose principal occupation is fighting with one another under a

system of perpetual blood-feuds and inextinguishable vendettas.

There are no tribes in the south, but the people, who are known as

Tosks, live under territorial magnates called beys, who are

practically the absolute rulers of their districts. The country as a

whole is a strange farrago of survivals of primitive conditions. And

it is not only without art and literature, but without manufactures

or trade or even agriculture. It is little wonder that the Greeks of

Epirus feel outraged by the destiny which the European Powers have

imposed upon them--to be torn from their own civilized and Christian

kindred and subjected to the sway of the barbarous Mohammedans who

occupy Albania. Nor is it surprising that since Hellenic armies have

evacuated northern Epirus in conformity with the decree of the Great

Powers, the inhabitants of the district, all the way from Santi

Quaranta to Koritza, are declaring their independence and fighting

the Albanians who attempt to bring them under the yoke.

The future of Albania is full of uncertainty. The State, however,

was not created for the Albanians, who for the rest, are not in a

condition to administer or maintain it. The state was established in

the interests of Austria-Hungary and Italy. And those powers are

likely to shape its future.

THE AEGEAN ISLANDS AND CRETE

For the sacrifice demanded of Greece in Epirus the Great Powers

permitted her by way of compensation to retain all the Aegean

Islands occupied by her during the war, except Imbros, Tenedos, and

the Rabbit Islands at the mouth of the Dardanelles. These islands,

however, Greece is never to fortify or convert into naval bases.

This allotment of the Asiatic Islands (which includes all but Rhodes

and the Dodecanese, temporarily held by Italy as a pledge of the

evacuation of Libya by the Turkish officers and troops) has given

great dissatisfaction in Turkey, where it is declared it would be

better to have a war with Greece than cede certain islands

especially Chios and Mitylene. The question of the disposition of

the islands had, however, been committed by Turkey to the Great

Powers in the Treaty of London. And Turkish unofficial condemnation

of the action of the Powers now creates a dangerous situation. Mr.

Venizelos declared not long ago, with the enthusiastic approval of

the chamber, that the security of Greece lay alone in the possession

of a strong navy. For Mr. Venizelos personally nothing in all these

great events can have been more gratifying than the achievement of

the union of Crete with Greece. This was consummated on December 14,

when the Greek flag was hoisted on Canea Fort in the presence of

King Constantine, the prime minister, and the consuls of the Great

Powers, and saluted with 101 guns by the Greek fleet.

KING CONSTANTINE

Fortune in an extraordinary degree has favored the King of the

Hellenes--Fortune and his own wise head and valiant arm and the

loyal support of his people. When before has a Prince taken supreme

command of a nation's army and in the few months preceding and

succeeding his accession to the throne by successful generalship

doubled the area and population of his country?

COST OF THE WAR

The Balkan wars have been bloody and costly. We shall never know of

the thousands of men, women, and children who died from privation,

disease, and massacre. But the losses of the dead and wounded in the

armies were for Montenegro 11,200, for Greece 68,000, for Servia

71,000, for Bulgaria 156,000, and for Turkey about the same as for

Bulgaria. The losses in treasure were as colossal as in blood. Only

rough computations are possible. But the direct military

expenditures are estimated at figures varying from a billion and a

quarter to a billion and a half of dollars. This of course takes no

account of the paralysis of productive industry, trade, and commerce

or of the destruction of existing economic values.

Yet great and momentous results have been achieved. Although seated

again in his ancient capital of Adrianople, the Moslem has been

expelled from Europe, or at any rate is no longer a European Power.

For the first time in more than five centuries, therefore,

conditions of stable equilibrium are now possible for the Christian

nations of the Balkans. Whether the present alignment of those

states toward one another and towards the Great Powers is destined

to continue it would be foolhardy to attempt to predict.

THE FUTURE OF THE BALKANS

But without pretending to cast a horoscope, certain significant

facts may be mentioned in a concluding word. If the Balkan states

are left to themselves, if they are permitted to settle their own

affairs without the intervention of the Great Powers, there is no

reason why the existing relations between Greece, Servia,

Montenegro, and Roumania, founded as they are on mutual interest,

should not continue; and if they continue, peace will be assured in

spite of Bulgaria's cry for revenge and readjustment. The danger

lies in the influence of the Great Powers with their varying

attractions and repulsions. France, Germany, and Great Britain,

disconnected with the Balkans and remote from them, are not likely

to exert much direct individual influence. But their connections

with the Triple Alliance and the Triple Entente would not leave them

altogether free to take isolated action. And two other members of

those European groups--Russia and Austria-Hungary--have long been

vitally interested in the Balkan question; while the opposition to

Servian annexation on the Adriatic littoral and of Greek annexation

in Epirus now for the first time reveals the deep concern of Italy

in the same question.

The Serbs are Slavs. And the unhappy relations between Servia and

Austria-Hungary have always intensified their pro-Russian

proclivities. The Roumanians are a Romance people, like the French

and Italians, and they have hitherto been regarded as a Balkan

extension of the Triple Alliance. The attitude of Austria-Hungary,

however, during the Balkan wars has caused a cooling of Roumanian

friendship, so that its transference to Russia is no longer

inconceivable or even improbable. Greece desires to be independent

of both groups of the European system, but the action of Italy in

regard to Northern Epirus and in regard to Rhodes and the Dodecanese

has produced a feeling of irritation and resentment among the Greeks

which nothing is likely to allay or even greatly alleviate. Bulgaria

in the past has carried her desire to live an independent national

life to the point of hostility to Russia, but since Stambuloff's

time she has shown more natural sentiments towards her great Slav

sister and liberator. Whether the desire of revenge against Servia

(and Greece) will once more draw her toward Austria-Hungary only

time can disclose.

In any event it will take a long time for all the Balkan states to

recover from the terrible exhaustion of the two wars of 1912 and

1913.

Their financial resources have been depleted; their male population

has been decimated. Necessity, therefore, is likely to co-operate

with the community of interest established by the Treaty of Bukarest

in the maintenance of conditions of stable equilibrium in the

Balkans. Of course the peace-compelling forces operative in the

Balkan states themselves might be counteracted by hostile activities

on the part of some of the Great Powers. And there is one

danger-point for which the Great Powers themselves are solely

responsible. This, as I have already explained, is Albania. An

artificial creation with unnatural boundaries, it is a grave

question whether this so-called state can either manage its own

affairs or live in peace with its Serb and Greek neighbors. At this

moment the Greeks of Epirus (whom the Great Powers have transferred

to Albania) are resisting to the death incorporation in a state

which outrages their deepest and holiest sentiments of religion,

race, nationality, and humane civilization. On the other hand the

Hoti and Gruda tribes on the north fiercely resent annexation to

Montenegro (which the Great Powers have decreed) and threaten to

summon to their support other Malissori tribes with whom they have

had a defensive alliance for several centuries. If Prince William of

Wied is unable to cope with these difficulties, Italy and

Austria-Hungary may think it necessary to intervene in Albania. But

the intervention of either would almost certainly provoke

compensatory action on the part of other European Powers, especially

Russia.

One can only hope that the Great Powers may have wisdom granted to

them to find a peaceful solution of the embarrassing problem which

they have created in setting up the new state of Albania. That the

Albanians themselves will have an opportunity to develop their own

national independence I find it impossible to believe. Yet I heard

in the summer of 1913 at Valona from the lips of Ismail Kemal Bey,

the head of the provisional government, a most impressive statement

of his hopes and aspirations for an independent Albania and his

faith and confidence in its future, in which he claimed to voice the

sentiments of the Albanian people. But, as I have already explained,

I think it doubtful whether under the most favorable external

circumstances the Albanians are at present qualified to establish

and maintain an independent state. And their destiny is so

inextricably entangled with the ambitions of some of the Great

Powers that the experiment stands no chance of getting a fair trial.

I heartily wish the circumstances were other than they are. For as

an American I sympathize with the aspirations of all struggling

nationalities to be free and independent. And my interest in Albania

is deepened, as the interest of all Americans must be deepened, by

the fact that a large number of Albanians have now found a home in

the United States.

End of Project Gutenberg's The Balkan Wars: 1912-1913, by Jacob Gould Schurman