The reconstruction of South-Eastern Europe

SOUTH-EASTERN EUROPE

tion would have been given by any ally and neighbour who would have behaved towards Serbia with the least grain of sincere amity and friendship. But Bulgaria insisted on her own interpretation of the strict letter of the treaty of alliance, and refused to listen to any proposal of the kind. The Bulgarian Government, blinded by greed, threw aside all counsels of wisdom and moderation. They considered that the alliance had already given them everything they expected to obtain from it. Since Turkey was beaten and reduced to impotence the alliance had in their view already served its purpose, and had for the future become rather a hindrance and nuisance. They appeared to rejoice at Serbia’s obstinacy in insisting on the revision of the treaty and in claiming some compensation, as it gave them the wished-for opportunity to rid themselves immediately of the fiction of an alliance with the very States they wanted to fight and dominate.

Bulgaria has been both condemned and pitied for her treacherous attack on the Serbian Army at midnight on the 30th of June, 1913. The sentimental friends of the Balkan nations looked for some scapegoat upon whom to throw the responsibility for such a criminal and foolish ending to the first Balkan League. The persons responsible for it are many, but hardly have they been anything more than puppets in the service of the spirit of greed and statecraft which

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