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 Balkan situation. It
began on July 28 with the declaration of the Dual Monarchy 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 Serajevo 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 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 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.
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.
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 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 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.
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 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 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.