The Turk could not hope to assimilate the Greek by peaceful methods, because he was his intellectual inferior. When he planned to use force, the Balkan Alliance was formed. The battle of Lulé Burgas took away from the Turk his last claim to fitness as dominant race. He could no longer fight better than Christians. The first Balkan War gave the coup de grâce to the final—and has it not been all along the only?—argument for Turkish racial supremacy.
THE CRETAN QUESTION AND THE GREEK BOYCOTT
The island of Crete had long been to Turkey, in relation to Greece, what Cuba had been to Spain, in relation to the United States. In both cases, and about the same time, wars of liberation broke out. But Greece was not as fortunate in her efforts for the emancipation of an enslaved and continually rebellious population as was the United States. Powerless and humiliated, after the war of 1897, Greece could no longer hope to have a voice, by reason of her own force, in the direction of Cretan affairs. Crete became the foundling of European diplomacy.
Together with the declaration of Bulgarian independence, and the annexation of Bosnia and Herzegovina by Austria-Hungary, the Young Turks had to face a decree of the Cretan assembly to the effect that Crete was indissolubly united to the kingdom of Greece. The Young Turks could do nothing against Bulgaria. For the ceremony of Tirnovo had been no more than the de jure sanction of a de facto condition. The only cause for conflict, the question of the railroads in eastern Rumelia, was solved by Russian diplomacy. Against Austria-Hungary a boycott was declared. It resulted in a few successful attempts to prevent the landing of mails and freights from Austrian steamers, and in the tearing up of several million fezes which were of Austrian manufacture. These, by the way, were soon replaced by new fezes from the same factories. The Sublime Porte settled the Bosnia-Herzegovina question by accepting a money payment from Austria-Hungary.
All the rancour resulting from these losses and humiliation, all the vials of wrath, were poured upon the head of Greece. The Cretan question became the foremost problem in European diplomacy. The Cretans stubbornly refused to listen to the Powers, and decided to maintain their decision to belong to Greece. But Greece was threatened with war by Turkey, if she did not refuse to accept the annexation decree voted by the Cretans themselves. In order to prevent Turkey from attacking Greece, the Powers decided to use force against the Cretans. Turkey, not satisfied with the efforts of the Powers to preserve the Ottoman sovereignty and Ottoman pride in Crete, demanded still more of Greece. She asked that the Greek Parliament should not only declare its disinterestedness in Crete, but should take upon itself the obligation to maintain that disinterestedness in the future.
To go into all the tortuous phases of the Cretan question up to the time of the Balkan War would make this chapter out of proportion; and yet Crete, like Alsace-Lorraine, has had a most vital influence upon the present European war. The one point to be emphasized here is, that to bring pressure to bear upon Greece in defining her attitude toward Crete, the Young Turks decided to revive the commercial boycott which they had used against Austria. I have seen from close range the notorious Greek boycott of 1910 to 1912. It was far more disastrous to the Turks than to the Greeks of Turkey. It threatened so completely, however, the economic prosperity of Greece, which is a commercial rather than an agricultural country, that it forced Greece into the Balkan Alliance much against her will, for the sake of self-preservation.
If this boycott had been carried on against the Greeks of Greece alone, it would not have affected vitally the prosperity of the Greeks in the Ottoman Empire. Their imports come from every country, and for their exports the freight steamers of all the European nations competed. But it was directed also against the Greeks who were Ottoman subjects. In Salonika, Constantinople, Trebizond, Smyrna, and other ports, commerce was entirely in the hands of Greeks. They owned almost every steamer bearing the Ottoman flag. They owned the cargoes. They bought and sold the merchandise. The Young Turks, working through the hamals or longshoremen and the boatmen who manned the lighters,—all Turks and Kurds,—succeeded in tying up absolutely the commerce of Ottoman Greeks. The Greek merchants and shippers were ruined. It was urged cleverly that this was the chance for Moslems to get the trade of the great ports of Turkey into their own hands. The Government encouraged them by buying and maintaining steamship lines. But the Turks had no knowledge of commerce, no money to buy goods, and no inclination to do the work and accept the responsibilities necessary for successful commercial undertakings. The result was that imports were stopped, prices went up, and the Moslems were hurt as much as, if not more than, the Christians. After several voyages, the new government passenger vessels were practically hors de combat. There was no longer first, second, and third class. Peasants squatted on the decks and in the saloons. Filth reigned supreme, and hopeless confusion. No European could endure a voyage on one of these steamers, and no merchant cared to entrust his shipments to them.
The boycott died because it was a hopeless undertaking. For many months, the Government lost heavily through the falling off in the custom house receipts. The labouring class (almost wholly Moslems) of the seaports suffered terribly, as our labouring class suffers during a prolonged strike. The boycott was removed, Greeks were allowed to resume their business, so essential for the prosperity of the community, and, as is always the case in Turkey, everything worked again in the same old way.
But, just as the failure to punish the perpetrators of the Adana massacre alienated definitely and irrevocably the sympathy and loyal support of the Armenian element from the constitutional régime, so the boycott, iniquitous and futile, lost to the Young Turks the allegiance of the Greeks of the Empire. Already alarmed by the attack upon the liberties of the patriarchate, the Greeks began to look to Greece for help; and, in the islands of the Ægean and in Macedonia, the hope was strong that a successful war might put an end to what they were suffering.