RESULTS: Turkey appealed to the powers, November 3, 1912, for
intervention, and an armistice was signed December 3, 1912, ending
one of the shortest and most sanguinary wars in history. The treaty
of peace was signed May 30, 1913.
(2) =Servia=, =Greece=, =Roumania=, =Turkey= vs. Bulgaria.
CAUSES: Disputes over the division of Macedonia.
CHIEF ACTIONS: Mainly astounding atrocities and the re-occupation of
Adrianople by Turkey.
RESULTS: Reorganization of the Balkan states. Albania was made
independent under an international commission of control; Crete was
ceded to Greece; Macedonia was divided among Greece, Servia, and
Bulgaria; and Roumania gained a strip from the northwest of
Bulgaria. On September 17, 1913, an agreement between Bulgaria and
Turkey provided that the latter retain Adrianople, Kirk Kilisseh,
and Dimotika. September 28 the treaty between Bulgaria and Turkey
was signed at Constantinople.
=EUROPEAN WAR=--1914-1917.
(1) Entente Allies (Great Britain, France, Russia, Italy, Belgium,
Servia, Montenegro, Roumania, Portugal, Japan) vs. (2) Teutonic
Allies (Germany, Austro-Hungary, Turkey, Bulgaria).
CAUSES: (1) The immediate occasion of this great conflict was the
murder of the Crown Prince and Crown Princess of the
Austro-Hungarian empire, on June 28, 1914, at Sarajevo, Bosnia,
through the alleged instigation of a Servian revolutionary society,
called the Narodna Odbrana, which had for its purpose the disrupting
of the Austro-Hungarian empire, particularly those parts inhabited
largely by Servians and other Slavic races, followed by a demand on
the part of the Austro-Hungarian government that Servia suppress the
criminal organization and permit the former to co-operate in the
inquiry as to the accomplices on Servian territory in the murders of
the Prince and Princess. This demand was refused by Servia, which
immediately received the support of Russia, France and Great
Britain, while Austria-Hungary received the support of Germany, and,
later, of Turkey.
(2) The underlying causes were the following:
(a) The policy of Russia (popularly known as Pan-Slavism), an
age-long political creed of Russian ambition, to dominate the Balkan
countries and extend her dominions to the Bosphorus, the Ægean and
the Adriatic.
(b) The ambition of France to regain Alsace-Lorraine, lost to her by
the Franco-Prussian war.
(c) The determination of Great Britain to check the growth of
Germany, politically, industrially, and especially commercially.
(3) More remote causes, and more specious ones, are alleged to be:
(a) The European political doctrine of the “Balance of Power,” which
was the outgrowth of the Napoleonic wars, and received its first
stamp of approval at the Congress of Vienna in 1815, which settled
the important boundaries of the map of Europe for more than half a
century afterward. Subsequently, the “great powers” of Europe
assumed the point of view that any acquisition of power, territory
or population by any one of them entitled all the others to
compensation; so that the relative strength and importance might not
be disturbed. This rule has been applied to every important war
since Napoleon’s time, and any threatened disturbance of this
“balance” has always had in it the germ of a general conflict. Hence
arose the historic “alliances,” known as the Triple Alliance, on the
one hand, and the Triple Entente, comprising France, Russia and
Great Britain, on the other.
(b) Militarism, so-called, with its attendant jealousies and
obstacles to social and economic reforms, and which might be said to
be the direct fruits of the “balance of power” doctrine, as is also
the doctrine of the “guaranteed neutrality” of certain small
countries of Europe, which astute European diplomacy created for the
purpose of “buffer” states.
MILITARY LEADERS: (1) Kitchener, French, Haig, Joffre, Grand Duke
Nicholas, Kouropatkin, Brusiloff, Admirals Fisher and Jellicoe; (2)
Emperor William, Hindenburg, Mackensen, Kluck, Falkenhayn, Archduke
Frederick, Hoetzendorf, Crown Prince Frederick William, Admiral
Tirpitz, Crown Prince Rupprecht, Enver Pasha.
CHIEF THEATERS OF ACTION: (1) Belgium; (2) Northern France; (3)
Poland; (4) Dardanelles; (5) Servia and Balkans; (6) Roumania; (7)
Austro-Italian Front; (8) Lithuania; (9) North Sea and Inlets; (10)
Mediterranean; (11) German Colonial Possessions throughout the
world.
RESULTS: Except for the loss of Germany’s Colonial Possessions, the
results of the war to date (1917) largely preponderate in favor of
the Teutonic Allies--the land campaigns being almost overwhelmingly
in their favor. (See further Great Battles of the World.)