The Balkan Wars: 1912-1913 | Page 5

of its
territory, any extension to the sea and especially to the Adriatic, any
heightening and intensifying of the national consciousness of its people

involved some danger to the Dual Monarchy. For besides the Germans
who control Austria, and the Hungarians who control Hungary, the
Austro-Hungarian Empire embraces many millions of Slavs, and the
South Slavs are of the same family and speak practically the same
language as the inhabitants of the Kingdom of Servia. And Austria and
Hungary can not get to their outlets on the Adriatic--Trieste and
Fiume--without passing through territory inhabited by these South
Slavs.
If, therefore, Austria and Hungary were not to be left land-locked they
must at all hazards prevent the absorption of their South Slav subjects
by the Kingdom of Servia. Pan-Serbism at once menaced the integrity
of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and jeopardized its position on the
Adriatic. Hence the cardinal features in the Balkan policy of
Austria-Hungary were a ruthless repression of national aspiration
among its South Slav subjects--the inhabitants of Croatia, Dalmatia,
Bosnia, and Herzegovina; a watchful and jealous opposition to any
increase of the territory or resources of the Kingdom of Servia; and a
stern and unalterable determination to prevent Servian expansion to the
Adriatic.
The new Servia which emerged from the Balkan Wars of 1912-1913
was an object of anxiety and even of alarm to the statesmen of Vienna
and Buda-Pesth. The racial and national aspirations already astir among
the South Slavs of the Dual Monarchy were quickened and intensified
by the great victories won by their Servian brethren over both Turks
and Bulgarians and by the spectacle of the territorial aggrandizement
which accrued from those victories to the independent Kingdom of
Servia. Might not this Greater Servia prove a magnet to draw the
kindred Slavs of Bosnia, Herzegovina, Dalmatia, and Croatia away
from their allegiance to an alien empire? The diplomacy of Vienna had
indeed succeeded in excluding Servia from the Adriatic but it had
neither prevented its territorial aggrandizement nor blocked its access
to the Aegean.
Access to the Aegean was not, however, as serious a matter as access to
the Adriatic. Yet the expansion of Servia to the south over the
Macedonian territory she had wrested from Turkey, as legalized in the
Treaty of Bukarest, nullified the Austro-Hungarian dream of expansion
through Novi Bazar and Macedonia to the Aegean and the development

from Saloniki as a base of a great and profitable commerce with all the
Near and Middle East.
Here were the conditions of a national tragedy. They have developed
into a great international war, the greatest and most terrible ever waged
on this planet.
It may be worth while in concluding to note the relations of the Balkan
belligerents of 1912-1913 to the two groups of belligerents in the
present world-conflict.
The nemesis of the treaties of London and Bukarest and the fear of the
Great Powers pursue the Balkan nations and determine their alignments.
The declaration of war by Austria-Hungary against Servia, which
started the present cataclysm, fixed the enemy status of Servia and also
Montenegro. The good relations long subsisting between Emperor
William and the Porte were a guarantee to the Central Powers of the
support of Turkey, which quickly declared in their favor. The desire of
avenging the injury done her by the treaty of Bukarest and the prospect
of territorial aggrandizement at the expense of her sister Slav nation on
the west drew Bulgaria (which was influenced also by the victories of
the Germanic forces) into the same group in company with Turkey, her
enemy in both the Balkan Wars of 1912-1913. Bulgaria's opportunity
for revenge soon arrived. It was the Bulgarian army, in cooperation
with the Austro-German forces, that overran Servia and Montenegro
and drove the national armies beyond their own boundaries into foreign
territory. If the fortunes of war turn and the Entente Powers get the
upper hand in the Balkans, these expelled armies of Servia and
Montenegro, who after rest and reorganization and re-equipping in
Corfu have this summer been transported by France and England to
Saloniki, may have the satisfaction of devastating the territory of the
sister Slav state of Bulgaria, quite in the divisive and internecine spirit
of all Balkan history. The fate and future of Bulgaria, Servia, and
Montenegro now depend on the issue of the great European conflict.
The same thing is true of Turkey, into which meanwhile Russian forces,
traversing the Caucasus, have driven a dangerous wedge through
Armenia towards Mesopotamia. Roumania has thus far maintained the
policy of neutrality to which she adhered so successfully in the first
Balkan war--a policy which in view of her geographical situation, with
Bulgaria to the south, Russia to the north, and Austria-Hungary to the

west, she cannot safely abandon till fortune has declared more
decisively for one or