Just here, however, was the rub. The secret treaty of March, 1912,
providing for the offensive and defensive alliance of Bulgaria and
Servia against the Ottoman Empire regulated, in case of victory, the
division of the conquered territory between the Allies. And the
extreme limit, on the south and east, of Turkish territory {73}
assigned to Servia by this treaty was fixed by a line starting from
Ochrida on the borders of Albania and running northeastward across the
Vardar River a few miles above Veles and thence, following the same
general direction, through Ovcepolje and Egri Palanka to Golema Vreh on
the frontier of Bulgaria--a terminus some twenty miles southeast of the
meeting point of Servia, Macedonia, and Bulgaria. During the war with
Turkey the Servian armies had paid no attention to the Ochrida-Golema
Vreh line. The great victory over the Turks at Kumanovo, by which the
Slav defeat at Kossovo five hundred years earlier was avenged, was, it
is true, won at a point north of the line in question. But the
subsequent victories of Prilip and Monastir were gained to the south of
it--far, indeed, into the heart of the Macedonian territory recognized
by the treaty as Bulgarian.
If you look at a map you will see that the boundary between Servia and
Bulgaria, starting {74} from the Danube, runs in a slightly undulating
line due south. Now what the military forces of King Peter did during
the war of the Balkan states with the Ottoman Empire was to occupy all
European Turkey south of Servia between the prolongation of that
boundary line and the new Kingdom of Albania till they met the Hellenic
army advancing northward under Crown Prince Constantine, when the two
governments agreed on a common boundary for New Servia and New Greece
along a line starting from Lake Presba and running eastward between
Monastir and Fiorina to the Vardar River a little to the south of
Ghevgheli.