hich it was formed. The constituent powers had looked for
a stiff struggle with the Ottoman armies, but for final success sufficient
to enable them, at the best, to divide Macedonia among themselves, at the
worst, to secure its autonomy under international guarantee. Neither they
nor any one else expected such an Ottoman collapse as was in store. Their
moment of attack was better chosen than they knew. The Osmanli War Office
was caught fairly in the middle of the stream. Fighting during the
revolution, subsequently against Albanians and other recalcitrant
provincials, and latterly against the Italians, who had snatched at
Tripoli the year before, had reduced the _Nizam_, the first line of
troops, far below strength. The _Redif_, the second line, had received
hardly more training, thanks to the disorganization of Abdul Hamid's last
years and of the first years of the new order, than the _Mustafuz_, the
third and last line. Armament, auxiliary services, and the like had been
disorganized preparatory to a scheme for thorough reorganization, which
had been carried, as yet, but a very little way. A foreign (German)
element, introduced into the command, had had time to impair the old
spirit of Ottoman soldiers, but not to create a new one. The armies sent
against the Bulgarians in Thrace were so many mobs of various arms; those
which met the Serbs, a little better; those which opposed the Greeks, a
little worse.

It followed that the Bulgarians, who had proposed to do no more in Thrace
than block Adrianople and immobilize the Constantinople forces, were
carried by their own momentum right down to Chataldja, and there and at
Adrianople had to prosecute siege operations when they ought to have been
marching to Kavala and Salonika. The Serbs, after hard fighting, broke
through not only into Macedonia but into Albania, and reached the
Adriatic, but warned off this by the powers, consoled themselves with the
occupation of much more Macedonian territory than the concerted plans of
the allies had foreseen. The Greeks, instead of hard contests for the
Haliacmon Valley and Epirus--their proper Irredenta--pushed such weak
forces before them that they got through to Salonika just in time to
forestall a Bulgarian column. Ottoman collapse was complete everywhere,
except on the Chataldja front. It remained to divide the spoil. Serbia
might not have Adriatic Albania, and therefore wanted as much Macedonia as
she had actually overrun. Greece