The Kaimmakam was an Albanian Moslem, Mehdi Bey, who kept the balance well under very difficult circumstances, and to-day is one of the leading Albanian Nationalists. He asserted always that Ochrida should, of right, belong to Albania. Albanian it was indeed considered until the rise of the Russo-Bulgar movement. As late as 1860 we find the Lakes of Ochrida and Presba referred to as the Albanian Lakes by English travellers.
Through the winter of 1903-4 trouble simmered, arrests were made, murders occurred. I learnt the ethics of murder, which, in Macedonia, were simply: "When a Moslem kills a Moslem so much the better. When a Christian kills a Christian it is better not talked about, because people at home would not understand it; when a Christian kills a Moslem it is a holy and righteous act. When a Moslem kills a Christian it is an atrocity and should be telegraphed to all the papers."
In February 1904 the Russo-Japanese quarrel, which had been for some time growing hotter, burst into sudden war, and the whole complexion of Balkan affairs changed.
At the beginning the Bulgar leaders took it for granted that Russia was invincible, and anticipated speedy and complete victory for her. They were also supplied with false news, and refused to credit at first any Russian defeat. The Bishop of Ochrida was furious when I reported to him the sinking of the Petropalovski, and fiercely declared that the war was in reality an Anglo-Russian one, and that Japan was merely our tool.
When riding on relief work among the burnt villages it was easy to learn the great part Russia had taken in building up the Bulgar rising in Macedonia. The same tale was told in almost each. Once upon a time, not so very long ago, a rich, noble and generous gentleman had visited the village. He was richer than you could imagine; had paid even a white medjid for a cup of coffee; had called the headmen and the priest together and had asked them if they would like a church of their own in the village. And in due time the church had been built. Followed, a list of silver candlesticks, vestments, etc., presented by this same nobleman—the Russian Consul. The Turks had looted the treasures. Could I cause them to be restored? Sometimes the Consul had had an old church restored. Sometimes he had given money to establish a school. Always he stood for the people as something almost omnipotent.
In August M. Rostovsky, the Russian Consul at Monastir, had been murdered. There was nothing political in the affair. The Russian had imagined the land was already his, and that he was dealing with humble mouzhiks. He carried a heavy riding-whip and used it when he chose. I was told by an eye-witness that on one occasion he so savagely flogged a little boy who had ventured to hang on behind the consular carriage that a Turkish gendarme intervened. One day he lashed an Albanian soldier. The man waited his opportunity and shot Rostovsky dead on the main road near the Consulate. Russia treated the murder as a political one, and demanded and obtained apology and reparation of the Turkish Government. The Consul's remains were transported to the coast with full honours. All this for a Russian Consul in Turkey. Truly one man may steal a horse and another not look over a fence. Russia mobilized when Austria insisted on enquiry into the murder of an Archduke. So well was Rostovsky's funeral engineered that the native Slav peasants looked on him as a martyr to the sacred Slav cause, not as a man who had brought his punishment on himself.
Russia was not, however, the only Power in Monastir. It seethed with consuls. And the most prominent was Krai, the Austrian Consul-General, a very energetic and scheming man who "ran" Austria for all she was worth, and was a thorn in the side of the British Consul, whom he endeavoured to thwart at every turn. He persuaded the American missionaries, who were as innocent as babes about European politics, though they had passed thirty years in the Balkan Peninsula, that he and not the Englishman could best forward their interests, and they foolishly induced the American Government to transfer them and their schools to Austrian protection. And he pushed himself to the front always, declaring that he had far more power to aid the relief work and trying to make the English consult him instead of their own representative. This annoyed me, and I therefore never visited him at all. Up country among the revolted villages it was clear that the luckless people had been induced to rise by the belief that, as in 1877, Russia would come to their rescue! But as time passed, and Russia herself realized that the Japanese were a tough foe, it became more and more apparent that no further rising would take place in the spring. The Balkan Orthodox Lenten fast is so severe that a rising before Easter was always improbable. This Easter would see none.. I remembered with curious clearness the words of the Pole who gave me my first Serbian lessons. "Russia is corrupt right through. If there is a war—Russia will be like that!" and he threw a rag of paper into the basket scornfully. His has been a twice true prophecy. The Bulgarian Bishop of Ochrida still believed firmly in Russia's invincibility. Furious when I refused to have cartridges, etc., hidden in my room—which the Turks never searched—he turned on me and declared that England was not a Christian country and would be wiped out by Holy Russia, who had already taken half Japan and would soon take the rest and all India too.
By the middle of March I was quite certain no rising would take place. The Foreign Office in London still expected one, and notified all relief workers up country to wind up work and return. The others did, but I stayed and managed to ride right through Albania.