The interest in the Balkan Wars of 1912-1913 has exceeded the
expectations of the publishers of this volume. The first edition,
which was published five months ago, is already exhausted and a second
is now called for.
Meanwhile there has broken out and is now in progress a war which is
generally regarded as the greatest of all time--a war already involving
five of the six Great Powers and three of the smaller nations of Europe
as well as Japan and Turkey and likely at any time to embroil other
countries in Europe, Asia, and Africa, which are already embraced in
the area of military operations.
This War of Many Nations had its origin in the Balkan situation. It
began on July 28 with the declaration of the Dual Monarchy {vi} to the
effect that from that moment Austria-Hungary was in a state of war with
Servia. And the fundamental reason for this declaration as given in
the note or ultimatum to Servia was the charge that the Servian
authorities had encouraged the Pan-Serb agitation which seriously
menaced the integrity of Austria-Hungary and had already caused the
assassination at Sarajevo of the Heir to the Throne.
No one could have observed at close range the Balkan Wars of 1912-1913
without perceiving, always in the background and occasionally in the
foreground, the colossal rival figures of Russia and Austria-Hungary.
Attention was called to the phenomenon at various points in this volume
and especially in the concluding pages.
The issue of the Balkan struggles of 1912-1913 was undoubtedly
favorable to Russia. By her constant diplomatic support she retained
the friendship and earned the gratitude of Greece, Montenegro, and
Servia; and through her {vii} championship, belated though it was, of
the claims of Roumania to territorial compensation for benevolent
neutrality during the war of the Allies against Turkey, she won the
friendship of the predominant Balkan power which had hitherto been
regarded as the immovable eastern outpost of the Triple Alliance. But
while Russia was victorious she did not gain all that she had planned
and hoped for. Her very triumph at Bukarest was a proof that she had
lost her influence over Bulgaria. This Slav state after the war
against Turkey came under the influence of Austria-Hungary, by whom she
was undoubtedly incited to strife with Servia and her other partners in
the late war against Turkey. Russia was unable to prevent the second
Balkan war between the Allies. The Czar's summons to the Kings of
Bulgaria and Servia on June 9, 1913, to submit, in the name of
Pan-Slavism, their disputes to his decision failed to produce the
desired effect, while this assumption of Russian hegemony in Balkan
affairs greatly {viii} exacerbated Austro-Hungarian sentiment. That
action of the Czar, however, was clear notification and proof to all
the world that Russia regarded the Slav States in the Balkans as
objects of her peculiar concern and protection.
The first Balkan War--the war of the Allies against Turkey--ended in a
way that surprised all the world. Everybody expected a victory for the
Turks. That the Turks should one day be driven out of Europe was the
universal assumption, but it was the equally fixed belief that the
agents of their expulsion would be the Great Powers or some of the
Great Powers. That the little independent States of the Balkans should
themselves be equal to the task no one imagined,--no one with the
possible exception of the government of Russia. And as Russia rejoiced
over the victory of the Balkan States and the defeat of her secular
Mohammedan neighbor, Austria-Hungary looked on not only with amazement
but with disappointment and chagrin.
{ix}
For the contemporaneous diplomacy of the Austro-Hungarian government
was based on the assumption that the Balkan States would be vanquished
by Turkey. And its standing policy had been on the one hand to keep
the Kingdom of Servia small and weak (for the Dual Monarchy was itself
an important Serb state) and on the other hand to broaden her Adriatic
possessions and also to make her way through Novi Bazar and Macedonia
to Saloniki and the Aegean, when the time came to secure this
concession from the Sultan without provoking a European war. It seemed
in 1908 as though the favorable moment had arrived to make a first
move, and the Austro-Hungarian government put forward a project for
connecting the Bosnian and Macedonian railway systems. 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.
Only one success could possibly be attributed to the diplomacy of the
Ballplatz. The exclusion of Servia from the Adriatic Sea and the
establishment of the independent State of Albania was the achievement
of Count Berchtold, the Austro-Hungarian Minister of Foreign Affairs.
The new State has been a powder magazine from the beginning, and since
the withdrawal of Prince William of Wied, the government, always
powerless, has fallen into chaos. Intervention on the part of
neighboring states is inevitable. And only last month the southern
part of Albania--that is, Northern {xi} Epirus--was occupied by a Greek
army for the purpose of ending the sanguinary anarchy which has
hitherto prevailed. This action will be no surprise to the readers of
this volume. The occupation, or rather re-occupation, is declared by
the Greek Government to be provisional and it is apparently approved by
all the Great Powers. Throughout the rest of Albania similar
intervention will be necessary to establish order, and to protect the
life and property of the inhabitants without distinction of race,
tribe, or creed. Servia might perhaps have governed the country, had
she not been compelled by the Great Powers, at the instigation of
Austria-Hungary, to withdraw her forces. And her extrusion from the
Adriatic threw her back toward the Aegean, with the result of shutting
Bulgaria out of Central Macedonia, which was annexed by Greece and
Servia presumably under arrangements satisfactory to the latter for an
outlet to the sea at Saloniki.
The war declared by Austria-Hungary {xii} against Servia may be
regarded to some extent as an effort to nullify in the interests of the
former the enormous advantages which accrued directly to Servia and
indirectly to Russia from the Balkan Wars of 1912-1913. That Russia
should have come to the support of Servia was as easy to foresee as any
future political event whatever. And the action of Germany and France
once war had broken out between their respective allies followed as a
matter of course. If the Austro-German Alliance wins in the War of
Many Nations it will doubtless control the eastern Adriatic and open up
a way for itself to the Aegean. Indeed, in that event, German trade
and German political influence would spread unchallenged across the
continents from the North Sea to the Persian Gulf and the Indian Ocean.
Turkey is a friend and ally; but even if Turkey were hostile she would
have no strength to resist such victorious powers. And the Balkan
States, with the defeat of Russia, would be compelled to recognize
Germanic supremacy.
{xiii}
If on the other hand the Allies come out victorious in the War of Many
Nations, Servia and perhaps Roumania would be permitted to annex the
provinces occupied by their brethren in the Dual Monarchy and Servian
expansion to the Adriatic would be assured. The Balkan States would
almost inevitably fall under the controlling influence of Russia, who
would become mistress of Constantinople and gain an unrestricted outlet
to the Mediterranean through the Bosphorus, the Sea of Marmora, and the
Dardanelles.
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 {xiv} by Turkey.
What may happen in 1914 or 1915 no one can predict. But if this
terrible conflagration, which is already devastating Europe and
convulsing all the continents and vexing all the oceans of the globe,
spreads to the Balkans, one may hazard the guess that Greece,
Montenegro, Servia, and Roumania will stand together on the side of the
Allies and that Bulgaria if she is not carried away by marked
Austro-German victories will remain neutral,--unless indeed the other
Balkan States win her over, as they not inconceivably might do, if they
rose to the heights of unwonted statesmanship by recognizing her claim
to that part of Macedonia in which the Bulgarian element predominates
but which was ceded to her rivals by the Treaty of Bukarest.
But I have said enough to indicate that as in its origin so also in its
results this awful cataclysm under which the civilized world is now
reeling will be found to be vitally connected with the Balkan Wars of
1912-1913. And I conclude {xv} with the hope that the present volume,
which devotes indeed but little space to military matters and none at
all to atrocities and massacres, may prove helpful to readers who seek
light on the underlying conditions, the causes, and the consequences of
those historic struggles. The favor already accorded to the work and
the rapid exhaustion of the first edition* seem to furnish some
justification of this hope.