This was a difficult matter to adjust. Before the war began, as we
have already seen, a Treaty of Partition had been negotiated between
Bulgaria and Servia, but conditions had changed materially in the
interval and Servia now demanded a revision of the treaty and refused
to withdraw her troops from Central Macedonia, which the treaty had
marked for reversion to Bulgaria. In consequence the relations between
the governments and peoples of {65} Servia and Bulgaria were
dangerously strained. The Bulgarians denounced the Servians as
perfidious and faithless and the Servians responded by excoriating the
colossal greed and intolerance of the Bulgarians. The immemorial
mutual hatred of the two Slav nations was stirred to its lowest depths,
and it boiled and sputtered like a witches' cauldron.
In Eastern Macedonia Bulgarians and Greeks were each eagerly pushing
their respective spheres of occupation without much regard to the
rights or feeling of the other Ally. Though the Bulgarians had not
forgiven the Greeks for anticipating them in the capture of Saloniki in
the month of November, the rivalry between them in the following winter
and spring had for its stage the territory between the Struma and the
Mesta Rivers--and especially the quadrilateral marked by Kavala and
Orphani on the coast and Seres and Drama on the line of railway from
Saloniki to Adrianople. The Greeks had one advantage over the
Bulgarians: {66} their troops could be employed to secure extensions of
territory for the Hellenic kingdom at a time when Bulgaria still needed
the bulk of her forces to fight the Turks at Chataldja and Adrianople.
Hence the Greeks occupied towns in the district from which Bulgarian
troops had been recalled. Nor did they hesitate to dislodge scattered
Bulgarian troops which their ally had left behind to establish a claim
of occupation. Naturally disputes arose between the military
commanders and these led to repeated armed encounters. On March 5
Greeks and Bulgarians fought at Nigrita as they subsequently fought at
Pravishta, Leftera, Panghaion, and Anghista.
This conduct of the Allies toward one another while the common enemy
was still in the field boded ill for their future relations. "Our next
war will be with Bulgaria," said the man on the street in Athens, and
this bellicose sentiment was reciprocated alike by the Bulgarian people
and the Bulgarian army. The {67} secular mutual enmities and
animosities of the Greeks and Bulgarians, which self-interest had
suppressed long enough to enable the Balkan Allies to make European
Turkey their own, burst forth with redoubled violence under the
stimulus of the imperious demand which the occasion now made upon them
all for an equitable distribution of the conquered territory. For ages
the fatal vice of the Balkan nations has been the immoderate and
intolerant assertion by each of its own claims coupled with
contemptuous disregard of the rights of others.