B. Granville Baker

“ Recent times have witnessed the rise of Bulgaria from the status of an Ottoman province to that of an independent kingdom, strong, prosperous, and determined. And on its southern frontier, and from the banks of the Struma to the Black Sea shore, the armed forces of Bulgaria strained at the leash, their eager gaze towards Constantinople, Tsarigrad, the Castle of Cæsar.
Among those whose eager eyes turned ever towards the south is one (I hope he still lives) for whom I have the friendliest feelings. His name is Dedo ’Mitri, and I venture to describe a visit I paid to that worthy. ”

“ But the clouds gathered apace, and ere Europe was fully alive to the situation, protests, ultimata, and the usual amenities had been exchanged; the world found itself confronted by a war between the Ottoman Empire and its former subjects, now clearly defined nationalities, united to one purpose, and that the end of Turkish rule in Europe.
While the Great Powers slowly set in motion the cumbrous machinery of diplomacy the storm-clouds discharged their lightnings, setting ablaze all the country from the Danube to the Ægean Sea, from the Adriatic to the Black Sea. ”

“ Here, on this tongue of land—Seraglio Point—began the history of this troubled city, this Castle of Cæsar, throne of the Osmanli, which has seen more glory and more gloom, known more high delights and abject terrors than perhaps even eternal Rome. While heavy drops of rain fall from a leaden sky on to the steel decks of those grim foreign men-of-war, or splash on the slow-swinging waters of the Golden Horn, it is difficult to conjure up the scenes of former glories witnessed here by the sun on his daily passage from the east. ”

“ It would be a ghastly sequel to the indecision of the Great Powers if this plucky little kingdom were called upon to face an invader, if grim-visaged war were to cast its shadow over the fair fields and fertile plains of Roumania. The rich soil produces abundance of wheat, maize, and other cereals, and would produce more but for the summer droughts. I have seen the rich yellow maize being garnered, and have watched the golden wealth of corn shipped into boats and barges on the Danube, to be taken down to Braila, Galatz, and thence onward to feed other countries less bountifully supplied. ”

“ The gilt crescent on dome and minaret no longer sends answering flashes to the sun that has shone for centuries over the shrine that holds these relics of a fighting race of sovereigns. To many here in this City the sky is overcast, the prospect dark and cloudy, for the Crescent has been waning where it was once supreme, in the countries of Eastern Europe, and the crusade called by the kings of former subject people has reached the outer defences of Stamboul, but fifty miles from the Mosque of Eyub the favourite disciple of the Prophet. ”

“ The beaten remnant of Ottoman power in Europe, huddling behind the lines of Chatalja, was to emerge from hiding, march over the Bulgarians up the Valley of the Maritza, relieve famine-stricken Adrianople, and enter Sofia in triumph. Yet another Ottoman army was to march south through Thessaly, retake Saloniki, cross into Epirus, and dictate the Sultan’s terms to Greece in Athens. This has been told me seriously by several Turks, those who are interested in the war. What is more, they are firmly persuaded that this can and will happen. ”

“ To-day the warships of the European Powers watch over the interests of their nationals in the death-struggle of an ancient Empire, many of them infants, some unthought of when Constantinople was guarding Europe from Asiatic agression, thus enabling those nations whose warships lie here to develop. Yet among the cypress groves of Seraglio Point, with the waves of the glittering Sea of Marmora lazily lapping against the tottering sea-walls, it was impossible not to let the mind wander among the misty labyrinths of ancient history, though Bulgarian guns were making history some fifty miles away. ”

“ No doubt the Valley of the Lycus was a pleasant place in those far-off golden days of a golden Empire, which, here in this valley, received the death-wound from the forebears of the people who are now swarming in the groves of cypresses, refugees, destitute, landless and homeless, instinctively turning towards Asia, whence their race sprang. It came with giant strides, that race of the sons of Othman; they first became acquainted with the glories of Byzant through a mission sent from their chief to Emperor Justinian in the sixth century ”

“ The daylight brightened as we sailed on past ruined castles and obsolescent earthworks into the blue Ægean Sea, losing sight of the Turkish fleet—grey and heavy, and listlessly at anchor by the old towers of the Dardanelles. No sooner had our ship put her nose out into the open than we saw black clouds of smoke hurrying along the skyline: Greek destroyers on the look-out for any ships coming out of the Dardanelles.
There was one more evidence of war as we drew near to Tenedos, with its mediæval fortress. ”

“ Here is a powerful Empire, carved out of Europe by the sword, and held by conquerors who despised their alien subjects, and failed to understand their feelings or realize their ambitions, closed their eyes in smug contentment to the portents of the time. Then came the avalanche, and young nations, hitherto disregarded as serious opponents, rose in their strength, tore themselves free, rent province after province from the weak hands of an unprepared overlord, and are now threatening the capital of the Turkish Empire. ”

“ From the courtyard of the Sublime Porte, where Turkey’s devious policy has been fashioned for so long, from the square in front of the War Office, which suddenly awakened, hurried untrained troops under untrained leaders, without a definite plan, to death by shot and shell, by starvation and disease; you could hear the sound of guns carried on the westerly wind from the lines of Chatalja, the last defences of the capital, where the remnants of the Sultan’s army are standing at bay against the organized forces of young Western nations. ”

“ Thus the life of this strange people, the Turks, goes on{108}{107} from day to day, leisurely business transacted with all dignity of inherent idleness, endless gossip under the vines and awnings of small cafés, talk which begins nowhere and arrives nowhere. Squalor, dirt, picturesque decay, and over all the sense that a migratory race has settled here for a while, is not disposed to move until turned out, and has just put up a leader or two with sufficient enterprise to make others build him a place of worship to glorify himself above his fellows. ”

“ We were not alone for long ere another body of weary soldiers, sick and slightly wounded, trudged past us up to the mosque erected by Suleiman to commemorate his many victories. He it was who carried the Crescent triumphant through Hungary to the gates of Vienna, leaving behind him Serbs and Bulgars in slavery. Those very nations have been trying the power of the Porte beyond the walls and are longing to enter; it is they who have reduced those Turkish soldiers to their present state of misery. ”

“ Here the pups, after strenuous mountaineering, would get their outlook on life, with all its excitements and possible dangers; here Turkish cavalry from Scutari would come dashing past, galloping furiously when there were people to watch this feat and stones to lame their clever little horses, subsiding to a walk when beyond the sight of admirers and when the roads were soft with dust some inches deep, or grass by the wayside. ”

“ Under the law, administered by the Sultan, the Turks increased in numbers, extended their possession, carved a large Empire out of the ruins of former civilizations, and left unsought those Elysian fields wherein the intellect of a nation gains those victories that make for stability, the fields of progress, scientific, literary, artistic. Under the law they built up their body politic, each member sincerely, blindly devoted to the dynasty of Othman, however many corpses of its scions might pave a Sultan’s upward path to power. ”

“ From Berlin my road turned to south-east, past prosperous cities such as Frankfort-on-the-Oder, Breslau, towards that corner of Europe where three Empires meet on what was once part of the picturesque Kingdom of Poland, long since forced into the realm of things forgotten by those three Powers that meet here. It is a gloomy country, black and ungainly in its tense industrial existence. ”

“ With consummate skill Tsar Ferdinand kept his plans secret while the Balkan League was forming to overthrow the last of Ottoman power in Europe. For many years all Bulgaria had been preparing for this great stroke, arming, organizing, making sacrifices as a nation must do when in pursuit of a high ideal, so when the moment came it found a strong people, trained to arms, determined to snatch success from before the cannon’s mouth and crown its standards with laurel victory. ”

“ It is no wonder that the example set by many officers of the Sultan’s army had discouraged the troops, who, seeing everything going against them, starving, diseased, turned their weary eyes homeward to the East, to Asia, the Turk’s real home, and dragged their tired, wounded limbs over the incredibly bad roads till the soaring minarets and their rivals the cypresses, the domes of mosques built to commemorate the conquests of former warrior Osmanli, gladdened their sight. ”

“ On a fine day the view over the walls away to the Sea of Marmora is wonderfully beautiful—but this is winter, and grey clouds keep out the sunshine needed to draw out the many beauties of the scene. The road, at no time really entitled to be called so, is now a quagmire with rocks in it, yet traffic of a kind is passing—lumbering carts drawn by water-buffaloes pitch and roll in the sea of mud, and clinging to them are refugees from Thrace and Macedonia who have fled from their homes before the invader. ”

“ The costumes of the people you meet are Oriental, though the women go unveiled. Samakov has a garrison; it is not far from the Turkish frontier, and the uniforms of the fine-looking Bulgarian soldiers strike a Western note. But on the whole the aspect of the town is Oriental, the smells intensely so.
The road improves as it leaves Samakov, it becomes really quite a good road, and carries you upwards into the mountains. There on a high plateau embowered in a forest of pines lies Tshamkuria. It is a hot-weather resort—everybody who is anybody in Sofia comes here for the summer. ”

“ A Turkish lady, a lady of high degree, turned on her fellow-workers and declared that should her people be driven to the last extremity they would certainly wreak vengeance on the Christian population, and she herself would be the first to incite them, to goad them on to murder and rapine, until the streets should run with the blood of Christians, and Christian habitations became a howling wilderness, to show a horror-stricken world in what manner a race of warriors goes out of history. ”

“ Enthusiasm, efficiency, and the spirit of self-sacrifice led the young nations on the road to victory; moreover, they found an ally in the selfishness of their antagonists, sycophants and pleasure-seekers, trusting to the paid legionaries of Rome or the foreign-trained political intriguers of the Sultan’s army. Imperial Rome perished of corruption and had to make way for something cleaner, wholesomer. The Turkish Empire in Europe has gone the same way, and the same causes brought about its fall. Would it not be as well for us Britons to look at home? ”

“ George, the patron saint of warriors, was entrusted with the defence of Constantine’s City here where the Walls of Theodosius reach this highest point. A glorious view spreads at your feet from their height; past groves of solemn cypress trees, which cast their long shadows over the graves of faithful followers of the Prophet, thousands of whom in distant ages assailed the strong defences of the City, your eye travels along the hoary walls, over a ruined palace to where Galata arises beyond the Golden Horn. ”

“ The Anatolian peasant, a simple-minded, strong, enduring child, when called for service with the colours, found no more of the old officers, who were content to lead without domineering, in a single-hearted effort for the Faith. In their stead he found men who assumed airs of superiority, who lived apart, and were not interested in the simple working of the soldier’s mind. These officers took as their models the men who train the German Army on German lines, suitable only to the German people, and appear to have disregarded the national peculiarities of their own kin. ”

“ Mohammed drew men to him by promises of glory and honour on this earth, ease and luxury in the Beyond. Christianity bids you forgive your enemies; Mohammed led his followers to battle against the unbelievers, conquered their cities, and called those places holy when he had fixed the strongholds of his militant faith. Mohammed died in the possession of great power, spiritual and temporal, enjoining his descendants to maintain and increase it by the sword. ”

“ It was not till Stamboul and Scutari hove in sight that I saw anything unusual, but what I saw was remarkably so—the massive hulls of foreign warships. Nearer to Scutari lay a large French cruiser, black against the uncertain light of a rainy day. Scutari and Kadi Kevi, the ancient Chalcedon, as Byzas, the founder of Byzantium, called it, because the inhabitants of that place must have been blind, or they would have chosen the tongue of land opposite, on the glorious harbour, on which to build their city. Scutari, where Florence Nightingale’s hospital still stands. ”

“ The fate of the City is yet undecided, for the arms of Othman have met with reverse after reverse, and no one can say whether recent attempts at implanting Western philosophy on an Eastern creed has left enough of Islam’s virility to defend the last foothold of the Turks on Europe. Here in Stamboul, where stand so many mosques of conquerors, where the Christian churches of the Eastern Empire have been converted into mosques, there is among some a dread uncertainty as to the future. ”