BULGARIA AND GREECE
Thanks to the kindness of a member of the Chilian Embassy, I managed to
get out of Constantinople in his car without having to wait my turn.
The booking-office at the Adrianople station was besieged by a crowd
impatient to leave the town, and a sleepy-looking clerk wrote down the
names, received the money for the tickets, and told the unfortunate
travellers to call in a couple of days, when he would perhaps be able
to let them know by which train they might leave. Some took the thing
philosophically, some tried to protest; but nobody, unless of Turkish
or German nationality, was allowed to travel by military trains. No
cars or vehicles of any kind were allowed on the road unless carrying
officials.
We went across the theatre of Turkey's last war. At Tchataldja the
almost tropical vegetation has not yet returned to efface, or even to
disguise, the trenches, which were the last defence of Constantinople.
"Here Turkey had her last close shave," laughingly said my driver.
"The next one will be more severe, I am afraid; for me, I should not
be surprised to see the Russians, or the English, or even both, here
before next summer." At Pavlo-Keni I left my courteous guide.
After waiting a few hours in a dirty inn full of soldiers, of
pipe-smoke, and of the onion-like smell of Turkish cooking, I managed
to get a train to Dedeagatch. There another unpleasant surprise awaited
me. Bulgaria had two days ago closed her ports and no boat was allowed
to sail.
Dedeagatch, the curious little town in which it seems impossible to
meet two people of the same nationality, so mixed are the races, the
costumes, the languages, does not show any signs of its recent change
of proprietorship. Dirt and dogs and rags are everywhere, as in a true
Turkish town.
I remember an old journalist of wide Balkan experience and of great
wit, Vico Mantegazza, telling me two years ago: "You ask a Bulgarian
for his political ideas or the designs of his country's diplomacy, then
reverse his answer, and you will be just as near the truth as you will
ever get!"
As a matter of fact, every Bulgarian I have had occasion to talk to,
lately, has told me a different tale. To some the enemy is Greece;
to others Serbia. At a few minutes' interval I was told, first, by
an officer, that Bulgaria wanted another fight with Turkey, "her
traditional enemy"--and then that Bulgaria's relations with Turkey had
been excellent since the last war, and would probably continue so for a
long time.
The impression I received here was that the Austro-German influence is
very strong; Bulgaria is ruled by a German, the German language is
spoken and understood everywhere, and business life as well as private
life is strictly connected with Germany. I do not know if the charge
of ingratitude generally made against Bulgaria is true, but it seems
that the country has forgotten the times of the dreadful, century-long
Turkish domination and the help Russia always gave to Bulgaria, who
owes to the great Slav nation both her birth as an independent State
and her existence after the last war.
The immoderate ambitions of the Bulgarian Government, ambitions of
increasing her territory and of becoming _the_ great nation of the
Balkans, has made her forget all this. It is certain that no mystery
is made in Bulgaria of her bitter feelings against Russia, feelings
reciprocated by Petrograd papers, which call the Bulgarians "the Balkan
Germans."
The personal influence of King Ferdinand has been very strong; he has
Germanised his capital and most of the important towns of his nation,
and has tried to attenuate as much as possible the natural intercourse
of Bulgaria with the other Slav countries.
The unnatural relations between Bulgaria and Serbia are a continuous
danger to the Entente. Bulgaria is certainly going to keep neutral for
some time, but supposing Serbia should one day suffer reverses on the
Austrian frontier, who could be sure of Bulgaria's attitude?
The infatuation for the German-Austrian power is such that one often
hears sentences like this: "Germany and Austria united cannot be beaten
by any nation on earth."
News here is practically all of the "made in Germany" type. At
Dedeagatch, besides a few Bulgarian papers, the only foreign papers
I could get were those of Berlin and Vienna. The successes of the
Serbians in the north do not please the Bulgarians; every day there are
incidents on both the Bulgarian and Greek frontiers.
The day before I reached Dedeagatch two Bulgarian sentries had been
killed in a fight with Serbian sentries. Of course, such incidents,
which would lead to unavoidable international complications if they
happened on the frontier of a great European country, are here
considered as merely incidents, and one cannot base on them hurried
judgments and deductions.
Regarding Great Britain, she has the sympathies of the Bulgarian
diplomacy, which is naturally inclined towards the nations who, like
England, protected the small Balkan States; but, I repeat, one feels
that Bulgaria will shake off her neutrality only when she sees the
chance of immediate gain in doing so, and in no case before having
waited a long time; time enough to see "how the cat jumps."
* * *
I have found him.
I am not sorry for the uncomfortable journey; I am not sorry for the
days wasted, nor for having missed, for a few hours only, the weekly
boat from Salonika to Athens; for it was in a little town called
Drama, where I had to stop an hour or so, that I met the wonderful man.
I bless a thousand times the hours of unspeakable boredom, the many
punishments for unlearned lessons, the terrific anxiety for the
examinations which worried my school days while learning the Greek
language, for it was in Tessalian dialect, which, luckily, is more
similar to old Greek than modern Greek itself, that my precious man
spoke. His existence has been denied by most. He has no equal in
England, I am sure, nor in Germany, nor in France, probably not one
in all Europe. He is more difficult to find than the white fly or the
black diamond of the old Oriental legends. If I had not been afraid of
trouble with the British police when I got back to England, I should
dare to write candidly that I am glad of Turkey's declaration of war
because, without it, I should never have gone to Drama and never have
met him.
"_Him_" is the man who has never heard of the war.
His look is like the look of any man a little over middle age; his
condition is corresponding to the condition of an English gentleman
farmer; his education is certainly far superior to the education of an
ordinary middle-class man. He knows and still reads daily a few pages
of his favourite classic works Homer, Anacreon, Hesiod. He does not
read newspapers.
I didn't realise my luck until we had talked a quarter of an hour--at
least, struggled hard to do so.
"And what do you think of the war?" I asked him at a certain moment.
"The war! Which war?"
"Yes, the big war; the war between England, France, Russia, and Serbia
on one side and Germany and----"
"Is there such a war? But why? What for?"
Then it was my turn to be perplexed. The "Why?" was already a difficult
question, which would have required half an hour to be answered
properly; as for the "What for?" I had absolutely no reason to give
the old man. Who knows exactly what for? However, I tried to condense
my answer in a word. "Jealousy, you know," I said after a moment.
"Jealousy! Just like at the time of Helen of Troy!" commented my
learned partner.
"Yes, just about it."
"I didn't think people could still be such fools! When we last heard of
war here it was two years ago. Well, the Turks have gone, the Greeks
have come, and things are exactly like they were before, only we have
to pay more taxes. I suppose the same will happen over there."
"I am afraid so, too."
"And who is winning? How long is it going to last? What will be the
result?"
"I really cannot tell you all this," I had to admit.
"You don't seem to know much more about it than I do," he said in
conclusion, and, after a few seconds, in a relieved tone of voice,
which clearly meant "Let us go back to an interesting subject:--"
"Have you ever read Æschylus's _Persians_?"
* * *
I had decided to take the boat at Salonika for Athens, so I took the
train from Dedeagatch to Salonika. A three hours' stop near Porto Lagos
made me realise that it was impossible to reach Salonika in time, so I
got out of the train at Drama,[1] and from there, on a dreadful little
two-wheeler, a sort of Irish jaunting-car pulled by a horse as thin as
a horse can possibly be, I made my way to Kavala, just in time to catch
the boat which was to take me back to the civilised world.
I shall never forget my ride to Kavala. I promised a generous tip to
the _auriga_ provided he went at full speed. The little horse, under
the whip used incessantly by the young man, seemed converted into one
of the fantastic animals of the French _chansons de geste_. With neck
outstretched, the long mane loose to the wind, he took to a furious
gallop, nor did he stop until we reached our destination. The road, if
road it can be called, was full of stones and deep cart-ruts, now muddy
and now dusty, uneven, and terribly steep. We were crossing the land on
which the battle of Philippi was fought. Even now the country retained
a sort of tragic look. Not a single house, not a single tree; nothing
but stones and bare soil. The sun was hiding slowly behind the hills of
Sérès. The great battlefield appeared to me under a sky covered with
black clouds edged with scarlet on a sunset of deep orange. And yet
this battlefield, the memory of which has lasted so strongly after two
thousand years, has swallowed less life than any of the battles of the
present war!
I believe optimists call this human progress....
* * *
Travelling on the boat was really leisure; the waters at the side ran
so slow that often they gave the impression that we were not moving at
all.
The _Stagyra_ was a little cargo boat of Roumanian nationality. I was
the only passenger on board, and the crew spoke only Roumanian and a
few words of Levantine, picked up during their continuous trips to Asia
Minor. The captain fancied himself as a French scholar, but it was very
hard to understand him, and still more to be understood.
We left Kavala at night, and should not reach Pireus for nearly two
days.
We passed the Isle of Athos and its twenty white convents, inhabited by
over a thousand monks. A number of Greeks, who were forced to escape
from Turkey, have found asylum in the large dormitories generally
offered by the convents to visitors to the Peninsula. A little plume of
grey smoke appeared on the horizon, and a few minutes later I could see
through the captain's glasses a Greek torpedo-boat, which signalled us
to stop. An officer, with a dozen blue-jackets, came on board, looked
at the cargo, at the board books, at my passport, and when he saw I
came from Constantinople said in excellent French, "Hope we are going
against them soon. It is about time to finish the Turks, in Europe at
least. I consider the Turkish intervention fortunate. We can now settle
the Constantinople question together with all the others. If Turkey had
not moved another war would have been necessary afterwards."
He left our boat, and the Greek torpedo-boat signalled to a few other
Greek warships, which we could see in the distance, that everything was
all right and that we could go ahead.
* * *
I happened never to have visited Athens when Greece was at war, and I
really don't know what the town must have looked like then, since now
while she is still neutral the capital shows such excitement, such
anxious feelings, and such general nervousness--far greater than that
shown by London, Paris, or Berlin.
Greece feels that she has to go to war again; the two questions of
Northern Epirus and of the islands are still waiting solution, and the
provocation of Turkey is such that war is bound to break out.
Athens, as well as most towns of Greece, is full of refugees,
especially from Asia Minor. Boycott, requisition, confiscation,
and forcible recruiting have made it necessary for nearly all the
Greeks, who are the only Christians in the Peninsula, to fly to
their Motherland. Their property has been taken by the Turks and
often destroyed. Some of the refugees tell the most dreadful tales
of abominable cruelty and violence. Torture and death are daily
inflicted on Greek subjects by the Mahomedan mob excited by the Turkish
officials, who allow all such crimes to be committed with impunity.
The patience of Greece is nearly exhausted, and especially in the
army the feeling that something must be done as soon as possible is
increasing every day.
Curiously enough, while Turkey seems to be carrying out a regular
programme of provocation towards Greece, every time Turkey goes too far
and Greece is feared to be about to take up arms, Austria and Germany
try to stop her by forcing Turkey to apologise humbly.
Since the war began, a wonderfully organised German propaganda has been
set in motion, not in Athens only, but in all Greek towns. Germany
purposed by so doing to capture Greek public opinion, and also the
sympathies of the countries in which the Greek element is predominant,
namely, some parts of Turkey and Egypt. The Wolff Agency overwhelms
Greece with _communiqués_, news guaranteed to be true, and despatches
from Berlin; a tremendous number of German professors, who have spent
years and years in Greece, studying and searching every inch of Greek
soil, wrote from the Fatherland to all their friends and acquaintances
the most fetching letters, and, lately, news in Greek was printed in
Berlin and sent free of charge to every influential person in Greece.
The _Philadelphia_, the German club in the rue d'Homère, has become the
centre of such propaganda, and every night there are lectures, kinema
shows, etc., to which, as the posters say, "everybody is cordially
invited."
I went out of curiosity to one of these lectures; the audience was not
very large, and was mostly composed of Germans. "You know what would
happen should the Entente win; which, of course, is almost impossible.
Russia would reach the Ægean Sea, the Slavs would be ultra-powerful in
the Adriatic, and Greece would never have a chance of fulfilling her
aspirations.
"And about England--has Greece forgotten the quarrels with Palmerston
and Disraeli?"
The German propaganda is specially conducted against England, France's
interests in the Near East being of little importance, and German
people being very annoyed at the very friendly feeling held by Greece
towards Great Britain.
I don't know, for instance, what the numerous German agents felt like
at seeing in Athens the most popular of picture-postcards, on which a
sentence from a book of Rhaïdes has been reprinted: "Whatever may be
the adventures of war, England is always certain to win one battle;
namely, the last one."
The confidence of Greece in Great Britain is almost unlimited, and the
efforts of Germany to diminish it leads to the opposite result.
During the last year the Greek Army has made enormous progress; the
new populations recently annexed have given to Greece an excellent
supply of men, out of whom capable and well-trained officers have made
some really efficient troops. Cavalry and artillery have also been
increased, and new guns have been purchased at Krupps and Creuzot. The
same can be said of the Navy, though two new Dreadnoughts, which were
being constructed in Germany and France, are not likely to be delivered
now.
The aerial services are also being reorganised, and recently some new
aeroplanes were bought in Italy, and it is said that shortly Greece
will also have some large modern dirigibles.
The merit of such important reforms belongs especially to King
Constantine himself, who remained Commander-in-Chief of the Army even
after his assumption of the throne. He understood that the next war
would be the decisive one for Greece, and with wonderful activity he
has managed to bring his country to the height of the situation.
* * *
_On board the Stagyra._
It is really most refreshing, after having visited a country like
Turkey, to spend a few hours in Athens. Everything here seems young
and fresh and full of vitality. It seems as though the spirit of the
golden times of old Greece has suddenly returned after a long period
of torpor.
The _Stagyra_ has just left harbour, and is now sailing in the Ionian
Sea.
A French cruiser has just approached our boat, and has told us to be
careful, as floating mines have often been found in this locality
during the last few weeks, and now makes her way at our side. Only
yesterday, I am told, a Corfu sailing boat had been sunk by a mine, and
only two of the crew were saved.
I have been on deck as much as possible because of the scenery, and
also because of the fearful smell downstairs. The Roumanian captain is
at my side and keeps telling me his worries; this is probably the last
journey of the _Stagyra_, as he has no hope of being able to go back to
Constanza now the Straits are closed and there is war in the Black Sea.
"And what are you going to do, now, when you have reached Marseilles,
if you can't go back to your country?"
"My men and I have already decided to enlist in France. We are all
well-trained and very good shots."
He answered as if this was the most natural thing to do.
* * *
It is just daybreak, and we are going through the Strait of Messina.
At our side, instead of the French cruiser, which has left us upon our
entering Italian territorial waters, is now the imposing mass of an
Italian warship, the _Vittor Pisani_, anchored in the bay.
On the Sicilian coast Messina smiles, surrounded by woods of oranges
loaded with golden fruit. After the terrible catastrophe of four
years ago, the former monumental town has assumed the quiet, modest,
village-like look of a Japanese seaport.
How far removed we are from those moments when the brute forces of
Nature made all nations on earth meet here to relieve the sorrow of the
stricken country in the noblest of competitions, and gave the world
the momentary illusion of a wide sense of brotherhood amongst all
peoples.
Still, even now, by the side of the Union Jack which floats over the
English relief-fund building, the tricolour of Germany waves to the
morning breeze.
FOOTNOTE:
[1] Where I had the fortune to come across the man who had never heard
of the war.