Full resolution (JPEG) - On this page / på denna sida - X. The Balkan war, 1912 (continued)
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1913] SERBIAN DEMANDS 133
an arrangement with the Greeks for absolutely free
transit to Salonika. Such a combination would naturally
constitute a violation of the Serbo-Bulgarian agreement;
but Belgrade justified this by saying to herself that the
Bulgarians would be compensated to a great extent by
the annexation of Adrianople and of the whole of Thrace,
as far as the Erghen, a conquest they had not dared to
dream of when they signed their agreement with the
Serbians.
I remember perfectly well the day on which, for the
first time, I heard my colleague Spala’ikovitch state these
claims. It was a foggy afternoon in December, and I
was taking my usual walk along the highroad of
Tsari-grad, and near the " fourth kilometre "—the usual goal
of my walks—I met Spala’ikovitch and we walked back
together towards the town. It was then that
Spala’ikovitch, complaining bitterly of the behaviour of the
Bulgarians towards the Serbians, described the
above-mentioned combination to me. I was very unfavourably
impressed by it; I realised the fanaticism with which
the Bulgarians looked on and maintained their right to
that part of Macedonia allotted to them by the
agreement of 1912, and I could picture the storm of
indignation which the new Serbian claims would raise in
Bulgaria, and how the relations of alliance between the
two countries would immediately change into bitter
hostility. Moreover, a treaty is a treaty, and to the one
signed by the Serbians and Bulgarians in February,
1912, Russia had morally set her seal; this agreement
had been made under our aegis, and we had taken part
in it, if not formally, at least by lending the support ot
our sympathies and consent. I mentioned all these
considerations to my Serbian colleague and entreated
him—and his Government—not to "start that hare."
But Spala’ikovitch did not appear to be too willing to
listen to reason.
Some time after, when the coup d’etat of
Constantinople had occurred and hostilities were beginning
again, the trend of opinion mentioned above became
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