Nevertheless, it is already clear that Venezelos’ judgement was the better. The settlement at the close of the present war may even yet bring Bulgaria reparation in many quarters. If the Ruman and South Slavonic populations at present included in the complexus of Austria-Hungary are freed from their imprisonment and united with the Serbian and Rumanian national states, Bulgaria may conceivably recover from the latter those Bulgarian lands which the Treaty of Bucarest made over to them in central Macedonia and the Dobrudja, while it would be still more feasible to oust the Turk again from Adrianople, where he slipped back in the hour of Bulgaria’s prostration and has succeeded in maintaining himself ever since. Yet no amount of compensation in other directions and no abstract consideration for the national principle will induce Bulgaria to renounce her claim on Greek Kavala. Access to this district is vital to Bulgaria from the geographical point of view, and she will not be satisfied here with such rights as Serbia enjoys at Salonika—free use of the port and free traffic along a railway connecting it with her own hinterland. Her heart is set on complete territorial ownership, and she will not compose her feud with Greece until she has had her way. So long, therefore, as the question of Kavala remains unsettled, Greece will not be able to put the preliminary problem of ‘national consolidation’ behind her, and enter upon the long-deferred chapter of ‘internal development’. To accomplish once for all this vital transition, Venezelos is taking the helm again into his hands, and it is his evident intention to close the Greek account with Bulgaria just as Serbia and Rumania hope to close theirs with the same state—by a bold territorial concession conditional upon adequate territorial compensation elsewhere.[1] [Footnote 1: The above paragraph betrays its own date; for, since it was written, the intervention of Bulgaria on the side of the Central Powers has deferred indefinitely the hope of a settlement based upon mutual agreement.] The possibility of such compensation is offered by certain outstanding problems directly dependent upon the issue of the European conflict, and we must glance briefly at these before passing on to consider the new chapter of internal history that is opening for the Greek nation. The problems in question are principally concerned with the ownership of islands.