But Mr. Wilson demurred.  A commercial outlet through foreign territory, he said, might possibly be as good as a direct outlet through one’s own territory in peace-time, but not in time of war, and, after all, one must bear in mind the needs of a country during hostilities.  In the mouth of the champion of universal peace that was an unexpected argument.  It had been employed by Italy in favor of her claim to Fiume.  Mr. Wilson then met it by invoking the economic requirements of Jugoslavia, and by declaring that the Treaty was being devised for peace, not for war, that the League of Nations would hinder wars, or at the very least supply the deficiencies of those states which had sacrificed strategical positions for humanitarian aims.  But in the case of Bulgaria he was taking what seems the opposite position and transgressing his own principle of nationality in order to maintain it.

Mr. Wilson, pursuing his line of argument, further pointed out that the Supreme Council had not accepted as sufficient for Poland an outlet through German territory, but had created the city-state of Dantzig in order to confer a greater degree of security upon the Polish republic.  To that M. Venizelos replied that there was no parity between the two instances.  Poland had no outlet to the sea except through Dantzig, and could not, therefore, allow that one to remain in the hands of an unfriendly nation, whereas Bulgaria already possessed two very commodious ports, Varna and Burgas, on the Black Sea, which becomes a free sea in virtue of the internationalization of the straits.  The possession of a third outlet on the AEgean could not, therefore, be termed a vital question for his protegee.  Thus the comparison with Poland was irrelevant.

If Poland, which is a very much greater state than Bulgaria, can live and prosper with a single port, and that not her own—­if Rumania, which is also a much more numerous and powerful nation, can thrive with a single issue to the sea, by what line of argument, M. Venizelos asked, can one prove that little Bulgaria requires three or four exits, and that her need justifies the abandonment to her tender mercies of seven hundred and fifty thousand Greeks and the violation of one of the fundamental principles underlying the new moral ordering.

Compliance with Bulgaria’s demand would prevent Greece from including within her boundaries the three-quarters of a million Greeks who have dwelt in Thrace for twenty-five centuries, preserving their nationality intact through countless disasters and tremendous cataclysms.  Further, the Greek Premier, taking a leaf from Wilson’s book, turned to the aspect which the problem would assume in war-time.  Bulgaria, he argued, is essentially a continental state, whose defense does not depend upon naval strength, whereas Greece contains an island population of nearly a million and a half and looks for protection against aggression chiefly to naval precautions.  In case of war, Bulgaria, if her claim to an issue on the AEgean were allowed, could with her submarines delay or hinder the transport and concentration in Macedonia of Greek forces from the islands and thus place Greece in a position of dangerous inferiority.