Balkan War
The course of the struggle is described elsewhere in this volume. Its
event illustrates the danger of an alliance succeeding beyond the
expectations in which it was formed. The constituent powers had looked for
a stiff struggle with the Ottoman armies, but for final success sufficient
to enable them, at the best, to divide Macedonia among themselves, at the
worst, to secure its autonomy under international guarantee. Neither they
nor any one else expected such an Ottoman collapse as was in store. Their
moment of attack was better chosen than they knew. The Osmanli War Office
was caught fairly in the middle of the stream. Fighting during the
revolution, subsequently against Albanians and other recalcitrant
provincials, and latterly against the Italians, who had snatched at
Tripoli the year before, had reduced the Nizam, the first line of
troops, far below strength. The Redif, the second line, had received
hardly more training, thanks to the disorganization of Abdul Hamid's last
years and of the first years of the new order, than the Mustafuz, the
third and last line. Armament, auxiliary services, and the like had been
disorganized preparatory to a scheme for thorough reorganization, which
had been carried, as yet, but a very little way. A foreign (German)
element, introduced into the command, had had time to impair the old
spirit of Ottoman soldiers, but not to create a new one. The armies sent
against the Bulgarians in Thrace were so many mobs of various arms; those
which met the Serbs, a little better; those which opposed the Greeks, a
little worse.
It followed that the Bulgarians, who had proposed to do no more in Thrace
than block Adrianople and immobilize the Constantinople forces, were
carried by their own momentum right down to Chataldja, and there and at
Adrianople had to prosecute siege operations when they ought to have been
marching to Kavala and Salonika. The Serbs, after hard fighting, broke
through not only into Macedonia but into Albania, and reached the
Adriatic, but warned off this by the powers, consoled themselves with the
occupation of much more Macedonian territory than the concerted plans of
the allies had foreseen. The Greeks, instead of hard contests for the
Haliacmon Valley and Epirus--their proper Irredenta--pushed such weak
forces before them that they got through to Salonika just in time to
forestall a Bulgarian column. Ottoman collapse was complete everywhere,
except on the Chataldja front. It remained to divide the spoil. Serbia
might not have Adriatic Albania, and therefore wanted as much Macedonia as
she had actually overrun. Greece wanted the rest of Macedonia and had
virtually got it. Remained Bulgaria who, with more of Thrace than she
wanted, found herself almost entirely crowded out of Macedonia, the common
objective of all.
Faced with division ex post facto, the allies found their a priori
agreement would not resolve the situation. Bulgaria, the predominant
partner and the most aggrieved, would neither recognize the others' rights
of possession nor honestly submit her claims to the only possible arbiter,
the Tsar of Russia. Finding herself one against two, she tried a coup de
main on both fronts, failed, and brought on a second Balkan war, in which
a new determining factor, Rumania, intervened at a critical moment to
decide the issue against her. The Ottoman armies recovered nearly all they
had lost in eastern and central Thrace, including Adrianople, almost
without firing a shot, and were not ill pleased to be quit of a desperate
situation at the price of Macedonia, Albania, and western Thrace.
Defeated and impoverished, the Ottoman power came out of the war clinging
to a mere remnant of its European empire--one single mutilated province
which did not pay its way. With the lost territories had gone about
one-eighth of the whole population and one-tenth of the total imperial
revenue. But when these heavy losses had been cut, there was nothing more
of a serious nature to put to debit, but a little even to credit. Ottoman
prestige had suffered but slightly in the eyes of the people. The
obstinate and successful defence of the Chataldja lines and the subsequent
recovery of eastern Thrace with Adrianople, the first European seat of the
Osmanlis, had almost effaced the sense of Osmanli disgrace, and stood to
the general credit of the Committee and the individual credit of its
military leader, Enver Bey. The loss of some thousands of soldiers and
much material was compensated by an invaluable lesson in the faultiness of
the military system, and especially the Redif organization. The way was
now clearer than before for re-making the army on the best European model,
the German. The campaign had not been long, nor, as wars go, costly to
wage. In the peace Turkey gained a new lease of life from the powers, and,
profligate that she was, the promise of more millions of foreign money.
Over and above all this an advantage, which she rated above international
guarantees, was secured to her--the prospective support of the strongest
military power in Europe. The success of Serbia so menaced
Germano-Austrian plans for the penetration of the Balkans, that the
Central Powers were bound to woo Turkey even more lavishly than before,
and to seek alliance where they had been content with influence. In a
strong Turkey resided all their hope of saving from the Slavs the way to
the Mediterranean. They had kept this policy in view for more than twenty
years, and in a hundred ways, by introduction of Germans into the military
organization, promotion of German financial enterprise, pushing of German
commerce, pressure on behalf of German concessions which would entail
provincial influence (for example, the construction of a transcontinental
railway in Asia), those powers had been manifesting their interest in
Turkey with ever-increasing solicitude. Now they must attach her to
themselves with hoops of steel and, with her help, as soon as might be,
try to recast the Balkan situation.
The experience of the recent war and the prospect in the future made
continuance and accentuation of military government in the Ottoman Empire
inevitable. The Committee, which had made its way back to power by violent
methods, now suppressed its own Constitution almost as completely as Abdul
Hamid had suppressed Midhat's parliament. Re-organization of the military
personnel, accumulation of war material, strengthening of defences,
provision of arsenals, dockyards, and ships, together with devices for
obtaining money to pay for all these things, make Ottoman history for the
years 1912-14. The bond with Germany was drawn lighter. More German
instructors were invited, more German engineers commissioned, more
munitions of war paid for in French gold. By 1914 it had become so evident
that the Osmanlis must array themselves with Austro-Germany in any
European war, that one wonders why a moment's credit was ever given to
their protestations of neutrality when that war came at last in August
1914. Turkey then needed other three months to complete her first line of
defences and mobilize. These were allowed to her, and in the late autumn
she entered the field against Great Britain, France, and Russia, armed
with German guns, led by German officers, and fed with German gold.
More
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Balkan War
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