the Black Sea, which becomes a
free sea in virtue of the internationalization of the straits. The
possession of a third outlet on the AEgean could not, therefore, be
termed a vital question for his protegee. Thus the comparison with
Poland was irrelevant.

If Poland, which is a very much greater state than Bulgaria, can live
and prosper with a single port, and that not her own--if Rumania, which
is also a much more numerous and powerful nation, can thrive with a
single issue to the sea, by what line of argument, M. Venizelos asked,
can one prove that little Bulgaria requires three or four exits, and
that her need justifies the abandonment to her tender mercies of seven
hundred and fifty thousand Greeks and the violation of one of the
fundamental principles underlying the new moral ordering.

Compliance with Bulgaria's demand would prevent Greece from including
within her boundaries the three-quarters of a million Greeks who have
dwelt in Thrace for twenty-five centuries, preserving their nationality
intact through countless disasters and tremendous cataclysms. Further,
the Greek Premier, taking a leaf from Wilson's book, turned to the
aspect which the problem would assume in war-time. Bulgaria, he argued,
is essentially a continental state, whose defense does not depend upon
naval strength, whereas Greece contains an island population of nearly a
million and a half and looks for protection against aggression chiefly
to naval precautions. In case of war, Bulgaria, if her claim to an issue
on the AEgean were allowed, could with her submarines delay or hinder the
transport and concentration in Macedonia of Greek forces from the
islands and thus place Greece in a position of dangerous inferiority.

Lastly, if Greece's claims in Thrace were rejected, she would have a
population of 1,790,000 souls outside her national boundaries--that is
to say, more than one-third of the population which is within her state.
Would this be fair? Of the total population of Bulgarian and Turkish
Thrace the Turks and Greeks together form 85 per cent., the Bulgars only
6 per cent., and the latter nowhere in compact masses. Moreover--and
this ought to have clinched the matter--the Hellenic population formed
an absolute as well as a relative majority in the year 1919.

These arguments and various other considerations drawn from the
inordinate ambitions, the savage cruelty,[119] and the Punic faith of
the Bulgars convinced the British, French, a