The New Republic/Volume 1/Number 1/The Empire of the East
The Empire of the East
THE war in Europe has lasted three months, and it is too soon to say what it is all about. The issues at stake in any war rarely emerge quite clearly until the settlement is in sight. Before the war began, it looked like a madman's dream to make a hecatomb of all the armies of Europe over the grave of the Austrian archduke, very much as the Scythians sacrificed slaves over the dead bodies of their chiefs. In its early weeks it took the dramatic form of a struggle to avenge the violation of Belgian neutrality. It may become, before it is ended, a battle for world empire in which the chief stakes will be distant colonies and "places in the sun."
But one issue behind all these phases will certainly persist. It is a war for the empire of the East. From the Continental standpoint, this struggle is really the postponed sequel of the two Balkan wars. The inner meaning of the original Balkan League has hardly yet been grasped by public opinion in western Europe. When Servia and Bulgaria concluded a secret treaty of alliance in the spring of 1912, under Russian auspices, they had two objects in view. One of these was the liberation of Macedonia from Turkey, primarily for Bulgaria's benefit. The other, which Russia regarded as the chief object, was an attack upon Austria, and the creation of a great Servia at her expense.
I have been told by Balkan diplomatists who had themselves seen the treaty that it provided clearly and precisely for Bulgarian cooperation in such a war. That was not generally known in England and France, but it was well known to the German government. It led to the last menacing increase in the peace effectives of the German army, which were defended at the time as the answer of the German powers to the menace of Pan-Slavism. There followed by way of reply reorganization of the Russian armies, and the return in France to three years' service.
This colossal struggle for the hegemony of the East has been the volcanic foundation of European politics ever since Russia and Austria quarreled over Bosnia in 1909. It has been imminent ever since the Balkan League was founded in 1912. If the war is fought to a clear decision, if either group of powers can master the other, the destinies of the East are sealed. In the one event the German Powers will dominate the Balkans, Turkey and the eastern Mediterranean; in the other it will be a Slavonic hegemony which will stretch from the Adriatic to the Persian Gulf.
It is something of a paradox that with this momentous issue hanging over it, the Balkan Peninsula, outside Servia, is only just beginning to be involved in war. Too many old resentments have stood in the way of a straight pursuit of national interests. Take, for example, the case of Roumania. She has much to gain from the defeat of Austria, for three million Roumanians await impatiently their liberation from the onerous Magyar yoke. It is customary to explain the early inaction of Roumania by the fact that the late King Carol was a Hohenzollern. In vain would he have been born a Hohenzollern had not Russia alienated the sympathies of his subjects. When she rewarded the valor of the Roumanian troops at Plevna by seizing the Roumanian province of Bessarabia, she made of this vigorous little state an almost irreconcilable enemy. She kept the resentment alive by subjecting the Roumanians of Bessarabia to a process of forcible denationalization more ruthless than the Magyars have ever attempted. The reason why Bulgaria has so long held aloof is familiar and recent history. Russia, partly because she has never found in the Bulgarians docile satellites, and partly because her court detests King Ferdinand, allowed and even encouraged the spoliation of Bulgaria in the Treaty of Bucharest. The idea was, of course, to teach the Bulgarians a lesson, and to render King Ferdinand's position intolerable.
It was a rash experiment to play upon a stubborn people. The result is that Servia has had to fight the first round of her hard battle against Austria alone, and that such deep resentment divided Bulgaria and Roumania that it was difficult to conceive any feat of diplomatic finesse which now would avail to bring them together as allies. They have none the less one fundamental instinct in common—the dread of finding their independence overshadowed by the extension of Russian power. It is this dread which has so far kept them neutral. Clearer thinking and a sharper insight into the future might have led them to a somewhat different conclusion. For the one hope of real independence for the Balkan States lies in the prompt and solid reconstitution of the Balkan League, with Roumania as one of its partners.
The hesitation which Turkey has at last overcome needs no interpreter. Of all the many resentments which she cherishes against Christian Powers, the deepest and most permanent is that which she feels against Russia. The sentiment has the justification in calculation, that the gravest menace to her territorial integrity comes from Russian designs upon Armenia. These ambitions, since Russia began to treat her own Armenians well, have now the support of some Armenians and of some influential friends of the Eastern Christians in England. If Turkey could hope to win a success as Germany's ally in some corner of the vast battlefield, she has also before her the alluring prospect of winning Egypt from England.
But there are other considerations which ought to have inspired her with caution. She owed her preservation twice in the last century to Anglo-Russian jealousies. She is probably astute enough to understand that these jealousies, though they may one day revive, have for the moment utterly vanished under the stress of a graver peril. Turkey has been bluntly told that if she goes to war at Germany's bidding, it will be her ruin. What that means in plain words is probably understood at the Porte. It means, as I hear on good authority, that England would no longer oppose or even deprecate the seizure by Russia of Constantinople. She would even assist it. Turkey would not have risked a catastrophe so final as that unless events had suggested to her that Germany is really able to protect her. While she hesitated, she had quite adroitly chosen a partial satisfaction for herself by repudiating the capitulations.
My views on that subject will probably be regarded as heretical by American readers, but I have held them for many years. Some transitional system ought to be arranged; but with this reserve, it seems to me, every instinct of tolerance and liberalism pleads for the abolition of the capitulations. They were a device for stamping a whole race with a sort of legal inferiority. While they lasted, every consulate was an organized insult, every foreign resident a reminder of Christian contempt for Islam. The capitulations have done ten times more evil by fostering Turkish resentment and fanaticism than they have done good by protecting foreign rights. One cannot lift a race by a code of systematic humiliation.
The war will certainly end, if it has any decisive result, in settling the hegemony of the East. The mischief of the modern system of alliances is that it is commonly made workable by a partition of spheres of interest. It is doubtful whether, in the event of a victory for the Triple Entente, the Liberal Powers will exert or seek to exert any great influence on the settlement of the near East. They will incline to respect Russia's province. If English opinion had its way, the iniquitous Treaty of Bucharest would be subjected to drastic revision. Englishmen would welcome the creation of a great Servia and a great Roumania.
But the more one emphasizes the principle of nationality, the more intolerable is it that those who profit by it should themselves defy it. Servia and Roumania both hold, the one in Macedonia and the other at the mouth of the Danube, territory inhabited by Bulgarian people. They hold it, moreover, with a harshness and a disregard of common human rights which overshadows anything the records of Prussia or of Russia. The Bulgarian church and the Bulgarian language are utterly suppressed, and this Macedonian population, better educated and more advanced than the village population of Servia proper, is held down under martial law, without a pretence of home rule, or so much as an illusory concession of electoral rights. Bulgaria, on the other hand, at once enfranchised even the Turks in her new territories, and has already allowed them to vote.
It is pleasant to express a facile enthusiasm for small nationalities, but for my part I feel that emotion chilled when I reflect that some of these small nationalities are themselves behaving like the largest and oldest of empires. The identity of Albania will probably be preserved by the ambitions of Italy. But one of two things must happen before Macedonia is liberated—either Bulgaria will make her peace with Russia by substituting Prince Boris for King Ferdinand, or else British statesmen must make up their minds to exact some small concession to principle from their Russian ally.