The first effect of the European fiat regarding an independent
Albania was the recoil of Servia against Bulgaria. Confronted by the
force majeure of the Great Powers which estopped her advance to the
Adriatic, Servia turned her anxious regard toward the Gulf of
Saloniki and the Aegean Sea. Already her victorious armies had
occupied Macedonia from the Albanian frontier eastward beyond the
Vardar River to Strumnitza, Istib, and Kochana, and southward below
Monastir and Ghevgheli, where they touched the boundary of the Greek
occupation of Southern Macedonia. An agreement with the Greeks, who
held the city of Saloniki and its hinterland as well as the whole
Chalcidician Peninsula, would ensure Servia an outlet to the sea.
And the merchants of Saloniki--mostly the descendants of Jews
expelled from Spain in the fifteenth century--were shrewd enough to
recognize the advantage to their city of securing the commerce of
Servia, especially as they were destined to lose, in consequence of
hostile tariffs certain to be established by the conquerors, a
considerable portion of the trade which had formerly flowed to them
without let or hindrance from a large section of European Turkey.
The government of Greece was equally favorably disposed to this
programme; for, in the first place, it was to its interest to
cultivate friendly relations with Servia, in view of possible
embroilments with Bulgaria; and, in the second place, it had to
countercheck the game of those who wanted either to make Saloniki a
free city or to incorporate it in a Big Bulgaria, and who were using
with some effect the argument that the annexation of the city to
Greece meant the throttling of its trade and the annihilation of its
prosperity. The interests of the city of Saloniki, the interests of
Greece, and the interests of Servia all combined to demand the free
flow of Servian trade by way of Saloniki. And if no other power
obtained jurisdiction over any Macedonian territory through which
that trade passed, it would be easy for the Greek and Servian
governments to come to an understanding.