The New Map of Europe (1911-1914) / The Story of the Recent European Diplomatic Crises and Wars and of Europe's Present Catastrophe

by Herbert Adams Gibbons

The Greeks believed themselves to be the unifying Christian race of the Balkan Peninsula. They had a tremendous advantage over the Slavs, because the ecclesiastical organization, to which all the Christians of the Balkan Peninsula owed allegiance, was in their hands. When Mohammed the Conqueror entered Constantinople, he gave to the Patriarch of the Eastern Church the headship of the Balkan Christians. The spirit of Moslem institutions provides for no other form of government than a theocracy. Religion has always been to the Osmanli the test of nationality. The Christians formed one millet, or nation. This millet was Greek. During all the centuries of Ottoman subjection, the Balkan Christians owed allegiance to the Greek Patriarchate. Whatever their native tongue, the language of the Church and of the schools was Greek.

Unfortunately for Hellenism, the new Greek aspirations came into immediate conflict with the renaissance of the Bulgarian nation. Russia had long been encouraging, for the purposes of Pan-Slavism, the awakening of a sense of nationality in the south Slavs. Her agents had been long and patiently working among the Bulgarians. But they overshot their mark. When Bulgarian priests and the few educated men of the peasant nation turned their attention to their past and their language, it was not the idea of their kinship with the great Slavic Power of eastern Europe that was aroused, but the consciousness of their own particular race. Bulgaria had been great when Russia was practically unknown. Bulgaria could be great once more, when, by the disappearance of Ottoman rule, the Bulgarian Empire of the Middle Ages would be born again in the Balkans.

One can readily appreciate that the first necessity of Bulgarian renaissance was liberation from the Greek Church. Russia strenuously opposed this separatist agitation. What she wanted was a Slavic movement within the bosom of the Greek Orthodox Church, which, if bitterly persecuted by the Patriarchate, would throw the south Slavs upon the Russian Synod for protection, or, if tolerated, would give Russia a powerful voice in the councils of the Orthodox Church in the Ottoman Empire. But the Bulgarians had progressed too far on the road of religious separation from the Greeks to be arrested by their Russian godfather. It was a prophecy of the future independent spirit of the Bulgarian people, which Beaconsfield and Salisbury unfortunately failed to note, that the Bulgarians determined to go the length of uniting with Rome in order to get free from Phanar. Another Uniate sect would have been born had Russia not yielded. With bad grace, her Ambassador obtained from Sultan Abdul Aziz the firman of March 11, 1870, creating the Bulgarian Exarchate.

The cleverness of the Bulgarians outwitted the manoeuvre made to have the seat of the Exarchate at Sofia. The Greeks realized that a formidable competitor had entered into the struggle for Macedonia. From that moment there has been hatred between Greek and Bulgarian. In spite of the treaty of Bukarest, the end of the struggle is not yet. The policy and ambition of the modern state are dictated by strong economic reasons, of which sentimental aspirations are only the outward expression. If wars and the treaties that follow them were guided by honest confession of the real issues at stake, how much easier the solution of problems, and how much greater the chances of finding durable bases for treaties! The whole effort of Bulgaria in Macedonia may be explained by the simple statement that the Bulgarian race has been seeking its natural, logical, and inevitable outlet to the Ægean Sea.

During the middle of the nineteenth century, Servian national aspirations were directed toward Croatia, Dalmatia, and Bosnia-Herzegovina. The Servians thought only in terms of the west. It was the foundation of the Austro-Hungarian dual monarchy in 1867, followed by the Austrian occupation of Bosnia-Herzegovina and of the sandjak of Novi Bazar, that let Servia to enter into the struggle for Macedonia.

As soon as Russia saw that she could not control Bulgaria, she began to favour a Servian propaganda in the valley of the Vardar. Russian intrigues at Constantinople led to the suppression of the Bulgarian bishoprics of Okrida, Uskub, Küprülü (Veles) and Nevrokop. Bulgaria secured the restoration of these bishoprics through the efforts of Austria-Hungary and Great Britain. The story of Macedonia is full of instances like this of intrigue and counter intrigue by European Powers at the Sublime Porte. Combinations of interests changed sometimes over night. Is it any wonder that the Turks grew to despise the European alliances, and to laugh at every "joint note" of the Powers in relation to Macedonia?

Austria-Hungary opposed the Russian aid given to Servia by introducing a new racial propaganda. Ever since the Roman occupation there had been a small, but widely diffused, element in the population of Macedonia, which retained the Roman language, just as the Wallachians and Moldavians north of the Danube had done. Diplomatic suggestion at Bukarest succeeded in interesting Rumania in these Kutzo-Wallachians, as they came to be called. Rumania did not have a common boundary with European Turkey. But her statesmen were quick to see the advantage of having "a finger in the pie" when the Ottoman Empire disappeared from Europe. So Rumania became protector of the Kutzo-Wallachian. The Sublime Porte gladly agreed to recognize this protectorate. The development of a strong Rumanian element in Macedonia would help greatly to preserve Turkish sovereignty. For Rumania could have no territorial aspirations there, and would look with disfavour upon Rumania being swallowed up by Greece, Servia, or Bulgaria. Another propaganda, well financed, and encouraged by the Austro-Hungarian and Turkish Governments was added to the rivalry of races in Macedonia.

We cannot do more than suggest these intrigues. After 1885, the Macedonian question became gradually the peculiar care of the two "most interested" Powers. There was little to attract again international attention until the question of Turkey's existence as a state was brought forward in a most startling way by the repercussion throughout the Empire of the Armenian massacres of 1893-96. By refusing to intervene at that time, the Powers, who fondly thought that they were acting in the interest of the integrity of the Empire, were really contributing to its further decline.

Elsewhere we have spoken of the Cretan insurrection of 1896 and the train of events that followed it, ending in the formation of the Balkan alliance to drive Turkey out of Europe. Here we take up the other thread which leads us to the Balkan Wars. Bulgaria, remembering the happy result of her own sufferings from the massacres of twenty years before, was keen enough to see in the Asiatic holocausts of the "Red Sultan" a sign of weakness instead of a show of strength. The statesmen of the European Powers had not acted to stop the massacres of the Armenians. But their indecision and impolitic irresolution was not an expression of the sentiments of the civilized races whom they represented. The time was ripe for an insurrection in Macedonia. Public opinion in Europe would sustain it. The movement was launched from Sofia.