The Balkan Wars: 1912-1913 / Second Edition

by Jacob Gould Schurman

RIVAL AMBITIONS OF THE ALLIES

This was a difficult matter to adjust. Before the war began, as we have already seen, a Treaty of Partition had been negotiated between Bulgaria and Servia, but conditions had changed materially in the interval and Servia now demanded a revision of the treaty and refused to withdraw her troops from Central Macedonia, which the treaty had marked for reversion to Bulgaria. In consequence the relations between the governments and peoples of Servia and Bulgaria were dangerously strained. The Bulgarians denounced the Servians as perfidious and faithless and the Servians responded by excoriating the colossal greed and intolerance of the Bulgarians. The immemorial mutual hatred of the two Slav nations was stirred to its lowest depths, and it boiled and sputtered like a witches' cauldron.

In Eastern Macedonia Bulgarians and Greeks were each eagerly pushing their respective spheres of occupation without much regard to the rights or feeling of the other Ally. Though the Bulgarians had not forgiven the Greeks for anticipating them in the capture of Saloniki in the month of November, the rivalry between them in the following winter and spring had for its stage the territory between the Struma and the Mesta Rivers—and especially the quadrilateral marked by Kavala and Orphani on the coast and Seres and Drama on the line of railway from Saloniki to Adrianople. The Greeks had one advantage over the Bulgarians: their troops could be employed to secure extensions of territory for the Hellenic kingdom at a time when Bulgaria still needed the bulk of her forces to fight the Turks at Chataldja and Adrianople. Hence the Greeks occupied towns in the district from which Bulgarian troops had been recalled. Nor did they hesitate to dislodge scattered Bulgarian troops which their ally had left behind to establish a claim of occupation. Naturally disputes arose between the military commanders and these led to repeated armed encounters. On March 5 Greeks and Bulgarians fought at Nigrita as they subsequently fought at Pravishta, Leftera, Panghaion, and Anghista.

This conduct of the Allies toward one another while the common enemy was still in the field boded ill for their future relations. "Our next war will be with Bulgaria," said the man on the street in Athens, and this bellicose sentiment was reciprocated alike by the Bulgarian people and the Bulgarian army. The secular mutual enmities and animosities of the Greeks and Bulgarians, which self-interest had suppressed long enough to enable the Balkan Allies to make European Turkey their own, burst forth with redoubled violence under the stimulus of the imperious demand which the occasion now made upon them all for an equitable distribution of the conquered territory. For ages the fatal vice of the Balkan nations has been the immoderate and intolerant assertion by each of its own claims coupled with contemptuous disregard of the rights of others.

ALBANIA A CAUSE OF FRICTION

There were also external causes which contributed to the deepening tragedy in the Balkans. Undoubtedly the most potent was the dislocation of the plans of the Allies by the creation of an independent Albania. This new kingdom was called into being by the voice of the European concert at the demand of Austria-Hungary supported by Italy.

The controlling force in politics, though not the only force, is self-interest. Austria-Hungary had long sought an outlet through Macedonia to the Aegean by way of Saloniki. It was also the aim of Servia to reach the Adriatic. But the foreign policy of Austria-Hungary, which has millions of Serbs under its dominion, has steadily opposed the aggrandizement of Servia. And now that Servia and her allies had taken possession of Macedonia and blocked the path of Austria-Hungary to Saloniki, it was not merely revenge, it was self-interest pursuing a consistent foreign policy, which moved the Dual Monarchy to make the cardinal feature of its Balkan programme the exclusion of Servia from access to the Adriatic Sea. Before the first Balkan war began the Adriatic littoral was under the dominion of Austria-Hungary and Italy, for though Montenegro and European Turkey were their maritime neighbors neither of them had any naval strength. Naturally these two dominant powers desired that after the close of the Balkan war they should not be in a worse position in the Adriatic than heretofore. But if Servia were allowed to expand westward to the Adriatic, their supremacy might in the future be challenged. For Servia might enter into special relations with her great sister Slav state, Russia, or a confederation might be formed embracing all the Balkan states between the Black Sea and the Adriatic: and, in either event, Austria-Hungary and Italy would no longer enjoy the unchallenged supremacy on the Adriatic coasts which was theirs so long as Turkey held dominion over the maritime country lying between Greece and Montenegro. As a necessity of practical politics, therefore, there emerged the Austro-Italian policy of an independent Albania. But natural and essential as this policy was for Italy and Austria-Hungary, it was fatal to Servia's dream of expansion to the Adriatic; it set narrow limits to the northward extension of Greece into Epirus, and the southward extension of Montenegro below Scutari; it impelled these Allies to seek compensation in territory that Bulgaria had regarded as her peculiar preserve; and as a consequence it seriously menaced the existence of the Balkan Alliance torn as it already was by mutual jealousies, enmities, aggressions, and recriminations.

RECOIL OF SERVIA TOWARD THE AEGEAN

The first effect of the European fiat regarding an independent Albania was the recoil of Servia against Bulgaria. Confronted by the force majeure of the Great Powers which stopped her advance to the Adriatic, Servia turned her anxious regard toward the Gulf of Saloniki and the Aegean Sea. Already her victorious armies had occupied Macedonia from the Albanian frontier eastward beyond the Vardar River to Strumnitza, Istib, and Kochana, and southward below Monastir and Ghevgheli, where they touched the boundary of the Greek occupation of Southern Macedonia. An agreement with the Greeks, who held the city of Saloniki and its hinterland as well as the whole Chalcidician Peninsula, would ensure Servia an outlet to the sea. And the merchants of Saloniki—mostly the descendants of Jews expelled from Spain in the fifteenth century—were shrewd enough to recognize the advantage to their city of securing the commerce of Servia, especially as they were destined to lose, in consequence of hostile tariffs certain to be established by the conquerors, a considerable portion of the trade which had formerly flowed to them without let or hindrance from a large section of European Turkey. The government of Greece was equally favorably disposed to this programme; for, in the first place, it was to its interest to cultivate friendly relations with Servia, in view of possible embroilments with Bulgaria; and, in the second place, it had to countercheck the game of those who wanted either to make Saloniki a free city or to incorporate it in a Big Bulgaria, and who were using with some effect the argument that the annexation of the city to Greece meant the throttling of its trade and the annihilation of its prosperity. The interests of the city of Saloniki, the interests of Greece, and the interests of Servia all combined to demand the free flow of Servian trade by way of Saloniki. And if no other power obtained jurisdiction over any Macedonian territory through which that trade passed, it would be easy for the Greek and Servian governments to come to an understanding.