THE NEUTRAL BALKAN STATES--1915
My duties recalled me to the Balkan Peninsula in the early spring of
1915. None too soon, the Allied Governments had turned their attention
to Near Eastern problems and had decided to dispatch an Expeditionary
Force to retrieve their damaged prestige in the East. The main
objectives were the Dardanelles and Constantinople, respectively the
gateway and the pivot of the Ottoman Empire and points of inestimable
strategic value for the future conduct of a world-wide war. Imperial
policy, in its widest and truest sense, dictated this course of action
and, as was natural and logical, the Allied Power which had most at
stake supplied the initiative and took the lead.
Great Britain, in its dual capacity of guardian of the sea-routes
of the world and the greatest Mohammedan Power, has seldom been in
a more critical position. Germany and Turkey acting in combination
could approach the Suez Canal through Asia Minor, the Red Sea through
Arabia and the Persian Gulf through Mesopotamia. Enemy successes in
these three directions could hardly fail to have an adverse influence
on Mohammedan opinion and, under such conditions, India itself would
not be safe. The foundations of the British Empire were endangered,
threatened by forces both open and insidious; a British policy, framed
by men who understood their business, was the only Allied policy which
could properly meet the case. The British statesmen then in office
faced this grave situation with steady eyes, and reached a conclusion
which, at the time, was widely criticized, but, to their credit, they
persisted in it.
The fiat went forth from Downing Street, and on the experts of
Whitehall devolved the task of evolving a strategy in harmony with
policy.
Experts, of any kind, are good servants but bad masters; they are prone
to pessimism when called to work outside their special spheres, and
are, as a rule, indifferent prophets; like the Spaniards, they often
seem wiser than they are. Expert and official opinion on both sides
of Whitehall was opposed to the expedition to the Dardanelles. The
North Sea drew the Navy like a magnet, there it was felt the decisive
battle would be fought, and the desire of islanders was natural to
make security doubly sure. Mr. Winston Churchill devoted all the
resources of his forceful and energetic personality to Eastern Naval
preparations, he had both courage and imagination, and brushed aside
the protests of officials within his jurisdiction, but these were
not the only obstacles--sometimes he must have wondered whether a
chasm had not replaced the thoroughfare which separates the Admiralty
from the War Office. In the latter building, an old machine, under
new and inexperienced direction, was creaking uneasily, barely able
to stand the strain caused by the war in France. To the War Office
staff, it seemed as if Pelion had been piled on Ossa, when they were
asked to co-operate with the Navy in a distant expedition, whose
scope and nature brought into strong relief their mental and material
unpreparedness. Refuge was sought in procrastination, difficulties
were exaggerated, the many human cogs of a complex machine groaned in
the throes of a new and unwelcome effort.
In enterprises of this nature, risks must be taken, a circumspect and
timid strategy misses the mark. In this particular instance, time was
the essence of the problem; a single Division, at the psychological
moment, was worth nine arriving late; a military force of 20,000 men,
acting in close support of the Allied Navies, could have achieved
success where a host a few weeks later, even if ably led, might fail.
The stakes were enormous, the obstacles, both naval and military,
formidable but not insuperable. A calm appreciation of the situation
should have convinced the most doubting spirits that Constantinople
could be taken by a well-timed and vigorous stroke. At this period
Turkey was isolated, her forces were disorganized and short of
ammunition, the Germans were unable to send either reinforcements or
war material to this theatre, except in driblets. The position of Enver
Pasha was precarious, his enemies were numerous and active, they had
viewed with profound misgivings the rapid growth of German influence,
and were ready for a change. Constantinople was ripe for revolution;
the wheel had turned full circle, the Allies, by the irony of fate,
could count on assistance from reactionary elements, converted by
mistrust of Germany into potential supporters of our cause. The neutral
Balkan States were waiting and, in their hearts, longing for Allied
intervention, it meant the solution of many complicated problems, and
they preferred even unpleasant certitude to doubt.
A turning point in history had been reached; statesmen had ordained
the expedition and left its execution to amphibious experts; prompt,
energetic action based on careful plans was needed, action combining
force on land and sea. A watching world was wracked with expectation,
something portentous was about to happen, the Small States held their
breath. In Whitehall, an official mountain trembled slightly, and forth
there crept a tardy, unready mouse.
While troops were being crowded pell-mell into transports and hurried
to Gallipoli, the Foreign Office in London and Paris took up the
question of the neutral Balkan States. A suggestion that reinforcements
should be sent to Servia had gained support in certain Allied quarters
and, since the only available port of disembarkation was Salonika,
for this, if for no other reason, friendly relations with the Greeks
were sought. Under the cloak of the commercial convention with Servia,
ammunition was already passing freely up the Vardar Valley, and it
was hoped that the precedent thus established might be extended so as
to cover a still more benevolent neutrality, and allow of the passage
of French and British troops. Greece was the only Balkan State which
depended for its existence on sea communications, she was completely
at the mercy of the Allies, and no amount of German intrigue, in court
and military circles, could twist the logic of hard facts. Neither
King Constantine nor his advisers were prepared to accept formally a
technical violation of Greek neutrality, they would have been helpless,
however, if the Allies had insisted. To a layman, the diplomatic
situation seemed to be typical of those described in a certain class
of novel, in which suave but firm diplomacy, supported by overwhelming
force, meets every protest with a soothing phrase and lends an air of
elegance to the most sordid bargain. When people or States are weak,
the path of consent descends by hesitating stages from “No” through
“Perhaps” to “Yes.”
The Allies did not negotiate upon these lines. They invited the
Greeks to send practically the whole of their army to reinforce the
Serbs; in return, they undertook to protect Greek communications with
Salonika, by occupying the “_non_-contested” zone in Macedonia with
Allied troops. In all my travels in the Balkan peninsula, I had never
come across a region to which the description “non-contested” could
be applied with any accuracy; in London and Paris it was visualized
by a miracle of self-deception, and acted like a charm. Here was the
solution of the Balkan question, an Allied force, immobilized in this
mysterious zone, would hold the Bulgarians in check, encourage the
Serbs and reassure the Greeks; Rumania would see what efforts we were
making and hurry to our aid; the Turks, trembling for Adrianople, would
make a separate peace.
For the moment the Greek Government was unable to entertain the
proposed arrangement; King Constantine and the Greek General Staff
rejected the suggested plan of operations and put forward another of
their own, which envisaged a second campaign against Turkey and opened
up alluring prospects further East. Temporarily, the negotiations
failed to secure either the co-operation of the Greek Army or a more
benevolent neutrality on the part of Greece. The political situation in
Athens became more and more confused. Allied diplomacy paid assiduous
court to M. Venizelos and, thereby, excited the jealousy and mistrust
of the King. Telegrams from an Imperial War Lord addressed to “Tino”
flattered the monarch’s vanity as a strategist, he laughed, with some
reason, at our tactics, and grew convinced we could not win the war.
Sofia presented a very different aspect from Athens. In the Bulgarian
capital there was little bustle in the streets, political excitement
was not apparent, the inhabitants went about their business quietly
and, in the case of most of them, that business was military in its
nature. Bulgaria, though unwilling to commit herself permanently, still
nursed her wrongs; to obtain redress for these was the object of the
entire people, and no neutral State was better prepared for war.
The alliance of Bulgaria was on the market, obtainable by either set
of belligerents at a price; that price was the territory in Thrace
and Macedonia, of which Bulgaria considered she had been wrongfully
deprived by the Treaty of Bucharest. If the Allies could have satisfied
the Bulgarian Government on this point, the Bulgarian Army would have
been employed with the same soulless ferocity against the Turks as, in
the end, it displayed against the Serbs.
The situation was clearly defined, and the rôle of diplomacy limited
to the manipulation of cross-currents of popular feeling and personal
sympathies, which, in Bulgaria as in every other State, divided
opinion among several political camps. Unfortunately for the Allies,
neither the British nor the French representative in Sofia had the
requisite qualifications for making verbiage about a “non-contested”
zone pass for a definite policy in the Balkans. The British Minister
was--rightly or wrongly--credited with Servian sympathies, the French
Minister was not a “persona grata” with King Ferdinand, whose favour
was all-important in a diplomatic sense. There does not appear to have
been any reason for the retention of either of these officials in their
posts, except the habitual unwillingness of government departments to
disturb routine. The difficulty of finding substitutes did not arise
in either case. Our Foreign Office had at its disposal a brilliant
young diplomatist, with a unique experience of Balkan capitals,
who could have rendered more useful services as Minister in Sofia
than as Counsellor of Embassy in Washington; a well-selected French
aristocrat would have received a cordial welcome from a Prince of the
Orleans family, who himself controlled Bulgaria’s foreign policy, and
whose “spiritual home” was France. The foregoing were some of the
imponderable factors in Bulgaria; in 1914 they could have been turned
to good account, in 1915 it was perhaps too late.
In time of war, a diplomatic duel is like a game of cards in which
victories are trumps; no amount of diplomatic skill can convert defeat
into success. During the spring and summer of 1915, our Diplomats in
the Balkans fought an unequal fight. The conviction that a stalemate
existed on the front in France and Flanders was daily gaining ground,
public attention was concentrated on the Dardanelles, and here the
operations were followed with an interest as critical as it was
intelligent. During the war against Turkey, the topographical features
in this theatre had been closely studied by the Bulgarian General
Staff, when a portion of the Bulgarian Army had penetrated into
Turkish Thrace as far as the lines of Bulair. To these men our tactics
became daily more incomprehensible. At first, the assaults on the
Western extremity of the Gallipoli Peninsula were taken to be feints,
intended to cover a landing in the neighbourhood of Enos, but, when
it was realized that these were the major operations, when thousands
of lives were sacrificed for the capture of a few bare and waterless
cliffs, their bewilderment became intensified, and into all their minds
there crept a doubt. General Fitcheff, the Chief of Staff and a man
whose English sympathies were widely known, ran considerable risks
by giving his expert advice in regard to a landing on the coast near
Enos; he was no arm-chair critic but a practical soldier with recent
and personal experience of battlefields in Thrace. His views were
identical with those of the King of Greece and, indeed, of the vast
majority of soldiers in the Balkans. They were rejected or ignored; a
pseudo-omniscient optimism pervaded Allied counsels and acted like a
blight.
Our friends in Bulgaria contemplated the useless slaughter at Gallipoli
with horror and dismay, waverers turned to German agents, who took
full advantage of every change of mood. An influx of German officers
and officials began about this time; they had access to all Government
departments, and assumed control of part of the Bulgarian railway
system; as one result of their activities Constantinople received
supplies of ammunition, whose Bulgarian origin was suspected if not
known.
The journey from Sofia to Bucharest lasts less than twenty-four hours,
its one noteworthy feature is the abrupt transition from a Slavonic
to a Latin race. The Bulgars are reserved and taciturn, strangers are
treated coldly, they are not wanted unless they come on business whose
utility can be proved. I left Sofia impressed by the efficiency and
self-confidence of the people, but chilled by their morose and almost
sullen ways. On crossing the Danube a new world was entered, where
hearts were warm and life was gay and easy, where every one talked
cleverly and much, and where, perhaps, words counted more than deeds.
In the spring of 1915 Bucharest was a diplomatic arena, in which all
the Great Powers were making prodigious efforts. Russia had ceased to
treat her southern neighbour as a revolted colony; the Central Empires
had developed a sudden sympathy for Rumania’s national aspirations,
more especially in the direction of Bessarabia; Great Britain had made
a loan of £5,000,000, on little or no security, and, as a further
proof of disinterested friendship, was buying a large proportion of
the output of the oilfields, regardless of the impossibility of either
using or exporting this more than ever precious product. A golden age
had dawned, business men were doing a roaring trade, cereals were being
bought at fancy prices and, looming ahead, were brighter prospects
still.
I looked for the warlike preparations of which the War Office in London
had so confidently spoken. Of officers there appeared to be no dearth,
the streets and cafés were crowded with brilliant uniforms, whose
wearers sauntered slowly to and fro, bestowing glances on the softer
sex which were returned in kind. To seek the favour of the fair has at
all times been a martial occupation. A wise man once remarked: “I know
not how, but martial men are given to love,” and added some comments on
perils, wine and pleasures which seemed to fit this case. But war is
not made with officers alone, men are required, men of the people, who
have no decorative functions in the piping times of peace. These were
lacking, they were neither on the streets nor in the barracks, they
were in their homes, producing wealth and not yet bearing arms.
Rumania was not prepared for war; no reservists had been mobilized,
training depots were at normal strength, there was a shortage of
horses for the Cavalry and Field Artillery, the Heavy Artillery was
deficient both in quality and quantity, the aviation equipment was out
of date, last but not least, the reserve stocks of ammunition had been
depleted, and the Rumanian arsenals lacked the plant needed for their
replenishment and the maintenance of an army in the field.
A policy which co-ordinated diplomacy and strategy would have carefully
weighed the “pros” and “cons” of an alliance with Rumania. The mere
presence of an army in a certain geographical position means little,
unless that army is an organization ready to act, containing within
itself the means whereby its action can be sustained. Rumania was a
granary of corn, a reservoir of oil, both valuable commodities, though
more so to our enemies than ourselves, but, from a military point
of view, the co-operation of this land of plenty involved a heavy
charge. To meet this charge, not only had guns and ammunition to be
sent, the Rumanian Army was short of everything, including boots and
clothes. Supply alone, though at this period difficult enough, did not
completely solve the problem, delivery required communications capable
of transporting at least 300 tons a day. No such communications existed
between Rumania and the Western Powers. Imports could reach Bucharest
or Jassy only through Servia or Russia, the railways in both countries
were inefficient and congested, to send ammunition by these routes, in
time of war, was to pass it through a sieve. The prophecy, made in May,
1915, that the then existing communications could not deliver more
than a seventh of Rumania’s requirements was well within the mark.
In short, in the spring and summer of 1915, the alliance of Rumania
would have been for the Western Powers a doubtful advantage and a heavy
responsibility. The first of these considerations might, at least, have
restrained the French Minister at Bucharest from demanding Rumanian
intervention with a vehemence which too frequently degenerated into
insult; it was fully appreciated by the Grand Duke Nicholas who, in his
quality of Russian Generalissimo, described as “une folie furieuse”
what the French Diplomat thought would turn the scale in favour of the
Allied cause. The second consideration should have appealed to the
British Government, the representatives of a people who look before
they leap. British statesmanship had inspired the Near Eastern policy
of the Allies, and had chosen as first objectives Constantinople and
the Dardanelles. Impartial historians will justify this choice; here
lay the key of the whole Balkan situation, here were the lever and
the fulcrum with which to actuate the Neutral States. Once masters of
Constantinople and its waterways, the Allies would have found Rumania
willing, when ready with their help, to co-operate in a concerted plan.
Her army, based on the Black Sea and the Danube, would have become
dynamic, a source of strength, instead of weakness, to an inert and
passive Russian front; Bulgaria, reduced to impotence, would either
have kept a strict neutrality or, breaking unnatural bonds, have
returned to the Russian fold; the Greeks, with their eyes on Smyrna,
could not have held aloof.
During the early months of 1915, diplomatic activity in Athens and
Sofia might have achieved results, it might, conceivably, have secured
the co-operation of the Greeks and Bulgars in our operations at the
Dardanelles; at Bucharest the position was wholly different. To urge
Rumanian intervention at this period was foolish and immoral, it
demanded an immense sacrifice from the Rumanian people which could not
help the Allies and might do their cause incalculable harm.
Owing to geographical conditions, the Central Empires were able to
offer Rumania more than merely contingent support in return for her
co-operation and alliance. Numerous railways cross the Carpathians and
by means of these the Rumanian army could have been promptly equipped
and efficiently maintained during a forward movement into Bessarabia, a
province described by German Diplomats as Rumania’s “promised land.”
Rumania lay between the upper and the nether millstones of belligerent
diplomacy, the mill was working at high pressure, but was not
grinding small. M. Bratiano, the Rumanian Prime Minister, was equally
uninfluenced by the promises of Germany, the blandishments of Russia,
the taunts of France, and the loans of Great Britain. He refused to
deviate from a policy of more or less impartial neutrality, and awaited
what he himself described as “le moment opportun.”[23]
Disgruntled allied diplomats and many of his countrymen reproached M.
Bratiano with lethargy and cowardice, in reality they owed him a debt
of gratitude; better than they he knew the unreadiness of the army and
the country for an adventurous policy, and, fortunately for Rumania
in 1915, he possessed sufficient sense and courage to reject their
amateurish plans. On the other hand, he had too sound a judgment to
be dazzled by proposals, however spacious, which held out prospects
of territorial conquest at the expense of Russia, although, as his
father’s son,[24] he suspected all Russians of treachery and guile.
Since the death of King Charles in November, 1914, M. Bratiano had
been the guiding force in Rumanian political life; he stood between
the extremists, who clamoured for intervention on the Allied side
without regard for consequences, and the Pro-germans, whose hatred and
mistrust of Russia had overcome the instincts of men of a Latin race;
his influence with King Ferdinand was undisputed, he used it to impose
a neutral attitude, both in the Council and at Court. This man had many
qualities of high statesmanship, he loved his country and had at least
one deep conviction--he was convinced that in the end the Allies would
win the war.
“Le moment opportun” of M. Bratiano was the moment when Rumania could
take up arms to fight on the Allies’ side, under conditions which
would confer a reasonable prospect of success; in his more expansive
moods he confessed to cherishing the hope, and even the belief, that
the Rumanian Army would deal the decisive blow. A proud thought this,
coming from a citizen of a little Neutral State during so great a war;
but Ion Bratiano was nothing if not proud.
Events were to put a heavy strain on the Prime Minister’s faith and
hope, times of trial and temptation lay ahead, when more garrulous
champions of the Entente were to give way to doubt. The withdrawal
from the Dardanelles, Bulgaria’s alliance with the Central Powers and
Servia’s subsequent rout were incidents charged with grave import to
Rumania, and destined to postpone indefinitely “le moment opportun.”
M. Bratiano never wavered, he waited patiently, by thus resisting the
impulses of interest and sentiment, he faithfully interpreted the
Rumanian people’s will.
1915 was a black year for the Allies, a period of diplomatic defeats
and military disasters. The officials and experts had had their
way; the policy, which had frightened them and of which they had
disapproved, had been reversed; Servia, the victim of predigested
plans, had been overrun, the succour so long demanded had been sent
three months too late; the Near East, save for some ragged remnants,
immobilized in Macedonia, had been denuded of troops and abandoned to
the enemy; the legend of British tenacity and perseverance had been
tried in a fiery furnace and had not survived the test.
Confusion, both mental and material, prevailed throughout the
British Empire; a vague uneasiness had entered every mind; a race of
hero-worshippers had vainly sought a hero and the market place was
strewn with broken idols. The war had introduced a new dimension, an
all pervading influence, a nightmare which haunted waking moments, a
great winding-sheet, a deluge submerging human thought.
During these days of evil omen, one reassurance was vouchsafed, one
thought consoled, lightening an atmosphere of gloom like a rainbow in a
lowering sky. The British people, though disillusioned and humiliated,
still kept the virtues of their race; in their hour of trial, they
rose above misfortune, and proved themselves worthy descendants of
the inspired adventurers whose heritage they held. Men to whom war
was odious developed into seasoned warriors, and women, who had never
worked before, gave up their lives to toil.
On battlefields, heroic valour was regarded as a commonplace, in
countless homes, self-sacrifice became a daily rite. In British
hearts, despair had found no place, theirs was a confidence born of
consciousness of strength, the strength which in Kinglake’s glowing
words is: “Other than that of mere riches, other than that of gross
numbers, strength carried by proud descent from one generation to
another, strength awaiting the trials that are to come.”