United States or Tanzania ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
"What confidence can be commanded by men who, asserting one week that the ultimate of human wisdom has been attained in a document, confess the next week that the document is frail? When are we to believe that their confessions are at an end?" M. Affonso Costa, who shortly before had succeeded the Minister of Foreign Affairs, M. Monas Egiz. Dedeagatch.
Daneff to the Greek demands was to the effect that Greece already had one good port on the Mediterranean, while Bulgaria had none, and that Bulgaria would have to spend immense sums on either Kavala or Dedeagatch to make them of any great value. Moreover, as a result of the war, Greece would get Crete, the Aegean islands, and a good slice of the mainland.
There was nothing for Bulgaria to do but yield, and on September 3d General Savoff and M. Tontcheff started for Constantinople to treat with the Turkish government for a new boundary line. They pleaded for the Maritza as the boundary between the two States, the possession of the west bank being essential for railway connection between Bulgaria and Dedeagatch, her only port on the Aegean.
As already stated, the rumors of military action on the part of Russia against Bulgaria had proved unfounded and a second bombardment of Varna had had no effect on the course of the campaign. Italy had done nothing in the Balkans as yet, except to fire a few shells into Dedeagatch on November 11, 1915.
Even railway communication with her one new port of Dedeagatch has been denied her. Bulgaria is in despair, but full of hate. However, with a reduced population and a bankrupt treasury, she will need many years to recuperate before she can hope to upset the new arrangement.
Athos, is the Bulgarian port, Dedeagatch, to which runs a branch of the main railway from Sofia to Constantinople. The country here is low and swampy, the port itself being little more than a boat landing. Just below this point, across the Gulf of Saros, is the peninsula of Gallipoli, where a critical phase of the war was fought.
Geographically, however, the whole district is intimately connected with Bulgaria, and the railway that follows the course of the Maritsa down to the port of Dedeagatch offers a much-needed economic outlet for large regions already within the Bulgarian frontier.
Bulgaria was still allowed to possess herself of a coastal strip east of the Mesta, containing the tolerable harbours of Porto Lagos and Dedeagatch, which had been occupied during hostilities by the Greek fleet, and thus her need for an Aegean outlet was not left unsatisfied altogether; while Greece on her part was cleverly shielded for the future from those drawbacks involved in immediate contact with Turkish territory, which she had so often experienced in the past.
At that moment King Ferdinand of Bulgaria was endeavoring to get Turkey to sign a treaty, for which negotiations had been going on secretly for some months, by which Bulgaria was to obtain all the Turkish land on the west side of the Maritza River, and so free the Bulgarian railroad to Dedeagatch from Turkish interference.
A convention was signed in Stamboul between the Turkish and Bulgarian Governments by which the former ceded to Bulgaria the Turkish section of the Dedeagatch railway that is to say, the whole line that runs on Turkish territory, together with the stations of Dimotika, Kulela-Burgas, and Karagatch.
Word Of The Day