The Balkan wars have been bloody and costly. We shall never know of
the thousands of men, women, and children who died from privation,
disease, and massacre. But the losses of the dead and wounded in the
armies were for Montenegro 11,200, for Greece 68,000, for Servia
71,000, for Bulgaria 156,000, and for Turkey about the same as for
Bulgaria. The losses in treasure were as colossal as in blood. Only
rough computations are possible. But the direct military
expenditures are estimated at figures varying from a billion and a
quarter to a billion and a half of dollars. This of course takes no
account of the paralysis of productive industry, trade, and commerce
or of the destruction of existing economic values.
Yet great and momentous results have been achieved. Although seated
again in his ancient capital of Adrianople, the Moslem has been
expelled from Europe, or at any rate is no longer a European Power.
For the first time in more than five centuries, therefore,
conditions of stable equilibrium are now possible for the Christian
nations of the Balkans. Whether the present alignment of those
states toward one another and towards the Great Powers is destined
to continue it would be foolhardy to attempt to predict.