Kelly Miller's History of the World War for Human Rights

by Kelly Miller

In a month of fighting the little countries, in the picturesque southeastern section, whose soldiers have been depicted as "comic opera" soldiers, had rent Turkey; Greece had captured the famous Macedonian city of Salonica, once known as Thessalonica, where was located the church in which was addressed St. Paul's Epistle to the Thessalonians; while the Servians had captured Monastir, one of the most important centers in Macedonia, and the Bulgarians had driven the Turks almost to the famed city of Constantinople. The Servian soldiers finally marched to the Adriatic sea, and Albania raised a flag of its own and asked Austria-Hungary and Italy to recognize its independence and grant it protection.

Within little more than two months Turkey had been deprived of the greater portion of her possessions in Europe and a treaty of peace was signed between the allied countries and the Turks. By this agreement Albania became in effect a suzerainty, protected by Austria. But the agreement between Germany, Austria-Hungary and Italy—the Triple Entente—gave those countries a combined power which, when it came to fixing the terms of peace, left the small allied countries of victory at a disadvantage, and while Montenegro and Greece gained some territory, as did Servia, Bulgaria lost what she had gained in the war. Turkey lost 90 per cent of her Empire in Europe, which so aroused the country that the rising of the young Turks followed and the government was reorganized. The enforced terms of settlement, however, set the little countries at each other's throats.

The field of the Balkan battles is the very center of the world's history. Along the Adriatic, Ionian and Agean seas are lands and territories peopled with races that mark their ancestry back to the very darkest ages. The protected country of Albania, with its rocky surface, numbers among its peoples descendants of the Arnauts, whose very origin is a mystery. They were present before the days of Greece and Rome. The Ottoman Turks, the Bulgars from the plains of the Volga and the Ural Mountains, the Serbs, the Roumanians, Russians, Italians, the Slavs, Tartars.

A REGION OF MOUNTAINS.

Albania is a mountainous region along the Adriatic coast, peopled with descendants of the ancients who maintain their characteristics. They are said to be descendants of the Pelasgian races, which inhabited the territory before the Greeks builded their Athens.

The Albanians are wild, daring mountaineers, and though the people have, to all intents and purposes, been under Turkish rule for centuries, they have never recognized the sovereignty of the Sultan. It was originally part of the Turkish Empire in Europe, having been taken by Turkey, in 1467, and is a fertile, but wild country.

The same picturesque people that make up the population of Albania constitute the populace of the little country of Montenegro, which was once part of the Turkish possession. Montenegro contained about 3486 square miles of territory before its acquisitions in the Balkan wars. Aided by Russia, the country obtained its independence from Turkey in 1878, and in 1910 became a kingdom. Its present area is about 5650 square miles and the population 520,000. The capital is Cettinje.

Bulgaria was also once a part of the Turkish possessions, and under the Treaty of Berlin, in 1878, became a suzerainty. It is a famous pastoral country, inhabited by a people for years held under the Ottoman heel. They are racially Turanians, and kin of the Tartar and Huns, who came into their present fertile country from the vast plains of eastern Russia. They made their way thither more than a thousand years ago, and battling at the very gates of Constantinople, by their fierce crusades, secured the grants from the Byzantine Empire of the territory, which constitutes the Bulgaria of today. The population is nearly 5,000,000, and the country contains about 43,000 square miles.

WHY ITALY ENTERED THE WAR.

Italy's reasons for entering the war, aside from her demands for territory, in exchange for continuance of neutrality, have to do with matters of years gone by, when she began the struggle for her liberation from the Austrian domination. Italy desired, among other things, to acquire Trentino, Goritz, and other adjacent territory controlled by Austria, but Italian in every attribute. Trentino is a rocky region, and strategically valuable to the country possessing it, which was proved by the terrible struggle which the Italians were forced to make in their attacks against the Austrian forces.