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the Aegean and the Lake of Okhrida, were to form " a distinct autonomous province "; but should their partition prove inevitable, then Serbia undertook to make no claim beyond a line drawn from the Lake of Okhrida to near Kriva Palanka on the old Turco-Bulgarian frontier and including Skoplje, but not Monastir, Prilep or Veles. In the event of a dispute, the Tsar was to act as arbitrator, and Bulgaria undertook to accept the more southerly line as its new frontier with Serbia, if the Tsar should decide in favour of the latter. In the event of war, Bulgaria undertook to place at least 200,000, Serbia at least 150,000, men in the field against Turkey. If either Turkey or Rumania attacked Bulgaria, Serbia was to send 100,000 men to her aid; while Bulgaria on her part must provide 200,000 men in support of Serbia, in the event of an attack by Austria-Hungary. 1 The treaty between Bulgaria and Greece was much more in- definite, though it provided for mutual aid against Turkey, not merely in case of direct military aggression, but also of the infringement of treaty rights and of the principles of inter- national law a phrase which was of course intended to cover the championship of co-nationals in Macedonia or Thrace against Ottoman misrule.

No attempt was made to define the territorial claims of the two countries in the event of a successful war, and the division of the spoils was thus left to the chance of a future agreement. The military convention was not concluded till Sept. 22, when events were already moving rapidly. By it Greece undertook to provide at least 120,000 men against Turkey, while Bulgaria increased the contingent already promised in her agreement with Serbia to 300,000 men. Special clauses provided for a blockade of the Aegean by the Greek fleet, and forbade the conclusion of peace or even of an armistice without the con- sent of all the allies.

The League, Turkey and the Powers. Internal disorder had spread rapidly throughout Turkey in Europe in the year following Italy's invasion of Tripoli: and the ferocious policy of suppres- sion adopted by the Committee of Union and Progress towards all the non-Turkish nationalities culminated in a reign of terror at the parliamentary elections of 1912, in a recrudescence of Komitaji activities, and in an Albanian rising even more wide- spread and more determined than in the two previous summers. The premature death of Milovanovic on July i not merely de- prived Serbia of her ablest modern statesman, but removed one of the few restraining influences in any Balkan capital. He was succeeded as premier by Trifkovic, and in the conduct of foreign affairs by the Old Radical leader Pasic, who placed almost unreserved reliance on Russian support and worked in the closest accord with Hartwig. On Sept. 12 Pasic became premier at the head of a purely Old Radical Cabinet.

By this time not even the most pacific statesmanship could have arrested the growing anarchy in Turkey. Public opinion in Belgrade and Sofia was roused by a massacre of Bulgarians at Kocana (Kochana) on Aug. i, and by the report of similar outrages in the Sanjak. By the middle of the month, Uskub, and the entire district recognized by the secret treaty as Serbian, were in the hands of the insurgent Albanians; and the con- cessions granted by the Porte, while failing to arrest the move- ment, only served as an incentive to swift action on the part of the neighbouring States.

The somewhat vague proposals for decentralization and administrative reform put forward by Count Berchtold on Aug. 20 prompted the Balkan allies to hasten their preparations. While the slow-moving concert of Europe was discussing alter- native proposals for Turkish reform, the Porte suddenly held up Serbian war material at Salonika and began to mass troops round Adrianople. Before any collective step had been taken by the Powers, the situation was gravely compromised by the almost simultaneous mobilization of the Bulgarian, Serbian, Greek

1 Gesov in his Memoirs asserts that King Ferdinand in signing this was decided by his knowledge of the text of a secret Austro- Rumanian military convention, permitting Rumania in the event of war with Russia, to annex not only Bessarabia, but also Silistra, and even Ruscuk (Ruschuk), Sumla (Shumla) and Varna.

and Turkish armies (Oct. i). At the last moment the Porte announced its intention to enforce the Vilayet Law of 1880, which had been allowed to remain on paper for a whole genera- tion. But this was very naturally regarded by the Balkan allies merely as a fresh attempt at evasion, and the Powers still further alarmed them by a note which, in its endeavours to soothe Turkish susceptibilities, laid far more stress upon Turkish territorial integrity and sovereign rights than upon the cause of reform. Simultaneously the Powers warned the four Balkan States against warlike action and assured them that even in the event of victory no change in the territorial status quo would be tolerated. The further announcement of their intention after a lapse of 34 years to enforce the Treaty of Berlin, decided the four allies to precipitate events, and before the impending note could be formally communicated, the King of Montenegro, by an act of undoubted collusion, declared war upon Turkey. On Oct. 13 the other three Balkan Govern- ments presented to the Porte a series of far-reaching demands, culminating in racial autonomy for all the nationalities of the Ottoman Empire, and four days later the Turks, without deign- ing to answer, declared war on Serbia and Bulgaria. (For the military events, see BALKAN WARS.) All the Great Powers, though for quite divergent reasons, genuinely attempted to pre- vent war. This is equally true of Russia, who, though privy to most of the designs of the Balkan allies, disapproved because she could not wholly control the time and method of action, and of Austria-Hungary, to whom the existence of an anti- Austrian clause in the treaty had been betrayed, but who already reckoned confidently upon setting the allies at variance before it could come into operation. That the Powers, having failed to prevent war, adopted a passive attitude during its early stages, was due to the almost universal assumption in official circles that the Turks would be victorious, and that the refrac- tory Balkan States would soon be only too glad to accept a settle- ment dictated from without.

The First Balkan War. The rapid and overwhelming success of the allies radically transformed the situation. By the end of November Turkish rule in Europe was restricted to the Chatalja lines, the Gallipoli Peninsula, and the three fortresses of Adri- anople, Janina (Yannina) and Scutari. The Serbs in par- ticular, after the victories of Kumanovo and Monastir, were in actual occupation of all Macedonia west of the Vardar, and had reached the Adriatic at Durazzo and Medua. They were thus able to go far beyond their obligations under the military con- vention, by help to the Bulgarians investing Adrianople.

Kumanovo was much more than an ordinary victory. It restored to Serbia that self-confidence which had been so gravely shaken by the rebuffs and scandals of the previous 30 years: and throughout the Yugoslav provinces of Austria-Hungary it was hailed as an atonement for Serbia's downfall on the field of Kosovo, and as a pledge of her new mission as the Southern Slav Piedmont. In Croatia especially, where the Hungarian Government had suspended the constitution and established Cuvaj as dictator, there were continual demon- strations in favour of the Balkan allies, even on the part of sections of the population hitherto regarded as Serbophobe. Austria-Hungary at first adopted 'a waiting attitude, but as the Serbs approached the Adriatic, she suddenly ordered a general mobilization, and suppressed all public expressions of feeling, while the official press of Vienna and Budapest adopted a menac- ing tone towards Serbia. Great prominence was given to the alleged insults offered to Herr Prochaska, Austro-Hungarian consul at Prizren, and for some days public opinion was allowed to believe that he had been shamefully mutilated by Serbian officers. It only transpired at a much later date that Prochaska, known to be in touch with the open enemies of Serbia in the Sanjak, had been entirely unmolested by the invaders, but that on the other hand he had received definite instructions from Vienna to create an " incident " such as might provide a pretext for action. The Austro-Hungarian chief-of-staff and War Minister, Gens. Conrad and Auffenberg, are known to have favoured a radical solution of the Southern Slav question by