Twenty Years of Balkan Tangle

by M. E. Durham

I talked with the two Young Turk officers, Halil and Khiassim Bey, at Scutari. They were hopelessly ignorant. Knew, in fact, no more about a Constitution than did the up-country mountain men. It was a sort of magic word which was to put all right. They were arranging to be photographed in new uniforms with plenty of gold braid, and were childishly happy. When I said: "But you have the Bulgar question, the Greek, the Serb, and Albanian questions all to solve in Europe alone—surely those are more important than new uniforms," they replied: "These questions no longer exist. We have made a law. All are now Ottomans!"

"You may make a law that a cat is a dog," said I, "but it will remain a cat."

They expressed horror that I should compare human beings to animals, and Halil persisted: "It will be like England. In England you have the people of Scotland and Ireland. But they are all English. A man from Scotland, for example, would not say 'I am Scotch.'"

"But he would," I persisted. "If you call an Irishman, English, he will probably knock you down." They were surprised and incredulous. They had no plans, no ideas. That no one wanted to be an Ottoman, and that, contracted to "Ot" the word was used as a term of contempt to denote "Turk" by the town Christians was unknown to them. Albania was, in fact, for the Young Turks, the most important of its European possessions, for, well handled, it might have remained loyal to the Turk against the dreaded Slav. But Constantinople did nothing to achieve this. And Scutari was infuriated because, though the prisoners had been released in honour of the Constitution throughout the land, the doors of Scutari prisons were still closed. Folk began to say: "The Young Turk is as bad as the Old."

I took a long journey up into Kosovo vilayet to districts which had previously been practically closed to travellers for many years, visiting Djakova, Prizren, Prishtina, Mitrovitza, and the plain of Kosovo. Here it seemed obvious that the new regime must fail. The Serbs everywhere were in very much of a minority, and their headmen —the Bishop of Prizren, the Archimandrite of Grachanitza, the master of the Serb theological school at Prizren, and others frankly lamented the Turkish revolution, and looked on it only as a frustration of all their schemes. A well-governed Turkey was the last thing they wished for, as it would prevent the creation of Great Serbia. Prizren itself was so overwhelmingly Albanian that the Serbian College, with its students brought even from Montenegro and other non-Turk lands, seemed ridiculously artificial.

Nor were the Albanians any longer pleased about the revolution. They meant to accept nothing that would bring them further under Turkish power. As for the Turkish authorities, they were still under the magic of the blessed word "Constitution," and in order that foreigners should be so too, sent gendarmes ahead to prepare a group of "peasants rejoicing under the Constitution" at Djakova, ready for the arrival of some French delegates.

I was back in Scutari when, on October 5th, came the startling news that Ferdinand of Bulgaria had proclaimed himself Tsar of independent Bulgaria. This confirmed the Christians of the town in their rooted belief that all that was going on was arranged by the Great Powers for the purpose of entirely overthrowing the Turk.

Tuesday, October 6th, the Austrian attache had supper with me, and was bubbling with excitement. He had a great piece of news, but it might not yet be told. I was to try and guess< He would tell me so soon as possible. Wednesday and Thursday passed, and on Friday early, in rushed my old Marko crying: "War is declared by Serbia, Russia, Montenegro, and Turkey against Austria!" Why, he did not know. Running out to learn, I met the attache beaming: "We have annexed Bosnia and the Herzegovina!" he said. "Then you have done a dashed silly thing!" said I. He was greatly surprised, and promised to come to dinner with me and fight it out. I went to the Montenegrin Consulate and found Petar Plamenatz almost in tears with a red-hot proclamation of Prince Nikola's in his hands, calling on all Serbs of all countries to unite and denounce the breaking of the Berlin Treaty, and laying great stress on the fact that all his ancestors were buried in the Herzegovina, which was now seized by Austria. Petar was of opinion that war was inevitable, otherwise all the plans of the Serbs for Great Serbia were ruined. Serbs and Montenegrins must act as brothers.

Excitement in the town was further heated by the arrival of the French Minister from Belgrade, who interviewed the newly-arrived Prenk Bib Doda, and the wildest things were reported and believed, even that England, Germany, and Austria had combined to crush the Slavs. Folk discussed which Power would land there. Prizren was said to have declared itself independent. And one of the political prisoners of the Cetinje bomb affair, who had been condemned to fifteen years, escaped and took refuge in Scutari. In the general excitement I never learnt his name, and he left for Serbia.

The Austrian attache duly came to dinner, and explained that it was absolutely necessary to annex Bosnia as the Young Turks were preparing for the general elections. The two provinces were nominally part of the Turkish Empire, and the Turks would claim that they should be represented in their Parliament. Europe had never intended the provinces to revert to Turkey; they had been entirely Austrian for thirty years, and the change was in name only. It would also make it possible to give the provinces a liberal and civilian government, a thing not possible when it was a question only of a military occupation. I countered with: "Let sleeping dogs lie." Europe would never have taken it from Austria, and if it had been agreed that Austria should retire from part she would have been necessarily heavily compensated. He replied: "Ah, but you don't know something we know, and which has expedited the affair. England is on the point of annexing Egypt. The same problem faces you there." I did not believe this possible, and declared that we were pledged to the Egyptians to restore the land to them. I believed, then, we should keep our word. He laughed, and said he had certain information that we should annex it. Nor would he agree, when I persisted, that Austria had made a mistake in not bringing the question up before the signatory Powers. We discussed the anti-Austrian propaganda, which I had found rife in Bosnian He believed it to have been largely due to the uncertainty of the position, and declared that, faced with the fait accompli, the Serbs would drop the intrigues which kept up the agitation, and that a civilian government and a constitution would speedily ameliorate everything.