ion of the Balkan plenipotentiaries in
breaking them off. By the spring of 1913 the three fortresses had fallen,
and, under the treaty finally signed at London, Turkey ceded to the Balkan
League, as a whole, all her European territories west of a line drawn from
Ainos on the Aegean to Midia on the Black Sea, including Adrianople and
the lower basin of the river Maritsa.

The time had now come for Greece and Bulgaria to settle their account, and
the unexpected extent of the common gains ought to have facilitated their
division. The territory in question included the whole north coast of the
Aegean and its immediate hinterland, and Venezelos proposed to consider it
in two sections. (1) The eastern section, conveniently known as Thrace,
consisted of the lower basin of the Maritsa. As far as Adrianople the
population was Bulgar, but south of that city it was succeeded by a Greek
element, with a considerable sprinkling of Turkish settlements, as far as
the sea. Geographically, however, the whole district is intimately
connected with Bulgaria, and the railway that follows the course of the
Maritsa down to the port of Dedeagatch offers a much-needed economic
outlet for large regions already within the Bulgarian frontier. Venezelos,
then, was prepared to resign all Greek claims to the eastern section, in
return for a corresponding concession by Bulgaria in the west. (2) The
western section, consisting of the lower basins of the Vardar and Struma,
lay in the immediate neighbourhood of the former frontier of Greece; but
the Greek population of Salonika,[1] and the coast-districts east of it,
could not be brought within the Greek frontier without including as well a
certain hinterland inhabited mainly by Bulgarians. The cession of this was
the return asked for by Venezelos, and he reduced it to a minimum by
abstaining from pressing the quite well-founded claims of Greece in the
Monastir district, which lay further inland still.

[Footnote 1: The predominant element within the walls of Salonika itself
is neither Greek nor Bulgarian, but consists of about 80,000 of those
Spanish-speaking Jews who settled in Turkey as refugees during the
sixteenth century.]

But Venezelos' conciliatory proposals met with no response from the
Bulgarian Government, which was in an 'all or nothing' mood. It swallowed
Venezelos' gift of Thrace, and then proceeded to exploit the Bulgar
hinterland of Salonika as a pretext for demanding the latter city as