Faced with division ex post facto, the allies found their a priori agreement would not resolve the situation.  Bulgaria, the predominant partner and the most aggrieved, would neither recognize the others’ rights of possession nor honestly submit her claims to the only possible arbiter, the Tsar of Russia.  Finding herself one against two, she tried a coup de main on both fronts, failed, and brought on a second Balkan war, in which a new determining factor, Rumania, intervened at a critical moment to decide the issue against her.  The Ottoman armies recovered nearly all they had lost in eastern and central Thrace, including Adrianople, almost without firing a shot, and were not ill pleased to be quit of a desperate situation at the price of Macedonia, Albania, and western Thrace.

Defeated and impoverished, the Ottoman power came out of the war clinging to a mere remnant of its European empire—­one single mutilated province which did not pay its way.  With the lost territories had gone about one-eighth of the whole population and one-tenth of the total imperial revenue.  But when these heavy losses had been cut, there was nothing more of a serious nature to put to debit, but a little even to credit.  Ottoman prestige had suffered but slightly in the eyes of the people.  The obstinate and successful defence of the Chataldja lines and the subsequent recovery of eastern Thrace with Adrianople, the first European seat of the Osmanlis, had almost effaced the sense of Osmanli disgrace, and stood to the general credit of the Committee and the individual credit of its military leader, Enver Bey.  The loss of some thousands of soldiers and much material was compensated by an invaluable lesson in the faultiness of the military system, and especially the Redif organization.  The way was now clearer than before for re-making the army on the best European model, the German.  The campaign had not been long, nor, as wars go, costly to wage.  In the peace Turkey gained a new lease of life from the powers, and, profligate that she was, the promise of more millions of foreign money.

Over and above all this an advantage, which she rated above international guarantees, was secured to her—­the prospective support of the strongest military power in Europe.  The success of Serbia so menaced Germano-Austrian plans for the penetration of the Balkans, that the Central Powers were bound to woo Turkey even more lavishly than before, and to seek alliance where they had been content with influence.  In a strong Turkey resided all their hope of saving from the Slavs the way to the Mediterranean.  They had kept this policy in view for more than twenty years, and in a hundred ways, by introduction of Germans into the military organization, promotion of German financial enterprise, pushing of German commerce, pressure on behalf of German concessions which would entail provincial influence (for example, the construction of a transcontinental railway in Asia), those powers had been manifesting their interest in Turkey with ever-increasing solicitude.  Now they must attach her to themselves with hoops of steel and, with her help, as soon as might be, try to recast the Balkan situation.