IN 1906 the Ottoman Committee of Union and Progress, considering that the time had come to transfer their organisation to the soil of Turkey itself, and there make the final preparations for their attack on the Despotism, selected Macedonia as the scene of their initial operations.
There were good reasons for choosing this portion of Turkey as their strategic base. In the first place, it was here that the forces were chiefly at work which were threatening the speedy dissolution of the Ottoman Empire, and the Young Turks realised that unless they quickly came to the rescue it would be too late, and Macedonia would be lost. The terrible condition of the country, overrun as it was by murderous bands of political brigands supported by Turkey’s enemies, had already drawn an interference in the internal affairs of Macedonia on the part of the Great Powers that was deeply humiliating to every patriotic Turk. The Powers had compelled the Sultan, by threat of force, to consent to the supervision of the civil administration of Macedonia by an international financial commission, and to the formation of an international gendarmerie trained and commanded by foreign officers—of whom, by the way, the English officers have undoubtedly been the most successful, as they are more in sympathy than the others with the nature of the Turkish soldier. But the patriotic Turks, though they often entertained personal affection for the European officers who were thus thrust upon them, loathed this foreign interference, and nourished a bitter resentment against the Hamidian régime, whose inept rule had brought this indignity upon Turkey and made the world regard the Ottomans as a fallen people no longer capable of managing their own affairs.
There was one feature of this foreign intervention which was especially disagreeable and alarming to the Young Turks. The reforms proposed by England, a disinterested country, had been rejected by the Powers, and a mandate had been given to Russia and Austria—regarded by the Turks as their most treacherous enemies—to introduce their own programme of reform (the Murzteg programme) into Macedonia. The Turks maintained, as, too, did independent observers, that these two Powers of a purpose made this programme a wholly ineffective one, and that their representatives were so working as to foment disorder and strife among the Christian populations in order to forward the schemes for the dismemberment of European Turkey.
The signs of this foreign intervention everywhere around them served as object lessons to the people in Macedonia, whether educated men or peasants, civilians or soldiers, and they realised that, unless the methods of Turkish government improved, the foreign hold on the country would be ever tightened until its independence was destroyed. Thus there spread throughout Macedonia a profound discontent with the existing order of things, that prepared the ground for the great conspiracy.
To win over the Army to their side was of course the first object of the Young Turks, and therefore Macedonia was well chosen as the field of the early operations, inasmuch as the troops there were in a more disaffected condition than those in any other part of the Empire, and were ripe for revolt. For years these troops—ill clad, ill fed, and rarely paid—had been engaged in a desultory guerilla war against the bands of the Christian insurgents—a form of police work that brought no glory and was uncongenial to soldiers, while, by scattering them over the country in small sections, it did away with the cohesion and esprit de corps essential to an army. Their discontent was also aroused by seeing by the side of them their brothers of the smart international gendarmerie, men with military pride and bearing, well disciplined and (for the Powers saw to this) well clothed and fed, and regularly paid. It hurt the self-respect of both officers and men in the regular army to contrast the condition of these men with that of their ragged selves, for which, as they well knew, the corrupt administration of the Palace gang was to blame.
Of the intolerable military spy system and the other causes of disaffection among the officers of the Ottoman forces I have already spoken. The young officers of the Macedonia army, men of education and open-minded, who had passed through the military academies and had received instruction from foreign teachers, had exceptional opportunities in Macedonia for observing how an infamous rule was hurrying their country to its ruin, and therefore their sympathies naturally inclined towards the Young Turkey movement. Moreover, special grievances of their own aggravated their detestation of the Hamidian régime; the spy system was more searching and oppressive then elsewhere in this suspected portion of the Ottoman army, and it had become the habit of the Palace—galling to those who suffered under it—to send from the capital sleek Court favourites, with nothing of the soldier in them, to assume commands over the heads of fine officers who had taken a distinguished part in Turkey’s wars, and had been fighting the insurgent bands for years in the Macedonian mountains, but had never obtained the promotion that was their due.
Moreover, it favoured the plan of the revolutionaries that this vantage ground of Macedonia was at a safe distance from the capital—from the Palace with its myriad eyes and its regiments of well-fed, well-equipped, well-paid troops who could be counted upon to remain loyal to the despotism.
So far as the Mussulman population and the army were concerned, Macedonia was therefore ripe for rebellion, and the Christian peasantry, weary of the slaughter and devastation which the bands for years had been inflicting on the wretched country, were ready to welcome any new order of things that promised to bring peace and security.
To understand the operations of the secret society that organised the insurrection in Macedonia, it is necessary to bear in mind the condition of the country at that time. The Christian peasantry in Macedonia had suffered terribly from the pitiless methods employed by the Turks in suppressing any signs of insurrection, but during the latter years of the Hamidian régime they had to suffer even worse things, in consequence of the cruel internecine war which they waged among themselves. The various races that make up the population of Macedonia had for long been carrying on their several national propaganda. The three independent States on Macedonia’s borders, Greece, Bulgaria, and Servia, were working with the Greeks, Bulgarians, and Serbs under Turkish rule, with a view to territorial expansion in this region, so soon as the dissolution of the Turkish Empire, to which they looked forward with confidence, should come to pass. But in Macedonia there are no extensive districts exclusively inhabited by Greeks, Bulgarians, or Serbs. The different races are intermingled, and it is not unusual to find Mussulman Turks and Christians of each of three races living side by side in the same village. Consequently, as each of the three States above mentioned aspired to the reversion of all territory occupied by people of its own race, there was nearly everywhere an overlapping of claims; and it became the policy of each State to gain influence in a coveted district and there secure the numerical superiority of people of its own race, so as to be able to establish a strong title to possession when the Powers should undertake the dismemberment of Turkey.
This racial rivalry was embittered by religious fanaticism. Formerly the Greek Orthodox Church exercised an exclusive influence over the Bulgarian as well as Greek population of Macedonia, and all recognised the Patriarch as their spiritual head. The Bulgarians resented the tyrannical ecclesiastical ascendency of the Greeks, and a schism arose which was deliberately widened by the Sultan Abd-ul-Aziz, who conceded to the Bulgarians the right to separate from the Greek Church and appoint an Exarch of their own. The Patriarch excommunicated the first Exarch and all who gave their allegiance to him, and since then there has been bitter hatred between the Orthodox and the schismatics. Of the Bulgarians in Macedonia, some have remained faithful to the Orthodox Church, while the majority acknowledge the spiritual headship of the Exarch. Now in Turkey populations are reckoned according to creed and not race, and in the census returns a Bulgarian who was a member of the Orthodox Greek Church would appear as a Greek. Therefore, for political, as well as religious, reasons the Greeks and Bulgarians strove hard to snatch from each other the control of the schools and churches in any district where there was a Bulgarian population, and employed violence and every form of persecution to secure converts.
In Greece, Bulgaria, and Servia, armed bands were equipped and sent into Macedonia to forward the rival interests of these land-lustful States. Bulgarian bands burnt Greek villages and Greek bands those of the Bulgarians. The seizure of each other’s churches and ecclesiastical property, and the murder of priests, became features of the propaganda. In the zeal to bring about the preponderance of this or that race the armed ruffians murdered women and children, and all the barbarities which aroused the indignation of Europe when Turkish irregulars were the guilty, were now committed against each other by the Christian protégés of our humanitarians. With fire and sword the several propaganda were spread through the country. The Greeks boycotted the Bulgarians in the towns, and by various methods of persecution endeavoured to drive Bulgarians from coveted districts on the sea-coast. The Greek bishops and clergy worked with fanatical activity; not only did they forbid their co-religionists to give employment to Bulgarians, but they were largely responsible for the atrocities committed by the Greek bands, and went so far as to draw up proscription lists of Bulgarian schismatics who had to be assassinated; but the Bulgarians often had their revenge, as when, about a year ago, they dragged a Greek clergyman out of his church and burnt him alive.
Out of the many stories which one could tell, here is one which will serve as an example of the methods of the bands. On November 26, 1907, a Greek band of over sixty men surrounded the village of Zelenitchi, while a party broke into the house of the Bulgarian, Stoyan Gateff, where a marriage was being celebrated, killed thirteen men, women, and children, and wounded others.
To add to all this orgie of bloodshed, robbery, and violence, came the formation of bands of Mussulman Turks, endowed with the bravery of their race, who, while protecting the Turkish peasantry against the Christians, pillaged and burnt the villages of the latter, and did their share of the killing; while the bodies of half-famished, unpaid Turkish troops who were sent to search for concealed arms over the countryside naturally lived on the wretched Christian peasants, and helped themselves to all they needed.
Between the Greeks and Bulgarians there was never a truce save in winter, when the snow lay deep upon the Balkans, but sometimes the Serb would join the Greek bands in their attacks on the Bulgarians. Thus organised brigandage terrorised the countryside, and the bands, when they ran short of money or supplies, did not hesitate to rob even the people of their own kin, whose cause they were espousing, levying blackmail upon them, and burning their villages if demands were not satisfied. It is not to be wondered at that a large proportion of the Christian population found the succour of their ferocious brethren somewhat irksome, and were ready to welcome the pacific programme of the Young Turks. It will be remembered that when Bulgaria declared her independence last year the Bulgarian peasants in Macedonia held meetings at which they denounced the Principality and sent a memorial to Prince Ferdinand to warn him that they would hold him responsible for whatever evil might now befall them, as the result of his action.
Of all these Christian propagandists the Bulgarians aroused most sympathy in Europe; for they are a brave and straightforward people. They had good reason to hate the Greeks, who had always persecuted them. When, in 1903, the Bulgarian exarchists in Macedonia, with their hundreds of small armed bands, carried on a gallant but hopeless guerilla war against the Turkish regular troops, the Greek Macedonians remained neutral, but worked against their fellow-Christians after a fashion characteristically Hellenic; they assisted the Turks by betraying and denouncing to them the Bulgarian rebels; for in their zeal to forward their ultimate political designs they were not ill pleased to witness the extermination by the Turks of their fellow-Christians who repudiated the Patriarch and refused to become Hellenised. It was not until 1904 that Greek bands, led by officers of the Greek regular army, crossed the frontier into Macedonia to wage war not only against the propaganda of the Bulgarian exarchists, but also that of the Wallach inhabitants, who desired to throw off the tyrannical supremacy of the Greek Patriarch and have an Exarch of their own, as the Bulgarians had, with their own schools and churches in which their national language could be used. The Sultan, who was ever playing one Christian sect off against another, and made no real effort to stop the fratricidal strife that served his designs, now gave his encouragement to the Wallach propaganda, for this did not threaten the integrity of his Empire as did the propaganda of the Greeks and Serbs, there being no question of annexation of any Wallach districts of Macedonia to the distant kingdom of the Wallachs’ kin, Roumania.
The Bulgarians proved themselves the braver men in this racial struggle; but the Greek bands were the strongest in numbers and were also the best equipped, for they were always kept well supplied with ammunition and food by the rich merchants in Athens. The Greek bands chiefly distinguished themselves by attacking unprotected villages and slaughtering unarmed peasants; half-a-dozen brave Turkish gendarmes have on occasion sufficed to rout the largest of these bands. I need not say that the unfortunate Turkish peasants, being regarded as enemies by all parties, suffered severely at the hands of the propagandists.
The condition of the country ever got worse. In 1907 there were one hundred and thirty-three conflicts between Turkish troops and Greek and Bulgarian bands, and a large but unrecorded number of fights between rival bands: Greek and Wallach; Greek and Bulgarian; Bulgarian and Serb; and Albanian and Serb. The bands used to come down to the plains and carry off the crops outside Salonica itself. The Greek Committee sent a manifesto to the villages round Salonica ordering the villagers, under pain of death, to become converts to Orthodoxy and to accept the Patriarch, and have themselves inscribed as Greeks upon the census papers. Shortly before the Sultan’s proclamation of the Constitution the artillery of the Salonica garrison had to shell the reed-covered swamps in the vicinity of the city to drive out the bands that had found shelter there.
It was in the city of Salonica that the Ottoman Committee of Union and Progress decided to establish the headquarters of the secret society that was to prepare the outbreak of rebellion in Macedonia, a city which, as being the cradle of their liberties, has already come to be regarded as a sort of holy place by patriotic Turks. It is a city worthy to be the scene of the initiation of one of the world’s great movements. The splendid seaport, on the acquisition of which Austria had set her heart, impresses every visitor with a sense of a peculiar nobility with which it is invested by its aspect, situation, and history. Stately and beautiful is the approach to it from the sea as one sails up the fifty-mile broad Gulf of Salonica; on the right the undulating land of Cassandra, with grassy, tree-studded shores, and windmills on the skyline testifying to the productiveness of the fields beyond; on the left the mountain ranges of Thessaly; with peaks whose names are known to every school-boy—Pelion to the south, then Ossa, and, near the head of the Gulf, a noble mountain mass towering over the lesser heights, with snowy summits ten thousand feet above the sea, Mount Olympus itself, the abode of the old gods.
From the busy quay of Salonica one looks across the blue water at the snows of Olympus and a wonderful far panorama of hills and dales of classic Greece; and Salonica itself is a fair city to look upon from the sea, with its gleaming white houses and minarets, and dark groves of cypress sloping up to the ancient castle and fortifications. I need not recall here the great part which Thessalonica played in the old days when Persians, Athenians, Macedonians, Romans, Normans of Sicily, and Saracens in succession conquered and held the famous port, the principal city between Rome and the East; its vicissitudes and many bloody sieges. Old Thessalonica, with its Greek, Roman, and Byzantine ruins, relics of “sad, half-forgotten things and battles long ago,” the thronged city where St. Paul preached and worked with his hands among the Macedonian artisans, as the modern Salonica has once again come to the forefront in the shaping of the world’s history, and its citizens walk proudly because here dawned the liberty of the Ottomans, with its inspiring hopes. There is something about the atmosphere of Salonica which makes it seem a fitting place to be the birthplace of a great movement. One feels freer on its broad quay and in its clean, well-paved streets than in the narrow, ever muddy lanes which imprison one in Constantinople. The climate for the greater part of the year is most exhilarating, and the inhabitants of this white city, “ever delicately walking through most pellucid air,” seem more vivacious and brisk, and are said to be more enlightened, more industrious, and shrewder than those of the capital.
Even under the tyranny and corruption of the old régime things were fairly well ordered in Salonica, and the municipal authorities did some good work, as the appearance of the streets shows, though they did appropriate, in the shape of irregular salaries, one-half of the rates. Salonica, too, enjoyed a measure of liberty, even in those dark days, and men could do here many things which would have ensured their prompt punishment in Constantinople. For example, though meetings of any description were banned by the Palace, and a man could not invite two or three friends to dine with him in his house without permission, and though to be found guilty of being a Freemason was to incur the death penalty, Freemasonry (French, Grand Orient, Spanish, and Italian) flourished in Salonica; there were five Masonic Lodges in the town throughout the long years of despotism, though of course the Lodges had no fixed habitations, and the Masons used to meet in whatever house or perhaps lonely spot in the open country was at any time deemed to be the safest place.
In Salonica, with its teeming population of Turks, Greeks, Jews, Albanians, Bulgarians, and Levantines of many mixed races, speaking divers tongues, it is easy for men to assume disguises and difficult for spies to trace conspiracies. In no city does one come across a greater variety of race and picturesque costume than in these busy bazaars and streets—the Jews (who here number fifty thousand) who look as if they had stepped straight out of the Venice of Shakespeare’s time, the men in gabardines, the women in robes such as were worn by the ancestors of these people when they were driven out of Spain by Ferdinand and Isabella, still speaking among themselves a strange Spanish dialect—swaggering Albanians in their picturesque becoming national costume of which Byron sang—burly Bulgarian peasants—priests of all denominations, including Russian monks of neighbouring Mount Athos, emissaries from that holy promontory on which for one thousand years no woman or even animal of the female sex has been allowed to set foot, where monks in their thousands dwell in ascetic retirement in monasteries perched like the lamaseries of Tibet among the mountains, while in the wildest and most inaccessible spots anchorites have their hermitages and live in complete solitude after the manner of their predecessor, St. Anthony.
The fact that it was possible in this crowded city to escape observation and to organise secret societies made Salonica the natural centre of the Young Turk movement in Macedonia. Secret political organisation already existed there, and the Internal Organisations of the Bulgarian revolutionary party had had its head-quarters there since about 1895.
THUS, in the summer of 1906, the Young Turk movement crystallised into a secret society in Salonica, so well organised that it effected its purpose despite the universal espionage, its work, of course, being facilitated by the fact that in every part of the Empire the system of administration had become so hateful to the people that, outside the horde of spies, and those who prospered under the methods of the old régime, few men could be found so base as to betray the leaders to the authorities. It will make a wonderful story, when it is fully told, that of these men working in secret and danger, many losing their lives and still more their fortunes, but spreading their propaganda, becoming ever stronger, until at last, having secured the support of a great army and a powerful Church, they won liberty for Turkey by the almost bloodless revolution that has taken all Europe by surprise.
This secret society was to a large extent modelled on Freemasonry, and a considerable proportion of the early associates (Mussulmans for the most part, with some Jews) were members of the Masonic Lodges in Salonica. The machinery of Freemasonry, however, was not directly employed to further the propaganda, and the Lodges took no official cognizance of this political movement. It would obviously have been too dangerous to discuss such a conspiracy as this one at Masonic gatherings, where the treason of one man could destroy so many. The methods of the Italian secret societies, where a member is introduced to two or three of the affiliated only and so cannot betray more than this number, were therefore adopted by those who framed the regulations of the new organisation. But still Freemasonry was a great help to the cause; for a member of the secret society who happened to be also a Mason, while he was seeking, as was his duty, to gain fresh initiates, could more readily approach a brother Mason than any other man with this purpose, knowing that the very fact of being a Mason indicated a natural inclination to be in sympathy with the aims of the Young Turks, and feeling also that he could rely upon the secrecy and fidelity of one of the fraternity.
The secret society was first known as the “Committee of Liberty,” but shortly after its creation it was amalgamated with the “Ottoman Committee of Union and Progress” in Paris, and became the working centre of that organisation. From that time the “Ottoman Committee of Union and Progress” had its secret headquarters in Salonica, while Ahmed Riza and his associates remained in Paris to form an important branch committee that was able to further the cause in many ways from the secure sanctuary of a foreign capital. Thus it was in Paris, in 1907, more than a year after the establishment of the Committee’s head-quarters in Salonica, that, at the instance of the Paris branch, there was held that Congress of Turkish revolutionaries of which I have already spoken, at which Committees representing the various races of the Empire agreed to co-operate with the Young Turks.
The secret central committee, therefore, held its meetings in Salonica, and kept up a constant communication with branch committees in Scutari of Albania, Monastir, Janina, and other towns, and later it had its small local committee in nearly every village of Macedonia and Albania. Before the outbreak of the revolution it had established its branch committees in all the important towns of Asiatic Turkey. Of those who composed the Salonica Committee I have met many. They were all men from what we should term the upper and middle classes—young officers in the army who had passed through the military schools and had profited by the splendid system of instruction introduced by the genius of Baron von der Goltz—the one good thing for which Turkey has reason to be grateful to Germany; young civil servants of the different State departments; land-owning Macedonian beys; professors; lawyers; doctors and some of the ulemas. Of officers of high rank and of the heads of the Civil Service there were none; for most of these were creatures of the Palace, and such as may have had sympathy with the Young Turk cause were, in consequence of their position, too closely watched by the Yildiz spies to take an active part in the movement. All the men—for the most part men under middle age—who became members of the secret committee were distinguished for their intense and unselfish patriotism, men who commanded the respect and admiration of every foreigner who has come in contact with them. This revolution did not come from below, from debased city mobs or ignorant peasantry, but from above, from all that is best in Turkey. The self-seeking demagogue had no part in this revolution. These men, who devoted their lives to overthrowing the Despotism, represented the honest and patriotic Ottoman gentry, men who placed country above self-interest, the natural leaders of the people, belonging to a dominant race which knows how to command men—a more useful quality than much administrative knowledge.
Some of the principal members of the Committee of Union and Progress in Salonica spoke to me when I was in that city, in November last, without reserve—as they will do to an Englishman who has gained their confidence—concerning their early secret organisation; for now that the danger is almost over they are quite willing that the methods which they were compelled to adopt before the granting of the Constitution should be made known. To understand with sympathy what I am about to describe, and recognise how fully justified were such assassinations as were ordered by the Committee, one must bear in mind the terrible nature of the late régime; how thousands of spies were scattered over the country whose business it was to denounce suspects to the Palace; how many of the best men in the country suddenly disappeared from their wives and families, never to return; how torture and death were the penalties for those who sought to set bounds to the Sultan’s absolutism.
The machinery of this wonderful secret Society, which, throughout the three years preceding the granting of the Constitution, did its dangerous work so well, so unpityingly when the occasion demanded, but always so justly, has been described to me as follows by some of its best known founders:
The propagandist work of a member of the Society was two-fold. First, he had to gain adherents to the cause among all classes of the Turkish population by using arguments, explanations, and exhortations. Secondly, he had to persuade certain carefully selected persons from among his relations and more intimate friends to become affiliated to the Society, and this he had to do with the greatest caution. Thus, a member of the Society, whom we will call A, would approach his friend and, perhaps, brother Mason, B, whom he knew to be a righteous and patriotic man, to whom the methods of the Despotism must necessarily be detestable, and carefully sound him. Having satisfied himself that his friend was inspired by a true zeal, and was prepared to make great sacrifices for his country’s salvation, A would say to B, “I have a secret, a great mystery, which I should like to confide to you. Will you swear never to divulge what I am about to say to any one?” On B’s taking the required oath, A would explain to him that there existed a powerful secret society of which he himself was a member, whose aim was the destruction of the existing system of government, and would then ask whether as a patriot he would like to join the brotherhood, warning him at the same time of the serious step he was about to take and of the great dangers which he would have to face.
On B’s replying in the affirmative, A would leave him, and a few days later two messengers would come to B and call upon him in the name of his friend A to follow them. The messengers would lead B to a lonely place, there blindfold him, and then take him to some retired house or recess in the forest which had been selected as the place of his initiation. Here he would be ordered to stand, the bandage still across his eyes, while he was addressed by two or more eloquent speakers, who would draw a vivid picture of the evils of the tyranny, of the certain destruction of the Ottoman Empire to which ill government was leading, of the great suffering which the Palace espionage had inflicted on so many of their friends and relations, and would show in burning words that it was the duty of every good Ottoman to do his utmost by all possible methods to assist in the liberation of Turkey. Turks often possess great oratorical powers, and I am assured that in nearly every instance the candidate would be moved to tears by these impressive exhortations. The candidate would be sworn to secrecy and fidelity and unquestioning obedience to the orders of the Committee, on the Koran and on the sword, and he would then be solemnly declared to be affiliated to the secret Society. In the rare cases in which the candidate was not a Mussulman the oath would of course be administered in some other way.
The bandage would then be removed from his eyes and lie would find himself in the presence of five masked men wearing long cloaks. One of these would again address the initiate. First, he would explain to him that precautions to secure secrecy and to make treason difficult were indispensable to the very existence of the Society, for the spies of the Palace were ever around it, while it was possible that some were even within its circle; that therefore it was expedient that the initiates should be as little known to each other as possible; and that it was on this account that those who now addressed him were masked, and, moreover, persons whom he had never previously met, so that it might be impossible for him to identify them by their voices. The speaker would then proceed to explain to the initiate his duties and obligations. He would remind him that the Committee condemned to death not only traitors but those who disobeyed its orders, and impress upon him that by the oath he had taken in the name of God and Mohammed his life would have to be devoted to the cause until Turkey was freed, that he belonged body and soul to the Society, and would have to go to whatever part of the world he was sent, and do whatever the Society bade him, even were it to kill his own brother. At the conclusion of this ritual B would again be blindfolded and be led away by the two messengers.
For some weeks or months after this initiation B would undergo a term of probation; orders would come to him by secret channels and he would obey them, but he would see no member of the Society. His introducer, A, was responsible for his fidelity, and should B so act as to be condemned to death by the Society, it would be the hand of his friend A which would have to slay him. At last, B having proved himself worthy, the messengers would again summon him to a meeting of the secret Committee, and after a ceremony somewhat similar to the first, he would be affiliated to one of the companies into which the Society was divided, each company containing about one hundred and fifty members. But B would be made known to four men of his company and no more, for it was in circles of five only that the initiates used to meet. So it was impossible for any false member to betray more than five comrades—the four of his own circle and his introducer. In each circle of five one member served as a link with the other circles of the company; while each company had certain members who were the links between it and the other companies and with the Central Committee.
Of this secret Central Committee I can say little; for though now, the Despotism having been destroyed, the members of the Committee of Union and Progress have come out in the open, and every one knows who they are, they still appoint a secret central organisation, the names of whose members no man will tell you and few men know. But one is assured that this Committee has no president and no leaders, that all are equal in it, and that a new chairman is elected at each meeting; for individual ambition is deprecated, and it was the original aim to make of this a band of brothers working with unselfish devotion, unknown, without desire for any recognition, for their country. The formation of any dominant group or camarilla within the Central Committee is made impossible by the regulations which govern its procedure.
Just before the proclamation of the Constitution the initiates of the Committee of Union and Progress, in Macedonia alone, numbered fifteen thousand. It was the duty of each member to spread the propaganda by conversing with men of all classes, a delicate and very dangerous task, as one may well imagine. Many were arrested at the instance of the spies, to be imprisoned or to lose their lives. Many of the captured were taken to the Palace and offered large bribes in return for information, and, this failing, tortures were applied, but with no effect. There was not one single instance of the betrayal of his brethren by a member of the Society.
The organisation of this wonderful secret Society was very complete. To meet the expenses each member was compelled to contribute a fixed percentage of his income to the Committee chest, while rich members, in addition to this tax, made generous donations when funds were required. Arms and ammunition were secretly purchased. A considerable sum was set apart annually to provide for the families of members who lost life or liberty while working for the cause. Their several duties were apportioned to the members. There were the messengers who, disguised in various ways, went to and fro over the Empire carrying verbal reports and instructions, for naturally communications between branches of the association and orders to individual members could not be confided to the postal and telegraph services. There were the men who had to assassinate those whom the Committee had condemned to death—Government officials who were working against the movement with a dangerous zeal, and Palace spies who were getting on the scent. Other members were sent out to act as spies in the interest of the cause, and the contre espionage became at last so thorough that it baffled the espionage of the Palace. Men whom the Palace paid as its spies were often the loyal agents of the secret Society. The Committee had its agents in every department of the Government, in the Civil Service, in the War Office, in the Custom House, in the post and telegraph offices, even in the foreign post-offices in Constantinople and other big cities; so that official communications were intercepted and read and the most secret designs of the Palace were revealed to the Committee and could therefore be circumvented. The Committee had its spies in the Turkish Embassies in foreign countries, among the retainers of influential Pashas, and in the Yildiz Palace itself. For example, a correspondent, writing to the Times from Salonica, tells the story of Dr. Baha-ud-Din, formerly physician to one of the Imperial princes, who had been exiled to the Russian frontier. He returned secretly to the capital, and for the three months preceding the revolution remained in the Palace undetected, supplying the Committee with a good deal of useful information. Suspicion fell upon him a few days before the revolution broke out, so he had to flee for his life, and became an active member of the Committee in Salonica.
Then there was the host of propagandists who were scattered all over the Empire doing their dangerous work, urging the civil population to embarrass the Government by a refusal to pay taxes and to prepare for a general rising, and persuading the soldiery of the righteousness of the movement, and obtaining their promise not to fight against their own countrymen when ordered to do so. So as to obtain easy access to houses and barracks, Turkish officers disguised themselves as hawkers of cheap jewellery and ribbons, or as the peripatetic sutlers who sell sherbet and little comforts to the Turkish soldier; and in their packs were always concealed the revolutionary tracts that were to spread the propaganda. One well-known officer for long kept a barber’s shop in Baghdad, and inoculated his customers with the doctrines of the conspiracy. Dr. Nazim Bey, who had been exiled, wandered over Asia Minor for eighteen months, sometimes disguised as a peddler, sometimes as a hodja, in order to win over the Anatolian regiments. He made initiates among the officers, and conversed with the men to such good effect that when the Sultan, in the last day of the old régime, despatched several battalions of the Anatolian army, to crush the military insurrection in Macedonia, these troops not only refused to fire on their comrades, but joined forces with them.
One remarkable feature of the propaganda was the great part taken in it by the Turkish women. They were largely employed, for example, in the delivery of messages and the carrying of documents; for it was easy for the wife of a member of the Committee to visit the wives of other members without attracting observation. The respect that is paid to women in Turkey gives them immunity from being searched; the women’s apartments in a Turkish house are held to be inviolable, and a police officer would not venture to infringe these cherished customs without very weighty cause. The following incident exemplifies this: Shortly after the revolution had made the Committee the virtual ruler of Turkey, some young officers were sent to pay a domiciliary visit to the house of a Pasha suspected of being a party to a reactionary plot. They arrested the Pasha, but made a vain search for incriminatory documents. At last they came across a chest that had obviously been concealed, and felt confident that they had at last discovered what they were seeking. At this juncture the Pasha’s wife came forward and stated that the chest contained her jewels and other property; whereupon the officers refrained from opening it, and, saluting the lady, left the house.
The first and most important task before the Committee was, of course, that of bringing round to the cause the Macedonian garrison—the Third Army Corps. The disaffection of these troops, the reasons for which I have explained, had in places manifested itself in open mutiny, and the incompetence and corruption of some of the officers of superior rank, who were indebted to Palace favouritism for their position, filled both the junior officers and the rank and file with an ever-increasing disgust. By degrees a number of the young officers were affiliated to the Committee, and received instructions to win over the rank and file. The fact that the troops were moving about in small bodies, hunting down the Bulgarian bands, rendered this proceeding the more easy; for while engaging in this work, regimental officers, unrestrained by the supervision of their superiors, could give political instruction to the men, and were able to hold meetings among themselves without attracting the attention of spies; the company commanders used also to deliver lectures to their men in out-of-the-way places, where any stranger would be conspicuous and Palace spies would be immediately recognised. Whenever a spy was discovered he promptly disappeared, soldiers who had taken the oath of fealty to the Committee being given the word to kill him. At last the whole Macedonian army was won over to the cause of the Young Turks, and as a consequence of the work performed by the disguised officers in other parts of the Empire, the Second Army Corps, which garrisons the Vilayet of Adrianople, also contained a large proportion of officers and men in sympathy with the movement—troops hostile to the Despotism thus enclosing the capital on all sides—while on the farther shore of the Bosphorus, Anatolia, whose sturdy peasantry supplies the Ottoman Empire with its finest troops, had been similarly prepared by Dr. Nazim Bey and numerous officers.
To those Englishmen who knew something of the Turkish army it appeared an amazing thing that these soldiers, who worshipped the Sultan with a blind faith not only as their sovereign, but as the head of the one true religion, “the Commander of the Faithful,” “the Shadow of God upon earth,”—however discontented they might be, however ready to mutiny, as they sometimes did mutiny, against their officers—could be persuaded to join in a movement of which the avowed object was the deposition of the Sultan Abdul Hamid. The soldier could only be won over by convincing him that religion itself commanded the overthrow of the tyrant. It will be remembered how, in 1876, the Sheikh-ul-Islam, as chief of the interpreters of the Sacred Law, decreed that the Sultan Abd-ul-Aziz should be deposed because, in ruining the State which God had confided to him, he had broken his sacred trust, and could no longer be head of the believers. The young officers put the case in the same way, and in simple words, to the honest and devout soldiery; they quoted the passages in the Koran which denounce tyranny, and showed that the Sultan was not true to his country, and therefore had forfeited the privileges God had lent to him. The fact that Austria and Germany had been granted concessions to construct railways through Turkish territory (the proposed railway through the Sanjak of Novi-Bazaar, which would afford Austria railway connection with Salonica, and the German-owned Baghdad railway) was a proof to the soldier that the Palace was selling the country bit by bit to the foreigner.
During the early days of the propaganda, hodjas who had joined the Committee, and officers disguised as hodjas, being freely admitted into barracks in their capacity of preachers, advocated these doctrines, and satisfied the religious scruples of the men; and when, later, the Sheikh-ul-Islam declared himself in favour of the Constitution, there remained no doubt in their minds that they were acting as their creed commanded in following the lead of their young officers. As a matter of fact, it was not difficult to show that Abdul Hamid, to quote from Mr. Hamil Halid’s book, “The Diary of a Young Turk,” was “the worst enemy of Islam, as no Moslem ruler has ever brought by his misdeeds so much shame upon the faith as he has. Any one who has observed his career closely knows that his actions are diametrically opposed to the principles of the Mussulman law and creed.” Moreover, the Turkish soldier, like the soldiers in other armies and the majority of healthy young men, can be appealed to through his stomach, and he naturally acquired an affection for and confidence in these majors, captains, and lieutenants of the new school who sympathised with him, pitied his wretched condition, and with their own money, or the Committee funds, supplemented his miserable rations and supplied him with comforts.
Of the methods of the propaganda in Macedonia we learn a good deal from the published letters of Major Niazi Bey, the officer who first raised the standard of revolt. He explains how, gradually, the young officers, hitherto estranged from one another by the mutual suspicions engendered by the system of espionage, were emboldened by the patriotic hopes held up before them, and through the possession of a common secret became as a band of brothers, mutual confidence and affection increasing daily; and how even those who had not been made members of the secret Society, and knew not its mysteries, were convinced by their affiliated comrades that the Committee was powerful and just, and was working in the sacred name of liberty for the integrity of the fatherland; and so sympathised heart and soul with the movement, and were in readiness to co-operate with the revolutionaries.
In the meanwhile the Committee was steadily undermining the entire civil as well as military administration of the Empire. It acted, as a member of the association put it to me, like a well-ordered but secret Government. It kept books in which were inscribed the names of all the higher Government officials, with particulars as to their careers and habits—their dossiers, in short. Some of the enlightened and right-minded of these officials had been gained over to the cause; the others were closely watched, and whether they were Valis, Inspectors General, or Governors of districts, or what not, their moral influence was destroyed, and their authority was made impotent by the fact that their subordinates, on whom they had to rely for the execution of their wishes, had almost without exception become adherents of the Committee.
IT had been calculated by the Young Turks that the time would not be ripe for their great coup until the autumn of 1909, but the menace of further foreign intervention in Macedonia and an active campaign against the Committee, which was opened by the Palace at the beginning of 1908, precipitated the revolt. The propaganda had been spreading rapidly, the movement had been prospering, when suddenly the prospect darkened, and there were happenings that threatened even to break up the Society and shatter the hopes of the reformers.
It became known to the Committee that the British Government had decided to withdraw from that “Concert of Europe,” which had failed so signally in dealing with the question of reforms in Macedonia, and that England and Russia were now going to work together to introduce a most drastic scheme of reform, which would include the suppression of all the bands in Macedonia, of whatever race or creed, by means of flying columns of troops. This intended co-operation of England and Russia greatly alarmed the Committee, such intervention, in the opinion of its leaders, necessarily leading to the disintegration of the Ottoman Empire, and to an immediate foreign domination of Macedonia that would make it impossible for the Committee to carry on its patriotic work in this, the stronghold of the movement and the contemplated base for the revolutionary campaign in the following year.
The Committee of Union and Progress therefore held secret meetings in Salonica in May, 1908, and it was decided, in view of what was happening, that it had now become necessary for the Committee to reveal to the European Powers the fact of its real existence and great influence, and also to explain to those Powers, especially to England, whose aim was honest but which, in the opinion of many Turks, was being duped by Russia, that the Committee alone could bring peace to Macedonia, and that for various good reasons it would be better that Europe should abandon all these futile schemes of reform and leave Macedonia to work out her own salvation.
A manifesto of the Committee was therefore drawn up and a copy of it was despatched to each of the European cabinets. These documents were posted in the foreign post-offices in Salonica by members of the Committee. A friend of mine told me of what a narrow escape he had while taking one of these letters to a certain foreign post-office. On entering the office he handed the letter to a Levantine clerk, who, after reading the superscription, put to him the unusual question, “From whom do you bring this letter?” “From Mr. Snider,” replied my friend, with ready invention, and hastened to leave the place. The clerk, evidently a Palace spy, followed him outside and looked up and down the street, no doubt to find some agent whom he could send to follow up the suspect. My friend fortunately got clear away before the pursuit could be started, and for the future he gave that post-office a wide berth.
The manifesto itself is a long one. My quotations from it are literal translations from the original Turkish version. It speaks in the name of the Committee of Union and Progress, and, of course, as coming from a secret society, bears no signatures. It opens thus:
“We, the children of the fatherland called Turkey, of which Macedonia is a part—actuated by the love which we bear to the land of our birth, our desire to work in harmony to bring about its tranquillity and welfare, and our wish to disabuse your minds of the false impression which we know you entertain to the effect that we (the Committee of Union and Progress) are few in number and mischievous in our aims—now write to you the following, to explain to you from what evils Macedonia is really suffering, to show you what is the true remedy and the right path, and to save Europe from a number of vain efforts and avoidable difficulties.”
The manifesto then proceeds to demonstrate that the efforts of the European Powers to introduce reforms into Macedonia had not only been attended with no success, but had made the condition of the country worse than it had been before their interference, and that all the so-called remedies that had so far been applied had been introduced by foreigners only, “who assumed an attitude of generosity,” and not by “Ottomans, who must know more about their own country than the foreigner does.
“We are told that the object of European reforms is to insure the happiness of Macedonia, in answer to which we assert that Europe, in spite of all her efforts, has been unable to attain this object and never will attain it.... The intervention has been useless for Europeans, injurious to the Ottomans. The Great Powers themselves admit the failure of the measures adopted by them; and yet now, Europe, instead of honourably withdrawing from this business, is, so it appears, about to make Macedonia the arena of yet further experiments.” Then the manifesto, after discussing the new schemes proposed by the British and Russian Governments, and showing how these, if carried out, would destroy the independence of an integral part of the Ottoman Government, declares that “We Mussulmans and Christians, united under the name of the Ottoman Committee of Union and Progress, not influenced by national or religious fanaticism, are working together to deliver our country from foreign intervention, and to obtain our personal and political liberty from the existing Government. We positively assert that these plans of England and Russia would sever Macedonia from the Ottoman Empire. We therefore cannot accept these proposed measures, which would lead to the general ruin of the Empire, and are opposed to justice and civilization. We are determined to employ all means to obtain our natural rights.” The manifesto points out that the purely selfish action of Bulgaria, Greece, and Servia, which for purposes of annexation sent their bands to murder and ravage in Macedonia, was the chief cause of the existing state of anarchy in the country; and it has a slap at our humanitarians, whose sole sympathy was with the Christians. As the first public declaration of the Committee, this is an exceedingly interesting document.
I need scarcely say that the Committee of Union and Progress did not receive a reply to its memorandum from any of the Great Powers. Cabinets cannot well recognise and hold communication with a revolutionary organisation whose aim it is to overthrow the Government of a friendly Power. Probably some of those to whom the manifesto was addressed read it with a contemptuous smile, little dreaming that within two months this band of unknown men would make itself the master of an Empire. One or two newspapers published brief summaries of the manifesto without comment, for the world did not take the Young Turkey party seriously until the revolution was an accomplished fact.
On June 10—that is, a week or so after the Committee had issued this manifesto—King Edward VII met the Tsar at Reval and shortly afterwards the details of the Anglo-Russian scheme for the pacification and better rule of Macedonia were communicated to the Powers. This forced the hands of the Committee; it was realised that the blow for Ottoman liberty must be struck soon, or it would be too late; but that which precipitated the movement, driving the Macedonian officers into an immediate revolt in self-defence, was the energetic action taken by the Palace spies at about this time.
In the beginning of 1908 the Palace became alarmed by the reports that came from the Macedonian garrisons. It is true that up to that time the discontent of the troops had assumed no revolutionary character, and at the meetings which they held in all the military centres the men, while demanding their rights under the military code, their arrears of pay, their proper rations, and so forth, uttered no threats against the Government; but the discipline and organisation of the army had been destroyed, and a number of the reservists in Macedonia went so far as to refuse to obey the call for service in the Hedjaz. The Palace now learnt that a number of young officers were taking advantage of this disaffection of the rank and file to spread treasonable propaganda. The rapid progress of the Young Turkey movement, and the wide dissemination of its doctrines through the towns and villages by trusted emissaries, made it impossible to preserve a complete secrecy, and the creatures of the Palace, though they could not place their hands upon those who directed this movement, felt that they were in the presence of a great danger, all the more terrible on account of the mystery that enveloped it. So they laid their apprehensions before their ever-fearful master, with the result that it was decided to take steps to effectually stamp out the conspiracy.
Espionage has ever been the favourite weapon of Abdul Hamid; so spies were now poured into Macedonia to worm out the secrets of the movement and discover the leaders, and of these spies many never returned to tell their tale. The Sultan also gave orders to the senior officers in Macedonia to find out all they could about the movement, to arrest suspected officers, and send them to Constantinople, and to address the men solemnly concerning their duties, and especially impress it upon them that to withdraw their fidelity and obedience from the Caliph, “the Shadow of God,” “the Commander of the Faithful,” was regarded by the Moslem religion as the most heinous of sins. In March a special Commission, under Mahir Pasha, was sent from Constantinople to Salonica to institute an inquisition, but despite numerous denunciations, perquisitions, arrests, and tortures, it collected little evidence, and entirely failed to get at the heart of the plot, for there were no traitors within that circle of devoted men. But the Commission was able to report to the Palace that there undoubtedly existed in Macedonia a powerful secret society dangerous to the régime, and that the Macedonian troops could not be relied upon to support the Government.
The work of the Commission alarmed the Committee of Union and Progress, several of whose most useful members had been seized; and the young officers in the army who had been affiliated realised their danger, and came to the conclusion that it would be expedient to start the insurrection as soon as possible, before further arrests had seriously weakened their cause. Thus it happened that, quite a year before the time originally contemplated by the Committee, Major Niazi Bey, at Resna, on July 3, took the momentous step. He openly disavowed his allegiance to his sovereign, fled to the mountains with a band of Moslem civilians and some of the soldiers under his command, and issued his rebel manifesto, in which he called upon all patriots to join in destroying the Government. I will tell later the story of the doings of Niazi Bey, Enver Bey, and the other insurgent leaders in the mountains; how officers and men rallied round them; how they persuaded the Bulgarian bands to join forces with them; how at last the entire Macedonian army had become the army of the Committee; and how, within three weeks of that historic event—the raising of the banner of revolt at Resna—the revolution had triumphed and the Despotism was a thing of the past. At this stage I will describe the series of events that precipitated the final struggle between the Palace and the Committee.
In view of the increasing activity of its enemies, the Committee, at its secret meetings, condemned to death and ordered the execution of such instruments of the Palace as were the most dangerous to the cause, including several of the senior officers in the Macedonian army and all those who were found to be spies or informers. Towards the end it must have become difficult for the Palace to find men willing to embark on so dangerous a profession as that of spy, even for the highest pay. Had it not been for these assassinations the conspiracy must have failed; at the cost of these few lives Turkey was saved; and a terrible persecution of her best sons by the vengeful Palace was warded off. These killings of the condemned as often as not were done in broad daylight, in a busy street, by officers in uniform, and no man interfered with the executioners.
Thus, on July 7, General Shemshi Pasha, an able soldier, who, as possessing considerable experience in suppressing Macedonian and Albanian risings, had been sent to crush the mutiny, was shot dead in the streets of Monastir in broad daylight by a young officer. Next, the officer commanding at Seres and certain other officers who upheld the cause of the Palace were killed. On July 10 the imam, or chaplain, of the artillery regiment in Monastir, who had been acting as a spy in barracks, was shot in the streets of Salonica while he was on his way to the railway station to carry his information to the capital. On the same day, and also in Salonica, an attempt was made on the life of Haki Bey, a Palace informant, who had been a member of the Commission of inquiry. On July 12, General Sadik Pasha was shot while on a Messagerie steamer bound from Salonica to Constantinople. The Committee was now fighting, so to speak, with the halter round its neck, and took no risks; it removed those whose action might bring ruin upon the cause of the Young Turks, for the chances of success or failure were still very uncertain.
The Palace realised its danger, and knew—what the outer world did not know—that this was no ordinary mutiny of discontented troops. The Sultan’s most trusted officers, when sent to crush the rising, could not get their men to fire upon their insurgent fellow-Moslems, and were sometimes themselves assassinated by them. For the first time in history the name of the Padishah had failed to inspire the pious Ottoman soldiery with reverence and obedience. The Palace was now thoroughly alarmed, and no measure was omitted that could help to bring about the destruction of the Young Turkey conspiracy. It was decided, among other things, that another effort should be made to get at the very heart of the movement, to strangle the secret Central Committee, which, as the spies suspected, worked in Salonica; for if the ringleaders and the central organisation could be exterminated, the movement would become a lifeless thing and fall to pieces.
So Colonel Nazim Bey, an A.D.C. of the Sultan, one of the most detested and feared of the instruments of the Despotism, was sent to Salonica with a body of spies to unearth the secret Committee. Nazim was a typical creature of the Palace. Extravagant and vicious, ever in debt, like Catiline, prodigal of his own while greedy for the possessions of others, clever, and quite unscrupulous, he was ready to sell his soul for the moneys of which he was ever in need. He was appointed Commandant de Palace in Salonica. Denunciations were well paid for, so he denounced many officers, professional men, and students on the flimsiest evidence, for real evidence was not easily procurable. On one day he despatched thirty-eight young officers to Constantinople, who were imprisoned on their arrival. But in many cases those whose arrest he ordered were immediately set free or escaped with the assistance of officials in the police and other departments, many of whom, as I have explained, were secret adherents of the Committee. Nazim, who knew well what found favour in his master’s eyes, also sent reports to the Palace regarding the conduct of his superiors in Salonica, accusing distinguished general officers of the head-quarters staff and others of carelessness, partiality, and covert sympathy with the Young Turks, with the result that he was given still further emoluments, and was so strongly supported by the Palace that he was enabled to arrogate successfully the chief authority in the city. The Committee of Union and Progress condemned Nazim to death, one of his own subordinates signing the decree. A young lieutenant of infantry offered himself as the executioner. Nazim, however, had taken fright, and on July 11 he fled from Salonica. As he was driving to the station in his carriage he was shot at, but was only slightly wounded; so he was able to reach Constantinople and report to the Sultan the information which he had collected concerning the revolutionary movement.