The Bulgarians were blind to all facts and considerations but the
abstract terms of the treaty with Servia. It was a fact, however, that
the war against Turkey had been fought by four Allies. It was a fact
that the Ottoman government had ceded European Turkey (except Albania)
to these four Allies. No two of the Allies could divide between
themselves the common possession. A division made by the four Allies
might contravene the terms of a treaty which existed between any two of
the Allies prior to the outbreak of the war. In any event it was for
the four Allies together to effect a distribution of the territory
ceded to them by Turkey. For that purpose a conference was an
essential organ. How otherwise could the four nations reach any
agreement? Yet the Bulgarians--army, government, and nation--were
obsessed by the fixed idea that Bulgaria enjoyed not only a primacy in
this {102} matter but a sort of sovereign monopoly by virtue of which
it was her right and privilege to determine how much of the common
spoils she should assign Servia (with whom she had an ante-bellum
treaty), and, after Servia had been eliminated, how much she could
spare to Greece (with whom no treaty of partition existed), and, when
Greece had been disposed of, whether any crumbs could be flung to
Montenegro, who had indeed very little to hope for from the Bulgarian
government. And so Bulgaria opposed a conference of the four prime
ministers though a conference was the natural, obvious, and necessary
method of disposing of the common business pressing upon them.
The attitude of Bulgaria left no alternative but war. Yet the
Bulgarian government failed to reckon the cost of war. Was it not
madness for Bulgaria to force war upon Greece, Servia, and Montenegro
on the west at a time when Roumania was making demands for territorial
compensation on the north and Turkey was {103} sure to seize the
occasion to win back territory which Bulgaria had just wrested from her
on the south? Never was a government blinder to the significant facts
of a critical situation. All circumstances conspired to prescribe
peace as the manifest policy for Bulgaria, yet nearly every step taken
by the government was provocative of war. The Bulgarian army had
covered itself with glory in the victorious campaign against the
Moslem. A large part of European Turkey was already in Bulgarian
hands. To imperil that glory and those possessions by the risk of a
new war, when the country was exhausted and new enemies lay in wait,
was as foolish as it was criminal. That way madness lay. Yet that way
the policy pursued by the Bulgarian government infallibly led. Must we
assume that there is some ground for suspecting that Austria-Hungary
was inciting Bulgaria to war? We must leave it to history to answer.
If the result was a terrible disaster, that was only the old Greek
Nemesis of the {104} gods for the outraged principles of reason and
moderation.