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e a party to any new Balkan settlement, and mobilised her forces to
give accent to the demand she had been making for some time for a
territorial concession from Bulgaria.
A Young Girl of Irn
The diplomacy of Bulgaria under these difficult circumstances was
deplorable. Her statesmen seemed bemused with the intoxication
of Bulgarian military victories, and unable to forget the glowing
calculations of the future Bulgarian Empire which they had made
during the course of the war. Those calculations I gathered from
gossip with all classes in Bulgaria at different times, speaking
not only with politicians but with bankers, trading people, and
others. They concluded that the Turk was going to be driven out
of Europe, at any rate, as far as Constantinople. They considered
that Constantinople was too great a prize for the Bulgarian nation
or for the Balkan States, and that Constantinople would be left as
an international city to be governed by a commission of the Great
Powers. Bulgaria was, then, to have of what had been Turkey-in-
Europe, the province of Thrace, and a large part of Macedonia as far
as the city of Salonica.
Salonica was desired very much by the Bulgarians, and also very
much by the Greeks; and the decision in regard to Salonica before the
war was that it would be best to make it a free Balkan city, governed
by all the Balkan States in common, as a free port for all the Balkan
States. The frontier of Greece was to extend to the north, and Greece
was to be allowed all the Aegean Islands. The Servian frontier was
to extend to the eastward and the southward, and what is now the
autonomous province of Albania (the creation of which was insisted
on by the Powers) was to be divided between Montenegro and
Servia.
That division would have left the Bulgarians with the greatest
spoil of the war. They would have had entry on to the Sea of
Marmora; they would have controlled, perhaps, one side of the
Dardanelles (but I believe they thought that the Dardanelles might
also be left to a commission of the Powers). Now, with the clash
of diplomacy, it was sternly necessary to curtail that ambition
considerably, and to decide to seek a friend among the different
rivals. Bulgarian diplomats could not be made to see that. They were
firm with Turkey: wisely enough, for Turkey had no power left to
wound or to help. But at the same time they refused to make any
concessions either to Servia, to Greece, or to Roumania, all of whom
were determined to have a share of the plunder which Bulgaria had
assigned for herself. “A leonine partnership” as the lawyers call it,
that is to say, a partnership in which one party takes the lion’s share
of the spoil, is a very satisfactory arrangement for the lion. But one
wants to be sure before attempting to enforce leonine arrangements