only divide the spoils by both making up their minds to give and take.  The actual lines this necessary compromise would follow, obviously depended on the degree of the allies’ success against Turkey in the common war that was yet to be fought, and Venezelos rose to the occasion.  He had the courage to offer Bulgaria the Greek alliance without stipulating for any definite minimum share in the common conquests, and the tact to induce her to accept it on the same terms.  Greece and Bulgaria agreed to shelve all territorial questions till the war had been brought to a successful close; and with the negotiation of this understanding (another case in which Venezelos achieved what Trikoupis had attempted only to fail) the Balkan League was complete.

The events that followed are common knowledge.  The Balkan allies opened the campaign in October, and the Turks collapsed before an impetuous attack.  The Bulgarians crumpled up the Ottoman field armies in Thrace at the terrific battle of Lule Burgas; the Serbians disposed of the forces in the Macedonian interior, while the Greeks effected a junction with the Serbians from the south, and cut their way through to Salonika.  Within two months of the declaration of war, the Turks on land had been driven out of the open altogether behind the shelter of the Chataldja and Gallipoli lines, and only three fortresses—­Adrianople, Yannina, and Scutari—­held out further to the west.  Their navy, closely blockaded by the Greek fleet within the Dardanelles, had to look on passively at the successive occupation of the Aegean Islands by Greek landing-parties.  With the winter came negotiations, during which an armistice reigned at Adrianople and Scutari, while the Greeks pursued the siege of Yannina and the Dardanelles blockade.  The negotiations proved abortive, and the result of the renewed hostilities justified the action of the Balkan plenipotentiaries in breaking them off.  By the spring of 1913 the three fortresses had fallen, and, under the treaty finally signed at London, Turkey ceded to the Balkan League, as a whole, all her European territories west of a line drawn from Ainos on the Aegean to Midia on the Black Sea, including Adrianople and the lower basin of the river Maritsa.

The time had now come for Greece and Bulgaria to settle their account, and the unexpected extent of the common gains ought to have facilitated their division.  The territory in question included the whole north coast of the Aegean and its immediate hinterland, and Venezelos proposed to consider it in two sections. (1) The eastern section, conveniently known as Thrace, consisted of the lower basin of the Maritsa.  As far as Adrianople the population was Bulgar, but south of that city it was succeeded by a Greek element, with a considerable sprinkling of Turkish settlements, as far as the sea.  Geographically, however, the whole district is intimately connected with Bulgaria, and the railway that follows the course of the Maritsa