W.W.1 (4)

Meanwhile, the Russians were having difficulties. They had millions
and millions of men, but not enough rifles to equip them all. They had
plenty of food but very little ammunition for their cannon. Austria
and Germany, on the other hand, had been manufacturing shot and shells
in enormous quantities, and from the month of May, when the Russians
had crossed the Carpathian Mountains and were threatening to pour down
on Buda-Pest and Vienna, they drove them steadily back until the first
of October, forcing them to retreat nearly three hundred miles.

In the meantime, the Balkans again became the seat of trouble. You
will recall that Bulgaria, who had grown proud because of her victory
over Turkey in the war of 1912, was too grasping when it came to a
division of the conquered territory. Thus she brought on a second war,
in the course of which Greece and Serbia defeated her, while Roumania
took a slice of her territory and the Turks recaptured the city of
Adrianople. The czar of Russia had done his best to prevent this
second Balkan war, even sending a personal telegram to Czar Ferdinand
of Bulgaria and to King Peter of Serbia, begging them for the sake of
the Slavic race, not to let their quarrels come to blows. Bulgaria,
confident of her ability to defeat Greece and Serbia, had disregarded
the Russians' pleadings, and as a result Russia did not interfere to
save her when her neighbors were robbing her of part of the land which
she had taken from Turkey.

Macedonia was the country which Bulgaria had
felt most sorry to lose, as its inhabitants were largely Bulgarian in
their blood, although many Greeks and Serbs were among them.
Therefore, just as Italy strove by war and diplomacy to add Trentino
to her nation, so Bulgaria now saw her chance to gain Macedonia from
Serbia. Accordingly, she asked the four great powers what they would
give her in case she entered the war on their side, and attacked
Turkey by way of Constantinople, while the French and English were
hammering at the forts along the Dardanelles.

England and France needed wheat, which Russia had in great quantities
at her ports on the Black Sea. On the other hand France and England,
by supplying Russia with rifles and ammunition, could strike a hard
blow at Germany.

The four powers, after much persuasion and brow-beating, finally
induced Serbia to agree to give up part of Serbian Macedonia to
Bulgaria. They further promised Bulgaria to give her the city of
Adrianople and the territory around it which Turkey had reconquered.
But Bulgaria was not easily satisfied. She wanted more than Serbia was
willing to give; she wanted, too, the port of Kavala, which Greece had
taken from her. This the allies could not promise.

In the meantime, Bulgaria was bargaining with Austria, Germany, and
Turkey. France, England, and Russia were ready to pay back Serbia for
the loss of Macedonia, by promising her Bosnia and Herzegovina in case
they won the war from Austria. In like fashion, Austria and Germany
promised Bulgaria some Turkish territory and also the southern part of
the present kingdom of Serbia, in case she entered the war on their
side.

Now the king of Bulgaria, or the czar, as he prefered to call himself,
is a German. (As these little countries won their independence from
Turkey, they almost always called in foreign princes to be their
kings. In this way it had come about that the king of Greece was a
prince of Denmark, the king of Roumania was a German of the
Hohenzollern family, while the czar of Bulgaria was a German of the
Coburg family, the same family which has furnished England and Belgium
with their kings.)

The Bulgarians themselves are members of the Greek Catholic Church,
and they have a very high regard for the czar of Russia, as the head
of that church. Czar Ferdinand had no such feeling, however. He wanted
to be the most powerful ruler in the Balkan states, and it made no
difference to him which side helped him to gain his object.