f Commons of the first weeks after the war was
declared.

Sir Edward Grey, then and now Foreign Secretary of State for Great
Britain, making the first announcement of the rupture between Turkey
and the Balkan States, said--exposing the views not only of his
Government but of the European concert as well--that Europe, being
taken unawares, would not permit any alteration of the Balkan
frontiers as the result of the war. After the first victories of the
Balkan allies we see Great Britain changing her policy. "The Balkan
victors shall not be deprived of the fruits of their victories,"
Premier Asquith was declaring in Parliament less than a fortnight
after Sir Edward spoke. In both these instances the British statesmen
were voicing the policy of the European concert taken as a whole. In
the first place, the Foreign Secretary was led into believing that
Turkey might prove victorious against the Balkan coalition, and the
warning about the immutability of the Balkan frontiers was only for
Turkey, in case her victorious armies were to cross the boundaries
into Bulgaria, Servia, Montenegro, and Greece.

When events marked the utter collapse of the Turkish campaign, Premier
Asquith came out with the declaration that Europe had agreed on a
policy safeguarding the interests of the victorious Balkan allies.
This policy was maintained as long as the Balkan victories were
confined in their first progress toward Ottoman territory, at the same
time leaving the great European interests unharmed. But when Servian
troops arrived at Durazzo, and Montenegro entered Scutari while Greece
kept pushing on to Avlona and Bulgaria stood before Tchataldja, the
European concert was no longer unanimous in safeguarding the interests
of the victors.

Austria, seeing her secular dream of a descent on Saloniki definitely
destroyed, and feeling at the same time the imperative need of making
impossible a Servian occupation of the Adriatic littoral, raised her
voice in favor of the creation of an autonomous Albania at the expense
of Servia, Montenegro, and Greece.

Italy, and then Germany, joined their ally in support of Albania.
Russia, at the same time not wishing to give any greater impetus to
the Bulgarian campaign, dexterously manipulated Rumania, which raised
at that time her first claims on Dobrudja. France, who for the last
twenty-five years has subjected her Near Eastern policy to the
exigencies of the Petrograd statesmen, agreed to the Albania