The Balkan Wars: 1912-1913 eBook

Jacob Gould Schurman
This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 87 pages of information about The Balkan Wars.

The Balkan Wars: 1912-1913 eBook

Jacob Gould Schurman
This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 87 pages of information about The Balkan Wars.

On June 14 Dr. Daneff was appointed prime minister in succession to Mr. Gueshoff.  He had represented Bulgaria in the London Peace Conference where his aggressive and uncompromising attitude had perturbed his fellow delegates from the other Balkan states and provoked some criticism in the European press.  He was known as a Russophil.  And he seems now to have got assurance from Russia that she would maintain the Bulgarian view of the treaty with Servia, although she had at one time favored the Servian demand for an extensive revision of it.  Certainly Dr. Daneff voiced the views and sentiments of the Bulgarian army and nation.  I was in Sofia the week before the outbreak of the war between the Allies.  And the two points on which everybody insisted were, first, that Servia must be compelled to observe the Treaty of Partition, and, secondly, that Central Macedonia must be annexed to Bulgaria.  For these things all Bulgarians were ready to fight.  And flushed with their great victories over the main army of Turkey they believed it would be an easy task to overpower the forces of Servia and Greece.  For the Greeks they entertained a sort of contempt; and as for the Servians, had they not already defeated them completely at Slivnitza in 1886?  Men high in the military service of the nation assured me that the Bulgarian army would be in Belgrade in eight days after war was declared.  The Greeks too would quickly be driven out of Saloniki.  The idea of a conference to decide the territorial question in dispute between the Allies found no favor in any quarter.

Now it is important that full justice should be done to Bulgaria.  As against Servia, if Servia had stood alone, she might have appealed to the sanctity and inviolability of treaties.  Circumstances had indeed changed since the treaty was negotiated.  But was that a good reason, Bulgaria might have asked, why she should be excluded from Central Macedonia which the treaty guaranteed to her?  Was that a good reason why she should not emancipate her Macedonian brethren for whose sake she had waged a bloody and costly war with Turkey?  The Bulgarians saw nothing in the problem but their treaty with Servia and apparently cared for no territorial compensation without Central Macedonia.

BULGARIA’S UNCOMPROMISING POLICY

The Bulgarians were blind to all facts and considerations but the abstract terms of the treaty with Servia.  It was a fact, however, that the war against Turkey had been fought by four Allies.  It was a fact that the Ottoman government had ceded European Turkey (except Albania) to these four Allies.  No two of the Allies could divide between themselves the common possession.  A division made by the four Allies might contravene the terms of a treaty which existed between any two of the Allies prior to the outbreak of the war.  In any event it was for the four Allies together to effect a distribution of the territory ceded to them by Turkey.  For

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The Balkan Wars: 1912-1913 from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.