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And the extreme limit, on the south and east, of Turkish territory assigned to Servia by this treaty was fixed by a line starting from Ochrida on the borders of Albania and running northeastward across the Vardar River a few miles above Veles and thence, following the same general direction, through Ovcepolje and Egri Palanka to Golema Vreh on the frontier of Bulgaria a terminus some twenty miles southeast of the meeting point of Servia, Macedonia, and Bulgaria.
And if the rest of Turkey in Europe up to the Adriatic were conquered by the two Allies, the Ochrida-Golema Vreh line would make a fairly equitable division between them of the spoils of war. But with Albania denied to Servia and Thrace occupied by Bulgaria, conditions had wholly changed.
During the war with Turkey the Servian armies had paid no attention to the Ochrida-Golema Vreh line. The great victory over the Turks at Kumanovo, by which the Slav defeat at Kossovo five hundred years earlier was avenged, was, it is true, won at a point north of the line in question.
Compelled by the Great Powers to withdraw her troops from Albania, after they had triumphantly made their way to the Adriatic, she was now requested by Bulgaria to evacuate Central Macedonia up to the Ochrida-Golema Vreh line in accordance with the terms of the treaty between the two countries which was ratified in March, 1912.
But this arrangement between Greece and Servia would leave no territory for Bulgaria in Central and Western Macedonia! Yet Servia had solemnly bound herself by treaty not to ask for any Turkish territory below the Ochrida-Golema Vreh line. There was no similar treaty with Greece, but Bulgaria regarded the northern frontier of New Greece as a matter for adjustment between the two governments.
Servia, withdrawn behind the Ochrida-Golema Vreh line in accordance with the terms of the treaty, would at any rate have nothing to say about the matter. Now if you imagine a base line drawn from Saloniki to Golema Vreh, you have an equilateral triangle resting on Ochrida as apex.
These were additional causes of dissension between the Allies. But the primary disruptive force was the attraction, the incompatible attraction, exerted on them all by that central Macedonian triangle whose apex rested on the ruins of Czar Samuel's palace at Ochrida and whose base extended from Saloniki to Golema Vreh.
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