Unfortunately, my forecast has come true in every particular. The failure of New Turkey was natural. It was unavoidable. Ancient States are ponderous and slow-moving bodies. Their course can be deflected and their character be altered only by gradual evolution, by slow and almost imperceptible changes spread over a long space of time. Democracy, like a tree, is a thing of slow growth, and it requires a congenial soil. It can not be created over night in Turkey, Persia, or China. The attempt to convert an ancient Eastern despotism, firmly established on a theocratic basis, a country in which the Koran and the Multeka are the law of the land, into a Western democracy based on the secular speculations of Rousseau, Montesquieu, Bentham, Mill, and Spencer was ridiculous. The revolution effected only an outward change. It introduced some Western innovations, but altered neither the character of the Government nor that of the people. Turkish Parliamentarism became a sham and a make-believe. The cruel absolutism of Abdul Hamid was speedily followed by the scarcely less cruel absolutism of a secret committee.
The new rulers of the country were mostly very young men, who were conspicuous for their enthusiasm and their daring but not for their judgment and experience. They had picked upon the boulevards and in the Quartier Latin of Paris and in Geneva the sonorous phrases of Western democracy and demagogy, and with these they impressed, not only their fellow citizens, but also the onlookers in Europe. Having obtained power, they embarked upon a campaign of nationalization. However, instead of trying to nationalize the non-Turkish millions slowly and gradually by kind and just treatment coupled with a moderate amount of nationalizing pressure, they began ruthlessly to make war upon the language, and to suppress the churches, schools, and other institutions of the non-Turkish citizens, whom they disarmed and deprived of their ancient rights. The complaints and remonstrances of the persecuted were answered with redoubled persecution, with violence, and with massacre, and soon serious revolts broke out in all parts of the Empire. The Young Turks followed faithfully in Abdul Hamid's footsteps. However, Abdul Hamid was clever enough always to play off one nationality or race against the other. In his Balkan policy, for instance, he encouraged Greek Christians to slay Christian Bulgarians and Servians, and allowed Bulgarian bands to make war upon Servians and Greeks, supporting, on principle, one nationality against the other. But the Young Turks persecuted indiscriminately and simultaneously all non-Turkish races, Albanians, Bulgarians, Servians, and Greeks, and thus they brought about the union of the Balkan States against themselves.
The outbreak of the war could scarcely have been prevented by the European Powers. It was bound to come. It was as inevitable as was the breakdown of the Young Turkish régime. Since the earliest times the Turks have been a race of nomadic warriors. Their policy has always been to conquer nations, to settle among the conquered, and to rule them, keeping them in strict and humiliating subjection. They have always treated the subject peoples harshly and contemptuously. Unlike other conquerors, they have never tried to create among the conquered a great and homogeneous State which would have promised permanence, but, nomad-like, have merely created military settlement among aliens. Therefore, the alien subjects of the Turks have remained aliens in Turkey. They have not become citizens of the Empire. As the Turks did not try to convert the conquered to Islam—the Koran forbids proselytism by force—and to nationalize them, the subjected and ill-treated alien masses never amalgamated with the ruling Turks, but always strove to regain their liberty by rebellion. Owing to the mistakes made in its creation, the Turkish Empire has been for a long time an Empire in the process of disintegration. Its later history consists of a long series of revolts, of which the present outbreak is the latest, but scarcely the last, instance.
The failure of the new Turkish régime has increased to the utmost the century-old antagonism between the ruling Turks and their Christian subjects. The accounts of the sufferings of their brothers across the borderline, inflicted upon them by Constitutional Turkey, which had promised such great things, had raised the indignation of the Balkan peoples to fever heat and had made an explosion of popular fury inevitable. The war fever increased when it was discovered that Servians, Bulgarians, and Greeks were at last of one mind, and that Turkey's strength had been undermined by revolts in all parts of the Empire and by the Turkish-Italian war. The Turks, on the other hand, were not unnaturally indignant with the perfidy of the Christian Powers, which, instead of supporting Turkey in her attempts at reform, had snatched valuable territories from her immediately after her revolution. Not unnaturally, they attributed the failure of the new régime and the revolts of their subjects to the machinations of the Christian States, and the Balkan troubles to the hostile policy of the Balkan States. The tension on both sides became intolerable. If the Balkan States had not mobilized, a revolution would have broken out in Sofia and Belgrade, for the people demanded war. If the Turkish Government had given way to the Balkan States, a revolution would have broken out in Constantinople. The instinct of self-preservation forced the Balkan Governments and Turkey into war. The passions of race-hatred had become uncontrollable.
FREDERICK PALMER[1]
[Footnote 1: Reprinted by permission from an article in Everybody's
Magazine.]
Against any one of his little Christian neighbors the Turk had superior numbers, and had only to concentrate on a single section of his many-sided frontier line. It had never entered his mind that the little neighbors would form an alliance. He had trusted to their jealousies to keep them apart. United, they could strike him on the front and both sides simultaneously. He was due for an attack coming down the main street and from alleys to the right and left.
In this situation he must temporarily accept the defensive. Meanwhile, he foresaw the battalions of "chocolate soldiers" beating themselves to pieces against the breastworks of his garrisons, and Greek turning on Serb and Serb on Bulgar after a taste of real war. Against divided counsels would be one mind, which, with reenforcements of the faithful from Asia Minor, would send the remnants of the opéra bouffe invasion flying back over their passes.
But the allies fully realized the danger of quarreling among themselves, which would have been much harder to avert if their armies had been acting together as a unit under a single command. Happily, each army was to make a separate campaign under its own generals; each had its own separate task; each was to strike at the force in front of its own borders. Prompt, staggering blows before the Turkish reserves could arrive were essential.
The Montenegrins in the northwest, who had the side-show (while Bulgaria, Servia, and Greece had the three rings under the main tent), did their part when they invested the garrison of Scutari.