Russian Realities and Problems/The War And Balkan Politics
THE WAR AND BALKAN POLITICS
Ladies and Gentlemen,
The great struggle we are now carrying on as allies can be looked at and its meaning explained from two points of view which are sometimes considered to be entirely different and even opposite to one another. On the one hand, it is a world-struggle, originating in a clash, foreseen but unavoidable, between the growing imperialism of a newcomer and the existing state of things. On the other hand, it is a local struggle in the south-east of Europe, originating in Balkan relations. From the first point of view, this is chiefly a war between Germany and England. From the second point of view, it is a war between Austria-Hungary and Russia.
To keep these two views disconnected, as if they had no concern with each other, is extremely profitable to our enemies. They might choose whatever view they liked while addressing themselves to different members of the entente, in order to dissociate them and to sow the seed of suspicion and discontent. They would come to you, for instance, and they would tell you that "you are taking a parochial view of Armageddon if you allow yourselves to imagine that this is primarily a struggle for the independence of Belgium or the future of France. We Germans," they would say, "are nearer the truth when we regard it as a Russo-German war. Was not, indeed, the original issue, 'in plain words, whether Serbia should become an Austrian vassal or remain a Russian too;[1]'? Why should you fight, then, for Serbia and for Russian predominance in the Balkans?" And then the Germans would come and say to us, "Well, this is, in the first place, our quarrel with England, for 'a place in the sun.' Did not they invent that wretched encompassment policy in order to encircle us and to cut us off from every foreign market, thus blocking the way to the realisation of our world-policy? Why should you Russians, whose dynasty has always been friendly with ours, join them and play their game? Why should you, chiefly a Continental and Asiatic power, whose principal interest lies, according to us Germans, in the Far East, why should you fight for British predominance on the seas?"
Well, ladies and gentlemen, what is the best means to parry and to refute such arguments, based chiefly on the idea of the incongruity of interest between the allies? Is it not to show that the two views on the war which I have just set out are one, or rather, that they are two different sides of the same view? There is something in common between the German world-policy directed against Great Britain, and the Austrian Balkan pohcy directed against Russia; and that something is German aggression. I do not think that the first part of this assertion, i.e. that the German conflict with England is based on German aggression, needs any further proof on my part to-day, as the opposite view is defended in this country only by a small misguided minority. But I shall proceed to develop the second part of my assertion, namely, that Russian policy in the Balkans was to a great extent provoked by the same cause, by German aggression, because here different views may be taken; and in particular I must show you that these two aspects of German aggression, the western and the eastern tendency, practically start from the same source and have the same origin.
Let me remind you, first, that both aspects of German aggression, which I have just called the western and the eastern, can be designated by geographical names. The name for German aggression in the west is Morocco, and the name for the other, the eastern arm of the German push, is Mesopotamia. You know that the Germans came rather late in their endeavour to secure good colonies. What were left unoccupied at that time were second-rate or quite worthless. But here, on the very outskirts of Europe, lay two of the best granaries in the world which seemed to be falling from the grasp of their owners, with no heir to the succession. Morocco and Mesopotamia—in these two words centres the whole story of German diplomacy in the twentieth century.
I cannot tell you the story of German intrigues at Morocco and their failure. I can only remind you of the fact that the German "bluff," for such it was then considered to be, in regard to Morocco was countered in this country in July, 1911, by Sir Edward Grey's declarations to the German ambassador, and by the famous speech of Mr Lloyd George at the Mansion House, where the Chancellor of the Exchequer made this' plain declaration: "If a situation were to be forced on us in which peace could only be preserved by the surrender of the great and beneficent position which Britain has won by centuries of heroism and achievement, by allowing Britain to be treated, where her interests were vitally affected, as if she were of no account in the cabinet of nations, then I say emphatically that peace at that price would be a humiliation intolerable for a great country like ours to endure."
Morocco gone, Mesopotamia remained; and, while recalling to your mind the story of German attempts to bluff us here, I shall be more than once tempted to repeat, on behalf of vital interests of Russia, the utterances of Mr Lloyd George on behalf of Great Britain.
Here we come to the Balkans, the Balkans as the only way to Mesopotamia. The German push to Mesopotamia has also got its geographical expression, and even two expressions: one for Austria-Hungary, from Vienna to Salonica, and another for Germany, from Berlin to Bagdad. This is an old story: it is not at all recent, but at the beginning it looked inoffensive, and it was called "economic penetration" of Asia Minor. In order to show you just how old that penetration is, I will give you a quotation from a famous pamphlet by Dr Sprenger, published in 1886 under the very telling title of "Babylonia, the richest land in antiquity and the most paying place for colonisation in the present." Among other things you can read there, is the following: "The east is the only region in the world which is not yet appropriated by any one of the expanding nations. If Germany does not let slip her chance, but puts it into her pocket before the Cossacks can dip their hands into it, she will soon have the best share in the partition of the world. As soon as some thousand armed German colonists begin to till the splendid soil, the fate of near Asia will be in the hands of the Emperor." This was written in 1886. I will not detain you by recalling how these ideas were realised. I suppose you know all about the friendship of William with the "Red Sultan," about the Emperor's theatrical journeys in 1898 to the tomb of Saladin in Damascus and to the Holy Places in Jerusalem, with all that display of German splendour, and with the profession by the Emperor that he is the only and the best friend of the Sultan, the only one who does not think of any partition of Turkey—and that because he wants her all for himself—the Emperor, the true and faithful protector of the Moslem all over the world. And then, after the Emperor, came the Krupps and von der Goltz: instructors for the Turkish army and concessions for German capital. The railway line—very short at first—from Haidar-Pasha to Ismid; then just a little further to Angora; then by a short cut down to the south to Konieh; and finally, in 1899, from Konieh to its terminus on the Persian Gulf—this is in a few words the story of the Bagdad railway.
I am not going to dwell on all these developments, which I suppose to be known, and I pass on to my chief point. How did all this expanding policy of Germany in the Near East affect Russia and her policy in the Balkans? Russia as a whole—I do not mean single politicians—paid simply no attention to it for a very long time, and, even at the most important moment of that development and economical expansion, permitted the Germans to divert her attention from the Near East to the Far East, just as you permitted Germany to take Heligoland from you when she was on the eve of building her huge fleet. We were both taken unawares. In 1878, while prosecuting her traditional policy in the Balkans, Russia liberated Bulgaria, in harmony with Gladstone and in opposition to Beaconsfield. But what did she gain for herself while doing this? We are now informed, owing to revelations from the family archives of the Austrian statesman, Count Julius Andrassy, that, before going to war, Russia, in the first place, by the secret treaty of Reichstadt, of the 26th of June, 1876, and by secret conventions of the 6th of March, 1877, handed Bosnia and Herzegovina over to Austria-Hungary, to be annexed whenever she liked without recourse to arms. In the second place, Russia formally renounced all claims to Constantinople and control over the Dardanelles, and all claims, to an exclusive protectorate over the Christian nationalities in the Balkans. Thirdly, and finally, after her victories over the Turks, victories which cost her hundreds of thousands of lives, Russia submitted to Austria her preliminary draft for the armistice in the beginning of January, 1878. She conformed her claims to the "Observations" formulated by the Emperor Francis Joseph, and she reduced her demands on Turkey to which Turkey had consented in the preliminary treaty of San Stefano. I do not mean to say that all this was done without hesitation and protest, but such was the leading policy of the then Chancellor, Prince Gorchakov, and this course was taken not only in order to comply with the wishes of the European Concert, but also because it represented the views of our leading statesmen during the reign of Alexander II. Certainly the feeling of offence at this humiliation was very strong, and also of bitter dissatisfaction_with Austria and Germany who had helped in diminishing our advantages secured by war, and these feelings were largely spread among the Russian masses. This compelled Russia to change her whole system of foreign policy. It was during the reign of Alexander III that we approached France, and that the basis of the Russo-French Alliance was laid down. However, our traditional relations towards Austria-Hungary still remained unchanged. In February, 1897, the Emperor Francis Joseph visited St Petersburg, and an agreement on Balkan affairs was concluded between Russia and Austria-Hungary on the basis of a partition of the Balkan peninsula into two spheres of influence—the western, including control over Servia, Macedonia, and Albania, and the eastern, where Russia was to control Bulgaria and European Turkey. At that time, as you may see, we did not at all resent the Austrian push to Salonica. The line of division between the two spheres of influence in the Balkans was considered to be traditional, and went back as far as the reign of Catherine the Second and the Emperor Joseph. I can add that this line of division between the two spheres has actually become the traditional view in the Balkans. Serbia was considered, accordingly, to belong to the Austrian sphere of influence. There even existed a secret treaty of 1881, renewed in 1889, between Austria and King Milan, according to which Serbia was made a tool of Austria in her push to Salonica, Austria formally promising her aid in the extension of Serbia in the direction of the Vardar valley, on condition that they were not to extend either to the Sanjak of Novy Bazar, a passage between Serbia and Montenegro, which Austria kept to herself according to the treaty of Berlin of 1878, or to the Dalmatian shore on the Adriatic. Still later, as recently as 1913, I personally heard from Ferdinand, the King of Bulgaria, the expression of his view that Serbia was to remain under Austrian sway. He even told me that he impressed this opinion upon Alexander, the Serbian heir-apparent. That was also the reason why Russia considered herself unconcerned in Macedonia: Macedonia was the sphere of the Austrian push, and as late as 1897 Russia agreed with Austria to preserve the status quo in Macedonia, and continued obstinately to defend it down to 1904 in spite of British demands for a serious reform in that wretched country.
We can state exactly when the traditional policy of Russia gave place to a new and an opposite line. It was at the time when Russia had finally altered her international course and had drifted into the channel of the entente with England. It was in the years 1907–1908. In August, 1907, a treaty with England had been concluded on Asiatic questions, and in May, 1908, there was an interview between the Tsar and King Edward VII. These two years, 1907 and 1908, represent the period of transition when the Russian Foreign Minister, Mr Izvolsky, after having found new friends in England, was still unwilling to surrender old friends in Austria, and so he is found discussing with them, to our great disadvantage, new schemes conceived under new international conjunctures. The possibility of the final downfall of Turkey, the possibility of the advance of Austria-Hungary to Salonica and of Russia on the Bosphorus, were the subjects of secret discussion on the former lines. But at the same time new developments took place, and two facts in particular must be remembered as outward symptoms of the changing situation.
First, in June, 1903, a new dynasty appeared in Serbia, the dynasty of Peter Karageorgevic, which was friendly to Russia, and then there began a bitter struggle for the emancipation of Serbia from the economic bondage of Austria. A Russophil Radical party, under the leadership of Mr Paschic, took a line which entirely changed the whole situation. It was then that Austria began to talk about the Serbian danger. Then, secondly. Baron Aerenthal, the Austrian Foreign Minister, on the 27th of January, 1908, made his famous speech about the new railway line to be constructed through Sanjak,—through the corridor I have mentioned,—and he particularly emphasised the importance of that railway as a means of direct communication between Vienna, Egypt, and India. This speech was an open avowal, and from that moment the Eastern Question was reopened in all its historical magnitude and significance. Under this new light the annexation by Austria-Hungary of Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1908 received a meaning quite different from what it was supposed to have in 1876, at the time of the Reichstadt concession. It brought about an acute conflict with Russia, and this diplomatic defeat of Russia at the hand of German bluff in 1909, served as an antecedent to the German policy of 1914. Thus, people who insist upon the fact that there must be a direct connection, as cause and effect, between these events of 1907–1909 and the present war are right, I suppose. The war might have begun from various causes and on many pretexts on the part of Germany, but, as a matter of fact, it began by reason of the Eastern Question being reopened, and we cannot understand the present situation in the Balkans unless we discuss the Eastern Question in full.
Coming to this part of my lecture, I find a very good definition of what the Eastern Question properly is, in its European shape, in the initial phrase of Mr Miller's book on the Ottoman Empire. He says: "The near Eastern Question may be defined as the problem of filling up the vacuum created by the gradual disappearance of the Turkish Empire from Europe." "Filling up the vacuum." I agree with this definition, but with one correction, and a very serious one. There is no vacuum, no emptiness, not only in the world of physical things but also in the world of morals. As long as there were no moral entities—by which I mean no nations conscious of themselves—as long as there were no moral entities in the world of the enslaved rayáh in Turkey, there was also no vacuum. Accordingly, there was also no dislocation of Turkey, although the symptoms of decrepitude and of coming decay were already present and numerous. The process of decomposition developed as the consequence of a new process of national integration, as its counterpart or inverse.
Look at this little collection of maps, showing different projects for a partition of Turkey. I took them from the book of Mr Djuvara, who counts a hundred of these projects, beginning as early as the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, and half of them are earlier than the eighteenth century, i.e. before the beginning of a real dislocation of Turkey, Compare these maps with the ethnographic map of the Balkan Peninsula. You will see how these early projects for the partition of Turkey make a clean slate of its ethnographic composition. Here, for instance, Father Coppin contrives to give something to everybody, to France, and to England, to Spain, to Modena and Parma, to the Pope and to Venice,—and all that on the very small spot of the Morea, which he divides into six parts. Next, Mr Carra, a Girondist executed by the Jacobins during the French Revolution, gives Prussia a place on the Danube and the Black Sea. Others cut to the quick in the living but torpid bodies of nations, drawing lines from north to south, or from west to east, of the Balkan Peninsula[2]. Looking at some of the later maps[3], you will see that the vacuum begins to fill up with living matter, and will notice how political frontiers of projected local kingdoms begin to coincide with national or religious divisions. Well, this change in political cartography reflects in itself the whole story of the Eastern Question. The real dislocation of the Ottoman Empire begins with the real growth of the Balkan nationalities, and fantastic schemes and combinations are soon eliminated by substituting for them real solutions. The only trouble, which is a new one, is to find just where the ethnographic frontiers go. Populations are mixed, claims are uncertain,—and a new and internal struggle begins between the Balkan nationalities themselves. Their original and lofty aim—that of national unification—gradually assumes the shape of new aspirations towards an "equilibrium of power," while ethnographic frontiers begin to, serve only as a pretext covering hidden tendencies towards hegemony and domination.
Let us now, for a time, put aside the far-reaching designs of European conquerors and diplomatists in the Balkans. Let us even forget dynastic intrigues, favoured or hampered by the reigning families of Europe. Let us review the double and elementary process of Turkish decay and of national awakening in the Balkans. What exactly was the principal cause of the destruction of Turkey? The answer may be partly found in what has been said already. But I want to impress it on you by the aid of an English book which, according to my view, is undeservedly forgotten, and which I wish particularly to recall to your minds at the present time: I mean Prof. Edward Freeman's book on The Ottoman Power in Europe, which was written on the eve of the Berlin congress of 1878,—and met at the time with a rather unfriendly reception. It might have been written to-day. This is what Freeman says: "The presence of the Turk in Europe is incidental. They remain at the end of 500 years as much strangers as they were at the beginning. European ideas and words, like 'nation,' "government,' 'law,' 'sovereign,' 'subject,' do not apply to them. How can they form a 'nation' when the Mahommedan part of the population has always been a ruling race and the Christian or other non-Mahommedan part has always been a subject race? The non-Mussulman 'subjects' of a Mussulman ruler sink to the condition of a subject people. The utmost that the best Mahommedan ruler can do is to save his subjects of other religions from actual persecution; he cannot save them from degradation; he cannot, without forsaking the principles of his own religion, put them on the same level as Mussulmans. That is why in Turkey there can be no 'subject' and no 'national government.' When we call an Englishman a British subject, we mean that he is a member of the British state. But if we call a Bulgarian an Ottoman subject, it means that he is the member of a body which is held in bondage by the body of which the Ottoman Sultan is the head, and he is also subject to all the lesser Turks as his daily oppressors. As far as the Turks themselves are concerned, the Turkish Government is a 'government,' i.e. a system of the administration of the law. But their rule over the Christian is a rule of mere force, and not a rule of law. The Christian is, in strictness, out of the pale of the law; the utmost that he can do is to purchase the security of his life and property and the exercise of his religion by the payment of tribute. That is why, among the nations of Western Europe, no one wishes to get rid of the government of his country, though he may wish to modify and improve it in many ways. But the Christian subject of the Turkish Government does not wish to reform the Turkish Government. He simply wishes to get rid of it altogether. He wishes to become a member of a political community of his own nation, which shall have nothing to do with the Turk. That power could not redress their grievances, because the existence of that power in itself is the greatest of their grievances, the root and cause of all lesser grievances. The only solution is the transfer of the power of the Turk to other hands."
I have known Turkey for nearly twenty years, and I can give you no better explanation of the real causes of her fatal downfall, than that given by the famous English historian. You will ask me perhaps, seeing that the book was written in 1878, how it is possible to apply Freeman's statements to regenerated Turkey, the Turkey of to-day, the Turkey of the Young Turks after their revolution of 1908? Well, there was one moment when I myself had some doubts, and after that a time when I did not wish to play the part of the bird of ill omen. But when two years had elapsed after the revolution—after this two years' test it became clear, even to those who knew nothing about the internal state of Turkey, that the trial had failed. I was in Constantinople ten days after the revolution of July 23, 1908, had begun. I saw the general enthusiasm of the crowds in the streets. I sympathised with the initiators of the national movement; I made acquaintance with some of them one week later in Salonica; day by day I was able to follow their first attempts to formulate their political programme; it was intended at least as much to liberate Turkey from Europe as from the old Sultan. As to their relations with Christian nationahties, I saw the chasm which existed between their idea of a united Ottoman Empire whose members should enjoy equal rights, and the firm decision of Christian subjects to preserve their separate national existence, their native habits, their inherited traditions, based on concessions given some hundreds of years ago by the early conquerors of Byzantium. No, Freeman was right: complete separation was the only possible solution of the problem. I left Turkey with the impression that her fate was sealed.
But who was to profit by the coming destruction of Turkey? The most natural answer was given already by Gladstone. "It will be in the first place the Balkan nations themselves." The Balkans were to be given to the Balkan nations. Well, that was not an anti-Russian solution. The only thing Russia claimed in the Balkans in case of the disappearance of Turkey was a narrow strip of land all along the Straits, with a comparatively mixed population. But it was beyond doubt an anti-Austrian solution, because it blocked for ever the way to Salonica, and an anti-German Solution, because it completely destroyed the scheme of Berlin to Bagdad. Germany did not fail, in the famous speech of the Chancellor Bethmann-Hollweg before the Reichstag, in April, 1913, to acknowledge that it was a "disadvantage" for her. "that the position in the balance of forces, which was occupied hitherto by European Turkey," began to be "filled in part by Slav States." The Chancellor pointed out, at this date, that such a state of things might bring about "a European conflagration, which sets Slaventum against Germanentum," and thus make it necessary for Germany to help Austria-Hungary "not merely within the limits of diplomatic mediation"—thus foreshadowing the arguments of the German White Paper of August, 1914.
The chief strength of the anti-German solution was this, that it satisfied local interests, and stood in perfect harmony with the national aspirations of the awakening Christian populations of the Balkans. Looking backwards at the events, we may say that all diplomatic designs, however farseeing they seemed at the time, have miserably failed in case they were inconsistent with local national needs, and that, on the contrary, small Balkan nations, steadily growing in consciousness and cohesion, have always found their way, mostly taking by surprise diplomatic wisdom. The two kinds of help they really wanted from the entente were, first, to let them alone and to ward off Austro-Germany while they were fighting their common enemy, Turkey, and, secondly, to suggest, and, if necessary, to impose solutions in very delicate and disputed questions of establishing satisfactory and permanent ethnographic frontiers. The entente succeeded in accomplishing the first task and utterly failed in the second.
The only possible way to defeat Turkey by the forces of the Balkan nations alone was to arrange a compact amongst them and to lay the foundations of a Balkan League, while the only chance of Austro-Germany to win the game was to keep them disunited, and to foster internal dissensions and national rivalries in the Balkans. Germs for both were not lacking, and the story of the relations between the Balkan States is, in substance, the story of a continuous struggle between these two tendencies of union and discord.
The idea of a Balkan Union is not new. It was dreamed of by Slav idealists and intellectuals over half a century ago. It was even tried by the Serbian patriot. Prince Michael, who, as early as 1866–68, i.e. about the time of the unification of Italy and Germany, concluded the same system of treaties[4] which forty-five years later brought about the victory of the Balkan peoples over the Turk. But for a time it did not succeed. In May, 1868, Michael fell victim to a conspiracy in which Austria had some hand, because Austria knew how dangerous it was for her to see, that union of the small Balkan nations accomplished. With Michael's death Serbia lost her chance of becoming what she sought to be, the "Piedmont" for all Balkan Slavs, because in the next years another Slav state in the Balkans was formed by Russia. This was Bulgaria, whose national consciousness was being awakened. Thenceforward there began a growing rivalry between the two related nations. Bulgaria had won (1870) her own national church, the Exarchy, while Serbia remained under the Greek Patriarch, and, as the Patriarch proclaimed the Bulgarians to be schismatics, there was the new difference of religion to increase the feeling of national disparity. It was then that the struggle for Macedonia began, and grew ever fiercer. Before that time, the Serbians did not claim the Macedonian population as their own. Macedonians called themselves "Bougari," and spoke a Bulgarian dialect. But Serbian patriots, from the end of 1860, claimed Macedonia as an historical inheritance of the Tsar Dushan, and tried to prove that there were Serbian sounds preserved in Macedonian dialects. The feeling of the Macedonian Slav population was not with them. Macedonian Bulgarians participated in general Bulgarian risings of the seventies, and suffered equally when the Bulgarians were massacred by the Turks; and they were included by Russia in the liberated Bulgaria by the treaty of armistice of San Stefano (March, 1878). The "undivided" Bulgaria of San Stefano has always remained since then a national ideal. If Lord Beaconsfield had not likened at that time to the Austrian advice of Count Andrassy, and if this ideal had then been realised, there would have been no ulterior struggle between Serbia and Bulgaria, and no attempts on the part of Austria to make use of this struggle in order to divert the attention of Serbia from the Adriatic shore and from Dalmatia, which is Serbian, to the valley of the Vardar and to Salonica. The treaty of San Stefano, I am sorry to say, was torn to pieces at Berlin (July, 1878) by the help of English statesmen who suspected Russia of designs for expansion; but this suspicion afterwards proved quite unfounded. The "wrong horse" policy showed here at its worst. And thus it finally happened that the Bulgarian national ideal, based on ethnography, is at this moment being realised by Germans, and by that royal degenerate, their King Ferdinand.
Meanwhile, there was a moment when it seemed that a just and reasonable partition of Slav lands owned by the Turk was likely, in spite of Austro-German attempts to sow discord, to be attained by the Balkan states themselves, united in one Balkan League. The possibility of building such a union appeared again with the change of dynasty in Serbia in 1903. The younger generation of Serbian and Bulgarian intellectuals did very much to cool down international irritation, and in 1904 an attempt was made to conclude a commercial treaty, with the further prospect of a customs-union and even a treaty for mutual defence. Unhappily, this treaty met with a formal veto on the part of Austria. Still, conversations were resumed as early as 1909, and proceeded further in Petrograd in 1910, without coming to any definite result in regard to Macedonia; and, finally, a formula of partition of Macedonia was secretly arrived at when the Turco-Italian war of 1911 made it clear to everybody that Turkey's life in Europe was soon to end. By the Serbo-Bulgarian Treaty of March 13, 1912, the limit was finally drawn in Macedonia, approximately, according to the view of Mr Tsviyits, the best Serbian specialist in geography, on the lines of Serbian ethnographic research. This treaty was followed by the Graeco-Bulgarian treaty of May, 1912, wherein, unhappily, no frontiers were established which could settle conflicting claims. Then, when the Albanian revolt of 1912 proved finally the weakness of Turkey, military agreements were concluded on September 5, 1912, with Serbia, and on September 28, 1912, with Greece. On October 13, the allied Balkan states formally demanded Turkey's consent to the autonomy of the European vilayets, redivided according to nationality, and on October 17 Turkey replied by declaring war on Bulgaria, Serbia, and Greece, Montenegro having been at war since October 9.
Nobody expected at the time a decisive victory for the allies, and thus it was easy for Russia, England, and France to persuade Austria-Hungary to let the Balkan states fight it out by themselves. Austria confidently expected that the Balkan states would be beaten by the Turks. It was a great disappointment, therefore, for both Austria and Germany when, in the short space of a few weeks, the allies had become masters of the Turkish provinces in Europe. The war for liberation was properly finished at Lulé-Bourgas on October 31 for Bulgaria, at Salonica on October 27 for Greece, and at Monastir on October 28 for Serbia. If by that time, by the end of October or, perhaps, November, a treaty of peace could have been concluded, the question of a just ethnographic partition should have been solved. But now there began a war for conquest, which was to end with the capture of Adrianople by Bulgaria on March 13, 1913, of Yaniña by the Greeks on February 24, and of Durazzo and Scutari on April 9 by Serbia and Montenegro.
Unhappily, this war for conquest was also the end of the Balkan League. Encroachments on foreign nationalities did not fail to revive ancient mutual animosities. Serbia and Greece, having become masters of Macedonia, began by very summary means to assimilate the local population. Bulgaria grew impatient to conclude peace with Turkey in order to turn against the allies herself. Serbia and Greece answered by concluding a treaty of alliance on May 29, 1913, against Bulgaria, in order to defend their booty. As the treaty of March 13, 1912, provided, in case of conflict between the allies, for arbitration by the Tsar, Russia made an attempt to convoke the quarrelling allies before her tribunal in Petrograd. But at the same time Russian diplomacy made Bulgaria understand that she must yield and make some further concessions to Serbia. This sufficed to make Bulgaria resort to the foolish proceeding of trying a solution by force. On June 29 a sudden attack was made by the Bulgarians on the Serbians and on the Greek army, and then a veritable avalanche of misfortune descended upon Bulgaria. Russia let go Roumania, whose soldiers advanced to Sofia. England did not stop the Turks, who recaptured Adrianople and passed on to Bulgarian territory. At the same time the Greeks reached the frontier of the kingdom at Djumaya; while the Serbians were besieging Vidin. After two weeks of unequal struggle, Bulgaria appealed to Europe. Two weeks later she asked Roumania to mediate. On July 30 negotiations were opened at Bucharest, and on August 10 a hasty peace was concluded which simply mutilated Bulgaria and distributed Balkan territory among the victors as if no ethnography existed. Thus the work of the Balkan union was utterly spoilt, and it was the Austro-Germans who really won the victory at Bucharest.
At the beginning of 1914 I wrote in the Report of the Carnegie Commission sent to inquire into the causes and conduct of the Balkan wars: "The treaty of Bucharest has sown a new seed of discord in its violation of the sentiment of nationality. It divides the Balkan territories on the principle on which the treaty of Vienna divided national regions in Europe in 1815. This historical example suggests that here, too, national reaction will follow on the work of diplomatic and political reaction. Those who won claimed that a balance in the Balkans had been secured, an end made of pretensions to hegemony, and peace thus secured for the future. Unhappily, a nearer examination leads rather to the conclusion that the treaty of Bucharest has created a state of things that is far from being durable." While writing these hues, I was far from foreseeing that this prophecy was to be accomplished during that very year and the next.
You can see now the bearing of the events of 1913, and of the mistaken policy of a fictitious equilibrium in the Balkans, on the events which brought about the present war. If the partition of Christian populations in the European provinces of Turkey had been made according to the treaty of March 13, 1912, and in accordance with the actual ethnographic frontiers, the Balkan League would have been kept in existence and Austria-Hungary would not have dared, would not even have thought of sending her ultimatum to Serbia. I do not mean to say that in that case there would have been no European war. What I mean is that, probably, there would have been no war in July, 1914, on the pretext of a Serbian danger for Austria.
Still, when this war began, not everything was lost in the Balkans. On September 17, 1915, the diplomatic representatives of the entente powers visited the Bulgarian premier, Mr Radoslavov, and handed to him identical verbal notes. They acknowledged in these notes that Bulgarian pretensions to Macedonia were just, and they gave Bulgaria a solemn guarantee that Macedonia would be given back to her, within the limits of the treaty of March 13, 1912, quite independently of what Serbia or Greece might think of it. They even proposed as a guarantee immediately to occupy the promised territories with the Italian army. If this proposal, instead of being made in September, had been made in March, half a year before, I am nearly sure that Bulgaria would have sided with us. But at that time there was no unity of opinion among the diplomatists of the entente as to the better solution to choose. Does not this mean that sometimes—let us be charitable—diplomatists are liable to be out of touch with the existing reality, and not quite well acquainted with things they ought to know?
Well, ladies and gentlemen, things are just now so complicated in the Balkans that I do not venture to utter any opinion as to what is to be done immediately in that region. We are now in the very process of development of new military operations which, in a few weeks, perhaps, may change the whole situation. But what I know, and what looms over momentary events so as to be seen afar, from a distance, is the conspicuous lesson given by the occurrences of the past which I have just recalled to your memory. Nothing short of extermination can change the state of national feeling, and the task of diplomatic wisdom is quite plain and simple if it does not permit itself to be guided by feelings of hatred or revenge. The settlement in the Balkans, to be durable, must be based on the just national aspirations of the Balkan peoples, The allies, who are led by feelings of justice and freedom, will know how to rearrange the conditions of national life in the Balkans in order to prevent the recurrence of mutual distrust and that false principle of "balance of power" which is profitable only to our enemies, and to crown our victory, which is sure to come, with a new reconstruction based on international law and guaranteed by international sanctions.
- ↑ The quotation is taken from Mr H. N. Brailsford's article in the Contemporary Review, reprinted as a leaflet. No. 4 ("The Origins of the Great War"), by the Union of Democratic Control.
- ↑ Projects of Catherine II (1772) and of Alexander I (1808).
- ↑ Projects of Capodistrias (1828), of Dandolo (1853), of Mathias Ban (1885).
- ↑ With Greece and Montenegro, and with the "apostles" of Bulgarian freedom, the Bulgarian revolutionaries.