THE DYNAMITERS
On the occasion of my first visit to Salonica one of the American
missionaries took me over the town sightseeing. When we came to the
local branch of the Imperial Ottoman Bank, a modern bank building of
quite an imposing appearance, my fellow-countryman said he had heard
that ‘the committee’ were going to dynamite the place. But this was
no news to me, for, on alighting at the railway station, the Greek
porter of the Angleterre had told me of this project of the insurgents,
giving it as a reason why I should stop at his hotel instead of at
the Cristoforo Colombo, which stood just beside the bank; and the Jew
bootblacks while shining my shoes had discussed the coming ‘outrages’
and had told me several exact days on which they would take place. A
revolutionary plot so widely known could be little more, I thought,
than a work of native imagination, and, as the missionary held a
similar view, I lengthened not my stay in Salonica to await the
event. I was in search of exciting ‘copy,’ and without the slightest
solicitude for that I left behind, took my way to the interior of the
country. During my absence the authorities raided a Bulgarian khan
in the neighbourhood of the bank, which rumour fixed upon as the bomb
factory of the committajis; but they discovered no insurgents and no
dynamite. The real factory, however, was not a hundred feet away, and
when I returned from my excursion inland I occupied a room in the
Hôtel Colombo which directly overlooked it. It was, to all outward
appearance, a little Bulgarian shop in a narrow, unpretentious street,
and the shopkeeper and his customers were only simple, dirty peasants.
I often watched the Bulgars enter and leave the place, but so little
did I suspect their real character that only three days before their
attack I deserted Salonica again for the Albanian district.
The Jewish bootblacks had fixed upon Easter as the day for the
dynamiting: that was a Christian festival, they knew. But the Easters
of both calendars came and went without disturbance--though the
garrison of the town was augmented on every ‘appointed’ day, to be
ready to suppress the ‘rising’ of Bulgarians in an expeditious manner,
while every Bulgarian barred his door lest the suppression should come
without the dynamiting. It was after many appointed days had passed by
without mishap, and most of the Asiatic soldiers had been withdrawn
from Salonica and sent to join the army for the penetration of Albania,
that the promises of the insurgents were at last fulfilled. Someone has
said ‘Fools lie; wise men deceive by telling the truth.’
[Illustration: ASIATIC SOLDIERS: ‘REDIFS.’]
[Illustration: WAITING FOR DYNAMITERS, SALONICA.]
All of the special correspondents--gathered like vultures in
Macedonia to prey on the harvest of death--knew of the prediction for
Salonica; but correspondents flock together, and we all followed the
leader to Uskub with our hawk eyes set upon Albania. And there we were,
in Uskub, when the dynamiting took place. The news reached us about
noon of the morning after the event. Instead of eating luncheon, I got
a travelling bag ready and boarded the south-bound train at half-past
two, with one other correspondent--an Englishman. Happily, we were not
rivals: he represented a London daily and I was working for America:
otherwise we might have resented each other’s presence. As it was we
rejoiced together at having a clear start of twenty-four hours on the
others, for there is but one train to Salonica each day.
By nightfall the Englishman was bored by my conversation and I was
bored by his, and, having nothing to read, we stretched ourselves out
on the seats of our compartment and went to sleep soon after dark.
It was in this condition that we arrived in Salonica at half-past
ten o’clock; but nobody woke us, and we slept on. The few other
passengers--all Turks, as Bulgarians were restricted in travelling at
the time--left the train quietly and repaired to a khan across the
road to spend the night. The train hands, frightened Christians, lost
no time in ‘shunting’ the train, and after placing it on a ‘siding’
a quarter of a mile from the station, deserted it, us included, and
joined the Turks in the crowded café.
About midnight I awoke and wondered where I was. It gradually dawned
upon me that I was aboard a train, and I rose and looked out of the
window. Every light was out: they must have been extinguished from
above or we should have been discovered. I could discern, indistinctly,
in the faint light of a new moon, a waving line of high grass on both
sides of the train, and here and there a low, thick tree, but not a
house was visible. I woke the Englishman. Towards the city, usually
aglow with little lights from the water’s edge all the way up to the
wall on the hills, only a few dim lamps now shone. The gas main to
the town had been cut by the committajis the night before, and they
had also attempted, in their dynamite revel, to destroy a troop train
not far from the spot where ours now stood. We knew that the railways
were patrolled everywhere and doubly guarded in the vicinity of
Salonica, and there was little chance of our getting out of the train
without being seen. We also knew that the Turk is averse from taking
prisoners on any occasion, and naturally supposed that the deeds of the
dynamiters--for many of whom they were still hunting--had not tended to
lessen this Mohamedan characteristic. But to remain in the train and be
discovered in the small hours of the morning by some excited Asiatic
seemed a greater danger, and we decided to take to the open at once.
Whereupon we gathered our bags, quietly opened the door, jumped to the
ground and scurried through the high grass in the direction of the
town. Fortunately we escaped from the train without detection. But we
had gone hardly a hundred yards when a Turkish shout went up that was
both a challenge and an alarm. We saw the Turk who gave the yell, for
the moon was behind him, but I am sure he only heard us. He was near
a tent, and the first to respond to his call for assistance were his
companions from within. Six of them rolled out from under the canvas in
their clothes, rifles in hand, and in a minute more there were twenty
others by his side, all jabbering high Turkish. We had dropped our bags
at the challenge and thrown up our hands, but still they did not seem
to see us. They evidently thought we numbered forty--the usual size of
an insurgent band--and it took us some time to convince them that we
were only two Englishmen.
‘_Inglese Effendi_’ was the extent of our Turkish, and this we shouted
to them with every variation of accent we could contrive, trusting
they would comprehend our meaning in one form or another. I had not
forgotten in the excitement that I was an American, but neither had I
forgotten that the Turks consider an American a peculiar species of
Englishman, and the situation was such that I was willing to forgo
detail in explanation. They located us at once from the noise we were
making, and, as soon as they had loaded and cocked their rifles, spread
out single file like Red Indians, and wound a circle about us--keeping
at a safe distance from our dynamite. During this manœuvre an animated
discussion took place as to whether--we judged--it were not better to
shoot us first and find out afterwards whether we were Bulgarians
or not. This process was boring, for our arms were growing numb,
and yet we dared not lower them. They shouted to us a score or more
questions, but we could understand not a word. And we, concluding our
Turkish had failed, tried them with English, French, and German, and
the Englishman (who was the linguist) in a rash moment discharged a
volley of Bulgarian. It was well for us then that these soldiers (as we
learned later) had arrived from Asia Minor only a few days before, and
knew not even the tone of the insurgents’ language. They had understood
one variation of our ‘_Inglese Effendi_,’ and though they could not
imagine what ‘English gentlemen’ were doing on a railway line beyond
the city in the dead of night, there was one among them willing to take
the chance of capturing us alive. But the bold fellow was not without
grave fears, as the manner in which he performed this task amply
demonstrated. All guns were turned on us:
Rifles to front of us,
Rifles to back of us,
Rifles all round us,
But nobody blundered.
The Turks signed to us to keep our hands up. We could lift them no
higher so we stood on our toes--to show how willing we were to comply
with all suggestions. Then the brave man who had volunteered to take us
prisoners made a long détour and approached us from behind stealthily,
lest we should turn upon him suddenly and cast a bomb. I was made aware
of his arrival at my back by a thump in the spine with the muzzle of a
loaded and cocked rifle. The finger on the trigger was nervous--if it
was anything like its owner’s voice--and I dared not even tremble lest
the vibration should drop the hammer of his gun. I being thus in my
captor’s power, the other Turks approached. One unwound the long red
sash from his waist and with an end of it bound my hands. Meantime,
the Englishman had been surrounded, and two curly-bearded fellows,
gripping his hands tightly, dragged him to my side and bound his wrists
with the other end of the red sash. Our proud captor then seized the
centre of the sash, and, carefully avoiding our baggage, led us away
to the camp in exactly the same manner as he would have led a pair of
buffaloes, and the other soldiers followed, jabbering, at our heels.
Our captor’s tugging pulled the sash off my wrists, but I held on to
it and pretended I was still shackled, considering the fright it would
give the Turks to discover me mysteriously at liberty again.
We were kept but a few minutes at their camp, then taken through the
railway station, now deserted, across a road to the Turkish café where
the other passengers and the train crew were spending the night. It
was a peaceful spectacle we entered upon, but we soon disturbed the
composure of the Christians in the place. The train crew was stretched
out on the floor snoring lustily, and the passengers, because of their
race, sat on the tables, their feet folded under them, occupied in
sucking hookahs. Our dramatic entrance, on the ends of the red sash and
surrounded by ragged soldiers, did not distract the Mohamedans from
their hubble-bubbles, but the snoring ceased immediately.
We pounced upon the conductor before he was on his feet, and through
him, by means of French, explained to our captors who we were and
how we happened to be in the train, and demanded our release. But
the Asiatics threatened the Christian and he slyly deserted us and
slunk out of the door. The passport officer, who records arrivals,
a Mohamedan, took it upon himself to relieve us of the bondage of
the red sash and returned it to its owner, whereupon he brought upon
himself a storm of abuse from the Asiatics, and he too deserted us.
One by one all the Christians escaped to the next khan, taking their
snoring with them, but leaving the curly-bearded Anatolians and the
‘bashi-bazouks.’[3] These Turks remained perched on the tables, our
only company through the whole long night, apparently without a thought
of a thing but their gurgling pipes. Indeed, not even the occasional
sound of an explosion in the town caused them so much as to lift their
eyes.
The soldiers knew now that we were foreigners, and did not attempt
to re-bind our hands, but they continued to keep us prisoners with
the object of securing ransom money. Had we been subjects of their
Sultan we should probably have had our pockets searched, but, being
foreigners, our persons, at least, were favoured with a grudged respect.
We refused persistently to comply with their demands for money, until
they became violent. When they had given our bags ample time to
explode, one of the Turks fetched them to the café, but declined to
surrender them unless we paid him. Even this we refused to do. Hereupon
one truculent fellow whipped out his bayonet and shook the blade in
our faces, at the same time drawing a finger significantly across
his throat and gurgling in a manner that must have been copied from
life. This realistic entertainment so impressed me that I rewarded
the actor with all the small change I possessed, about six piastres.
The amount did not satisfy him by any means, for he explained that he
desired to divide the money with his companions, but I dreaded to show
them gold, and handed over an empty purse--my money was in a wallet.
Then they put pressure on the Englishman, but he flatly declined to
reward them and pretended to prefer the alternative they offered. Bold
Briton! they turned from him in disgust and proceeded to fight over the
shilling I had given them. The individual who had drawn his bayonet
carefully replaced it in its scabbard and slung his gun by a strap
over his shoulder before entering the fray. And not once did he or any
of the others use a weapon, though they punched each other’s faces
viciously--not, however, disturbing the bashi-bazouks on the tables,
whose rhythmic suck of the hubble-bubbles could be heard above the
irregular sounds of the brawl.
The fight concluded and quiet restored, the Englishman got writing
materials out of his bag and proceeded to take notes for despatches.
But this proceeding did not meet with the approval of our guards. The
truculent individual walked round behind him without a word, and drew
his bayonet again. This time he was truly alarming, for he was alarmed
himself. He suspected that we were making a report of the treatment we
had received. Now this Englishman was none other than ‘Saki,’ author
of ‘Alice in Westminster,’ a man who would write an epigram on the
death of a lady love. In a few minutes Saki’s mind had risen above all
earthly surroundings in search of an epigram on a capture by Turks,
and he was oblivious to the presence of the Asiatic hovering over him.
Perceiving my friend’s unfortunate plight, I came to the rescue, shook
him back to earth, and persuaded him to destroy his papers. We could do
nothing the rest of the night but sit and study the Turks and listen to
the rhythmic gurgles of the hubble-bubble pipes.
Early in the morning two army officers arrived and came into the khan
for coffee, and we appealed to them in French to relieve us from
the tender mercies of our tormentors. But they sipped their coffee
unaffected, and informed us that the soldiers were not of their
command. Indeed, these Asiatics seemed to be of nobody’s command! Up
to the hour they took it into their heads to return to the railway
station, no superior officer came near them. It was about six o’clock
when they departed, leaving us without ceremony. There were already
cabs at the station, bringing passengers for the early train, and one
of these took us into the city.
* * * * *
The streets of the city, usually crowded at dawn, were still deserted
by all except soldiers when we entered. There were sentinels seated
cross-legged at every corner, who rose and unslung their guns as
our carriage approached--the dynamiters had gone to their work in
carriages. But we were not halted on this ride, for we had a Turkish
driver who served as a passport. We drove first to the hotel named
from America’s discoverer, but finding it had been put out of business
by the same explosion that destroyed the bank, we went back to the
Angleterre. After a wash and breakfast we at once set about gathering
an account of the events of the past two days. It was difficult,
however, to move through the town, Asiatics challenging us at every
turn, and we sought out the British Consul for assistance.
We arrived at the Consulate just as the Vice-Consul, accompanied by the
Consular kavass, was starting on an official tour of investigation.
This was an opportunity we could not afford to miss. We attached
ourselves to the Vice-Consul, and the gentleman protested. But he was
courteous in his objections to our company, and we remained with him.
His great solicitude was to know the exact number of the slain on both
sides, a fact which concerned us less than graphic accounts of the
fighting; for it is a duller story to say a thousand people were put
to the sword than to give in detail the way a single Christian died.
H.M. Vice-Consul was a careful young man, with little confidence in
correspondents. He evidently thought it would be useless to provide
us with accurate information, and took no trouble to point out to us
that the slaughter had not assumed the proportions of what might in
Turkey be called a massacre. He seemed to concern himself chiefly with
priming himself to contradict in his official despatches the gross
exaggerations wherein we would undoubtedly indulge; and in view of his
services to us we were both sincerely sorry to disappoint him.
The dead were all now removed from the streets, though the routes taken
by the carts in which they were collected could still be traced to the
trenches by clotted drippings of blood and bloody wads of rags on the
roads. The Consul led the way to the Bulgarian cemeteries in the hope
of being able to count the corpses, but the last spadeful of earth was
just being shovelled into the long graves as we entered the gates. We
could only, therefore, estimate the number. We paced off the dimensions
of the excavations, and, taking the word of the Turkish official that
the bodies were laid but one row deep, estimated that there could not
be more than twenty in a trench--and, as far as we knew, there were
but three trenches throughout the city.
[Illustration: THE WRECK OF THE OTTOMAN BANK.]
[Illustration: ENTERING THE DYNAMITERS’ DEN.]
From the cemetery we followed the Consul to the site of the Ottoman
Bank and passed with him through the cordon of troops which surrounded
the ruins. Workmen were busily engaged uncovering a tunnel under the
street leading from a little shop opposite to a vital spot beneath the
bank. The little shop was that which I had watched so often from my
window in the Hôtel Colombo. The peasants I had seen enter and leave
the place had been, many of them, insurgents in disguise. The stock
displayed in front was only a ruse to cover the real merchandise, which
had come all the way from France and had been passed by the Turkish
Customs officials on the payment of substantial backsheesh. We were
told that ‘special’ customers of this shop went away nightly with heavy
baskets, now suspected of containing the earth excavated during each
day. It is said to have taken the insurgents forty days to cut the
tunnel, by means of which they were able to blow up the bank.
The soldiers were preparing to break into the den of the dynamiters,
and we waited in the street to see what they would discover within.
They were compelled to enter first by a side window, because the iron
front of the place was stoutly barred. They made an opening large
enough for a man to pass through, and two of them climbed in cautiously
with lighted lanterns. I do not think they expected to discover any
Bulgarians, dead or alive, within--nor did they--but they feared to
tread on dynamite. They found a sword of the pattern in use in the
Bulgarian army, and a wooden box with a small quantity of dynamite,
and a basket containing a strange assortment of other things. They
passed these trophies out of the window and permitted us to examine
them. In the basket were several yards of fuse, a few pounds of steel
lugs for making bombs more deadly, a bottle half full of wine, a hunk
of native cheese, and a string of prayer beads. The dynamite, in the
shape of cubes two inches thick, was carefully packed in cardboard
boxes, on the covers whereof were instructions for use printed in three
languages--French, English, and German, in the order named.
There is some irony in the fact that the explosives supplied to the
insurgents by France did most damage to citizens of the country from
which they came. The revolutionary attack on Salonica was directed
primarily against Europeans and European institutions, ‘as a threat
and in punishment for the non-interference of the civilised nations
in behalf of the Christians of Macedonia.’ The Imperial Ottoman
Bank is owned and conducted largely by Frenchmen and Italians, the
_Guadalquivir_ belonged to the Mesageries Maritimes Company, and
against these institutions the insurgents accomplished their most
successful dynamite work. They began the eventful day with an attempt
to blow up a troop train leaving for the interior, crowded with
Anatolian soldiers. An ‘infernal machine’ was placed on the railway
track over which the train was to pass in the early morning, but it was
timed to go off a few minutes too soon, and exploded before the train
reached the spot.
Their next exploit was more cleverly contrived. It was the destruction
of the French steamer. A Bulgarian, describing himself as a merchant,
and possessing the requisite _teskeré_ for travelling in Turkey
duly viséd, took second-class passage for Constantinople aboard the
_Guadalquivir_, and went aboard with his luggage a few hours before the
ship sailed. He inspected the steamer, pretending mere curiosity, and
learned that the state rooms amidships were allotted only to passengers
holding first-class tickets; whereupon he paid the difference in
fare and shifted a heavy bag into a cabin nearer the engine-room. A
few minutes before the ship weighed anchor the Bulgarian hailed a
small boat and went ashore, ostensibly to speak to a friend on the
quay, leaving all his baggage behind. But he did not return, and the
ship sailed without him. She was hardly in motion, however, before a
terrible explosion amidships wrecked the engine-room, cut the steering
gear off from the wheel-house, and set the vessel afire. The concussion
was of such violence that it is said to have shaken the houses on the
quay, nearly two miles away. The engineer and several firemen were
severely injured, but no one was killed. Another vessel in the harbour
went to the assistance of the _Guadalquivir_, rescued the crew and
passengers, and towed the ship back into port. There was a suspicion
of foul play, but the cause of the explosion was not definitely fixed
until that night.
Crowds soon collected to watch the ship burn, and grew until at evening
the whole town was on the quay--little suspecting that this was the day
for the long-promised dynamiting. The plot was well planned.
An ‘infernal machine’ placed under a viaduct which carried the gas main
over a little gulley, exploded promptly at eight o’clock, and this was
the signal for the general attack. Before the lights of the city had
finished flickering, a carriage dashed up to each of the principal
open-air cafés along the water-front, and several drew up before the
bank. In each of them were two or more desperate men, who in some
cases jumped out and threaded their way to the midst of the wondering
crowds, before hurling their deadly missiles. They made for the places
where their bombs would do damage among the foreign element and the
most prominent citizens, and attempted to throw them into the thickest
groups. But the people, already alarmed, were on the _qui vive_, and
few of the explosions in the cafés did really effective work. The
Macedonians are well drilled in scurrying into their houses, and,
recognising the attack at last, they did not linger till the troops
came. The dynamiters tried to catch some ‘on the wing,’ but a bomb is a
poor weapon for use against the individual.
The proprietor of the Alhambra personally pointed out to us the holes
made in his curtains and his stage, and gave us pieces of shell he had
gathered in his yard; but two tables and three coffee-cups and one man
was the complete record of the destruction wrought at his establishment.
Dynamite requires confinement to be thoroughly effective. The
destruction of the Imperial Ottoman Bank was thorough. The Bulgarians
who had this work in charge were evidently the pick of the band. Four
of them alighted from their carriage in front of the building and
several others behind it. Those attacking the front, in the guise of
gentlemen, succeeded in getting near enough to the two soldiers on
guard to overpower them and cut their throats. Then they began casting
bombs at the windows. The other insurgents entered the courtyard of the
Hôtel Colombo and hurled bombs into the doors of the German skittle
club, a low building at the back of the bank. While these two divisions
of dynamiters were at this work, and their confederates were elsewhere
attacking various places, the charge beneath the bank was set off.
A vast hole was rent in the rear wall of the building, the skittle
club was demolished and the front of the Hôtel Colombo shattered. The
manager of the bank, who lived above the offices, escaped with his
family before the building succumbed to the fire, and all but one of
thirty Germans who were in the skittle club at the time got out with
their lives.
The explosions of the bombs caused the wildest panic everywhere, but
they seem to have been remarkably ineffective. They were thin-shelled
things (I have seen several), some three and some four inches in
diameter, with a hole for loading. The shells and the dynamite were
imported separately and put together in various places in the town.
The insurgents appear to have had little knowledge in the manipulation
of the bomb other than what was contained in the printed instructions.
In some cases--in the mountains--they have blown themselves to pieces
while loading shells.
The dynamiters escaped in most instances. After doing their work they
sought cover, leaving the excited soldiers to wreak their vengeance on
the unarmed Bulgar. This is a part of their system, that those who will
not join them shall suffer for their weakness. But in one place the
insurgents were trapped, and a pretty fight took place ’twixt dynamite
and rifle, for the account of which I am indebted largely to the wife
of a missionary, who witnessed it through the blinds of one of the
mission windows.
The American Mission at Salonica is one block--an Oriental block cut
by crooked streets--away from the spot where the Ottoman Bank stood.
It was opposite an antiquated Turkish fort, and next door to the
German school. On the other side of the school is a little house with
a broad balcony overlooking the schoolyard. This little house was one
of the insurgent rendezvous, though unknown and unsuspected. About half
an hour after the explosions at the bank, while the little party of
Americans watched the burning bank from the back of the mission, bombs
began exploding, seemingly almost under their door, at the side of the
house. The American property was not the object of the attack; it was
directed against the German school. The insurgents had, apparently,
waited until the troops from the fort were drawn off to other parts
of the city before beginning their job. They threw their bombs from
the balcony down at a corner of the building, where they exploded. The
detonations were deafening, but the whole damage to the school was less
than that which a single bomb would have wrought if put into one of the
rooms.
But the fort opposite had not been left entirely deserted, and a few
minutes after the first report it opened fire from the battlemented
walls. The Turks were soon reinforced by two detachments of troops
which came up from opposite directions. One force, in the darkness,
mistook the other for insurgents and fired into them. For more than two
hours the fight continued, during which probably forty bombs exploded
and hundreds of rifle cracks rent the air. The missionary’s wife told
me she had seen the Bulgarians light their fuses in the room, then dash
out on the terrace and throw the bombs into the street below. Several
times the Turks attempted to rush the place, but the street was narrow
and stoutly walled, and whenever they came up the Bulgarians dropped
bombs into them and drove them back. Towards the last the insurgents
staggered out and only dropped their bombs. As they lit the fuses the
Americans saw one of them bleeding from a wound in the face, and the
other from the chest. Finally the defence ceased, and the Turks charged
the little fortress successfully. They battered in the door and
dragged out the garrison, both undoubtedly beyond earthly suffering.
* * * * *
Several of the dynamiters went up with their bombs; some were killed
by the soldiers in the streets during the night, but a majority (I
was told by an insurgent) got out of the town safely before morning
and made their way, singly and severally, to join other bands in the
mountains.
Early the following morning the Turkish population came down from the
hill in a body, yataghans in hand, ready to clear out the Bulgarian
quarter. But Hassan Fehmi Pasha, the Vali of Salonica, had anticipated
this descent of the ‘faithful,’ and himself drove out and cut them off
and persuaded them to leave the work to the soldiers. A house-to-house
search of the Bulgarian quarter was begun at once, and every male
Bulgarian of fighting age was hounded out. They had barred their doors
and hidden themselves in the darkest corners of their houses. But the
bars did not defy the soldiers’ axes, and their hiding places were
generally shallow, and practically the whole male population was locked
up in ‘Bias Kuler’ (White Tower) and the prison in the wall. No women
were arrested in this ‘round up,’ but one was shot in the streets. The
reason, it is said, was that her figure was padded with dynamite bombs.
Just two months prior to this general incarceration of Bulgarians
a general amnesty had taken place. The Sultan by a single Iradé
reprieved all Bulgarian prisoners. The prisons of European Turkey were
thrown open, exiles were brought back from across the seas and set
free. Political and criminal offenders were treated alike. Brigands
returned to the mountains, petty thieves to the cities, and insurgents
to revolutionary bands. Among the last was the chief of the ‘internal
organisation,’ Damian Grueff, who returned from Asia Minor to resume
supreme command of the committajis. This was one of the features of the
Austro-Russian ‘reform’ scheme. The Sultan evidently desired to begin
it with a grand display of beneficence, perhaps foreseeing the result
of this liberality. The British Government, at any rate, appreciated
the error of the act and protested against its being executed; but
Great Britain had given a mandate to Russia and Austria to do in Turkey
what one of them cannot do at home, and what both are seriously doubted
of honestly desiring.
Almost as absurd as this general amnesty were the general arrests
which now followed the ‘Salonica outrages.’ Not only was the Bulgarian
community of Salonica put behind bars, but an attempt was made to
extend the wholesale incarceration throughout Macedonia. This proved a
failure for two reasons: the Turks could not catch the revolutionists,
and they had not gaols enough to contain the unarmed Bulgars. When the
gaols were filled with ‘suspected’ peasants extraordinary tribunals
were created in the several consular towns to judge the prisoners. I
visited one of these while ‘in session.’ The building was a shanty in
the outskirts of the town; it had been whitewashed for this function.
The usual cellar (an excavation under a Macedonian house) served to
hold the prisoners in waiting. A score of them, manacled, were brought
from the gaols every morning, and choked into this dark hole, whence,
one at a time, they were unchained from their partners and sent up the
ladder into the court. Three dreamy looking Turks and two corrupted
Christians (a feature of the reforms) tried the peasants. There were
no witnesses--at least not when I was present--and the case seemed to
go for or against the prisoner as he himself could persuade the sleepy
judges of his innocence. The judges never asked a question; the whole
evidence, _pro_ and _con_, was drawn by one Turk in a shabby uniform,
who stood before the handcuffed prisoner, questioned him, and then
advised the judges--still sleeping--of his testimony. Judgment was by
no means summary; it was not ‘Who are you?’--‘Ivan Ivanoff.’--‘Guilty!’
Every Bulgar had an hour or more to talk. So slow was the process of
these courts that another amnesty took place before they had tried half
the prisoners. Nevertheless, the number of condemned was large, and for
many months the weekly steamer which conveys political prisoners into
exile was crowded on touching at Salonica.
[Illustration: EXILES, SHIPPED WEEKLY FROM SALONICA.]
The week we spent at Salonica after the dynamiting bristled with
incident. The days we devoted to gathering news and material for
‘letters,’ and the nights we put in ‘writing up.’ In making our
rounds of the town it seemed that every sentry would have his turn
challenging us, and the Turkish post office insisted on searching me
before I entered, and relieving me, for the time being, of my pistol.
Even at night we were not free from the investigation of the now
cautious authorities. Every patrol passing the Angleterre would rouse
the house and ask why the candles burned at so late an hour in the room
we occupied. We had just time each day to swallow a hasty dinner at the
little restaurant opposite the hotel when the ‘all in’ hour, sundown,
arrived. But we took a supper of _yowolt_ (a kind of curdled milk) and
bread to our rooms to eat at midnight. At six o’clock each morning
we were on our way to the railway station to hand our despatches to
the Consular kavass. Of course we could trust none of our ‘stuff’ to
the Turkish telegraph or post offices. For one thing, no report was
permitted to pass the censor which did not in all cases describe the
insurgents as ‘brigands,’ and this word throughout a despatch would
lend a false colour to it. There is, besides, no assurance that either
a letter or a telegram will ever reach its destination through the
Turkish institutions; and so we had deposited a sum of money with the
telegraph operator at Ristovatz, the Servian frontier station, and sent
our despatches to him by either of the messengers who take the mails of
the English, French, and Austrian post offices to the frontier daily.
One morning, after we had worked all night and got to bed only
after delivering our despatches safely into the hands of the French
messenger, a skirted kavass with a tremendous revolver, we were rudely
awakened at nine o’clock by a continuous booming of cannon in the
harbour. We knew it was a foreign fleet, and had rather looked forward
to its arrival, but we were perfectly willing to have it stay away
altogether rather than come at this hour. It boomed on and on until
there was nothing for us to do but get up and go to see how many
warships and whose they were. We dressed and went up on the broad
terrace of the Cercle de Salonique, to which the American Consul had
given us cards. There we breakfasted and watched them sail into the bay
under Olympus, still snow-capped, standing higher than the cloud line,
his smaller companions tapering off to his right and left.
There was a coarse rumble as the heavy chain of the first warship,
an Austrian, followed its anchor to a bed. For a week we watched
the Italians and the Austrians rivalling each other in this naval
demonstration. An Austrian, then an Italian; then three Austrians,
three Italians--at the end of the week nearly a score of foreign ships
swung on their anchors in two parallel lines, the torpedo boats close
in to the shore and the big ships in deeper water. Neither nation could
let the other appear the stronger in the eyes of the Turks or, more
particularly, the Albanians.
The Turkish flagship, which has swung at anchor in the bay of Salonica
for the past ten years, floats an admiral’s colours. The admiral had
been warned that there would be a naval demonstration in the bay, but
his Government had not informed him that every ship that entered would
salute him. In consequence he was unprepared to fire some hundreds
of guns, and his ammunition was soon exhausted; so he gave orders to
switch his flag up and down twenty-one times to each foreign ship, and
for a week the Star and Crescent rose and fell at the Turk’s hind mast.
All the peoples but the Mohamedans had rejoiced at the arrival of the
foreign ships, but they were all disgusted with them before they left.
The Bulgarians had thought they would all be released from prison,
otherwise the town would be bombarded; the Jews had thought the sailors
would hire their boats to come ashore; the Greeks had thought the
officers would dine nightly at their hotels; and the Tziganes had made
their children learn enough words of French to beg for small coin.
‘The English float no come?’ asked a Jew bootblack of me with a glance
of disgust at a group of Italian sailors passing.
‘What’s the matter with these fellows?’ I inquired.
‘Never get drunk so much as English. Got no money anyhow.’
During the week of sentinels and excitement at Salonica the wife of one
of my friends at the American mission died. I had known them only a few
months, but I was the only other American in the town, and was asked to
be one of the pall-bearers with several of the English residents there.
The Vali sent down a detachment of troops to prevent any disturbance,
and they accompanied the funeral to the English cemetery to protect a
number of Bulgarian women who wanted to follow the remains of their
friend to the grave. It was a strange sight--the parade of these
peasants whose husbands were dead, in gaol, or in hiding, following
the hearse through the semi-deserted streets afoot, surrounded by
fezzed soldiers. After them came a train of native hacks, in which the
European community followed.
* * * * *
The town was resuming its normal quiet and we began to inquire for
excitement elsewhere. The Englishman in some way got a tip that trouble
was brewing in Monastir, and he and I made ready to disappear one
morning, leaving the other correspondents in the dark as to where we
had gone. It was now necessary for him to secure a _teskeré_--I already
possessed one and needed but to have mine viséd. On application to his
Consul for this document he was advised to designate himself ‘artist,’
as the word ‘correspondent’ always shocks the Turk. (The correspondent
represented the _Graphic_.) But the Turkish official must have a reason
for everything, and the first question of the dignitary who drafts the
passports was, why an _artiste_ desired to go to Monastir.
‘To see the country--among other things,’ said the Englishman. ‘I
understand it is very fine.’
‘The country is magnificent,’ replied the Turk, ‘but the café-chantants
are all closed now.’
The café-chantant _artiste_ was the only artist known to this
enlightened official.
We had thought that all the live insurgents had left Salonica and we
were going on their trail. But one desperate dynamiter had remained
in town, and was doomed to die before we left. He chose the hour and
place himself: about two o’clock of the day before we left, within a
stone’s throw of the Angleterre. It was a rainy day, and we--the whole
corps of correspondents--were lingering over our lunch at the time,
idly speculating on ‘What next?’ when several shots rang out almost
in front of the place. At the first everyone jumped up, expecting
either a dynamite attack on ‘Europeans’ or a massacre of Christians.
We were both. But the firing stopped almost the instant it had begun,
and we moved towards the door. There the crowd hesitated for a moment,
but those--of us behind--forced the front file out into the street.
Curiosity soon got the better of fear, and three minutes after the
shooting we were ‘on the spot.’
It was only seventy yards up the street from the Hôtel d’Angleterre.
The body of a boy some eighteen or twenty years of age lay pale and
lifeless in a gutter half full of dirty water. There was a short pause
before anyone ventured to approach him; there was an infernal machine
under his coat. Then a black soldier went up, felt the body carefully
and relieved it of an iron bomb and two sticks of dynamite. He had no
sooner done this than two other Asiatics approached the body, and one,
with blood trickling down his face, set upon it with the bayonet,
muttering Turkish--curses, I imagine--through his clenched teeth.
Before he had struck many blows, however, an officer caught hold of his
sword arm and violently pushed him back; and for a moment there was a
rapid argument, followed by a tussle. The other white soldier raised
his gun, butt downwards, to smash in the victim’s face, but the negro
thrust him back too. In a few minutes four soldiers and the officer
came and dragged the body through the mire across the street, and the
now freed Asiatic, with drawn bayonet, unable to control himself, began
again his curses, and dealt three blows at the stomach of the victim
trailing through the mud. Then he put his bayonet between his teeth and
took hold of the feet, and helped to throw the dead Bulgar upon a Jew’s
cart standing by. The old Jew drove off rapidly; he had cut a cabman
out of a job.
The slaughtered youth was said to have come from a small town up the
railroad. He was a Bulgarian school teacher. In his attempt to blow
up the telegraph office (this was his object) he went down to the
place dressed as a European. He loitered about his goal, which aroused
suspicion, and when he collected his courage and started to enter, one
of the sentries at the door challenged him. The young man, holding a
paper in his hand and feigning indignation, is said to have exclaimed,
‘Let me pass! I want to send off this telegram.’ The guard answered,
‘I must search you before you go in.’ Here the young Bulgar thrust
his hand into his pocket for a bomb, but before he could withdraw it,
the stalwart guard, who was twice the size of the Bulgar, grabbed him
by the throat, threw him on his back, and sent two balls into him. A
letter was found on the boy’s body stating that he had successfully
carried out one piece of dynamiting and hoped to accomplish this.