Greece was obliged to sign a peace treaty giving her vague and indefinite boundaries and leaving out the question of the Aegean Islands and Epirus, to be settled at a later date by another conference of the Ambassadors of the six great powers in London.
Servia also had to wait for the realization of her fondest hope, which was to obtain a free commercial access to the Adriatic by way of Durazzo or San Giovanni di Medua. That question also was to be decided by the Ambassadorial conference. Montenegro was to lose Scutari, for which she had shed her heart's blood, without getting at the same time any adequate compensation. Such was the Peace of London, from the strictly Balkan point of view, and its conclusion in May, 1913, was the signal for the disruption of the Balkan League and the forerunner of the second war. One month later Bulgaria, having fallen under Austrian influences, quarreled with Servia and Greece over the division of certain Macedonian territories, and on June 16 (29, new style) all of a sudden attacked her erstwhile allies, thereby bringing about the second Balkan conflict, with Greece, Servia, and Montenegro united against her. The outcome of this war, the entry of Rumania and Turkey into the field against Bulgaria, the tearing up of the London Treaty, and the settlement of Bucharest are too well known to need an extensive mention here.
The Treaty of London once torn to pieces by the second Balkan war, it remained for the great powers to find a new way of forcing their terms on the recalcitrant Balkan States, and this they succeeded in doing by adroitly using Rumania as the representative of European diplomacy. Thus the Rumanian Army, without any provocation from Bulgaria, took the field against her neighbor, and acted as a mediator and arbiter of the second Balkan conflict.
The Greek, Servian, Montenegrin, and Bulgarian delegates who went to Bucharest at the close of the war knew beforehand that behind the actions of the Rumanian Government stood united the whole of European diplomacy, again striving to put down once for all these insolent little States who thought themselves emancipated from European guardianship. These delegates knew quite well that there was no escape, but they went, trying and hoping for the best. The Rumanian "Green Papers," published a short time after the Treaty of Bucharest and covering a period between Sept. 20, 1912, and Aug. 1, 1913, give a vivid and true story of the whole proceedings, showing once more what a powerful instrument diplomacy is in the hands of the strong for cheating the weak.
On Aug. 1, 1914, we see the Balkan Peninsula presenting the following aspect:
From the erstwhile European Turkey, of six vilayets, or departments, namely, those of Adrianople, Saloniki, Monastir, Uskub, Jannina, and Scutari, only one, and that mutilated, remains, the Vilayet of Adrianople. Greece, Bulgaria, Servia, Montenegro, and Albania appropriated the rest. Gone is Crete, and gone are the twenty-six Aegean Islands, twelve of them permanently united to their Hellenic motherland, while Italy temporarily occupies fourteen as a result of the Tripolitan war of 1911. Thus Turkey, from an area of 168,500 square kilometers, and 5,000,000 to 6,000,000 inhabitants, forming her European dominions, was reduced to about 30,000 square kilometers and nearly 3,000,000 inhabitants, including the population of Constantinople, amounting, according to the only available foreign statistics, to 1,203,000 inhabitants. Of course Turkey has in Asia an area of more than 2,000,000 square kilometers, with a population approximating 20,000,000, but that, properly speaking, does not enter into Balkan considerations.
Greece, after her two victorious wars, approximates 120,000 square kilometers in territory, with more than 5,000,000 population.
Rumania has 139,690 square kilometers of area and 7,601,660 of population.
Servia has an area of 87,300 square kilometers and a population of 4,256,000.
Bulgaria's area is 114,000 square kilometers, with 4,766,900 of population.