Bulgaria

by Frank Fox

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The passions which the war has engendered are only partly due to lust for territorial aggrandisement. Mere thirst after conquest would have never produced such perversions of moral sense had it not been backed by the sentiment of fear and jealousy. This is clearly proved by the fact that feelings have reached their highest point of intensity where this latter element loomed largest. The Bulgarians have exhibited a degree of self-control which is in marked contrast with the conduct of other Allies. This equanimity is the more surprising in view of the fact that the position of Bulgaria is well-nigh desperate. For months past, the brunt of the war has fallen almost entirely on her. On every side she is surrounded by an atmosphere of open hostility. By threats of invasion, Roumania has wrung from her a ransom for the Balkan victories, while in Macedonia her allies are preparing to dispute her lawful share and have massed against her their whole armies. So long as peace with Turkey is not signed she must remain immobilised in front of Chatalja and Bulair. For a parallel case one must go back to the dark hours of Prussia during the Seven Years' War. But in the midst of all these difficulties Bulgaria has kept a cool head, whereas public opinion in Servia and Greece has parted company with all reason. It is not indifference to the issues at stake which explains this placid demeanour. When the proper time arrives, the Bulgarians will be found tough bargainers and determined to claim their full due. They know, however, that the position of their country as prime factor in the Balkans cannot be seriously affected by the results of the allotment. Even before the war, the supremacy of Bulgaria was hardly questioned, and the formation of the Balkan League would have been impossible but for this acquiescence in her right to leadership. With the disappearance of Turkey, this predominance is bound to be further accentuated and henceforth will have to be reckoned with as a political axiom.

The reasons which have enabled Bulgaria to envisage the future with tranquillity are for her allies a source of uneasiness. Servia and Greece have long watched the rapid and uninterrupted progress of their pushful neighbour with mixed feelings of fear and envy. Her seniors in point of time, they have been outdistanced in the race for Balkan hegemony. In 1885 Servia made a desperate attempt at grappling with the problem, but had no reason to be satisfied with the results. The doctrine of Balkan equilibrium was buried at Slivnitza, and since then Servia has had to rest contented with a secondary place. But the galling memory of defeat had never died out and probably plays in the present anti-Bulgarian agitation a larger part than most Servians realise or would care to admit.

Antagonism between Greeks and Bulgarians is a legacy of the past. Their history is a long record of ceaseless struggle. When they could no longer war as freemen, the feud was transferred to ecclesiastical ground and there continued under the mocking eye of their new masters. Since their restoration to independent life, they have not been able to revert to the old tradition owing to Turkey's presence as buffer state. This involuntary truce, however, has not turned hatred into love. They are once more to have a common frontier and will thus be brought in direct contact.

... The war has widened the gulf between these races by adding to the old stock of animosities a fresh supply of military jealousies. It has let loose over the entire Peninsula a flood of vanity which has upset the balance of a good many heads. A year ago, no sane Servian would have dreamed of pitting his country against Bulgaria, and this recognition of inferiority stood for peace. Now, every Servian officer is convinced that the result of such a trial of forces would be favourable to Servia, just as he is persuaded that the issues of the war with Turkey have been decided mainly by Servian valour....

If this is the way in which Servians are wearing their laurels, it can be imagined what the effect of recent events has been on impressionable Greece. To the trepidation with which the war was entered has succeeded the feeling of boundless self-reliance. All sense of reality and proportion has been banished, and there is no exploit which seems beyond the reach of Greek effort.

The outbreak of a fresh Balkan war would, in the present circumstances, prove little short of a world-wide calamity. Should, however, Europe succeed in localising such a conflict, its miseries will, to a certain extent, be compensated by one very important advantage. A trial of forces between the various Balkan competitors will clear the atmosphere and settle in the only efficacious way the sore problem of Balkan hegemony, which is at the bottom of Balkan unrest. It will fix for a long term of years the respective positions of the parties. Just as the Servo-Bulgarian War in 1885 proved a blessing in disguise, so this time also the arbitrament of the sword might create conditions more favourable to the political stability of the Peninsula. And this will be a gain not only to the Balkan nations, but to the whole of Europe.

The last thing of which that Bulgarian writer dreamt was the actual result of the fresh Balkan war, which did break out and which ended in the humiliation of Bulgaria. He contemplated the necessity of palliating to European minds the enormity of a fratricidal war between allies who had sanctioned their war against Turkey as a struggle of the Cross against the Crescent; but he had no idea that there was the barest possibility that Bulgaria would have to suffer complete defeat instead of explaining victory.

The Conference of London which endeavoured to arrange a peace after the first phase of the Balkan war met first in December 1913. I watched closely its deliberations, had several friends among the delegates, and was in a position to see at close hand the play of jealousies and ambitions which made its work futile. From the first the very desperation of Turkey raised a difficulty to quick peace negotiations. She had lost so much as to be practically bankrupt, and was in the position of a reckless man with no more possible losses to suffer, anxious by any expedient to postpone the day of payment in the hope that something would turn up in his favour. That anything should turn up seemed in reason impossible, but Oriental fatalism despises reason; and in this case Oriental fatalism was right judged by the final event.

The sessions of the London Conference found a vividly contrasting setting in London. (In Constantinople the meetings would have had an appropriate stage.) It was a contest of Oriental against semi-Oriental diplomacy; and staid British officials, who had duties in connection with the Conference, lived for weeks in an atmosphere of bewilderment, wondering if they were still in the twentieth century or had wandered back to the Bagdad of the Middle Ages.