The Committee of Union and Progress showed the inherited genius of destruction, but failed when it came to construction. Western people said, “Give them time,” but time brought no betterment. The old order had been ruthlessly destroyed, the fear of authority had been dispelled, and nothing was created to fill the vacant places in the mind of the people. Public administration suffered, neglected because the reformers had no thought but for the maintenance of their own dignity, and this was entrusted to an esoteric militarism, to a political body whose members were not publicly known, and who were therefore removed from public responsibility. The worst effects of this clandestine body politic were felt in the army, and those whose business it was to maintain the efficiency of the Sultan’s forces were too much concerned with political machinations to attend to their primary duties. The disorder which resulted in all departments of public life led to an increase in the ever-present inertia of the Turk when not engaged in warfare, and acted as a further hindrance to reform.
In the Army the spirit of change brought from the West worked the greatest havoc. 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. Some were even lax in matters of religious observance, and how could a war prove victorious when all due glory was not given to the God of battles? Again, there were Christians fighting, in the ranks only, side by side with Moslems—how could this be? Is not war a religious commandment, a sacred matter in which infidels can have no part? The Koran says: “Who dies for God’s sake receives the highest reward”; but how can a Christian be so blest, as he does not follow the law of the Prophet? Thus bewildered the Anatolian peasant marched to war, inspired by Islam, obedience, resignation, against the armed manhood of nations who breathed freedom.
The Porte, or the inexpert executive of the Ottoman Empire, had failed to realize that the Balkan States had been strengthened by the weakening of Islam’s simple ideals, that hopes of liberty had risen high among the Christian subjects of the Sultan in Europe, and that a formidable alliance was in being, conceived with the sole idea of ending Turkish rule over European Christians.
With a thoroughness of which the Oriental mind is incapable, the great coup had been prepared by the Balkan States. A hard-and-fast Alliance which for the time overrode all political and religious differences confronted the Porte, and roused it suddenly to face a desperate emergency. The Kochana massacres brought matters to a head, while Turkey was still engaged in apathetic war with Italy. Bulgaria insisted in peremptory tones on reform in Macedonia, Servia raised its voice over the detention of munitions of war in transit from Saloniki, via Üsküb, to Nish; Montenegro found a casus belli, and was first to pour its armed sons down from the mountains into Turkey. They captured Detchich on October 9th, the day after the formal declaration of war; they seized Tuzi and Berane, and proceeded to invest Scutari. While thus engaged the Porte was forced to declare war on Bulgaria and Servia on October 17th, and on the same day Greece took a like step towards Turkey. An army under the Crown Prince at once invaded the southern provinces of the Empire.
The floods were out, and Western armies, highly trained, purposeful, each individual fighter inspired by love of liberty, full of zeal for the cause he had at heart, overflowed into Thrace, Thessaly, and Macedonia. The Ottoman Army had but recently been engaged in manœuvres, and these had shown many glaring defects of organization. When the Allied Armies marched, the Turks were more unready than ever; they had even sent their reservists home. Then began a scene of frantic disorder. Units were hurried to the front where the commanders of brigades, divisions, army corps, impatiently awaited them. The carefully arranged commands and sub-commands were entirely disregarded, and each brigadier or divisional commander seized on troops as they arrived, indiscriminately, and added them to his command. Thus the war, begun in confusion, invited defeat. And defeat came swiftly, mercilessly, while the unorganized masses of Ottoman troops, however bravely individuals might comport themselves, were swept away before the rising tide. Everybody failed, except perhaps the long-suffering Turkish soldier; ammunition reserves were not, food supplies gave out at once, and by the end of October all Thessaly, all Macedonia, the greater part of Thrace, were no longer Turkish possessions, and the Sultan’s armies, broken, starved, diseased, were driven behind the lines of Chatalja, the outer defences of the capital. On these lines the remnant of Ottoman military power guarded the last trace of Turkish dominion in Europe; shivering on the wind-swept heights, ill-equipped, underfed, regardless of elementary hygiene, they awaited Kismet, these ill-used, long-suffering sons of Islam, while in the Empire’s capital the mosques filled with sick and wounded, mingling with refugees from the former European vilayets. There were others yet in the City, or why should the War Office have issued an order to the imams, the priests, to render account of officers and men of the army who are hiding in the narrow streets of their respective parishes? The police were also instructed to demand of officers they saw in the streets some document to show that they were authorized to be in the town instead of at the front.
Seven short weeks and the Empire carved out of Europe by the sword of Othman has shrivelled up before the fierce blast of war like grass before a prairie fire. And in their need and sickness the soldiers of Islam turned to Allah, the god of battles, and sought refuge in the mosques built to commemorate the triumphs of departed Caliphs.
CHAPTER XV
The Greeks, ancient and modern—Origin of the modern Greeks—Mohammed the Conqueror and the Greeks—The Greeks under Selim I—The rise of the Phanariot Greeks—The work of the Orthodox Church—The Greek literary revival—The trade of the Greeks—The revival of Hellenism—The first Pan-Hellenic rising—The revolt of the Islands—Ali Pasha’s assistance—Massacres—The battle of Navarino—The last war between Greece and Turkey—Joachim III—The story of the Patriarchate—The funeral of His Holiness Joachim III—The Greeks in the last war—A legend of Balukli.
WHEN Mohammed II completed the conquest of the Eastern Empire by the capture of Constantinople he made himself master of a large population, both in the City and the former Empire of old Byzantium, which had for some time been considered Greek, and which was subsequently called Greek. This classification was religious from the Turkish point of view, from that of the Greeks themselves it became racial as time went on. To the conquering Moslem all those were Greeks who belonged to the Orthodox Church; the Greeks, however, insisted on their descent from the historic people who had made their country famous before the days of the Romans even, the Hellenes, whose literature they adopted, whose art they basely imitated, and with whose high attributes they consider themselves endowed.
This people, the classic Greeks, the Hellenes, had inhabited the Peloponese Peninsula from those dark ages before recorded history, and even in prehistoric times had occupied the islands between Greece and Asia Minor. No doubt the Hellenes moved down from the plains of Central Europe, the cradle of the Aryan race, in successive waves, being urged forward by seething masses of young nations behind them. We have some indications as to what manner of men they were in the early works of art of the sixth century B.C., which tend to show that these ancient immigrants were large, blue-eyed, fair-haired men. Anthropologists maintain after studying the skulls of ancient Greeks that these were dolichocephalic, long-headed, which tends further to the conclusion that the first invaders of this peninsula were akin to the races of Northern Europe. The first immigrants were probably the Arcadians, who spread from the coasts to the islands and populated Crete, Rhodes, and Cyprus. They were followed by the Doric tribe, kinsmen who came from Thrace, who probably brought the first immigrants to submission and gradually absorbed them, and such of the aboriginals, the Ionians, who did not migrate to Asia Minor. Within the range of history another people came down from the north to influence the Peloponese, the Macedonians. Their origin is uncertain, but what traces are left of their old language, a name here and there, suggests that they were akin to the Illyrians, had adopted Greek culture, and were ruled by princes who wished to be considered pure Greeks. It would seem, therefore, that the ancient Hellenes were a mixture of various northern Aryan races and aboriginal inhabitants, Illyrians, Ionians, whose origin forms a yet unsolved historical problem. The Peloponese was, as it were, a pier, standing out into the Mediterranean Sea, and from which northern ideas extended and spread southward to Africa, eastward over the Archipelago to Asia. The subtle attraction of an outlet must have acted on the subconsciousness of other northern races, in that the Hellenes, far from feeling secure in their peninsula, were constantly exposed to the visits of strange barbaric visitors whenever “Wanderlust” moved the tribes of Central Europe. Of course, Romans left their impress, and so did wandering Goths, but strongest of all was the influence of the Slavs, and they so seriously affected the Peloponese that at one time it was known as Slavinia.