We have seen that a blood-mist has hung over the Balkans during all
the centuries that history knows. Nature set up there lists for the great
contests of races—on the path from the cold north of Europe to the warm south; on the path from Asia to Europe; and each great
campaign left behind it shreds of devastated peoples. These shreds
of peoples dwelling in the Balkans to-day have a blood-thirst as an inescapable heritage. Turk, Bulgar, Serb, Roumanian, Greek—they
may hold the peace for a time, and some may try to think that they are friends with others; but all have something of hate or fear or contempt for the others, and all prepare in peace for the next fight.
The Fates making the Balkan Peninsula the battle-ground of empires
and races, the field of
[176]
last stands, the refuge of residual fragments of peoples, imposed
upon it its bloody tradition. Under other conditions, Serb or Bulgar or
Greek or Turk or Roumanian left to themselves might have made
happier history. For all these races can be human, reasonable,
companionable. I have seen something of all of them in following a Balkan campaign as a war correspondent (not following always as
the sheltered guest of an army, but forcing a solitary path through the
peasant population), and in watching the wonderful acrobatic lying of
a Balkan Peace Conference have seen thus the best and the worst of
them. I have been an unofficial member of a Bulgarian court-martial;
the guest of a dozen and more Bulgarian and Serbian army outposts,
dependent often for food and shelter on the kindness of peasant
soldiers; for days have held at the mercy of Balkan peasants my life
and my property; have been mistaken for a wandering Turk twice,
and have never suffered violence, rudeness, or the loss of a
pennyworth. For the peasants, the commonfolk of all the Balkan
peoples, I have come thus to a hearty liking; their priests and
politicians (with a few exceptions), a different feeling. Knowing that the massacre is the
[177]
national sport in many districts of the Balkans; that at the outbreak of
the 1912 war the death-rate by violence actually decreased in some
quarters because the killing was systematised a little and put under a
sort of regulation; that always Turks and Exarchate Christians and
Patriarchate Christians are plotting against one another new raids
and murders, still I maintain that, if left to themselves, if freed from the prompting of priests and politicians the Balkan peasants of any race
are quite decent folk. So I wish heartily that there was fair reason to hope for peace and happiness for them. Is there fair reason? To that
question a study of the races and the personalities can give clues for
an answer.
Underwood & Underwood
ALBANIAN TRIBESMEN
The Bulgarian is dour, dull, a little greedy, honest, very industrious.
He is almost as much a Turk as a Slav. (I was told that during the Turkish occupation a Bulgarian mother finding herself with child after
violence by a Turk brought up the child with her family, whilst a Serbian mother under the same circumstances killed the infant at
birth.) The Bulgarian is very moral, marrying at an early age.
The Bulgarian peasant soldiers were very honest and loyal. At
Mustapha Pasha one
[178]
night, being short of food, I tried to get bread at the military bakery (all bread and flour having been requisitioned for the army). I offered a soldier up to five francs for a loaf without tempting him to sell it.
Finally I had to get bread as a charity by declaring that I was actually
in want of it for food. Later, travelling between Silivri and Chatalja, I encountered four Bulgarian foot soldiers who had become separated
from their regiment and were starving. They asked for food and I
gave them all I could spare, enough for two meals. One of the men produced a purse and took out some coppers wishing to pay.
Travelling across Thrace (then in Bulgarian occupation), I often put up at some military post, being invited to become a member of the little mess—usually an official or two and four or five non-commissioned officers. Nearly always I had the same experience,
that I was made free of the stewed goat and rice, or the dish of eggs
and flour, or the bread and cheese of the Bulgarians, and when I wished to add from my stores chocolate and biscuits and dates, just a
scrap or two would be taken. I could see the men's eyes hungering for the delicacies, but nothing would induce them to take anything material from my stores.
[179]
The Bulgarian peasant soldier and officer I found, in short, to be a gentleman. Yet nationally Bulgaria is not "a gentleman," and has come to its present sorry state, I believe, largely on that account. The
old Bulgarian aristocracy was exterminated by the Turks. The
surviving Bulgarian peasantry has not yet been able to produce
another aristocracy. It is the more cunning rather than the more
worthy son of the peasant who wins to a sort of an education—often
abroad—and becomes the lawyer, politician, official. In very many
cases he carries with him into a higher stratum of society few of his peasant virtues and all of his peasant faults. He gets an overweening
pride in his own acuteness. He becomes arrogant, "too-clever-by-half," and intrigue teaches him cruelty. I can contrast vividly two Bulgarian types in a noted diplomat, who fancied himself a Bismarck
and had about the wits of an office boy, and an old peasant captain
with whom I travelled from Kirk Kilisse to Chorlu. Generalising, the
"leading men" in Bulgaria are of a poor type (there are exceptions), the leading priests of a still poorer type; the people themselves are a
sound people, and when the ambitious among them contrive to
[180]
preserve their peasant virtues through the ordeal of education they will become a great people.
The Bulgarian did not seem to me naturally cruel. All the time that I was with the main army I saw no trace of outrage or cruelty. I did see
several instances of curt and merciful justice.
I arrived one night at the Tchundra River alone, having gone forward
from my ox cart because the miserable Macedonian driver and the
still more miserable Bulgarian servant I had (I suspect he was in training for the diplomatic service) could not be induced to do a fair day's march. A vedette outpost of five men held the bridge. They took
me—as I judged from their gestures rather than from their language,
of which I understood only one word, "Turc"—for a Turk. But they let me stay unmolested at their camp fire for an hour until an officer who
spoke French appeared. I could give several similar instances. Never
did I feel nervous in the least when making my way alone through the
country in Bulgarian occupation (most of the time I was alone, for after a while I dropped my Macedonian and my Bulgarian servant).
[181]
GREEK INFANTRY
The Turk I found disappointing. I had pictured a romantic individual with a Circassian harem, a stable of Arab steeds, and a fierce and warlike manner. I found the Turk to be rather a shabby individual; monogamous usually (but with the free and easy ideas as to his
rights over Christian women which are almost consequent upon his
philosophy of life, and cause most of the trouble when the Turk lives
by the side of a Christian population); much addicted to
sweetmeats—his shops were full of Scotch lollies and English
biscuits. Certainly most of the Turks I have encountered were
prisoners or dwelling in conquered country. But, making all allowance
for that, the traditional fiery Turk of martial fame no longer exists, I should say, in European Turkey. The Turkish prisoners in the hands
of the Bulgarians seemed to be glad to have arrived at a fate which meant regular food. In old Bulgaria I found Turks living quite
contentedly under Christian rule, and in many cases following menial
occupations. The boot-blacks in the streets were Turks, the porters were Turks.
I had a Turkish driver for five days once from Kirk Kilisse to Mustapha
Pasha. The first hour
[182]
of our acquaintance he won my heart by telling me (through an
interpreter) that since his horses had been requisitioned by the
Bulgarians, he had not been able to get proper food for them, and he
embraced his ponies, which were really in rather good condition. I applauded the noble Turk and his love for horses, and bought
tobacco for him which he welcomed with tears of joy, as he had been
without it for long. The horses carried the cart a gallant thirty miles that day, and we camped at a burned-out village. Mr. Turk set himself
to enjoy a smoke over the fire. My own supper I prepared, and gave
him some to eke out his bread and cheese, and then told him to
water and feed the horses. Because the well was 400 yards away
and the tobacco was sweet and the fire comforting, the Turk had no
wish to do this, but was ready to let them go through the night without
food or water. I had to threaten to flog him (and to start to do it) before he would attend to the horses. Yet after that incident I slept in
the cart without a thought that the Turk would consider himself
offended and cut my throat. As a matter of fact the touch of the whip
did not rankle with him, and at Mustapha Pasha when, the journey
[183]
ended, I gave him a little money for himself, Mr. Turk prostrated himself in gratitude.
I believe that the warlike virtues have died out of the Turk in Europe.
Of other nation-making and nation-maintaining qualities he has none.
In all Turkey from the borders of Bulgaria to the lines of Chatalja, I found no roads, no street lamps, no drainage, no water supply (I was
not in Adrianople). Except for a few agricultural peasants I found nowhere the Turk doing any useful work. In a characteristic Turkish town the shops were kept by Greeks, the industries carried on by
Greeks, Macedonians, and Bulgarians. The Turk was the tax-
collector, the official, the soldier, and did none of these things well.
That acute observer of the Turkish character, Mr. L. March Phillips, in
his book In the Desert upholds that the Turk is impossible as a civilising force:
Or, for a third example, come to the craggy hills of Southern Albania,
and mix, if but for half an hour, with the armed shepherds, as wild and
intractable as their own crags, or as the gaunt dogs which guard their
flocks from the wolves, and whose attentions to strangers you are apt
to find such a nuisance. You will understand from the first glance at the men more of the interminable Balkan difficulty than newspapers
and books can ever
[184]
teach you. These are the fellows who swoop down from their peaks
on the mixed races of the plains and carry fire and slaughter through
village and valley. Their natural aptitude for fighting and foraging, for
bearing things with a strong hand, for cowing the weak and feeble, for
vindicating the old "might is right" theory, is written all over them. You see it in their gait, glance, walk, and manner, you hear it in every accent of their voice, you feel it in their individuality and presence.
These are specimens of the Moslem type, the type that stops short at
the virile virtues, that makes the best host and worst neighbour in the
world, that has many splendid qualities to recommend it, but to which
all that makes life profound and inexhaustible is a dead letter. It is the
most strongly marked and salient type I have ever met with. There is
the Moslem walk, the Moslem scowl, the Moslem courtesy, the
Moslem dignity, the Moslem carriage and attitudes and features, the
Moslem composure, and the Moslem fury. All these traits and
characteristics, inspired by the same temper, expressing the same
ideal, conspire to depict a figure so notable that you must be a dull observer indeed if you cannot pick him out from a mixed crowd as you would pick out a Chinaman in the London streets.
Some people say it is the religion that creates the type. "There," they say of Mohammedanism, "is a religion that breeds men." It would be truer, I think, to say that Mohammedanism recommends itself to men
at a certain stage of their development, and has for that stage a natural affinity. Every race goes through a time when the virile
estimate of life and the splendour of self-assertion seem the finest things possible. It is at this time it is open to the attack of El Islam.
The
[185]
Moslem religion answers all its needs at this stage, and lays good hold of it, and having once laid hold of it, it sanctifies the ideas belonging to this stage, and so tends to restrict the race to it. There is
no
instance
on
record
of
a
people
having
embraced
Mohammedanism and afterwards achieving a complete, or what
gives promise of ever becoming a complete, civilisation.
During my stay in the Balkans I found no certain evidence of Turkish
cruelty. There was plenty of evidence offered by the Bulgarians, but it
usually smelt of the lamp of some patriotic journalist of Sofia. Once near Mustapha Pasha—when all the war correspondents were
cooped up under strict censorship, prevented from seeing any of the
operations around Adrianople—the Bulgarians found it necessary to
burn a village for strategic reasons. The chance was offered to the Press photographers of seeing this, if it were represented in their pictures as the atrocious burning of a village by the Turks. I believe that the offer was accepted by some. The "atrocities" by Turks, regularly recorded by the Bulgarian Press Bureau were, as far as the
main theatre of operations was concerned, founded on similar
evidence. During its first phase I believe that the war was very
humanely conducted on all sides. In Macedonia, of course, there
were
[186]
some deplorable atrocities, but I believe the normal massacre
conditions there were rather bettered than otherwise by the outbreak
of war.
To sum up the Turk, I do not think he will survive for long in Europe.
As a matter of hard fact there really are not many real Turks left in Europe.
The Serbian, with his highlander the Montenegrin, is a far more
engaging personality than the Bulgarian. He lacks the stubborn, dour
courage of his neighbour, but he has more élan. In military life the Bulgarian would supply incomparable infantry, the Serbians be
superior in artillery and cavalry. In social life the Serbian is convivial and hospitable. Whilst the Bulgarian wishes to go to bed early that he
may get up early and push the road he is making along a little farther,
the Serbian will keep you at his dinner-table drinking and singing until
far into the morning. He is not troubling about a road.
When the Serbian army came to help the Bulgarians in the siege of Adrianople, the contrast between the two armies and the two camps
was great. The Serbian men were smarter, better equipped, their
quarters cleaner, and from their
[187]
mess tents would come by night the sound of revelry. One might
imagine Roundheads and Cavaliers camping side by side.
The Allies did not fraternise. For that I blamed the Bulgarians. The positions in regard to the Serbian aid at Adrianople, as I understood
it, was this: that originally the Bulgarians engaged to help the
Serbians in their campaign, but this was found not to be necessary: that the Bulgarians, later, asked for aid against Adrianople, and it was
promptly given without any conditions being imposed, though there
then already existed in the Serbian mind a desire to modify the
territorial partition arrangement they had with Bulgaria and this
request for aid might have been taken as a good opportunity for
raising that question. I believe those to be the facts, but since in Balkan diplomacy it is always a matter of finding out the truth of comparing and weighing and deducing from a series of lies, I cannot
state them with absolute certainty. If they are true, the Serbians behaved like gentlemen in not raising against an ally an awkward
question at a time when help was asked. Quite certainly the Bulgarian
authorities behaved like boors to their Serbian friends. Things were made as
[188]
unpleasant as was reasonably possible for them in all kinds of
niggling ways around Adrianople. The Serbians behaved well under
great provocation.
During the first sessions of the Balkan Peace Conference I had
opportunities of observing the same good behaviour on the part of the
Serbians. Bulgarian diplomacy was, as usual, very exasperating. It
was not only that Bulgaria was insisting on having the hide, horn, and
hoofs of Turkey, but also on rubbing salt into her bare carcase. The Turkish delegates approached the Serbians—whose territorial
demands as far as Turkey was concerned were satisfied, but who
had a pending controversy with the Bulgarians—hoping to get some
moral support against Bulgaria and being prepared to offer something
in return. The Serbian attitude was sharply loyal, to stand by Bulgaria
absolutely in regard to the Turkish frontier. Serbians have not been always popular in Great Britain, I know; but I am not alone among those who have come into recent contact with Balkan affairs who
found them to be the best of the Balkan peoples.
PODGORICA, UPON THE ALBANIAN FRONTIER
The Greek is even more engaging and hospitable than the Serbian;
but his fluent, flexible,
[189]
subtle nature does not inspire full confidence. At the outset of the last
Balkan war there was one thing that all were sure of: that the Greeks
would not fight. All were wrong. The Greeks did exceedingly well in the field, even allowing that they sometimes shaped their campaign
quite as much by considerations of jealousy of their allies as of hostility to the common enemy. But it is a fact that the Greek has usually more stomach for politics than for fighting, and that his subtle
nature allows him to live comfortably in a state of subjection, which would irk a more robust mind. He is by instinct a trader: and a trader
is not an uncompromising patriot as a rule.
The Greeks live side by side with the Turks in Turkey with fair
comfort. At Kirk Kilisse, after the Bulgarian occupation, a deputation came to me from the Greeks to assure me that they would much
prefer to live under the Turk than under the Bulgar: and asking that England should be urged to support autonomy for Thrace. Well, the
Turks are back at Kirk Kilisse, and I suppose my Greek friends are happy. Eloquent, courteous, kind folk they were. I stayed in the house
of one for some days, and will remember always the gracious
kindness of the man and his
[190]
wife. I had to leave one morning at four to catch a troop train which would carry me a few miles towards the front. The couple were up and had a fire and tea ready for me. As I had a fever at the time, and
a long laborious journey ahead, the whole Greek race seemed good
that morning.
Later at Chorlu after I had got permission from the military
commandant to go forward to Chatalja, and he had helped me to hire
a cart and horses and to stock up my provisions, the permission was
withdrawn because Bashi-Bazouks were raiding along the line of
communication. I might go later, he said, when a body of troops was
moving. I objected that time was precious; and I had my revolver, and
there was the driver.
"Ah," he said sweetly, "he is a Greek. He will run away."
After that manner the Bulgarians always spoke of the Greeks. In this
case the Bulgarian was possibly right. I finally coaxed permission to go forward, on condition that I took a patrol of one Bulgarian soldier,
and I was allowed to borrow a rifle and some ammunition. We met no
Bashi-Bazouks: but whilst the Bulgarian palpably was quite content to
enter into a plan to give the Bashi-Bazouks a chance of showing
[191]
themselves at nightfall, the Greek liked the adventure not at all.
(Perhaps on the whole he was justified. But I was desperately eager
for a "story," and with the Turkish regulars running away so consistently, to encounter irregulars suggested no real danger.)
On that journey, at a little village which I cannot name between Silivri
and Chatalja, the population was largely Greek. Some of the Greeks,
after the Turks had fled before the Bulgarians, had discarded the fez
and were wearing Bulgarian caps. Others held to the fez, but had
marked on it with white chalk a cross. I formed the opinion that if by
the fortune of war the Turks came back, those crosses would be
rubbed out. The Greek can be very pliant undoubtedly, when he is in
contact with a dominant people. The other side to his character—that
of a hot-headed, argumentative, boisterous Donnybrook Fair
patriotism—is developed in his own country where it is fed with
memories of the historic greatness of his race.
The Roumanian—the fourth national type in the Balkans to which I
shall refer—very closely resembles the Greek in most respects.
[192]
Like the Greeks the Roumanians are subtle, flexible, engaging. They
are a singularly good-looking race, and Roumanian girls are sought
after in marriage a great deal. A Serbian politician explaining to me what he called "a nice national balance," pointed out that the Serbians rather despised trade and finance. The Roumanian,
therefore, came into Serbia to make money as shopkeeper and
financier. Then the young Serbian man married the rich Roumanian's
daughter and thus the Serbian money was still kept in the country.
The instinct for trade has a very marked effect on the politics of the Balkans. The Serbian has no love for trade: the Montenegrin
despises it quite. The Greek and the Roumanian are very keen
traders with an inclination to escape from manual work as soon as they can. The Bulgarian is a trader and also fond of productive
industry. So "as two of a trade never agree," neither Greek nor Roumanian can get on as well with the Bulgarian as with the Serbian.
The Roumanian national polity differs greatly from the Greek, though
the two racial types are very similar. Whilst Greece has a stormy and
disorderly democracy, Roumania is ruled practically
[193]
by an oligarchy—an oligarchy which during the past twelve months
has won to an achievement which would have delighted the old
Florentine Republic. Without losing a soldier, almost without spending
a crown, Roumania has won a great tract of territory and established
herself as the paramount power of the Balkans. It was a victory of unscrupulous and patient resoluteness which is a classic of its kind, and it was made possible by the oligarchic system of Roumania. The
Montenegrin does not need to be considered separately: he is the
"Highlander" of the Serbian and shares Serbian language, customs, and character with such modifications as the conditions of