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 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 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 gods for the outraged principles of reason and moderation.