What was the occasion of the war between Turkey and the Balkan states
in 1912? The most general answer that can be given to that question is
contained in the one word _Macedonia_. Geographically Macedonia lies
between Greece, Servia, and Bulgaria. Ethnographically it is an
extension of their races. And if, as Matthew Arnold declared, the
primary impulse both of individuals and of nations is the tendency to
expansion, Macedonia both in virtue of its location and of its
population was fore-ordained to be a magnet to the emancipated
Christian nations of the Balkans. Of course the expansion of Greeks
and Slavs meant the expulsion of Turks. Hence the Macedonian question
was the quintessence of the Near Eastern Question.
But apart altogether from the expansionist ambitions and the racial
sympathies of their kindred in Bulgaria, Servia, and Greece, the {31}
population of Macedonia had the same right to emancipation from Turkish
domination and oppression as their brethren in these neighboring
states. The Moslems had forfeited their sovereign rights in Europe by
their unutterable incapacity to govern their Christian subjects. Had
the Treaty of Berlin sanctioned, instead of undoing, the Treaty of San
Stefano, the whole of Macedonia would have come under Bulgarian
sovereignty; and although Servia and especially Greece would have
protested against the Bulgarian absorption of their Macedonian brethren
(whom they had always hoped to bring under their own jurisdiction when
the Turk was expelled) the result would certainly have been better for
all the Christian inhabitants of Macedonia as well as for the
Mohammedans (who number 800,000 persons or nearly one third of the
entire population of Macedonia). As it was these people were all
doomed to a continuation of Turkish misgovernment, oppression, and
slaughter. The Treaty of Berlin {32} indeed provided for reforms, but
the Porte through diplomacy and delay frustrated all the efforts of
Europe to have them put into effect. For fifteen years the people
waited for the fulfilment of the European promise of an amelioration of
their condition, enduring meanwhile the scandalous misgovernment of
Abdul Hamid II. But after 1893 revolutionary societies became active.
The Internal Organization was a local body whose programme was
"Macedonia for the Macedonians." But both in Bulgaria and in Greece
there were organized societies which sent insurgent bands into
Macedonia to maintain and assert their respective national interests.
This was one of the causes of the war between Turkey and Greece in
1897, and the reverses of the Greeks in that war inured to the
advantage of the Bulgarian propaganda in Macedonia. Servian bands soon
after began to appear on the scene. These hostile activities in
Macedonia naturally produced reprisals at the hands of the Turkish
authorities. In one {33} district alone 100 villages were burned, over
8,000 houses destroyed, and 60,000 peasants left without homes at the
beginning of winter. Meanwhile the Austrian and Russian governments
intervened and drew up elaborate schemes of reform, but their plans
could not be adequately enforced and the result was failure. The
Austro-Russian entente came to an end in 1908, and in the same year
England joined Russia in a project aiming at a better administration of
justice and involving more effective European supervision. Scarcely
had this programme been announced when the revolution under the Young
Turk party broke out which promised to the world a regeneration of the
Ottoman Empire. Hopeful of these constitutional reformers of Turkey,
Europe withdrew from Macedonia and entrusted its destinies to its new
master. Never was there a more bitter disappointment. If autocratic
Sultans had punished the poor Macedonians with whips, the Young Turks
flayed them with scorpions. {34} Sympathy, indignation, and horror
conspired with nationalistic aspirations and territorial interests to
arouse the kindred populations of the surrounding states. And in
October, 1912, war was declared against Turkey by Bulgaria, Servia,
Montenegro, and Greece.