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BULGARIA
_Uniform with this Volume_
AUSTRIA-HUNGARY
ENGLAND
FRANCE
ITALY
SWITZERLAND
A. AND C. BLACK, LTD.,
4 SOHO SQUARE, LONDON, W.
[Illustration: A YOUNG SHOP MAN OF THE DISTRICT OF SOFIA
_Frontispiece_]
BULGARIA
BY
FRANK FOX
AUTHOR OF "ENGLAND," "ITALY," AND "SWITZERLAND"
WITH 32 FULL-PAGE ILLUSTRATIONS IN COLOUR
LONDON
A. AND C. BLACK, LIMITED
1915
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I
Page
BY WAY OF INTRODUCTION 1
CHAPTER II
BULGARIA AND THE DEATH OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE 15
CHAPTER III
THE SCRAP-HEAP OF RACES 36
CHAPTER IV
BULGARIA--A POWER AND A TURKISH PROVINCE 52
CHAPTER V
THE LIBERATION OF BULGARIA 65
CHAPTER VI
THE WAR OF 1912-1913 77
CHAPTER VII
A WAR CORRESPONDENT'S TRIALS IN BULGARIA 99
CHAPTER VIII
INCIDENTS OF BULGARIAN CHARACTER 120
CHAPTER IX
THE TRAGEDY OF 1914 134
CHAPTER X
SOME FACTS FOR THE TOURIST AND THE ECONOMIST 150
CHAPTER XI
HOW BULGARIA IS GOVERNED 167
CHAPTER XII
THE FUTURE OF BULGARIA 174
CHAPTER XIII
THE RESPONSIBILITY OF EUROPE 187
INDEX 207
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
By JAN V. MRKVITCHKA and NOEL POCOCK*
1. A Young Shop Man of the District of Sofia _Frontispiece_
FACING PAGE
2. A Contented Turk 8
3. A Peasant at Work--District of Tsaribrod 17
4. Women of Pordim, in the Plevna District 19
5. In the Harvest Fields near Sofia 22
6. A Shop Woman of the District of Sofia 24
7. A Woman of Thrace, of the Shop Tribe, and of Macedonia 33
8. *Sistov, on the Danube 40
9. Ancient Costume of Balkan Peasant Women near Gabrovo 49
10. A Wedding in the Rhodopes 56
11. *Roustchouk, on the Danube 65
12. "Mystery"--a Study in the Roustchouk District 67
13. A Blind Beggar Woman 70
14. A Young Married Shop Woman 72
15. *A Bulgarian Market Town 75
16. Blessing the Lamb on St. George's Day 78
17. *The Cathedral, Sofia 81
18. *An Adrianople Street 88
19. *The Shipka Pass 97
20. A Young Widow at her Husband's Grave 104
21. Gipsies 113
22. A Peasant of the Tsaribrod District 120
23. The Ratchenitza, the National Dance of Bulgaria 129
24. A Bagpiper 136
25. A Young Girl of Irn 145
26. Guarding the Flocks and Herds 152
27. An Old Street in Philippopolis 161
28. A Grave Question 168
29. A Young Man of the Choumla District 177
30. *A Bulgarian Farm 184
31. A Young Woman of the Roustchouk District 193
32. At the Well 200
_Sketch Map at end of Volume._
BULGARIA
CHAPTER I
BY WAY OF INTRODUCTION
Instructed in the autumn of 1912 to join the Bulgarian army, then
mobilising for war against Turkey, as war correspondent for the _London
Morning Post_, I made my preparations with the thought uppermost that I
was going to a cut-throat country where massacre was the national sport
and human life was regarded with no sentimental degree of respect. The
Bulgarians, a generation ago, had been paraded before the eyes of the
British people by the fiery eloquence of Mr. Gladstone as a deeply
suffering people, wretched victims of Turkish atrocities. After the wide
sympathy that followed his Bulgarian Atrocities campaign there came a
strong reaction. It was maintained that the Bulgarians were by no means
the blameless victims of the Turks; and could themselves initiate
massacres as well as suffer from them. Some even charged that there was
a good deal of party spirit to account for the heat of Mr. Gladstone's
championship. I think that the average British opinion in 1912 was that,
regarding the quarrels between Bulgar and Turk, there was a great deal
to be said against both sides; and that no Balkan people was worth a
moment's sentimental worry. "Let dogs delight to bark and bite, for 'tis
their nature to," expressed the common view when one heard that there
had been murders and village-burnings again in the Balkans.
Certainly there were enthusiasts who held to the old Gladstonian faith
that there was some peculiar merit in the Bulgarian people which
justified all that they did, and which would justify Great Britain
in going into the most dangerous of wars on their behalf. These
enthusiasts, as if to make more startlingly clear their love for
Bulgaria, commonly took a profoundly pacific view of all other questions
of international politics, and would become passionately indignant at
the suggestion that the British Power should ever move navy or army in
defence of any selfish British interest. They were--they still are, it
may be said--the leading lights of what is called the Peace-at-any-price
party, detesting war and "jingoism," and viewing patriotism, when found
growing on British soil, with dry suspicion. Patriotism in Bulgaria is,
however, to their view a growth of a different order, worthy to be
encouraged and sheltered at any cost.
As a counter-weight to these enthusiasts, Great Britain sheltered a
little band, usually known as pro-Turks, who believed, with almost as
passionate a sincerity as that of the pro-Bulgarians, that the Turk
was the only gentleman in Europe, and that his mild and blameless
aspirations towards setting up the perfect State were being cruelly
thwarted by the abominable Bulgars and other Balkan riff-raff. Good
government in the Balkans would come, they held, if the tide of Turkish
rule flowed forward and the restless, semi-savage, murderous Balkan
Christian states went back to peace and philosophic calm under the
wise rule of Cadi administering the will of the Khalifate.
But pro-Bulgarian and pro-Turk made comparatively few converts in Great
Britain. They formed influential little groups and inspired debates in
the House of Lords and the House of Commons, and published literature,
and went out as missions to their beloved nationalities, and had all
their affection confirmed again by the fine appreciation showered upon
them. The great mass of British public opinion, however, they did not
touch. There was never a second flaming campaign because of Turkish
atrocities towards Bulgaria, and the pro-Turks never had a sufficient
sense of humour to suggest a counter-campaign when Bulgarians made
reprisals. In official circles the general attitude towards Balkan
affairs was one of vexation alternating with indifference.
"Those detestable Balkans!" quoth one diplomat in an undiplomatic
moment: and expressed well the official mind. "They are six of one and
half a dozen of the other," said the man in the street when he heard of
massacres, village-burnings, and tortures in the Balkans; and he turned
to the football news with undisturbed mind, seeking something on which a
fair opinion could be formed without too much worry.
The view of the man in the street was my view in 1912. I can recall
being contented in my mind to know that at any rate one's work as a war
correspondent would not be disturbed by any sympathy for the one side
or the other. Whichever side lost it would deserve to have lost, and
whatever reduction in the population of the Balkan Peninsula was caused
by the war would be ultimately a benefit to Europe. In parts of America
where the race feeling is strongest, they say that the only good nigger
is a dead nigger. So I felt about the Balkan populations. The feelings
of a man with some interest in flocks of sheep on hearing that war had
broken out between the wolves and the jackals would represent fairly
well the attitude of mind in which I packed my kit for the Balkans.
It is well to put on record that mental foundation on which I built up
my impressions of the Balkans generally, and of the Bulgarian people
particularly, for at the present time (1914) I think it may safely be
said that the Bulgarian people are somewhat under a cloud, and are not
standing too high in the opinion of the civilised world. Yet, to give
an honest record of my observations of them, I shall have to praise
them very highly in some respects. Whilst it would be going too far to
say that the praise is reluctant, it is true that it has been in a
way forced from me, for I went to Bulgaria with the prejudice against
the Bulgarians that I have indicated. And--to make this explanation
complete--I may add that I came back from the Balkans not a
pro-Bulgarian in the sense that I was anti-Greek or anti-Servian or
even anti-Turk; but with a feeling of general liking for all the
peasant peoples whom a cruel fate has cast into the Balkans to fight
out there national and racial issues, some of which are older than the
Christian era.
Yes, even the Turk, the much-maligned Turk, proved to have decent
possibilities if given a decent chance. Certainly he is no longer
the Terrible Turk of tradition. Most of the Turks I encountered in
Bulgaria were prisoners of war, evidently rather pleased to be in the
hands of the Bulgarians who fed them decently, a task which their own
commissariat had failed in: or were contented followers of menial
occupations in Bulgarian towns. I can recall Turkish boot-blacks and
Turkish porters, but no Turks who looked like warriors, and if they
are cut-throats by choice (I do not believe they are) they are very
mild-mannered cut-throats indeed.
Coming back from the lines of Chatalja towards the end of 1912, I had,
for one stage of five days, between Kirk Kilisse and Mustapha Pasha, a
Turkish driver. He had been a Bulgarian subject (I gathered) before the
war, and with his cart and two horses had been impressed into the
transport service. At first with some aid from an interpreter,
afterwards mostly by signs and broken fragments of language, I got to be
able to converse with this Turk. (In the Balkans the various shreds of
races have quaint crazy-quilt patchworks of conversational language.
Somehow or other even a British citizen with more than the usual
stupidity of our race as to foreign languages can make himself
understood in the Balkan Peninsula, which is so polyglottic that its
inhabitants understand signs very well.) My Turk friend, from the very
first, filled my heart with sympathy because of his love for his horses.
Since he had come under the war-rule of the Bulgarians, he complained to
me, he had not been allowed to feed his horses properly. They were
fading away. He wept over them. Actual tears irrigated the furrows of
his weather-beaten and unwashed cheeks.
As a matter of fact the horses were in very good condition indeed,
considering all the circumstances; as good, certainly, as any horses I
had seen since I left Buda-Pesth. But my heart warmed to this Turcoman
and his love for his horses. I had been seeking in vain up to this point
for the appearance of the Terrible Turk of tradition; the Turk, with his
well-beloved Arabian steed, his quite-secondary-in-consideration
Circassian harem; the fierce, unconquerable, disdainful, cruel Turk,
manly in his vices as well as in his virtues. My Turk had at least one
recognisable characteristic in his love for his horses. As he sorrowed
over them I comforted him with a flagon--it was of brandy and water: and
the Prophet, when he forbade wine, was ignorant of brandy, so Islam
these days has its alcoholic consolation--and I stayed him with
cigarettes. He had not had a smoke for a month and, put in possession of
tobacco, he plunged into a mood of rapt exultation, rolling cigarette
after cigarette, chuckling softly as he inhaled the smoke, turning
towards me now and again with a gesture of thanks and of respect. I had
taken over the reins and the little horses were doing very well.
[Illustration: A CONTENTED TURK]
That day, though we had started late, the horses carried us thirty-five
miles, and I camped at the site of a burned-out village. The Turk
made no objection to this. Previously coming over the same route with an
ox-cart, my Macedonian driver had objected to camping except in occupied
villages where there were garrisons. He feared Bashi-Bazouks (the
Turkish irregular bands which occasionally showed themselves in the rear
of the Bulgarian army) and wolves. Probably, too, he feared ghosts, or
was uneasy and lonely when out of range of the village smells. Now I
preferred a burned village site, because the only clean villages were
the burned ones; and for the reason of water it was necessary to camp at
some village or village site. Mr. Turk went up hugely in my estimation
when I found that he had no objections to the site of a burned village
as a camping-place.
But the first night in camp shattered all my illusions. The Turk
unharnessed and lit the camp fire. I cooked my supper and gave him a
share. Then he squatted by the fire and resumed smoking. The horses over
which he had shed tears waited. After the Turk's third cigarette I
suggested that the horses should be watered and fed. The village well
was about 300 yards away, and the Turk evidently did not like the idea
of moving from the fire. He did not move, but argued in Turkish of which
I understood nothing. Finally I elicited the fact that the horses were
too tired to drink and too tired to eat the barley I had brought for
them. As a remedy for tiredness they were to be left without water and
food all night.
As plainly as was possible I insisted to the Turk that the horses must
be watered at once, and afterwards given a good ration of barley. I
dragged him from the fire to the horses and made my meaning clear
enough. The Turk was stubborn. Clearly either I was to water the horses
myself or they were to be left without water, and my old traditions of
horse-mastery would not allow me to have them fed without being watered.
So this was the extent of the Turk's devotion to his horses!
It was necessary to be firm, and I took up the cart whip to the Turk and
convinced him almost at once that the horses were not "too tired" to
drink.
Mr. Turk did not resent the blows in the least. He refrained from
cutting my throat as I slept that evening. Afterwards a mere wave of the
hand towards the whip made him move with alacrity. At the end of the
journey, when I gave him a good "tip," he knelt down gallantly in the
mud of Mustapha Pasha and kissed my hand and carried it to his forehead.
So faded away my last hope of meeting the Terrible Turk of tradition in
the Balkans. Perhaps he exists still in Asia Minor. As I saw the Turk in
Bulgaria and in European Turkey, he was a dull monogamic person with no
fiery pride, no picturesque devilry, but a great passion for
sweetmeats--not merely his own "Turkish Delight," but all kinds of
lollipops: his shops were full of Scotch and English confectionery.
But the Bulgarian, not the Turk, is our theme. This introduction,
however, will make it plain that, as the result of a direct knowledge of
the Balkans, during some months in which I had the opportunity of
sharing in Bulgarian peasant life, I came to the admiration I have now
for the Bulgarian people in spite of a preliminary prejudice. And this
conversion of view was not the result of becoming involved in some
passionate political attitude regarding Balkan affairs. I am not now
prepared to take up the view of the fanatic Bulgar-worshippers who must
not only exalt the Bulgarian nation as a modern Chosen People, but must
represent Servian, Greek, and Turk as malignant and devilish in order to
throw up in the highest light their ideas of Bulgarian saintliness.
The Balkans are apt to have strange effects on the traveller. Perhaps it
is the blood-mist that hangs always over the Balkan plains and glens
which gets into the head and intoxicates one: perhaps it is the call to
the wild in us from the primitive human nature of the Balkan peoples.
Whatever the reason, it is a common thing for the unemotional English
traveller to go to the Balkans as a tourist and return as a passionate
enthusiast for some Balkan Peninsula nationality. He becomes, perhaps, a
pro-Turk, and thereafter will argue with fierceness that the Turk is the
only man who leads an idyllic life in Europe to-day, and that the way
to human regeneration is through a conversion to Turkishness. He fills
his house with Turkish visitors and writes letters to the papers
pointing out the savagery we show in the "Turk's Head" competition for
our cavalry-men at military tournaments. Or he may become a pro-Bulgar
with a taste for the company of highly flavoured Macedonian
revolutionary priests and a grisly habit of turning the conversation to
the subject of outrage and massacre. To become a pro-Servian is not a
common fashion, but pro-Albanians and pro-Montenegrins and
Philhellenists are common enough.
The word "crank," if it can be read in a kindly sense and stripped of
malice, covers all these folk. Exactly why the Balkans have such an
effect in making "cranks" I have already confessed an inability to
explain. The fact must stand as one of those things which we must
believe--if we read Parliamentary debates and newspaper
correspondence--but cannot comprehend.
But any "crank" view I disavow. Whether from a natural lack of a
generous sense of partisanship, or a journalistic training (which crabs
emotionalism: that acute observer of men, the late "General" Booth, said
once of his Salvation Army work, "You can never 'save' a journalist"), I
came back from the Balkans without a desire to join a society to exalt
any one of the little nationalities struggling for national expression
in its rowdy life. But I did get to a strong admiration of the Bulgarian
people as soldiers, farmers, road-makers, and as friends. The evidence
on which that admiration is based will be stated in these pages, and it
is my hope that it will do a little to set the Bulgarian--who is
sometimes much overpraised and often much over-abused--in a right light
before my readers.
But before dealing with the Bulgarian of to-day we must look into his
antecedents.