INTEKNATIONAL RELATIONS	493
Whenever the non-Moslem races have made a show of
independence, the Ottoman Government has curbed their
initiative by means of massacres or deportation. A
strange fact which occurs at once to the student of Turk-
ish history is that it was not until the first Balkan War
in 1912 that the neighboring Balkan countries, formerly
a part of the Turkish Empire, formed a coalition against
the Turks; and yet this coalition immediately broke down
on account of the division of the spoils. Afterwards, in
the second Balkan War, one of the Christian nations,
Bulgaria, renewed the war in which her Christian op-
ponents—Greece, Romania and Serbia—welcomed Tur-
key as an ally. Despite the tremendous extent of the
Ottoman Empire in the earlier centuries, the subject peo-
ples made no concerted effort to abolish Turkish rule.^1
It is hopeless to attempt to prophesy Turkey's future
relations with outside powers. No permanent political
ground floor' * in Mohammedan countries, has been the principal factor in
European alliances and European conflicts since the Congress of Vienna?
Napoleon's lack of success in holding Alexander after the Tilsit inter-
view; the impairment of the Holy Alliance over the questions raised by
the War of Greek Independence, the policy of England toward France
in regard to Mohammed Ali; the Crimean War and the treaty of Paris;
French intervention in Syria; Bismarck's bribe to Eussia in 1870; the
attitude of England and Austria toward Eussia in the Turkish War of
1877 and the Congress of Berlin; Italy^7s entrance into the Triple Alliance
after Prance took Tunis; the Anglo-French Agreement of 1904, with
Egypt and Morocco as the principal "compensations"; the Anglo-Eussian
Agreement of 1907, for which Persia paid the piper; Russia's use of her
opportunity in Serbia after Austria-Hungary annexed Bosnia and Herze-
govina; the effect of maritime considerations upon Italy's international
relations when she found herself in Tripoli and Ehodes; the change in
the attitude of the Balkan States toward one another when the Powers
imposed the Albanian embargo—had these events no part in preparing
and precipitating the Great War? (Herbert Adams Gibbons, "The Ee-
construction of Poland and the Near East," pages 104-106.)
*Lord Eversley writes: "There can be little doubt that if the Greeks,
Bulgarians and Serbians had combined to resist the invading Moslems,
their efforts would have been successful. But, Greeks and Bulgarians,
Greeks and Serbians, hated one another more than they feared and hated
the Ottoman Empire. . . . Want of union of the Christian states was a
main cause of the servitude of all of them for nearly five hundred years
under Turkey'sjule." ("The Turkish Empire," page 373.)