III.
Was the formation of the Balkan League or Confederacy, covertly patronized by Russian diplomacy, known to the Cabinets of Berlin and Vienna? I am inclined to think that they were not informed of it until the moment when the Confederates were ready to give battle; otherwise, they would have tried to hold them back or to sow dissensions among them. Germany and Austria-Hungary alike were greatly concerned to keep Turkey intact, that they might draw freely, not only upon her military strength, but also upon her financial resources. Things were quite bad enough when she became involved in the struggle with Italy, which had threatened to drag on for ever. But when the Montenegrins, venturing on a forlorn hope, began hostilities, the German Government at once saw its chance in this new complication. It had no doubts as to the ultimate success of the Turks. The retired officers who wrote for Berlin newspapers trotted out a host of figures and technical details to prove the overwhelming superiority of the Ottoman army. The Serbs and the Greeks, who were no better now than when they were beaten at Slivnitza and Domokos respectively, would be swallowed at a single gulp. The Bulgarian army would offer a more stubborn resistance, but it was deficient both in numbers and in training. Accordingly Berlin laughed at the proposal of the Paris Cabinet that no change should be permitted in the frontiers of the Balkan States. The Wilhelmstrasse made a show of accepting it, with the mental reservation that later on, when the triumph of the Crescent was assured, it would adopt the views of the Vienna Cabinet, which had little inclination for showing mercy to the Confederates.
If ever a war, before its opening stages, appeared to be a futile shedding of blood, it was this one. For the matter of that, the illusion only lasted a few days. I dined at Herr von Kiderlen-Wächter’s on the evening when news was brought him of the Turkish defeat at Kirk Kilisse. No words of mine can paint his amazement. He almost refused to believe that a fortified position, held by excellent troops, should have been carried in a few hours by an army of peasants. After the brilliant victory of the Serbians at Kumanovo, however, and the entry of the Greeks into Salonika, he was forced to admit the overthrow of the Ottoman power. But the most cruel shock to German self-esteem was to hear the French artillery, with which the Allies were supplied, praised at the expense of the Krupp guns used by the vanquished army, and strictures passed upon the German tactics, which Marshal Von der Goltz had hammered so thoroughly into the heads of the Turkish officers. Thus the first stones were cast at two reputations hitherto unchallenged, and defended with might and main at Berlin.
The disasters of the Turks before the armistice had an extraordinary moral effect in Germany. The new principle laid down by the friends of the victors, “The Balkans for the Balkan nations,” seemed to be accepted without much cavil by the Imperial Government and the Press. A scornful indifference towards Turkey and her misfortunes suddenly took the place of their former cordial friendliness. The Emperor, always ready to turn aside from the weak and to make advances to the strong, was one of the first to perform this interesting change of front. The Wilhelmstrasse exerted itself above all to soothe the anger of the Ballplatz and to stifle its faint cries for intervention, preaching the doctrine that Turkey should be left to her fate. I learned on good authority that when William II. took leave of the Archduke Francis Ferdinand, who, under colour of taking part in an Imperial shooting party, had come to Berlin to discuss the situation with him, he exclaimed, just as the train was starting: “Now remember—no silly adventures!”
The confining of the Ottoman Empire to its Asiatic possessions, with Constantinople as a bridgehead in Europe, was a solution regarded at Berlin during the whole winter, after and even before the capture of Adrianople, as eminently acceptable. The abandonment of her European provinces, which had become a serious burden on the Ottoman Treasury, would leave Turkey free to devote all her resources to exploiting her neglected domains in Anatolia and Syria, where her real wealth lay. The Crescent would shine with more dazzling radiance in the sky of Asia. The Berlin Press threw out hints of this kind to its Constantinople friends by way of consolation. Since German finance and industry had locked up vast sums of capital in the Asiatic vilayets for the building of railways and the irrigation of the adjoining land concessions, the most urgent business of the Imperial Government seemed to consist henceforth in ensuring the success of these undertakings. The directors of the Deutsche Bank, concessionaires for the Bagdad Railway, made every effort to discover means of saving the flotsam and jetsam of the Turkish wreck, and of settling the financial problems on which it was already decided a conference was to sit in Paris.