646 THE GRECO-TURKISH WAR.

craft had the undisputed command of the sea. Vigorously used, this fleet might be an important factor in the war;for once hostilities began,the Turks could makeno use of transport by sea, and their supplies and reinforcements wouldhave to reach their base of operations at Salonika by a single line of railway which runs i.long the coast of Roumelia in easy reach of the sea, and be destroyed by the Greek fleet. Salonikaitselfmight not be safe from a vigorous attack.

been their goodwill, the malcontents could not attempt a rising until after a decisive Greek victory. Unhappily for the Greeks, they were counting on the insurrection to preparethe way for their victorious advance. They wanted te> repeat the Cretan programmeinMacedonia.

If there was to be a fight across the border against the Turk, it could not be very lon-r delayed. In March the snows were melting em the mountains, the streams were full of good water, theyoung grass wasspringingup,helping to solve theproblem of feedingcavalry, artillery, and transport horses and mules. The fight must be in the spring. If it were delayed even till the early summer, the whole country would be burned up by the heat, and the mere dearth of waterwould make itdifficult to move brigades and divisions through the hilly country of Epirus andMacedonia.

It was further hopedby the friends ot Greece that the other small states of the Balkan peninsula would join in the attack on the Sultan. Montenegro,Servia, and Bulgaria were all expected to put their armies in the field. The Turk was not merely to be defeated in Macedonia; he was to be swept, bag and baggage, out of Europe. There were even enthusiasts wholooked further afield, and hinted that defeat in Europe would mean a general crash inAsiaticTurkey:the Greek cities of Asia Minor would claimtheir oldheritage of freedom, Armenia would rise from her blood-stained ruins, the Druses of the Hauran and the Lebanon would proclaim the fall of Turkish power in Northern Syria, the flame of revolt alreadyablaze in Yemen would spread through Arabia. It was a splendid vision of the" might have been." It had the drawback of ignoring some of the fundamental factsof the situation. Though the " concert of Europe" had been a failure in Crete, there was no doubt that the two Powers chiefly interested,Austria-Hungary and Russia, wouldholdthe Balkan principalities in check, and that Russia would tolerate no renewed attempts at revolution in Armenia. Further, the whole scheme of "setting the Balkans on fire" depended on a successful outbreak in Macedonia. But the Macedonians were by no means unanimous for Greece. There werenon-Greek,evenanti-Greek elements in the Christian population, that looked to Belgrade andSofia, not to Athens,for guidance. Both Servia and Bulgaria felt they had quite as good a claim to Macedonia as Greece could raise, and neither was anxious to put itself under Greek leadership in an anti-Turkish crusade from which King George would gain more than his allies. Thus only a portion of the Macedonian population was at the command of the agents sent by the Ethnike Hetaireia. There had been an abortiverising in 189:, and since then the Turks had kept a large force in the province. So that, whatever may have From the middle of Februarythe concentration of the rivalarmieson the northern frontiers of Greece had been in progress. If anything, the Greeks would have gained by an early declaration of war, for now day by day the numerical superiority of the Turks was increasing ;and, so long as the state of war did not exist, they were able to make some use of the sea for supplying their armies. But the Greek Government was waiting for two things, and therefore held its hand. It wanted the war to be heralded by an insurrection in Macedonia, andit wantedthe actualdeclarationofhostilities to come from Constantinople, so that Greece might be regarded as acting only in self-defence, and might thus have a further claim on the sympathies of Europe. This reluctance to fire the first shot was shared by the Turks :for the Powers had issued a joint declaration that if either partybroke the peace the aggressor would not be allowed to obtain any territorial advantage evenin the event of victory.

But this waiting gamecould not be prolonged indefinitely, and in the first days of April the Ethnike Hetaireia began to use its irregular bands on the border in a way that was sure to provoke a Turkish declaration of war. It certainly acted with the connivance,and even the aid,of Greek regularofficers onthe frontier. How far the headquarters staff* of the Royal army was a party to these proceedings,how far tlae cabinet at Athens was involved in the policy of this powerful secret society,it is not yet possible to say.

Before telling the story of these border raids, it willbe well to describe the military situation!