Rumania and
Turkey into the field against Bulgaria, the tearing up of the London
Treaty, and the settlement of Bucharest are too well known to need an
extensive mention here.
The Treaty of London once torn to pieces by the second Balkan war, it
remained for the great powers to find a new way of forcing their terms
on the recalcitrant Balkan States, and this they succeeded in doing by
adroitly using Rumania as the representative of European diplomacy.
Thus the Rumanian Army, without any provocation from Bulgaria, took
the field against her neighbor, and acted as a mediator and arbiter of
the second Balkan conflict.
The Greek, Servian, Montenegrin, and Bulgarian delegates who went to
Bucharest at the close of the war knew beforehand that behind the
actions of the Rumanian Government stood united the whole of European
diplomacy, again striving to put down once for all these insolent
little States who thought themselves emancipated from European
guardianship. These delegates knew quite well that there was no
escape, but they went, trying and hoping for the best. The Rumanian
"Green Papers," published a short time after the Treaty of Bucharest
and covering a period between Sept. 20, 1912, and Aug. 1, 1913, give a
vivid and true story of the whole proceedings, showing once more what
a powerful instrument diplomacy is in the hands of the strong for
cheating the weak.
On Aug. 1, 1914, we see the Balkan Peninsula presenting the following
aspect:
From the erstwhile European Turkey, of six vilayets, or departments,
namely, those of Adrianople, Saloniki, Monastir, Uskub, Jannina, and
Scutari, only one, and that mutilated, remains, the Vilayet of
Adrianople. Greece, Bulgaria, Servia, Montenegro, and Albania
appropriated the rest. Gone is Crete, and gone are the twenty-six
Aegean Islands, twelve of them permanently united to their Hellenic
motherland, while Italy temporarily occupies fourteen as a result of
the Tripolitan war of 1911. Thus Turkey, from an area of 168,500
square kilometers, and 5,000,000 to 6,000,000 inhabitants, forming her
European dominions, was reduced to about 30,000 square kilometers and
nearly 3,000,000 inhabitants, including the population of
Constantinople, amounting, according to the only available foreign
statistics, to 1,203,000 inhabitants. Of course Turkey has in Asia an
area of more than 2,000,000 square kilometers, with a population
approximating 20,000,000, but that, properly speaking, does
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