Balkan Wars

“ The Balkan wars have been bloody and costly. We shall never know of the thousands of men, women, and children who died from privation, disease, and massacre. But the losses of the dead and wounded in the armies were for Montenegro 11,200, for Greece 68,000, for Servia 71,000, for Bulgaria 156,000, and for Turkey about the same as for Bulgaria. ”

“ The Italian War and the two Balkan Wars were natural sequels to the Anglo-Russian Treaty of 1907. Far outside the frontiers of the Empire, its final break-up had been decreed, and the conference at Bucharest which ended the Second Balkan War was a diplomatic maneuvring for position between Russia and Austria-Hungary. The latter won and Serbia was wrapped round with a hostile Albania, a hostile Bulgaria and a hostile Greece. The only other interest which the Balkan Wars hold for us, lies in the fact that they left a Constantine, wedded to a Sophia, preparing at Athens for still another war. ”

“ France and Russia did not like this program, but they did not feel like fighting the Triple Alliance to prevent its being put into effect.
Changes as a Result of the Two Balkan Wars 1912-13
The three little countries, separated from a great part of their new territory, now turned to Bulgaria, and, practically, said to her, “Since we have been robbed of Albania, we will have to divide up all over again. You must give us part of your plunder in order to ‘make it square.’” Now was the time for the ancient ill-feeling between the Bulgarians and their neighbors to show itself. ”

“ The spirit of strife and division possesses them; they are dominated by the uncontrolled instinct of national egoism and greed. The second Balkan War, alike in its origin, course, and conclusion, was a bald exhibition of the play of these primitive and hateful passions. ”

“ The future of Macedonia has been the great source of conflict between Austria-Hungary and Russia, and between the Balkan States. At Athens, Sofia, Belgrade, Bukarest, and Cettinje, the diplomats of Russia, Austria-Hungary, and Turkey, from the morrow of the Berlin Congress to the eve of the recent Balkan Wars, played a game against each other, endeavouring always to use the Balkan States {164} as pawns in their sordid strife. ”

“ Its eyes are directed especially toward the Albanian coast of the Adriatic, should a new regulation of Balkan affairs take place. The Triple Alliance, having already sustained a severe blow in the Tripolitan war, was destroyed by the acute crisis in the Balkans during the two Balkan wars. The Central Powers were thus brought into conflict with the entire outside world. German imperialism, chained to two decaying corpses, was steering its course directly toward a world war. ”

“ Add all these figures together, and the result is the total population of the Balkan peninsula proper, less that which covers what was still Turkish territory when the present war broke out.
It is in the proportionate numbers of the various races and nationalities, however, that the greatest confusion and uncertainty exists. Nowhere in the world is there such an intermingling of various and differing peoples. Here official figures are especially misleading, and should be considered only within the boundaries of Bulgaria, Serbia, and Greece as they were before the Balkan wars. ”

“ But the only result was to bring to an end the co-operation which had for some years been maintained between the Austrian and Russian governments in the enforcement upon the Porte of the adoption of reforms in Macedonia. {x} And now the result of the Balkan Wars of 1912-1913 was the practical expulsion of Turkey from Europe and the territorial aggrandizement of Servia and the sister state of Montenegro through the annexation of those very Turkish domains which lay between the Austro-Hungarian frontier and the Aegean. At every point Austro-Hungarian policies had met with reverses. ”

“ In spite of themselves the destiny of the peoples of the Balkans is once more set on the issue of war. It is not inconceivable, therefore, that some or all of those States may be drawn into the present colossal conflict. In 1912-1913 the first war showed Bulgaria, Greece, Montenegro, and Servia allied against Turkey; and in the second war Greece, Montenegro, and Servia were joined by Roumania in the war against Bulgaria, who was also independently attacked by Turkey. What may happen in 1914 or 1915 no one can predict. ”

“ Here, too was the center of the revolutionary movement against the Turks, and here the people rose time and time again in open insurrection, only to be quenched by fire and blood. Nowhere in the Balkan Peninsula has there been so much oppression and bloodshed on account of nationality. For these reasons Monastir has a deep sentimental significance to every Bulgarian. No part of Macedonia means so much to him. Its possession by the Serbians after the Balkan Wars did more, probably, to reconcile the country to King Ferdinand's otherwise hateful pro-German policy than anything else. ”

“ With Greece humiliated by the Protecting Powers and her territory occupied by Bulgaria, with Servia and Montenegro overrun and occupied by the German-Austrian-Bulgarian forces, with Roumania waiting to see which of the belligerent groups will be finally victorious, with Bulgaria now basking in the sunshine of the Central Powers but an object of hatred to all the Allied Powers and especially to Russia, one may be pardoned for refusing to make any guess whatever as to the way in which the resultant diagonal of the parallelogram of European forces will ultimately run through the Balkans. ”

“ The military losses in the recent Balkan Wars had of course so weakened her that cautious diplomatic jockeying was a preliminary necessity, but when Russia had succumbed to Hindenburg's hammer-strokes in the summer of 1915 and the Germanic hosts menaced Serbia in the autumn, Bulgaria threw off the mask, struck Serbia from the rear, and joined the Teutonic powers. Thus did the "Berlin-Bagdad" dream grow into solid fact, and Mitteleuropa became a hard reality.
The people give hearty assent.
Germany promises cessions from Turkey.
Victory over Serbia and Rumania. ”

“ As a matter of fact there existed no juridical ground for this expectation, and the sentiments of the peoples of the four Christian nations, even while they fought together against the Moslem, were saturated with such an infusion of suspicion and hostility as to render nugatory any programme of Balkan confederation. An alliance had indeed been concluded between Greece and Bulgaria in May, 1912, but it was a defensive, not an offensive alliance. ”

“ Montenegro too received her reward by an extension of territory on the south to the frontier of Albania (as fixed by the Great Powers) and a still more liberal extension on the east in the sandjak of Novi Bazar. This patriarchal kingdom will probably remain unchanged so long as the present King lives, {118} the much-beloved King Nicholas, a genuinely Homeric Father of his People. But forces of an economic, social, and political character are already at work tending to draw it into closer union with Servia, and the Balkan wars have given a great impetus to these forces. ”

“ These countries have been the adopted children of the great European powers during generations of rulers. Russia assumed guardianship of the nations having a preponderance of Slavic blood; Roumania with its Latin consanguinities was close to France and Italy; Bulgaria, Greece, and Balkan Turkey were debatable regions wherein the diplomats of the rival nations secured temporary victories by devious methods.
[42] The Balkans have fierce hatreds and have been the site of sudden historic wars. ”

“ 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 {70} 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. ”

“ The Irish question and the agitation for woman suffrage continued to occupy public attention in 1912. In August of that year, 1912, Great Britain joined with France and Germany in accepting Austria-Hungary's invitation to confer on the Balkan situation, which was rapidly assuming grave importance. In conjunction with these powers, as well as Italy and Russia, it maintained a strict neutrality during the Balkan Wars of 1912 and 1913, just as it had done during the Turko-Italian War of 1911 and 1912. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Finally, he was now defending (p. 295) his country, his home, his very fireside and his family against foreign invasion. And it is generally admitted that a man fighting in that situation is equal to two invaders, all other things being equal.
The Serb army opposing the Austrian invasions was composed of ten divisions of the First Ban and five divisions of the Second Ban. Five of the divisions of the First Ban and the five of the Second came from the kingdom as it was prior to the two Balkan wars, but the second five divisions of the First Ban were new creations recruited from Serb Macedonia. ”

“ The same question is now being asked, with some bewilderment, by millions of men in this country, who want to know what difficulties there are in the present situation which should threaten Europe with a general war, or even a collision larger than that already witnessed.... There is no great nation in Europe which to-day has the least desire that millions of men should be torn from their homes and flung headlong to destruction at the bidding of vain ambitions. The Balkan peoples fought for a cause which was peculiarly their own. ”

“ It meant another war in the Balkans, the kindler of wars in Europe. All along a thousand miles of new frontier and ancient hatred any outbreak in the Balkans would spread. Italy would cross the Adriatic again; what would Jugo-Slavia say to that? Serbia would come down in force from the north; would Croatia, Bosnia, Dalmatia, Montenegro, not seize the opportunity to strike at Serbia, the hated new master? Could Jugo-Slavia turn her back on Hungary, in safety? All the Balkans and Central Europe are tinder to any spark, to-day. ”

“ Serbia had successfully held the gate of the Balkans against Austria: Rumania's intervention would extend the lines of possible attack, Greece inclined in the same direction, and the forcing of the Dardanelles would assuredly have deterred Bulgaria from hostile intervention, and almost certainly have decided her to join a common Balkan move against the Teutons and the Turks. To the war on the Eastern and Western fronts, which was already a German nightmare, would be added one on an almost undefended Southern frontier. ”

“ At the outset, the Powers, when endeavouring to prevent hostilities, made an announcement that, whatever the result of the war, no territorial benefit would be allowed to any of the participants; that is to say, the Balkan States were informed, on the authority of all Europe, that if they did go to war, and if they won victories they would be allowed no fruits from those victories. ”

“ But what is of especial political significance, in considering these various Balkan peoples, is the mutual distrust and hatred that exists between them, sown and sedulously fostered by outside powers. For had they been able to weld themselves into one people, one nation, they would have been able to (p. 223) withstand the aggressive intentions of both Austria and Russia, presented a solid front to both those powers, and able to maintain the independence and peace in the Balkans, and, very possibly, no great war at present. ”

“ What have peace theories to do with this war? asks the practical man, who is the greatest mystic of all, contemptuously. Well, they have everything to do with it. For if we had understood some peace theories a little better a generation or two ago, if we had not allowed passion and error and prejudice instead of reason to dominate our policy, the sum of misery which these Balkan populations have known would have been immeasurably less. ”

“ But the causes of the war went back deep into the roots of Balkan history, long before either Germany or Italy played leading rôles in the councils of the great powers. What the Balkan peoples had sorely needed, in their bloody struggle for freedom from the Ottoman yoke, was non-interference of the great powers in their internal affairs and their relations among themselves. ”

“ Its futility is proven by the war waged daily by the Turks as conquerors, during the last 400 years. And because the Balkan peoples have chosen the less evil of two kinds of war, and will use their victory to bring a system based on force and conquest to an end, we who do not believe in force and conquest rejoice in their action, and believe it will achieve immense benefits. ”