another recent work by Mr. Seton-Watson: _Roumania and the Great
War_, London, 1915. Other noteworthy expositions of Roumania’s claims
to what was eastern Hungary are to be found in: M. R. Sirianu, _La
Question de Transylvanie et l’unité politique roumaine_. Paris, 1916.
D. Draghicesco, _Les problèmes nationaux de l’Autriche-Hongrie. Les
Roumains_. Paris, 1918. N. P. Comnène, _Roumania through the Ages. An
historical, political, and ethnographical atlas_. Paris, 1919.
A rather copious literature has grown up lately around the Yugo-Slav
movement. Among the most useful works on that subject are: A. H.
E. Taylor, _The Future of the Southern Slavs_. New York, 1917. V.
R. Savić, _South-Eastern Europe_. New York, 1918. E. Denis, _La
grande Serbie_. Paris, 1915. R. J. Kerner, _The Jugo-Slav Movement_.
Cambridge, Mass., 1918.
* * * * *
For Italian views on the group of questions relating to the Adriatic
provinces, one would turn especially to: V. Gayda, _L’Italia
d’oltre confini_. Turin, 1914. A. Tamaro, _Italiani e Slavi
nell’Adriatico_. Rome, 1915. ***, _L’Adriatico. Studio geografico,
storico, e politico_. Milan, 1915. Adriacus. _From Trieste to Valona.
The Adriatic Problem and Italy’s Aspirations_. Milan, 1919. G.
Dainelli, _La Dalmazia, sua italianità, suo valore per la libertà
d’Italia nell’Adriatico_. Genoa, 1915. Dainelli has also published
a useful atlas of Dalmatia, entitled _La Dalmazia. Cenni geografici
e statistici_. Novara, 1918. A. Hodnig, _Fiume italiana e la sua
funzione antigermanica_. Rome, 1917. G. Depoli, _Fiume e la Liburnia_.
Bari, 1919.
On the Fiume question it is also useful to consult V. Tomsich,
_Notizie storiche sulla città di Fiume_, Fiume, 1886 (the fullest
history of the city. Written in a vein of intense local patriotism,
in the spirit of the old Fiumano independence party); Sišić, _Abrégé
de l’histoire politique de Rieka-Fiume_, Paris, 1919 (review of the
history from the Croatian point of view); and the brochure _Fiume_,
arguing for Yugo-Slav claims, published at Paris in 1916 by Count
Voinovitch and others.
[Illustration: EXPLANATION
Frontier promised to Italy by the Treaty of London (1915) shown thus
......
“Wilson Line” _____________
Proposed Republic of Fiume //////////
Part of Yugo-Slav Frontier ......]
FOOTNOTES:
[57] While these pages were going through the press, the peace treaty
with Hungary was signed on June 4 at the palace of the Grand Trianon at
Versailles.
[58] H. Wickham Steed, _Edinburgh Review_, vol. 222, p. 234.
VIII
THE BALKANS
It was in the Balkans that the World War started; control of the
Balkans was one of the primary objects for which the Central Powers
fought; through the intervention of our Balkan opponents, Turkey
and Bulgaria, the War was prolonged far beyond what would probably
otherwise have been the case; and it was in the Balkans that the
victory of the Entente was earliest and, perhaps, most decisively won.
Nevertheless, the War has produced, or is likely to produce, fewer
and much less sweeping changes of territory in the Balkans than in
the case of Austria-Hungary or Germany. It will probably alter the
map of the Peninsula less than did almost any other of the Balkan
cataclysms of the last hundred years. That is partly because one of our
late enemies, the Sick Man on the Bosporus, had already handed over
so much of his estate to his impatient heirs that in Europe at least
very little remains to be liquidated; while our other enemy at Sofia
possessed very little land that was not Bulgarian in population, and it
was not the policy of the Allies to take away territory simply by way
of retribution. But the main reason why no very large alterations of
frontiers are now in process, is that the most contentious territorial
questions of the Peninsula were settled by the two Balkan wars of
1912-13 and the ensuing Peace of Bucharest. Whether they were rightly
settled at that time is a topic to which I may revert a little
later. At any rate, they were settled in a sense favorable to our
allies, Greece, Serbia, and Roumania. And the most salient feature
of the Balkan settlement made by the Conference at Paris is that it
essentially confirms the settlement made by the Peace of Bucharest.
Bulgaria escapes with far slighter losses than any other member of the
defeated alliance. Nevertheless, she is quite as indignant as any of
the rest of them over the peace treaty imposed upon her (the treaty
signed at Neuilly, November 27, 1919). But she is indignant, not so
much over what she has lost, as over what she has failed to gain. There
is, of course, not a little irony in the fact that at the close of
a war which she entered so perfidiously, conducted so brutally, and
ended so disastrously, Bulgaria should still be clamoring that to the
vanquished belong the spoils, and should be demanding that the Entente
hand over to her, at the expense of its Greek and Serbian allies, the
lands which she hoped to gain by fighting throughout the War on the
side of the Germans. But there is another way of looking at the matter.
Bulgaria and her many friends abroad regard the Peace of Bucharest as
a monstrous iniquity--the dismemberment of the Bulgarian nation at the
hands of its rapacious neighbors. Therefore, it is argued, at a time
when the victorious Allies are remaking the map of Europe on the basis
of the principle of nationality and of impartial even-handed justice,
it is only right that ‘the crime of 1913’ should be undone, and that
Bulgaria should be allowed to attain her national unity, as Greece,
Serbia, and Roumania are doing in such rich measure. And unless that is
done, it is said, there can be no stable peace in the Balkans.
Since the discussion of the new settlement thus turns largely on the
merits of the Peace of Bucharest, it is necessary to revert briefly to
the main facts connected with that treaty.
In the First Balkan War (1912-13), the four small allies--Bulgaria,
Serbia, Greece, and Montenegro--had brought the Turkish giant to earth
with an ease and rapidity that astonished the world, and themselves,
perhaps, most of all. By the peace treaty signed at London May 30,
1913, all of the Turkish possessions in Europe were ceded to the
victors, except for the district along the Straits, bounded by the
famous Enos-Midia line, which was to be left to the Sultan, and
Albania, which was to be made independent--the one case in history of a
people that owes its liberty to Austria-Hungary. As everyone remembers,
there then arose a dispute among the victors as to the distribution of
the spoils. While negotiations were still going on and the other states
were willing to accept the proffered arbitration of Russia, Bulgaria,
carried away by a truly Prussian arrogance and recklessness, attempted
to seize what she wanted by suddenly and treacherously attacking her
late allies. This precipitated the Second Balkan War, in which the
despised Greeks and Serbs were completely victorious, while Roumania
and Turkey also intervened to complete Bulgaria’s discomfiture. The
upshot was the Peace of Bucharest, of August 10, 1913.
By that famous treaty, Macedonia, the chief object of the dispute,
was divided up between Serbia and Greece, the former taking the
northern and central parts, the latter the southern and southeastern.
Bulgaria received only a small fragment of Macedonia--the Strumica
salient--together with some territory in Western Thrace, which gave her
a narrow frontage on the Aegean and the two mediocre harbors of Porto
Lago and Dedeagach. Eastern Thrace, including Adrianople, was restored
to Turkey. Finally, Bulgaria had to cede to Roumania the territory
called the Southern Dobrudja.
The net result was, in the first place, a great shift in the Balkan
balance of power in favor of Greece and Serbia, both of which had
formerly been far smaller and weaker than Bulgaria, but both of which,
after nearly doubling their territories, had now virtually caught up
with their neighbor; and, secondly, that Bulgaria came forth from the
crisis mortally exasperated over the loss of her old territory in the
Dobrudja and of the new territories she had hoped to gain in Thrace
and Macedonia. It is, above all, the Macedonian question that has
rankled in her mind ever since. For many decades Macedonia has been
the Promised Land to the Bulgars: it has undoubtedly meant for them at
least as much as Alsace and Lorraine to the French. Once they had had
it in their grasp, in 1878 when Russia won it for them by the treaty
of San Stefano--and then the Congress of Berlin restored it to Turkey.
Again in 1912 they believed that they had secured it--and it was taken
away from them by their allies. A third time they had it, during the
present War,--and the Peace Conference has restored it to Greece and
Serbia, in accordance with the Peace of Bucharest.
What are the rights and wrongs in the case? Has the Peace Conference
simply perpetuated a great injustice, repeated the mistake of the
Congress of Berlin, deprived the Bulgarians of a province which is
theirs by right of nationality and without which they can never rest?
The Macedonian question has been before the world a sufficiently long
time to have thoroughly wearied most people of it, perhaps, but not
long enough to produce a clear understanding or any real unanimity
of opinion about it. It presents, on the one hand, such a medley
of jarring races, long-standing animosities, and ever-recurring
atrocities, and, on the other hand, such a jumble of ethnographic
riddles, philological controversies, psychological uncertainties,
unreliable statistics, assertions and counter-assertions flatly
contradictory on every point, that one almost despairs of an idea as
to how it ought to be settled, or of the hope of ever seeing it settled
at all.
Macedonia contained in 1910--nobody knows what it contains now, after
the last three wars--over two million people, including about 1,300,000
Slavs, 300,000 Greeks, and scattered minorities of Turks, Albanians,
Vlachs, Jews, and Gypsies. The Greeks predominate in the south and
southeast, and can make out a very good claim on ethnographic grounds
to most of that part of Macedonia which they acquired in 1913. The
dispute turns much more upon central and northern Macedonia, where the
Slavs predominate, and upon the question whether these Slavs ought to
be considered as mainly Bulgarians or Serbs.
For the elucidation of this question, it is necessary to go very far
afield. When the Southern Slavs first settled in the Balkans, they
formed a great, undifferentiated mass, stretching from the Alps and the
Adriatic to the Aegean and the Black Sea--a mass of ethnographic raw
material out of which almost any number of ‘nations’ and ‘languages’
might have been developed in accordance with the accidents of history.
As it turned out, two centres of political crystallization arose--a
northeastern centre, in the region between the Balkan Mountains and
the Danube, where a Turanian people called Bulgars organized the Slavs
into a state to which they--the original Bulgars--contributed little
except the name and the ruling class; and a northwestern centre of
crystallization in Serbia and Montenegro. The modern Serb and the
modern Bulgarian nations are closely akin in language and in blood,
although the Bulgars have a certain Turanian strain in them, while the
Serbs boast of being ‘pure Slavs.’ Sprung from substantially the same
stock, the two nations have throughout their history vied with each
other in trying to draw to themselves as large as possible a part of
their kinsmen; and it is not surprising if the Macedonian Slavs, lying
midway between the two centres of gravitation, have been attracted,
now to the one and now to the other, without ever apparently taking on
completely the imprint of either.
In the Middle Ages, when frontiers in the Balkans were, if possible,
even more fluid than they have been in recent times, Macedonia was
most frequently under the rule of the Greeks. It was, however, held
by Bulgaria from about 860 to 1018 and again for some years in the
thirteenth century; and from about 1260 down to the Turkish conquest
in 1389 it belonged to the Serbian empire. From these rather brief
periods of tenure both nations draw their claims to ‘historic rights’
over Macedonia today, and a fund of proud historic memories which lend
warmth and passion to those claims. King Ferdinand of Bulgaria promoted
himself to be ‘Tsar’ in imitation of the Bulgarian tsars of the Middle
Ages who ruled over Macedonia. The Prince Regent of Serbia today
addresses the Macedonians as “sons of Stephen Dushan,” in allusion to
the great Serbian emperor of the fourteenth century whose capital was
Üsküb in Macedonia. It seems undeniable that the period of Serbian rule
made a much deeper impression on the country than did the Bulgarian.
Not only is Macedonia strewn with churches, monasteries, and works
of art recalling the great days of Serbia, while similar Bulgarian
monuments are almost totally lacking; but the wonderfully rich ballad
literature, through which alone the Macedonian Slavs express whatever
historic memories they have, dwells exclusively upon the heroes of the
Serbian past, with never the mention of a Bulgarian.
At any rate, the ensuing five hundred years of stagnation and isolation
under Turkish rule afforded the Macedonians ample time to forget which
of their kinsmen they preferred to be associated with, and to lose
whatever national consciousness they had possessed. When the Serb and
Bulgarian national revivals began in the early nineteenth century,
Macedonia was more or less no-man’s-land; and either movement might
sweep the field, provided it got started early enough. Fortune seemed
for a while to be with the Bulgarians. For many years all of Russia’s
powerful influence was cast in their favor, since Russia regarded the
Serbs as Austria’s protégés. The Turks also thought it very clever to
favor the Bulgarians, who seldom or never revolted, against the Serbs
who never did anything else but rebel. Hence the Bulgarians got the
start, and for some decades they could conduct religious, educational,
and nationalist work in Macedonia, while Serb influences were in the
main barred out. What particularly helped the process of Bulgarization
was the formation in 1870 of the independent Bulgarian (or Exarchist)
church, a body which could offer the Macedonian Slavs the things which
they seem to have craved above all others at that time: emancipation
from the Greek clergy, and the church service in a tongue which they
could understand. Hence a general stampede to the Exarchist church,
restrained only by the calculation that it was materially more
expensive to get christened, married, or buried by that businesslike
body than by the old Patriarchist or Greek church. Once inside the
Exarchist fold, you were regarded by the authorities as a Bulgarian and
taught by your religious superiors that you must feel yourself one.
After the formation of the new Bulgarian state in 1878, the Bulgarian
nationalist propaganda in Macedonia went forward with redoubled vigor.
It was carried on from Sofia and from the seat of the Exarchate at
Constantinople with all the means and by all the devices that the
government and the church could bring to bear. Meanwhile the Turks,
somewhat disillusioned as to the harmlessness of their Bulgarian
protégés and always experts at the art of playing the Christians off
against each other, determined to open the door to rival influences.
Hence in the late ’80s and the ’90s the Serbs could at last rush in
and strive to make up for lost time by organizing a rival propaganda,
with all the paraphernalia of Serbian bishops, churches, schools, etc.
As the Greeks were also busily engaged in the same kind of work, the
Macedonian question then entered that acute phase which so delighted
the Turks and wore out the nerves of Europe--that desperate and
sanguinary mêlée, in which the three rival races strove to spread their
‘national culture,’ not only by furiously proselytizing the unfortunate
Macedonians, but by exterminating each other. It must be admitted that
in both forms of activity the Bulgarians came out ahead. Not only did
their _komitadjis_ dominate the blood-stained field, but they had
a network of schools and churches quite surpassing either of their
rivals. Refugees from Macedonia also seem to have fled to Bulgaria
in larger numbers than to Serbia or Greece; and indeed they formed a
very active and influential element at Sofia, which did not permit the
Bulgarian government to forget the Macedonian question for a moment.
On the eve of the Balkan Wars, the situation might be summarized
by saying that a section of the Macedonian Slavs had more or less
warmly adopted the Bulgarian cause, and another, probably smaller,
section, the Serbian cause, and--it seems to me--the great mass of
this population was still lying inert and undecided, untouched by any
schools, chiefly concerned about peace and its daily bread, prepared to
go with either party that should prove the stronger. So much for the
sentiments of the population.
Both sides have also appealed to other arguments to prove that all
Slavic Macedonia ought to belong to them. Endless controversy has raged
over the question whether its people speak Bulgarian or Serbian. It has
been triumphantly demonstrated, on the one hand, that the Macedonians
are Bulgars because they use a definite article and do not inflect
their nouns; but it has also been conclusively shown that they are
Serbs by all the laws of morphology and phonetics. In fact, the best
philological judgment seems to be that these people speak a series of
dialects intermediate between Bulgarian and Serbian, gradually shading
off from one into the other; and that they can without much difficulty
understand either language.
Equally inconclusive are the arguments based on popular customs.
Although it has been attempted, one will never solve the Macedonian
question by proving that marriage, burial, and saint’s day customs in
this region are strikingly Serbian, or that the female costumes and the
embroidery worn by the ladies are unmistakably Bulgarian. In customs as
in language, this is simply a transitional area with affinities with
both its neighbors.
It is therefore a rather tragic thing that for a generation or two
the public in Bulgaria has been trained to think that Macedonia is a
fundamentally Bulgarian country pining for liberation. The feeling on
that subject has been all the more intense because this was almost the
only region that could be considered as unredeemed Bulgaria. Bulgarian
patriotism could concentrate and specialize on Macedonia. Serbian
feeling about the country was formerly not quite so strong, perhaps,
since Serbia had so many other unredeemed kinsmen to ponder over--in
Bosnia first and foremost. At any rate, since the events of the last
seven years, after they have fought three wars for the possession of
Macedonia, the Serbs now entertain feelings about that country that are
not a bit less ardent and intransigent than those of the Bulgarians.
Those three wars--or the last two at least--can hardly be left out of
the account. If before 1913 the Macedonian problem might be considered
an open question, with the balance of rights inclining somewhat
in favor of the Bulgarians, it would seem that today Serbia has
acquired, by blood and suffering, titles that can scarcely be denied.
After Bulgaria’s two perfidious attacks--the first one in 1913 so
indefensible that prominent Bulgarians have since called it “an act of
insane folly,” “a fratricidal crime,” and the second one in 1915 hardly
less dastardly, for it was a blow in the back when Serbia was fighting
for her life against the Austro-German onslaught--; after Bulgaria
has conducted her wars with a savagery worthy of her allies and joined
in what seems little less than a deliberate effort to exterminate the
Serbian nation; after Bulgaria, in her moments of apparent triumph, has
loudly announced the intention to appropriate not only Macedonia but
half of the older Serbia as well; and after Serbia’s so desperate and
gallant struggle and final brilliant victory--it may be all very well
for the beaten Bulgar to present himself, with Wilsonian phrases to
replace his old Prussian ones, and say, “Let’s have peace and make up,
and you give me all we’ve been fighting for”; but it would be more than
human nature could expect, or than strict justice, I think, can demand,
that Serbia or her Allies should grant his request.
It is another question, of course, whether this outcome will make
for permanent peace in the Balkans. Much will depend on the degree
of generosity and tact that the Serbs may show in dealing with those
Macedonians who have come to feel themselves Bulgars, and with the
probably larger mass who as yet have no definite national consciousness
of any kind. There is reasonable ground for hope, I think, that, if
peace continues for a generation or so, the majority of the Macedonians
can be won over by quite legitimate means to Serbian nationality.
Rather different, perhaps, is the case of another territory lost by
Bulgaria at the treaty of Bucharest, and which she has again failed to
recover--the Southern Dobrudja. Apart from the one city of Silistria
(with 14,000 people), this small territory would seem to be of little
value to anybody. It contains, however, over 100,000 Bulgarians as
against only 6000 Roumanians; moreover, it is of strategic importance.
Roumania’s motive for demanding it in 1913 was to protect the railway
leading to her chief port, Constanza, a line which was at one point
only about twenty miles from the old Bulgarian frontier. But through
the cession then made, the danger was merely shifted to the other
side. It is now Bulgaria’s chief Black Sea port, Varna, and the
railway serving it that are menaced, for the Roumanian frontier comes
within about ten miles of them. Hence the American delegation at Paris
endeavored to have the frontier of 1913 corrected so that neither side
would be in danger. But Roumania displayed a certain obstinacy, and
the Conference, not wishing to complicate much more serious questions
then pending between it and Roumania, shelved the Dobrudja matter,
intimating, however, that it might be taken up later in connection with
the problem of Bessarabia.
Not only has Bulgaria failed to regain her losses of 1913, but the new
Peace Treaty deprives her of some bits of territory that have hitherto
belonged to her. Serbia has secured some small rectifications of the
frontier established in 1913, all of them for strategic reasons. One of
them, in the valley of the River Strumica, was very genuinely needed,
for at that point the old frontier came within about six miles of the
Belgrade-Salonica railway, and what this means is shown by the fact
that in the first year of the Great War, before Bulgaria officially
entered the contest, this all-important railroad was almost cut by
a raid of Bulgarian _komitadjis_. The other chief rectification,
in the Pirot-Tsaribrod basin, seems more questionable, and has the
disadvantage of bringing the frontier even nearer to Sofia than has
been the case since 1878.
A more considerable loss to Bulgaria, though not necessarily a
definitive one, is that of the territory in Western Thrace which she
acquired in 1913. To this question I shall come back in a moment in
connection with the whole problem of Thrace. As a preliminary to that,
however, it seems necessary to say a word as to the general situation
and claims of Greece.
* * * * *