The Balkan Wars: 1912-1913 Part 5

They are generally favorable to the Greek cause. Most of them speak Greek as well as Roumanian; and they are all devoted members of the Greek Orthodox Church. Yet there has been a Roumanian {115} propaganda in Macedonia since 1886, and the government at Bukarest has devoted large sums to the maintenance of Roumanian schools, of which the maximum number at any time has perhaps not exceeded forty.

Now if every other nation--Greek, Servian, Bulgarian--which had hitherto maintained its propaganda of schools and churches in Macedonia, was to bring its now emanc.i.p.ated children under the benign sway of the home government and also was to annex the Macedonian lands which they occupied, why, Roumania asked, should she be excluded from partic.i.p.ation in the arrangement? She did not, it is true, join the Allies in fighting the common Moslem oppressor. But she maintained a benevolent neutrality. And since Macedonia is not conterminous with Roumania, she was not seeking to annex any portion of it. Yet the rights those Roumanians in Macedonia gave her should be satisfied. And so arguing, the Roumanian government claimed as a _quid pro {116} quo_ the adjoining northeastern corner of Bulgaria, permitting Bulgaria to recoup herself by the uncontested annexation of Thrace and Eastern Macedonia.

Such was the Roumanian reasoning. Certainly it bore hard on Bulgaria.

But none of the belligerents showed any mercy on Bulgaria. War is a game of ruthless self-interest. It was Bulgaria who appealed to arms and she now had to pay the penalty. Her losses enriched all her neighbors. What Lord Bacon says of individuals is still more true of nations: the folly of one is the fortune of another, and none prospers so suddenly as by others' errors.

THE WORK AND REWARD OF MONTENEGRO

I have already sufficiently described the territorial gains of Roumania, Servia, and Greece. But I must not pa.s.s over Montenegro in silence. As the invincible warriors of King Nicholas opened the war against the Ottoman Empire, so they joined Servia and Greece in the struggle {117} against Bulgaria. On Sunday, June 29, I saw encamped across the street from my hotel in Uskub 15,000 of these Montenegrin soldiers who had arrived only a day or two before by train from Mitrowitza, into which they had marched across Novi Bazar. Tall, lithe, daring, with countenances bespeaking clean lives, they looked as fine a body of men as one could find anywhere in the world, and their commanding figures and manly bearing were set off to great advantage by their striking and picturesque uniforms. The officers told me next day that in a few hours they would be fighting at Ghevgheli. Their splendid appearance seemed an augury of victory for the Serbs.

Montenegro too received her reward by an extension of territory on the south to the frontier of Albania (as fixed by the Great Powers) and a still more liberal extension on the east in the sandjak of Novi Bazar.

This patriarchal kingdom will probably remain unchanged so long as the present King lives, {118} the much-beloved King Nicholas, a genuinely Homeric Father of his People. But forces of an economic, social, and political character are already at work tending to draw it into closer union with Servia, and the Balkan wars have given a great impetus to these forces. A united Serb state, with an Adriatic littoral which would include the harbors of Antivari and Dulcigno, may be the future which destiny has in store for the sister kingdoms of Servia and Montenegro. If so, it is likely to be a mutually voluntary union; and neither Austria-Hungary nor Italy, the warders of the Adriatic, would seem to have any good ground to object to such a purely domestic arrangement.

THE PROBLEM OF ALBANIA

The Albanians, though they rather opposed than a.s.sisted the Allies in the war against Turkey, were set off as an independent nation by the Great Powers at the instigation of Austria-Hungary with the support of Italy. The {119} determination of the boundaries of the new state was the resultant of conflicting forces in operation in the European concert. On the north while Scutari was retained for Albania through the insistence of Austria-Hungary, Russian influence was strong enough to secure the Albanian centres of Ipek and Djakova and Prisrend, as well as Dibra on the east, for the allied Serb states. This was a sort of compensation to Servia for her loss of an Adriatic outlet at a time when the war between the Allies, which was destined so greatly to extend her territories, was not foreseen. But while in this way Albanians were excluded from the new state on the north and east, an incongruous compensation was afforded it on the south by an unjustifiable extension into northern Epirus, whose population is prevailingly Greek.

The location of the boundary between Albania and New Greece was forced upon the Great Powers by the stand of Italy. During the first war the Greeks had occupied Epirus or southern {120} Albania as far north as a line drawn from a point a little above Khimara on the coast due east toward Lake Presba, so that the cities of Tepeleni and Koritza were included in the Greek area. But Italy protested that the Greek occupation of territory on both sides of the Straits of Corfu would menace the control of the Adriatic and insisted that the boundary between Albania and Greece should start from a point on the coast opposite the southern part of the island of Corfu. Greece, accordingly, was compelled to evacuate most of the territory she had occupied above Janina. And Albania subsequently attempted to a.s.sert her jurisdiction over it.

But the task of Albania is bound to be difficult. For though the Great Powers have provided it with a ruler--the German Prince William of Wied--there is no organized state. The Albanians are one of the oldest races in Europe, if not the oldest. But they have never created a state. And to-day they are hopelessly {121} divided. It is a land of universal opposition--north against south, tribe against tribe, bey against bey. The majority of the population are Mohammedan but there are many Roman Catholics in the north and in the south the Greek Orthodox Church is predominant. The inhabitants of the north, who are called Ghegs, are divided into numerous tribes whose princ.i.p.al occupation is fighting with one another under a system of perpetual blood-feuds and inextinguishable vendettas. There are no tribes in the south, but the people, who are known as Tosks, live under territorial magnates called beys, who are practically the absolute rulers of their districts. The country as a whole is a strange farrago of survivals of primitive conditions. And it is not only without art and literature, but without manufactures or trade or even agriculture. It is little wonder that the Greeks of Epirus feel outraged by the destiny which the European Powers have imposed upon them--to be torn {122} from their own civilized and Christian kindred and subjected to the sway of the barbarous Mohammedans who occupy Albania. Nor is it surprising that since h.e.l.lenic armies have evacuated northern Epirus in conformity with the decree of the Great Powers, the inhabitants of the district, all the way from Santi Quaranta to Koritza, are declaring their independence and fighting the Albanians who attempt to bring them under the yoke.

The future of Albania is full of uncertainty. The State, however, was not created for the Albanians, who for the rest, are not in a condition to administer or maintain it. The state was established in the interests of Austria-Hungary and Italy. And those powers are likely to shape its future.

THE AEGEAN ISLANDS AND CRETE

For the sacrifice demanded of Greece in Epirus the Great Powers permitted her by way of compensation to retain all the Aegean Islands {123} occupied by her during the war, except Imbros, Tenedos, and the Rabbit Islands at the mouth of the Dardanelles. These islands, however, Greece is never to fortify or convert into naval bases. This allotment of the Asiatic Islands (which includes all but Rhodes and the Dodecanese, temporarily held by Italy as a pledge of the evacuation of Libya by the Turkish officers and troops) has given great dissatisfaction in Turkey, where it is declared it would be better to have a war with Greece than cede certain islands especially Chios and Mitylene. The question of the disposition of the islands had, however, been committed by Turkey to the Great Powers in the Treaty of London.

And Turkish unofficial condemnation of the action of the Powers now creates a dangerous situation. Mr. Venizelos declared not long ago, with the enthusiastic approval of the chamber, that the security of Greece lay alone in the possession of a strong navy.

For Mr. Venizelos personally nothing in all {124} these great events can have been more gratifying than the achievement of the union of Crete with Greece. This was consummated on December 14, when the Greek flag was hoisted on Canea Fort in the presence of King Constantine, the prime minister, and the consuls of the Great Powers, and saluted with 101 guns by the Greek fleet.

KING CONSTANTINE

Fortune in an extraordinary degree has favored the King of the h.e.l.lenes--Fortune and his own wise head and valiant arm and the loyal support of his people. When before has a Prince taken supreme command of a nation's army and in the few months preceding and succeeding his accession to the throne by successful generals.h.i.+p doubled the area and population of his country?

[Ill.u.s.tration: Map: The Balkan Peninsula after the Wars of 1912-1913.]

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COST OF THE WAR

The Balkan wars have been b.l.o.o.d.y and costly. We shall never know of the thousands of men, women, and children who died from privation, disease, and ma.s.sacre. But the losses of the dead and wounded in the armies were for Montenegro 11,200, for Greece 68,000, for Servia 71,000, for Bulgaria 156,000, and for Turkey about the same as for Bulgaria. The losses in treasure were as colossal as in blood. Only rough computations are possible. But the direct military expenditures are estimated at figures varying from a billion and a quarter to a billion and a half of dollars. This of course takes no account of the paralysis of productive industry, trade, and commerce or of the destruction of existing economic values.

Yet great and momentous results have been achieved. Although seated again in his ancient capital of Adrianople, the Moslem has been expelled from Europe, or at any rate is no {126} longer a European Power. For the first time in more than five centuries, therefore, conditions of stable equilibrium are now possible for the Christian nations of the Balkans. Whether the present alignment of those states toward one another and towards the Great Powers is destined to continue it would be foolhardy to attempt to predict.

THE FUTURE OF THE BALKANS

But without pretending to cast a horoscope, certain significant facts may be mentioned in a concluding word. If the Balkan states are left to themselves, if they are permitted to settle their own affairs without the intervention of the Great Powers, there is no reason why the existing relations between Greece, Servia, Montenegro, and Roumania, founded as they are on mutual interest, should not continue; and if they continue, peace will be a.s.sured in spite of Bulgaria's cry for revenge and readjustment. The danger lies in the influence of the {127} Great Powers with their varying attractions and repulsions.

France, Germany, and Great Britain, disconnected with the Balkans and remote from them, are not likely to exert much direct individual influence. But their connections with the Triple Alliance and the Triple Entente would not leave them altogether free to take isolated action. And two other members of those European groups--Russia and Austria-Hungary--have long been vitally interested in the Balkan question; while the opposition to Servian annexation on the Adriatic littoral and of Greek annexation in Epirus now for the first time reveals the deep concern of Italy in the same question.

The Serbs are Slavs. And the unhappy relations between Servia and Austria-Hungary have always intensified their pro-Russian proclivities.

The Roumanians are a Romance people, like the French and Italians, and they have hitherto been regarded as a Balkan extension of the Triple Alliance. The att.i.tude of {128} Austria-Hungary, however, during the Balkan wars has caused a cooling of Roumanian friends.h.i.+p, so that its transference to Russia is no longer inconceivable or even improbable.

Greece desires to be independent of both groups of the European system, but the action of Italy in regard to Northern Epirus and in regard to Rhodes and the Dodecanese has produced a feeling of irritation and resentment among the Greeks which nothing is likely to allay or even greatly alleviate. Bulgaria in the past has carried her desire to live an independent national life to the point of hostility to Russia, but since Stambuloff's time she has shown more natural sentiments towards her great Slav sister and liberator. Whether the desire of revenge against Servia (and Greece) will once more draw her toward Austria-Hungary only time can disclose.

In any event it will take a long time for all the Balkan states to recover from the terrible exhaustion of the two wars of 1912 and 1913.

{129} Their financial resources have been depleted; their male population has been decimated. Necessity, therefore, is likely to co-operate with the community of interest established by the Treaty of Bukarest in the maintenance of conditions of stable equilibrium in the Balkans. Of course the peace-compelling forces operative in the Balkan states themselves might be counter-acted by hostile activities on the part of some of the Great Powers. And there is one danger-point for which the Great Powers themselves are solely responsible. This, as I have already explained, is Albania. An artificial creation with unnatural boundaries, it is a grave question whether this so-called state can either manage its own affairs or live in peace with its Serb and Greek neighbors. At this moment the Greeks of Epirus (whom the Great Powers have transferred to Albania) are resisting to the death incorporation in a state which outrages their deepest and holiest sentiments of religion, race, nationality, and humane {130} civilization. On the other hand the Hoti and Gruda tribes on the north fiercely resent annexation to Montenegro (which the Great Powers have decreed) and threaten to summon to their support other Malissori tribes with whom they have had a defensive alliance for several centuries. If Prince William of Wied is unable to cope with these difficulties, Italy and Austria-Hungary may think it necessary to intervene in Albania.

But the intervention of either would almost certainly provoke compensatory action on the part of other European Powers, especially Russia.

One can only hope that the Great Powers may have wisdom granted to them to find a peaceful solution of the embarra.s.sing problem which they have created in setting up the new state of Albania. That the Albanians themselves will have an opportunity to develop their own national independence I find it impossible to believe. Yet I heard in the summer of 1913 at Valona from the lips of Ismail Kemal Bey, {131} the head of the provisional government, a most impressive statement of his hopes and aspirations for an independent Albania and his faith and confidence in its future, in which he claimed to voice the sentiments of the Albanian people. But, as I have already explained, I think it doubtful whether under the most favorable external circ.u.mstances the Albanians are at present qualified to establish and maintain an independent state. And their destiny is so inextricably entangled with the ambitions of some of the Great Powers that the experiment stands no chance of getting a fair trial. I heartily wish the circ.u.mstances were other than they are. For as an American I sympathize with the aspirations of all struggling nationalities to be free and independent.

And my interest in Albania is deepened, as the interest of all Americans must be deepened, by the fact that a large number of Albanians have now found a home in the United States.