The history of the ten years of rivalry between bands, which had nullified the efforts of the Powers to "reform" Macedonia by installing a gendarmerie under European control, had taught the diplomats that they had working against the pacification of Macedonia not only the Ottoman authorities, but also the native Christian population and the neighbouring emancipated countries. They were ready to believe the astute Hussein Hilmy pasha, Vali of Macedonia, when he said: "I am ruling over an insane asylum. Were the Turkish flag withdrawn, they would fly at each other's throats, and instead of reform, you would have anarchy."
If the Balkan States had realized how completely and how easily they were going to overthrow the military power of Turkey, they probably would not have attempted it. This seems paradoxical, but it is true all the same.
The Allies did not anticipate more than the holding of the Ottoman forces in check and the occupation of the frontiers and of the upper valleys of the Vardar and Struma. Greece felt that she would be rewarded by a slight rectification of boundary in Thessaly and Epirus, if only the war would settle the status of Crete and result in an autonomous régime for the Ægean Islands. At the most, the Balkan States hoped to force upon Turkey the autonomy of Macedonia under a Christian governor. So jealous was each of the possibility of another's gaining control of Macedonia that this solution would have satisfied them more than the complete disappearance of Turkish rule. Both hopes and fears as to Macedonia were envisaged rather in connection with each other than in connection with the Turks.
Between Servia and Bulgaria there was a definite treaty, signed on March 13, 1912, which defined future spheres of influence in upper Macedonia. But Greece had no agreement either with Bulgaria or Servia.
The events of October, 1912, astonished the whole world. No such sudden and complete collapse of the Ottoman power in Europe was dreamed of. I have already spoken of how fearful the European Chancelleries were of an Ottoman victory. Had they not been so morally certain of Turkey's triumph they would never have sent to the belligerents their famous—and in the light of subsequent events ridiculous—joint note concerning the status quo.
But if the Great Powers were unprepared for the succession of Balkan triumphs, the allies were much more astonished at what they were able to accomplish. Kirk Kilissé and Lulé Burgas gave Thrace to Bulgaria. Kumanovo opened up the valley of the Vardar to the Servians, while the Greeks marched straight to Salonika without serious opposition.
The victories of the Servians and Greeks, so easily won, were to the Bulgarians a calamity which overshadowed their own striking military successes. They had spilled much blood and wasted their strength in the conquest of Thrace which they did not want, while their allies—but rivals for all that—were in possession of Macedonia, the Bulgaria irredenta. To be encircling Adrianople and besieging Constantinople, cities in which they had only secondary interest, while the Servians attacked Monastir and the Greeks were settling themselves comfortably in Salonika, was the irony of fate for those who felt that others were reaping the fruits for which they had made so great and so admirable a sacrifice.
When we come to judge dispassionately the folly of Bulgaria in provoking a war with her comrades in arms, and the seemingly amazing greed for land which it revealed, we must remember that the Bulgarians felt that they had accomplished everything to receive nothing. Salonika and not Adrianople was the city of their dreams. Macedonia and not Thrace was the country which they had taken arms to liberate. The Ægean Sea and not the extension of their Black Sea littoral formed the substantial and logical economic background to the appeal of race which led them to insist so strongly in gathering under their sovereignty all the elements of the Bulgarian people. European writers have not been able to understand how little importance the Bulgarians attached to their territorial acquisitions in Thrace, and of how little interest it was for them to acquire new possessions in which there were so few Bulgarians.
Then, too, the powerful elements which had pushed Bulgaria into the war with Turkey, and had contributed so greatly to her successes, were of Macedonian origin. In Sofia, the Macedonians are numerically, as well as financially and politically, very strong. I had a revelation of this, such as the compilation of statistics cannot give, on the day after the massacre of Kotchana. The newspapers called upon all the Macedonians in Sofia to put out flags tied with crêpe. In the main streets of the city, it seemed as if every second house was that of a Macedonian. To these people, ardent and powerful patriots, Macedonia was home. It had been the dream of their lives to unite the regions from which they had come—once emancipated from the Turks—to the mother country. From childhood, they had been taught to look towards the Rhodope Mountains as the hills from which should come their help. Is it any wonder then, that, after the striking victories of their arms, there should be a feeling of insanity—for it was that—when they saw the dreams of a lifetime about to vanish?
But the mischief of the matter, as a Scotchman would say, was that Greeks and Servians felt the same way about the same places. Populations had been mixed for centuries. At some time or other in past history each of the three peoples had had successful dynasties to spread their sovereignty over exactly the same territories. Each then could evoke the same historical memories, each the same past of suffering, each the same present of hopes, and the same prayers of the emancipated towards Sofia and Athens and Belgrade.