III.
Contemporaneously with the rumour of a separate peace with Turkey, in February, 1916, a suggestion was mysteriously made to the Western Allies that the Bulgarians also wished to treat with them. The two manœuvres, as we shall see, are in fact closely connected. If the Bulgarians were to come and say to the Allies: “We have been deceived, deluded by Berlin, we have pursued an odious policy. As a proof of our good faith we will evacuate immediately the Serbian territories which we have invaded, and we will do all in our power to undo the mischief we have done. Grant us peace on these terms”; in that case, clearly enough, there would be some reason for listening to Sofia. But it would be entirely to mistake the character of the Bulgarians and of their government to imagine that they could even dream of such a proposal. What the Bulgarians would like well enough would be a peace with the Allies, which should allow them to retain their territorial acquisitions, the permanent character of which was proclaimed by M. Radoslavoff on March 1st, 1916. Such a settlement, moreover, as we shall see, would square exactly with the interests of Sofia and Berlin.
At heart, the Bulgarians would be very glad of peace, since a continuation of the war can hardly procure for them any accession to what they already hold. On the other hand, the offensive of the Allies from Salonika, if it is well organized, ought to mete out to the Bulgarians the chastisement which they dread, especially since the check to the Germans before Verdun and the Russian successes in Armenia. The Bulgarian people is moreover deeply discontented at the heavy losses which it has already sustained by the sword and by disease in the campaign against Serbia. They see the whole of Bulgaria in the hands of German officers. As for the Bulgarian army, it is in a very unsatisfactory state, which has already led to local mutinies and many desertions. In these circumstances Bulgaria would evidently on all accounts do a good piece of business if she were to make a separate peace with the Allies. It must be clearly understood that this Bulgarian manœuvre is not openly avowed at Sofia; it is only carried on underhand, and probably, for the reasons we shall see, with the connivance of Berlin. Nevertheless, it is very dangerous, for, it must be said in the interest of the common Allied cause and of the truth, it has found supporters in the Allied countries among those who combine an invincible fatuity with ideas on the Balkans which are forty years behind the time.
There are also some Russians who still imagine that in 1915 the Allied diplomacy made a mistake in not undoing the consequences of the treaty of Bukarest; whereas in point of fact that is just what has been done, and what, as we saw in Chapter II., § I., constituted the fundamental error of the Allied policy in the Balkans. According to these Russians the treaty of Bukarest should have been set aside in order to restore Bulgaria to the limits assigned to it by the treaty of San Stefano. This is the point of view maintained as late as March, 1916, by M. Milioukoff from the tribune of the Duma. I have explained (p. 138), why on the west the Bulgaria of the San Stefano treaty by no means corresponded to the racial facts, and for what reasons Macedonia, forming the south of Serbia, is very far from being Bulgarian. A striking proof of it is that the Bulgarians have just massacred there a quantity of Serbians. With regard to the ethnography of the region we may introduce into the discussion a new argument, as original perhaps as it is convincing. To tell the truth the most accurate account of the ethnographic position of Macedonia is that which has been handed down to us for generations by the Cooks—it is a Macédoine. In the great dictionary of Larousse, vol. x, p. 855, edition of 1873, and therefore anterior by five years to the treaty of San Stefano (1878), we read: “Macédoine (Macedonia), a dish composed of a great number of different vegetables or fruits. ‘This word,’ says Ch. Nodier, ‘was probably first applied to a very miscellaneous dish in allusion to the incredible medley of peoples on whom Philip and Alexander imposed the laws of Macedonia.’”
Now these various peoples are the Turks, the Albanians, the Bulgarians, the Jews, the Roumanians, and the Serbians, who inhabit the south of Serbia. Thus the ancient tradition handed down by the cooks, whose impartiality in matters of ethnography will not be disputed, undoubtedly contradicts the theory of the ethnographical unity of Bulgaria mapped out by the treaty of San Stefano; and it must be remembered that in 1878 Russian diplomacy had special reasons, which no longer exist, for treating the whole of that Bulgaria as exclusively Bulgarian. The words of M. Milioukoff prove that the erroneous ideas of 1878 still linger in the minds of some Russians. Happily among the vast majority of our Eastern Allies the logic of facts has dissipated those sentimental leanings to Bulgaria which were once so strong. Indeed, the Bulgarians themselves have powerfully assisted the Russians to arrive at a juster appreciation of the true situation. At the end of 1915, in the first effervescence of their affection for Germany, the newspapers of Sofia announced that the Bulgarians are not Slavs but Tartar-Mongols, and that this racial consideration, added to all the rest, goes to show that along with the Turks and the Magyars they should form the “Turanian block,” which, in association with Germany, will master and hold down the Slavs and Latins in Europe. Hence the Bulgarian dodge of a separate peace with the Allies has very little chance of being seriously considered in Russia. But unfortunately some of those same Englishmen, whose erroneous information greatly contributed to the Balkan mistakes of 1915, are actually supporting it. I shall only refer here to Englishmen who have no official position. Among them must particularly be named the brothers Charles and Noel Buxton, who have long been at the head of a committee which is called the Balkan Committee, but which in fact has always been systematically Bulgarophile. Now by an odd coincidence the brothers Buxton have into the bargain Germanophile leanings. Le Temps of January 10th, 1916, noticed a curious book of theirs which had lately appeared, and which the journal described as “pacificist dreams.” These gentlemen appear to advocate a premature peace with Berlin as well as with Sofia, a policy which is characteristic of them. Still more dangerous is the activity of some underground workers who masquerade as correspondents of English newspapers in the Balkans. Amongst them are some who, holding views that were true enough in the time of Gladstone but are wrong to-day, systematically favour the Bulgarians. Such is their prejudice that they have failed to see the bearing of the treaty of Bukarest, and did not so much as suspect the existence of the treaties which Bulgaria concluded with Germany and Turkey in the spring of 1914, and which have just been disclosed by M. Radoslavoff (see p. 154). These correspondents, in virtue of the undeserved credit given them in London, contributed in large measure to delude the British authorities in 1915 as to the true intentions of Bulgaria down to the moment when it stepped into the arena at the side of Germany. From this grievous error has resulted the crushing of Serbia, with its manifold consequences. In spite of these plain facts staring them in the face, some incorrigible Englishmen are still unconvinced. While they acknowledge the very great difficulties of the actual situation of the Bulgarians, they nevertheless arrive at this paradoxical conclusion that the Allies should make peace with the Bulgarians and suffer them to retain their present conquests.
Be that as it may, this underhand agitation lately carried on in London by a few but very active agents, has naturally been reprobated by well-informed British opinion. The English who in April, 1916, gave so warm a reception to the Prince of Serbia, are apprehensive lest a new blunder should be perpetrated in the Balkans. To prevent that contingency a question was put in the House of Commons on March 28th: “A member asked for an assurance that Bulgaria would not be admitted to a separate peace, and especially that she should not be permitted to acquire territories at the expense of the peoples who have fought on the side of the Allies during the war” (see L’Œuvre, 29th March, 1916). This British resolution is in harmony with the interests, moral and material, recent and future, of the Allies.
In the first place, it is useless to reckon, as some misguided people have done, on a really effective popular Bulgarian rising against the government. Tsar Ferdinand has always done just what he pleased in Bulgaria, and now that he is hand in glove with Berlin, the Germans will furnish him with the force needed to keep him on the throne. As for the Bulgarian people, they are no doubt the victims of the present situation, but so they will remain. Unquestionably they possess some sterling qualities. They are industrious, energetic, and sober. But they resemble the Prussians in many points, as the new German minister to Sofia announced recently (see Le Temps, 18th March, 1916). In fact the Bulgarian people has the keen eye to the main chance, the duplicity, and the domineering spirit of the Brandenburgs. Moreover, the Bulgarian people is the prey of the Bulgarian politicians, who, with the stubbornness of mules and a doggedness of which it is impossible to convey an idea, are perfectly irreconcilable on the question of Macedonia. No doubt the most astute among them might very well, as in 1915, pretend to negotiate with the Allies for the purpose of delaying the attack from the side of Salonika, of which Berlin is extremely afraid; but to believe it possible to come to a sincere and durable understanding with Bulgaria is merely to nurse the most pernicious of chimeras. To conclude a premature peace with Bulgaria would also entail on the Allies other fatal consequences, which it is easy to demonstrate. A treaty with the Bulgarians, who in complicity with the Germans have just massacred systematically an enormous number of Serbians, would be a manifest act of treason to Serbia; it would be to treat the crimes of the Bulgarians as if they actually conferred rights on the criminals. Clearly the public opinion of the Allied nations would never tolerate such an infamy. Besides, from a military point of view the calculation would be wrong. In order to avoid giving battle to 350,000 Bulgarians, whose forces must be divided between the Roumanian front and the Salonika front, the Allies would be obliged, in the first place, to dispense with the assistance of 150,000 Serbian soldiers, who obviously would refuse to march the day that the Allies entered into negotiations with the Bulgarians. Moreover, an understanding with Bulgaria would have the effect, at once political and military, of undermining the favourable disposition of the Greeks and Roumanians towards the Entente. As I have shown in Chapter VII, the hatred of the Roumanians and the Greeks for the Bulgarians is the great psychological factor in the Balkans.
The official plan of Bulgarian supremacy, set forth on the accompanying map, may serve to explain that hatred, for it shows that Bulgarian ambition encroaches considerably on the territories of all her neighbours. It now even extends by way of Albania to the Adriatic. We can therefore readily understand that this plan of Bulgarian supremacy is the nightmare of the Greeks and the Roumanians. But these Bulgarians, like the Prussians, because of the similarity of their characters, will never renounce their programme of dominion until they shall have received at the hands of the Allies, with the help of the Greeks and Roumanians, the sound thrashing which they have earned a hundred times over, and which is essential to the establishment of lasting peace in the Balkans. But it is clear that if negotiations were opened for a separate peace with the Bulgarians, the Greeks (250,000 men) and the Roumanians (600,000 men), seeing their interests once more misunderstood by the Allies, would refuse once and for all to fight on their side.
ENCROACHMENTS PLANNED BY BULGARIA ON NEIGHBOURING STATES.
Finally, a separate peace which left Bulgaria in possession of her conquests, would enable her to build and buttress the bridge which is to join the Central Empires to Turkey. That is just what Berlin wants in order to execute its scheme of domination “from Hamburg to the Persian Gulf.” In the light of that aim, the secret attempts of Bulgaria to conclude a separate peace are seen to be the Bulgaro-German counterpart of the Turko-German manœuvre which I have exposed above (see p. 167).
Evidently the Allies will not allow themselves to be taken in by these clumsy tricks. The lesson taught by the faults committed in the Balkans in 1915 is so plain that it will prevent the Allied leaders from perpetrating any fresh blunder on a large scale. Moreover, the victory of the Allies cannot be won, and a lasting peace cannot be established in Europe, unless the German dodge of the “drawn game” is frustrated.
CHAPTER IX.
THE STILL NEUTRAL STATES WHOSE INDEPENDENCE WOULD BE DIRECTLY THREATENED BY THE ACHIEVEMENT OF THE “HAMBURG TO THE PERSIAN GULF” SCHEME, AND THEREFORE BY GERMANY’S CAPTURE OF AUSTRIA-HUNGARY.
I. The example of Portugal.
II. Holland.
III. Switzerland.
IV. The States of South America.
V. The United States.
Almost all the neutral States, though as yet they are hardly aware of it, have a vital interest, not only in compelling Germany to abandon her conquests in the East and in the West, but also in preventing her from establishing her supremacy over Austria-Hungary by means of the war. This latter aim is perfectly logical, since the German supremacy over Central Europe would secure for the government of Berlin formidable means of domination both by land and sea (see p. 106). One of the effects of the colossal upheaval in the mutual relation of the forces of the States involved, in view of the abnormal concentration of the sources of power in German hands, would be that the independence of the neutral States would inevitably be gravely imperilled. In this chapter we shall consider the situation of countries still neutral, which would be particularly affected by the achievement of the scheme “from Hamburg to the Persian Gulf.”