The Balkan Peninsula

CHAPTER VIII

The Adriatic coast has charms of rugged coast-lines and bright waters; the Black Sea littoral, though flat and sandy, has a warm sunny summer or autumn climate; the Aegean is a sea of brilliant purples and rosy mists, in which air, rock, and water mingle to greet the eye with a great opal jewel. A November sunset on the Sea of Marmora gave to my eyes such a feast of suffused colour as I had not seen since I left the shores of the southern Pacific. The rocky hills had the rich red of the Jersey cliffs, but the sea and sky were incomparably warmer and deeper in tone. Across the sea the shores of distant Asia shone dimly through two veils of mist, one of the tenderest rose, the other of the palest gold. The greater part of the Greek coast has the same deliciousness of colour in autumn and in summer.

A few travellers bolder than the ordinary search out nowadays the shores of the Adriatic, the beautiful coast of Greece, and even the margin of the Sea of Marmora in quest of beauty and relief from the tedium of civilisation. But they must face poor means of communication (though to Constantinople and to Trieste there is an excellent train service) and scanty accommodation of any kind—almost none of good quality. Within a very few years, if the Balkans could settle down to peace and the legalised plunder of foreign visitors—a pursuit which is as profitable as brigandage and far more comfortable,—the seaside resorts that would spring up within Balkan territories would of themselves provide a handsome revenue. The shores of the Aegean and of the Sea of Marmora in particular would attract tourists wearied of the air of hackneyed sameness which comes after a while to pervade seaside haunts in Italy and France.

From another attraction the Balkan States could hope for a great tourist traffic. I have caught but fleeting glimpses of the Balkan range and of the Rhodopes and the Serbian mountains, but have seen enough to know that they offer boundless delights to the climber, to the seeker after winter sports, and to the lover of the picturesque; and the Swiss Alps in these days are overcrowded, and the Tyrolean mountains and the Carpathians begin to receive a big overflow of people who have a taste for heights that are not covered with hotels and funicular railways. But the mountains of the Balkan Peninsula offer prospects, I believe, of greater beauty, certainly of greater wildness, than any other ranges of Europe. Of the Rhodope mountains, in particular, one gets the most alluring accounts from the rare travellers who have explored them. Seen by the passing voyager as they stand guard with their farthest spurs over Philippopolis, they suggest that no account of their charm could be too glowing. I have promised myself one autumn or summer a month in this range, exploring its flower-filled valleys and its wild cliffs, shining through an air which seems now of rose and now of violet.

For winter sports the Serbian, Montenegrin, and Albanian mountains, as well as the chief Balkan range, promise well. I believe that it was part of the plan of Bulgarian reorganisation after the war, which King Ferdinand had in his mind, to set up great winter hotels in the mountains of his kingdom. The other Balkan States could with advantage give hospitality to similar plans. Provided that security is assured—and the Balkan peasant is in my experience the gentlest-mannered kind who ever cut throats in a wholesale way at the call of a mischief-maker—visitors to the mountains of the Balkan Peninsula would find the wildness, the uncouthness of the surrounding national life, very attractive. The picturesque national costumes, the national music, wild and uncanny, the strange national dances, all add to the fascination of the savage scenery. In an age when a fog of dreary sameness comes over all the civilised world, the Balkans have a great asset in their primitivism. Theirs is not a wholly European civilisation; indeed, except in the capital cities, it is not chiefly a European civilisation. Everywhere there is a touch of the mystery, the fatalism, the desert-bred wildness of the Asiatic steppes. For centuries the hand of the Turk has been heavy on the land, and a strong stream of his blood courses still through the veins of most of the Balkan peoples. It is not the East this Balkan Peninsula, but it is not the West, nor will be for some generations.

There is yet another possible means of attracting great streams of visitors to the Balkan regions. Throughout the mountains there are numberless medicinal springs. In Serbia and Bulgaria the water of two springs is being exploited for table use, and in Bulgaria the warm medicinal springs are being developed for bathing resorts. At Sofia there are now in course of erection great public baths which will be equal to any in Europe when they are completed. In the mountains above Sofia warm springs are being utilised, and quite a large spa village has grown up. King Ferdinand, who has a fine commercial instinct whatever the failures of his war diplomacy, has done good service to his kingdom by developing its baths and springs.

The plain country of the Balkan Peninsula is but little attractive. Under the Turkish rule nearly all plantations of trees were destroyed, and a general air of desolation was maintained. Since the Turk left, cultivation and development have been on strictly utilitarian lines, and there has been little chance for gardens or woods. The eye of the voyager misses them, and misses also the sight of castles, churches, or great buildings. The dreariness of the plain is unrelieved by forests. The rivers flow sullenly along without a bordering of trees. The Thracian plain—the greater part of which has now gone back to Turkey and thus lost hope of a redemption of its really fertile soil—is in particular desolate and forbidding. But even there, and more frequently in the plain country of Bulgaria and Serbia, there is now and again a charming village in some dell with adornment of trees and gardens. The average village, however, is a collection of hovels, their roofs lying so close to the ground that they seem to be rather burrows than huts, their aspect suggesting that they are hiding themselves and their inhabitants from the eye of a possible ravager.

Desolate as this plain country is, it has its attractions at dawn and sunset in the clear colourfull air of the Balkan Peninsula; and where the hill slopes, denuded of their forests, have been covered over by a dense oak scrub the autumn aspect of the plain at sunset is incomparably lovely. The scrub, when the first of the autumn frosts come, blazes out in such scarlet and gold as cannot be imagined in the moist and soft climate of England. With the setting of the sun and the coming of the violet night the earth's carpet seems to be here smouldering, there burning, a sea of lambent fire so bright that you look to see its burgeoning reflected in the sky.

I should advise the tourist wishing to see the Balkan Peninsula at its best to choose the fall of the year for a visit. In the summer there is great heat and dust and plague of flies. In the winter travel is impossible with any comfort except along the railway lines, and the whole Peninsula is frost-bound. The spring is a beautiful season at its later end, but not at the time of the thaw.

As to the route for a voyage there are several alternatives. One may take the Oriental Express through to Constantinople and work a way up the Balkan Peninsula from there: or take train to Trieste and approach the Balkans by the Adriatic side: or, taking the Oriental Express, leave it at Bucharest and journey from there to Sofia: or, taking the Oriental Express, leave it at Belgrade, making that the starting-point for a riding trip. Certainly to enjoy the country one must leave the railways and journey on horseback or by cart over the wilder tracks. An interpreter who speaks English can be engaged in any one of the capitals. The hire of horses, oxen, and carts is very cheap, if you are properly advised by your interpreter and pay the local rates only. Forage, too, is cheap: and so is "the food of the country," i.e. bread, cheese, bacon, and goat and sheep flesh. Most civilised luxuries of food can be obtained in the capitals and bigger towns, but they are dear.

Take train to Belgrade: then go by Danube steamer to Widdin. From Widdin to Sofia go by rail, and then back to Belgrade on horseback, sending on heavy luggage by rail, but making at Nish on the way a depot of provisions and linen.

Take train to Bucharest. Go from there to Stara Zagora on horseback, crossing the Roumanian frontier at Roustchouk, going over the trail of the Russian Army of Liberation and seeing the Balkan mountain passes.

Take train to Sofia, and from there to Yamboli. At Yamboli go on horseback (in the track of the Bulgarian Third Army of 1912) to Kirk Kilisse, Lule Burgas, Chorlu, Silivri (on the Sea of Marmora), and Constantinople. A somewhat wild trip this would be, but quite practicable. The most comfortable way to travel would be to take ox wagons for the luggage and the camping outfit. That would restrict the day's march to twenty miles. The horses—(diverging to look at scenery and battle-fields)—would do about thirty miles a day.

Take train to Constantinople, and from there boat to Salonica. Go on horseback from Salonica to Belgrade. This would show the most disturbed part of the Balkan Peninsula and some of its wildest scenery.

Take train to Philippopolis, and from there go on horseback and with ox wagons for a tour of the Rhodope mountains.

Of course it is possible to take much tamer tours of the Balkans. Practically all the big towns are connected with the European railway systems. But you would see, thus, towns and not the country. The Balkan towns are to my eye very dreary. There are practically no fine old buildings, for in the Turkish occupation the greater number of these were destroyed. The modern buildings have rarely any character. The churches, usually of the Slav school of architecture, alone relieve the monotony of economical imitations of French and British buildings. In Belgrade, it is true, there has been an effort to carry the Slav note farther, and some of the commercial and public buildings show a Moscow influence.

Mr. Noel Buxton, M.P., that most enthusiastic admirer of the Bulgarians, can carry his enthusiasm so far as to admire Sofia. He wrote recently (With the Bulgarian Staff):

Few sights can be more inspiring to the lover of liberty and national progress than a view of Sofia from the hill where the great seminary of the national church overlooks the plain. There at your feet is spread out the unpretentious seat of a government which stands for the advance of European order in lands long blighted with barbarism. Here resides, and is centred, the virile force of a people which has advanced the bounds of liberty. From here, symbolised by the rivers and roads running down on each side, has extended, and will further extend, the power of modern education, of unhampered ideas, of science, and of humanity. From this magnificent view-point Sofia stretches along the low hill with the dark background of the Balkan beyond. Against that background now stands out the new embodiment of Bulgarian and Slavonic energy, genius, and freedom of mind, the great cathedral, with its vast golden domes brilliantly standing out from the shade behind them. In no other capital is a great church shown to such effect, viewed from one range of hills against the mountainous slopes of another. It is a building which, with its marvellous mural paintings, would in any capital form an object of world interest, but which, in the capital of a tiny peasant State, supremely embodies that breadth of mind which

... rejects the lore
Of nicely calculated less or more.

But I think that that is a too kindly view. What makes the Balkan capitals additionally dreary is that there is no "society" in the European sense. The Turkish idea of keeping the womenfolk in the harem survives to the extent that woman is not supposed to frequent places of entertainment, to receive or to pay visits. In Bulgaria the women are secluded with an almost Turkish strictness: in Serbia, not quite so strictly, but still strictly.

Bucharest is quite another story; but Bucharest would rather resent being called a Balkan city. There is no seclusion of the very charming Roumanian women, and the atmosphere of the city is a little more than gay. Plant a section of Paris, a section including Montmartre, into the middle of an enlargement of the old quarter of Belgrade, and that is Bucharest. It is the one Balkan city which has a luxurious and to an extent polished aristocracy.

Some of the smaller towns are slightly more interesting—Philippopolis, for instance, in a position of great natural beauty—but the average Balkan town must be set down as squalid. Its centres of social interest are the cafés, where men who have the leisure assemble to drink coffee made in the Turkish fashion, tea made in the Russian fashion, and occasionally vodka, which is the usual alcoholic stimulant. Tobacco is smoked mostly in the form of cigarettes. Excellent (and cheap) cigarettes are supplied by the government Régies in Serbia and Bulgaria.

The wise tourist will keep clear of the Balkan towns apart from the actual capitals, and will carry his food and lodging with him. Under these circumstances a good standard of ease can be maintained if a train of ox wagons sufficient to the size of the party is enlisted. Ladies can travel with fair comfort in an ox wagon. As regards the danger of Balkan travel, in my experience—and that was during war-time—there is none. Serbian peasant, Bulgarian peasant, Greek peasant, Turkish peasant, alike are amiable and obliging fellows, if they do not feel in duty bound to cut your throat on some theological or political point. Being strangers, tourists would have no theology and no politics. So much for the inhabitants. The officials, provided passports are clear and the precaution is taken of getting letters at the capital from the authorities of the country you are travelling through, will be helpful. The one district that might be a little dangerous is that corner of Macedonia where Greek and Bulgar are always playing against one another the old game of massacre.

CHAPTER IX

THE BALKAN PEOPLES IN ART AND INDUSTRY

The five centuries of Turkish domination, during which all the arts and most of the crafts were neglected in the Balkan Peninsula, killed nearly completely the ancient civilisations of the Greeks, the Serbs, and the Bulgars. But a few traces of the old culture survive to this day as mournful and tattered relics of the greatness of those departed Empires. The old Bulgarian Empire, combining a Slav with a Turconian element; the old Serbian Empire, almost purely Slav but influenced a little by Italian and Grecian influence, evolved in the days of its greatness the beginnings of a national literature and national architecture. In Serbia particularly was there a strong and promising growth of humane culture, and the greatest of the Serbian rulers, Stephen Dushan (14th century), whose death before the walls of Constantinople at the beginning of the Turkish invasions gave up the Balkan Peninsula to the Crescent, left as one monument to his name a well-reasoned code of laws. He was throughout his reign a sincere friend of learning. In Bulgaria during the 10th century, under the Czar Simeon, there was a brief efflorescence of learning. Montenegro, which alone of the Balkan States kept its head unbowed before the Turk, was a busy centre of literary effort in the 16th century. Under the stress of constant war, however, the arts of peace died down almost completely in the Balkans until the Liberation of the peoples in the 19th century. During the interval, however, the peasants in their homes kept up some little knowledge of the traditions of their forefathers' greatness. Legends were passed down from father to son in chants set to a rough music. In these chants, too, were recorded the deeds of heroism which marked the ever-recurring revolts against the Turk.

What survives to-day from this period of oppression is a very characteristic national music, melancholy usually, as might be expected, but of arresting sweetness; and an art of peasant-applied decoration, which recalls the earlier and more primitive forms of Byzantine Art. Balkan tapestries, Balkan carpets, Balkan embroideries, woven or stitched by the peasant women, have a note of barbaric boldness in design and colour which distinguishes them at once from the peasant work of other countries.

This applied art in decoration is wisely fostered by the various governments, and there is liberal encouragement also given to modern art. Especially is this the case in Bulgaria. The impression I have got from seeing picture collections in the Balkans is that the local artists have learned foreign methods without adding any national bent of their own, and contrive to give a native character to their pictures only when they make the choice of some particularly horrible subject. Yet there should come a vigorous art as well as a vigorous literature one day from these Balkan States. There the mysticism, the melancholy, the transcendentalism of the Slav is mixed with the fatalism of the Turk, and the vivacity of the Greek and the Roumanian in the national types. Byzantine traditions, Slav traditions, classic Greek traditions, Roman traditions mingle to influence this composite character, the two former predominating, but the two latter having a very definite power. It should be rich soil for talent, even for genius.

Interesting opportunities were given in the Southern Slav Art Exhibitions of 1904 and 1906 (the first at Belgrade, the second at Sofia) to note the trend of art in the Balkans. At those Exhibitions Bulgarian, Serbian, Croatian, and Slavonian arts were represented. The Croatian pictures—I follow a trustworthy guide in stating this—showed a high degree of technical skill, not distinguishable from Austrian art in character: the Slavonian pictures were also technically good, but of a more impressionist character: the Serbian pictures imitated in technique the Old Masters, but took their subjects almost exclusively from Serbian history: the Bulgarian pictures had no national characteristic in style, but usually sought to be transcriptions of some form of Bulgarian life of the day.

Summing up the art position in the Balkans, it can be fairly said that before the outbreak of the last great war very good progress had been made for the few years since the Liberation from the Turks. A wise policy for the future would be to encourage as much as possible the peasant arts and crafts which are distinctive, and not to seek to impose too much of modern art education, which may stifle national influences and inflict a sterile sameness.

Balkan industry varies greatly with the height of the country, as well as with the racial type. The mountaineers are usually lacking in steady industry: the peoples of the plain are usually exceptionally hard workers. Very many emigrants from the Balkans go to the United States to work there in the mines, and on works of railway construction, for a term of years. The Bulgarian will come back from the United States with £300 saved up, and settle down in his native village as farmer or trader. The Serbian will come back with £200 saved up, but with a wider knowledge of United States life, and he will settle down as pastoralist or farmer, but not as trader. The Albanian or Montenegrin will come back with little or no money, but with a wonderful armoury of silver-adorned weapons and much other personal decoration. So graced, the mountaineer will have no difficulty in marrying the girl of his choice, and she will do most of the work that is needed thereafter, whilst he attends to the hunting and the fighting. The Greek and the Roumanian go abroad, preferably as traders, and afterwards elect to stay abroad, though it is to be recorded in proof of modern Greek patriotism that in 1912 there was a steady flow of Greeks from all parts of the world coming back to their native land to fight in the army.

Considered industrially the Bulgarian is the best type in the Balkans. He is a steady, tireless worker on the soil; takes to factory life amiably; and has in a very strongly marked degree "the road-making talent."

A very valuable index to national character is provided by a people's roads. The most successful Imperial governors, the Romans, were also builders of the finest roads the world has known. The British people have been good road-builders as well as good Empire-makers; the French people, too, and every other people who at any time have done big enduring work in the government of the world. If a nation is not a good road-building nation it will not go far: and the converse is probably true. On this road-building test the Bulgarians have a prosperous future indicated, for they are very pertinacious and skilful road-builders. During the 1912 war I noticed that despite all other pre-occupations they were pushing roads forward at every possible opportunity. The Turks going back to Adrianople and Kirk Kilisse found a great number of roads built or building—the first serious efforts in that direction since the downfall of the Roman Empire.

The Bulgarian's chief occupation is agriculture. The system of land tenures is that of peasant ownership. There are no large estates and very few non-occupying landlords. The chief crops are wheat, barley, maize, rice (around Philippopolis), tobacco, and roses. The tobacco is of as good quality, almost, as that of Turkey. The Bulgarian Government encourages the culture of tobacco by distributing seed, free of cost, among the planters, by setting a bounty on the export tariff, and by authorising the Bulgarian National Bank to consent to loans on the surety of certificates granted to the planters until they are able to dispose of their crops advantageously.

Tobacco culture is carried on chiefly in the south and in the provinces of Silistria and Kustendil. The area of the plantations is estimated at 3000 hectares. The province of Haskovo has the greatest yield; then follows Philippopolis, with 300,000 kilograms; Kustendil and Silistria, 210,000 kilograms. According to approximate calculations based on various statistics, three-fourths of the tobacco crop of Bulgaria is consumed by the inhabitants and only a quarter is exported.

The rose crop is next in importance after tobacco. The roses are used exclusively for the distilling of attar of roses. The rose gardens are limited to 148 parishes of the provinces of Philippopolis and Stara Zagora, and occupy a total area of 5094 hectares. The quantity and quality of the attar depend very much on the weather at the time of bloom and gathering. The roses most cultivated in Bulgaria are the red rose (Rosa damascena) and the white rose (Rosa alba). The best gardens are at Kazanlik, Karlovo, Klissoura, and Stara Zagora. The distilling of the attar is now a Government monopoly. The cultivation of beetroot has been introduced recently and is confined to the province of Sofia. The sugar refinery near Sofia utilises the whole crop for local consumption.

It is interesting to note in connection with Balkan agriculture that as far back as 1863 the much-abused Turk had actually adopted the very modern idea of an agricultural Credit Foncier system in the Balkans! In that year Midhat Pasha, Governor of the Danubian Vilayet, prepared a scheme for the creation of banks, to assist the rural population. The scheme having been approved by the Turkish Government, several of these banks were established. The peasants were allowed to repay in kind the loans which were advanced to them, the banks themselves selling the agricultural products. With the object of increasing the capital of the banks, a special tax was introduced obliging the farmers to hand every year to these institutions part of their produce in kind.

When it was realised that these banks were of great service to the rural population, to which they advanced money at 12 per cent interest—instead of 30-100 per cent, as the usurers generally did—the Turkish Government extended the reform to the whole Turkish Empire, and obliged the peasants to create similar banks in all the district centres. According to their statutes one-third of the net profits of these banks was destined for works of public utility, such as bridges, roads, fountains, schools, etc., while the remaining two-thirds went to increase the capital of the banks.

During the Russo-Turkish war several of these banks lost their funds, the functionaries of the Turkish Government having carried away all the cash, as well as the securities and other property belonging to the banks' clients. After the war the debtors refused to pay, and only part of the property of the banks was restored, by means of the issue of new bonds. For that unfortunate end the war is rather to be blamed than the Turk. This Credit Foncier system is pretty clear proof that the Turkish power was not always cruel and rapacious, since so sensible a reform was set on foot in one of the Christian provinces under the Sublime Porte.

Apart from the industries of the soil, Bulgaria has a small mining population and an increasing factory population. The Protective tariff is used freely to encourage young industries, and there is an effort just now to set up cotton-spinning as a national enterprise.

Serbia had a mixed pastoral and agricultural population up to the outbreak of the war of 1912, with pig-raising as the greatest of the national industries. By the Treaty of Bucharest she has, however, acquired much new territory, and is now probably predominantly an agricultural country. She has, too, great mineral resources at present, but they are little developed, and fine forests which only need an improvement of the means of communication to be commercially a big asset. The Serbian is not so steadily devoted to his work as the Bulgarian: his is the pastoral as opposed to the agricultural character. Nevertheless he has a reasonable faculty of industry. As is the case in Bulgaria the bulk of the land is held by peasant proprietors. These are organised into communes very much on the Russian system. It is an interesting fact that though in Serbia there is almost the same degree as in Bulgaria of seclusion of the women of the nation, a Serbian woman may be the head of the village commune, and, as such, exercise a very real authority.

Both in Bulgaria and Serbia the rights of the commune are very jealously safeguarded. The central government must take no part in the administration of the communes, or maintain any agents of its own to interfere with their affairs. The commune forms the basis of the State fabric and enjoys a complete autonomy. It is the smallest unit in the administrative organisation of the country. Every district is subdivided into communes, which are either urban or rural. The commune is a corporation. Every subject must belong to a commune and figure in its registers, the laws not tolerating the state of vagrancy. The members of the Commune Council are elected by universal suffrage, in the same way and subject to the same precautions as the members of the National Assembly. In passing it may be observed that theoretically the governments of the Balkan States are free democracies. Practically they are oligarchies tempered by assassination, which is still a favoured political weapon.

The Serbian has not much of the commercial faculty: and people of other nations manage very many of the businesses in Serbia.

The Montenegrin is willing to be a worker if it does not interfere with his manly amusements of warfare. His occupations are pastoral and agricultural pursuits and the chase. The Albanian is not content to be a worker at all under any conditions. His occupations are dancing and swaggering whilst his womenfolk carry on the bulk of the primitive pastoral and agricultural work.

It is not possible to hope for much industrial or commercial progress in Albania. But in Serbia and Bulgaria there are rich opportunities for enterprise and capital provided that an era of peace could be reckoned upon. It is the uncertainty on that point that will stand in the way of future Balkan development. When after the Treaty of London the Balkan League fell to pieces there was incurred, in addition to other sacrifices, a serious loss of confidence on the part of European capital.

CHAPTER X

THE FUTURE OF THE BALKANS

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 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 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.

The Bulgarian peasant soldiers were very honest and loyal. At Mustapha Pasha one 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.

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 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).

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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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.