CHAPTER VII

_DISCONTENT IN THE ARMY_

In 1906 the Ottoman Committee of Union and Progress, considering that the time had come to transfer their organisation to the soil of Turkey itself, and there make the final preparations for their attack on the Despotism, selected Macedonia as the scene of their initial operations.

There were good reasons for choosing this portion of Turkey as their strategic base. In the first place, it was here that the forces were chiefly at work which were threatening the speedy dissolution of the Ottoman Empire, and the Young Turks realised that unless they quickly came to the rescue it would be too late, and Macedonia would be lost. The terrible condition of the country, overrun as it was by murderous bands of political brigands supported by Turkey’s enemies, had already drawn an interference in the internal affairs of Macedonia on the part of the Great Powers that was deeply humiliating to every patriotic Turk. The Powers had compelled the Sultan, by threat of force, to consent to the supervision of the civil administration of Macedonia by an international financial commission, and to the formation of an international _gendarmerie_ trained and commanded by foreign officers—of whom, by the way, the English officers have undoubtedly been the most successful, as they are more in sympathy than the others with the nature of the Turkish soldier. But the patriotic Turks, though they often entertained personal affection for the European officers who were thus thrust upon them, loathed this foreign interference, and nourished a bitter resentment against the Hamidian _régime_, whose inept rule had brought this indignity upon Turkey and made the world regard the Ottomans as a fallen people no longer capable of managing their own affairs.

There was one feature of this foreign intervention which was especially disagreeable and alarming to the Young Turks. The reforms proposed by England, a disinterested country, had been rejected by the Powers, and a mandate had been given to Russia and Austria—regarded by the Turks as their most treacherous enemies—to introduce their own programme of reform (the Murzteg programme) into Macedonia. The Turks maintained, as, too, did independent observers, that these two Powers of a purpose made this programme a wholly ineffective one, and that their representatives were so working as to foment disorder and strife among the Christian populations in order to forward the schemes for the dismemberment of European Turkey.

The signs of this foreign intervention everywhere around them served as object lessons to the people in Macedonia, whether educated men or peasants, civilians or soldiers, and they realised that, unless the methods of Turkish government improved, the foreign hold on the country would be ever tightened until its independence was destroyed. Thus there spread throughout Macedonia a profound discontent with the existing order of things, that prepared the ground for the great conspiracy.

To win over the Army to their side was of course the first object of the Young Turks, and therefore Macedonia was well chosen as the field of the early operations, inasmuch as the troops there were in a more disaffected condition than those in any other part of the Empire, and were ripe for revolt. For years these troops—ill clad, ill fed, and rarely paid—had been engaged in a desultory guerilla war against the bands of the Christian insurgents—a form of police work that brought no glory and was uncongenial to soldiers, while, by scattering them over the country in small sections, it did away with the cohesion and _esprit de corps_ essential to an army. Their discontent was also aroused by seeing by the side of them their brothers of the smart international _gendarmerie_, men with military pride and bearing, well disciplined and (for the Powers saw to this) well clothed and fed, and regularly paid. It hurt the self-respect of both officers and men in the regular army to contrast the condition of these men with that of their ragged selves, for which, as they well knew, the corrupt administration of the Palace gang was to blame.

Of the intolerable military spy system and the other causes of disaffection among the officers of the Ottoman forces I have already spoken. The young officers of the Macedonia army, men of education and open-minded, who had passed through the military academies and had received instruction from foreign teachers, had exceptional opportunities in Macedonia for observing how an infamous rule was hurrying their country to its ruin, and therefore their sympathies naturally inclined towards the Young Turkey movement. Moreover, special grievances of their own aggravated their detestation of the Hamidian _régime_; the spy system was more searching and oppressive then elsewhere in this suspected portion of the Ottoman army, and it had become the habit of the Palace—galling to those who suffered under it—to send from the capital sleek Court favourites, with nothing of the soldier in them, to assume commands over the heads of fine officers who had taken a distinguished part in Turkey’s wars, and had been fighting the insurgent bands for years in the Macedonian mountains, but had never obtained the promotion that was their due.

Moreover, it favoured the plan of the revolutionaries that this vantage ground of Macedonia was at a safe distance from the capital—from the Palace with its myriad eyes and its regiments of well-fed, well-equipped, well-paid troops who could be counted upon to remain loyal to the despotism.

So far as the Mussulman population and the army were concerned, Macedonia was therefore ripe for rebellion, and the Christian peasantry, weary of the slaughter and devastation which the bands for years had been inflicting on the wretched country, were ready to welcome any new order of things that promised to bring peace and security.

To understand the operations of the secret society that organised the insurrection in Macedonia, it is necessary to bear in mind the condition of the country at that time. The Christian peasantry in Macedonia had suffered terribly from the pitiless methods employed by the Turks in suppressing any signs of insurrection, but during the latter years of the Hamidian _régime_ they had to suffer even worse things, in consequence of the cruel internecine war which they waged among themselves. The various races that make up the population of Macedonia had for long been carrying on their several national propaganda. The three independent States on Macedonia’s borders, Greece, Bulgaria, and Servia, were working with the Greeks, Bulgarians, and Serbs under Turkish rule, with a view to territorial expansion in this region, so soon as the dissolution of the Turkish Empire, to which they looked forward with confidence, should come to pass. But in Macedonia there are no extensive districts exclusively inhabited by Greeks, Bulgarians, or Serbs. The different races are intermingled, and it is not unusual to find Mussulman Turks and Christians of each of three races living side by side in the same village. Consequently, as each of the three States above mentioned aspired to the reversion of all territory occupied by people of its own race, there was nearly everywhere an overlapping of claims; and it became the policy of each State to gain influence in a coveted district and there secure the numerical superiority of people of its own race, so as to be able to establish a strong title to possession when the Powers should undertake the dismemberment of Turkey.

This racial rivalry was embittered by religious fanaticism. Formerly the Greek Orthodox Church exercised an exclusive influence over the Bulgarian as well as Greek population of Macedonia, and all recognised the Patriarch as their spiritual head. The Bulgarians resented the tyrannical ecclesiastical ascendency of the Greeks, and a schism arose which was deliberately widened by the Sultan Abd-ul-Aziz, who conceded to the Bulgarians the right to separate from the Greek Church and appoint an Exarch of their own. The Patriarch excommunicated the first Exarch and all who gave their allegiance to him, and since then there has been bitter hatred between the Orthodox and the schismatics. Of the Bulgarians in Macedonia, some have remained faithful to the Orthodox Church, while the majority acknowledge the spiritual headship of the Exarch. Now in Turkey populations are reckoned according to creed and not race, and in the census returns a Bulgarian who was a member of the Orthodox Greek Church would appear as a Greek. Therefore, for political, as well as religious, reasons the Greeks and Bulgarians strove hard to snatch from each other the control of the schools and churches in any district where there was a Bulgarian population, and employed violence and every form of persecution to secure converts.

In Greece, Bulgaria, and Servia, armed bands were equipped and sent into Macedonia to forward the rival interests of these land-lustful States. Bulgarian bands burnt Greek villages and Greek bands those of the Bulgarians. The seizure of each other’s churches and ecclesiastical property, and the murder of priests, became features of the propaganda. In the zeal to bring about the preponderance of this or that race the armed ruffians murdered women and children, and all the barbarities which aroused the indignation of Europe when Turkish irregulars were the guilty, were now committed against each other by the Christian _protégés_ of our humanitarians. With fire and sword the several propaganda were spread through the country. The Greeks boycotted the Bulgarians in the towns, and by various methods of persecution endeavoured to drive Bulgarians from coveted districts on the sea-coast. The Greek bishops and clergy worked with fanatical activity; not only did they forbid their co-religionists to give employment to Bulgarians, but they were largely responsible for the atrocities committed by the Greek bands, and went so far as to draw up proscription lists of Bulgarian schismatics who had to be assassinated; but the Bulgarians often had their revenge, as when, about a year ago, they dragged a Greek clergyman out of his church and burnt him alive.

Out of the many stories which one could tell, here is one which will serve as an example of the methods of the bands. On November 26, 1907, a Greek band of over sixty men surrounded the village of Zelenitchi, while a party broke into the house of the Bulgarian, Stoyan Gateff, where a marriage was being celebrated, killed thirteen men, women, and children, and wounded others.

To add to all this orgie of bloodshed, robbery, and violence, came the formation of bands of Mussulman Turks, endowed with the bravery of their race, who, while protecting the Turkish peasantry against the Christians, pillaged and burnt the villages of the latter, and did their share of the killing; while the bodies of half-famished, unpaid Turkish troops who were sent to search for concealed arms over the countryside naturally lived on the wretched Christian peasants, and helped themselves to all they needed.

Between the Greeks and Bulgarians there was never a truce save in winter, when the snow lay deep upon the Balkans, but sometimes the Serb would join the Greek bands in their attacks on the Bulgarians. Thus organised brigandage terrorised the countryside, and the bands, when they ran short of money or supplies, did not hesitate to rob even the people of their own kin, whose cause they were espousing, levying blackmail upon them, and burning their villages if demands were not satisfied. It is not to be wondered at that a large proportion of the Christian population found the succour of their ferocious brethren somewhat irksome, and were ready to welcome the pacific programme of the Young Turks. It will be remembered that when Bulgaria declared her independence last year the Bulgarian peasants in Macedonia held meetings at which they denounced the Principality and sent a memorial to Prince Ferdinand to warn him that they would hold him responsible for whatever evil might now befall them, as the result of his action.

Of all these Christian propagandists the Bulgarians aroused most sympathy in Europe; for they are a brave and straightforward people. They had good reason to hate the Greeks, who had always persecuted them. When, in 1903, the Bulgarian exarchists in Macedonia, with their hundreds of small armed bands, carried on a gallant but hopeless guerilla war against the Turkish regular troops, the Greek Macedonians remained neutral, but worked against their fellow-Christians after a fashion characteristically Hellenic; they assisted the Turks by betraying and denouncing to them the Bulgarian rebels; for in their zeal to forward their ultimate political designs they were not ill pleased to witness the extermination by the Turks of their fellow-Christians who repudiated the Patriarch and refused to become Hellenised. It was not until 1904 that Greek bands, led by officers of the Greek regular army, crossed the frontier into Macedonia to wage war not only against the propaganda of the Bulgarian exarchists, but also that of the Wallach inhabitants, who desired to throw off the tyrannical supremacy of the Greek Patriarch and have an Exarch of their own, as the Bulgarians had, with their own schools and churches in which their national language could be used. The Sultan, who was ever playing one Christian sect off against another, and made no real effort to stop the fratricidal strife that served his designs, now gave his encouragement to the Wallach propaganda, for this did not threaten the integrity of his Empire as did the propaganda of the Greeks and Serbs, there being no question of annexation of any Wallach districts of Macedonia to the distant kingdom of the Wallachs’ kin, Roumania.

The Bulgarians proved themselves the braver men in this racial struggle; but the Greek bands were the strongest in numbers and were also the best equipped, for they were always kept well supplied with ammunition and food by the rich merchants in Athens. The Greek bands chiefly distinguished themselves by attacking unprotected villages and slaughtering unarmed peasants; half-a-dozen brave Turkish _gendarmes_ have on occasion sufficed to rout the largest of these bands. I need not say that the unfortunate Turkish peasants, being regarded as enemies by all parties, suffered severely at the hands of the propagandists.

The condition of the country ever got worse. In 1907 there were one hundred and thirty-three conflicts between Turkish troops and Greek and Bulgarian bands, and a large but unrecorded number of fights between rival bands: Greek and Wallach; Greek and Bulgarian; Bulgarian and Serb; and Albanian and Serb. The bands used to come down to the plains and carry off the crops outside Salonica itself. The Greek Committee sent a manifesto to the villages round Salonica ordering the villagers, under pain of death, to become converts to Orthodoxy and to accept the Patriarch, and have themselves inscribed as Greeks upon the census papers. Shortly before the Sultan’s proclamation of the Constitution the artillery of the Salonica garrison had to shell the reed-covered swamps in the vicinity of the city to drive out the bands that had found shelter there.

It was in the city of Salonica that the Ottoman Committee of Union and Progress decided to establish the headquarters of the secret society that was to prepare the outbreak of rebellion in Macedonia, a city which, as being the cradle of their liberties, has already come to be regarded as a sort of holy place by patriotic Turks. It is a city worthy to be the scene of the initiation of one of the world’s great movements. The splendid seaport, on the acquisition of which Austria had set her heart, impresses every visitor with a sense of a peculiar nobility with which it is invested by its aspect, situation, and history. Stately and beautiful is the approach to it from the sea as one sails up the fifty-mile broad Gulf of Salonica; on the right the undulating land of Cassandra, with grassy, tree-studded shores, and windmills on the skyline testifying to the productiveness of the fields beyond; on the left the mountain ranges of Thessaly; with peaks whose names are known to every school-boy—Pelion to the south, then Ossa, and, near the head of the Gulf, a noble mountain mass towering over the lesser heights, with snowy summits ten thousand feet above the sea, Mount Olympus itself, the abode of the old gods.

From the busy quay of Salonica one looks across the blue water at the snows of Olympus and a wonderful far panorama of hills and dales of classic Greece; and Salonica itself is a fair city to look upon from the sea, with its gleaming white houses and minarets, and dark groves of cypress sloping up to the ancient castle and fortifications. I need not recall here the great part which Thessalonica played in the old days when Persians, Athenians, Macedonians, Romans, Normans of Sicily, and Saracens in succession conquered and held the famous port, the principal city between Rome and the East; its vicissitudes and many bloody sieges. Old Thessalonica, with its Greek, Roman, and Byzantine ruins, relics of “sad, half-forgotten things and battles long ago,” the thronged city where St. Paul preached and worked with his hands among the Macedonian artisans, as the modern Salonica has once again come to the forefront in the shaping of the world’s history, and its citizens walk proudly because here dawned the liberty of the Ottomans, with its inspiring hopes. There is something about the atmosphere of Salonica which makes it seem a fitting place to be the birthplace of a great movement. One feels freer on its broad quay and in its clean, well-paved streets than in the narrow, ever muddy lanes which imprison one in Constantinople. The climate for the greater part of the year is most exhilarating, and the inhabitants of this white city, “ever delicately walking through most pellucid air,” seem more vivacious and brisk, and are said to be more enlightened, more industrious, and shrewder than those of the capital.

Even under the tyranny and corruption of the old _régime_ things were fairly well ordered in Salonica, and the municipal authorities did some good work, as the appearance of the streets shows, though they did appropriate, in the shape of irregular salaries, one-half of the rates. Salonica, too, enjoyed a measure of liberty, even in those dark days, and men could do here many things which would have ensured their prompt punishment in Constantinople. For example, though meetings of any description were banned by the Palace, and a man could not invite two or three friends to dine with him in his house without permission, and though to be found guilty of being a Freemason was to incur the death penalty, Freemasonry (French, Grand Orient, Spanish, and Italian) flourished in Salonica; there were five Masonic Lodges in the town throughout the long years of despotism, though of course the Lodges had no fixed habitations, and the Masons used to meet in whatever house or perhaps lonely spot in the open country was at any time deemed to be the safest place.

In Salonica, with its teeming population of Turks, Greeks, Jews, Albanians, Bulgarians, and Levantines of many mixed races, speaking divers tongues, it is easy for men to assume disguises and difficult for spies to trace conspiracies. In no city does one come across a greater variety of race and picturesque costume than in these busy bazaars and streets—the Jews (who here number fifty thousand) who look as if they had stepped straight out of the Venice of Shakespeare’s time, the men in gabardines, the women in robes such as were worn by the ancestors of these people when they were driven out of Spain by Ferdinand and Isabella, still speaking among themselves a strange Spanish dialect—swaggering Albanians in their picturesque becoming national costume of which Byron sang—burly Bulgarian peasants—priests of all denominations, including Russian monks of neighbouring Mount Athos, emissaries from that holy promontory on which for one thousand years no woman or even animal of the female sex has been allowed to set foot, where monks in their thousands dwell in ascetic retirement in monasteries perched like the lamaseries of Tibet among the mountains, while in the wildest and most inaccessible spots anchorites have their hermitages and live in complete solitude after the manner of their predecessor, St. Anthony.

The fact that it was possible in this crowded city to escape observation and to organise secret societies made Salonica the natural centre of the Young Turk movement in Macedonia. Secret political organisation already existed there, and the Internal Organisations of the Bulgarian revolutionary party had had its head-quarters there since about 1895.