Thus was started the series of outbreaks which recently convulsed southeastern Europe.[1] Seldom has a war been so unjustifiable, so obviously forced upon a weaker nation for the sake of aggrandizement, as that of Italy against the “Young Turks” who were struggling to reform their land.  The Italians seized the last of Turkey’s African possessions, with scarce a shadow of excuse.  This increase of territory appealed to the pride and so-called “patriotism” of the Italian people.  The easy victories in Africa gratified their love of display; and many of the ignorant poor who had been childish in their attachment to the romantic ideals of Socialism now turned with equal childishness to applaud and support their “glorious” government.  Yet even here Democracy made its gain; for under shelter of this popularity the government granted a demand it had long withheld.  Male suffrage, previously very limited in Italy, was made universal.

[Footnote 1:  See The Turkish-Italian War, page 140.]

The humiliation of Turkey in this Italian war led to another and far larger contest, and to that practical elimination of Turkey from European affairs which had been anticipated for over a century.  The Balkan peoples, half freed from Turkey in 1876, took advantage of her weakness to form a sudden alliance and attack her all together.[2] This, also, was a Democratic movement, a people’s war against their oppressors.  The Bulgars, most recently freed of the victims of Turkish tyranny, hated their opponents with almost a madman’s frenzy.  The Servians wished to free their brother Serbs and to strengthen themselves against the persistent encroachments of Austria.  The Greeks, defeated by the Turks in 1897, were eager for revenge, hopeful of drawing all their race into a single united State.  Never was a war conducted with greater dash and desperation or more complete success.  The Turks were swept out of all their European possessions except for Constantinople itself; and they yielded to a peace which left them nothing of Europe except the mere shore line where the continents come together.

[Footnote 2:  See The Overthrow of Turkey, page 282.]

But then there followed what most of the watchers had expected, a division among the victorious allies.  Most of these were still half savage, victims of centuries of barbarity.  In their moment of triumph they turned upon one another, snarling like wild beasts over the spoil.  Bulgaria, the largest, fiercest, and most savage of the little States, tried to fight Greece and Servia together.  She failed, in a strife quite as bloody as that against Turkey.  The neighboring State of Roumania also took part against the Bulgars.  So did the Turks, who, seeing the helplessness of their late tigerish opponent, began snatching back the land they had ceded to Bulgaria.[1] The exhausted Bulgars, defeated upon every side, yielded to their many foes.

[Footnote 1:  See The Second Balkan War, page 350.]