“War is a cruelly destructive thing,” said the Wanderer, dropping his
newspaper to the floor and staring reflectively into space.
“Ah, yes, indeed,” said the Merchant, responding readily to what seemed
like a safe platitude; “when one thinks of the loss of life and limb, the
desolated homesteads, the ruined—”
“I wasn’t thinking of anything of the sort,” said the Wanderer; “I was
thinking of the tendency that modern war has to destroy and banish the
very elements of picturesqueness and excitement that are its chief excuse
and charm. It is like a fire that flares up brilliantly for a while and
then leaves everything blacker and bleaker than before. After every
important war in South-East Europe in recent times there has been a
shrinking of the area of chronically disturbed territory, a stiffening of
frontier lines, an intrusion of civilised monotony. And imagine what may
happen at the conclusion of this war if the Turk should really be driven
out of Europe.”
“Well, it would be a gain to the cause of good government, I suppose,”
said the Merchant.
“But have you counted the loss?” said the other. “The Balkans have long
been the last surviving shred of happy hunting-ground for the
adventurous, a playground for passions that are fast becoming atrophied
for want of exercise. In old bygone days we had the wars in the Low
Countries always at our doors, as it were; there was no need to go far
afield into malaria-stricken wilds if one wanted a life of boot and
saddle and licence to kill and be killed. Those who wished to see life
had a decent opportunity for seeing death at the same time.”
“It is scarcely right to talk of killing and bloodshed in that way,” said
the Merchant reprovingly; “one must remember that all men are brothers.”
“One must also remember that a large percentage of them are younger
brothers; instead of going into bankruptcy, which is the usual tendency
of the younger brother nowadays, they gave their families a fair chance
of going into mourning. Every bullet finds a billet, according to a
rather optimistic proverb, and you must admit that nowadays it is
becoming increasingly difficult to find billets for a lot of young
gentlemen who would have adorned, and probably thoroughly enjoyed, one of
the old-time happy-go-lucky wars. But that is not exactly the burden of
my complaint. The Balkan lands are especially interesting to us in these
rapidly-moving days because they afford us the last remaining glimpse of
a vanishing period of European history. When I was a child one of the
earliest events of the outside world that forced itself coherently under
my notice was a war in the Balkans; I remember a sunburnt, soldierly man
putting little pin-flags in a war-map, red flags for the Turkish forces
and yellow flags for the Russians. It seemed a magical region, with its
mountain passes and frozen rivers and grim battlefields, its drifting
snows, and prowling wolves; there was a great stretch of water that bore
the sinister but engaging name of the Black Sea—nothing that I ever
learned before or after in a geography lesson made the same impression on
me as that strange-named inland sea, and I don’t think its magic has ever
faded out of my imagination. And there was a battle called Plevna that
went on and on with varying fortunes for what seemed like a great part of
a lifetime; I remember the day of wrath and mourning when the little red
flag had to be taken away from Plevna—like other maturer judges, I was
backing the wrong horse, at any rate the losing horse. And now to-day we
are putting little pin-flags again into maps of the Balkan region, and
the passions are being turned loose once more in their playground.”
“The war will be localised,” said the Merchant vaguely; “at least every
one hopes so.”
“It couldn’t wish for a better locality,” said the Wanderer; “there is a
charm about those countries that you find nowhere else in Europe, the
charm of uncertainty and landslide, and the little dramatic happenings
that make all the difference between the ordinary and the desirable.”
“Life is held very cheap in those parts,” said the Merchant.
“To a certain extent, yes,” said the Wanderer. “I remember a man at
Sofia who used to teach me Bulgarian in a rather inefficient manner,
interspersed with a lot of quite wearisome gossip. I never knew what his
personal history was, but that was only because I didn’t listen; he told
it to me many times. After I left Bulgaria he used to send me Sofia
newspapers from time to time. I felt that he would be rather tiresome if
I ever went there again. And then I heard afterwards that some men came
in one day from Heaven knows where, just as things do happen in the
Balkans, and murdered him in the open street, and went away as quietly as
they had come. You will not understand it, but to me there was something
rather piquant in the idea of such a thing happening to such a man; after
his dullness and his long-winded small-talk it seemed a sort of brilliant
_esprit d’esalier_ on his part to meet with an end of such ruthlessly
planned and executed violence.”
The Merchant shook his head; the piquancy of the incident was not within
striking distance of his comprehension.
“I should have been shocked at hearing such a thing about any one I had
known,” he said.
“The present war,” continued his companion, without stopping to discuss
two hopelessly divergent points of view, “may be the beginning of the end
of much that has hitherto survived the resistless creeping-in of
civilisation. If the Balkan lands are to be finally parcelled out
between the competing Christian Kingdoms and the haphazard rule of the
Turk banished to beyond the Sea of Marmora, the old order, or disorder if
you like, will have received its death-blow. Something of its spirit
will linger perhaps for a while in the old charmed regions where it bore
sway; the Greek villagers will doubtless be restless and turbulent and
unhappy where the Bulgars rule, and the Bulgars will certainly be
restless and turbulent and unhappy under Greek administration, and the
rival flocks of the Exarchate and Patriarchate will make themselves
intensely disagreeable to one another wherever the opportunity offers;
the habits of a lifetime, of several lifetimes, are not laid aside all at
once. And the Albanians, of course, we shall have with us still, a
troubled Moslem pool left by the receding wave of Islam in Europe. But
the old atmosphere will have changed, the glamour will have gone; the
dust of formality and bureaucratic neatness will slowly settle down over
the time-honoured landmarks; the Sanjak of Novi Bazar, the Muersteg
Agreement, the Komitadje bands, the Vilayet of Adrianople, all those
familiar outlandish names and things and places, that we have known so
long as part and parcel of the Balkan Question, will have passed away
into the cupboard of yesterdays, as completely as the Hansa League and
the wars of the Guises.
“They were the heritage that history handed down to us, spoiled and
diminished no doubt, in comparison with yet earlier days that we never
knew, but still something to thrill and enliven one little corner of our
Continent, something to help us to conjure up in our imagination the days
when the Turk was thundering at the gates of Vienna. And what shall we
have to hand down to our children? Think of what their news from the
Balkans will be in the course of another ten or fifteen years. Socialist
Congress at Uskub, election riot at Monastir, great dock strike at
Salonika, visit of the Y.M.C.A. to Varna. Varna—on the coast of that
enchanted sea! They will drive out to some suburb to tea, and write home
about it as the Bexhill of the East.
“War is a wickedly destructive thing.”
“Still, you must admit—” began the Merchant. But the Wanderer was not in
the mood to admit anything. He rose impatiently and walked to where the
tape-machine was busy with the news from Adrianople.