The frontiers of Jugoslavia are a source of weakness and danger, like those of Rumania, Czechoslovakia, and Poland. If the real interests of these peoples had been considered, and not the policies of great powers, more permanent frontier lines could have been traced. But the rôles of Austria and Hungary have simply been reversed. The four Succession States are compelled to guard their frontiers arms in hand, and are saddled with alien border populations by the million, which can be governed only by military intimidation. Thus the old European evils of irredentist agitation, of harsh treatment of minorities, of government by military force, have not been done away with.
The Treaty of Neuilly increased materially the already large number of Bulgarians under Serbian rule. Macedonian mountaineers, comitadjis by profession, have not accepted Serbian overlordship and are waging against the Serbs the guerrilla warfare that baffled the Turks and proved so costly to them. The Macedonian League is giving the Serbs much trouble and anxiety. In a comminatory note on this subject, one finds M. Nintchitch, the minister of foreign affairs, using to Bulgaria the same argument and employing the same threats Austria used and employed against Serbia, when it was a question of the activities of the Narodny Obrana in Bosnia. We remember that Austria asserted that these activities were engineered from Serbian territory, and it was a summons to stop them that led to the World War. And now Jugoslavia, alarmed over the spirit of rebellion among her Bulgarian subjects in Macedonia, talked to Bulgaria as Serbia used to object to Austria talking to her!
After four years of anxious effort Jugoslav statesmen began to see the danger of having hostile neighbors and constant frontier disputes when internal questions were still far from being settled. A sensible attitude was adopted toward Italy and Bulgaria. Stubbornness in the west and intimidation in the east were abandoned as profitless. In the spring of 1923 the Jugoslavs got together with the Italians at Abbazia (and later Rome) and with the Bulgarians at Nish. Moot questions were frankly thrashed out. With Italy the problem of Porto Baros, on the coast near the frontier with the Free State of Fiume, was solved by mutual compromise. With Bulgaria it was decided that practical measures should be taken by both states to minimize the inconveniences and political agitation of comitadji raids. Bulgaria was to be allowed to conscript frontier guards, and Serbia was granted the right to pursue comitadjis on Bulgarian territory.
The debacle of Greece in Asia Minor, the dramatic return of the Turks to Thrace, and the sudden overthrow of the Stambulisky régime in Bulgaria compelled the new Jugoslav Government to make a military demonstration in Macedonia in June, 1923. From Nish to Strumnitza troops were concentrated. The Serbians intimated at Lausanne to the Turks and at Sofia to the Bulgarians that no move to modify or upset the Treaty of Neuilly would be tolerated. In view of what has happened at Lausanne, however, it is doubtful if this attitude can be maintained. When the Turks successfully resisted the Treaty of Sèvres, they made a precedent and set an example for the other conquered nations. The Bulgarian revolution is the logical result of the success of the Angora Nationalist movement. Jugoslavia is not yet secure, in so far as the Balkans are concerned, in her fruits of victory.
CHAPTER XV
GREATER RUMANIA
We have three groups of minor nations in Central and Eastern Europe: those whose emancipation or extension of frontiers is at the expense of the Central Empires; those whose emancipation or extension of frontiers is at the expense of Russia; and the Balkan States, completing their emancipation from Turkey and establishing new frontiers at the expense of each other. Czechoslovakia belongs to the first category; Poland and Lithuania to the first and second categories; Finland and the Baltic States to the second category; the Ukraine also to the second category, although her claim to Eastern Galicia, denied by the Supreme Council, would put her in the first category as well; Jugoslavia to the first and third categories; Greece and Bulgaria and Albania to the third category. Rumania has the unique distinction of being in all three groups. And the factors and conditions in the creation of Greater Rumania are different from those that attend the resurrection or enlargement of the other minor states. Our small Allies (and Austria, Hungary, and Bulgaria) face the general problems of the groups to which they belong. Rumania faces all the problems of all the groups.
Like Greece and Serbia, Rumania is confronted with a complete and radical remolding of the old political organism and a transformation of her social and economic life by the incorporation of “unredeemed” elements too large and too different culturally to assimilate; her agrarian and electoral problems are similar to those of Hungary; with Poland, she must face Bolshevism or make concessions to the irredentism of Russian subject races or find herself later forced to choose between Russia and Germany; she has frontier aspirations in common with Bulgaria and Italy against Serbia; she must resist the conspiracy of Great Britain and France to substitute themselves for Germany as her economic suzerain; and, as her only outlet is through the Dardanelles, she cannot remain indifferent to the disposition of Constantinople.
In common with all the races of southeastern Europe, the Rumanians had their independence and their political unity destroyed by the Turks centuries before the awakening of what we call “national consciousness.” When they tried to take advantage of the decay of the Ottoman Empire to reconstitute a state in the modern sense of that word, i. e., by bringing together into one political organism the regions where the majority of the people spoke the same language and felt the ties of blood and common interests, they faced implacable enemies in the empires of Austria and Russia. The policy of the Hapsburgs and Romanoffs was to extend their own frontiers at the expense of the Ottoman Empire. The resurrection of the Christian races subject to Turkey into political units was opposed by both empires, because each believed that the other would control the new state. Great Britain and France, and later Germany and Italy, adopted the same policy for the same reason. Up to 1880, the Occidental powers feared Russian control of the Balkans. They did not want the Slavs to have an outlet on the Mediterranean. During the generation preceding the World War, France—and later Great Britain—shifted their opposition from Russia to Austria. Where they had worried about the Romanoffs, they now feared the Hohenzollerns. Unified Germany was gaining control of the Hapsburg Empire to further her Drang nach Osten.
But the motives actuating Balkan policy did not change. All the Balkan States, and Rumania especially, were potential factors in upsetting the European balance of power. Hence they must be kept as small and powerless as possible, for fear of disturbing the peace of Europe. Irredentism, whether the agitation for extending frontiers was directed against Mohammedan Turkey or Christian Russia and Austria-Hungary was frowned upon. To prevent the Balkan States from forming an alliance to secure their national unity, the great powers arranged frontiers at Paris in 1856 and at Berlin in 1878 in such a way as to kindle the animosity of one Balkan race against the other. The Balkan races were not consulted in the drawing up of frontiers. They were not brought together and asked to settle their own differences by mutual compromises, with the great powers abstaining from interference. The same policy was followed at Paris in 1919. It bids fair to have the same results.