Twenty Years Of Balkan Tangle Part 9

THE Macedonian rising of 1903 was a purely Bulgar movement. As is invariably the case with such risings, it was ill-planned; and untrained peasants and irregular forces never in the long run have a chance against regulars. Its history has been told more than once in detail. I need only say that, instead of revolting simultaneously, one village rose after another, and the Turkish forces rode round, burning and pillaging in the usual fashion of punitive expeditions.

Thousands of refugees fled into Bulgaria--thus emphasizing their nationality--and within the Bulgarian frontier organized komitadji bands, which carried on a desultory guerrilla war with the Turkish forces for some time. But it was soon obvious that, unless strongly aided by some outside Power, the rising must fail.

The most important point to notice now is that not a single one of these many revolutionaries fled to Serbia, or claimed that they were Serbs. They received arms, munitions and other help from Bulgaria, from Serbia nothing. They were rising to make Big Bulgaria, not Great Serbia. Serbia now claims these people as Serbs. She did not then extend one finger to a.s.sist them.

Milosh would not help the Greeks to obtain freedom because he did not want a large Greece. Similarly, Serbia and Greece in 1903 did nothing at all to aid the Macedonian revolutionaries. Most of us who have worked in old days to free the people from the Turkish yoke have now recognized what a farce that tale was. Not one of the Balkan people ever wanted to "free" their "Christian brethren"

unless there was a chance of annexing them.

The Bulgar rising died down as winter came on and acute misery reigned in the devastated districts. In December, as one who had some experience of Balkan life, I was asked to go out on relief work under the newly formed Macedonian Relief Committee. The invitation came to me as an immense surprise and with something like despair.

I had had my allotted two months' holiday. I had never before been asked to take part in any public work, and I wanted to go more than words could express. Circ.u.mstances had forced me to refuse so many openings. I was now forty, and this might be my last chance.

The Fates were kind, and I started for Salonika at a few days'

notice, travelling almost straight through. Serbia was depressed and anxious, I gathered from my fellow travellers, as we pa.s.sed through it. Bishop Firmilian, whose election to the see of Uskub the Serbs had with great difficulty obtained in June 1902, had just died. The train was full of ecclesiastics going to his funeral at Uskub.

Russia had aided his election very considerably. It had coincided with Russia's support of Petar Karageorgevitch to the throne of Serbia, and all was part of Russia's new Balkan plans in which Serbia was to play a leading role.

Petar was not received by Europe. Firmilian was dead. Serbia was anxious. They buried Firmilian on Christmas Day in the morning, dreading the while lest they were burying the bishopric too, so far as Serbia was concerned--and I reached Salonika that night.

The tale of the relief work I have told elsewhere. I will now touch only on the racial questions.

In Monastir I tried to buy some Serb books, for I was hard at work studying the language, and had a dictionary and grammar with me.

Serbian propaganda in Monastir was, however, then only in its infancy, and nothing but very elementary school books were to be got. The Bulgars had a big school and church. If any one had suggested that Monastir was Serb or ever likely to be Serb, folk would have thought him mad--or drunk. The pull was between Greek and Bulgar, there was no question of the Serbs. There was a large "Greek" population, both in town and country, but of these a very large proportion were Vlachs, many were South Albanians, others were Slavs. Few probably were genuine Greeks. But they belonged to the Greek branch of the Orthodox Church, and were reckoned Greek in the census. Those Slavs who called themselves Serbs, and the Serb schoolmasters who had come for propaganda purposes, all went to the Greek churches.

As for the hatred between the Greek and Bulgar Churches--it was so intense that no one from West Europe who has not lived in the land with it, can possibly realize it. The Greeks under Turkish rule had been head of the Orthodox Christians. True to Balkan type, they had dreamed only of the reconstruction of the Big Byzantine Empire, and had succeeded, by hooks and crooks innumerable, in suppressing and replacing the independent Serb and Bulgar Churches.

But Russia, when she began to scheme for Pan-Slavism, had no sympathy with Big Byzantium, and was aware that when you have an ignorant peasantry to deal with, a National Church is one of the best means for producing acute Nationalism. Under pressure from Russia, who was supported by other Powers--some of whom really believed they were aiding the cause of Christianity--the Sultan in 1870 created by firman the Bulgarian Exarchate. Far from "promoting Christianity" the result of this was that the Greek Patriarch excommunicated the Exarch and all his followers, and war was declared between the two Churches. They had no difference of any kind or sort as regards doctrine, dogma, or ceremonial. The difference was, and is, political and racial.

Never have people been more deluded than have been the pious of England about the Balkan Christians. In Montenegro I had heard all the stock tales of the Christian groaning under the Turkish yoke, and had believed them. I learnt in Macedonia the strange truth that, on the contrary, it was the Christian Churches of the Balkans that kept the Turk in power. Greek and Serb were both organizing komitadjis bands and sending them into Macedonia, not to "liberate Christian brethren"--no. That was the last thing they wanted. But to aid the Turk in suppressing "Christian brethren."

I condoled with the Bulgar Bishop of Ochrida on the terrible ma.s.sacre of his flock by the Turks. He replied calmly that to him it had been a disappointment. He had expected quite half the population to have been killed, and then Europe would have been forced to intervene. Not a quarter had perished, and he expected it would all have to be done over again. "Next time there will be a great slaughter. All the foreign consuls and every foreigner will be killed too. It is their own fault." Big Bulgaria was to be constructed at any price.

I suggested that, had the Bulgars risen in 1897 when the Greek made war on the Turk, the whole land could have been freed. He replied indignantly, "I would rather the land should remain for ever under the Turk than that the Greeks should ever obtain a kilometre."

Later I met his rival, the Greek Bishop. He, too, loudly lamented the suffering of the wretched Christian under the Turkish yoke. To him I suggested that if Greece aided the Bulgar rising the Christian might now be freed. The mere idea horrified him. Sooner than allow those swine of Bulgars to obtain any territory he would prefer that the land should be for ever Turkish.

Such was the Christianity which at that time was being prayed for in English Churches.

Bulgars came to me at night and begged poison with which to kill Greeks. Greeks betrayed Bulgar komitadjis to the Turkish authorities. The Serbs sided with the Greeks. They had not then the smallest desire "to liberate their Slav brethren in Macedonia." No.

They were doing all they could to prevent the Bulgars liberating them. Of Serb conduct a vivid picture is given by F. Wilson in a recently published book on the Serbs she looked after as refugees during the late war. She gives details taken down from the lips of a Serbian schoolmaster, who describes how he began Serb propaganda in Macedonia in 1900. "We got the children. We made them realize they were Serbs. We taught them their history. . . . Masters and children, we were like secret conspirators." When the Bulgars resisted this propaganda he describes how a gang of thirty Serbs "met in a darkened room and swore for each Serb killed to kill two Bulgars." Lots were drawn for who should go forth to a.s.sa.s.sinate.

"We broke a loaf in two and each ate a piece. It was our sacrament.

Our wine was the blood of the Bulgarians."

A small Serb school had recently been opened in Ochrida, and I was invited there to the Feast of St. Sava. The whole Serb population of Ochrida a.s.sembled. We were photographed together. Counting the Greek priest, the schoolmaster and his family, who were from Serbia, and myself, we were a party of some fifty people. Ochrida had a very mixed population. More than half were Moslems, most of them Albanians. Of the Christians the Bulgars formed the largest unit, but there were many Vlachs. These were reckoned as Greeks by the Greeks, but were already showing signs of claiming their own nationality. The Serbs were by far the smallest group, so small in fact as to be then negligible.

The Kaimmakam was an Albanian Moslem, Mehdi Bey, who kept the balance well under very difficult circ.u.mstances, and to-day is one of the leading Albanian Nationalists. He a.s.serted always that Ochrida should, of right, belong to Albania. Albanian it was indeed considered until the rise of the Rus...o...b..lgar movement. As late as 1860 we find the Lakes of Ochrida and Presba referred to as the Albanian Lakes by English travellers.

Through the winter of 1903-4 trouble simmered, arrests were made, murders occurred. I learnt the ethics of murder, which, in Macedonia, were simply: "When a Moslem kills a Moslem so much the better. When a Christian kills a Christian it is better not talked about, because people at home would not understand it; when a Christian kills a Moslem it is a holy and righteous act. When a Moslem kills a Christian it is an atrocity and should be telegraphed to all the papers."

In February 1904 the Russo-j.a.panese quarrel, which had been for some time growing hotter, burst into sudden war, and the whole complexion of Balkan affairs changed.

At the beginning the Bulgar leaders took it for granted that Russia was invincible, and antic.i.p.ated speedy and complete victory for her.

They were also supplied with false news, and refused to credit at first any Russian defeat. The Bishop of Ochrida was furious when I reported to him the sinking of the Petropalovski, and fiercely declared that the war was in reality an Anglo-Russian one, and that j.a.pan was merely our tool.

When riding on relief work among the burnt villages it was easy to learn the great part Russia had taken in building up the Bulgar rising in Macedonia. The same tale was told in almost each. Once upon a time, not so very long ago, a rich, n.o.ble and generous gentleman had visited the village. He was richer than you could imagine; had paid even a white medjid for a cup of coffee; had called the headmen and the priest together and had asked them if they would like a church of their own in the village. And in due time the church had been built. Followed, a list of silver candlesticks, vestments, etc., presented by this same n.o.bleman--the Russian Consul. The Turks had looted the treasures. Could I cause them to be restored? Sometimes the Consul had had an old church restored. Sometimes he had given money to establish a school. Always he stood for the people as something almost omnipotent.

In August M. Rostovsky, the Russian Consul at Monastir, had been murdered. There was nothing political in the affair. The Russian had imagined the land was already his, and that he was dealing with humble mouzhiks. He carried a heavy riding-whip and used it when he chose. I was told by an eye-witness that on one occasion he so savagely flogged a little boy who had ventured to hang on behind the consular carriage that a Turkish gendarme intervened. One day he lashed an Albanian soldier. The man waited his opportunity and shot Rostovsky dead on the main road near the Consulate. Russia treated the murder as a political one, and demanded and obtained apology and reparation of the Turkish Government. The Consul's remains were transported to the coast with full honours. All this for a Russian Consul in Turkey. Truly one man may steal a horse and another not look over a fence. Russia mobilized when Austria insisted on enquiry into the murder of an Archduke. So well was Rostovsky's funeral engineered that the native Slav peasants looked on him as a martyr to the sacred Slav cause, not as a man who had brought his punishment on himself.

Russia was not, however, the only Power in Monastir. It seethed with consuls. And the most prominent was Krai, the Austrian Consul-General, a very energetic and scheming man who "ran" Austria for all she was worth, and was a thorn in the side of the British Consul, whom he endeavoured to thwart at every turn. He persuaded the American missionaries, who were as innocent as babes about European politics, though they had pa.s.sed thirty years in the Balkan Peninsula, that he and not the Englishman could best forward their interests, and they foolishly induced the American Government to transfer them and their schools to Austrian protection. And he pushed himself to the front always, declaring that he had far more power to aid the relief work and trying to make the English consult him instead of their own representative. This annoyed me, and I therefore never visited him at all. Up country among the revolted villages it was clear that the luckless people had been induced to rise by the belief that, as in 1877, Russia would come to their rescue! But as time pa.s.sed, and Russia herself realized that the j.a.panese were a tough foe, it became more and more apparent that no further rising would take place in the spring. The Balkan Orthodox Lenten fast is so severe that a rising before Easter was always improbable. This Easter would see none.. I remembered with curious clearness the words of the Pole who gave me my first Serbian lessons. "Russia is corrupt right through. If there is a war--Russia will be like that!" and he threw a rag of paper into the basket scornfully. His has been a twice true prophecy. The Bulgarian Bishop of Ochrida still believed firmly in Russia's invincibility. Furious when I refused to have cartridges, etc., hidden in my room--which the Turks never searched--he turned on me and declared that England was not a Christian country and would be wiped out by Holy Russia, who had already taken half j.a.pan and would soon take the rest and all India too.

By the middle of March I was quite certain no rising would take place. The Foreign Office in London still expected one, and notified all relief workers up country to wind up work and return. The others did, but I stayed and managed to ride right through Albania.

CHAPTER NINE.

ALBANIA

"Where rougher climes a n.o.bler race displayed."--BYRON.

Study of the Macedonian question had shown me that one of the most important factors of the Near Eastern question was the Albanian, and that the fact that he was always left out of consideration was a constant source of difficulty. The Balkan Committee had recently been formed, and I therefore decided to explore right through Albania, then but little known, in order to be able to acquire first-hand information as to the aspirations and ideas of the Albanians.

Throughout the relief work in Macedonia we had employed Albanians in every post of trust--as interpreters, guides, kava.s.ses and clerks.

The depot of the British and Foreign Bible Society at Monastir was entirely in Albanian hands. The Albanian was invaluable to the Bible Society, and the Bible Society was invaluable to the Albanians.

Albania was suffering very heavily. Every other of the Sultan subject races had its own schools--schools that were, moreover, heavily subsidized from abroad. The Bulgarian schools in particular were surprisingly well equipped. Each school was an active centre of Nationalist propaganda. All the schoolmasters were revolutionary leaders. All were protected by various consulates which insisted on opening new schools and protested when any were interfered with.

Only when it was too late to stop the schools did the Turks perceive their danger. First came the school, then the revolution, then foreign intervention--and another piece of the Turkish' Empire was carved off. This had happened with Serbia, Greece and Bulgaria. The Turks resolved it should not happen in the case of Albania.

Albania was faced by two enemies. Not only the Turk dreaded the uprising of Albania, but Russia had already determined that the Balkan Peninsula was to be Slav and Orthodox. Greece as Orthodox might be tolerated. No one else.

The Turkish Government prohibited the printing and teaching of the Albanian language under most severe penalties. Turkish schools were established for the Moslem Albanians, and every effort made to bring up the children to believe they were Turks. In South Albania, where the Christians belong to the Orthodox Church, the Greeks were encouraged to found schools and work a Greek propaganda. The Turks hoped thus to prevent the rise of a strong national Albanian party.

The Greek Patriarch went so far as to threaten with excommunication any Orthodox Albanian who should use the "accursed language" in church or school. In North Albania, where the whole of the Christians are Catholics, the Austrians, who had been charged by Europe with the duty of protecting the Catholics, established religious schools in which the teaching was in Albanian, and with which the Turkish Government was unable to interfere. The Jesuits, under Austrian protection, established a printing press in Scutari for the printing in Albanian of religious books. But this movement, being strictly Catholic, was confined to the North. It was, moreover, initiated with the intent of winning over the Northern Christians to Austria, and was directed rather to dividing the Christians from the Moslems and to weakening rather than strengthening the sense of Albanian nationality. The results of this we will trace later.

None of these efforts on the part of Albania's enemies killed the strong race instinct which has enabled the Albanian to survive the Roman Empire and the fall of Byzantium, outlive the fleeting mediaeval Empires of Bulgar and Serb, and finally emerge from the wreck of the mighty Ottoman Empire, retaining his language, his Customs and his primitive vigour--a rock over which the tides of invasion have washed in vain.

When threatened with loss of much Albanian territory by the terms of the Treaty of Berlin, the Albanians rose in force and demanded the recognition of their rights. There is a popular ballad in Albanian cursing Lord Beaconsfield, who went to Berlin in order to ruin Albania and give her lands to her pitiless enemy the Slav. The Treaty did nothing for Albania, but it caused the formation of the Albanian League and a national uprising by means of which the Albanians retained some of the said lands in spite of the Powers.

This induced Abdul Hamid for a short time to relax the ban upon the Albanian language. At once national schools were opened, and books and papers came from Albanian presses. The Sultan, alarmed by the rapid success of the national movement, again prohibited the language. Schoolmasters were condemned to long terms of imprisonment. As much as fifteen years was the sentence that could be, and was, inflicted upon any one found in possession of an Albanian paper, and the Greek priests entered enthusiastically into the persecution. But Albanian was not killed. Leaders of the movement went to Bucarest, to Sofia, to Brussels, to London, and set to work. With much difficulty and at great personal risk books and papers published abroad were smuggled into Albania by Moslem Albanian officials, many of whom suffered exile and confiscation of all their property in consequence.

But there was another means by which printed Albanian was brought into the country. During the short interval when the printing of Albanian had been permitted, a translation of the Bible was made for the British and Foreign Bible Society. This Society had the permission of the Turkish Government to circulate its publications freely. When the interdict on the language was again imposed a nice question arose. Had the Society the right to circulate Albanian Testaments? The Turkish Government had not the least objection to the Gospels--only they must not be in Albanian. A constant war on the subject went on. The director of the Bible Depot in Monastir was an Albanian of high standing both as regards culture and energy.

Grasping the fact that by means of these publications an immense national propaganda could be worked, he spared no pains, and by carefully selecting and training Albanian colporteurs, whose business it was to learn in which districts the officials were dangerous, where they were sympathetic, and where there were Nationalists willing themselves to risk receiving and distributing books, succeeded to a remarkable degree.

The Greeks, of course, opposed the work. A Greek Bishop is, in fact, declared to have denounced the dissemination of "the New Testament and other works contrary to the teaching of the Holy and Orthodox Church." Nevertheless it continued. It was with one of the Society's colporteurs that I rode through Albania. I was thus enabled everywhere to meet the Nationalists and to observe how very widely spread was the movement. The journey was extremely interesting, and as exciting in many respects as Borrow's Bible in Spain.

Leaving Monastir in a carriage and driving through much of the devastated Slav area I was greatly struck on descending into the plain land by Lake Malik to see the marked difference in the type of man that swung past on the road. I saw again the lean, strong figure and the easy stride of the Albanian, the man akin to my old friends of Scutari, a wholly different type from the Bulgar peasants among whom I had been working, and I felt at home.

Koritza, the home of Nationalism in the South, was my first halting-place. It was celebrated as being the only southern town in which there was still an Albanian school in spite of Turk and Greek.

Like the schools of Scutari, it owed its existence to foreign protection. It was founded by the American Mission. Its plucky teacher, Miss Kyrias (now Mrs. Dako), conducted it with an ability and enthusiasm worthy of the highest praise. And in spite of the fact that attendance at the school meant that parents and children risked persecution by the Turk and excommunication by the Greek priest, yet the school was always full. The girls learned to read and write Albanian and taught their brothers. Many parents told me very earnestly how they longed for a boys' school too. The unfortunate master of the Albanian boys' school, permitted during the short period when the interdiction was removed, was still in prison serving his term of fifteen years. Could not England, I was asked, open a school? Now either a child must learn Greek or not learn to read at all. And the Greek teachers even told children that it was useless to pray in Albanian, for Christ was a Greek, and did not understand any other language.

Everywhere it was the same. Deputations came to me begging for schools. Even Orthodox priests, who were Albanian, ventured to explain that what they wanted was an independent Church. Roumania, Serbia, Greece, even Montenegro, each was free to elect its own clergy and to preach and conduct the service in its own language. At Leskoviki and Premeti folk were particularly urgent both for schools and church.