THE BALKAN WAR, 1912
“On arrive novice à toutes les guerres,” wrote the French philosopher;
or if he did not, he said something like it. I have never known a place
where being on the spot made so sharp a difference in one’s point of
view as the Near East, and where one’s ignorance, and the ignorance
of the great mass of one’s fellow-countrymen, was so keenly brought
home to one. The change in the point of view happened with surprising
abruptness the moment one crossed the Austrian frontier. There are other
changes of a physical nature which happen as well when one crosses the
frontier into any kingdom where war is taking place. The whole of the
superficial luxuries of civilisation seem to disappear in a twinkling;
and so adaptable a creature is man that you feel no surprise; you just
accept everything as if things had always been so. The trains crawl; they
stop at every station; you no longer complain of the inadequacy of the
luxuries of your sleeping-car; you are thankful to have a seat at all. It
is no longer a question of criticising the quality of the dinner or the
swiftness of the service. It is a question whether you will get a piece
of bread or a glass of water during the next twenty-four hours.
Belgrade Station was full of reservists and peasants: men in uniform,
men half in uniform, men in the clothes of the mountains—sheepskin
coats, putties, and shoes made of twisted straw; dark, swarthy, sunburnt
and wind-tanned, hard men, carrying rifles and a quantity of bundles
and filling the cattle vans to overflowing. At every station we passed
trains, most of them empty, which were coming back to fetch supplies
of meat. Every platform and every station were crowded with men in
uniforms of every description. A Servian officer got into the carriage
in which I was travelling. He was dressed in khaki. He wore a white
chrysanthemum in his cap, a bunch of Michaelmas daisies in his belt, and
he carried, besides his rifle and a khaki bag which had been taken from
the Turks, a small umbrella. He had been wounded in the foot at Kumanovo.
He was on his way to Uskub. He was a man of commerce, and had closed
his establishment to go to the war; the majority of the officers in his
regiment were men of commerce, he said. They had sacrificed everything to
go to the war, and that was one reason why they were not going to allow
the gains of the war, which they declared were a matter of life and death
to their country, to be snatched from them by diplomatists at a green
table. “If they want to take from us what we have won by the sword,” he
said, “let them take it by the sword.”
I asked him about the fighting at Kumanovo. He said the Turks had fought
like heroes, but that they were miserably led. He then began to describe
the horrors of the war in the Servian language. As I understood about
one word in fifty, I lost the thread of the discourse, and so I lured
him back into a more neutral language. He told me that someone had asked
a Turkish prisoner how it came about that the Turks, whom all the world
knew to be such brave soldiers, were nevertheless always beaten. The
Turk, after the habit of his race, answered by an apologue as follows:
“A certain man,” he said, “once possessed a number of camels and an
ass. He was a hard taskmaster to the camels, and he worked them to the
uttermost; and after trading for many years in different lands, he became
exceedingly rich. At last one day he himself fell sick; and feeling that
his end was drawing nigh, he wished to relieve himself of the burden on
his soul, so he bade the camels draw near to him, and he addressed them
thus: ‘I am dying, camels, dying, only I have most uncivilly kept death
waiting, until I have unburdened my soul to you. Camels, I have done you
a grievous wrong. When you were hungry, I stinted you of food, when you
were thirsty, I denied you drink, and when you were weary, I urged you
on and denied you rest; and ever and always I denied you the full share
of your fair and just wage. Now I am dying, and all this lies heavily
on my soul, I crave your forgiveness, so that I may die in peace. Can
you forgive me, camels, for all the wrong I have done you?’ The camels
withdrew to talk it over. After a while the Head Camel returned and
spoke to the merchant thus: ‘That you ever overworked us, we forgive you;
that you underfed us, we forgive you; that you never remembered to pay us
our full wage, we forgive you; but that you always let the ass go first,
Allah may forgive you, but we never can!’”
It took over twelve hours to get from Belgrade to the junction of Nish,
where there was a prospect of food. When we stopped at one station in
the twilight there was a great noise of cheering from another train, and
a dense crowd of soldiers and women throwing flowers. Then in the midst
of the clamour and the murmur somebody played a tune on a pipe. A little
Slav tune written in a scale which has a technical name—let us say the
Phrygian mode—a plaintive, piping tune, as melancholy as the cry of a
seabird. The very voice of exile. I recognised the tune at once. It is
in the first ten pages of Balakirev’s collection of Russian folk-songs
under the name “Rekrutskaya”—that is to say, recruits’ song. Plaintive,
melancholy, quaint, and piping, it has no heartache in it; it is the
luxury of grief, the expression of idle tears, the conventional sorrow of
the recruit who is leaving his home.
“You are going far away, far away from poor Jeannette,
And there’s no one left to love me now, and you will soon forget.”
So, in the song of our grandfathers which I have quoted earlier in the
book, the maiden sang to the conscript, adding that were she King of
France, “or, still better, Pope of Rome,” she would abolish war, and
consequently the parting of lovers. But the song of the Slav recruit in
its piping notes seems to say: “I am going far away, but I am not really
sorry to go. They will be glad to get rid of me at home, and I, in the
barracks, shall have meat to eat twice a day, and jolly comrades, and I
shall see the big town and find a new love as good as my true love. They
will mend my broken heart there; but in the meantime let me make the most
of the situation. Let me collect money and get drunk, and let me sing my
sad songs, songs of parting and exile, and let me enjoy the melancholy
situation to the full.”
That is what the wistful, piping song, played on a wooden flageolet of
some kind, seemed to say. It just pierced through the noise and then
stopped; a touching interlude, like the shepherd’s piping amidst the
weariness, the fever and the fret, the delirious remembrance and the
agonised expectation, of the last act of Wagner’s _Tristan und Isolda_.
The train moved on into the gathering darkness.
We arrived at Nish at eight o’clock in the evening. It was dark; the
station was sparsely lighted; the buffet, to which we had been looking
forward all day, was as crowded as a sardine-box and apparently devoid of
anything suggesting food. Wounded soldiers, reservists, officers filled
the waiting-room and the platform. The Servian officer dived into the
crowd and returned presently, bringing his sheaves with him in the shape
of three plates of hot chicken.
Nish seemed an unfit-like meeting-place for triumphant soldiers; it
resembled rather the scene of a conspiracy in a melodrama, where tired
conspirators were plotting nothing at all. One felt cut off from all
news. In London, one knew, in every sitting-room people were marking off
the movements of the battles with paper flags on inaccurate maps. Here at
Nish, in the middle of a crowd of men who either had fought or were going
to fight, one knew less about the war than in Fleet Street. One bought a
newspaper, but it dealt with everything except war news.
A man came into the refreshment-room—the name was in this case
ironical—and said, “I have had nothing to eat, not a piece of bread and
not a drop of water, for twenty-four hours,” and then, before anybody
could suggest a remedy—for food there was none—he went away. Afterwards
I saw him with a chicken in his hand. One man was carrying a small
live pig, which squealed. In the corner of the platform two men, with
crutches and bandages, dressed in the clothes of the country, were
sitting down, looking as if they were tired of life. I offered them a
piece of cold sausage, which they were too tired to accept; only at
the sight of a cigarette one of them made a gesture, and, being given
one, smoked and smoked and smoked. I knew the feeling. Suddenly, in the
darkness, a sleeping-car appeared, to the intense surprise of everyone—an
International sleeping-car, with sheets, and plenty of room in it. My
travelling companion and myself started for Sofia, where we arrived the
next morning.
At Sofia the scene on the platform was different. The place was full of
bustle; the platform crowded with Red Cross men, nurses, and soldiers,
in tidy, practical uniforms. The refreshment-room, too, was crowded with
doctors. You heard fragments of many languages: the scene might have been
Mukden, 1904, or, indeed, any railway station in any war anywhere. An
exceedingly capable porter got me my luggage with dispatch, and I drove
to the hotel in a “phaeton,” but not with the coursers of the sun. The
horses here had all gone to the war. At the hotel I was first given—the
only room said to be vacant—a room which was an annex to the café. For
furniture it had six old card-tables and nothing else.
Full of Manchurian memories, I was about to think this luxurious, when
the offending Adam in me quite suddenly revolted, and I demanded and
obtained instead a luxurious upper chamber. I stayed about a week at
Sofia, and made unavailing efforts to get to the front. I was then told
I would find it easier to get to the front where the Servian Army was
fighting. So, laden with papers and passports, I started for Uskub.
I travelled from Sofia to Nish in the still existing comfortable
sleeping-cars; but when I arrived once more at the junction of Nish I
learnt a lesson which I thought I had mastered many years ago, and that
is, take in a war as much luggage as you possibly can to your civilised
base, but once you start for the front or anywhere near it, take nothing
at all except a tea-basket and a small bottle of brandy. I had only a
small trunk with me, but the stationmaster refused to let it proceed.
War goes to the heads of stationmasters like wine. This particular
stationmaster had no right whatsoever to stop my small trunk on the
grounds that it was full of contraband goods, and he could perfectly
well have had it examined then and there; instead of which he said it
would have to be taken to the Custom House Office in the town, which
would involve a journey of two hours and the missing of my train. I was
obliged to leave my trunk at the station, nor cast one longing, lingering
look behind. The only reason I mention this episode, which has no sort
of interest in itself, is to illustrate something which I will come to
later. At Nish I got into a slow train. The railway carriage was full of
people. There was in it a Servian poet, who had temporarily exchanged
the lyre for the lancet, and enrolled himself in the Medical Service.
His name was Dr. Milan Curçin—pronounced Churchin. He showed me the
utmost kindness. Like all modern poets, he was intensely practical,
and an admirable man of business, and he promised to get me back my
trunk and either to bring it to Uskub himself, as he was continually
travelling backwards and forwards between Uskub and Nish, or to have it
sent wherever I wished. He spoke several languages, and we discussed the
war. He said the Servians resented the abuse which had been levelled
against them by Pierre Loti. Pierre Loti, he said, accused them of being
barbarians and of attacking Turkey without reason.
“We,” said the poet, “hate war as much as anyone. What does Pierre
Loti know of our history? What does he know of Turkish rule in Servia?
He knows Stamboul; ‘but what does he know of Turkey who only Stamboul
knows?’ Besides, if Pierre Loti’s knowledge of Turkey was anything like
his knowledge of Japan, as reflected in that pretty book called _Madame
Chrysanthème_—a book which made all serious scholars of Japan rabid
with rage—it is not worth much.” He had no wish to deny the Turks their
qualities. That was not the point. The point was Turkish rule in Servia
in the past, and that was unspeakable. The poet was obliged to get out
at the first station we stopped at, and after his departure I moved into
another compartment, in which there were a wounded soldier, a young
Russian volunteer, who was studying at the Military Academy at Moscow,
two men of business who were now soldiers, and a gendarme who had been
standing up all night, and who stood up all day. I offered these people
some tea, having a tea-basket with me. They accepted it gratefully, and
after a little time one of them asked me if I were an Austrian. I said
no; I was an Englishman. They said: “We thought it extremely odd that
an Austrian should offer us tea.” The wounded soldier, thinking I was
a doctor, asked me if I could do anything to his wound. As he spoke
Servian I could only understand a little of what he said. It seemed
heart-breaking, just as one began to get on more or less in Bulgarian,
to have to shift one’s language to one which, although the same in
essentials, is superficially utterly different in accent, intonation, and
in most of the common words of everyday life! Servian and Bulgarian are
the same language at root, but Servian is more like Polish, Bulgarian
more like Russian. Servian is a great literary language, with a mass of
poetry and a beautiful store of folk songs and folk epics. Bulgarian
compared with it is more or less of a patois; it is like Russian with all
the inflections left out. With the help of the Russian student I gathered
that the soldier had been wounded at the battle of Kumanovo, that his
wound had been dressed and bandaged by a doctor, but that subsequently
he had gone to a wise woman, who had put some balm on it, and that the
effect of the balm had been disastrous. I strongly recommended him
to consult a doctor on the first possible occasion. It is travelling
under such circumstances, in war-time especially, that one really gets
beneath the crust of a country. Every man who travels in an International
sleeping-car becomes more or less international; and it is not in hotels
or embassies that you get face to face with a people, however excellent
your recommendations. But travel third-class in a full railway carriage,
in times of war, and you get to the heart of the country through which
you are travelling. The qualities of the people are stripped naked—their
good qualities and their bad qualities; and this is why I mentioned the
episode of the trunk, in order to call attention to the extreme kindness
shown to me by the Servian poet, Dr. Curçin, who rescued the trunk for me
at great personal inconvenience. I hoped that the “Georgian” poets would
do the same for a Servian war correspondent, supposing there were a war
in England and they were to come across one.
After many hours we came to a stop where it was necessary to change,
at Vranja; and then began one of those long war waits which are so
exasperating. The station was full to overflowing with troops; there was
no room to sit down in the waiting-room. We waited there for two hours,
and then, at last, the train was formed which was bound for Uskub. There
were several members of the Servian Parliament who had reserved places
in this train, and in a moment, it appeared to be quite full, and there
seemed to be no chance of getting a place in it. I was handicapped also
by carrying a saddle and a bridle, which blocked up the narrow corridor
of the railway carriage. But I got a place in the train, and room was
found for the saddle owing to the kindness of an aviator called Alexander
Maritch. He was one of those extremely unselfish people who seem to spend
their life in doing nothing but extremely tiresome things for other
people. He carried my saddle in his hands for half an hour, and at last
managed to find room for it where it would not be in the way of all the
other passengers. He was an astonishingly capable man with his hands and
his fingers. There appeared to be nothing he could not do. He uncoupled
the railway carriages; he mended during the journey a quantity of broken
objects, and he spent the whole of the time in making himself useful in
one way or another.
Towards nightfall we arrived at the station of Kumanovo, and got out to
have a look at the battlefield. It was quite dark and the ground was
covered with snow. Drawn up near the station were a lot of guns and
ammunition carts which had been taken from the Turks. Here were some
Maxim guns whose screens were perforated by balls, which shows that they
could not have been made of good material; and indeed at Uskub I was told
that there were no doubt cases where the Turkish material was bad; but
another and more potent cause of the disorganisation in the Turkish Army
was the manner in which the Turks handled, or rather mishandled, their
weapons. They forgot to unscrew the shells; they jammed the rifles. This
is not surprising to anyone who has ever seen a Turk handle an umbrella.
He carries it straight in front of him, pointing towards him in the air,
if it is shut, and sideways and beyond his head, if it is open.
We arrived at Uskub about half-past eight. The snow was thawing. The
aspect was desolate. The aviator found me a room in the Hôtel de la
Liberté; but the window in it was broken, and there was no fuel. It was
as damp as a vault. We had dinner. I happened to mention that it would
be nice to smoke a cigarette, but I had not got any more. At once the
aviator darted out of the room and disappeared. “He won’t come back,”
said one of his friends, “till he has found you some cigarettes, you may
be sure of that.” In an hour’s time he returned with three cigarettes,
having scoured the town for them, the shops, of course, being shut.
Uskub is a picturesque, straggling place, and at that time of the year,
swamped as it was in melting snow, an incredibly dirty place, situated
between a mountain and the river Vardar. Like all Turkish towns, it
is ill-paved, or rather not paved at all, and full of mud. It is—or
was—largely inhabited by Albanian Mohammedans. As the headquarters of the
Servian Army, it was full of officers and soldiers; there was not much
food, and still less wood. Here were the war correspondents. They had not
been allowed to go any farther; but the order went out that they could,
if they liked, go on to Kuprulu, a little farther down the line, whence
it was impossible to telegraph. A stay at Uskub, as it was then, would
afford a tourist a taste of all the discomforts of war without any of its
excitement. The principal distraction of the people at Uskub was having
their boots cleaned; and as the streets were full of large lakes of water
and high mounds of slush, the effect of the cleaning was not permanent.
Matthew Arnold was once asked to walk home after dinner on a wet night
in London. “No,” he said; “I can’t get my feet wet. It would spoil my
style.” Matthew Arnold’s style would have been annihilated at Uskub.
The stories told by eye-witnesses of the events immediately preceding the
occupation of Uskub by the Serbians were tragicomic in a high degree. In
the first place, the population of the place never for one moment thought
that the Turks could possibly be beaten by the Servians. Suddenly, in the
midst of their serene confidence, came the cry: “The Giaours are upon
us.” Every Turkish official and officer in the place lost his head, with
the exception of the Vali (head of the district), who was the only man
possessing an active mind. Otherwise the Turkish officers fled to the
Consulates and took refuge there, trembling and quaking with terror.
The two problems which called for immediate solution were: (_a_) to
prevent further fighting taking place in the town; (_b_) to prevent a
general massacre of the Christians before the Servians entered the town.
To prevent fighting in the town, the Turkish troops had to be persuaded
to get out of it. This was done. The only hope of solving both these
problems lay in the Vali. All the Consuls, as I said, agreed that the
Vali’s conduct on this occasion shone amidst the encircling cowardice of
the other officers and officials. Already before the news of the battle
of Kumanovo had reached the town about two hundred Christians had been
arrested on suspicion and put in prison. They were not of the criminal
class, but just ordinary people—priests, shopmen, and women. About three
hundred Mohammedans were already in the prison. News came to the Russian
Consul-General, M. Kalnikoff, that these prisoners had had nothing to eat
for two days. He went at once to the prison and demanded to be let in. He
heard shots being fired inside. Some of the Albanians were firing into
the air. He asked the Governor of the prison whether it was true that
the prisoners had had no food for two days, and the Governor said it was
perfectly true, and that the reason was that there was no bread to be had
in the town.
“In that case,” said the Consul-General, “you must let all these
prisoners out.”
“But if I let them out,” said the Governor, “the Mohammedans will kill
the Christians.”
Finally it was settled that the prisoners should be let out a few at a
time, the Christians first, and the Mohammedans afterwards, through a
hedge of soldiers; and this was accomplished successfully. M. Kalnikoff
told me that among the prisoners were many people he knew.
Then came the question of giving up the town to the Servians without
incurring a massacre. I am not certain of the chronology of the events,
and all this was told me in one hurried and interrupted interview, but
the Vali took the matter in hand, and as he was driving to the Russian
Consulate a man in the crowd shot him through the arm and killed the
coachman. This man was said to be mad.
In the meantime, the various Consulates were crowded with refugees, and
in the French Consulate a Turkish officer fainted from apprehension,
and another officer insisted on disguising himself as a _kavass_. The
Servians, who were outside the city, at some considerable distance,
thought that the Turks meant to offer further resistance in the town.
It was arranged that the various Consuls and the Vali (in their uniforms)
should set out for the Servian headquarters and deliver up the town. This
was done. They drove out until they met Servian troops. Then they were
blindfolded and marched between a cordon of soldiers through the deep mud
until they reached those in authority. They explained matters, and the
Servian cavalry rode into the town, just in time to prevent a massacre
of the Christian population. As it was, the Albanians had already done
a good deal of looting. That there was no fighting in the town, and
consequently no massacre, was probably due to the prompt action of the
Vali.
When the Turkish and Albanian soldiers retired south from Kumanovo they
were apparently completely panic-stricken. At Uskub, horses belonging to
batteries were put in trains, while the guns were left behind. There is
not the slightest doubt that the troops massacred any Christians they
came across. At the military hospital at Nish I saw a woman who was
terribly cut and mutilated. She told the following story: Her house, in
which were her husband, her brother, his son-in-law, and her two sons,
was suddenly occupied by Arnaut refugees. These were Albanians from the
north, who were fighting with the Turks. The Arnauts demanded weapons,
which they were given. They then set fire to the house, killed the
woman’s husband and everyone else who was there, and no doubt thought
that they had killed her also. But she was found still breathing, and
taken to the hospital. The doctor said that she might recover. Stories
such as these, and far worse, one heard on all sides. The Arnauts were an
absolutely uncompromising people. They gave and expected no quarter. In
the hospitals they bit the doctors who tried to help them. They fought
and struck as long as there was a breath left in their bodies.
At the military hospital of Nish I saw many of the wounded. The wounds
inflicted by bullets were clean, and the doctors said that they were such
that the wounded either recovered and were up and about in a week, or
else they died. There were cases of tetanus, and I saw many men who had
received severe bayonet wounds and fractures at the battle of Perlepe,
where some of the severest fighting had taken place.
At the beginning of this battle somebody on the Servian side must have
blundered. A regiment was advancing, expecting to meet reinforcements on
both sides. In front of them, on a hill, they saw what they took to be
their own men, and halted. Immediately a hot fire rained on them from
all sides. The men they had seen were not their own men but Turks. The
Servians had to get away as fast as ever they could go, otherwise they
would have been surrounded; as it was, they incurred severe losses.
You had only to be a day in Servia to realise the spirit of the people.
They were full of a concentrated fire of patriotism. The war to them was
a matter of life and death. They regarded their access to the sea as a
question of life and death to their country. They had been the driving
power in the war. They had had to make the greater sacrifices; and the
part they had played certainly was neither realised nor appreciated. The
Servians were less reserved than the Bulgarians, but they had the same
singleness of purpose and the same power of cleaving fast to one great
idea.
I only spent four or five days at Uskub, and as there seemed to be no
chance of getting within range of any fighting, I went back to Sofia. I
stopped on the way to Nish, where I visited the military hospital, and
there I met once more the Servian poet, and received my lost trunk from
his hands. Just outside the Servian hospital there was a small church.
This church was originally a monument built by the Turks to celebrate
the taking of Nish, and its architecture was designed to discourage the
Servians from ever rising against them again, for the walls were made
almost entirely of the skulls of massacred Servians.