a triumphant campaign of one month, in which the Serbs
were joined by the Greeks, Bulgaria had to bow to
the inevitable. The Rumanian army had invaded
northern Bulgaria, bent on maintaining the Balkan
equilibrium and on securing compensation for having
observed neutrality during the war of 1912-13, and
famine reigned at Sofia. A conference was arranged
at Bucarest, and the treaty of that name was signed
there on August 10, 1913. By the terms of this
treaty Serbia retained the whole of northern and central
Macedonia, including Monastir and Okhrida, and the
famous
sandjak of Novi-Pazar was divided between
Serbia and Montenegro. Some districts of east-central
Macedonia, which were genuinely Bulgarian, were included
in Serbian territory, as Serbia naturally did not
wish, after the disquieting and costly experience
of June and July 1913, to give the Bulgarians another
chance of separating Greek from Serbian territory
by a fresh surprise attack, and the further the Bulgarians
could be kept from the Vardar river and railway the
less likelihood there was of this. The state
of feeling in the Germanic capitals and in Budapest
after this ignominious defeat of their protege Bulgaria
and after this fresh triumph of the despised and hated
Serbians can be imagined. Bitterly disappointed
first at seeing the Turks vanquished by the Balkan
League—their greatest admirers could not
even claim that the Turks had had any ‘moral’
victories—their chagrin, when they saw
the Bulgarians trounced by the Serbians, knew no bounds.
That the secretly prepared attack on Serbia by Bulgaria
was planned in Vienna and Budapest there is no doubt.
That Bulgaria was justified in feeling disappointment
and resentment at the result of the first Balkan War
no one denies, but the method chosen to redress its
wrongs could only have been suggested by the Germanic
school of diplomacy.
In Serbia and Montenegro the result of the two successive
Balkan Wars, though these had exhausted the material
resources of the two countries, was a justifiable
return of national self-confidence and rejoicing such
as the people, humiliated and impoverished as it had
habitually been by its internal and external troubles,
had not known for very many years. At last Serbia
and Montenegro had joined hands. At last Old Serbia
was restored to the free kingdom. At last Skoplje,
the mediaeval capital of Tsar Stephen Du[)s]an, was
again in Serbian territory. At last one of the
most important portions of unredeemed Serbia had been
reclaimed. Amongst the Serbs and Croats of Bosnia,
Hercegovina, Dalmatia, Croatia, Slavonia, and southern
Hungary the effect of the Serbian victories was electrifying.
Military prowess had been the one quality with which
they, and indeed everybody else, had refused to credit
the Serbians of the kingdom, and the triumphs of the
valiant Serbian peasant soldiers immediately imparted
a heroic glow to the country whose very name, at any
rate in central Europe, had become a byword, and a