The Balkans: A History of Bulgaria—Serbia—Greece—Rumania—TurkeyHogarth, D. G. (David George)
History
The Balkans: A History of Bulgaria—Serbia—Greece—Rumania—Turkey
Hogarth, D. G. (David George)
Balkan Peninsula -- History; Eastern question (Balkan)
The results of the one month’s war were registered in the Treaty of
Bucarest. Many of its provisions were unhappily, though naturally,
inspired by the spirit of revenge; but the Greek premier, at any rate,
showed a statesmanlike self-restraint in the negotiations. Venezelos
advocated the course of taking no more after the war than had been
demanded before it. He desired to leave Bulgaria a broad zone of Aegean
littoral between the Struma and Maritsa rivers, including ports capable
of satisfying Bulgaria’s pressing need for an outlet towards the south.
But, in the exasperated state of public feeling, even Venezelos’
prestige failed to carry through his policy in its full moderation.
King George had just been assassinated in his year of jubilee, in the
streets of the long-desired Salonika; and King Constantine, his son,
flushed by the victory of Kilkish and encouraged by the Machiavellian
diplomacy of his Hohenzollern brother-in-law, insisted on carrying the
new Greek frontier as far east as the river Mesta, and depriving
Bulgaria of Kavala, the natural harbour for the whole Bulgarian
hinterland in the upper basins of the Mesta and Struma.
It is true that Greece did not exact as much as she might have done.
Bulgaria was still allowed to possess herself of a coastal strip east
of the Mesta, containing the tolerable harbours of Porto Lagos and
Dedeagatch, which had been occupied during hostilities by the Greek
fleet, and thus her need for an Aegean outlet was not left unsatisfied
altogether; while Greece on her part was cleverly shielded for the
future from those drawbacks involved in immediate contact with Turkish
territory, which she had so often experienced in the past. It is also
true that the Kavala district is of great economic value in itself—it
produces the better part of the Turkish Régie tobacco crop—and that on
grounds of nationality alone Bulgaria has no claim to this prize, since
the tobacco-growing peasantry is almost exclusively Greek or Turk,
while the Greek element has been extensively reinforced during the last
two years by refugees from Anatolia and Thrace.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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