The Story of the Great War, Volume 1 / Introductions; Special Articles; Causes of War; Diplomatic and State Papers

by Unknown

CHAPTER XIX

FIRST AND SECOND BALKAN WARS

The war finally broke out on September 30, 1912, precipitated by Montenegro before the other members of the league were quite ready. The wonderful victories of the Serbian and Bulgarian armies were the surprise and wonder of the world at the time. The Bulgarians were victorious at Lule Burges, and the Serbians at Kumanovo. The Greeks advanced as far as Saloniki, while their fleet bottled up the ships of the Turks in the Dardanelles. Finally the Bulgarians swept the Turks in Thrace into Constantinople and were battering down the gates of the capital itself. The Serbians marched an army over the mountains to Durazzo on the Adriatic, and the Montenegrins took Scutari. And by the following spring Turkey was suing for peace, which was finally brought about by the Treaty of London on May 30, 1913.

But the very success of the Balkan allies opened up new dangers of deep gravity. And now Austria, who had not quite dared to attack Serbia during the hostilities, saw an opportunity whereby she might defeat the league by opening up the dangers engendered by their very success. Had it not been for her intrigues there would have been no Second Balkan War. But she hated Serbia and was already determined on her destruction.

Largely because of the determined stand taken by Austria in the London conference, Albania was made an independent principality, Serbia was denied her longed-for outlet on the Adriatic, Greece was deprived of Epirus, and Montenegro had to give up Scutari, the taking of which cost her so much blood.

Now it had also happened that the operations of the various armies of the Balkan allies had been in territories different from what had at first been anticipated. The Turks had put up their main fight down in Thrace, leaving the greater area of Macedonia comparatively undefended. Thus the Bulgarians, while doing the heaviest fighting, had been concentrated in a small territory, hammering away at the main forces of the Turks, while the Serbian and Greek armies had been able to overrun much larger territories with comparative ease. Thus Bulgaria, though she had done most of the fighting and had lost the heaviest, occupied only a broad pathway from her own southern frontier, down through Thrace to Constantinople, while Serbia occupied most of Macedonia, and Greece was in possession of Saloniki.

Greece and Serbia, and especially Serbia, having been cheated of most of the territory they had counted on annexing by the Treaty of London, now demanded a revision of the treaties by which they had gone into the war. Moreover, the Treaty of London confirmed them in the possession of the territory they now occupied.

The bitterest feelings were at once rekindled. Both sides had grievances. Serbia maintained that at the conference in London Bulgaria had failed to back up her claim for Albania. Therefore she was entitled to compensation in Macedonia. Bulgaria asserted that Macedonia was inhabited by Bulgars who did not wish to become Serbian subjects.

Balkans After the Second Balkan War.

At this juncture Austria again appeared on the scene and whispered in Bulgaria's ear that she should take what she wanted by force of arms; was not her army equal to the armies of Greece and Serbia combined? Meanwhile she, Austria, would see that there was no intervention from the outside. This was one motive that drove Bulgaria into the Second Balkan War.

For the past generation Macedonian boys had been coming up into Bulgaria. Many had gone back to Macedonia, but the majority had remained and settled in Bulgaria. Hundreds of them had entered the army and many of them had acquired high rank. Others, again, had entered the Government service, and dozens had been sent to the National Assembly by Bulgarian constituencies. And several, among them Ghenadieff, had become ministers in the cabinet.

To a still greater extent Macedonians have poured into Serbia. During the past hundred years, ever since the pashalic of Belgrade became free from the Turks, thousands of Macedonians have come up into Serbia for education and a life. They entered the army, Parliament, and every department of state, in large numbers, they became educationalists and swelled the ranks of commerce. Among the members of the Serb Cabinet during this war born in Macedonia are: the Prime Minister Nikola Pashich, from Tetovo; Dr. Lazar Patchou, Minister of Finance, from Monastir; Nicola Stefanovich, Cabinet Minister at the war's outbreak, from Navrovo; Kosta Stoyanovich, former Minister of Commerce, from Monastir; General Dimitriye Tzintzar-Markovich, from Ochrida; General Lazar Lazarevich, from Moskopolye, Monastir; former Prime Minister Milan Christich, the Serb Minister Plenipotentiary in Rome; Michael Ristich; former Prime Minister Dr. Vladam Georgevich; Svetolick Popovich, from Uskub; Under-Secretary of State for Public Works, Petar Popovich, from Prilep; Head of Public Works, Professor Lazarevich, from Ghevgheli; Professor Alexich, from Kumanovo; General Lazar Petrovich, from Bashino Selo; Veles, and many others. The names of the distinguished and prominent Macedonians in army, state, and education services, and those in trade and other useful occupations in Serbia fill a considerable space in the Post Office Directory.

The ambition of the Coburg King Ferdinand, since his coming to Bulgaria, has steadily aimed at the conquest and annexation of neighboring countries with the view of forming for himself an extended state. In this idea Bulgaria has been developed by him on lines de facto tending toward creating rather a feudal domain than a free, modern constitutional state. He encouraged a large number of political parties which could be easily played one against another, duplicating somewhat the Hapsburg principle as applied in the Austrian system of counterbalancing the various nationalities; the educational system was not developed to the extent nor along lines to produce a truly free and powerful people evidenced by the large number of young men and women students finding it necessary to go for higher education to the American Roberts College at Constantinople.

Ferdinand, always supported by Austria, with whom he has always been in secret alliance, has devoted large sums to anti-Serb and anti-Greek propaganda in Bulgaria, Macedonia, and throughout the world, preparing for the day when his designs of conquest could be carried into effect.

As the First Balkan War drew to a finish, when King Ferdinand's grip had hardly closed on the golden prize of that war, Adrianople, which the Serbs helped their Bulgar brothers to conquer, and whose Turkish commander and his staff, as fate decreed, were actually captured by the Serbs and handed over by them to the Bulgarians, Ferdinand turned his army westward to attack the Serbs, leaving Adrianople and Thracia, rich territory which the Bulgars had just reconquered at such cost of blood and which was confirmed to Bulgaria by the Treaty of London, to fall back unprotected into the hands of the Turks.

On the night of June 29, 1913, without any declaration of war, the Bulgarian army suddenly attacked the Serbians and Greeks all along the line, over 250 miles in length. Apparently General Savoff, the Bulgarian commander, had taken the initiative upon himself, for all that night and the next day the Government in Sofia kept sending telegrams ordering the operations to cease.

All through July the fighting continued, and the battles were far more bloody than those that had been fought with the Turks in the first war. In the south the Bulgarians were decidedly beaten, but this was because they had counted on holding the Greeks back with only 70,000 men.

The main fighting was on the Bregalnitza River, between the Serbians and the Bulgarians. Here the Bulgarians also suffered a reverse. And the Serbians were suffering losses that they could less afford than the Bulgarians. Whether the Bulgarians might eventually have won out, as their lines were contracted and the Greeks were drawn away from their base at Saloniki, was a military question that was not to be decided. For at this juncture Rumania took unexpected action. She suddenly on July 10 began an invasion of Bulgaria from the north, and by the end of the month her cavalry screens were within twenty miles of the Bulgarian capital. The Turks, too, had recrossed the frontier and were once more in possession of Adrianople, which the small Bulgarian garrison surrendered without resistance. Literally the armies of all her neighbors were invading Bulgaria. Further resistance was useless. On July 31, after just one month of fighting, an armistice was signed, and representatives from all the belligerents met in Bucharest to negotiate terms of peace. On August 10 the Treaty of Bucharest was finally signed.

As a result of the Second Balkan War Bulgaria was left in a much worse position than she was in after the first war. First of all she had to give a slice of her Danubian territory to Rumania, as her price for entering the war. Then she had to return part of Thrace, including Adrianople, to the Turks. Serbia retained southeastern Macedonia, and Greece kept Saloniki and its hinterland for fifty miles inward, including Kavala, the natural economic outlet for Bulgaria on the Ægean.[Back to Contents]

PART III—DIRECT CAUSES OF THE WAR

CHAPTER XX

ASSASSINATION OF FRANZ FERDINAND—AUSTRIA'S ULTIMATUM

It was the boast of the greater European powers, during the Balkan Wars of 1912 and 1913, and after, that the "conflagration in the Balkans had been localized"—i.e., that none of the western nations would be involved in the complications growing out of the trouble in the Balkans. The conflagration in the mountainous peninsula had been "localized," it was true; but the smouldering fire that remained after the Balkan Wars was to flare forth, during the summer of 1914, to spread over Europe from the Shetland Islands to Crete in one grand flame, and to drop sparks on the remaining four continents. That smouldering fire was the doctrine known as Greater Serbianism, sometimes wrongly spoken of as Pan-Serbianism.

As during the nineteenth century one after another the Balkan States gained independence from Turkish sovereignty and the germ of what is called Nationalism was born in them, each looked about to see in what direction its boundaries might be extended. The appetite of Nationalism, with these small states as with the greater countries, demanded that under the flag of a given nation must be gathered all the peoples of that nation; if some of them dwell in foreign lands those lands must be conquered; if foreigners live within the borders of the country those foreigners must be "ironed out"—the crushing machinery of despotic government must be brought into use to force them to adopt the language, literature, traditions, and religion of the nation which considered them alien. And the appetite of Nationalism demanded one thing more—that the political boundaries of a nation conform with the "natural boundaries" as they seemed to be delimited by mountains, rivers, and coasts.

The kingdoms of Serbia and Montenegro had shown symptoms of Nationalism long before the Balkan Wars of 1912 and 1913; when they emerged from those wars with their territories almost doubled the idea took even greater hold on them. As Turkish sovereignty and influence became less feared, Austrian dominance replaced them.

Austria did nothing to allay this fear; she stood as a Teutonic bulwark between a growing Slavic menace (in Serbia and Montenegro) on the south and the already formidable Slavic menace (Russia) on the east. In her provinces of Bosnia and Herzegovina, which were transformed from protectorates to integral parts of the Austrian Empire in 1908, there dwelt thousands of peasants who were of Serbian nationality; in more concise terms they were of the same racial stock as the Serbians. After Serbian prestige rose as a result of the Balkan Wars of 1912 and 1913 these Serbian subjects of Austria desired more than ever to be a part of the Slav kingdom; this desire was shared by the leading factions in Serbia itself; the doctrine of "Greater Serbia" demanded that the aims of the desire be materialized. Besides, the "natural boundaries" of Serbia seemed to take in the greater part, if not all, of Bosnia and Herzegovina, for they stretched along the eastern shores of the Adriatic and shut Serbia and Montenegro off from that sea.

Propaganda began to spread throughout Serbia and Bosnia and Herzegovina, reminding the Serbs in all three places that they must work to bring themselves under one government, and that government their own; they were urged to keep up their efforts to standardize their religion, their speech, their traditions; they were called upon, by this same propaganda, to substitute Austria for Turkey as the object of national Serbian hate.

But Austria, too, had the disease of Nationalism, and she had been engaged since 1908 in "ironing out" the Serbs within her borders. Thus great friction was engendered, and when, on June 28, 1914, the Archduke Francis Ferdinand, the crown prince and his morganatic wife visited the Bosnian city of Sarajevo, they and the officials of the city and province knew that the lives of the pair were in danger from Serbian intrigue.

The archduke had gone to Bosnia on his first visit to take charge of military maneuvers there, and before he left the Austrian capital the Serbian minister had expressed doubt as to the wisdom of the visit, telling the court that the Serbian population in Bosnia might make unfavorable demonstrations. The fears of the Serbian minister proved to be well founded; Sarajevo displayed many Serbian flags on the day of his arrival. The archduke's party, in automobiles, proceeded to the Town Hall after leaving the railway station, passing through crowded streets. The city officials were gathered at the Town Hall to give him an official welcome. A bomb, hurled from a roof, fell into the archduke's car; he caught it and threw it to the pavement, where it exploded, doing no damage to either him or his wife, but injuring two adjutants in the car following. One Gabrinovics, a Serbian from Trebinje, was arrested as the assailant.

The archduke proceeded to the Town Hall, and after berating the city officials listened to the speeches of welcome. As he and his wife were departing a Serbian student, named Prinzip, who was later arrested, rushed out from the crowd and fired point-blank at the couple with a revolver. Both were hit a number of times and died some hours later from their wounds.

Great excitement immediately prevailed in Sofia and Vienna, and in Berlin and St. Petersburg to a lesser degree. What retribution would Austria demand? The Austrian press openly avowed that the plot on the archduke's life had been hatched in official circles in Serbia, and the Austrian Government made no attempt to suppress these statements. One hour after the tragedy had taken place it had assumed an official and international complexion.

A punitive war against Serbia was immediately urged in Vienna. On June 29, 1914, anti-Serbian riots broke out in Bosnia, Sarajevo was put under martial law, and the bodies of the assassinated couple began the mournful journey to Vienna. On July 2, 1914, Prinzip confessed that he had apprised the Pan-Serbian Union of his attempt to kill the archduke, and on the same day the first intimation came that the matter was considered a serious one in Germany—the kaiser became "diplomatically ill." Then, for twenty days there was an outward calm in the capitals of Europe, but behind the scenes the diplomats were at work; the great question was how far Russia would go in defending her Slavic sister state against the impending demands of Austria.

These demands were made public in a note which Austria sent to Serbia on July 23, 1914. Serbia was given till 6 p. m., July 25, 1914, to comply with the ultimatum, which read as follows:

"On March 31, 1909, the Royal Serbian Minister in Vienna, on the instructions of the Serbian Government, made the following statements to the Imperial and Royal Government:

"'Serbia recognizes that the fait accompli regarding Bosnia has not affected her rights, and consequently she will conform to the decisions that the powers will take in conformity with Article XXV of the Treaty of Berlin. At the same time that Serbia submits to the advice of the powers she undertakes to renounce the attitude of protest and opposition which she has adopted since October last. She undertakes on the other hand to modify the direction of her policy with regard to Austria-Hungary and to live in future on good neighborly terms with the latter.'

"The history of recent years, and in particular the painful events on June 28 last, have shown the existence in Serbia of subversive movement with the object of detaching a part of Austria-Hungary from the monarchy. The movement which had its birth under the eyes of the Serbian Government, has had consequences on both sides of the Serbian frontier in the shape of acts of terrorism and a series of outrages and murders.

"Far from carrying out the formal undertakings contained in the declaration of March 31, 1909, the Royal Serbian Government has done nothing to repress these movements. It has permitted the criminal machinations of various societies and associations, and has tolerated unrestrained language on the part of the press, apologies for the perpetrators of outrage and the participation of officers and functionaries in subversive agitation. It has permitted an unwholesome propaganda in public instruction. In short, it has permitted all the manifestations which have incited the Serbian population to hatred of the monarchy and contempt of its institutions.

"This culpable tolerance of the Royal Serbian Government had not ceased at the moment when the events of June 28 last proved its fatal consequences to the whole world.

"It results from the depositions and confessions of the criminal perpetrators of the outrage of June 28 that the Sarajevo assassinations were hatched in Belgrade, that the arms and explosives with which the murderers were provided had been given to them by Serbian officers and functionaries belonging to the Narodna Obrava, and, finally, that the passage into Bosnia of the criminals and their arms was organized and effected by the chiefs of the Serbian Frontier Service.

"The above-mentioned results of the magisterial investigation do not permit the Austro-Hungarian Government to pursue any longer the attitude of expectant forbearance which it has maintained for years in face of the machinations hatched in Belgrade and thence propagated in the territories of the monarchy. These results, on the contrary, impose on it the duty of putting an end to intrigues which form a perpetual menace to the tranquility of the monarchy.

"To achieve this end the Imperial and Royal Government sees itself compelled to demand from the Serbian Government a formal assurance that it condemns this dangerous propaganda against the monarchy and the territories belonging to it, and that the Royal Serbian Government shall no longer permit these machinations and this criminal and perverse propaganda.

"In order to give a formal character to this undertaking the Royal Serbian Government shall publish on the front page of its official journal for July 26 the following declaration:

"'The Royal Government of Serbia condemns the propaganda directed against Austria-Hungary, i. e., the ensemble of tendencies of which the final aim is to detach from Austro-Hungarian monarchy territories belonging to it, and it sincerely deplores the fatal consequences of these criminal proceedings.

"'The Royal Government regrets that Serbian officers and functionaries participated in the above-mentioned propaganda and thus compromised the good, neighborly relations to which the Royal Government was solemnly pledged by its declaration of March 31, 1909. The Royal Government, which disapproves and repudiates all idea of interfering or attempt to interfere with the destinies of the inhabitants of any part whatsoever of Austria-Hungary, considers it its duty formally to warn officers and functionaries, and the whole population of the kingdom, that henceforward it will proceed with the utmost rigor against persons who may be guilty of such machinations, which it will use all its efforts to anticipate and suppress.'

"The Royal Serbian Government further undertakes:

"1. To suppress any publications which incite to hatred and contempt of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy and the general tendency of which is directed against its territorial integrity.

"2. To dissolve immediately the society styled Narodna Obrava, to confiscate all its means of propaganda, and to proceed in the same manner against other societies and their branches which are addicted to propaganda against the Austro-Hungarian monarchy. The Royal Government shall take the necessary measures to prevent the societies dissolved from continuing their activity under another name and form.

"3. To eliminate without delay from public instruction in Serbia, not only as regards the teaching body, but also as regards the methods of instruction, everything that serves or might serve to foment the propaganda against Austria-Hungary.

"4. To remove from the military service and from the Administration in general all officers and functionaries guilty of propaganda against the Austro-Hungarian monarchy, whose names and deeds the Austro-Hungarian Government reserves to itself the right of communicating to the Royal Government.

"5. To accept the collaboration in Serbia of representatives of the Austro-Hungarian Government in the suppression of the subversive movement directed against the territorial integrity of the monarchy.

"6. To take judicial proceedings against accessories to the plot of June 28 who are on Serbian territory. Delegates of the Austro-Hungarian Government will take part in the investigation relating thereto.

"7. To proceed without delay to the arrest of Major Voija Tankositch and of the individual named Milan Ciganovitch, a Serbian state employee, who have been compromised by the results of the magisterial inquiry at Sarajevo.

"8. To prevent by effective measures the cooperation of the Serbian authorities in the illicit traffic in arms and explosives across the frontier, and to dismiss and punish severely officials of the frontier service at Schabatz and Loznica guilty of having assisted the perpetrators of the Sarajevo crime by facilitating the passage of the frontier for them.

"9. To furnish the Austro-Hungarian Government with explanations regarding the unjustifiable utterances of high Serbian officials, both in Serbia and abroad, who, notwithstanding their official position, did not hesitate after the crime of June 28 to express themselves in interviews in terms of hostility to the Austro-Hungarian Government, and finally;

"10. To notify the Austro-Hungarian Government without delay of the execution of the measures comprised under the preceding heads.

"The Austro-Hungarian Government expects the reply of the Serbian Government at the latest by six o'clock on Saturday evening, July 26, 1914."[Back to Contents]

Austria, 1815-1914.