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Title: The Balkan Wars
1912-1913
Author: Jacob Gould Schurman
Release Date: May 22, 2011 [EBook #36192]
Language: English
*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE BALKAN WARS ***
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THE BALKAN WARS
1912-1913
BY
JACOB GOULD SCHURMAN
PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS
PRINCETON
LONDON: HUMPHREY MILFORD
OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
1914
Copyright, June 1914, December 1914, by
PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS
Second Edition
Published December, 1914
{v}
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 the Balkan situation. It
began on July 28 with the declaration of the Dual Monarchy {vi} 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 Sarajevo 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 {vii} 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 {viii} 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.
{ix}
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.
{x} 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 {xi} 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 {xii} 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.
{xiii}
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 {xiv} 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 {xv} 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.
{1}
I
TURKEY AND THE BALKAN STATES
[Illustration: Map: The Balkan Peninsula before the Wars of 1912-1913.]
{3}
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, {4} 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 {5} 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, {6} 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 {7} 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, {8} 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 {9} 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 {10} the territory immediately surrounding them.
But this first Bulgarian Empire was short-lived, 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 {11} 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 brought 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 {12} 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 {13} 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
their wives and children and the safeguarding of their interests the
nobles of Bosnia and the {14} 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
spirit 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 {15} 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 perhaps as potent a factor
in contemporary Balkan politics as the antipathy of the Christian
nations to their former Moslem oppressors.
{16}
GREEK ECCLESIASTICAL DOMINATION OF SLAVS
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 {17} 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 {18} 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 {19}
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 {20}
complete as that of the Serbs and Bulgarians, 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 {21}
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
{22} 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 {23} 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 {24} 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 {25} 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 {26} 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. {27} 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 {28} 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 {29} 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.
{30}
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 fore-ordained 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 {31}
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 {32} 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 {33} 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. {34} 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 {35} 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 {36} 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 {37}
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
{38} 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 {39} 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 time nothing of the sort was even suspected. It {40} 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 {41} 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 {42} 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.
{43}
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 {44} 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 {45} 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 {46} 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 {47} 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 kindred Slav nations and driving them into war against
Turkey. When matters had {48} 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 event proved him one of the great
captains of our day. The prime minister, who was also minister {49} 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 Meluna Pass and the valley of the Xerias River. {50}
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 Serfidje. 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 {51} 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 {52} 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.
{53}
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 Fiorina, but when the
prize fell to Servia, though the Greeks were disappointed, it made no
breach in the friendship {54} 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 {55} 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 {56} 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, {57} 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,
{58} 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.
{59}
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.
{60}
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.
{61}
II
THE WAR BETWEEN THE ALLIES
[Illustration: Map showing the Turkish Territories occupied by the
Armies of Bulgaria, Greece, Montenegro, and Servia at the close of the
War against Turkey.]
{63}
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 {64} 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 {65} 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. The Greeks had one advantage over the
Bulgarians: {66} 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 {67} 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.
{68}
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 {69} 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 {70}
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 stopped 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 {71} 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 {72} 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 {73}
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 {74} 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 Fiorina 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 {75} 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 Goletna 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.
The war between the Allies was fought over the possession of this
triangle. The larger {76} 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 {77} 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 {78} 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 {79} 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 {80}
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.
{81}
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, {82} 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
{83} 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 {84} 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 {85}
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 {86} 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.
{87}
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 {88} 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 {89} 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 {90} 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 {91} 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.
{92}
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 {93}
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 {94} 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 {95} 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.
{96}
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 {97} 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 expiation, 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 {98}
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 {99} 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 {100} 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.
{101}
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 {102} 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 {103} 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 {104} 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 {105}
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 littoral between the Struma and the Mesta Rivers
including Greek cities like Kavala, {106} 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.
{107}
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 {108} 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
{109} 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 Varclar 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. {110} 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 {111} 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 {112}
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 {113} 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 pre-eminence
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, {114} 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 {115} 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 {116} 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 {117} 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, {118} 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 {119} 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 {120} 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 {121} 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 {122} 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
{123} 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 {124} 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?
[Illustration: Map: The Balkan Peninsula after the Wars of 1912-1913.]
{125}
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 {126} 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
{127} 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 {128} 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.
{129} 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 counter-acted 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 {130}
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, {131} 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.
{133}
INDEX
Abdul Hamid II, misgovernment, 32.
Adrianople, capture by Murad I, 4; left to Turkey, 9, 25; holds out
against Bulgaria, 56; _sine qua non_ at Peace Conference, 57; captured,
57; question of retention of, 58; reoccupied by Turkish army, 109;
ceded back to Turkey, 111.
Adriatic, question of supremacy over, 68.
Aegean Islands, Greece takes, 52; left to decision of Powers, 59; given
to Greece, 122.
Albania, Montenegrins, 53; to be left to Powers, 59; cause of friction,
67; problem of, 118; given a ruler, 120; danger-point of the Balkans,
129; northern tribes oppose absorption by Montenegro, 130; future of,
131.
Alexander, Prince, of Bulgaria, 27.
Area, see under countries.
Asen brothers, free Bulgaria, 10.
Athens, recaptured, 22.
Austria, discusses division of Turkey, 7; given Bosnia and Herzegovina,
27; intervenes in Macedonia, 33; demands independent Albania, 67, 118;
opposes Servia, 68; dislikes Slav hegemony, 97; interests in Balkans,
127.
Balkan Alliance, see Balkan states.
Balkan states, quarrel, 11; peninsula under Moslems, 13; massacres in,
25; large part of peninsula lost to Turkey, 27; dissensions among, 60;
alliance, 34; rival ambitions among, 64; treaty restrictions, 72;
causes of war between, 75; previous fighting between, 108; make peace,
110; future, 126.
Balkan wars, cause of first war, 30; cause of second war, 64; division
of fighting, 54; cost, 125. (For progress, see under countries.)
Basil II, conquers Bulgaria, 10.
Belgrade, conquered by Dushan, 12.
Berane, massacre at, 36.
Berlin, Treaty of, 21; Congress of, 78.
Blockade, Greek, of Turkey, 51.
Boris, accepts Christianity, 9.
Bosnia, conquered by Dushan, 12; delegated to Austria, 27.
Bosphorus, Turks on, 3.
Brusa, surrendered, 3.
Bukarest, see Treaty of, and Peace Conference.
Bulgaria, independent, 8; suffers most, 8; church, progress, area, 9;
under Moslem despotism, 11; ravaged by Turks, decline, 14; educational
movement, 23; exarchate established, 24; revolt against Turkey, 25;
"Big Bulgaria," 25; proclaimed independent, 26; astounding progress,
27; area and population, 29; declares war against Turkey, 34; alliance
with Greece, 35; with Servia, 35; decide to mobilize, 36; enters
Thrace, 54; success at Kirk Kilisse, Lule Burgas, and Chorlu, 55;
capture Adrianople, 57; disagreement with Servia, 65; rivalry with
Greece, 65; as to division of Macedonia, 72; demands that Servia
observe treaty, 76; claims of, 77; exarchate in Macedonia, 81; alleged
majority in Macedonia, 88; jingoism in, 96; position of, as to
arbitration of Czar, 99; uncompromising policy, 101; her mistake, 102;
opens war, 107; defeat by Allies, 109; makes peace, 110; present
attitude, 127.
Byron, Lord, volunteer in Greece, 21.
Byzantine Empire, falling before Turks, 4; annihilates Bulgaria under
Samuel, 10.
Chataldja, now border of Turkey, 8; Bulgarians at, 55.
Chorlu, Bulgarians victorious at, 55.
Christians, defeated by Moslems, 5; races quarrel, 11; In Macedonia,
31; oppressed, 13.
Constantine, King, 20; as Crown Prince, commanding general, 48;
success, 50; captures Janina, 57; ability and achievements, 124.
Constantinople, seat of Byzantine Empire, 4; captured by Mohammed II,
5; left to Turkey, 8; Russia at gates of, 25.
Crete, question of, 42; captured by Venetians, 43; present condition,
43, 44; becomes autonomous, 44; elects members to Greek parliament, 45;
process of annexation to Greece, 45, 124; Turkish sovereignty
withdrawn, 59.
Czar, arbiter of Treaty of Partition, 95; summons Servia and Bulgaria
to submit their disputes, 97.
Daneff, Dr., prime minister of Bulgaria, 98; tries to stop war, 107;
rejects Roumanian claim, 112; resigns, 109.
Dushan, Stephen, rules Servia, 12.
Eastern Roumelia, see Roumelia.
Elassona, Greeks win at, 50.
England, fleet at Navarino, 22; joins Russia to reform Macedonia, 33;
influence, 127.
Enver Bey, heads Young Turk revolt, 58.
"Eothen," does not mention Bulgaria, 15.
Epinus holds out, 56; Greeks of, resist incorporation in Albania, 129.
European, aid for Greece, 21.
Evans, Sir Arthur, excavations in Crete, 43.
Exarchate, Bulgarian, 19; Sultan's firman, 24; in Macedonia, 81.
Ferdinand, Prince, of Bulgaria, 27; King, 55, 108.
France, fleet at Navarino, 22; influence, 127.
Gabrovo, school of, 23.
Gallipoli, entry of Turks into, 4.
George, King of Greece, assassinated, 22; experienced ruler, 36;
Prince, Commissioner of Crete, 44.
Germany, influence, 127.
Gibbon, quoted as to Czar Simeon, 9.
Gladstone, denunciation of Turkish atrocities, 25.
Great Britain, see England.
Greece, becomes independent, 7; ecclesiastical domination of Slavs, 16;
Greek millet, 17; ascendancy in Bulgaria, 18; influence in Turkish
Empire, 19; war of independence, 21; Powers make her independent, 22;
boundaries, 28; area and population, 29; causes of war with Turkey, 32;
declares war, 34; alliance with Bulgaria, 35; reorganizes army, 37;
near alliance with Turkey, 40; Cretan question, 42; mobilization, 48;
enters Macedonia, 49; conquers at Sarandaporon, Serfidje, Elassona,
Veria, and Jenitsa, 50; blockades Turkey, 51; captures Janina, 57;
rivalry with Bulgaria, 65; favors Servian egress to Aegean, 71;
question of division of Macedonia, 74; propaganda in Macedonia, 83;
position of division of territory, 104; conciliatory methods, 105;
alliance against Bulgaria, 108; treaty of peace and extension of
territory, 110; annexation of Crete, 124; attitude toward Italy, 128.
Gueshoff, agrees to conference of Allies, 95; statesman, 96; resigns,
97.
Hellenism, cause of, 36.
Hellespont, Turks cross, 4.
Herzegovina, conquered by Stephen Nemanyo, 11; delegated to Austria, 27.
"Internal Organization" in Macedonia, 32.
Ipek, Archbishop of, 12.
Islam, millet of, 16.
Ismail Kemal Bey on Albania's future, 130.
Italy holds Rhodes, 52; demands independent Albania, 67, 118; desires
control of Adriatic, 69; protests against Greece at Corfu, 120.
Janina, holds out, 56; falls, 57.
Janissaries, 13; revolt, 14.
Jenitsa, Turks defeated at, 50.
Kara-George, leads Servians, 20; dynasty, 21.
Kiamil Pasha, Grand Vizier, 48; driven out, 58.
Kilkis, battle of, 109.
Kirk Kilisse, Bulgarian victory, 55.
Kossovo, field of, 4; avenged, 53.
Kochana, massacre at, 36.
Kumanovo, Servians defeat Turks at, 53.
Lazar, the Serb, 4.
Literary revival in Bulgaria, 23.
London, see Treaty of, and Peace Conference.
Lule Burgas, Bulgarian victory, 55.
Macedonia, ruled by Murad I, 4; cause of first Balkan war, 30; question
of its division, 72; racial problem, 79, 89; religion in, 81; alleged
Bulgarian majority in, 88; claims to central portion of, 89.
Mahmud Shevket Pasha, Grand Vizier, 58.
Massacre, in 1876, 25; at Kochana and Berane, 36; inflames Slavs, 47.
Mehemet Ali, fights against Greece, 22.
Meluna Pass, Greeks enter, 49.
Millet, a Turkish term, 16.
Mohammed II, conquers Constantinople, 5.
Mohammedan, intolerance, 8; Balkan peninsula under, 13; incapacity, 31.
Monastir, captured by Serbs, 53.
Montenegro, remembers Kossovo, 5; conquered by Nemanyo, 11; independent
by Treaty of Berlin, 27; area and population, 29; declares war against
Turkey, 34; fires first shot of war, 53; captures Scutari, 57; work and
reward, 116; inclination toward Servia, 118.
Moslem, see Mohammedan.
Murad I, captures Adrianople, 4.
Navarino, Battle of, 22.
Nazim Pasha, murdered, 58.
Near Eastern Question, Macedonia, 30.
Nemanyo, Stephen, unites Servia, 11.
Nicaea, surrender of, 3.
Nicholas, King of Montenegro, 53; Homeric Father, 118.
Nigrita, Greeks and Bulgarians fight at, 66.
Novi-Bazar, Montenegrins in, 53.
Obrenovich, Milosh, leads Servians, 20; dynasty, 21.
Ochrida, location, 9; given bishop, 81; religious division, 88.
Orkhan, Brusa surrenders to, 3.
Otto, of Bavaria, becomes King of Greece, 22.
Ottoman Empire, see Turkey.
Pashitch, demands revision of treaty, 95.
Patriarch, Greek, of Constantinople, 17.
Patriarchate restricted, 19, 24.
Peace Conference, at London, 57; at Bukarest, 110.
Peace, terms of, with Turkey, 59; between Allies, 110.
Peter, King, 21.
Phanariots, Turkish term, 19.
Pomaks, become Moslem, 14.
Population, see under countries.
Porte, see Turkey.
Powers, intervene in Greece, 22; recognize Bulgarian independence, 26;
views of Balkan success, 55; meet at London, 57; lack of success, 57;
insist on peace, 58; give Silistria to Roumania, 112; in Albania, 119.
Prilip, Serbs capture, 53.
Racial, division, 30; sympathies, 31; problem in Macedonia, 79;
fallacies in Macedonia, 84; characteristics, 89; in Albania, 121.
Religion, Turks divide subjects by, 16; contest in Bulgaria, 24; in
Crete, 43, 44; in Macedonia, 81; in Albania, 121.
Roumania, becomes independent, 7; by Treaty of Berlin, 27; convention
with Greece and Servia, 109; seizes Silistria, 109; at Treaty of
Bukarest, 112; justification, 113; attitude toward Triple Alliance, 127.
Roumelia, Eastern, union with Bulgaria, 26; annexation, 78.
Russia, discusses the division of Turkey, 7; fleet at Navarino, 22;
declares war against Turkey, 25; intervention in Macedonia, 33; rivalry
with Austria, 98; interest in Balkans, 127.
St. Petersburg, conference of allies at, 95.
Saloniki, left to Turkey, 9; conquered by Greeks, 51; desirability, 70.
Samuel, reigns in Bulgaria, 10.
San Stefano, Treaty of, 25; destroyed by Powers, 26.
Sarandaporon, Turks driven from, 50.
Savoff, General, orders attacks on Servians and Greeks, 107.
Scutari holds out, 56; falls, 57; to Albania, 119.
Serbs, see Servia.
Serfidje, Greeks capture, 50.
Servia, remembers Kossovo, 5; independent, 7; conquers Bulgaria, under
Asen, 10; become Christian, launch a dynasty, 11; decline, 14; throws
off Turkish yoke, 20; independence by Treaty of Berlin, 27; area and
population, 29; bands in Macedonia, 32; declares war against Turkey,
34; alliance with Bulgaria, 35; decide to mobilize, 36; enter
Macedonia, 53; victorious, at Kumanovo, Prilip, and Monastir, 53;
differences with Bulgaria, 64; desire to reach Adriatic, 68; recoils to
Aegean, 70; question of division of Macedonia, 72; propaganda in
Macedonia, 82; attitude of, 92; jingoism in, 96; position of, 100;
alliance against Bulgaria, 108; her enlargement of territory under the
Treaty of Bukarest, 110; affiliations with Russia, 127.
Shishman, Czar, dies, 11.
Silistria, taken by Roumania, 109; awarded by Powers, 113.
Slavs, unsubdued, 4; all under Moslems, 13; hostility to Greeks, 18;
indignation against Turkey, 47; racial characteristics in Macedonia, 89.
Suleyman the Magnificent, 5.
Thrace, ruled by Murad I, 4; location, 54; entered by Bulgarians, 54.
Treaty of Berlin, recognizes Servian independence, etc., 21; of
Bukarest, 110; of London, short lived, 58; eliminates Turkey, 63; of
Partition, between Servia and Bulgaria, 64; of San Stefano, created
"Big Bulgaria," 25; torn up by Powers, 26.
Triple Alliance, influence, 127.
Triple Entente, influence, 127.
Trnovo capital of Bulgaria, 10; burned, 11.
Tsaribrod, interview at, 95.
Turkey, empire in Europe, 3; armies go to Danube, 4; becomes central
European power, 5; treatment of subjects, 6; decline and division, 7;
driven from Europe, 8; oppression, 13; troops ravage Bulgaria, 14;
reconquers Greece, 22; European, how divided, 28; area and population,
29; frustrates Treaty of Berlin, 32; war against by Balkans, 34;
blockaded by Greece, 51; at mercy of Allies, 56; at Peace Conference,
57; accepts peace, 57; driven from Europe, 59; reoccupies Adrianople,
109; final boundary of Turkey in Europe, 111; no longer European power,
125; Asiatic, next danger-point, 129.
Uskub, Dushan crowned at, 12; given Bishop, 81.
Venizelos, Prime Minister of Greece, 37; criticism of and defense, 40;
his predicament, 46; suggests conference of Allies, 95; conciliatory
position, 104.
Veria, Greeks enter, 50.
Vienna, Suleyman at gates of, 5; siege of, 14.
Vilayet, Turkish term, 28.
Vlachs, in Macedonia, 114.
William, of Wied, King of Albania, 120.
Young Turks, rule, 33; reject proposals of Venizelos, 47; forced out,
48; depose Kiamil Pasha, 58.
Zaimis, succeeds Prince George in Crete, 45.
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