THE SECOND BALKAN WAR AND THE TREATY OF BUCHAREST
In April, 1913, representatives of the Balkan States were summoned,
for the second time, to Great Britain, and once again the negotiations
threatened to drag on interminably. They were cut short, however, by
Sir Edward Grey, who had lost patience with the procrastinating methods
of the delegates, and a treaty was signed, known as the “Peace of
London.”
So ended the first Balkan War. Turkey lost all her territory in Europe
except Turkish Thrace, which served as a hinterland to Constantinople;
Bulgaria acquired Adrianople and Dede Agatch as her share of the spoil;
the Greeks retained Salonika and Cavalla; the Serbs still occupied
Monastir; Albania was declared an autonomous kingdom, whose frontiers
were to be delimited under the direction of an Ambassadors’ Conference
in London, while an International Commission assisted the local
Government, pending the appointment of a King.
The Peace Treaty registered the defeat of Turkey; it did little more,
and was merely a rough and ready attempt to reconcile the conflicting
aims and aspirations of the victors. Rumania added fresh complications
by demanding compensation from Bulgaria for having played a neutral
part during a Balkan War. Another conference of Ambassadors was
assembled in Petrograd to arbitrate upon this point.
The Bulgarian delegate in London had been M. Daneff, a rude,
overbearing Macedonian who incensed and irritated all those with whom
he came in contact. The selection of this man for so delicate a mission
was, to say the least, unfortunate. To many it appeared suspicious
that M. Daneff should have been sent, when M. Gueshoff, the Prime
Minister, and a man of reasonable and moderate views, could have gone
in his place; it looked as if King Ferdinand of Bulgaria had already
become entangled in the meshes of Austro-Hungarian diplomacy, whose
object was the disruption of the Balkan League. M. Daneff rejected
the overtures and proposals of Greeks, Serbs, Rumanians and Turks
with equal contempt. As a result, Bulgaria became more and more
isolated. Potential enemies surrounded her on every side, but, blinded
by arrogance and false counsel, she disdained the alliance of any
neighbouring State.
At the end of June, the storm broke. The signature of peace had enabled
the Bulgarian Government to concentrate troops in Eastern Macedonia,
in close proximity to the Servian army of occupation. The soldiers of
the two armies fraternized with one another and, to all appearances,
the Bulgars had the friendliest intentions. The first act of war took
place before dawn on June 30 when, without warning, the Servian outpost
line was attacked and driven in by a numerically superior force of
Bulgars. The Serbs recovered themselves speedily, reinforcements were
hurried to the front attacked, and a counter-attack was made which
drove the Bulgars in confusion from the field. Servian successes had an
immediate effect on the Government at Sofia. The treacherous offensive
of June 30 was repudiated and ascribed to the personal initiative of
General Savoff, one of Bulgaria’s most notorious “men of action” and
a favourite of the King. The repudiation came too late. All the other
Balkan States combined against Bulgaria, and within three months of the
signing of peace in London, Greeks and Serbs were fighting their late
ally in Macedonia, while Turks and Rumanians invaded her territory from
the east and north.
The Bulgars soon found themselves in a desperate plight; no amount
of stubborn valour at Carevoselo[15] could protect Sofia against
the Rumanians or save Adrianople from the Turks. By the end of July
the Bulgarian Government was forced to sue for an armistice to save
the country from utter ruin. The day of reckoning had come for an
inexcusable and odious crime.
In the first week of August, the delegates of the Balkan States
assembled at Bucharest to negotiate yet another peace. Their task was
not an easy one. Public opinion in Servia and Greece was exultant
and clamouring for vengeance; in Turkey, Enver Pasha, the saviour of
Adrianople, was at the zenith of his fame. From elements such as these
a judicial frame of mind was not to be expected; they were blinded by
hatred, pent up through decades of jealousy and fear. Enver cherished
ambitious dreams, counted on German help, and knew no scruples. The
majority of the Greeks and Serbs aimed at reducing Bulgaria to a state
of impotence. Had it been possible, they would have exterminated the
entire race.
A few courageous voices were raised in protest against a too brutal
application of the principle that every country has the government it
deserves; they declared it a crime to visit the sins of the rulers on
their hapless subjects; they claimed that the Bulgarian people, as
distinct from their rulers, had been punished enough already; that
Bulgaria had been bled white and had made many sacrifices in a common
cause; that she had lost much of her power for evil, and might, if
properly handled, lose the will; they pleaded that justice should be
tempered with common sense, if not with mercy, and urged that the folly
of exasperating millions of virile peasants, and thereby driving them
into closer union with the Central Empires, against all their racial
instincts, should be foreseen and checked.
The men who dared to speak with the voice of reason were called
pro-Bulgars in Greece and Servia; they went to Bucharest, hoping to
find a more objective spirit.
Many factors combined to make the Rumanian capital the most suitable
meeting-place for the Balkan delegates on this momentous occasion.
Rumania had struck the decisive blow without bloodshed; her army was
intact and her treasury was not depleted; her territorial claims
were inconsiderable and had been submitted to the Great Powers for
arbitration; lastly, in her King, Rumania possessed a personage
peculiarly fitted to mould and direct, dispassionately, the proceedings
of the Conference.
King Charles was a man advanced in years who had served his adopted
country both faithfully and well. The Rumanian people felt for him
gratitude and respect. At this period they would have followed loyally
in any course he chose to take. As head of the elder and Catholic
branch of the Hohenzollern family, the King of Rumania was in close
touch with the courts of the Central Empires and with King Constantine
of Greece.
In short, fate had conferred on this Hohenzollern prince unrivalled
authority in his own country, access to powerful channels of
persuasion, and in relation to the other Balkan States, forces
sufficient to impose his will. He could, had he willed, have been
arbiter of the Balkans and might have changed the course of history. In
the event, he preferred to stand aside.
History is full of such “might have beens.” Time is a kind of fourth
dimension affecting every human action. King Charles’s opportunity
occurred when he was old and tired. Made over-cautious by his knowledge
of the play of external forces on the Balkan situation, he feared a
general conflagration, which might consume his life’s work at a stroke.
And so he left ill alone, and hoped to end his days in peace.
Probably the best known of King Charles’s ministers in 1912 was M. Take
Jonescu, whose tireless energy in the cultivation of relationships
and souvenirs in foreign capitals had earned for him the title of
“the Great European.” This title was not undeserved, though applied
ironically in nine cases out of ten. M. Take Jonescu had acquired the
habit of generalizing from Rumanian affairs so as to make them embrace
the whole of the old world and the new; this had enlarged his horizon
and given him a vision which at times was startlingly prophetic.
He recognized more clearly than any of his countrymen the rôle of
Rumania at the Conference and what could and should be done. The
restless, versatile man of the people was fascinated by the splendid
possibilities of a bold and imaginative Rumanian policy. Not so his
colleagues of the Conservative Party; they opposed inertia to ideas,
and behind them stood the King. M. Take Jonescu had a lawyer’s training
and was no champion of lost causes. This cause was lost indeed while
King Charles was on the throne; only a cataclysm could have saved
it--a “Cascade des Trônes.”[16] The Rumanian statesman foresaw, and in
his vaguely anarchic fashion wished for this consummation, about which
he was to write a few years later, but the lawyer threw up his brief
and devoted his undoubted talents to bargaining and the conclusion of a
Treaty which King Charles himself described as a “drum-head truce.” In
the Near East, men have a passion for subtle and tortuous negotiations,
which are comprehended in the phrase “un marchandage Balkanique,”[17]
which end in compromises, effect no settlement, and serve to postpone
the evil day.
The Austro-Hungarian representative in Bucharest must have heaved a
sigh of relief when it became clear that Rumania’s participation in the
Conference would be restricted to land-grabbing in the Dobruja.[18]
Silistria and a district from which one of the best Bulgarian infantry
regiments drew its recruits were claimed, and eventually annexed, by
Rumania. No great extent of territory this, but enough to hurt.
The French and British press, skimming lightly on the surface of the
Conference, dealt with personalities in preference to principles. M.
Venizelos was their favourite delegate, and held that position to the
end. Success in any walk of life is profitable; success in rebellion
is the shortest road to fame. M. Venizelos had begun his career as
a Cretan rebel. In 1913 he shared with King Constantine the honours
of two victorious campaigns in Macedonia, and was credited with the
resurrection of the old Hellenic spirit. At Bucharest this remarkable
man was in a difficult position; his sole rival in the affections of
the Greek people was his sovereign, to whom he owed the allegiance of a
subject and with whom his personal relations were far from cordial. The
considered judgments of M. Venizelos favoured concessions to Bulgaria
in regard to Cavalla and its hinterland; to any such suggestions
the King replied with a categorical refusal. Fearful of forfeiting
popularity by any act which would diminish the aggrandizements of
Greece, M. Venizelos was perpetually balancing between his conception
of Balkan statesmanship and concern for his own reputation. Eventually,
the latter gained the day. Cavalla was retained by Greece and another
bone of contention was created between Greeks and Bulgars. The presence
of Servian and Turkish delegates at Bucharest was purely formal.
Like the daughters of the horse-leech, their cry was--give; to have
given them more than what they had already taken would have brought
on another war, and no one was prepared for that. Servia’s retention
of Monastir was sanctioned, the Turks remained at Adrianople. The
Bulgars, crestfallen and daunted for a time, retained a part of Thrace,
including Dede Agatch and Porto Lagos; they were alone and friendless;
the sympathies of Russia, the one-time liberator, had been estranged.
They turned their eyes, reluctantly, towards the Central Empires and
nursed a fell revenge.
In due course, the Treaty of Bucharest was signed by the contracting
parties. It has never been officially recognized by the Great Powers,
yet by many it is accepted as a basis for future readjustments in
the Balkan Peninsula. Fallacies are of rapid growth, they none the
less die hard. The negotiations had been, in fact, a diplomatic duel
between Russia and Austria-Hungary, the first clash between two mighty
movements--the “Drang nach Osten”[19] and Pan-Slavism. Austria-Hungary
had won. The new frontiers were a triumph for her diplomacy.
Servia, though victorious, was enclosed as in a net; on the East an
irreconcilable Bulgaria; on the West, Albania torn by internal discord,
and fast becoming an outpost of the Central Empires; on the South
Greece, where German influence was daily gaining ground. Killed by its
authors, the Balkan “Bloc” was dead. A new element had been introduced
into the balance of power in Europe. Servia and Bulgaria were doubtful
States no longer, they were in opposite camps, and, when the lassitude
caused by two cruel wars had passed, they could be set at each other’s
throats again to fight for interests not their own.
Great Britain had held aloof from the proceedings of the Conference.
Our Minister in Bucharest had received instructions to take neither
part nor lot in the negotiations; if called upon for an opinion he was
to endorse that of his Russian colleague. If the British Government
had any Balkan policy at all it was, apparently, a Russian policy, a
vicarious partnership, an acquiescence in the pernicious doctrine that
two wrongs may make a right.
A gaping wound had been made in Europe’s side, the surgeons had met
together at Bucharest, and fearing to probe had sewn it up with clumsy
stitches. Wounds are not healed by surgery such as this, not only do
they open up again, their poison spreads, attains some vital organ,
and causes death. Good surgery needs knowledge, foresight, courage,
the power and will to act. The men, who from ignorance or inertia
neglected and dallied with the Balkan problem, were scarcely less
guilty than the criminals who, of set purpose, made a peace which sowed
the seeds of war.
During the summer of 1913 a spell of intense heat occurred in the
fertile plains of the Danube valley. In every village dirt and
insanitary conditions encouraged flies, winged insects swarmed by night
and day, revelling in filth and carrying disease. The Rumanian peasants
who had marched into Bulgaria had been attacked by a more deadly enemy
than the Bulgarian hosts--the cholera microbe pursued them to their
homes; the malady assumed an epidemic form and raged at first unchecked.
To some it seemed an act of retribution for an unrighteous peace, a
manifestation of stern justice, dubbed divine, although its victims
were the innocent and weak. The rich escaped by fleeing to hill
stations or the sea, the poor, perforce, remained and died by hundreds,
their families were decimated, their fields were left untilled, a
blight had fallen on this pleasant land.
In her hour of trial Rumania discovered an unexpected source of
strength and consolation. Calamity had called, and from her castle in
the mountains an English Princess came, leaving the fragrant coolness
of the woods for stifling heat and misery in myriad shape, down in the
sun-scorched plain. In every cholera camp her white-clad form was seen
moving from tent to tent, bringing the tonic of her beauty, restoring
hope, dealing out pity with a lavish hand. To humble folk weighed
down by suffering, it was as though an angel passed, and memories
cluster still around those days, weaving a web of gratitude and loving
kindness, a web to outward seeming, frail and unsubstantial, but
unbreakable, surviving all the shocks of war, binding the people to
their Queen.
I returned to London through Sofia and Belgrade. After the festivities
of Bucharest the aspect of both these Capitals was sad indeed. Victor
and vanquished alike were reaping the aftermath of war; bedraggled
soldiers thronged the streets, no longer saviours, not even heroes,
merely idle citizens, useless until demobilized.
From Belgrade my duties called me to Vienna. As the train crossed
the railway bridge to Semlin, I saw again the guns and searchlights
on the Save’s Hungarian bank. Austria-Hungary had not yet decided on
her course of action, but she was ready. The Balkan Allies of 1912,
like rabbits unconscious of the presence of hungry pythons, had had
their frolic. Now, they had paused for breath and had time to think.
No longer Allies, they were helpless. Victims, not wholly innocent,
they would crouch and wait; already it seemed as if a Python-State had
stirred.