X -- [March 30, 1903] 

IN MACEDONIA

"ALL IS TRANQUIL"

SUSPICION AND FEAR

A VISIT TO SERRES

Bansko (Macedonia) March 20.

In general estimation Hassan Fehmi Pacha, Governor-General of the valet of Salonica, is a model ruler. I have heard Christians say that if all Turkish administrators were like Hassan Fehmi they would be content to live under the Turkish government. But they were Christians, principally Greeks, of the large towns. The Christians of the villages talk in a different strain. The valet, or province, of which Jassan Fehmi Pacha is Governor-General comprises about a third of Macedonia.

"The Turkish government," said the Pacha, in the course of a long and most pleasant interview I chad with him, "is based upon justice. The Padisha's subjects in Macedonia know it. In Northern and Central Macedonia we have had troubles of various sorts. But they were caused by brigands, who are puppets in the hands of Bulgarian wirepullers. The Bulgarians are a low race." he repeated, with energy of voice and gesture. "The people of Macedonia would have nothing to complain of if only the Komitadjis (members of the Revolutionary Committee of Macedonia) would leave them alone. We have now dispersed the Komitadjis. They have taken themselves off to the mountains. And Macedonia is tranquil. The Macedonia of the English Press and the Paris papers is an imaginary country. The correspondent of a Fresh journal, who has come from Monastir, tells me he was surprised when he saw that its streets were not filled with dead bodies; and that if he assures his readers there are no butcheries constantly going on they will suspect him of having been bribed by the Turks." His Excellency Hassan Fehmi Pacha, who is an excellent talker, fluent in French, and a humourist, drew an amusing picture of the French journalist's perplexities. "Believe me," he said to me, "those stories of atrocities are gross inventions. Macedonia is tranquil--'absolument tranquil'--as you will see for yourself when you visit the villages.

THE TRANQUILITY OF TERROR

Tranquil it certainly is, but with the tranquility of terror. This silent terror, unheeded of the world, is the permanent fact, of which the torturings, rapes, murders that lately accompanied the search for arms were the incidental sign. This large village of Serres seems tranquil enough as one looks down, from its hill top, upon its red roofs and white walls, its white minarets, its tall poplars, pale and slender, its dark cypress trees. The minaret, the poplar, and the cypress--a characteristic trinity in Macedonia, as elsewhere in the Moslem East--impart to this town of Serres a subtle, indefinable air of dignity and repose. The distant picture is one for a painter. But beneath that calm exterior nine thousand people live in constant apprehension of impending calamity. Spies dog every new-comer's footsteps, lounge about the inns, some of whose landlords are spies, with an inquisitive eye and hand for their guests' baggage. There would be risk in walking, unprotected, through the narrow, crooked streets of Serres after dark; and in traversing, even during daylight, the country surrounding it. Risk, that is to say, for the Christian, the "Giaour," whether Greek or Bulgar-Macedonian, though these form the large majority; but not for the Turk, who alone among the Sultan's subjects is permitted to carry arms. This exclusive privilege is the most obvious symbol of the incompatibility between Turkish rule and the concession, to the Christians, of legal equality with the Moslems. If the Christians were allowed to carry arms, the Turkish Empire in Macedonia would be over in an hour. So long as this exclusive privilege lasts, no reforms, worthy of the name, can be introduced into Macedonia. If they are introduced, the rule of the Turk in Macedonia will for that very reason, disappear. In resisting them, the Sultan is fighting for his Empire's existence. The Bulgarian population of Macedonia regard the Russo-Austrian reforms as a disastrous sham.

In Serres, I know a man of business who lately, in order to save his property from destruction, was compelled to pay a hundred liras (Turkish pounds) to a Turkish blackmailer. This property, a small factory, is situated within two miles of the Governor's residence and Court of Justice in Serres. Some months ago, a trader of Serres on his way to a neighboring village, was stopped at a Turkish guard house. One of the Zaptiehs began to search him. The trader, having money in his pocket, and knowing that he would be deprived of it, took to flight. A Zaptieh, firing, hit him in the leg, disabling him. Another, running up with his yataghan (a sort of sword-knife), cut him down. The murders and robbers were imprisoned. They were soon released. A few days ago they were swaggering about the bazaar of Serres. Instances of robbing and maiming of traders and others travelling about the country occur frequently enough to impede, to a most serious extent, intercourse between village and village, and between the villages and the chief towns, such as Serres, Nevrocop, Bansko, and Djumaia.

"CORRUPT AND UTTERLY ROTTEN"

In the Courts a Christian has no chance, or next to none, against a Mahomedan. "The Government is corrupt, utterly rotten," are the words of a foreign official who fills a responsible position in Serres, but whose name I need not mention. The evil repute of the Serres Mahomedans may partly be accounted for by the fact that among them are many fanatical Turks who emigrated from Bulgaria at the time of the Russo-Turkish war, and have ever since borne a bitter grudge against the "Giaour." It was one of these, I am told, who, when General Tzontcheff;s band came into collision with the Turks last autumn, and the search for arms, with all its attendant atrocities, began, killed a Christian bookseller, on the ground that his trade was seditious. "You sons of swine," he exclaimed, "you are the cause of our troubles." A less extreme instance of Press censorship happened at Salonica shortly before I left that town for Serres. The victim in this case is a Bulgarian bookseller, at whose shop I have had occasion to call. He is the publisher of a calendar, a copy of a new edition of which, for the year 1903, he had submitted to the Turkish Censor before Christmas. The copy was returned to him, with the censor's erasures and corrections. Wherever the name Macedonia appeared in the original, out it went. For there is no such thing as Macedonia. What the Bulgarian "Giaour" and his like call Macedonia is a group of three vilayets. Salonica, Monastir and Cassava exist, but not Macedonia. None but those brigands, the Komitadjis and the Bulgarian wirepullers of Sofia should say Macedonia. They are always saying it: may they burn everlastingly.

The censor has also drawn his black mark over the words Association and Society. He is not so simple as to be imposed upon by the explanation that there are charitable societies. Why not say Charities? It is a simpler word, and less ambiguous. Society? It fills the minds of the foolish with evil thoughts and vain imaginings. We cannot admit words that suggest the Revolutionary Society begotten of Bulgarian dogs. Bitola. Out it goes. For the Bulgars in Macedonia say Bitola when they should say Monastir. So the censor puts in the word Monastir. Salon is expunged, and Salonica is put in its place, for the one is Bulgarian and the other Turkish. The unbelieving bookseller had printed the name Peter Petre, which is one of the commonest names in Bulgaria, that land of the unblest. Print any name you like, says the censor, except Peter. Say Angelos, which name is also known unto all men. Or Andrew, or John; any saint's name; for surely one saint's name is as good as another. How the bookseller got over the difficulty I do not know. I only know he was hesitating between publishing his calendar as improved by the censor and suppressing it altogether.

A BLACK HOLE OF CALCUTTA

Among Turkish officials this hatred of Bulgaria appears to be as universal as it is natural. In this respect, Ruknedin Bey, Mutessarif (Lieutenant Governor) of Serres, outdoes his superior, the Vali of Salonica. In the interviews I have had with him, Ruknedin Bey has never missed an opportunity of venting his wrath upon the Bulgarian Government and people. "They are treacherous, all of them," says the Bey; "they are brigands, Ministers and all. They are the enemies of humanity; they are Anarchists." I have listened to many a discourse on civilization, by Turkish officials, and the Mutessarif's excels them in humane fervour. So that his Excellency's humane sentiments must often, and grievously, have been outraged by what he must, or should, have known of the state of his prison in Serres during the recent excitement on the northern frontier. The gaol delivery which lately took place by the Sultan's orders, was an unspeakable relief to those who were still detained; for, until then, the prisoners were as closely packed as the victims in the historic "Black Hole" of Calcutta. Scores of them had been confined, for weeks and months, on mere suspicion--in accordance with the customary method of tranquillising, otherwise terrorizing, a district. I shall not dwell upon the brutish indifference to sanitary precautions, which characterises the control of an ordinary Turkish prison.

The best comment upon his Excellency's enlightened speech is the little story which follows. One day, in a certain mejliss, or representative Assembly, not a hundred miles from Serres, a Christian "Deputy" rose up at the end of the Turkish Governor's harangue, hung his seal on a rail close by, and made ready to walk off. "What are you up to? quoth his Excellency. "My attendance is needless," replied that rash Deputy, "there is my seal, use it when you want it." A representative's duty is to say ditto to the President; but not every representative has had the courage to signify his contempt for the farce in any such realistic manner.

The deputy--who is not a deputy, inasmuch as he is merely nominated--and the presiding Turk are both in the right. The Turk is justified by the law of self-preservation. For he and his kin, constituting the minority in Macedonia, would under a really representative system be overwhelmed. Therefore, the sword is the Turk's clinching argument. The sword, it may be said, is the final argument even in free England. Yes, but it is in the majority's keeping. Here it is the ever obtrusive threat of a predatory caste. The rule of the Turk cannot co-exist with a reform which, to be efficient, must be enforced from without. This fundamental fact stares Europe in the face. And Europe sees it not, or only in a blurred sort of way.

THE DEAD STILLNESS

What is it that first impresses one in the interior of this "tranquil" Macedonia? The omnipresence of soldiers and gendarmes, with their rifles, cartridge belts, swords, and bayonets, as if in occupation of an enemy's country (as in fact, it is); the almost total absence of traffic on the rude pathways that serve for roads; the dead stillness and desolate look of the villages that in a land so splendidly endowed by Nature as Macedonia should be the rallying points of an energetic industrial life. In these Macedonian villages "to rest tranquil." Their tranquility is that of the rabbit warren when the dogs are about. I have passed through wide tracts of country where the only human beings I met were small detachments of unwashed, unkempt, and more or less tattered idle loafers armed to the teeth. They were gendarmes, rural guards, and regulars. Another species of loafer is the Arnaut, the Moslem Albanian, who to-day swaggers about the streets, with his knives and pistols stuck in his red sash, an to-morrow, in some secluded spot, lies in wait for unarmed wayfarers. A foreigner travelling with such as escort would be safe from molestation. But the "Giaour" farmer, or peddler, carrying goods on mule back to market, or the labourer returning home with his few piastres, earned, it may be, in Bulgaria, Roumania, Greece, or Austria, might be stopped, be roughly asked, "Who are you? Where have you come from? Where are you going to? What have you got there? How much money have you?" And he would consider himself fortunate if he escaped with a whole skin and a share of his own property. How often this happens in this or that district I do not know. But I know it happens often enough to interfere most seriously not only with commercial intercourse between the towns, but also with the cultivation of the land.

Along the railroad from Salonica to Serres, where the line ends, as on the three hundred miles of railway between Constantinople and Salonica, small bodies of armed troops are posted at frequent intervals. Between these detachments calvary patrols are constantly moving. They are supposed to be guarding the line from damage by the "bands" (always designated by the Turks as "brigands"), and to be on the watch for them in their attempts to slip through. The "brigands" do slip through, not in bands, however, but one by one, stealthily, in the dead of the night, when the sentries neither like interruption to their repose, nor care to risk separation in pursuit of an invisible enemy. A band of some eighty Macedonian Bulgarians from Thrace slipped into Salonica a day or two before I left it for Serres. It may sound startling, but it is nevertheless a fact, that considerable quantities of the ammunition, dynamite, and rifles smuggled into Macedonia by the revolutionists are taken from Constantinople. Each of the many stations on the line to Serres has its idle group of regulars and armed Zaptiehs. They are extremely untidy. One man, with his Mannlicher rifle slung over his shoulder, and his greasy fez tilted to the nape of his neck, lounges about in slippers down at heel, another stalks along the platform with his worn-out tunic buttoned awry, and his woollen shirt bulging over the top of his bepatched, baggy pantaloons. He peeps, in his slow, inquisitive way, into every carriage, as if on the outlook for suspects. By and by, a third, following him, repeats the scrutiny. And perhaps a fourth, a fifth, a sixth. In the doorway of the station house, a Zaptieh is prodding, promiscuously, with the butt-end of his rifle, into a little group of country people huddled together, silently and submissively, like a flock of sheep. They have emerged from a third-class waggon. They are to be scrutinised afresh as soon as they get inside. They must produce their passports--"teskerehs," as they are called in Turkish--without which they must not proceed to their homes, nor travel from town to town.

DIFFICULTIES WITH THE TESKEREH

Of all the complicated, painfully elaborated, wasteful stupidities peculiar to the Ottoman Government, the "teskereh" is about the worst. It costs money, which the Macedonian peasant, or petty trader, travelling on business, can ill afford. It costs time. "Call to-morrow," says the Turkish official, when a peasant or trader calls for his passport. And to-morrow. And again to-morrow; until a bribe, perhaps, jogs the official elbow. So that, what with loss of time and money, the trader may find that such profit as he might reasonably have expected, is already swallowed up by the formalities of his "teskereh." This ridiculous system of local passports accounts, to a considerable extent, for the commercial stagnation of all of Macedonia that is not contained within its two or three large towns. The inspection of "teskerehs" is a curious spectacle at such railway stations as those of Salonica and Serres. Between soldiers, or gendarmes, equipped, as usual, with rifles and cartridge belts, passengers, "teskereh" in hand, file one after the other, to a table whereat the two or three scrutiners, military men, sit. Every "teskereh" is copied by these officials--with the bearer's name, place of origin, destination, business and so forth. A silly waste of life for all concerned! Only when the "teskereh" is found satisfactory is its owner free to buy his ticket. If the traveller be a foreigner his "teskereh" will be examined, over and over again during the railway journey, he will be asked what hotel he means to put up at, and he may be told that the document will be re-delivered to him there.

At Serres, my "teskereh" was copied by each of three officials, one of them, a military officer. At Serres my journey to the interior was arrested for several days, because an alleged (but imaginary) irregularity in his passport brought my dragoman under suspicion. His Bulgarian name, Stephanoff, alarmed the Konak. A Macedonian by birth, a subject of Abdul Hamid the Second, an absentee during the last ten years, he was returning to his native land at a time of revolutionary excitement. Clearly the Konak must keep an eye on him. What if the young man were a member of the Revolutionary Society? His excellency Ruknedin Bey must stop him. Time was wasted in referring the matter to the Governor-General of Salonica. The result was that I not only took Mr. Stephanoff with me, but was freed from future worry about "teskerehs," and invited to travel anywhere in Macedonia--with an escort imposing enough for the Governor-General himself.

MY DRAGOMAN'S ROMANTIC CAREER

Mr. Stephanoff's career has been a romantic one, though not altogether unique in the history of young Macedonia. Mr. Stephanoff is one of many among the rising generation who, in their eagerness for the knowledge unprocurable in the Macedonia of the Turk, are scattered over the world's colleges and universities, from Yale and Harvard beyond the Atlantic to Robert College on the Bosphorus. The poorer students go all the way to America--third class by rail, steerage by steamer--because in America they find work, manual or other, to support themselves withal and pay their fees during their years of study. To Yale Constantine Stephanoff also went, ten years ago, at the age of seventeen, with a few pounds earned by him as a teacher in the school of his native village. At first he found work on a farm. During his college career he served at one time as a tramway official, at another as an attendant both in a fashionable hotel and in his own college, where young Mr. Vanderbilt was one of his "chums." Not every waiter turns his tips into Greek and Latin, philosophy and political economy, as that young Macedonian did. Stumbling upon a rusty hand press among backyard rubbish, he tried his hand at printing and publishing, and piled up dollars thereby. At last, after years of ruthless self-discipline, the tramway-man took his Master's degree, with Goethe's "Faust" as the subject of his thesis. And the Yankee papers wrote laudatory editorials about him. Some months ago he entered the University of Berlin. Home sickness drew him into Bulgaria, but not across the frontier and into his native Bansko, which is the centre of the disaffected region of North-Eastern Macedonia. For the country was in a state of commotion; and Stephanoff, being still a Turkish subject, and having become "suspect," could only visit his parents and relatives at the risk of being put under lock and key in some overcrowded Turkish gaol. He lingered about the Monastery of Rilo, at Dubnitza of the refugees, and about Sofia, in one of whose noisy, cloudy cafes I met him one day, and heard the story of his adventures.

HUNGERING TO SEE HIS PARENTS

Said Mr. Stephanoff, "My father used to tell us children, when we were grown up, 'Go away; your lives are wasted here in Macedonia. My life has been. And your mother's. Clear out of this country. This is no place for you. Here you will be nought. In some foreign country you will at least be men and women.' All this he would say, though the words wrung his and my mother's heart." So, to America there also exiled themselves my friend Constantine Stephanoff's sister and two brothers. Returning to Macedonia, the sister was captured with Miss Stone by the brigands. And here was her brother, Constantine, hungering to see his parents after ten years' absence, but fearing arrest if he entered the country. It was suggested to him that he would be free from all such danger if he went with me as my dragoman. The experiment was worth the making, and he agreed. But he had to be cautious. The mere fact that he was the brother of Madam Zilka, Miss Stone's fellow captive, brought him under suspicion. For--said his Excellency, Ruknedin, while arguing the matter with me--"Madame Zilka and Miss Stone's capture was arranged by the Bulgarians simply to get our government into trouble."

One morning, while we were strolling through the bazaar at Serres, Stephanoff suddenly stood still before an inn gateway, into which a countryman was leading his mules laden with merchandise of all sorts. They stared at each other, the young man and the old. The grasped each other hands affectionately, exchanged a few words and parted. It was Stephanoff's uncle, from Bansko. After ten years they scarcely recognized each other. With the Zaptiehs about, they did not venture to be more demonstrative. "In 1879," said Stephanoff, "when I was three years old, and when my father and mother and the rest of us, fearing a massacre in Bansko, fled to Philippopolis, it was my uncle who carried me on his back across the mountains. The scar on his lip was made by the knife of one of three Bashi-Bazouks who attempted to rob him and a small company of his fellow-traders returning home from market." So it still is the same Macedonia--only twenty-four years nearer its end.