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Salonica was desired very much by the Bulgarians, and also very much by the Greeks; and the decision in regard to Salonica before the war was that it would be best to make it a free Balkan city, governed by all the Balkan States in common, as a free port for all the Balkan States. The frontier of Greece was to extend to the north, and Greece was to be allowed all the Aegean Islands. The Servian frontier was to extend to the eastward and the southward, and what is now the autonomous province of Albania (the creation of which was insisted on by the Powers) was to be divided between Montenegro and Servia.
That division would have left the Bulgarians with the greatest spoil of the war. They would have had entry on to the Sea of Marmora; they would have controlled, perhaps, one side of the Dardanelles (but I believe they thought that the Dardanelles might also be left to a commission of the Powers). Now, with the clash of diplomacy, it was sternly necessary to curtail that ambition considerably, and to decide to seek a friend among the different rivals. Bulgarian diplomats could not be made to see that. They were firm with Turkey: wisely enough, for Turkey had no power left to wound or to help. But at the same time they refused to make any concessions either to Servia, to Greece, or to Roumania, all of whom were determined to have a share of the plunder which Bulgaria had assigned for herself. "A leonine partnership" as the lawyers call it, that is to say, a partnership in which one party takes the lion's share of the spoil, is a very satisfactory arrangement for the lion. But one wants to be sure before attempting to enforce leonine arrangements that one is the lion. Bulgaria blundered on into a position which left her exhausted army to face at once Greece, Servia, Montenegro, and Roumania.
That it was not necessary for her to get into that position I can say with some confidence. A more judicious handling of her relations with Servia would have kept the friendship of that kindred nation, and Montenegro would have followed Servia. The united Slav peoples of the Balkans would then have been strong enough to withstand any attempt to enforce unfair conditions by Roumania or Greece. But Bulgaria made no attempt to conciliate Servia. Between the two peoples there had existed before the war a very close treaty of alliance. This treaty had arranged for the division of the spoil of the war on a basis which had not foreseen that the European Powers would create an independent Albania; and Servia had not imagined that Turkey would be so weak, and that the booty in Thrace would have been so considerable. Bulgaria thus had more than was expected in one quarter, whilst Servia was bitterly disappointed in another direction. Friends, under the circumstances, would have struck another bargain. Bulgaria insisted upon the strict letter of the old bargain.
Servia was thus forced into the arms of Greece; reluctantly, I think. If she could have made a fair arrangement with Bulgaria she would have preferred that. But it seemed to be destined that Bulgaria should add another to the long list of her frustrated hopes.
The early part of 1914 saw the Balkans in the throes of a war which eclipsed in bitterness and bloodshed the campaign of 1913. Greece and Servia fought against Bulgaria, and Roumania marched down from the north towards the Bulgarian capital, her army unopposed because there was no means of opposing it. Stopping short of entering Sofia, Roumania took up the position of the chief Power in the Balkans and insisted upon dictating terms of peace. Those terms Bulgaria, perforce, accepted after her army had been defeated with terrible slaughter by the Servian and Grecian forces. She was forced to give up territory in all directions: to Roumania on the north; to Servia on the west; to Greece on the south. To crown her misfortunes, the Turks moved up against the prostrate country, recaptured, without an effort, Adrianople, which had been won with such terrible cost of Bulgarian blood, and also Kirk Kilisse. In the final result Bulgaria was left with but little net gain as the price of her enormous sacrifices of blood and of treasure. To the north she actually lost some of her old territory. From the Turk she secured a fragment of Thrace, and a part of Macedonia which gave her access to the Aegean Sea, but no decent port there, and no possibility of carrying out her grandiose scheme of canalising the River Maritza and making a Bulgarian Adrianople a port for trade. Further, she had the mortification of seeing all three of her rivals in the Balkans aggrandised, and Roumania left with the hegemony of the Peninsula.
Only a few months before, Mr. Noel Buxton had written the "Io triumphe" of the Bulgarian cause:
The blight that had lain on the Balkan lands was healed, the fog dispelled. Even the prestige of military despotism was gone like a pricked bubble. The tyranny that rested on delusion and not on power was vanished like an empty nightmare that fades when the sleeper wakes. The establishment of Europe's freedom was fulfilled; the final step taken. A great and notable nation had obtained recognition through the war. Its persistence, its purpose, its deep reserve, now stood revealed, added to the world's stores of national character.
For centuries the Bulgarian refused to compromise with the Turk. Other nations sought to lighten the weight of the yoke by taking service with the tyrant or bowing the head. The maxim, "The sword never strikes when the head is bowed," undermined the soul of other nations, never of this. Influence and wealth went to others; all seemed lost by the policy of defiance. Bulgarians would not balance advantages. A kind of faith made them ready to pay even death for ultimate gain. The spirit wins at last: and the indomitable spirit of the Bulgars has come by its just reward.
Three months after that the Turk was back in Thrace, and the national life of Bulgaria had touched its lowest point since the war of Liberation, with only her justified hope in the future as a consolation.