Part 9 (1/2)
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 fas.h.i.+on 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.