The results of the one month’s war were registered in the Treaty of Bucarest.  Many of its provisions were unhappily, though naturally, inspired by the spirit of revenge; but the Greek premier, at any rate, showed a statesmanlike self-restraint in the negotiations.  Venezelos advocated the course of taking no more after the war than had been demanded before it.  He desired to leave Bulgaria a broad zone of Aegean littoral between the Struma and Maritsa rivers, including ports capable of satisfying Bulgaria’s pressing need for an outlet towards the south.  But, in the exasperated state of public feeling, even Venezelos’ prestige failed to carry through his policy in its full moderation.  King George had just been assassinated in his year of jubilee, in the streets of the long-desired Salonika; and King Constantine, his son, flushed by the victory of Kilkish and encouraged by the Machiavellian diplomacy of his Hohenzollern brother-in-law, insisted on carrying the new Greek frontier as far east as the river Mesta, and depriving Bulgaria of Kavala, the natural harbour for the whole Bulgarian hinterland in the upper basins of the Mesta and Struma.

It is true that Greece did not exact as much as she might have done.  Bulgaria was still allowed to possess herself of a coastal strip east of the Mesta, containing the tolerable harbours of Porto Lagos and Dedeagatch, which had been occupied during hostilities by the Greek fleet, and thus her need for an Aegean outlet was not left unsatisfied altogether; while Greece on her part was cleverly shielded for the future from those drawbacks involved in immediate contact with Turkish territory, which she had so often experienced in the past.  It is also true that the Kavala district is of great economic value in itself—­it produces the better part of the Turkish Regie tobacco crop—­and that on grounds of nationality alone Bulgaria has no claim to this prize, since the tobacco-growing peasantry is almost exclusively Greek or Turk, while the Greek element has been extensively reinforced during the last two years by refugees from Anatolia and Thrace.

Nevertheless, it is already clear that Venezelos’ judgement was the better.  The settlement at the close of the present war may even yet bring Bulgaria reparation in many quarters.  If the Ruman and South Slavonic populations at present included in the complexus of Austria-Hungary are freed from their imprisonment and united with the Serbian and Rumanian national states, Bulgaria may conceivably recover from the latter those Bulgarian lands which the Treaty of Bucarest made over to them in central Macedonia and the Dobrudja, while it would be still more feasible to oust the Turk again from Adrianople, where he slipped back in the hour of Bulgaria’s prostration and has succeeded in maintaining himself ever since.  Yet no amount of compensation in other directions and no abstract consideration for the national principle will induce Bulgaria to renounce her claim on Greek Kavala.  Access to this district is vital to Bulgaria from the geographical point of view, and she will not be satisfied here with such rights as Serbia enjoys at Salonika—­free use of the port and free traffic along a railway connecting it with her own hinterland.  Her heart is set on complete territorial ownership, and she will not compose her feud with Greece until she has had her way.