down to the port of Dedeagatch offers a much-needed economic outlet for large regions already within the Bulgarian frontier.  Venezelos, then, was prepared to resign all Greek claims to the eastern section, in return for a corresponding concession by Bulgaria in the west. (2) The western section, consisting of the lower basins of the Vardar and Struma, lay in the immediate neighbourhood of the former frontier of Greece; but the Greek population of Salonika,[1] and the coast-districts east of it, could not be brought within the Greek frontier without including as well a certain hinterland inhabited mainly by Bulgarians.  The cession of this was the return asked for by Venezelos, and he reduced it to a minimum by abstaining from pressing the quite well-founded claims of Greece in the Monastir district, which lay further inland still.

[Footnote 1:  The predominant element within the walls of Salonika itself is neither Greek nor Bulgarian, but consists of about 80,000 of those Spanish-speaking Jews who settled in Turkey as refugees during the sixteenth century.]

But Venezelos’ conciliatory proposals met with no response from the Bulgarian Government, which was in an ‘all or nothing’ mood.  It swallowed Venezelos’ gift of Thrace, and then proceeded to exploit the Bulgar hinterland of Salonika as a pretext for demanding the latter city as well.  This uncompromising attitude made agreement impossible, and it was aggravated by the aggressive action of the Bulgarian troops in the occupied territory, who persistently endeavoured to steal ground from the Greek forces facing them.  In May there was serious fighting to the east of the Struma, and peace was only restored with difficulty.  Bulgarian relations with Serbia were becoming strained at the same time, though in this case Bulgaria had more justice on her side.  Serbia maintained that the veto imposed by Austria upon her expansion to the Adriatic, in coincidence with Bulgaria’s unexpected gains on the Maritsa to which Serbian arms had contributed, invalidated the secret treaty of the previous summer, and she announced her intention of retaining the Monastir district and the line of the Salonika railway as far as the future frontier of Greece.  Bulgaria, on the other hand, shut her eyes to Serbia’s necessity for an untrammelled economic outlet to one sea-board or the other, and took her stand on her strictly legal treaty-rights.  However the balance of justice inclined, a lasting settlement could only have been reached by mutual forbearance and goodwill; but Bulgaria put herself hopelessly in the wrong towards both her allies by a treacherous night-attack upon them all along the line, at the end of June 1913.  This disastrous act was the work of a single political party, which has since been condemned by most sections of Bulgarian public opinion; but the punishment, if not the responsibility for the crime, fell upon the whole nation.  Greece and Serbia had already been drawn into an understanding by their common danger.  They now declared war against Bulgaria in concert.  The counter-strokes of their armies met with success, and the intervention of Rumania made Bulgaria’s discomfiture certain.