ailed 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 Regie 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.

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 n