ite; and certain
important elements, both Moslem and Christian, had already developed too
mature ideas of separate nationality. With all its defects, however, the
new order did undoubtedly rest on a wider basis than the old, and its
organization was better conceived and executed. It retained some of the
sympathy of Europe which its beginnings had excited, and the western
powers, regarding its representative institutions as earnests of good
government, however ill they might work at the first, were disposed to
give it every chance.

Unfortunately the Young Turks were in a hurry to bring on their
millennium, and careless of certain neighbouring powers, not formidable
individually but to be reckoned with if united, to whom the prospect of
regenerated Osmanlis assimilating their nationals could not be welcome.
Had the Young Turks been content to put their policy of Ottomanization in
the background for awhile, had they made no more than a show of accepting
local distinctions of creed and politics, keeping in the meantime a tight
rein on the Old Turks, they might long have avoided the union of those
neighbours, and been in a better position to resist, should that union
eventually be arrayed against themselves.

But a considerable and energetic element among them belonged to the
nervous Levantine type of Osmanli, which is as little minded to compromise
as any Old Turk, though from a different motive. It elected to deal
drastically and at once with Macedonia, the peculiar object not only of
European solicitude but also of the interest of Bulgaria, Serbia, and
Greece. If ever a province required delicate handling it was this. It did
not get it. The interested neighbours, each beset by fugitives of its
oppressed nationals, protested only to be ignored or browbeaten. They drew
towards one another; old feuds and jealousies were put on one side; and at
last, in the summer of 1912, a Holy League of Balkan States, inspired by
Venezelos, the new Kretan Prime Minister of Greece, and by Ferdinand of
Bulgaria, was formed with a view to common action against the oppressor of
Greek, Serbian, and Bulgarian nationals in Macedonia. Montenegro, always
spoiling for a fight, was deputed to fire the train, and at the approach
of autumn the first Balkan war blazed up.

8

_Balkan War_

The course of the struggle is described elsewhere in this volume. Its
event illustrates the danger of an alliance succeeding beyond the
expectations in w