CHAPTER VIII
THE DANUBE AND THE DARDANELLES
The River Danube and the Straits leading from the Black Sea to the Ægean Sea have been the waterways of Europe whose fortunes have had the greatest influence upon the evolution of international relations during the last half century. The control of these two waterways, as long as the Ottoman Empire remained strong, was not a question of compelling interest to Europe. It was only when the decline of the Ottoman power began to foreshadow the eventual disappearance of the empire from Europe that nations began to think of the vital importance of the control of these waterways to the economic life of Europe.
There is an extensive and interesting literature on the history of the evolution of international law in its relationship to the various questions raised by the necessarily international control of the Danube and the Dardanelles. In a book like this, an adequate statement of the history and work of the Danube Commission, and of the various diplomatic negotiations affecting the Bosphorus and the Dardanelles, their freedom of passage, their fortifications, their lighthouses, and their life-saving stations, cannot be attempted. It is my intention, therefore, to treat these great waterways only in the broader aspect of the important part that the questions raised by them have played in leading up to the gigantic struggle which foreshadows a new political reconstruction of the world.
The Danube is navigable from Germany all the way to the Black Sea. On its banks are the capitals of Austria, Hungary, and Servia. It traverses the entire Austro-Hungarian Empire, forms a natural boundary between Austria and Servia, Rumania and Bulgaria, and then turns north across Rumania to separate for a short distance Rumania and Russia before finally reaching the Black Sea.
The volume of traffic on the Danube has increased steadily since the Crimean War. It has become the great path of export for Austrian and Hungarian merchandise to the Balkan States, Russia, Turkey, and Persia, and for Servian, Bulgarian, and Rumanian products to Russia and Turkey. The passenger service on the Danube has kept pace with the competition of the railways. Eastward, it is frequently quicker, cheaper, and more convenient than the railway service. You can leave Vienna or Buda-Pesth in the evening, and reach Buda-Pesth or Belgrade in the morning. From Belgrade to the Hungarian and Rumanian frontier towns, the Danube furnishes the shortest route. From Bulgaria to Russia, the Danube route, via Somovit and Galatz to Odessa, is in many ways preferable to the through train service. It is by spending days on the Danube that I have come to realize how vital the river is to freight and passenger communications between Austria-Hungary, the Balkan states, and Russia. Travel gives life and meaning to statistics. The Danube interprets itself.
The Congresses of Paris and Berlin considered carefully the entrance of the Danube question into international life through the enfranchisement of the Balkan States. International laws, administered by an international commission, govern the Danube. It is a neutral waterway. Problems, similar to those of the Scheldt, have arisen, however, in the present war between Austria-Hungary and Servia. If Rumania and Bulgaria should join in the European war, no matter on which side they should fight, the whole Danube question would become further complicated. When war actually breaks out, the rulings of international law concerning neutrality are invariably violated. States act according to their own interests.
In its larger European aspect, the Danube, as an international waterway, is dependent upon the Dardanelles. Were Rumania to close the navigation of the Danube, or were she to preserve its neutrality, she would only be preventing or assisting the commerce of the riverain states with the Black Sea. Unobstructed passage to the outside world for Danube commerce depends upon the control of the outlet from the Black Sea to the Ægean Sea. The Hungarian and Servian peasant looks beyond his own great river to the narrow passage from the Sea of Marmora. The question of the Danube is subordinated to the question of the Dardanelles.
That the passage from the Black Sea to the outside world remain open and secure from sudden stoppage or constant menace is of vital importance to the riverain Danube states, Austria-Hungary and Servia, to the states bordering the Black Sea, Russia, Rumania, and Turkey, and to Persia, whose nearest communications with Europe are by way of the Black Sea. Austria-Hungary, however, has another outlet through the Adriatic, Servia is pressing towards the Adriatic and the Ægean, Bulgaria has recently secured an Ægean littoral, Persia is dependent upon Russia, and Turkey holds the straits. There remain Russia and Rumania, to whom the question of the Dardanelles is a matter of life and death.
The international position of Rumania is most unfortunate. She must make common cause with Germanic Europe or with Turkey to prevent her only waterway to the outside world from falling into the hands of Russia, or she must ally herself with Russia, and, by adding Bukovina and Transylvania, increase her numbers to the point where she can hope to resist the tide of Slavs around her. In discussing the neutrality of Rumania, the French and British press have given too much emphasis to the loyalty of King Carol for the Hohenzollern family, of which he was a member, as the cause of the failure of Rumania to join the enemies of the Germanic Powers, and to the hope that the death of the sovereign who made Rumania may result in a favourable change in the policy of the Bukarest Cabinet. The new sovereign, King Ferdinand, is also a Hohenzollern. The hesitation of Rumania has not been, and is not, primarily because of the family ties of her rulers. The Rumanians in Hungary may call for union with their enfranchised brethren, just as the Italians in Austria may call for union with the Italians who were liberated in 1859 and 1866. But is irredentism the only factor in influencing the policy of Italy and Rumania? For Rumania, at least, the hope of acquiring Transylvania and Bukovina in the international settlement following the war is offset by the apprehension of seeing Russia at the Dardanelles.
The Dardanelles has been the scene of struggles for commercial supremacy since the days of the Peloponnesian wars. It was in the Dardanelles that the great battle was fought which brought about the downfall of Athenian hegemony. It was over the question of fortifying the island of Tenedos that Venice and Genoa in the latter half of the fourteenth century fought the war during which the Genoese occupation of Chioggia nearly caused the destruction of Venice. Then came the Ottoman occupation to put a stop to international jealousies until modern times.
The political development of Russia from Moscow has been a consistent forward march towards ocean waterways. There have been six possible outlets for Russia, the Baltic Sea, the Black Sea, the White Sea, the Yellow Sea, the Persian Gulf, and the Adriatic. At different periods of her history, Russia has expended her efforts continuously in these various directions. To reach the Baltic, Peter the Great built Petrograd. One has to stand on the Kremlin on a beautiful summer day and look out over the sacred city of the Russians to grasp the fulness of the sacrifice and the marvellous daring of the man who abandoned Moscow to build another capital on piles driven into dreary salt marshes. It was for the sea and contact with the outside world! To reach the Pacific Ocean, Russia patiently conquered the former empire of the Mongols, steppe by steppe, and when she thought the moment of realization had arrived, did not hesitate to throw a band of steel across the continent of Asia. To reach the Persian Gulf, she crossed the Caucasus and launched her ships upon the Caspian Sea. To reach the Black Sea, she broke the military power of the houses of Jagello and Osman, building laboriously upon the ruins of Poland and the Ottoman Empire. Is it to reach the Adriatic that her forces are now before Przemysl?
In spite of her struggles through three centuries, Russia is still landlocked. The ice is an insurmountable barrier to freedom of exit from the White Sea, her only undisputed outlet. Japan has arisen to shatter the dreams of the future of Port Dalny, and make useless the sacrifices to gain the Pacific. The control by Germany of the exit from the Baltic Sea has been strengthened in recent years by the construction and fortification of the Kiel Canal. The Persian Gulf has been given up by the accord of 1907 with Great Britain. There has remained what has always been the strongest hope, and the one for the realization of which Russia has made consistent and stupendous efforts.
Radetsky, in his memoirs, has summed up the attitude of Russia towards the Ottoman Empire in words that give the key to the whole Eastern Question during the past century:
"Owing to her geographical position, Russia is the national and eternal enemy of Turkey.... Russia must therefore do all she can to take possession of Constantinople, for its possession alone will grant to her the security and territorial completeness necessary for her future."
Three times during the nineteenth century Russia endeavoured to destroy the Ottoman Empire in Europe so that she might gain control of the exit to the Ægean Sea. In 1828, her armies reached Adrianople, and half a century later the suburbs of Constantinople. In both instances, especially the second, it was the opposition of Great Britain that forced Russia to make peace without having attained her end. In 1854, France and Italy joined Great Britain in the invasion of the Crimea to preserve "the integrity of the Ottoman Empire." In 1856, at the Congress of Paris, Russia saw the western Powers uphold the principle that the Czar had no right to sovereignty even on the Black Sea, a half of which his ancestors had wrested from the Turks. It was no use for Russia to plead that she had "special interests" in her own territorial waters. The Black Sea was neutralized. The expression "selon nos convenances et intérêts" was understood by Great Britain to refer only to British interests! It was by right of might that Russia was held in check. In 1870, Bismarck purchased the neutrality of Russia in his war against France by agreeing to Russia's denunciation of the Paris treaty clauses which held her impotent in the Black Sea. But again, in 1878, Great Britain interfered to bottle up Russia. Since then the Russian navy has been a prisoner in the Black Sea. Will it continue to be so after the war of 1914?
Just when Ottoman power was receding, the rapid development of steam power began to make southern Russia the bread basket of Europe. Steam machinery increased the yield of these vast and rich lands, steam railways enabled the farmers to send their harvests to Black Sea ports, and steamships made possible the distribution of the harvests throughout Europe. I used to live on the Bosphorus, and from my study window I could see every day the never-ceasing procession of grain ships of all nations going to and coming from the Black Sea. In May, 1912, when the Dardanelles was closed for a month during the Italian war, two hundred steamships lay at anchor in the harbour of Constantinople.
Another influence whose importance cannot be overestimated has constantly turned the eyes of Russians towards Constantinople. Slavs are idealists. For an ideal, one makes sacrifices that material considerations do not call forth. To the Russians, Constantinople is Tsarigrad, the city of the Emperor. It is from Constantinople that the Russians received their religion. Their civilization is imbued with the spirit of Byzantium. Just as one sees in the Polish language the influence of Latin in the construction of the sentence, one sees in the kindred Russian tongue the influence of Greek. I have frequently been struck with the close and vital relationship between Constantinople and Russia during the period of the development of the Russian nation. Now that Russia seems to be entering upon a period of national awakening, the sentiment is bound to be irresistible among the Russians that they are the rightful inheritors of the Eastern Empire, eclipsed for so many centuries by the shadow of Islam and now about to be born again.
On a July evening in 1908, when the constitutional revolution in Turkey was beginning to occupy the attention of Europe, I sat with my wife in the winter garden of the Grand Hotel in Paris. We were listening to a charming and intelligent Russian gentleman explain to us the aims of the political parties in the Duma of 1907. A waiter came to tell us that our baggage was ready. "Where are you going?" asked the Russian. "To Constantinople," we answered. An expression of wistful sadness or joy—you can never tell which it is meant to be with a Russian—came across his face. "Constantinople!" he murmured, more to himself than to us: "This revolution will fail. You will see. For we must come into our own."
The political aspect of the question of the Dardanelles has changed greatly since Great Britain and France fought one war with Russia, and Great Britain stood ready to fight a second, in order to prevent this passage from falling into Russian hands.
Almost immediately after the crisis of San Stefano and the resulting revision of the Russo-Turkish treaty at Berlin, the interests of Great Britain were diverted from the north-east to the south-east Mediterranean. She decided that her permanent route to India was through the Suez Canal, and made it secure by getting possession of the majority of the shares of the Canal and by seizing Egypt. The Bulgarians began to show themselves lacking in the expected docility towards their liberator. British diplomats realized that they had been fearing what did not happen. They began to lose interest in the Dardanelles. This loss of interest in the question of the straits as a vital factor in their world interests has grown so complete in recent years that Russia has no reason to anticipate another visit of the British fleet to Besika Bay if—I refrain from prophesying. It is safe to say, however, that London has forgotten Mohammed Ali, the Crimea, and the Princes' Islands, while the traditions of Unkiar Skelessi are still dominating the foreign policy of Petrograd.
For, while the future of the Dardanelles has come to mean less to Great Britain, it means more than ever before to Russia. Russia has been turned back from the Pacific. The loss of Manchuria in the war with Japan caused her once again to cast her eyes upon the outlet to the Mediterranean. To the increase in her wheat trade has been added also the development of the petroleum trade from the Caucasus wells. Since the agreement for the partition of Persia with Great Britain in 1907, and the mutual "hands off" accord with Germany at Potsdam in 1910, the expectations of a brilliant Russian future for northern Persia and the Armenian and Kurdish corner of Asiatic Turkey have been great.
Since the Congress of Berlin, Germany has come into the place of Great Britain as the enemy who would keep Russia from finding the Ægean Sea. The growth of German interests at Constantinople and in Asia Minor has become the India—in anticipation—of Germany. When Russia, after her ill-fated venture in the Far East, turned her efforts once more towards the Balkan peninsula, it began to dawn upon her that the Drang nach Oesten might prove a menace to her control of the Dardanelles, fully as great as was formerly the British fetish of the integrity of the Ottoman Empire to keep open the route to India. Diplomacy endeavoured to ward off the inevitable struggle. But the Balkan wars created a new situation that broke rudely the accords of Skierniewice and Potsdam. Austria-Hungary in the Balkans and Germany in Asia Minor became the nightmare of Russia.
CHAPTER IX
AUSTRIA-HUNGARY AND HER SOUTH SLAVS
It has often been predicted in recent years that the union between Austria and Hungary would be broken by internal troubles. Hungary has been credited with desiring to cut loose from Austria. The frequent and serious quarrels between the members of the Dual Monarchy have caused many a wiseacre to shake his head and say, "The union will not outlive Franz Josef!" But the Austro-Hungarian Empire has been founded upon sound political and economic principles, which far transcend a single life or a dynasty. Austrians and Hungarians may be unwilling yoke-fellows. But they know that if they do not pull together, they cannot pull at all. They have too many Slavs around them.
The principle upon which Austrians and Hungarians have founded a Dual Monarchy is the old Latin proverb, divide et impera. In the Empire, Austrians and Hungarians are in the minority. In each kingdom, by dividing the Slavs cleverly between them, they hold the upper hand. The German race is, therefore, the dominant race in Austria, and the Hungarian race is the dominant race in Hungary.
If one looks at the map, and studies the division of the Empire, he will readily see that it is much more durably constructed than he would have reason to believe from statistics of the population. The Slavic question in the Dual Monarchy is not how many Slavs of kindred races are to be found in Austria-Hungary, but how they are placed in relationship to each other and to neighbouring states. It is a question of geography rather than of census. The student needs a map instead of columns of figures.
In only one place is the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy very weak, and that is in the south. The sole port for the thirty millions of Austria is Trieste. To reach Trieste one passes through a belt of Slavic territory, and Trieste itself is more Italian than German. The sole port of Hungary is Fiume. To reach Fiume one passes through a belt of Slavic territory, and there are hardly any Hungarians in Fiume itself. The Slavs which cut off Fiume from Hungary and the Slavs of the Dalmatian coast and of all Bosnia and Herzegovina belong to the same family. They speak practically the same language as the Servians and Montenegrins.
The Hungarians, then, have exactly the same interest as the Austrians in every move that has been made since the proclamation of the constitution of Turkey to prevent the foundation of a strong independent Servian State on the confines of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and to prevent the Slavs from reaching the Adriatic Sea.
Austria has not been necessarily influenced in her attitude towards the Balkan problem by Germany. Although her Drang nach Osten is frequently interpreted as a part of the Pan-Germanic movement, the Germans of Austria have needed no German sentiment and no German prompting to arrive at their point of view in regard to the Balkan nationalities. It must be clearly kept in mind that the Convention of Reichstadt in 1876, which was the beginning of Austria's consistent policy towards the Balkan peninsula, was signed before the alliance with Germany; that it was the conception of a Hungarian statesman, and that the occupation of Bosnia and Herzegovina had nothing whatever to do with Pan-Germanism. It was a measure of self-protection to prevent these remote provinces of Turkey from forming a political union with Servia, should the Russian arms, intervening on behalf of the south Slavs against Turkey, prove successful. The extension of sovereignty over Bosnia-Herzegovina in 1908 was to prevent the constitutional régime from trying to weaken the hold of Austria-Hungary upon these provinces. Austria-Hungary certainly would have preferred the more comfortable status of an occupation to the legal adoption of a Reichsland. But she could take no chances with the Young Turks. Her military occupation of the Sandjak of Novi Bazar was inspired as much by the necessity of preventing the union of Montenegro and Servia as by the desire to provide for a future railway extension to Salonika.
Hungary has had to grapple with two Balkan problems, the rise of Rumania and the rise of Servia. She has had within her kingdom several million Rumanian subjects and several million South Slavic subjects. Most of her Rumanians, however, have been separated from Rumania from the natural barrier of the Carpathian mountains, and have not found their union with Hungary to their disadvantage. For the Rumanians of Hungary enjoy through Buda-Pesth and Fiume a better outlet to the markets of the world, and a cheaper haul, than they would find through Rumania. They have benefited greatly by their economic union with Hungary. It is not the same with the Croatians. They are situated between Buda-Pesth and the Adriatic. They have a natural river outlet to the Danube. They are not separated by physical barriers from their brothers of race and language in Servia, Bosnia, and Dalmatia. Were they to separate from Hungary, they would not find their economic position in any way jeopardized.
Many South Slavs have advocated a trialism to replace the present dualism. They have claimed that the most critical problems of the Austro-Hungarian Empire could be solved in this way. Added to Hungary and Austria, there could be a Servian kingdom, perhaps enlarged by the inclusion of independent Servia and Montenegro, whose crown could be worn by the Hapsburg ruler.
But this solution has never found favour, simple and attractive though it sounds on first sight, with either Hungarians or Austrians. For it would mean the cutting off of both kingdoms from the sea. The Hungarians would be altogether land-locked, and surrounded on all sides by alien races. Austria would be forced into hopeless economic dependence upon Germany. The Germans of Austria and the Hungarians of Hungary have felt that their national existence depended upon keeping in political subjection the South Slavs, and upon repressing mercilessly any evidences of Italian irredentism upon the littoral of the Adriatic. Italian irredentism is treated in another place. The repression of national aspirations among the South Slavs, which interests us here, has been the corner-stone of Austro-Hungarian policy in the Balkans. For Hungary it has also been an internal question in her relationship with Croatia.
The Serbo-Croatian movement in southern Hungary has been repressed by Hungary with the same bitterness and lack of success that have attended the attempts to stifle national aspirations elsewhere in Europe. No weapon has been left unused in fighting nationalism in Croatia. Official corruption, bribery, manipulation of judges, imprisonment without trial, military despotism, gerrymandering, electoral intimidation,—this has been for years and is still, the daily record in Croatia. If there were a Slavic Silvio Pellico, the world would know that the ministers of the aged Franz Josef are not very different from the ministers of the young Franz Josef, who crushed the Milanese and tracked Garibaldi like a beast. Radetzkys and Gorzkowskis are still wearing Austrian livery. To Austria and Hungary, Salonika and Macedonia may have been the dream. But Trieste, Fiume, and Dalmatia have always been the realities. If Hungary took her heel off the neck of the Croatians, Buda-Pesth might become another Belgrade and Hungary another Servia, land-locked with no other outlet than the Danube. This does not excuse, but it explains. In this world the battle is to the strong. The survival of the fittest is a historical as well as a biological fact.
In spite of their juxtaposition, the Serbo-Croats have never been able to unite. There have been more reasons for this than their political separation. They are divided in religion. The Servians are Orthodox, and the Croatians and Dalmatians Catholic. In Bosnia and Macedonia, the race adhered to both confessions, though in majority Orthodox, and has also a strong Mohammedan element. The Orthodox Servians of Servia use the Cyrillic alphabet, and the Catholic Croatians and Dalmatians of Austria-Hungary the Latin alphabet.
Until the recent Balkan Wars, the Croatians and Dalmatians considered themselves a much superior branch of the race to the Servians. They have certainly enjoyed a superior education and demonstrated a superior civilization. The probable reason for this is that they did not have the misfortune to be for centuries under the Ottoman yoke. The Croatians have never been willing to play the understudy to the Servians. Agram has considered itself the centre of the Serbo-Croat movement rather than Belgrade. It is a far more beautiful and modern city than Belgrade. Few cities of all Europe of its size can equal Agram for architecture, for municipal works, and for keen, stimulating intellectual life. Its university is the foyer of Serbo-Croat nationalism and of risorgimento literature. It was here that the one Roman bishop of the world, who dared to speak openly in the Vatican Council of 1870 against the doctrine of papal infallibility and remain within the Church, gave to his people the prophetic message that nationality transcended creeds. Here also another Catholic priest taught the oneness of Servians and Croatians in language and history, and proved by scholarly research which is universally admired, that Croatia, Slavonia, and Dalmatia formed a triune kingdom, whose juridic union with the Austro-Hungarian Empire was wholly personal connection with the Hapsburg Crown, and had never been subjection to the Magyar. The Hungarians, during the past few years of bitterest persecution at Agram, have not been able to drive away the ghosts of Strossmayer and Racki. In Croatia, the pen has proved mightier than the sword.
Until recently, Austria-Hungary has not felt uneasy about the relationship between the Croatians and the Servians of the independent kingdom. But there has never been a minute since the annexation of 1908 that the statesmen of the Ballplatz have not been nervous about the Servian propaganda in Bosnia and Herzegovina. To keep Catholic Croatians and Orthodox Servians in antagonism with each other and with the Moslems, to prevent the education and economic emancipation of the Orthodox peasants, and to introduce German colonists and German industrial enterprises everywhere, has been the Austro-Hungarian program.
Vienna has used the Catholic Church and the propaganda of Catholic missions for dividing the Orthodox Servians in Bosnia from their Croatian brothers of the Catholic rite. Missionaries give every encouragement to Servians to desert the Orthodox Church. In the greater part of Bosnia, the Government has made it absolutely impossible for a child to receive an education elsewhere than in the Catholic schools. There are only two hundred and sixty-eight schools supported by the Government, of which one-tenth are placed in such a way that they serve exclusively other populations. The Bosnian budget provides four times as much money for the maintenance of the gendarmerie as for public schools.
Moslem law provides that all conquered land belongs to the Khalif. He farms it out in annual, life, or hereditary grants. In the Ottoman conquest of the Balkan Peninsula, the territories acquired were granted to successful soldiers on a basis which provided for a feudal army. The feudal proprietors, or beys, left the land to the peasants who occupied it, in consideration of an annual rental of a third of the yield of the land. The peasants had in addition to pay their tenth to the tax collectors of the Sultan. In territories that were on the borders of the Ottoman Empire, like Bosnia and Albania, the lands were largely retained by their former proprietors, who became Moslems. So the landed aristocracy remained indigenous.
The lot of the peasants in Bosnia, who were largely Orthodox Servians was not intolerable under Turkish rule, except when Moslem fanaticism was aroused by Christian separatist propaganda. Austria-Hungary claimed, however, that her occupation of the province was a measure dictated by humanity to ameliorate the lot of the enslaved Christians. But the Austrian administration has accomplished just the opposite. The new government from the beginning supported its authority upon the Moslem landowners, upon whose good-will they were dependent to prevent the awakening of national feeling among the peasants. Vienna was more complacent in overlooking abuses of the beys than had been Constantinople. For the Turks held their beys in check when exactions grew too bad. The Sublime Porte was afraid of giving an excuse for Christian intervention. But the Austrians encouraged the exactions of the beys in order to keep in abject subjection the Servian peasant population.
From the first moment of the Austro-Hungarian occupation, the peasants found that they would no longer enjoy undisturbed possession of their lands. The exodus of Mohammedan Bosnians, who, as we have seen elsewhere, were urged to follow the Ottoman flag, gave the Germans the opportunity of settling colonists on the vacated lands. This process of colonization was afterwards pursued to the detriment of the indigenous Christian population. Ernest Haeckel, the great philosopher, once said in a lecture at Jena that "the work of the German people to assure and develop civilization gives it the right to occupy the Balkans, Asia Minor, Syria, and Mesopotamia, and to exclude from these countries the races actually occupying them which are powerless and incapable." This statement, publicly made before a body of distinguished German thinkers, reveals the real ulterior ideal of the Drang nach Osten. Professor Wirth, dealing specifically with present possibilities, stated that the policy of Austria-Hungary in Bosnia must be to keep the peasantry in slavery and, as much as possible, to encourage them by oppression to emigrate. The reason given for this was: "To render powerful the Bosnian peasant is to render powerful the Servian people, which would be the suicide of Germany." Can we not see from this how public sentiment in Germany has stood behind the Austro-Hungarian ultimatum to Servia?
From 1890 to 1914, the theory of Haeckel and the advice of Wirth have been followed by the Austrian functionaries in Bosnia. No stone has been left unturned to drive the peasants from their lands. Right of inheritance has been suppressed, a tax collector has been introduced between the bey and his peasants, the taxes have been raised in many cases arbitrarily to the point where the peasants have been compelled to abandon their land. To German immigrants have been given communal lands which were necessary to the peasants for pasturage and the forests where their swine fed on acorns.
The population of Bosnia hardly surpasses thirty-five inhabitants to the kilometre. The total population is about two millions, of whom eight hundred thousand are Orthodox, six hundred thousand Moslem, and five hundred thousand Catholic. But practically all of this population—except one hundred thousand who are Jews, Protestants, and other German immigrants—is Servian or Servian-speaking. There are thirty-five thousand Germans, as opposed to one million eight hundred thousand Slavs. And yet German is the language of the administration, and the only language of the railways and posts and telegraphs, which in Bosnia have not ceased to be under the control of the military government. Many functionaries after thirty years of service in Bosnia do not know the language of the country. Two German newspapers are supported at the expense of the public budget to attack indigenous elements. In German schools, pupils are taught the history of Germany, but in Slavic schools the history of the south Slavs is excluded from the curriculum. There are fourteen schools for ten thousand Germans, and one school for every six thousand Slavs.
In the administration of Bosnia, only thirty-one out of three hundred and twenty-two functionaries are Servians, only twelve out of one hundred and twenty-five professors of lyceums, only thirty-one out of two hundred and thirty-seven judges and magistrates. And yet the Orthodox Servians form forty-four per cent. of the population. The young Bosnians who have graduated from the Austro-Hungarian universities find themselves excluded from public life. Turning to commercial life, they find eighty per cent. of the large industries controlled by German capital and managed exclusively by Germans. Turning to agriculture, they find economic misery and hopeless ignorance among the peasants of their race, and every effort made by the Government to prevent the bettering of their lot. Turning to journalism and public speaking to work for their race, they find an unreasoning censorship and a law against assemblies. As one of them expressed it to me, "We must either cease to be Slavs or become revolutionaries."
Did Austria-Hungary need to look to Servian propaganda, to influences from the outside, to find the cause of the assassination of Franz Ferdinand? Political assassinations were not new in the south Slavic provinces of the monarchy. A young Bosnian student attempted to assassinate the Governor of Bosnia at Sarajevo on June 6, 1910, at the time of the inauguration of the Bosnian Sabor (Diet). Two years later the royal commissioner in Croatia was the object of an attempt at assassination by a Bosnian at Agram. In September of the same year, a Croatian student shot at the Ban of Croatia. The same Ban, Skerletz, was attacked again at Agram by another young Croatian on August 18, 1913. These assassinations preceded those of the Archduke and his wife. They were all committed by students of Austro-Hungarian nationality. Only the last one had ever been in Servia.
In theory, Bosnia has had since February 20, 1910, a constitution with a deliberative assembly. But the Sabor can discuss no projects of law that have not been proposed by the two masters. Once voted, a law has to pass the double veto of Vienna and Buda-Pesth. As if this were not enough, the Viennese bureaucracy has so arranged the qualification of the electorate and the electoral laws that the suffrage does not represent the country. Then, too, the constitution decides arbitrarily that the membership of the Sabor must be divided according to religions, one Jew, sixteen Catholics, twenty-four Moslems, and thirty-one Orthodox. The Government has reserved for itself the right of naming twenty members! The constitution provides for individual liberty, the inviolability of one's home, liberty of the press and speech, and secrecy of letters and telegrams. This enlightened measure of the Emperor was heralded to the world. But of course there was the joker, Article 20. Vienna held the highest card! In case of menace to the public safety, all public and private rights may be suspended by a word from Vienna. Public safety always being menaced in Bosnia, the constitution is perpetually suspended. The Government even goes as far as to prosecute deputies for their speeches in Parliament. Newspapers are continually censored. Their telegraphic news from Vienna and Buda-Pesth is suppressed without reason. Particularly severe fines—sometimes jail sentences—are passed upon offending journalists.
Is it necessarily because of instigation and propaganda from Belgrade that of the three Servian political parties in Bosnia two (the Narod and the Otachbina) are closely allied to the Pan-Servian Society Narodna Obrana, and that these two parties openly support the separatist movement?
In Bosnia, Dalmatia, and Croatia in 1914 the bureaucracy of Vienna has been engaged in the same process of repression and police persecution as in Italy during the half century from 1815 to the liberation of Italy. The local constitutions have been suspended everywhere. Why have the Austrians, in spite of the lessons of the beginning of the present reign, dared to tempt providence in exactly the same way after the Golden Jubilee?
The victories of the Allies in the Balkans were a terrible blow to Austria-Hungary. Not only was her dream of reaching the Ægean Sea through the sandjak of Novi Bazar and Macedonia shattered by the Greek occupation of Salonika, but the aggrandizement of Servia, caused by a successful war, threatened to have a serious effect upon the fortunes of the Empire. The appearance of the Servians on the Adriatic would mean really the extension of Russian influence through Bulgaria and Servia to the Austrian and Italian private lake, and would cut off Austria for ever from her economic outlet to the Ægean. But there was more than this to cause alarm both in Austria and in Hungary. Bosnia-Herzegovina, Croatia, and Dalmatia—would they remain loyal to the Empire, if once they came under the spell of the idea of Greater Servia? Leaving Russia entirely out of the calculation, an independent, self-reliant, and enlarged Servia, extending towards the Adriatic and Ægean Seas, if not actually reaching it,—would it not be, as Professor Wirth declared, "the suicide of Germany"? The statesmen of the Hohenzollern and Hapsburg Empires determined that it should not occur.
From the very moment that the Servian armies drove the Turks before them, Austria-Hungary began to act the bully against Servia. The Austrian consuls at Prisrend and Mitrovitza were made the first cause of Austrian interference. It was pretended that Herr Prochaska had been massacred and mutilated at Prisrend, and that the life of Herr Táhy had been threatened so that he was forced to flee for safety from Mitrovitza. A formal inquest showed that the first of these consuls was safe, and that the trouble had been merely a discussion between Servian officers and Herr Prochaska over some fleeing Albanians who had taken refuge in the consulate, in the other case, there seemed to be no ground at all for complaint. But on January 15, 1913, the Servians acceded to the demand of Austria that the reparation be granted for the Prisrend incident. A company of Servian soldiers saluted the Austro-Hungarian flag as Consul Prochaska solemnly raised it. This incident seems too petty to mention, but in that part of the world and at that moment we thought it very serious. For it showed how anxious Austria-Hungary was to pick a quarrel with Servia in the midst of the Balkan War.
Two other incidents of an even more serious character immediately followed. Servia refused the Austrian demand that Durazzo be evacuated, supporting herself upon the hope that Russia would intervene. During December and January, deluded by unofficial representatives of Russian public sentiment and by demonstrations against Austria-Hungary in Moscow and Petrograd, Servia held out. It was only when she saw that Russian support was not forthcoming that she withdrew from Durazzo. The international situation during January, 1913, was similar to that during July, 1914, and the cause of the crisis was practically the same. In both cases Servia backed down, but the second time Austria-Hungary and Germany determined to provoke the war which they believed would be the end of Servia and the destruction of Russia's power to influence the political evolution of Balkan Peninsula.
After Durazzo, it was Scutari. Servia for the third time bowed before the will of Austria.
The next move against Servia was the annexation on May 12, 1913, of the little island of Ada-Kaleh on the Danube, which had curiously enough remained Turkish property after the Treaty of Berlin. It had actually been forgotten at that time. This island, situated in front of Orsova, would have given Servia a splendid strategic position at the mouth of the river. Austria-Hungary anticipated the Treaty of London.
It was to reduce Servia that secret encouragement was given to Bulgaria to provoke the second Balkan war. There is no doubt now as to the rôle of the Austro-Hungarian Minister at Sofia in allowing this crisis to be precipitated.
Had Germany been willing to stand behind her at Bukarest, Austria-Hungary would have prevented the signing of the treaty between the Balkan States by presenting an ultimatum to Servia. But Germany did not seem to be ready. The reason commonly given that Emperor William did not want to embarrass King Carol of Rumania, a prince of his own house, and his brother-in-law, the King of Greece, does not seem credible. In view of the events that have happened since, the signing of the Treaty of Bukarest is a mystery not yet cleared up.
The second Balkan war acted as a boomerang to Austria-Hungary. It increased tremendously the prestige of Servia abroad, and the confidence of the Servians in themselves. The weakness of the Turkish armies in the first Balkan war had been so great that Servia herself hardly considered it a fair test of her military strength. To have measured arms successfully with Bulgaria was worth as much to Servia as the territory that she gained.
We have seen how strained were the relationships of Austria-Hungary as separate kingdoms and together as an empire in their relationship with their south Slavic subjects. The Croatians, the Dalmatians, and a major portion of the inhabitants of Bosnia-Herzegovina were Servian in language and sympathies. They had never thought of political union with Servia, the petty kingdom which had allowed its rulers to be assassinated, and which seemed to be insignificant in comparison with the powerful and brilliant country of which they would not have been unwilling, if allowed real self-government, to remain a part. But a large and glorified Servia, with an increased territory and a well-earned and brilliant military reputation—would this prove an attraction to win away the dissatisfied subjects of the Dual Monarchy?
Austria-Hungary by the annexation of Bosnia-Herzegovina had taken to herself more Servians in a compact mass than she could well assimilate. They were not scattered and separated geographically like her other Slavic subjects. It was a danger from the beginning. After the Balkan wars, it became an imminent peril.
The death sentence of Servia was decided by the statesmen of Austria-Hungary and Germany the moment their newspapers brought to them the story of the battle of Kumonova.
I shall never forget my presentiment when I heard on June 29, 1914, down in a little Breton village, that a Bosnian student had celebrated the anniversary of the battle of Kossova by assassinating the Archduke Franz Ferdinand. The incident for which Austria was waiting had happened. There came back to me the words of Hakki Pasha, "If Italy declares war on Turkey, the cannon will not cease to speak until all Europe is in conflagration."
NOTE.—As a commentary on Austrian rule in Bosnia, particularly in connection with the statistics on pages 152-153 of this chapter, consider von Kállay who, as Governor of Bosnia-Herzegovina, fought so bitterly the rise of national feeling among the Servians through the teaching in their schools. This same von Kállay, in his earlier days, wrote a scholarly history of Servia, which I have had occasion to use. It is admirably written and accurate in detail. As a research scholar, von Kállay believed that Bosnians, Serbs, and Croats were the same race, and supported this thesis; but, as an Austrian official, he disclaimed such dangerous teaching by placing the ban upon his own book, which he forbade to be introduced into the provinces of which he was governor!
CHAPTER X
RACIAL RIVALRIES IN MACEDONIA
In the latter half of the nineteenth century, the peace of Europe was twice disturbed, and terrible wars occurred, over the question of the integrity of the Ottoman Empire. Since it is still the same question which has had most to do—directly at least—with bringing on the general European war of 1914, it is important to consider what has been, since the Treaty of Berlin, the very heart of the Eastern question in relation to Europe, the rivalry of races in Macedonia.
When the European Powers, following the lead of Great Britain, intervened after the Russo-Turkish War of 1877-78 to annul the Treaty of San Stefano, they frustrated the emancipation from Moslem rule of the Christian populations in Macedonia. A Balkan territorial and political status quo was decided upon by a Congress of the Powers at Berlin in 1878. In receiving back Macedonia, Turkey solemnly promised to give equal rights to her Christian subjects. In taking upon themselves the terrible responsibility of restoring Christians to Turkish rule, the Powers assumed at the same time the obligation to watch Turkey and compel her to keep her promises.
The delegates of the Powers brought to the Congress of Berlin a determination to solve the problems of South-eastern Europe, according to what they believed to be the personal selfish interests of the nations they represented. From the beginning of the Congress to the end, there was never a single thought of serving the interests of the people whose destinies they were presuming to decide. They compromised with each other "to preserve the peace of Europe." This formula has always been interpreted in diplomacy as the getting of all you can for your country without having to fight for it!
Practically every provision of the Treaty of Berlin has been disregarded by the contracting parties and by the Balkan States. The policy of Turkey in this respect has not been different from that of the Christian Powers. Great Britain and France, as their colonial empires increased, ignored the obligations of the treaty which they had signed, because they feared the effect upon their commercial and colonial interests overseas, were they to press the Khalif. The only effective pressure would have been force of arms. When popular sympathy was stirred to the depths by the cruelty of Abdul Hamid's oppression and massacres, successive British and French Cabinets washed their hands of any responsibility towards the Christians in Turkey. Pan-Islamism was their nightmare. They had an overwhelming fear of arousing Mohammedan sentiment against them in their colonies. Germany refused to hold Abdul Hamid to his promises, because she wanted to curry favour with him to get a foothold in Asiatic Turkey. Russia and Austria, the Powers most vitally interested in the Ottoman Empire, because they were its neighbours, were agreed upon preserving the Sultan's domination in the Balkan Peninsula, no matter how great the oppression of Christians became. Neither Power wanted to see the other increase in influence among the Balkan nationalities.
The centres of intrigue were Bulgaria, Albania, Thrace, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Macedonia, the portions of the Peninsula which had been refused emancipation by the Congress of Berlin. Bulgaria worked out her own emancipation. She refused the tutelage of Russia, annexed Eastern Rumelia in defiance of the Powers in 1885, and proclaimed her independence in 1908. The fortunes of Albania have been followed in another chapter. Thrace was too near Constantinople, the forbidden city, too unimportant economically, and too largely Moslem in population to be coveted by the Balkan States. Bosnia and Herzegovina, administered by Austria-Hungary since 1878, were annexed in defiance of treaty obligations in 1908. The principal victim of the mischief done by the Congress of Berlin was Macedonia.
The future of Macedonia has been the great source of conflict between Austria-Hungary and Russia, and between the Balkan States. At Athens, Sofia, Belgrade, Bukarest, and Cettinje, the diplomats of Russia, Austria-Hungary, and Turkey, from the morrow of the Berlin Congress to the eve of the recent Balkan Wars, played a game against each other, endeavouring always to use the Balkan States as pawns in their sordid strife. Turkey was backed by France and England, whenever it suited opportune diplomacy to do so. Austria-Hungary was backed by Germany, who at the same time did not hesitate to play a hand with the Turks. Russia has always stood more or less alone in the Balkan question, even after the conclusion of the alliance with France. Except at Cettinje, Italian activity in this diplomatic game has never been particularly marked.
What has been the object of the game? This is difficult to state categorically. Aims have changed with changing conditions. For example, during the five years immediately following the Congress of Berlin, British diplomacy was directed strenuously towards keeping down emancipated Bulgaria, and towards preventing the encroachment of Servia in the direction of the Adriatic and the Ægean. But when she saw that Bulgaria had refused to be the tool of Russia, and when her problem of the trade route of India had been solved by the buying up of the majority of shares in the Suez Canal and the occupation of Egypt, Great Britain championed Bulgaria and sustained her in the annexation of Eastern Rumelia. British policy remained anti-Servian for thirty years. There was more in the withdrawal of the British Legation from Belgrade than disapproval of a dastardly regicide. But the moment British commerce began to fear German competition, and an accord had been made with Russia to remove causes of conflict, the British press began to change its tone towards Servia. What a miracle has been wrought in the decade since "an immoral race of blackguards, with no sense of national honour" has become "that brave and noble little race, spirited defenders of the liberties of Europe!" I quote these two sentiments from the same newspapers. If Premier Asquith is sincere in his belief that this present war is to defend the principle of the sanctity of treaties, will he insist, when peace is concluded, that Servia make good her oath to Bulgaria, and Russia her international treaty obligations in regard to the kingdom of Poland? Great Britain is the least of the offenders when it comes to diplomatic cant and hypocrisy. For the British electorate has a keen sense of justice, and an intelligent determination that British influence shall be exerted for the betterment of humanity. Cabinets must reckon with this electorate when they decide questions of foreign policy.
But we do not want to lose ourselves in a maze of diplomatic intrigue, which it is fruitless to follow, even if we could. We must limit ourselves to an exposition of the ambitions of Austria-Hungary and of the Balkan States to the possession of this coveted province.
Since the creation of modern Italy, the great German trade route to the Mediterranean has been changed. The influence in Teutonic commercial evolution of the passing of Lombardy and Venetia from the political tutelage of a thousand years has been of tremendous importance, for the connection between Germany and Italy had always been vital. It was the first Napoleon who broke this connection. It was the third Napoleon who nullified the effort of the Congress of Vienna to re-establish it. United Italy gave a new direction to Teutonic expansion. United Germany gave to it a new impulsion. The Drang nach Osten was born.
By the Convention of Reichstadt in 1876, Austria-Hungary secured from Russia the promise of the Turkish provinces of Bosnia and Herzegovina in return for her neutrality in the "approaching war of liberation" of Russia against Turkey. In order to liberate some Slavs, Russia changed the subjection of others. The Convention of Reichstadt is really the starting-point of the quarrel which has grown so bitterly during the last generation between Austria and Russia over the Slavs of the Balkan Peninsula. Russia paid dearly for a "free hand" with Turkey in 1877. She is paying still.
In her attitude towards the Balkans, Austria has had three distinct aims: the prevention of a Slavic outlet to the Adriatic, the realization of a German outlet to the Ægean, and the effectual hindrance of the growth in the Balkans of a strong independent south Slavic state, which might prove a fatal attraction to her own provinces of Croatia and Dalmatia. It was this triple consideration that led her to the occupation and annexation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and to the policy of hostility to Servia, which is developed in another chapter. Desiring to possess for herself the wonderful port of Salonika on the Ægean bea, to reach which her railroads would have to cross Macedonia, the policy of Austria-Hungary towards Macedonia has been consistently to endeavour to uphold the semblance of Turkish authority, and at the same time to make that authority difficult to uphold through the exciting of racial rivalry among Greece, Servia, Bulgaria, Rumania, and Albania, in this turbulent country. Turkey and Austria met on the common ground of "keeping the pot boiling," although with a different aim. By keeping the pot boiling, Turkey thought that her sovereignty was safe, while Austria hoped that when Turkey and the Balkan States had worn themselves out, each opposing the other, she could step in and capture the prize.
Turkey and Austria-Hungary, then, conspired together to create as many points of conflict as possible among the Macedonians of different races. The most devilish ingenuity was constantly exercised in stirring up and keeping alive the hatred of each race over the other. While frequently aroused to the point of making perfunctory protests, the other nations of Europe, with the exception of Russia, let Austria and Turkey do as they pleased, just as Turkey was allowed a free hand in massacring the Armenians. The laissez faire policy of the Powers was a denial of their treaty obligations.
It was only when the Balkan States awoke to the realization of the fact that they were regarded as mere pawns upon the chessboard of world politics, to be sacrificed without compunction by the European Powers whenever it was to their interest, that they buried differences for a moment, and worked out their own salvation. If the Balkan Wars have brought the present terrible disaster upon Europe, it is no more than the contemptible diplomacy of self interest and mutual jealousy could expect.
Why was the Austro-Turkish policy possible, and why did it succeed for a whole generation?
The Ottoman Empire was founded in the Balkan peninsula by rulers whose military genius was coupled with their ability to use one Christian population against the other. The Osmanlis never fought a battle in which the Balkan Christians did not give valuable assistance in forging the chains of their slavery. The Osmanlis conquered the Balkan peoples by means of the Balkan peoples. They kept possession of the country just as long as they could pit one chief against another, and then, when national feeling arose, one race against another.
Gradually, in the portion of the Balkans where one race was predominant, nationalities began to form states, which secured independence as soon as they demonstrated the possibility of harmony. Greece was the first, and was followed by Servia. Moldavia and Wallachia united into the principality of Rumania. Last of all came Bulgaria. After having gained autonomy, independence was only a matter of form. But in the central portion of the Balkan Peninsula, from the Black Sea to the Ægean, through Thrace, Macedonia, and Albania, the sovereignty of Turkey, restored by the Treaty of Berlin, was able to endure. For the people were mixed up, race living with race, and in no place could the Christians of any one race claim that the country was wholly theirs.
As emancipated Greeks, Servians and Bulgarians formed independent states, they looked towards Macedonia as the legitimate territory for expansion. But here their claims, both historically and racially, overlapped. Greece regarded Macedonia as entirely Hellenic. Had it not always been Greek before the Osmanlis came, from the days of Philip of Macedon to the Paleologi of the Byzantine Empire? The Servians, on the other hand, invoked the memory of the Servian Empire of Stephen Dushan, who in the fourteenth century, on the eve of the Ottoman conquest, was crowned "King of Romania" at Serres. It was from the Servians and not from the Greeks, that the Osmanlis conquered Macedonia in the three battles of the Maritza, Tchernomen, and Kossova. The Bulgarians invoked the memory of their mediæval domination of Macedonia and Thrace. It was by the Bulgarians that northern Thrace was defended against the Ottoman invasion; a Bulgarian prince was the last independent ruler of central Macedonia; and long before the ephemeral Servian Empire of Stephen Dushan, the Bulgarian Czars were recognized from Tirnova to Okrida. This latter city, in fact, was the seat of the autonomous Bulgarian patriarchate in the Middle Ages.
These historical claims, to us of western Europe, would have only a sentimental value. They had been forgotten by the subject populations of European Turkey for many centuries. The first revival of political ambitions was that of Hellenism. Modern Greece, divorcing itself from the impossible and pagan dream of a restoration of classic Greece, with Athens as its capital, which had been woven for it by western European admirers during the first half century of its liberation, began to take stock of its Byzantine and Christian heritage during the latter part of the reign of Abdul Aziz. The new Hellenism, as the prestige of the Ottoman Empire decreased, took the definite form of a determination to succeed the Ottoman Empire, as it had preceded it, with Constantinople as capital.
The Greeks believed themselves to be the unifying Christian race of the Balkan Peninsula. They had a tremendous advantage over the Slavs, because the ecclesiastical organization, to which all the Christians of the Balkan Peninsula owed allegiance, was in their hands. When Mohammed the Conqueror entered Constantinople, he gave to the Patriarch of the Eastern Church the headship of the Balkan Christians. The spirit of Moslem institutions provides for no other form of government than a theocracy. Religion has always been to the Osmanli the test of nationality. The Christians formed one millet, or nation. This millet was Greek. During all the centuries of Ottoman subjection, the Balkan Christians owed allegiance to the Greek Patriarchate. Whatever their native tongue, the language of the Church and of the schools was Greek.
Unfortunately for Hellenism, the new Greek aspirations came into immediate conflict with the renaissance of the Bulgarian nation. Russia had long been encouraging, for the purposes of Pan-Slavism, the awakening of a sense of nationality in the south Slavs. Her agents had been long and patiently working among the Bulgarians. But they overshot their mark. When Bulgarian priests and the few educated men of the peasant nation turned their attention to their past and their language, it was not the idea of their kinship with the great Slavic Power of eastern Europe that was aroused, but the consciousness of their own particular race. Bulgaria had been great when Russia was practically unknown. Bulgaria could be great once more, when, by the disappearance of Ottoman rule, the Bulgarian Empire of the Middle Ages would be born again in the Balkans.
One can readily appreciate that the first necessity of Bulgarian renaissance was liberation from the Greek Church. Russia strenuously opposed this separatist agitation. What she wanted was a Slavic movement within the bosom of the Greek Orthodox Church, which, if bitterly persecuted by the Patriarchate, would throw the south Slavs upon the Russian Synod for protection, or, if tolerated, would give Russia a powerful voice in the councils of the Orthodox Church in the Ottoman Empire. But the Bulgarians had progressed too far on the road of religious separation from the Greeks to be arrested by their Russian godfather. It was a prophecy of the future independent spirit of the Bulgarian people, which Beaconsfield and Salisbury unfortunately failed to note, that the Bulgarians determined to go the length of uniting with Rome in order to get free from Phanar. Another Uniate sect would have been born had Russia not yielded. With bad grace, her Ambassador obtained from Sultan Abdul Aziz the firman of March 11, 1870, creating the Bulgarian Exarchate.
The cleverness of the Bulgarians outwitted the manoeuvre made to have the seat of the Exarchate at Sofia. The Greeks realized that a formidable competitor had entered into the struggle for Macedonia. From that moment there has been hatred between Greek and Bulgarian. In spite of the treaty of Bukarest, the end of the struggle is not yet. The policy and ambition of the modern state are dictated by strong economic reasons, of which sentimental aspirations are only the outward expression. If wars and the treaties that follow them were guided by honest confession of the real issues at stake, how much easier the solution of problems, and how much greater the chances of finding durable bases for treaties! The whole effort of Bulgaria in Macedonia may be explained by the simple statement that the Bulgarian race has been seeking its natural, logical, and inevitable outlet to the Ægean Sea.
During the middle of the nineteenth century, Servian national aspirations were directed toward Croatia, Dalmatia, and Bosnia-Herzegovina. The Servians thought only in terms of the west. It was the foundation of the Austro-Hungarian dual monarchy in 1867, followed by the Austrian occupation of Bosnia-Herzegovina and of the sandjak of Novi Bazar, that let Servia to enter into the struggle for Macedonia.
As soon as Russia saw that she could not control Bulgaria, she began to favour a Servian propaganda in the valley of the Vardar. Russian intrigues at Constantinople led to the suppression of the Bulgarian bishoprics of Okrida, Uskub, Küprülü (Veles) and Nevrokop. Bulgaria secured the restoration of these bishoprics through the efforts of Austria-Hungary and Great Britain. The story of Macedonia is full of instances like this of intrigue and counter intrigue by European Powers at the Sublime Porte. Combinations of interests changed sometimes over night. Is it any wonder that the Turks grew to despise the European alliances, and to laugh at every "joint note" of the Powers in relation to Macedonia?
Austria-Hungary opposed the Russian aid given to Servia by introducing a new racial propaganda. Ever since the Roman occupation there had been a small, but widely diffused, element in the population of Macedonia, which retained the Roman language, just as the Wallachians and Moldavians north of the Danube had done. Diplomatic suggestion at Bukarest succeeded in interesting Rumania in these Kutzo-Wallachians, as they came to be called. Rumania did not have a common boundary with European Turkey. But her statesmen were quick to see the advantage of having "a finger in the pie" when the Ottoman Empire disappeared from Europe. So Rumania became protector of the Kutzo-Wallachian. The Sublime Porte gladly agreed to recognize this protectorate. The development of a strong Rumanian element in Macedonia would help greatly to preserve Turkish sovereignty. For Rumania could have no territorial aspirations there, and would look with disfavour upon Rumania being swallowed up by Greece, Servia, or Bulgaria. Another propaganda, well financed, and encouraged by the Austro-Hungarian and Turkish Governments was added to the rivalry of races in Macedonia.
We cannot do more than suggest these intrigues. After 1885, the Macedonian question became gradually the peculiar care of the two "most interested" Powers. There was little to attract again international attention until the question of Turkey's existence as a state was brought forward in a most startling way by the repercussion throughout the Empire of the Armenian massacres of 1893-96. By refusing to intervene at that time, the Powers, who fondly thought that they were acting in the interest of the integrity of the Empire, were really contributing to its further decline.
Elsewhere we have spoken of the Cretan insurrection of 1896 and the train of events that followed it, ending in the formation of the Balkan alliance to drive Turkey out of Europe. Here we take up the other thread which leads us to the Balkan Wars. Bulgaria, remembering the happy result of her own sufferings from the massacres of twenty years before, was keen enough to see in the Asiatic holocausts of the "Red Sultan" a sign of weakness instead of a show of strength. The statesmen of the European Powers had not acted to stop the massacres of the Armenians. But their indecision and impolitic irresolution was not an expression of the sentiments of the civilized races whom they represented. The time was ripe for an insurrection in Macedonia. Public opinion in Europe would sustain it. The movement was launched from Sofia.
From that moment, Turkish sovereignty was doomed. Turkey did not realize this, however. Instead of adopting the policy of treating with Bulgaria, and giving her an economic outlet to the Ægean Sea, the Sublime Porte was delighted with the anticipation of a new era of racial rivalry in Macedonia. For it knew that Bulgaria's efforts to secure Macedonian autonomy would be opposed by Servia and Greece. In fact, the Greeks were so alarmed by the Bulgarian activity that immediately after their unhappy war with Turkey they gave active support to the Turks in putting down the Bulgarian rebels. The services of the Greek Patriarchate were particularly valuable to Turkey at this time.
Nor did Austria-Hungary and Russia appreciate the significance of the Bulgarian movement. In 1897, they signed an accord, solemnly agreeing that the status quo be preserved in the Balkan peninsula. Russia was anxious for this convention with Austria. For the moment all her energies were devoted to developing the policy in the Far East that was to end so abruptly eight years later on the battlefield of Mukden. Austria-Hungary was delighted to have the solution of the Macedonian problem delayed. She felt that every year of anarchy in European Turkey would bring her nearer to Salonika. The Drang nach Osten was to be made possible through the strife of Servian, Bulgarian, and Greek.
The moment was favourable for the Bulgarian propaganda. Russia was too much involved in Manchuria to help the Servians. The Greeks had lost prestige with the Macedonians by their easy and humiliating defeat at the hands of Turkey. Gathering force with successive years, and supported by the admirably laid foundation of the Bulgarian ecclesiastic and scholastic organizations throughout Macedonia, the Bulgarian bands gradually brought the vilayets of Monastir, Uskub, and Salonika into a state of civil war. In 1901 and 1902, conditions in Macedonia were beyond description. But the Powers waited for some new initiative on the part of Austria-Hungary and Russia.
Emperor Franz Josef and Czar Nicholas met at Mürszteg in the autumn of 1903. Russia, more and more involved in Manchuria, and on the eve of her conflict with Japan, found no difficulty in falling in with the suggestion of the Austrian Foreign Secretary that the two Powers present to the signers of the Treaty of Berlin a program of "reforms" for Macedonia. Europe received with delight this new manifestation of harmony between Austria-Hungary and Russia.
In 1904 the "Program of Mürszteg" was imposed upon Turkey by a comic-opera show of force on the part of the Powers. An international gendarmerie was their solution of the Macedonian problem. Different spheres were mapped out, and allotted to officers of the different Powers. Germany refused to participate in this farce, just as she had refused to participate in "protecting" Crete.
The international "pacification" failed in Macedonia for the same reasons that it had failed in Crete, and was to fail a third time ten years later in Albania. It was a compromise between the Powers, dictated by considerations which had nothing whatever to do with the problem of which it was supposed to be the solution. This is the story of European diplomacy in the Near East.
From the very moment that Turkey found herself compelled to accept the policing of Macedonia by European officers, she set to work to make their task impossible. Hussein Hilmi pasha was sent to Salonika as Governor. An accord was quickly established between him and the Austro-Hungarian agents in Macedonia. Where the Bulgarians were weak, the Turks and the Austrian emissaries encouraged the Bulgarian propaganda. Where the Greeks were weak, Hellenic bands were allowed immunity. Where the Servians were weak, the connivance of the Government. The European gendarmerie was powerless to struggle against Turkish, Austro-Hungarian, and Balkan intrigues. The correspondence of the European officers and consuls, and of journalists who visited Macedonia during this period, makes interesting reading. Their point of view is almost invariably that of their surroundings. It depended upon just what part of Macedonia one happened to be in, or the company in which one travelled, whether a certain nationality were "noble heroes suffering for an ideal" or "blood-thirsty ruffians." Why are so many writers who pretend to be impartial observers like chameleons?
Greece, Servia, and Bulgaria were alike guilty of subsidizing bands of armed men, who imagined that they were fulfilling a patriotic duty in brutally forcing their particular nationality upon ignorant peasants, most of whom did not know—or care—to what nation they belonged. There was little to choose between the methods and the actions of the different bands. Everywhere pillage, incendiarism, and assassination were the order of the day. When Christian propagandists let them alone, the poor villagers had to endure the same treatment from Moslem Albanians and from the Turkish soldiery.
In order to give the "reforms" of the Program of Mürszteg a chance, Athens, Sofia, and Belgrade ostensibly withdrew their active support of the bands. But the efforts of the Powers had still not only the secret bad faith of Austria-Hungary and Turkey to contend with, but also the determination of the Macedonians themselves not to be "reformed" à l'européenne, that is to say, à la turque. The powerful Bulgarian "interior organization" in Macedonia kept up the struggle in the hope that the continuation of anarchy would bring the Powers to see that there was no other solution possible of the Macedonian question than the autonomy of Macedonia under a Christian governor. Greeks and Servians opposed the project of autonomy, however, because they knew that it would result eventually in the reversion of Macedonia to Bulgaria. The history of Eastern Rumelia would be repeated. In considering the Macedonian problem, it must never be forgotten that the great bulk of the population of Macedonia is Bulgarian, in spite of all the learned dissertations and imposing statistics of Greek and Servian writers. But the difficulty is that this Bulgarian population is agricultural. In the cities near the sea and all along the seacoast from Salonika to Dedeagatch the Greek element is predominant. No geographical division of Macedonia can be made, viable from the economic point of view, which satisfies racial claims by following the principle of preponderant nationality.
After her disasters in the Far East, Russia began to turn her attention once more to the Near East. A reopening of the Macedonian question between Austria-Hungary and Russia was imminent when the Young Turk revolution of July, 1908, upset all calculations, and brought a new factor into the problem of the future of European Turkey. Austria-Hungary boldly challenged—more than that, defied—Russia by annexing Bosnia-Herzegovina. In this action she was backed by Germany. Russia and France were not ready for war. Great Britain and Italy, each involved in an internal social revolution of tremendous importance, could not afford to risk the programs of their respective cabinets by embarking upon uncertain foreign adventures.