The events of the great war have already modified the problem. The one unanswerable argument of the Serbs in declining to surrender Macedonia was the plea that they would then have nothing to offer Bulgaria for her neutrality or her support when their own inevitable day of reckoning with Austria should arrive. In short, Veles, Monastir and Ochrida were widely regarded as a pledge to be held until Bosnia and Dalmatia could be redeemed, but then to be handed over to the Bulgarians. It is true that the Serbo-Bulgar War of 1913 and the passions which it aroused have converted this feeling into one of reluctance to sacrifice what was bought at such a fearful price. But the moment has now arrived to translate an instinct into a reality. If Southern Slav Unity is to be achieved, a binding promise, under the guarantee of the Entente Powers, must be given to Bulgaria, that, in proportion as the work of Serbo-Croat unification is achieved, the Macedonian frontier will be revised in favour of Bulgaria. It is possible that Bulgaria may prefer a different formula, according to which the Tsar with the approval of his Western Allies should arbitrate upon the original Serbo-Bulgar treaty. Any such concession to Bulgarian sentiment ought not to be resented in Serbia, in view of the great issues involved. It is obvious that Serbia cannot hope to achieve her national unity unless Bulgaria abstains from hostile action, or to consolidate her new position when won unless she can win Bulgaria's active friendship. The latter by her intervention could at any moment turn the scales against Turkey or against Serbia, and it is thus essential that the Allies should treat her now with a generosity proportionate to the callous neglect with which Europe left her to her fate in September 1913.
The tendency to look down upon the Balkan States from the fancied heights of a superior "culture" has never been so marked in France or Britain as in Germany, where the Press is now engaged in comparing their own cultural exploits in Belgium with the lack of culture displayed by the "bandits" and "assassins" of Serbia, and where a man of such scientific distinction as Werner Sombart can describe the heroic kingdom of Montenegro as "nothing but a bad joke in the history of the world!"[1] But even here the habit of condescension lingers, and amidst the threatened collapse of Western civilisation it is well to remember the essential distinction between primitive and savage. The Balkan nations have grown to manhood while we slept, and must henceforth be regarded as equals in the European commonwealth.
[Footnote 1: Berliner Tageblatt, cited by Observer, November 8, 1914.]
(B) Such territorial changes as have been outlined above would vitally affect the position of Greece, who is also fully entitled to claim compensation for any serious disturbance of the balance of power. The first and most obvious form which compensation would take is the final occupation of southern Epirus; no objections will be raised to this by the Entente Powers, and it is probable that Italy has already made her own bargain with the Cabinet of Athens on this very point. It is to be hoped that Italy may also consent to hand over Rhodes and the neighbouring islands to Greece, in return for a free hand in Southern Asia Minor in the event of the Turkish Empire breaking up. By far the thorniest problem is provided by the future ownership of Kavala, which the Treaty of Bucarest assigned to Greece in August 1913, but which from an economic point of view is Bulgaria's port on the Aegean, and as vital a necessity for her future development as it is a superfluous luxury to Greece. The statesmen of Petrograd were not blind to these considerations, but the scale was turned at Bucarest by the active intervention of the German Emperor, who, under the plea of seconding his brother-in-law, King Constantine, skilfully provided a permanent bone of contention between Bulgaria and Greece. His action may not unfairly be compared to that of the Hungarian Premier, Count Tisza, in fomenting the quarrel between Serbia and Bulgaria two months earlier.
Serbia's cession of Central Macedonia to Bulgaria could not fail to be distasteful to the Greeks, for it would automatically render their tenure of Kavala highly precarious. It is to be hoped, however, that they may be brought to realise that its surrender and the consequent improvement of Greco-Bulgarian relations are in the highest interests of Greece and the whole Hellenic race. Here again, the break-up of the Turkish Empire may enable the Greeks to compensate themselves on the shores of Asia Minor. But the real key to the problem of Kavala, and thus indirectly to the revival of the Balkan League and all the far-reaching effects which that would have upon the fate of Europe, lies in the hands of Britain. It could instantly be solved by the cession of Cyprus to Greece, on condition that Kavala and the valley of the Strymon were restored to Bulgaria. Neither strategically nor economically is Cyprus of any value to Britain; thirty-five years ago it was taken over by Disraeli "as a sort of fee for opposing Russia," a foolish habit which we had abandoned long before the present war with Turkey. Its population is predominantly Greek, and the Hellenic national movement is steadily gaining ground. Anything that we might gain by its retention is more than counterbalanced by its value as an instrument of barter.
§13. The Future of Turkey.—The entry of Turkey into the great war marks a further stage in the winnowing process from which we hope that a regenerated Europe will emerge. Two of the main causes of the war are the Turk and the Magyar, whose effete and tyrannous systems have each in its own manner and degree long kept South-Eastern Europe in a ferment of unrest and reaction. It is a matter of profound regret that two infinitely more virile and progressive races, the German and the Jew, should be fighting their battles for them, and indeed bolstering up causes which would otherwise speedily collapse by reason of their own inward rottenness. It is the Triple Alliance which has made it possible for the iniquitous racial hegemony of the Magyars to survive in Hungary; it is the joint policy of Vienna, Budapest, and Berlin which has hampered the progress of the Balkan States, and above all the development of every Slavonic nation; and in this their most valuable allies have been the Jewish Press and the Jewish haute finance of Germany, Austria and Hungary. Just as we hope and believe that one result of this war will be the emancipation of Germany and German "culture" from the corroding influences of militarist doctrine, so there are good grounds for hoping that it will also give a new and healthy impetus to Jewish national policy, grant freer play to their many splendid qualities, and enable them to shake off the false shame which has led men who ought to be proud of their Jewish race to assume so many alien disguises and to accuse of anti-Semitism those who refuse to be deceived by mere appearances. It is high time that the Jews should realise that few things do more to foster anti-Semite feeling than this very tendency to sail under false colours and conceal their true identity. The Zionist and the orthodox Jewish nationalist have long ago won the respect and admiration of the world. No race has ever defied assimilation so stubbornly and so successfully, and the modern tendency of individual Jews to repudiate what is one of their chief glories suggests an almost comic resolve to fight against the course of nature.
These cryptic tendencies of pseudo-national as opposed to national Judaism have played a great part in the Young Turkish movement and the destruction which it is bringing upon Turkey. The Committee of Union and Progress at first enjoyed the moral and financial support of many men, both Christians and Jews, to whom its methods and secret currents were a sealed book. For a time the Young Turks, like the Magyars farther west, deceived foreign opinion by claptrap phrases from the repertory of modern democracy. But "murder will out," and the Committee—despite the tiny group of able, and in certain cases honourable, men who control its destinies—has gradually been revealed in its true colours, as a parasitic growth upon the body politic, preserving the worst faults of the old régime and blending with it much of the decadence which lies like froth along the backwaters of Western civilisation.
Since 1908, then, the fate of Turkey has passed from the control of the Turk and is being decided by an alien clique of infidels, renegades, political freemasons[1] and Jews, in whose hands the Caliph is a helpless tool, and to whom the teachings of Christ and of Mohammed are mere worn-out superstitions. In fact, the Committee is in its essence non-Turkish and non-Moslem. In the name of a secret society, based openly upon the subversive ideas of the wilder French Jacobins, and not shrinking from assassination as a convenient political weapon, a Jehad or Holy War is to be preached against the British Empire, and the most sacred interests of Islam are to be exploited in the interests of Germany. What bitter irony is in the fact that William II., who risked universal war to avenge the murder of his friend, the Archduke Francis Ferdinand, should now find himself closely allied with Enver Pasha, the military adventurer who barely two years ago foully assassinated his own commander-in-chief, Nazim Pasha, and who therefore represents everything that is anathema to the Prussian War Lord with his exaggerated ideas of military discipline and personal loyalty!
[Footnote 1: Not to be confused for a moment with the very different form of freemasonry which prevails in this country.]
The die has been cast, and even those who most regret Turkey's action cannot shut their eyes to the fact that it inevitably raises the whole question of Constantinople and the Dardanelles. If Germany should emerge victorious, Turkey is likely to fall under a more or less veiled German protectorate. In the event of the victory of the Allies, Turkey may continue to exist as an Asiatic power, but there is little doubt that she will be eliminated from Europe. The only real question is, Who is to replace her? Bulgaria will, it is to be hoped, recover Adrianople and the Enos-Midia line, of which she was so cruelly robbed last year. The fact that the Turks on their re-entry systematically wiped out the entire Bulgarian population of northern Thrace does not weaken, but enormously strengthens, the case for its restoration. But to offer Constantinople to Bulgaria would be a fatal gift. She has absolutely no historic claim to the great city of the Caesars (Tsarigrad, as it is rightly known to every Slav); nor is there even any considerable Bulgarian population which could rally round the new government. The administrative task is obviously far beyond the powers of a small peasant state, most of whose present leaders were born under a foreign yoke. Nor is Greece a serious candidate for the vacant post. The Greeks, of course, unlike the Bulgarians, have a definite claim, based on the traditions of the Byzantine Empire, and there is a large Greek population in the city—at present close upon 350,000, though their numbers are likely to be materially reduced before this war is over. But in their case also Constantinople would be a fatal gift. The resources even of the enlarged Hellenic kingdom would inevitably prove unequal to the task. Moreover, it must not be forgotten that a Greek occupation would be opposed on many grounds by the entire commercial community of every other nation in Europe.