Nothing is more difficult than to ascertain the sentiments of a population among whom such a thing as a genuinely free election has never been known, propaganda and terrorism are the most common things in the world, and the rifle has hitherto been the principal means of settling questions. Albanian nationalism is so new and Albanian education so much a novelty of yesterday that perhaps the Albanians have never had a fair chance. At any rate, the balance of evidence so far seems to favor the Greeks. Almost all the schools in the contested area are Greek; the predominance of the pro-Greek element in the intellectual and economic life of the country can scarcely be disputed; the manifestations of Greek sentiment, especially at Koritza, have been impressive; and most impressive of all, perhaps, was the uprising of the Northern Epirotes in 1913, when Europe tried to place them under Albanian rule and then found itself unable to make them submit to it. At all events, the Paris Conference did not arrive at an agreement about this question. While the British and French advocated transferring all of Northern Epirus to Greece, the Italians stood out for leaving it to Albania, and the Americans advocated a compromise solution, which would have ceded the southern, Argyrocastro district to Greece, while leaving to Albania the northern district of Koritza, which some people have called the intellectual centre of Albanian nationalism.
Albania is menaced with some other losses. There has been talk of forming her northern territories into a separate autonomous province under the protection of Yugo-Slavia. Something might be said for this project from the economic standpoint, since, through the control of the Drin valley and the ports at its mouth, Serbia would obtain the only relatively easy outlet to the sea south of Fiume. The Drin valley has usually been taken as the western starting-point in plans for an Adriatic-Transbalkan railway. But from every other standpoint, the project in question seems objectionable in the extreme. Whatever may be the case in Epirus, no one can claim that the North Albanians are devotees of Serbian culture or have any feelings towards the Serbs save ancient and bitter hostility. One could hardly think of a more successful device for creating a permanent storm centre in the Balkans.
A more certain territorial loss to Albania is that of the port of Avlona, which Italy occupied in 1914, and which she assuredly will be allowed to keep. After all, her possession of it is no more unnatural than England’s position at Gibraltar or our own at Panama. Furthermore, it is probable that Italy will receive some kind of mandate from the Allies or from the League of Nations to supervise Albania. It is pretty generally admitted, even by the Albanians themselves, that this nascent and terribly backward state needs a protector; and since our government has been unable to assume that rôle, as the Albanians would have preferred to see us do, both we and they can scarcely object to Italy’s undertaking it.
To return to the subject of Greek claims—the main object of Mr. Venizelos’ diplomacy at Paris was the question of Thrace. This was a double-barrelled problem, for it referred both to the territory which fell to Bulgaria in 1913, which we call Western Thrace, and to Eastern Thrace, which means all that is left of Turkey in Europe except Constantinople.
Here again we are in a region of statistical chaos and ethnographic nightmares. The racial problems of Thrace are as bad as those of Macedonia—worse in fact, since they are so new and unfamiliar. We know in a general way that throughout both the Thraces Turks, Greeks, and to a less extent Bulgarians are scattered about with a promiscuity that almost defies analysis or conclusions. The racial statistics available—the Turkish census of 1910, the Greek Patriarch’s statistical estimates of 1912, and the Bulgarian census in Western Thrace for 1914—make it a point never to agree on a single item. Religious factors add to the confusion. In Western Thrace there is a large population called the Pomaks: people who are probably Bulgarian in race and speech, but who are Moslems in religion and in their Weltanschauung. Ought they to be counted as sterling Bulgarian patriots, as people at Sofia maintain; or rather as Turks, as Constantinople and Athens consider them? Finally, after all the wars, migrations, and massacres of the last eight years, one may well doubt whether any of the three censuses mentioned could claim to represent the existing situation, even assuming that they were honestly made in the first place.
At all events, one point in this chaos is tolerably clear. In Eastern Thrace the Greeks have the best claim on the basis of nationality, if one takes as the criterion the situation before the Balkan Wars. Speaking very roughly, they may then have numbered about 400,000, as against some 250,000 Turks and only about 50,000 Bulgarians. Not only did the Greeks hold virtually the entire coast, even on the side of the Black Sea; but in the interior they formed the matrix of this strange agglomeration, in which the Turkish and Bulgarian enclaves were embedded.
In Western Thrace the question is more difficult. The answer to it depends on whose statistics one thinks least unreliable, and largely on whether one counts the Pomaks as Bulgars or Turks. The Pomaks are rather less known to us than the tribes of Central Africa; but if one may judge of their sentiments today by what little is known of their behavior in the past, one would hesitate to put them down as Bulgarians. At any rate, one is faced here by Mr. Venizelos’ estimates: a total population of about 400,000, made up of 285,000 Turks, 70,000 Greeks, and 59,000 Bulgarians; and, on the other side, the Bulgarian census purporting to show 210,000 Turks, 185,000 Bulgarians (including 70,000 Pomaks) and only 32,000 Greeks. In fact the latest Bulgarian estimates do not admit the existence of any Greeks at all here: which leaves one free to make any one of several unpleasant conjectures as to what the Bulgars have done with them. A slight Greek majority over the Bulgarians is claimed by the one side, then; and a large Bulgarian preponderance is claimed by the other.
The question also has an economic and a political aspect. If Bulgaria is deprived of Western Thrace, she will be shut off from the Aegean Sea, which certainly forms her shortest and most natural outlet to the Western world. It is true, as the Greeks point out, that Bulgaria has several ports on the Black Sea, and as the Straits are surely going to be placed under international control and freely opened to all nations, Bulgaria will not be cut off from external communications. Moreover, Greece is willing to offer her special commercial rights, to be defined by the Powers, in certain Greek ports on the Aegean. But this quite naturally does not satisfy the Bulgars. They maintain that if they were to be deprived of their one direct and secure access to the open sea, this would be a disaster and an affront from which their people would never recover.
This raises, of course, the political question. From the standpoint of nationality, it would seem only just to award Eastern Thrace to Greece, and perhaps at least the southern half of Western Thrace as well. The Greeks ardently desire this, both for the sake of liberating their kinsmen, and also, doubtless, in order to build a bridge towards Constantinople, the glittering prize of the future, which is always dangling before Greek eyes. But beyond this narrow isthmus of Hellenism along the north Aegean coast, there would always be the lowering Bulgarian giant, thirsting to recover what he considers to be the key to his house. Whatever be the rights and wrongs in the case, a very severe strain is being put upon Bulgaria’s self-control by the present settlement of the Macedonian question. If, in addition, Bulgaria were to be permanently stripped of the territory she already possesses on the Aegean, the resulting dangers to the peace of the Balkans would be obvious.
For some such reasons, and since the ethnographic situation in Western Thrace was so uncertain, the American representatives at Paris, as is well known, stood out against the attribution of this territory to Greece. Finally, a compromise was arranged by which, in the treaty of Neuilly, Bulgaria was made simply to cede the disputed territory to the Principal Allied and Associated Powers. What they will do with it remains, apparently, still unsettled. It may pass to Greece; it may ultimately be restored to Bulgaria; conceivably it may be joined to Eastern Thrace to form an internationally controlled autonomous state. In any case, this is likely to remain one of the danger-zones of Eastern Europe.