HELLAS AND THE BALKAN WARS.*
THERE seems to be no end to the recriminations of the Balkan Allies. Mr. Cassavetti offers us the Greek point of view in this excellent survey of the events that led up to the Balkan War, of the war itself so far as it concerned the Greeks, and of the prospects of the Hellenic Kingdom. The Greek case could hardly have a better advocate than this author, who has Greek blood in his veins, but who judges what he sees by English standards. And yet we feel when we have read it all that a Bulgarian case could probably be stated with similar persuasiveness. Mr. Cassavetti is a candid untie of certain failings of the Greeks in education and discipline, but when it comes to judging between them and the Bulgarians on their territorial claims and on their conduct in the war he has no good word to say of the Bulgarians. The outsider who has to draw his conclusions from what lie reads may well despair of arriving at the truth. Men who have made a lifelong study of the ethnography of Macedonia will flatly contradict one another on the question of where racial sympathy may be said to be Greek and where Bulgarian. Some eyewitnesses of the war will swear that they saw atrocities committed by Bulgarians, others that they saw them committed by Greeks. Mr. Cassavetti writes of the Greeks as a nation much too gentle and kindly to commit atrocities. But while taking, as we do, the view that the • HAW and the Ream: Wen. By D. J. Ca:meet:A, M.A. Oxon. Wish an_ Introductionby the Hon. W. Pemba r Reeves. With 10 Maps and 74 Illuatele time. London: T. Fisher Ewen. [10a. 8d_ net.] Greeks did themselves great credit in the war, we may still ask that the word " atrocity " should be defined before we consent to the conclusion that the Greeks were wholly innocent when the Bulgars were wholly guilty. Is Mr. Cassavetti, for instance, including all the irregulars who fought on the Greek side in his general acquittal P Greeks who have fought in the Macedonian bands have generally practised the same methods as their opponents. We do not blame one side more than the other; but whichever way the balance of criminality inclines, none of the bands have their hands clean of horrors. The present writer happened to be on the Thessalian frontier in 1897 when Greek bands provoked Turkey to a declaration of war. The members of a certain Greek band, as he very well remembers, received Holy Communion from a Greek priest about dawn one day and then rushed across the frontier into Macedonia on what they regarded as a holy crusade. War had not been declared—the Greek authorities, in fact, had said that there would be no war—but the band shot the Turkish soldiers in a blockhouse and burned the blockhouse.
Our own sympathy with the Greeks is strong. We admire their progress and the very gallant manner in which they have redeemed the ignominious reverse of 1897. We hope that there will be no check to the progress of Greece along legitimate lines. But we may offer this general con- sideration: that few incidents in history have been more tragic than the manner in which Greece and Servia took advantage of the hopeless condition of Bulgaria and humili- ated her, forcing her to surrender a large part of the fruits of conquest. It will be said at once that Bulgaria suffered no more than she deserved for her treacherous attack on her Allies. We admit that she deserved to suffer; but if the Allies really looked upon the war against Turkey as a sacred movement of the Cross against the Crescent—and they pro- fessed nothing less—what is one to say of the sincerity of the Christian Allies who gladly allowed large tracts to be recovered by the Crescent rather than offer a helping hand to impotent Bulgaria P Possibly those Englishmen who were Philhellenea in 1897 have been merely misguided by false reports—though it is impossible to dispose of all the evidence of the Balkan correspondent of the Times in the airy manner adopted by Mr. Cassavetti—but it is certainly a very curious fact that the Philbellenee as a body have gone over to the cause of Bulgaria. Mr. Cassavetti mentions Mr. Brailsford. Few English men can have taken up the Greek cause more whole-heartedly than Mr. Brailsford did in 1897. He volunteered to fight for the Greeks, became one of the Foreign Legion, and was wounded. Yet Mr. Brailsford, who presumably has taken as much trouble as usual to inform himself about recent events, finds little or nothing to say in defence of Greece. Probably he thinks, as most of us do, that while Bulgaria deserved to suffer, she was made to suffer far too much. A whole nation —a Christian nation which stands for progress and the arts of civilization—should not have been sacrificed because a megalo- maniac General, or Minister, or Monarch decreed the mad act of attacking the Greeks and Servians. This is the broad accusation of Englishmen against Greece, though we do not pretend to sufficient knowledge to dispute the evidence on particular points that Mr. Cassavetti lays before us. When all this has been said, however, we are convinced that the Greeks are misled if they suppose that there is any lack of cordial good wishes here for the future of Greece. Before the war Englishmen looked upon Greece as, let us say, a deserving recipient of charity ; now they regard her as a country that counts and that commands respect on her merits.
We cannot do more than choose a few of the more interest- ing points from the book. Mr. Cassavetti proves conclusively, we think, that the command of the sea which the Greek Navy managed to maintain was of the greatest service to the Allies, and prevented the landing of many thousand. of Turkish reinforcements on the Thracian coast Kiamil Pasha, one of the very few far-seeing Turkish statesmen, actually tried to detach Greece from the Balkan Alliance in order to demobilize her fleet. He offered as inducements the withdrawal of the Turkish suzerainty over Crete and substantial privileges to Greeks throughout the Turkish Empire. No figure stands out better in this history—except perhaps the present King of Greece—than M. Venezelos. His ateadineas of purpose and patience when he was mistakenly attacked by
Prince George in Crete brought him through amazing difficulties, and to-day his reputation is safe as that of the greatest statesman of modern Greece. Compared with him M. Tricoupi was but a faltering amateur. He has the uncommon Greek merit of being unmoved by public passion, and he is quite proof against the voice of flattery. To have reconciled the various Greek parties and saved what was good out of the menacing Zorbas military revolt was a wonderful achievement. If anyone doubts that the Crown Prince (the present King) has really mastered the essential arts of war, and that M. Venezelos was justified in saving his services and those of the other Princes for the nation in spite of the Military League, he should read Mr. Cassavetti's account of the capture of Janina. The whole situation was changed when the Crown Prince took over the command from the unsuccessful General Sapundzaki.
As regards the troublesome question of Southern Albania, which the Greeks call Northern Epirus, Mr. Cassavetti's solution is delightfully simple. He would avoid all friction between Greece and Albania by allowing the Greeks to keep the territory which the Powers require them to evacuate ! How lie can suppose that this would placate the Albanians we cannot imagine. His claim for the Greeks in Albania is as extravagant as in Thrace, where he seems to think that the Bulgarians never had a right to any important part of the territory they conquered. Another point worth mentioning is the suggestion that there should be a naval alliance in the Mediterranean between Greece and Great Britain.
We must end with a quotation from the fatal order which launched the Bulgarians against Greece and Servia—truly one of the most sinister documents in history. It is addressed from Headquarters to the Army Commanders, and is signed by General Savoff. The following sentences are the essential part :-
"The Army Commanders must bear in mind that our operations against the Hellenea and the Servians are taking place without any °pia/ declaration of war, and that they hays been dictated to us by the following important considerations 1. To raise as much as possible the monde of our troops, and to make them consider our ex-allies as enemies.
2. By the threat of a declaration of war between the allies to force Russian policy to hasten the solution of the question, a course which will save us from delays.
3. By the violent blows which we shall deliver on our allies to compel them to be more conciliatory.
4. As we claim the territories which de facto they hold, to succeed by force of arms in occupying new territories, which Ivo shall be able to continue to do until the intervention of the Powers brings our military operations to a standstill. And as ouch intervention may take place at any moment, it is imperative that you should act promptly and energetically."
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