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 foreordained 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
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
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 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.
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.