In the First Balkan War (1912-13), the four small allies--Bulgaria, Serbia, Greece, and Montenegro--had brought the Turkish giant to earth with an ease and rapidity that astonished the world, and themselves, perhaps, most of all. By the peace treaty signed at London May 30, 1913, all of the Turkish possessions in Europe were ceded to the victors, except for the district along the Straits, bounded by the famous Enos-Midia line, which was to be left to the Sultan, and Albania, which was to be made independent--the one case in history of a people that owes its liberty to Austria-Hungary. As everyone remembers, there then arose a dispute among the victors as to the distribution of the spoils. While negotiations were still going on and the other states were willing to accept the proffered arbitration of Russia, Bulgaria, carried away by a truly Prussian arrogance and recklessness, attempted to seize what she wanted by suddenly and treacherously attacking her late allies. This precipitated the Second Balkan War, in which the despised Greeks and Serbs were completely victorious, while Roumania and Turkey also intervened to complete Bulgaria’s discomfiture. The upshot was the Peace of Bucharest, of August 10, 1913. By that famous treaty, Macedonia, the chief object of the dispute, was divided up between Serbia and Greece, the former taking the northern and central parts, the latter the southern and southeastern. Bulgaria received only a small fragment of Macedonia--the Strumica salient--together with some territory in Western Thrace, which gave her a narrow frontage on the Aegean and the two mediocre harbors of Porto Lago and Dedeagach. Eastern Thrace, including Adrianople, was restored to Turkey. Finally, Bulgaria had to cede to Roumania the territory called the Southern Dobrudja. The net result was, in the first place, a great shift in the Balkan balance of power in favor of Greece and Serbia, both of which had formerly been far smaller and weaker than Bulgaria, but both of which, after nearly doubling their territories, had now virtually caught up with their neighbor; and, secondly, that Bulgaria came forth from the crisis mortally exasperated over the loss of her old territory in the Dobrudja and of the new territories she had hoped to gain in Thrace and Macedonia. It is, above all, the Macedonian question that has rankled in her mind ever since. For many decades Macedonia has been the Promised Land to the Bulgars: it has undoubtedly meant for them at least as much as Alsace and Lorraine to the French. Once they had had it in their grasp, in 1878 when Russia won it for them by the treaty of San Stefano--and then the Congress of Berlin restored it to Turkey. Again in 1912 they believed that they had secured it--and it was taken away from them by their allies. A third time they had it, during the present War,--and the Peace Conference has restored it to Greece and Serbia, in accordance with the Peace of Bucharest.