The Balkans became a very important part of Buxton's career. In 1912, as Buxton had been warning,
war broke out between the newly independent Balkan countries of
Bulgaria,
Greece,
Montenegro and
Serbia and the
Ottoman Empire. Buxton was Chairman of the Balkan War Relief Committee. Shortly after the war had broken out, he visited Bulgaria with
Mabel St Clair Stobart, founder of the
Women's Sick and Wounded Convoy Corps. He helped her convince the government to agree to send an all-female medical unit to the war. During the
First World War (1914–1915), he went on a political mission with his brother Charles with the object of securing the neutrality of
Bulgaria. While in
Bucharest,
Romania in October 1914, an assassination attempt was made on them, by
Turkish activist,
Hasan Tahsin. Buxton was wounded and his brother was shot through the lung. They both recovered and continued to have an interest in the region. After their return, they published a book describing the region and its recent history,
The War and the Balkans (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1915). It begins with these words: from the boulevard named after the brothers Noel & Charles Buxton in
Sofia,
Bulgaria () No one now denies the supreme importance of the Balkans as a factor in the European War. It may be that there were deep-seated hostilities between the Great Powers which would have, in any case, produced a European War and that if the Balkans had not offered the occasion, the occasion would have been found elsewhere. The fact remains that the Balkans did provide the occasion. A great part of the Serbo-Croat race found itself under the Austrian Empire, and with its increasing consciousness of nationality became more and more dissatisfied with its lot. The independent kingdom of Serbia for its part has taken active steps to spread abroad the idea of uniting its brothers under its own flag. It was Austria's ambition to crush this dangerous little State, the one rallying point of a vigorous and determined race. Buxton's publications include:
Europe and the Turks (1907),
With the Bulgarian Staff (1913),
Travels and Reflections (1929); and he was part-author of
The Heart of the Empire (1902),
Travel and Politics in Armenia (1914),
The War and the Balkans (1915),
Balkan Problems and European Peace (1919), and
Oppressed Peoples and the League of Nations (1922). ==Family==