The Project Gutenberg eBook, Turkey; the Awakening of Turkey; the Turkish Revolution of 1908, by E. F. (Edward Frederick) Knight

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[ORIGINAL TITLE PAGE]

Oriental Series

TURKEY
THE AWAKENING OF TURKEY
THE TURKISH REVOLUTION OF 1908

BY

E. F. KNIGHT

Volume XXI

J. B. MILLET COMPANY
Boston and Tokyo

Copyright, 1910
By J. B. MILLET CO.

THE · PLIMPTON · PRESS
[W · D · O]
NORWOOD · MASS · U · S · A

CONTENTS

ILLUSTRATIONS

EDITORIAL NOTE

FROM the land of the Turks—Turkestan in Central Asia—there descended beginning in A.D. 800 a series of hordes and armies which overran and gradually took possession of that portion of South-Eastern Europe and Western Asia once known as Turkey. After five hundred years Mohammed II seized upon Constantinople, and that city became the capital of the Turkish Empire;—for the next two hundred years the dominion spread until it became an immense and important world-power. Then began a period of decline; and vice and prodigality in harem and seraglio brought about disruption and war. Russia saw her opportunity to extend her borders towards the sea—and went on gaining Turkish territory from early in the 18th until the middle of the 19th century when the Crimean war crippled her power in that corner of Europe. But Turkey could not hold the heterogeneous populations of her European provinces. Insurrection after insurrection broke out and one by one she lost many of the more important of them. She became bankrupt and a concert of the European Powers proposed and partially carried out a scheme for her reform. But she proved stubborn and went to war with Russia in 1877-1878; this ended disastrously for her and more territory was lost. In 1897, came the war with Greece in which she was successful. In recent years after many vicissitudes the spread of the great awakening of the people of Oriental lands has reached Turkey, and the story of the newer political and social life in that country is related in this volume in full and complete detail, from its inception until the famous Revolution of 1908.

No one is better qualified to tell this story than Edward F. Knight, who as a noted correspondent for one of the leading papers of London has seen service in all the wars since 1895, his work having taken him to South America, Africa, and Asia. In 1908, he was specially commissioned to visit Turkey to study the conditions of the recent revolution, and this book is the result of his exhaustive study.

The important position which Turkey occupies on the highway to the Farther East from Europe has made it the subject of continuous political intrigue by the nations of that continent. Its interesting and romantic people and their despotic government; its natural products, some of them unique; its picturesque and poetical language and literature, are full of peculiar and absorbing interest, and no one who wishes to keep abreast of the great world movements of our time can afford to neglect this stirring work.

Charles Welsh.

TURKEY

CHAPTER I
THE TURKISH PEOPLE

TURKEY, once so vast and powerful, has been undergoing a gradual dismemberment for the last two centuries. Possession after possession has been wrested from her in Europe, Asia, and Africa. On the mainland of Europe, having lost Greece, Bulgaria, Roumania, Servia, Bosnia, Croatia, and Herzegovina, as well as those regions on the northern shores of the Black Sea (once a Turkish lake) which now form part of Southern Russia, Turkey is left with but a narrow strip of territory stretching across the centre of the Balkan Peninsula from the Black Sea to the Adriatic.

The despotic system of government in Turkey worked well enough so long as she was a conquering and expanding nation; but so soon as she ceased to be this, and was hemmed in by Christian Powers strong enough to check her advance, the system, being incompatible with progress, failed to hold the Empire together and disintegration set in. The internal disorders caused by the evils of her administration and the cupidity and treachery of her powerful European neighbours threatened Turkey with extinction. Russia and Austria waged successful wars against her and possessed themselves of her frontier provinces, and at the same time the disaffected Christian populations of European Turkey were encouraged to rise and gain their independence. So it came about that Greece, Bulgaria, and other kingdoms and principalities were carved out of Turkey, and up to within a few months ago Christian peoples within and without her frontiers were quarrelling over a further projected act of spoliation that would indeed have been for Turkey the beginning of the end—the partition of Macedonia.

For the oppression, corruption, and incompetence that characterised their government the Turkish people themselves were held responsible by a large section of public opinion in Western Europe. There is a saying to the effect that a nation has the government which it deserves, and this may be true if a nation is free to work out its own salvation. But in the case of Turkey the people were allowed no chance of obtaining the government which they deserved; for it was to the interest of Turkey’s powerful enemies to conserve the evils of the despotic rule, and whenever the Turks made an effort to put their house in order some Christian Power, fearing lest a reformed Turkey might prove a strong Turkey, fell upon her with armed force or stood in the way of the projected changes. Moreover, the Powers that were bent upon self-aggrandisement at Turkey’s expense saw to it that there should be no peace within her borders and stirred up trouble, exciting the Christian peasants to rise, and fomenting disturbances that might serve as pretexts for a policy of intervention and annexation. No methods were too unscrupulous for the Powers in question. For example, among many other agents provocateurs was a certain Dervish who, some years ago, as the paid secret agent of Russia, acting under instructions, preached a holy war against giaours in Asia Minor and excited the Mussulman population to attack the Christian inhabitants. One could quote many other stories to illustrate the treachery of Turkey’s enemies and the unfair treatment which has been accorded to her.

And so Turkey, by her own bad government and by the machinations of those who lusted after the rich possessions that were still left to her, was being steadily dragged down to her ruin. Even her best friends despaired of her regeneration; for reform from without administered by the Powers would mean the loss of her independence, while reform from within seemed impossible of attainment. Turkey appeared to be destined to early effacement from the map of Europe, when, lo! of a sudden, the Turks themselves—all that was best and most patriotic of the manhood of the Empire—came boldly forward to make a desperate last stand in the defence of the integrity of their beloved fatherland. The “Young Turks” threw off the despotism that had all but destroyed their country and seized the reins of government, displaying a firmness, justice, wisdom, and moderation in their almost bloodless revolution that have won for them the admiration of all honest men throughout the civilised world. It looks very much as if these men are about to prove to the world that reform can come from within even in Turkey, provided that the Turks are now given the chance which they have never had before, and greedy foes are not permitted to frustrate the aspirations of a people freed at last.

Those who know and therefore like and respect the Turkish people rejoice that the ancient friendship between England and Turkey has been restored, and that at last the English people are beginning to realise the injustice that a large section of public opinion has done to a noble race, for over thirty years. There was a time when they understood the Turks better. During the Crimean war the British officers had the opportunity of acquiring an intimate knowledge of their allies; many firm friendships were then made which were kept up through life, and so large and influential were the relations thus brought about between the gentlemen of the two countries that they directed English diplomacy in Turkish affairs for many years. It may seem, and it ought to be, unnecessary to preface this little work with an explanation of what manner of men these Turks are; but so grossly have they been misrepresented, and so widespread has been the misconception concerning them, that a few words on this subject may not be out of place.

Five and a half centuries have passed since the Mussulman Turks—a Central-Asian people akin to the Mongols—having seized the Asiatic possessions of the decaying Byzantine Empire, crossed the Bosphorus and, extending their conquests, established themselves firmly in Europe. It is possible that in Asia Minor peasants of pure Turkish blood may still be found, but in European Turkey—that “lumber room of many races”—the strong and noble Turkish stock has been so largely intermingled with a number of other races that the racial characteristics of the Osmanli have practically disappeared. It is more rare to find features of the Mongolian stamp among the modern Turks than among the Christian peoples over whom they rule. The Bulgarians, for example, though speaking a Slav tongue and generally considered as a Slav people, often have the flat faces, the projecting cheek-bones, the small oblique eyes, that betray their descent from the nomads of the Asiatic steppes.

There are no handsomer people in Europe than the Turks, for here the crossing of many virile breeds has resulted in the development of a very fine race of men. The modern Turk is a Caucasian of the highest type, and combines in himself some of the best qualities of the East and West. It is true that some of his Eastern qualities stand in the way of what the energetic Western world calls progress. The Turk is improvident and often a spendthrift; he is a fatalist, enduring patiently whatever ill fortune or suffering fate may bring him, but displaying an indolent indisposition to struggle against destiny. Dieu aide qui s’aide expresses a motive for action which is opposed to his Moslem fatalism. But difficult though he may be to rouse to effort, once roused he displays great energy and stubbornness of purpose, as has been recently proved to the world by the careful preparation and determined carrying through of the Turkish revolution. At any rate, the faults of the Turks are for the most part amiable ones, and most people who have travelled in the Near East will agree with an authority on the politics of that region, who replied as follows to a question put to him by an interviewer: “The men that I liked best among all that I met in the East were Turks. In some respects the Turk struck me as more like an Englishman and more like a gentleman than any of the other races except the Magyars. He is a quiet, manly fellow, with great repose and charm of manner, and does not wear his heart on his sleeve. Europeans who live in the country look on the Turk as an honest man and a man of his word.”

It must be remembered that the corrupt officialdom created by the Palace, which had a degrading influence on everything in touch with it, is not representative of the Turkish people. The typical Turk possesses the virtues and the failings of a conquering and dominant race. He is courageous, truthful, and honest amid races not conspicuous for truthfulness or honesty, some of which are likewise lacking in courage. The Turk, moreover, is shrewd and gifted with common sense, and he is not a visionary, as are the Arabs and some other peoples holding the Moslem faith. He has not the quick wits of some European peoples, and may perhaps be described as being somewhat stupid, in the same sense that the Englishman is stupid in the eyes of a neighbouring, brighter race; but this same stupidity, or whatever else we may call it, happily has preserved the Turk from the seeing of visions, and consequently no impossible ideals, no wild dreams for the reconstruction of society, have led his practical and common-sense revolution into those dreadful roads of bloodshed and anarchy which more imaginative nations, shrieking liberty, have blindly followed to tyrannies more oppressive than the worst of despotisms.

Those who know him best also claim that the Turk is hospitable, temperate, devoid of meanness, sincere in his friendships—once he is your friend he is always your friend—and, though his enemies have represented him as very much the reverse, gentle and humane. Of the steadfastness of his friendship I have had experience. When a Turk is your friend you can implicitly trust him, even though he be, what the conditions of his country have sometimes made him, a murderous outlaw. I have had friends among Turkish brigands myself, and Sir William Whittall, who knows the Turks as well as any Englishman can, writes in the following sympathetic way of his robber friend Redjeb: “Peace be to his ashes! He is dead now. Brigand or no brigand, I had a sincere admiration for the man as a man. His faithfulness was like unto that of a dog, and he saved my life at the risk of his own. I have had many incidents with brigands in Asia Minor during my fifty years of sport, and I must say that as long as they were Turks, and I had assisted some friends or villages of theirs, which I always made it a point to do when I frequented the wild regions, I never feared any accidents; and though I might often have been taken, I never was. I would not like to trust Christian brigands in the same fashion.”

Gentleness and humanity are among the most marked characteristics of the Turk. With his ferocity in war when his passions are roused I shall deal later, but of his kindliness and charity in his dealings with his fellow-men there can be no doubt. In no European country are animals treated so kindly as they are in Turkey. A Turk never ill-uses his horse or his ox or his domestic pets, and the wonderful tameness of these creatures in Turkey testifies to this good trait. In Constantinople the pariah dogs lie about the streets in their tens of thousands; they live partly on garbage and partly on the scraps of food which even very poor Turks put out for them. These dogs, though fighting among themselves, display nothing but friendship for, and confidence in, man. They never move for one as they sprawl across the narrow pavements, for they know that no Turk would have the heart to kick them out of the way. A few years ago an American offered a very large sum for the right to clear Constantinople of its pariah dogs, his object being to sell their skins to the glove makers. The populace raised a howl of indignation when they heard of this, and had not the scheme been abandoned serious riots would have occurred. There is no need for a society for the prevention of cruelty to animals in a Turkish town.

It has often been maintained by the enemies of the Turk that his Mohammedan fanaticism makes his continued occupation of any portion of Christian Europe undesirable. But in justice to the votaries of the Moslem creed one ought to bear in mind, in the first place, that early Mohammedanism never persecuted the Christian religion in the ferocious fashion that Christianity persecuted Mohammedanism, as for example in Spain. The Moslems were taught that it was their duty to convert or exterminate the idolatrous heathen, but to respect “the people of the book.” Did not Mohammed himself spread his cloak upon the ground for the Christian envoys who came to him, treating them with honour; and do not the Mussulmans believe that on the day of judgment the Judge will be Jesus Christ, while the Prophet Mohammed will stand at His side as the Intercessor? When the Turks conquered the territories of the Christians they did not massacre the Christians, neither as a rule did they enslave them, and they did not interfere with their religion; under the more equitable Moslem rule the conquered Greeks found themselves less heavily taxed and generally better off than they had been under the rule of the emperors of the decaying Byzantine Empire. To Jews also, as being worshippers of the one God, they extended a like tolerance; and it was to Turkey—where they are numerous and prosperous and still speak an old Spanish dialect—that the Jews fled when they were driven out of Spain by the persecutions of Ferdinand and Isabella.

That later on the Mohammedans developed a fierce anti-Christian fanaticism is largely due to centuries of political conflict with Christian peoples, and to the many wars that have been fought to defend Islam against the never-ceasing aggressions of Europe. Within the Turkish Empire itself, for example in Arabia and in Northern Albania, dangerously fanatical Moslem populations are to be found, but these are not people of Turkish blood. The majority of the Turks of any education, though religious, are not fanatics, and on this very account are regarded as indifferent Mussulmans and often frankly called kafirs by the bigoted Arabs. Of all the various peoples who inhabit Turkey the Mussulman Turks are undoubtedly the least intolerant. The Christians of different sects there hate each other as no Turk hates a Christian and no Christian hates a Turk. The orthodox Greeks and the Bulgarian schismatics in Macedonia employ all methods of barbarism in their persecutions of each other. When Bulgaria formed part of Turkey the Bulgarians had often to petition the Turks to protect them against the fanatical Greeks. The Catholic Latins, too, in Turkey, being in a minority, would doubtless have been exterminated by their fellow-Christians had it not been for the protection extended to them by the Turks, with the result that they are grateful and loyal to the Ottoman rule. The recent revolution appears to have brushed away almost completely what religious fanaticism there was still left among the Mohammedan Turks, and the Young Turks themselves, the deliverers of the nation and its real rulers, are entirely free from it. I have conversed with hundreds of these Young Turks and have many friends among them, and in no country have I come across more broad-minded and tolerant men. There is no doubt that Islamism has of late years undergone a modernising process, thereby gaining strength. The Sheikh-ul-Islam himself, as head of the Ulema—the Doctors of Law whose duty it is to interpret the judicial precepts of the Koran, and who have hitherto composed the most fanatical and conservative element in Turkey—has been at great pains to impress it upon the Mussulman people, upon whom from his position he exercises such great influence that the Constitution which has been granted to them, though introducing the principle of complete equality between Mussulmans, Christians, and Jews, is quite in accordance with the teachings of the Koran.

As I find myself embarked on this somewhat long defence of the Turkish people I may as well deal with another popular misconception concerning them. It is often urged that the Mohammedan institution of polygamy, with its consequent degradation of women, is incompatible with the progress or with the moral and mental well-being of a race, and that this by itself makes the Turk unfit to rule in Europe. Now it must be remembered that many distinct races profess the Mohammedan religion, and that some of these are barbarian and others decadent, even as are some of the races that profess Christianity; but it is not fair, because the Turks happen to be Mussulmans, that they should be credited with the faults and vices of some other Mussulman peoples. I have no intention of discussing the effects of polygamy, but I may point out that the Turk, unlike the Arab, appears to be not really polygamous by nature, and that whatever may happen in some other Moslem lands there is no degradation of the women in Turkey. The Turkish peasant women are as far from being degraded as any other women of their class in Europe. It may astonish some Englishmen to learn that the simple-living Turk of the upper and middle classes, though his religion permits him to marry four wives, rarely marries more than one. Of the Young Turks whom I have met, not one, I believe, has more than one wife, and I have heard several of them speak with disapproval of the custom of polygamy. English ladies who have friends among the Turkish ladies have told us how refined, charming, and—in these latter days—well educated they are. As most Turkish gentlemen retain the old customs in their family life, the Englishman visiting the house of a Turkish friend has no opportunity of seeing his wife, but his little daughters up to the age of about twelve years are usually brought in by the proud father to see the visitor, just as they might be in England, when the pretty manners, the intelligence, and the careful education which they have evidently received (they nearly always speak French or some other European language) tell their own tale. The constant and deep veneration which a Turk entertains for his mother through life belies the nonsense that is sometimes talked concerning the condition of the women in Turkey. The Turkish woman, too, respected and trusted, is much freer than most people in this country imagine, and, as I shall explain later on, the revolution largely owed its success to her brave co-operation.

One ought to be able to form some idea of the character of a people from its literature. Turkish literature, the classical form of which was borrowed from that of Persia, has, like many other things in Turkey, been undergoing a process of modernisation; it has for some years been under the influence of Western, more especially of French, literature; and simplicity and lucidity in the expression of thought has taken the place of the intentional obscurity and artificiality that characterise Oriental writing. Mr. Stanley Lane Poole, in the Turkey volume of the excellent “The Story of the Nations” series, concludes his chapter on Turkish men of letters as follows: “The tone of the imaginative literature of modern Turkey is very tender and very sad. The Ottoman poets of to-day love chiefly to dwell upon such themes as a fading flower, or a girl dying of decline; and though admiration of a recent French school may have something to do with this, the fancy forces itself upon us, when we read those sweet and plaintive verses, that a brave but gentle-hearted people, looking forward to its future without fear, but without hope, may be seeking, perhaps unconsciously, to derive what sad comfort it may from the thought that all beautiful life must end in dismal death.” I have met some of these modern Turkish poets, very manly fellows, though their work has the melancholy tinge described above, for which, in my opinion, a long political exile in a foreign land and sorrows for the evil fortunes of their beloved country are largely responsible. But now the days of Turkey’s mourning are over, and the more recent poems of these men, who are sturdy patriots and not decadents, are beginning to reflect the triumph, enthusiasm, and hope which have characterised the Young Turks since their successful revolt against the despotism.

CHAPTER II
ATROCITIES

SUCH are the people who but recently were spoken of as the “unspeakable Turks.” For thirty years they have suffered from the crudest of tyrannies and have met with but scant sympathy in Western Europe; for it was “their double misfortune,” to quote the words of a writer in the Times, “to be oppressed and to be compelled to bear the odium of the cruelty of the oppressor. Their fine qualities were obscured to the world. Their name was a byword for cruelty, violence, and fanaticism.” In England, if one attempted to defend the Turk, one was regarded as a cold-blooded villain by a great many good people. A considerable section of the English lost their sense of fair play so soon as the Turkish question became at the same time a pawn in our party politics and an excitant of religious bigotry; for one political party became avowedly anti-Turkish, while numbers of well-meaning but unjust Christian people approached the subject from the point of view which made a Mussulman appear everything that is vile, and so espoused the cause of Turkey’s Christian enemies as being of necessity the right one. It was the same sort of sectarian narrow-mindedness that impelled well-known preachers—not members of the English State Church to pray from their pulpits for the success of the Americans in their war with Spain, because Spain was Catholic and the “land of the Inquisition.” Thus it came about when Turkey’s Christian subjects rebelled in the seventies and the Russians came to their assistance, the Turks were held up to opprobrium as fiends in human shape, the murderers, violators, and mutilators of the gentle Christians. Any piece of evidence, second-hand or third-hand, however extravagant, was implicitly believed by these people provided it was against the Turks, whereas whenever charges of committing atrocities were brought against Russians and Bulgarians by the most trustworthy eye-witnesses a very different standard of evidence was set up, and it was held to be incredible that Christians could do these things.

Yet what were the facts? In the first place, there can be no doubt that Russia, bent on the destruction of Turkey and aggrandisement at her expense, had stirred the Bulgarians into rebellion by means of agents provocateurs. Travellers who visited Bulgaria in the years preceding the Russo-Turkish war state that the Bulgarian peasantry were more prosperous than any in Turkey. It is unlikely that they would have risen of their own accord, seeing that they had good reason to be grateful to the Turks, who had come to their rescue when their persecuting Greek fellow-Christians had set themselves to exterminate the Bulgarian Church, language, and nationality. In the next place, it is now realised that the Christians and not the Turks initiated the atrocities. The Bulgarians, when they rose, plundered and burnt the villages of the Turks, committed the most shocking cruelties, and massacred unarmed Moslem men, women, and children. There is good evidence to show that the Turkish regular troops behaved with consideration to the Christian population until their passions were roused by the barbarities committed by the Bulgarians and Russian Cossacks; then indeed the Turks, exasperated by the sufferings of their co-religionists, engaged in terrible reprisals which aroused the indignation of the civilised world. Ferocious when provoked by the cruelty of others, the Turks are the last people to engage in wanton cruelty, and those who like myself have seen their armies in time of war can vouch for their humane treatment of prisoners and of the civil population in an enemy’s country. It must be remembered, too, that the worst atrocities proved against the Turks in Bulgaria were committed not by Turkish regulars but by fanatical Circassians and by the Bashi-Bazouks, ill-disciplined irregulars recruited from the criminals and ne’er-do-wells of any races, detested by the Turks themselves for their excesses.

The evil name thus acquired by the Turk during the war with Russia stuck to him through the years that followed, and ignorant, prejudice has been wont to put down to him all the cruel deeds committed by the Palace Camarilla, including the terrible Armenian massacres, which were perpetrated, not by the Turks—who regarded these crimes with loathing—but by the savage Kurds and Lazes, at the instigation of those who misruled the unfortunate country. In many ways the Turks have suffered more from the oppressive despotism than their Christian fellow-subjects, but all the sympathy of our humanitarians has been for the latter, and they had little pity or sympathy to spare for the Mussulman. Of late years the political intriguers in Athens, Sofia, and Belgrade have been supporting bands of Christian brigands in Macedonia, with the object of forwarding the rival interests of the Greeks, Bulgarians, and Servians, in anticipation of the scramble over the partition of that rich country on the breaking up of the Ottoman Empire. These bands have been burning villages and murdering women and children, their excesses being committed against both Christians and Turks. In April, 1908, a Bulgarian band burnt a Greek priest at the stake. The incident aroused no comment. What a howl would have been raised had the Mussulmans done this thing!

So the Christian had plenty of friends and the Turk few. No voices were raised to defend him and to explain the injustice that was done him. Neither was he the man to put his own case before his European critics; for the Turk is better with the sword than with the pen; he is not so cunning as Greek or Bulgarian in carrying on a newspaper campaign, or in the weaving of effective misrepresentations; as a rule he is too proud to defend himself against calumny, and treats with silent contempt those who snarl at him. Moreover the Turk, being essentially a patriot, would not appeal for help to foreign Governments as did the Christians. To quote from an article recently written by Halil Halid: “The Mussulmans suffered as much as, indeed in many places more than, the Christians, from a despotic régime. They had submitted, not to the will of their rulers, but to their hard fate, because Turkish patriotism, which has not until recently received fitting attention, was too great to allow them to invite outside interference or help in the national struggle against native tyranny. Never despairing of gaining their end, the people of Turkey have waited for an opportune moment to strike a blow at the foundations of despotism, and this promptly and with the least possible risk of international complications. They have thus submitted to the indignities and hardships caused by the tyranny of their own rulers, rather than expose themselves to the patronising interference of any foreign Power.”

There are thus excuses for the misunderstanding that poisoned the minds of so many Englishmen against their former friends, the Turks. Greeks, Bulgarians, and others who sought the dismemberment of Turkey and the appropriation of Macedonia voiced their cause loudly, not only with just denunciations of the Turkish oppression of the Christians, but with many plausible inventions. That the Turkish side of the question was so rarely heard was also largely due to the fact that, during the few years preceding the revolution, it became ever more difficult for Englishmen in Turkey to have friendly intercourse with the Turks themselves. The intervention of the English Government to introduce reforms into Turkey, and the action of the Balkan and Armenian Committees, which were wrongly believed by the Sultan and his advisers—and appear still to be believed by all Germans and Austrians—to be the agents in advance of the perfidious English Government, so intensified the hatred of the Turkish despotism against England that it was practically made a crime for a Turk, especially if he was suspected of Liberal tendencies, to receive an Englishman into his house. If a Turk was even seen to speak to an Englishman in Constantinople the spies reported the fact to the Palace; and, as I shall explain later, to manifest sympathy for the British cost many a Turk his life and liberty. Thus the intelligent tourist, or the globe-trotting M.P., who visited Constantinople in those days was not in a position to pick up accurate information. His doings and goings would probably be watched by spies, especially if he was a member of the Balkan Committee. Though he knew it not, he would find no opportunity of conversing with Turks save such as were the secret agents of the Palace. His dragomans would be Greeks or Armenians, who might speak to him of the grievances of the Christian subjects of the Sultan, but certainly not of the grievances of the Turks. So, too, was it with most of the journalists. If they were anti-Turks they sought information from the members of the Greek and Bulgarian bands, and if they were pro-Turks they were on friendly terms with officialdom—they had audiences with ministers, possibly with the Sultan himself; and as all Turks are very polite, they often left the audience-chamber charmed with despotism, and explained, in the papers they represented, that the Young Turk party was either a myth or a small and impotent group of malcontents, who, during a sojourn in Paris, had absorbed the wild theories of the internationalists and anarchists.

To drive the Turks “bag and baggage” out of Europe was the proclaimed policy of many ignorant humanitarians. The expulsion of the Turkish rule would indeed have been followed by a bag-and-baggage exodus, for but a small minority of Mussulmans would have remained in the land to be governed by a Christian race. In former years Russia and Austria were regarded as the probable inheritors of the “Sick Man’s” European territories, and it is certain that the rule of either of these would be intolerable to the Turks. One remembers how the Circassian and Bosnian Mussulmans emigrated in large numbers into Turkey when their countries were occupied respectively by the Russians and Austrians. These emigrations were accompanied by great suffering and loss of life, due largely to the incapacity and callousness of the Turkish Government, which, while undertaking to found colonies of the refugees in Asia Minor, Mesopotamia, and other parts of the Empire, practically left them to starve. The humanitarians would have realised the cruelty of their proposal had they seen, as I did, the pitiful sights in Northern Albania thirty years ago. The Bosnian Mussulman peasants, escaping from the rule of Austria, were pouring into that portion of Turkish territory. Men, women, and children were slowly crawling across the snow-covered country in the bitter winter weather, weak and listless with hunger and cold, often frost-bitten, hundreds of them failing by the way, so that it was a common thing to see frozen corpses lying by the roadside. The Albanians themselves were in a half-starving condition after the ravages of the war, and could render little assistance to the wretched refugees. Under the bag-and-baggage scheme there would be an exodus of millions and unimaginable suffering. Had Europe committed this crime the retribution might have been heavy. The Sultan would still have been the Caliph of the Moslem world, and the Turks, driven into Asia, might have reformed their Government and set their house in order, even as they are doing now; but the Turkish awakening, instead of taking its present form, would have taken that of Pan-Islamism—the combination against the Christians of all the Mussulman peoples.

The humane bag-and-baggage proposal would have meant the expulsion of nearly half the population of Turkey and the replacement of the Turkish by some other rule. But the Russianisation or Germanisation of the Balkan Peninsula would have been more disagreeable to the Christian population than even the domination of the Turk, while it would have been impossible to divide the country among the neighbouring states in such a way as to satisfy the inhabitants. In the peninsula are jumbled up remnants of every race and creed, not collected into separate districts, but intermingling with each other, hating each other, jealous of each other—Servians dreaming of the larger Servia, Bulgarians of the larger Bulgaria, Greeks of the larger Greece—their territorial claims, based upon race distinctions, all overlapping each other; an entanglement of rival rights and interests impossible of unravelment. Neither of these Christian races would submit to be ruled by the other. For example, there can be no doubt that a Bulgarian would rather be governed by the Moslem Turk than by the Greek. And amid all these races, more numerous than any of them taken singly, are the ruling Turks, who own the fee simple of the land by the best of titles, conquest. They are the strong race whose bearing is in strong contrast to the servility of some of the races in their midst. They are the masterly people fit to rule the others; for whatever peace fanatics may say, only people ready to fight bravely in defence of their possessions are fit to own possessions. We have not arrived at the state of civilisation when it can be otherwise. Even our humanitarians, who unknown to themselves have some of the old Adam in them, respect those who can use the sword; for whereas they sympathise with the aspirations of the plucky Bulgarians they pay little heed to the Greeks, who, though the noisiest of the claimants to Turkey’s heritage and having vast pretensions which extend to every piece of territory in Europe and Asia that ever belonged to any of the states of ancient Greece, are among the feeblest people in the world in the practice of war.

It needs a strong rule to keep the rival Christian sects of the Balkan Peninsula in order and to prevent them from cutting each other’s throats, lopping off each other’s ears, and burning each other’s priests. The Turks can provide that strong rule; and if we add to the Turks the Mussulmans of other race in the country—Albanians, Moslem Bulgarians, Circassians, and others—we have nearly half the total population united by a common religion, as the Christians certainly are not. The Young Turks may now prove that Lord Palmerston, after all, was right when he said that the rule of the Mussulman Turk was the only one that could combine the different races and sects of Turkey in one kingdom. The Turks have no ambition to recover the territory which they have lost, but they are determined to hold on to what still remains to them. With a strong Turkey, in close alliance with a federation of the Slav states to the north of her, we may yet see a quiet and contented Balkan Peninsula.

CHAPTER III
EARLY REFORMERS

IT is about a century ago that Western ideas began to influence the better Turkish statesmen and efforts were made to reform the system of government and bring it into harmony with modern civilisation. Mahmud II, who came to the throne in 1808, and his successor, Abd-ul-Mejid, who died in 1861, were wise and reforming monarchs, who were advised by enlightened statesmen such as Reshid Pasha, at whose instance, in 1839, the edict known as the Hatti-Sherif of Gulhane was promulgated. This edict, which has been called the Magna Charta of Turkey, promised many useful administrative and judicial reforms, and secured to the Christian as well as Mussulman subjects of the Sultan security for their lives, honour, and property. Again, in 1856, after the Crimean war, the Hatti Houmaioum Firman announced among other things the complete equality in the eyes of the law of the Christians and Mussulmans in Turkey. I need scarcely say that these solemn engagements have been wholly ignored by Turkey’s recent rulers.

In 1861, on the death of Abd-ul-Mejid, Abd-ul-Aziz succeeded to the throne of Othman. He was assisted by a group of patriotic and able statesmen, among whom were Fuad Pasha, Rushdi Pasha, Aali Pasha, and Midhat Pasha; and for the first ten years of his reign he ruled his country well. He made the Turkish navy one of the most formidable in Europe; he organised the army that fought so stubbornly at Plevna; justice was administered, and the press was free to criticise the Government. But this promising monarch, unfortunately for his country, broke away from the tutelage of wise men and fell under the influence of evil advisers. On the death of Aali Pasha in 1872, Mahmud Nedim Pasha, a man who was fanatically anti-European and uneducated, became the chief adviser of the Sultan, and was soon created Grand Vizier. The character of the Sultan seemed now to undergo a complete change; his policy became retrograde and reactionary; he drove from his side the good and wise and surrounded himself with corrupt parasites, who were in many cases the ready tools of Ignatieff; for the Russian diplomacy had gained the ascendency in Constantinople, and, as usual, was employed in intriguing against the party of reform and organising the disruption of the Ottoman Empire.

And now commenced that final struggle between the Palace and the Sublime Porte which has resulted in the overthrow of the Despotism. The Sultan, though the absolute head of the Church and State, had hitherto left the administration of the Empire to his Cabinet of Ministers chosen by himself, whose office is known as the Sublime Porte. Abd-ul-Aziz attempted to break down this system, and to centre in himself the entire rule of the country; soon the ministers became mere puppets, and the Palace was made paramount. The Sultan assumed the complete control of the Treasury, and refused to give any account of the public revenues which he wasted. He contracted loans in Europe under onerous conditions that endangered the very independence of the Empire.

The patriots among the Turkish statesmen, who had been cast out from all direction of public affairs, almost despaired of their country, and the risings in Herzegovina and Bosnia, presaging European intervention, seemed to many to be the beginning of the end. The great Midhat Pasha, whom the Young Turks speak of as the first martyr of their cause, had the temerity to seek a two-hours’ private audience of the Sultan, and pointed out to him with such forcible eloquence the corruption of his administration, the incapacity of his Grand Vizier, and the certain destruction to which he was dragging his country, that Abd-ul-Aziz was terrified, his eyes were for a moment opened, and he saw the dreadful truth; so deposing Mahmud Nedim he appointed Midhat and Rushdi as his principal ministers and advisers. For three months only these reforming statesmen were left in power, for Midhat Pasha was suddenly disgraced because he had expressed indignation when a favourite odalisque of the monarch had sent a negro to him to ask him to appoint one of her servants to a provincial vice-governorship. The system of Mahmud Nedim was reintroduced; things went from bad to worse; justice became openly venal; ranks in the services were sold by Palace favourites; the entire administration became grossly corrupt and disorganised; and at last, in 1875, the Turkish Government had to declare itself insolvent.

Turks who had the welfare of their country at heart felt that it was necessary to put a forcible end to this state of things. On May 22, 6000 Softas, the theological students attached to the mosques, invaded the Sublime Porte and clamoured for the deposition of the Grand Vizier, while some thousands of others demonstrated in front of the Palace. The Sultan, terrified, yielded to these demands, deposed Mahmud Nedim, recalled Rushdi Pasha; and a Cabinet of reforming statesmen, including Midhat Pasha, was formed. Then came the famous coup d’état. The ministers, having reason to doubt the good faith of the monarch, decided to depose him. In the night of May 30, 1876, the Palace was surrounded by troops, the Chief Eunuch was called up and was ordered to awake his master and hand him the fetva, or decree of the Sheikh-ul-Islam, Hairoullah Effendi, in his capacity of chief expounder of the sacred law, a decree to which even a Sultan must submit. The fetva was set forth in the form of a question and answer as follows: “If the Head of the Believers has so lost his reason as to ruin the State, which God has confided to his care, by foolish expenditure, by wild caprices, and if the continuation of this misrule is likely to bring on a situation which will destroy the sacred interests of the country, is it permissible to leave that man at the head of affairs, or ought one to deprive him of his power? The answer is, that he ought to be deprived of his power.” Thus the Sheikh-ul-Islam, in the name of the Mohammedan religion, approved of the revolution of 1876, even as did another Sheikh-ul-Islam declare himself in favour of the recent Young Turk revolution and the granting of the Constitution. It is important to remember that despotism is not (as many suppose that it is) in accord with the teachings of the Koran, and that constitutional government ought not to be acceptable to good Mussulmans. Islam, as the Young Turks point out, condemns tyranny and encourages peoples to rule themselves. The following, for example, are passages from the Koran which have been much quoted in Turkey of late: “God loveth not tyrants”; “When a people direct their affairs by consulting among themselves they shall get their reward.”

So Abd-ul-Aziz was deposed and Murad V became Sultan in his place. The new monarch issued a proclamation by which he promised to carry out the reforms advocated by his minister, Midhat Pasha; and the well-wishers of Turkey rejoiced. But unhappy Turkey was not to be freed yet, and an event happened that turned hope into despair. Four days after his deposition Abd-ul-Aziz either committed suicide or was assassinated in the palace to which he had been removed. If he was murdered, he who committed the crime must have been the greatest enemy of Turkey, and none of the ministers could have had anything to do with a deed that upset all their plans for the regeneration of their country. So soon as Abd-ul-Aziz was found dead his Circassian aide-de-camp, Hassan, rushed to Midhat Pasha’s house, where the ministers were assembled, and assassinated two of these whom Turkey could ill spare, Avni Pasha and Rechid Pasha. This succession of tragic events so shook the weak mind of the new Sultan that he became hopelessly insane. After a reign of only three months it became necessary to depose him, and the legitimate heir, his brother, Abdul Hamid, the present Sultan of Turkey, ascended the throne in the autumn of 1876.

Abdul Hamid, however, was not permitted to grasp the sceptre until he had signed a document by which he undertook to grant a Constitution to his people and to rule with justice. Indeed, he was ready to make any promises, and accepted without reserve the liberal principles of Midhat Pasha and the reformers. No one in Turkey believes that he was sincere, and Sefer Bey recounts in La Revue how, on the very day of his succession, Abdul Hamid, on his return to the Palace, after having gone through the traditional ceremony of buckling on the sword of Othman, spoke in the following words to a well-known Turkish general of his entourage: “It is Reshid Pasha who is responsible for everything that has happened; it is that great criminal who made my father sign that accursed firman under the pressure of Europe, and by giving stupid illusions to the Turkish people has led them into wrong ways. The government which our nation needs is an absolute despotism, and not the pernicious régime of liberty which Europe practises. I shall know how to put order in the ideas of the people, but before all, I must make my position secure and get rid of the wretches who deposed my uncle.”

At the opening of the new reign, however, the reformers looked to the future with hope. Midhat Pasha was appointed Prime Minister, and began to work out his scheme for the regeneration of Turkey. He framed his Constitution, which established the equality of all races and creeds, and took steps to crush the rebellion in European Turkey that was threatening to bring about a European war. Midhat was beloved by educated and patriotic Turks, and was strongly supported by the people; his position seemed unassailable. But before he had been four months on the throne Abdul Hamid struck his first blow at liberty, and showed what manner of man he was. Midhat was suddenly summoned to the Palace, and on arriving there was informed that his exile had been determined upon and that he must forthwith board a vessel that was awaiting him in the Bosphorus with steam up, and betake himself beyond the confines of the Ottoman Empire. Then the Sultan set himself to put out of the way the other men who had taken a part in the deposition of Abd-ul-Aziz. Rushdi Pasha and the Sheikh-ul-Islam were exiled to remote parts of the Empire, while many less distinguished Liberals disappeared, being either killed or imprisoned.

Midhat Pasha, the greatest of the Turkish reformers, as an exile, lived in several European capitals, studied on the spot the principles of decent government, and formed plans for the amelioration of the condition of his unfortunate country when the opportunity should arrive. The Sultan appears to have come to the conclusion that his ex-Grand Vizier might be as dangerous to the Despotism while in Europe as he had been in Turkey. A plot, the details of which are well known, was laid to bring about Midhat’s destruction. He was led to believe that the Sultan had repented of his injustice, had come to see the errors of his illiberal policy, and desired that the able statesman should return to Turkey to give his valuable assistance in the reorganisation of the Empire. So, after a long exile, Midhat, accepting a treacherous invitation, came back to his native land, and was made Governor of Syria. Shortly after his appointment he was denounced to the Palace by false accusers, who were prepared to prove that Abd-ul-Aziz had been assassinated by Midhat’s orders. After an iniquitous trial, by judges who pretended to credit the obvious inventions of suborned witnesses, he was found guilty, and as it might have been dangerous to execute a man so much beloved and respected, he was condemned to imprisonment in a fortress in Arabia. There he was treated with great inhumanity and deprived of all the comforts and some of the necessaries of life. As his strong constitution resisted these privations for three years, he was strangled in May, 1884, by order of his persecutors, and his head was sent to the Palace, so that there should be no doubt about his death.

The Sultan had rid himself of all the chief friends of liberty immediately after his accession to the throne, but, cautious and fearful by nature, he took no further immediate steps to impose absolute despotism upon his people. Mainly with the object of hoodwinking England and winning her good-will at the critical period preceding the outbreak of the war with Russia, he proclaimed the Constitution of Midhat Pasha, and a Turkish Parliament was allowed to meet. The Sultan imposed his will upon the Parliament and reduced it to impotence; but there were many patriotic deputies who spoke their minds freely and defied the monarch’s wrath. At last, in February, 1878, shortly before the conclusion of the treaty of peace with Russia at St. Stephano, the Sultan dissolved both Houses, and, with pretended reluctance, suspended the Constitution. He next proceeded to deprive the Sublime Porte of all power and to make the Palace supreme. The ministers became mere puppets, whose submission was bought by the license that was allowed to them to embezzle the public funds. The control of the army and navy, of foreign affairs, of the finances of the Empire, every branch of the administration, the appointment of every official were in the hands of the Sovereign and his corrupt Camarilla. Having a pampered Prætorian Guard to enforce his will, he held Constantinople under martial law. It was a reign of terror; he spared none who were not for him. From the dissolution of Turkey’s first Parliament in 1878 until the proclamation of the Constitution in 1908 Turkey was oppressed by one of the most demoralising and destructive tyrannies that the world has known. For the Ottoman Empire those thirty years were the most unhappy and disastrous of its long history.

CHAPTER IV
THE SPREAD OF CORRUPTION

THE sultan’s policy was directed by a narrow fanaticism. It is possible that he sincerely believed that a cruel despotism was the best rule for Turkey. He hated the Christians, and it was his ambition to realise the dream of the Pan-Islamites, to gather together round himself as the Caliph all the followers of the faith of whatever race, so as to form a strong political-religious confederation of Moslems that should keep in check the aggressions of Europe and liberate Mussulman peoples now subject to the Christians. It was his aim, too, to withdraw all such rights as his predecessors had granted to the Christian subjects of Turkey and to revoke the irritating privileges which the Capitulations had given to foreigners within Turkish territory—not in themselves ignoble designs, but which were prosecuted by such ignoble methods as nearly to destroy instead of to strengthen the Moslem supremacy in Turkey.

It is not necessary here to follow the history of Turkey under the Hamidian régime. How, defeated in war, she was bereft of vast and rich territories; how the splendid navy, created by Abd-ul-Aziz, was allowed to fall into decay, so that when Turkey was at war with Greece in 1897, she found herself with not a single ship that could be made fit to put to sea; how her fine army was starved and neglected, so that it became demoralised and helpless to defend her against her foes; how corruption and the wholesale appropriation of public moneys by the creatures of the Palace brought her finances into so hopeless a condition that she was tied hand and foot by her foreign creditors, and had therefore to submit to the control of several departments of her internal administration by commissions appointed by the Christian Powers; how justice was bought and sold, and promotion in all the services was awarded to the parasite or the highest bidder; how, in consequence of the massacres of Christians and the impotence of her Government to maintain order, Turkish patriots were humiliated by seeing a foreign gendarmerie forced upon her by the Powers; how, in short, Turkey became so weak and effete that even to her friends her disintegration appeared to be the inevitable end delayed only by the jealousy of the rival Powers, who, fearing for what is called “the balance of power” in Europe, bolstered up the “Sick Man” and professed a desire to preserve the integrity of the Ottoman Empire. All these things were regarded with dismay by the Turks, and precipitated the revolution against the Government responsible for the rapid decay of the nation; but in this chapter I will confine myself to an account of the particular forms which the despotic oppression of the Mussulman Turks assumed, until at last that oppression became so insupportable as to goad into rebellion not only the upper classes, but even the ignorant Turkish peasants, who, serving so patiently and bravely in the army, had hitherto been ever faithful with the faithfulness of a dog to the Sultan’s person.

The Sultan has proved himself to be in many respects a man of great strength of character and of exceptional ability; a subtle diplomatist, he was able to play the European Powers against each other; and he succeeded in the main object of his life, centralising all authority in himself at the cost of indefatigable personal labour, and making himself the supreme master of his country. He might indeed, with his sagacity, have been an excellent monarch of the despotic Oriental type, working for the good of his people, had it not been for one failing which grew into an obsession and brought much woe to Turkey, and this failing was fear. Abdul Hamid was haunted by a perpetual fear of assassination; he had no trusted friends, and suspected all men; and therefore cowardice, as is always the case, called in cruelty and oppression to protect itself. He subordinated the welfare of his country to his elaborate schemes for self-preservation. He deliberately weakened the Ottoman Empire, dividing it against itself, and demoralised his subjects so that there should be no element in the State or group of individuals strong enough to attempt his overthrow. Thus he stirred up strife between the different Christian sects and inflamed Mussulman fanaticism, so that populations which before his time had lived side by side in peace, tolerating if not loving each other, fell upon each other with sword and fire; and when his oppressed subjects rebelled he quenched their spirit with dreadful massacres.

So, too, was it in his dealings with individuals, in the selection of his creatures and in his treatment of them. A tyrant who is enslaving his country naturally looks upon honest patriots with suspicion as potential rebels. He cannot well employ the services of such men as his advisers and ministers. He also mistrusts ability, as giving a power to be dangerous. Thus Turkish gentlemen of the official class, who possessed distinction, brains, and probity, had very little share in the administration. The Camarilla of the Sultan was mainly composed of base and illiterate though cunning people; avaricious and unscrupulous parasites, of whom the most influential were not Turks, but Syrians, Arabs, and Circassians; men who, being devoid of true patriotism and having the attainment of wealth as their one aim, would have no reason for joining in a conspiracy against the Despotism. But the Sultan mistrusted even these ready instruments of his will. Having a profound knowledge of the evil side of human nature, he played off one creature against the other, made them jealous of each other, paid them to spy upon each other, prevented any sort of friendship between them, and governed them by terror. The Camarilla, selling public appointments, spread the poison of corruption that threatened to demoralise a whole people. To quote the words of a Young Turk writer: “There was left in Turkey but one ideal, but one opening for those who aspired, and that was to amass riches and spend them in gross sensual amusement. But, for the attainment of this, one had to declare oneself the spy of the Palace, and to give proofs of one’s servility by sacrificing father, mother, brother, friends, principles, conscience, all patriotic sentiments, and all humanity.”

It is wonderful that there were any honest men holding high positions during this period, but such there undoubtedly were, though these were for the most part narrow-minded fanatics who favoured Abdul Hamid’s Pan-Islamic schemes, and were pleased to co-operate with him in depriving the Christians of what liberties they possessed, and seizing pretexts to massacre them. But to the highest offices of the State, such as the Grand Vizierate, the Sultan found himself compelled at times, in self-defence, to appoint men of capacity and high character; especially so when, after happenings more iniquitous than usual, the relations between Turkey and the European Powers became dangerously strained. Thus Kiamil Pasha, concerning whose good work for his country I shall have to speak later, was several times Grand Vizier, to be deposed as soon as he could be dispensed with; for he was not the man to be obsequious to the despot, and he was not afraid of uttering disagreeable truths. On the whole, however, conspicuous ability became a disqualification for office in Turkey; and for a public man to be popular was a crime.

In order to insure their blind obedience to him as the Padisha, it was Abdul Hamid’s aim to keep his Mussulman subjects in a state of ignorance. He knew that the liberal ideas of modern Europe had been planted in Turkey, and he determined to uproot them, or at any rate prevent their spread. He endeavoured, not without some success, to cut Turkey off from the influence of Western progress. His subjects, with certain exceptions, were not permitted to travel in foreign countries, and even their goings to and fro within the Empire were regarded with suspicion. It has been suggested that he allowed his navy to rot because he feared lest his sailors should be inoculated with ideas about liberty while visiting Western ports; at any rate, he appears to have connived at the embezzlement by his Minister of Marine of ten millions sterling, which were to have been devoted to naval expenditure. Realising, however, that the preservation of the Empire depended upon the reorganisation of his army, the Sultan was compelled to provide for the education of his officers, some of whom were sent to Germany and other foreign countries, while thousands were passed through the Turkish military schools in Turkey itself, where they were instructed by European teachers. Officers thus trained, however, were looked upon as somewhat dangerous, and were attached to the Army Corps in various parts of the Empire, but not to that portion of the Turkish army which guards Constantinople, the centre of the Despotism, and the Sultan’s person; for there the pampered fanatical troops, faithful to their master, were officered by men who had risen from the ranks, some of whom could not even read, but who could be relied upon to carry out the orders given to them by the Palace.

All progress was paralysed by the fear that ruled at the Palace. The introduction of typewriters and telephones as being of possible use to conspirators was prohibited. The Press had no liberty; the strictest censorship was exercised over all printed matter that came into Turkey. To be found in possession of a work of Herbert Spencer’s, for example, would mean imprisonment. The censor would not consent to the production of “Hamlet” in the theatre, because in that play the killing of a monarch is represented on the stage.

Under the Hamidian régime there was of course no recognition of the inviolability of the domicile. The houses of educated Turks were frequently broken into by the police in search of forbidden literature. To such an extent was the right of public meeting denied, that it was not safe for three or four friends to sit and chat together in a café. A Turk could not give a dinner-party in his own house without the permission of the authorities, and even if he obtained that permission, some police agent would likely as not be sent to sit at his table, as an uninvited and most unwelcome guest, taking mental notes of the conversation and smelling out conspiracies.

It was altogether a hideous system that naturally bred all manner of tyrants, great and petty, who being the creatures of the Palace were enabled to oppress the people with impunity. There was, for example, the infamous Fehim Pasha, chief of the secret police, who abused his official authority to gratify his every whim and passion, plundering and blackmailing those whose possessions aroused his avarice, killing those who stood in his way, and, whenever his fancy was attracted, forcibly carrying off to his harem the wives and daughters of peaceable citizens—a wretch so hated that so soon as the Constitution was announced, the mob at Broussa, fearing him no longer, fell upon him and tore him to pieces.

Then there was the great army of paid informers who preyed upon the people. The system of espionage, which Abdul Hamid in his fear devised to protect himself against conspiracy and assassination, was so oppressive and cruel in its working as to render almost insupportable the lives of such of his subjects as were regarded as suspects on account of their good birth, enlightenment, patriotism, or honourable character. The expenditure on this espionage sometimes amounted to as much as $10,000,000 a year. The spies were everywhere, and were of every rank and condition. Ministers were paid to spy on each other. A man’s house-servants, the Greek hotel-waiter who brought him his cup of coffee, the Armenian dragoman who guided the simple foreign tourist, were paid to watch and listen and send their reports to the Palace. Spies would gain a man’s friendship, worm themselves into his confidence, and then denounce him. People were sometimes betrayed by their own relations. All the social relationships of the family, the military college, the regiment, and the navy were undermined; for if the Palace suspected a man it would spare no effort to buy the treason of those nearest to him. There was an atmosphere of terror and universal distrust. When the spy system was introduced into the army it destroyed all esprit de corps. It became known that there were spies among the officers of every unit, whose business it was to watch their brother officers; with the result that there was no comradeship even among officers of the same regiment, each suspecting the other of being the secret agent of the Palace; they never messed together, and in many cases had never spoken to each other.

And even the spies themselves had other spies set to spy upon them by the all-suspicious ruler. The Sultan’s spies were in every foreign capital—sometimes working with its secret police—to keep an eye upon the exiles and seek evidence to entrap friends of theirs in Turkey who might be in communication with them. And from this great army of spies a flood of denunciations poured into the Palace. The denunciations were well paid for, so the supply never failed, even when the terrorised people avoided any conduct that could be construed into a political offence. Agents provocateurs incited men to acts that would afford ground for accusation. The spies did not hesitate to bear false testimony against the innocent, and, as in the case of Midhat Pasha, the creatures of the Palace, when desirous of ruining some individual, employed wretches to trump up the tale that would condemn him. A friend of mine suffered long imprisonment because the secret police searched his house and there pretended to find compromising papers which they themselves had forged. It is scarcely necessary to add that vile people availed themselves of the system to levy blackmail by threatening denunciation.

The denounced were often condemned without any pretence of a legal trial. Many of the best men in the country disappeared from their families never to return, their fate the oubliette, or death by the cord, or the traditional dropping into the Bosphorus of a sack containing the victim. Exile or imprisonment for a term of years were the punishments awarded for minor indiscretions—chance words expressing disapproval of the methods of the Palace, or the possession of a foreign paper of liberal views. People were tortured in the Palace to betray their friends and relations. Thousands of families in Turkey have had to mourn members torn away after denunciations by the spies. After the proclamation of the Constitution about seventy thousand exiles returned to Turkey from remote parts of the Empire (the Siberias of Turkey) and from foreign countries, and how many thousands have been put to death or have died in captivity no man can tell.

I may mention here that during the latter years of the Hamidian régime many Turks were denounced and suffered because they manifested friendship for the English. The Turks are not a fickle people, and despite the thirty years’ aloofness of the English through misconceptions regarding the Turkish people, the Turks themselves have ever remained faithful to their old friends, and the present enthusiasm for England is no passing wave. But the Palace hated the British Government which had attempted to force reforms upon Turkey, and it suspected all Englishmen of sharing the views of the Balkan Committee. On the other hand, German influence became ascendant at the Palace about twelve years ago, and remained so until the overthrow of the Despotism; for German diplomacy is not sentimental; it did not worry the Palace with humanitarian pressure for the sake of securing the better government of the unfortunate subjects of the Sultan; and it even assisted the Porte to thwart the efforts of the other Powers. Its main object was to further German commercial interests. The German Embassy in Constantinople squeezed concessions out of the Turkish Government by curious methods, and knew well how to make use of Palace intrigues and corrupt officialism. Helped by their Government, German syndicates, with cynical disregard of the fact that they were hurrying the country to its ruin, worked in league with those in the Palace, who were ready to betray their fatherland for a bribe, and secured the Baghdad railway concession with its iniquitous kilometric guarantee, and other privileges, on terms far more onerous for Turkey than could have been obtained from other quarters, thus burdening the country with unfair obligations, which now cripple her efforts for reform and reorganisation.

But I must not digress into the tortuous ways of Turkish finance, which is outside the scope of this book. Suffice it to say that German influence at the Palace undoubtedly intensified the Sultan’s hatred of England, and the obsequious spies received their cue. The English in Turkey were in no wise molested, but they were declared taboo by the authorities. For a Turk even to be seen talking to an Englishman was dangerous. Turks feared to look towards the English Embassy as they passed it. They were forbidden to visit certain English establishments, such as the English book-shop in Pera, and the quaint old inn in Galata, built long ago by the Genoese, where, with a retired British sea-captain as host, naval officers, British and Turkish, had been wont to foregather in good fellowship. The spies were busily employed in denouncing such Turks as were supposed to be Anglophil. A friend of mine, who at that time held a good appointment and enjoyed a large income, was reported by the spies as having intrigued to bring the British fleet to Constantinople. He was imprisoned for five years. He was released with all other political prisoners after the successful revolution, and came back to the world to find himself penniless; to learn that his wife, having first become blind from unceasing weeping, had died practically in a starving condition, and that his children were living on charity.

It ought not to be forgotten by Englishmen that when they were engaged in their last war with the Boers, and all Europe was reviling them, the Turks alone—and notably those of the educated classes who now rule the country as the Young Turk party—were in sympathy with them, and some of them suffered in consequence. A number of young officers of the army and navy, and others, put their names to a document in which they expressed their hope that the British arms would prove successful in South Africa, and this they carried to the British Embassy to present to the English Ambassador. The Palace heard of this; the spies were set to work to ascertain what names appeared upon the incriminating document, and one by one every one of these men disappeared, being snatched up to be put into prison, or to be sent into exile. One of these young officers, Sirret Bey, escaped from those who arrested him, hid himself for some time in the guise of a cook in the British Consulate, and is now one of the leading members of the Committee of Union and Progress in Salonika.

This dreadful system of espionage and the suppression of all intellectual liberty fell harder on the educated Mussulmans than on the Christian subjects of the Sultan, for despotism had no such fear of the Greek or Armenian as it had of the patriotic Turk, and the Christians therefore were not so closely watched and had more chance of public appointment. The Christians also had one important advantage over the Mussulman Turks in so much as their privileges allowed them to establish schools uncontrolled by the State, which provided a more liberal education than was possible in the Moslem schools. It can be readily understood, therefore, how patriotic Turks of the upper and middle classes, ground down under this tyranny that gave them no voice in the administration and placed over them mean men who were hurrying the country to its destruction, were prepared to join in any movement that promised a fair chance of overthrowing the Hamidian régime.

It is also easy to understand that the Christians, who during this reign were deprived of some of their ancient rights, who were treated with a more galling contumely than ever before, as a subject and despised people, and lived in perpetual dread of massacre and outrage, welcomed the revolution that placed them on an equality with the Mussulmans; but how it came to pass that the Despotism became so intolerable to the masses of the Turkish people as to excite to rebellion even the patient, religious Moslem peasants, who had hitherto revered the Sultan as their spiritual ruler as well as their monarch, and had been blindly and fanatically obedient to his will, requires some explanation. The thrifty, hard-working Turkish peasants suffered as much as the Christians from the evils of the administration; they paid the same heavy taxes, and, like their Christian neighbours, they were cheated by the tax-collectors, being often illegally mulcted and most harshly treated by petty tyrants. The provincial officials did not receive their pay regularly, and so recouped themselves by corrupt practices. Thus the rich, by paying bribes, succeeded in many cases in avoiding taxation altogether, and many unfair exemptions were allowed; with the result that in some places nearly all the burden of taxation fell upon the poor. The peasants were shrewd enough to perceive that the money thus wrung from them did not produce any good for themselves or their country, but went to enrich the ruling clique, and that Constantinople swallowed up the huge sums that were collected in every part of the Empire. They knew that there were Ministries established in costly palaces and maintaining a large number of well-paid officials, while the result of this extravagant expenditure was not anywhere to be seen. Thus there was a Ministry of Public Works, but there were no roads or irrigation works; a Ministry of Police, but no protection of life and property; a Ministry of Justice, and no justice; a Ministry of War, and a starved army.

But the stoical Mussulman peasants, whose faithfulness is as that of a dog, were loth to think ill of their Sultan, and they put the blame upon his Ministers as doing wrong without his knowledge. Oppression and unjust taxation by themselves would not have driven these people into revolt, and the Young Turk movement would have had small chance of success, had not Abdul Hamid neglected to secure—what would have been so easy to secure—the continued fidelity and affection of his army, of which the splendid peasantry of the country form the backbone. I have explained that the Sultan was careful to pamper the Albanian and other regiments that were stationed in Constantinople to protect his person, overawe the city, and preserve the Despotism; and he saw to it that these men duly received their pay, were well fed and properly clothed. But with this exception the military administration of the Empire was left wholly in the hands of the Palace favourites, who, with their characteristic greed and total lack of patriotic sentiment, enriched themselves at the expense of the national defence and, with a callous indifference to the sufferings of the men, practically starved the army.

In Turkey, the burden of obligatory service is placed exclusively on the Mussulman population, the Christians up till now having enjoyed complete exemption, in return for which they have paid a small poll-tax. The Turkish soldier is among the toughest as well as the bravest in the world, and he will undergo great hardships uncomplainingly; but there are limits even to his endurance. It would be difficult to exaggerate the pitiable condition of these fine troops, as I have often seen them in provincial garrisons and posts in the days of the old régime. They never received their full rations; sometimes they were in a starving condition; they were ill-clothed even when guarding the frontier through the hard Balkan winters; often in rags and tatters, with what remained of their uniforms supplemented with such native garments as they could pick up; their small pay was always in arrears; they were untrained and undisciplined—a pitiful waste of the finest military material in Europe; and the officers themselves irregularly paid, slovenly, because they had no means to procure the decencies of life, and estranged one from the other by the hateful spy system, were in no condition to inspire their men with the high spirit and esprit de corps that used to distinguish the Turkish army. But despite all this, when fighting had to be done these men remembered that they were Turkish soldiers, and fought well.

The Turkish soldier might even have put up with all this during his four years of service with the colours, for it takes much to rouse him to mutiny; but his oppression took one form that was intolerable to him and to his family; the iniquitous custom grew up of keeping him with the army for several years after his term of service had legally expired; and the reservists also, when called out for their periodical training, were not infrequently carried off to remote parts of the Empire and compelled to resume their military service for an indefinite time. The worst lot of all was that of regiments ordered to the Hedjaz or the Yemen. In those wild regions the wretched troops, ill-equipped, with wholly inadequate transport, and therefore always short of food, and generally provided with insufficient ammunition, had to carry on long campaigns against the rebel Arabs. They thus suffered great privations, and were not seldom defeated and massacred in consequence of the criminal negligence of Turkey’s rulers. Educated surgeons were rarely attached to these expeditions, and I have been assured by old soldiers, who had served in Arabia, that if a man was sick or wounded, so that he was unable to march, there was little chance for him, as there were no means for carrying him; and that in these circumstances the ignorant and ill-paid men who played the part of army doctors, after pretending to examine a man, would declare that he was in a dying condition, and had him buried in the sand while yet alive. It often happened, too, that soldiers in Arabia, when they did get their discharge—probably because they were unfit for further service—were refused transport back to Turkey on the Government ships, and, being penniless, had to remain in that alien land until charitable people, of whom there are happily plenty among the Turks, came to their rescue. A friend of mine, who was recently British consul in a Turkish port, after careful investigation in his particular district, found that not more than twenty per cent. of the soldiers who were sent to the Yemen returned to their homes. Whenever conscripts were carried away for service in that dreaded land there were piteous scenes, and crowds of wailing women would come to the ship’s side to bid a last farewell to the relatives whom they never expected to see again, and already mourned as dead.

Under this shocking system of military maladministration there was a great waste of Turkey’s young manhood. The rate of mortality in the army was excessive, and this was one of the principal causes of the standstill in the numbers of this, the finest peasantry in Europe, as compared with the rapid increase of the exempted Christian population. These conscripts, when they were torn from their homes, often left behind them wives and families dependent on them, so the whole Mussulman people suffered greatly through the vile treatment of the army, that was the best part of itself and in which every one had relatives; and at last it came about that even the faithful peasantry lost its loyalty, and, like the Moslems of the higher classes, was ready to rise and sweep away the intolerable Despotism.

CHAPTER V
THE SPREAD OF EDUCATION

FOR the last few years—that is, ever since the victorious war waged by Japan against Russia demonstrated to the peoples of the East that an Oriental country could break away from the conservative traditions that oppose progress, and make itself respected as one of the great civilised powers of the world—a remarkable growth of nationalism throughout Asia has attracted the close attention of observers in Europe. The East that gave the West its early civilisation is now taking its political ideals from the West. In India, China, Persia, and Egypt national parties have risen whose aim it is to free their countries either from native despotism or from European tutelage, and to introduce forms of self-government modelled on those of modern Europe. But though much has been written and said concerning the awakening of the populations of the above-mentioned countries, it is curious that there was no talk of any political movement in Turkey, the nearest to Europe of the Eastern nations, until July, 1907, when the world was suddenly amazed to learn that what appeared to be an unpremeditated military mutiny in Macedonia had compelled the Sultan to grant a Constitution to his country.

This Moslem revolution, that had been so long preparing and was so well organised, came as a complete surprise even to such European residents as knew the country best, including the Ambassadors of the Powers in Constantinople and their Consular representatives throughout the Empire. None of these gave any warning to their respective Governments of what was coming. None of the newspaper correspondents in Turkey, none of the globe-trotting M.P.s and members of the Balkan Committee who were seeking an understanding of Turkish affairs on the spot, had any inkling of the wide-spread conspiracy that was to upset the Despotism with its first blow. It had been long known, of course, that there existed a group of exiled politicians who called themselves the “Young Turkish Party.” But this party was not taken seriously, for its critics little knew that it represented all that was intelligent and enlightened in Turkey. It was regarded as a little band of mad anarchists, or at best of foolish visionaries. An ambassador described the movement as “innocuous,” while some regarded it as “bogus,” and denied even the virtue of sincerity to these patriots. It was written of them in an authoritative work that “a large proportion of them had gone into an exile with the express object of being persuaded to return,” that is, of being reclaimed by the Sultan’s bribes. An Englishman who has lived all his life in Turkey thus summed up his opinion: “The Young Turkey association—lacking, as it does, pecuniary resources, cohesion, definite purpose, and capable leaders, has not shown itself a formidable organisation.” Our humanitarian agitators had a complete misapprehension of the aim of the movement, and were apparently convinced that no good thing would come from the modern Turks. But the Young Turks all the while knew what they were about, what they wanted, and how to set to work to get it; and the organisation that for years was preparing the revolution worked so secretly as to conceal the importance of the movement from the Palace spies themselves.

No great political movement can be of sudden growth if it is going to meet with permanent success, and though the ultimate explosion may take by surprise those outside the movement, the revolution of a serious people is the result of long brooding and gradual development of opinion. From the time of the Sultan Mahmud II, who ascended the throne one hundred years ago, the better and more patriotic statesmen of Turkey have made efforts to bring the system of government into accord with the methods of advancing Europe. The influence of Western ideas made themselves felt throughout European Turkey, and began to modify the intellectual outlook, the ideals, and the social customs of the educated classes. The change, as I have pointed out in a previous chapter, was reflected in Turkish literature, which about forty years ago became Western in sentiment and style, and the literary language itself was modernised by a group of writers of whom Kemal Bey, historian, poet, philosopher, dramatist, and novelist, was pre-eminent, a genius whose works, published in Europe, were not allowed to enter Turkey during the Hamidian régime, but whose splendid war hymn, the “Silistria,” the penalty for singing which was formerly death, now has the same stirring effect upon the revolutionary Moslem crowds as had the “Marseillaise” upon the French. As the facilities for education, the schools and colleges, multiplied in Turkey, the thirst for scientific knowledge and the culture of Western Europe spread through the country, and with enlightenment and education naturally came the liberalism of the West and intellectual revolt against the paralysing influence of some time-honoured institutions and doctrines.

It is scarcely accurate in these days to speak of the Turks—as one often hears them spoken of—as the finest of Oriental races. The Turks have been five hundred years in Europe, during which they have intermarried largely with Europeans, and they are now to all intents and purposes Europeans, more so, indeed, than some of their neighbours on the continent of Europe itself, a fact which would be more generally recognised were it not for the barrier raised between them by the difference of religion. Thus it has come about that the modernist movement in Turkey is much more in touch with Western ideas than is that of the other awakening peoples of the East, who differ so much from Europeans in race and character, and whose awakening has to a large extent taken the form of antagonism to European influence and a desire to free themselves from the European hegemony. On the other hand, the Turkish reformers wish to attach the Turkish race to Europe and not to Asia; their sympathies and culture are now Western and not Eastern; they wish Turkey to be recognised as one of the civilised countries of Europe.

It is partly on this account, too, that the Young Turks have repudiated Pan-Islamism, the form which the modern awakening of the Moslem nationalities has taken in some parts of the Eastern world—that combination of Mohammedans of all races to resist the Christian nations, of which, as I have explained, Abdul Hamid himself was an advocate. It was a movement, which, if successful, might have restored to Islam its glory and its conquering might, but it would have brought with it the recrudescence of religious fanaticism and the impossibility of progress on modern lines.

The views of the Young Turkey party on this subject were thus expressed by one of their organs: “We Ottomans belong to a race sufficiently intelligent and practical to understand that the pursuit of the Pan-Islamic designs of the visionaries would be contrary to our dearest interests.” The Young Turk is a patriot whose first thought is for his own fatherland; he is working for its liberation and its progress, and hopes to make it again strong and respected of the nations. But Pan-Islamism he leaves alone, and it will be remembered that the Turkish Constitutional party gave no encouragement to the Egyptian Nationalists, whose aspirations have a Pan-Islamic character.

On the other hand, the Young Turks have made it clear that theirs is not an irreligious movement, and that Moslem fanatics cannot with justice accuse them of holding the rationalistic views of the French revolutionaries, and of being bad Mussulmans. Writers have described this as a party of agnostics. This is an incorrect statement, and were it believed by the Turkish people the Constitution would have but a short life. There are, of course, some Young Turks who, during their exile in Paris and other European cities, have acquired rationalistic views; but the great bulk of them are faithful Moslems. There have been at times agnostics in the English Parliament, but it would not be fair on that account to dub England a nation of unbelievers. The Young Turkish movement, indeed, far from being irreligious, is tempered with the faith of Islam; but, as a French writer recently put it, with these reformers Islamism is a motive and not an end.

But the Mohammedanism of the enlightened Turks who compose the Young Turk party is a very different thing to the fanatical and narrow creed of the Arab; for it is wholly and sincerely tolerant. There has been an awakening of the religion of Islam itself, and it is now being proved to an astonished world that the ancient dogmas of Mohammedanism are no more immutable than those of other creeds. Even as the Christianity of the Middle Ages, which burnt heretics and regarded science as the invention of the devil, has adapted itself to modern ideas, so at last has it come to pass with the supposed unchangeable doctrines of the Moslem Church. Enlightened Mussulmans are doing their best to bring their religion into conformity with modern ideas and the progress of an enfranchised people. In India, Persia, and Turkey learned doctors of the sacred law are showing that many accepted doctrines are not enjoined by the Koran itself, but have been grafted on the religion by various commentators; and therefore, even as the Reformation in Europe rejected much that had been superimposed on primitive Christianity and went straight back to the Bible, so does the present Moslem reformation reject many of the commentaries and go straight back to the Koran, bringing new interpretations to bear upon the Book itself, with the result that the doctors have been able to prove that the strictest Mussulman can reconcile it with his conscience to accept the Constitution, that Islam is essentially liberal and democratic, that to remove oppression and corruption is to obey the teachings of the Koran, and that the granting of equal rights to Christians and Mussulmans—a reform which was the stumbling-block to many Mohammedans—is in no wise opposed to the injunctions of the Prophet.

The Young Turk movement is therefore Nationalist and not Pan-Islamic, and the policy of these reformers is opportunist. Liberal-minded themselves, they have had to bear in mind that Turkey-in-Asia holds some of the most conservative and fanatical Moslems in the world; so they had to go delicately to work when they began necessarily to interfere with some cherished traditions. The exile of these young men afforded them the opportunity of getting into contact with educated Indian and other Mussulmans, learned in Moslem law, from whom they received considerable assistance. It will be remembered that the Sheikh-ul-Islam, as representative of the mollahs and the interpreters of the Koran in Turkey, gave the Young Turk movement the sanction of the faith, rebuked the fanatics who had preached against reform as being irreligious, and compelled them to stay their mischievous vapourings. Had it not been for this support the revolution would have been impossible. But it may not be generally known that the theological arguments which convinced the Sheikh-ul-Islam that this was the right attitude to take were drawn up for him by a faithful subject of King Edward VII, Ameer Ali, ex-judge of the High Court in India, and a learned exponent of Moslem thought and tradition. It was Ameer Ali who recently introduced the deputations of Indians that waited on Lord Morley to plead the cause of the Moslems in India who, by the scheme proposed by the Government, were not to be given due representation on the Councils.

The awakening of Turkey, the growth of liberalism, and the thirst for knowledge among the educated Turks, including even the Ulemas, whom the world regarded as the most narrow-minded of Mussulman conservatives, were largely encouraged by the very measures which Abdul Hamid had taken to suppress these ideas and movements so dangerous to his despotism. Men of ability, being suspected by the Palace, and living in perpetual dread of the espionage which enveloped them like some hideous nightmare, were unable to associate with each other freely, and had to live isolated lives, the tedium of which they relieved by reading, with a greater avidity than is displayed in other countries, where men have wider scope for their intellectual energies, works on history, philosophy, and law, and other literature which were smuggled into Turkey across her land and sea frontiers. In latter days the Turkish exiles in Europe succeeded in pouring prohibited literature wholesale into Turkey, but at first the supply was small; one book, passed secretly from one man to another, would be read by hundreds, and young men greedy for instruction even went to the pains of copying out with their own hands bulky volumes which they had borrowed. Many a man who considers himself to be well read would feel ashamed on discovering how much wider than his own is the knowledge of English literature possessed by some of his friends among the Young Turks. The Sultan, too, unintentionally, spread far and wide the very influences which it was his desire to destroy, for by driving thousands of educated men out of Constantinople into exile in various provinces of his Empire, he made of these, missionaries of enlightenment, liberalism, and political discontent. Those also who were exiled to foreign countries and lived in Paris and other Western capitals came under the immediate influence of modern ideas, and, communicating with their friends in Turkey, inoculated them with their own views. Thus it came about that the whole Empire was gradually leavened with dissatisfaction with the Sultan’s rule, and the ground was prepared for the revolution.

CHAPTER VI
THE RISE OF THE YOUNG TURKS

IT is about forty years since one first heard of a Young Turk party. Abd-ul-Aziz, having broken the early promises of his reign, had made himself the absolute despot, and had crushed the liberalism that from the time of Mahmud II had been gaining ground in Turkey. A number of educated men then fled from the country to Paris and London, and, calling themselves the “Young Turks,” started a movement whose object it was to agitate for the introduction of reforms into the government of their native land. Among them were men of great ability, including the illustrious Kemal Bey; and all the Turkish literature of that period that had any value was produced by this group of “intellectuals.” They published a paper called the Hurriet, which is the Turkish word for liberty, in which they exposed in an unsparing fashion the corruption, incapacity, and lack of patriotism of the high officials and advisers of the Sultan. The outspoken Hurriet alarmed the Palace, and was of course placed on the black list; but it was smuggled into the country, exercised a great influence, and effected its purpose of spreading antagonism to the existing state of things.

IMPERIAL PALACE OF THE SWEET WATERS OF ASIA

Liberalism, as we have seen, waxed strong enough to have its way for a short period in Turkey. Abd-ul-Aziz was deposed, and Midhat Pasha and the patriotic statesmen who were his associates began to introduce their reforms. Many of the Young Turks returned from Europe to support the new Constitutional Government, some sitting in the short-lived Parliament which the present Sultan opened on his accession to the throne.

Those who loved Turkey thought that the day of her regeneration had dawned at last; but the disillusionment soon came, for Abdul Hamid, in the spring of 1878, dissolved the Parliament, suspended the Constitution, and commenced his ruthless persecution of liberalism. So the Young Turks were once again scattered over the face of the earth; some were imprisoned; some were exiled to distant provinces of the Empire; some escaped to Europe; and such as were allowed to remain in Turkey as free men, had to conduct themselves warily and shun politics, living as they did under the sleepless eyes of the ubiquitous espionage.

For about fifteen years after this date one heard nothing of the Young Turkey movement. If it existed it had little if any organisation, and had no power. To all appearances it had been stamped out effectually by the suppressive measures that had been taken by the Palace. One came across members of the scattered band in European cities, earning their living as teachers of languages and in other capacities, but these rarely spoke to foreigners of what was in their hearts, for they found few sympathisers with the sorrows of Turkey.

But though “Young Turkey” showed no signs of life it was not dead. In Constantinople and other big Turkish cities the visitor from Europe would never hear the movement spoken of; the word hurriet was, so to speak, expunged from the Turkish dictionary, and to have been heard uttering it would have brought denunciation as a traitor. But in far parts of the Empire tongues wagged more freely, and the memory of the reformers was kept green. In the autumn and winter of 1879 I was wandering over that wildest region of all Europe, Northern Albania, and there I found that men were speaking very plainly indeed; for the espionage system was not then fully organised, and at any rate it had not reached that lawless province, where the Government was helpless, and inspired neither respect or fear.

At the period of my visit, Albania, a country which, as I shall show later, took a prominent part in the recent revolution, was in a state of positive anarchy—the gendarmerie on strike, the mutinous soldiers refusing to salute their officers, neither having received pay for months, while the natives held seditious meetings publicly and unmolested in the mosques of the garrison towns, in which rebellion against the Porte was fearlessly advocated. The army officers with whom I conversed despaired of their country, and those who had been in Constantinople said that the one hope for Turkey—an administration under the direction of men of Midhat Pasha’s stamp—had been destroyed. The army doctors in Scutari—for the most part Armenians—were still more outspoken, and advocated the deposition and even killing of the Sultan. One of these doctors described the condition of the country to me in the following words: “You have no idea of what a corrupt, vile thing this Turkish Government is. The Court eats all the country. We who work, the employés of the State, the doctors, the soldiers, never receive any pay now. As long as they think they can obtain our labour for nothing, not a para will they let slip through their fingers. Look at my case. I have been a doctor in the Turkish army for forty years. I have been through the Crimean war, over all Asia, in the service of Turkey. I am entitled to a good pension. I have been day after day to the offices at Constantinople, and put my case before the authorities. They put me off with all sorts of fair promises, but I knew what these meant, so went to them day after day, and worried them so much that they decided to get rid of me in some way. ‘There is a permanent hospital in Scutari in Albania,’ they told me. ‘In consideration of your long service we appoint you as head doctor of it. Start at once to your post.’ Now that I have travelled all this way, at my own expense, mind you, what do I find? The permanent hospital no longer exists—it is a myth, and they knew it in Constantinople all the time, and no doubt chuckled merrily, when I had turned my back, at the clever way they had rid themselves of the importunate old nuisance.” Then he went on to speak of the sufferings of the troops, and assured me that, faithful and obedient as they were by nature and tradition, they would not put up with the vile treatment much longer, and that a military mutiny was brewing which would destroy the Despotism within a few months. In this opinion he was wrong, for thirty years had to roll by before the event which he predicted actually came to pass. He also spoke to me of men of the Young Turk party whom he met in Constantinople during the brief period of free institutions. He much admired their tolerance, and asked me whether I thought that the Young Turk refugees in England, by explaining Turkey’s trouble, would be able to persuade the British Government to champion the cause of Turkish liberty.

I discovered, too, that the fame of Midhat Pasha as an honest, just, and patriotic statesman had spread throughout that wild country, and it is not to be wondered at that the Sultan, fearing him, brought about his destruction, and so made him the first martyr of the Young Turkey cause. The Mussulman Albanians themselves greatly revered Midhat, and regarded him as their possible saviour. They had at that time formed themselves into the organisation known as the Albanian League, whose object it was in the first place to resist by force of arms the handing over to Montenegro of the Albanian town and district of Gussinje, which, by the terms of the treaty of Berlin, Turkey had ceded to the mountain principality; and in the second place to throw off the yoke of the Sultan. The leaguesmen were then the masters of Albania. They decided on, and carried out, the murder in Jakova of Mehemet Ali, the general who had been sent by the Porte on the dangerous mission of negotiating this transfer of Turkish territories to her enemies, and about eight thousand of them, Albanians, Mussulman refugees from Bosnia, and deserters from the Turkish army, were holding Gussinje under the leadership of Ali Bey. Gussinje, by the way, still belongs to Turkey; for the Great Powers who had given it to Montenegro were unable to enforce with the cannon of their warships the surrender of a place lying amid the mountains of the interior; so Montenegro ultimately had to content itself with another arrangement.

I crossed the mountains that lie between Scutari and Gussinje, and narrowly escaped having my head cut off as a Russian spy on one occasion; but I succeeded in seeing a good deal of the Albanian leaguesmen. In the course of conversation with one of their chiefs he spoke to me as follows: “The men who rule in Constantinople, what do they do for us? Tax us, rob us—that is all. And what do they give us in return for what they steal? Can they defend us, protect us? No! They have sold our lands to the Montenegrins and the Austrians. I tell you that we of the League have sworn that we will have the Turk no more. Albania shall have her independence and the Powers shall recognise us. If they do not, we care not. Leave us alone; that is enough for us.” Then turning suddenly to me, he asked, “What do you English think of Midhat Pasha?” I told him of the esteem in which Midhat was held by my countrymen; he seemed pleased on hearing this, and said, “The Turks will not have him, but we will. What we wish is to create an independent Albanian principality, with this good man Midhat Pasha as our prince.” I have described these experiences of mine in Albania to show how things were shaping in the outer provinces of Turkey thirty years ago, and how, though one heard nothing of the Young Turks in Europe, the seed they had sown had not fallen on barren ground; so that at last, when the time was ripe, the people of Turkey, remembering what their fathers had told them of the good Midhat, were ready to range themselves by the side of his disciples.

But from the year 1878, when the Constitution was suspended, until 1891 there appears to have been no Young Turk organisation, though the number of Turks who longed for deliverance from a detested régime was increasing by leaps and bounds. For centuries Geneva has been the safe asylum for men from other lands who have revolted against the tyranny of Church or Government, and there, in these days, is to be found an interesting little society of Russian anarchists, and all manner of malcontents and visionaries, who hatch their various plots, and when the demand arises manufacture the favourite weapon of anarchy, the bomb. It was in this fair city, in the year 1891, that a group of Turkish refugees and exiles formed themselves into the association that afterwards developed into the “Ottoman Committee of Union and Progress.”

The time had indeed arrived for patriotic Turks to bestir themselves and come to the rescue of their country; for it was about this date that the most critical period of her history opened, and that various happenings in her European and Asiatic provinces threatened the disruption of the Empire. In 1890 the persecuted Armenians commenced the agitation which later on the Sultan put down with wholesale massacres. In the early nineties, too, the Bulgarians in Macedonia initiated the conspiracy which, after various small risings, culminated in the rebellion of 1903; and here, as in Armenia, the Turkish irregulars suppressed insurrection with slaughter and rapine. Indignation was aroused in Europe, especially in England, and in 1903 the British Government urged the other Powers to join her in compelling the Porte to accept a scheme of reform under European supervision that should secure fair government and the security of Turkey’s Christian subjects. But the jealousy of the Powers stood in the way of any genuine co-operation, while the policy of Turkey’s two most powerful neighbours was to destroy the Ottoman Empire and not to reform it; so the British scheme was rejected; the measures that were taken by the Powers proved wholly inadequate; the anarchy in Macedonia ever grew worse; and it became evident that sooner or later foreign intervention of an effective and forcible character would be necessitated.

Now the one essential part of the Young Turk programme is the preservation of the integrity of the Ottoman Empire. Opportunists in the rest of their policy, the Young Turks are determined that no more Ottoman territory shall be placed under foreign domination. They feel that foreign interference in Turkey’s internal affairs means loss of national independence and the ultimate expulsion of the Turks from the European side of the Bosphorus. They entertain the strongest objection to the attempted settlement of the racial disputes in Macedonia by foreign Powers, and the chief article of their faith is that, for Turkey to hold her own in the world, her reforms must come from within and not from without. Therefore at this juncture, knowing that they had the educated classes in Turkey in sympathy with them, and that oppression had made the masses discontented, these Turkish patriots in Geneva decided to create an organisation whose object it would be to bring pressure to bear upon the Turkish Government, and move the Sultan to sanction the much needed reforms. At this early stage they did not feel sufficiently strong to plan the deposition of the monarch should he prove obdurate, but they resolved so to arrange matters in Constantinople as to make it impossible, in the case of the death of that clever and masterly monarch, for his successor to rule on the same despotic lines.

The head-quarters of the organisation was moved from Geneva to Paris, and it had its branches in London and other capitals. Little heed was paid to the Young Turks by the peoples in whose midst they lived, and many regarded them as harmless dreamers. But the Sultan himself knew better; his Embassy in Paris was instructed to watch the organisation closely, and spies were sent from Constantinople whose business it was to report directly to the Palace all they could discover concerning the members. In Turkey itself active methods of suppression were taken, and the system of espionage became ever more unbearable, with the result that the enemies of the régime increased in number, and Turkey’s best men fled the country to swell the band of conspirators in Paris.

Now that men can talk quite freely in Turkey, returning exiles tell strange and romantic tales of their adventures in those dark days. For a Turkish subject to leave Turkey without the permission of the inquisitorial Government was then a treasonable offence involving outlawry and the confiscation of property. As every outgoing steamer was closely watched by the police, it was no easy matter to escape from Constantinople by sea, and to do so by land was still more difficult. On several occasions distinguished Turks were assisted in their flight by their English friends. For example, with the connivance of one of our Consuls, a fugitive Pasha was concealed in the Consulate, was disguised in a suit of slops such as sailormen wear, and when the opportunity arrived quietly walked away from the carefully watched Consulate in the company of an English merchant captain, satisfied the questioning police spies on the quay, and boarded the British vessel that was to carry him to safety; for he had been entered on the ship’s books as cook, and was provided with the necessary consular document that testified to his having signed articles in that capacity. Oftentimes, too, some British steamer passing down the Bosphorus would stop her engines and, under cover of the darkness, send off the friendly boat that, by pre-arrangement, would take a party of fugitive Turks from a lonely beach, and so save them from the oubliette or the strangler’s cord.

The Palace employed terrorism in Turkey and corruption in Paris in its attempt to destroy the Young Turk association. By offers of rewards and high positions, some of the members were persuaded to desert the cause and to return to Turkey. Some were found base enough to serve as spies. Thus, one, whose name it is perhaps better not to mention, contrived to work himself into a prominent position on the Paris Committee, learnt its secrets, and returned to Constantinople to betray them to the Sultan. But the organisation ever grew stronger under persecution, and patriotic Turks supplied the funds which enabled it to carry on its propaganda. The Paris Committee published a paper and numerous tracts, which exposed the iniquities of the Hamidian régime and called for the deposition of the Sultan, and these were smuggled into Turkey and were widely distributed and read, despite the vigilance of the ever-increasing army of spies. The agents of the Committee in Constantinople used to placard the city under cover of the night with revolutionary appeals, and seditious placards threatening the life of the Sultan were sometimes placed upon the walls of the Palace itself. Abdul Hamid, living in perpetual fear, redoubled his precautions.

In 1901 the Sultan, having been informed by his ambassador in Paris that the Paris Committee was preparing a great Young Turkey demonstration in Constantinople itself, was so anxious to intercept the correspondence that was passing between Paris and the members of the Young Turkey party in his capital that he violated his international agreements by seizing and breaking open the European mail-bags that were addressed to the various foreign post-offices in Constantinople, and thereby provoked the Powers to threaten a joint naval demonstration, which was only warded off by a humble apology and further solemn promises on Abdul Hamid’s part.

In Paris the “Ottoman Committee of Union and Progress,” to give the association the now world-famous name which it assumed a few years ago, was ably directed by Ahmed Riza Bey, who, having worked with devotion for the cause through eighteen years of exile, returned to Turkey after the proclamation of the Constitution last year, and is now the President, or Speaker, of the Turkish Chamber of Deputies. The Committee was also strengthened during the last few years of the Hamidian régime by the admission to it of several distinguished Turks of high rank, who fled from Constantinople to Paris so as to be able to assist the national movement from that safe vantage-ground. Among these fugitives was the Sultan’s relative, Prince Sabah-ed-din, who threw himself heart and soul into the revolutionary movement, and advocated a policy more advanced and radical than that favoured by the large majority of the Young Turks, whose Liberalism is full-blooded Toryism when compared to what passes for Liberalism in England in these latter days. Prince Sabah-ed-din is an advanced home ruler, and he is the virtual leader of the “Liberal Union” party, which is working for a degree of centralisation that is regarded as dangerous by most Mussulmans, but is naturally pleasing to the Greeks.

But though these Turkish gentlemen, with their clever conversation and their charming manners, were welcomed in Paris salons and London drawing-rooms, few people in Europe realised that the Young Turkey movement had the remotest chance of attaining its ends; for it was a silent movement, and while the Greeks, Bulgarians, and Armenians voiced their grievances with a persistence that gained for them a wide hearing and much sympathy, the patriotic Turks, unwilling to invoke the help of foreigners, took no steps to make their aspirations known in Europe. Ahmed Riza did, indeed, come over to London in 1904, and, for the first time in his life, addressed a meeting of Englishmen, but it was not to crave sympathy for the Mussulman Turks whom he represented, but to express the sentiments of his party regarding foreign intervention in Turkey, whether it were that of a Government or of the English humanitarian committees. In the course of his speech Ahmed Bey, while admitting the justice of a revolt against despotism, condemned the European friends of Armenia and Macedonia for wrongfully and artificially inciting a rising, and so playing the part of the Pan-Slavist agents, and he practically put it that by fomenting insurrection among the Christian populations in Turkey they were more or less responsible for the massacres which followed. The meeting, to quote from the official report, “became extremely agitated, and many interruptions were addressed to the speaker.” The speakers who followed had some unkind things to say concerning Ahmed Riza and the Young Turks. Here is a quotation from the speech of an influential humanitarian who was present: “I am not sorry that the gentleman has spoken, because it shows us how impossible it is to expect any reforms in Turkey from the Young Turkish party. They are only thinking of themselves. The liberties of the Christians would be just as unsafe under a Sultan with the sentiments of the gentleman who has just sat down, as under the present Sultan.”

And yet, even at that time, Ahmed Riza and his Mussulman associates were planning a scheme which was intended to bring liberty, justice, and security to the oppressed Christian subjects of the Porte, and was, moreover, destined to prove successful where all the diplomacy of the Powers and the too often misdirected efforts of the humanitarians in Europe had signally failed. For the Young Turks, like their great forerunner, Midhat Pasha, realised that Turkey could only be saved from disintegration by placing all her races and creeds on an equality, by giving the same rights to all. They therefore set themselves to bring about a co-operation of the various elements of the Turkish population, and to make common cause with the Armenian, Bulgarian, and other revolutionary non-Mussulman committees in Paris.

It appeared, to those who heard of it, as being the most chimerical of schemes; for the Young Turks and their proposed allies had but one aspiration in common—the overthrow of the Despotism. Their ideals seemed indeed to be irreconcilable. The Young Turks above all things desired the maintenance of the integrity of the Ottoman Empire and a union of her peoples that would make the Empire strong. On the other hand, the non-Mussulman revolutionaries cared nothing for the integrity of the Empire. For the most part they desired not to reform Turkey, but to break her up. Neither did they seek union among themselves; for the different Christian races hated each other, and cherished mutually incompatible ambitions. Thus, Bulgarians, Greeks, and Serbs in Macedonia dreamt of the formation of autonomous States, or of annexations to Bulgaria, Greece, and Servia, respectively. There was to be found, too, in some of the non-Mussulman committees, a considerable leavening of anarchical and socialistic ideas with which the conservative Turkish reformers could have no sympathy. Out of elements so incongruous, and in many respects antagonistic, it would seem impossible to effect any sort of co-operation.

But the Young Turks were terribly in earnest, and were patient and persuasive; they compelled the leaders of the non-Mussulman committees to listen to their arguments, and they sent delegates to their meetings; but it was, of course, not for a long time that they could come to an understanding with men who found it difficult to believe that any form of Turkish rule could deal fairly with Christians and Jews. At last, wonderful to say, the Young Turks in Paris, being honest patriots, succeeded in convincing the other groups of their sincerity when they put forward the full equality in the eyes of the law of all races and creeds in Turkey as an essential portion of their programme.

The Armenian committees were the first to fall in line with the Young Turkey movement, and the union between them that was arranged in Paris, in 1903, has been faithfully observed by both parties. It will be remembered how the two races fraternised after the declaration of the Constitution, how the world was amazed by the spectacle of Armenian and Moslem clergymen walking arm in arm in processions, and how loyally the Turks and Armenians worked together during the Parliamentary elections. It was, indeed, a natural alliance; there has never been real enmity between the two races until the present Sultan’s reign. The Armenian massacres were not the work of Turks but of savage Kurds, instigated by the Palace Camarilla. “Few incidents in history are more touching,” writes a Turkish subject in the Nineteenth Century, “than the visit paid by a large assembly of Turks (in August last) to the Armenian cemetery in Constantinople, in order to deposit floral tributes on the graves of the victims of the massacre of 1894, and to have prayers recited, by a priest of their own persuasion, over the butchered dead.”

Moreover, there were few political difficulties in the way of an understanding between the Young Turks and the Armenian revolutionaries. The problem was not like that of the Greeks and Slavs in Macedonia, who had on the frontier independent nations of people of their own kin on whom to lean and to whom to look for protection and perchance annexation. For Armenia is now but a geographical expression, and ancient Armenia has been partitioned between Turkey, Russia, and Persia. The Armenians in Turkish Armenia are vastly outnumbered by the Moslem population; and the creation of an independent Armenian principality, desired by a section of the revolutionists, was obviously an impracticable scheme. The more sensible Armenians realised that the only alternative for the rule of Turkey was that of Russia, and the experience of their brethren across the border had proved to them that, of the two, the rule of Turkey was to be preferred; for under it they enjoyed a measure of racial autonomy and various privileges—much restricted, it is true, under Abdul Hamid’s despotism—which the Russian Government, ever bent on the Russianisation of the nationalities subject to it, would certainly have denied to them.

It was, therefore, the aim of the moderates among the Armenian malcontents, while remaining under Ottoman rule, to secure the civil liberties and institutions calculated to guarantee their personal safety, the security of their property, and the honour of their wives and daughters. Now the Young Turk programme promised them these things and more; so, realising that this great Mussulman movement was likely to meet with success, they decided to throw in their lot with Ahmed Riza and his brother revolutionaries.

But this union could not be accomplished until the Armenians had consented to abandon the methods of their propaganda. They had for years been appealing to the European Powers, through their Committees, to compel the Sultan to grant good government to his Christian subjects in Armenia in accordance with the solemn pledges which he had given to the signatories of the Treaty of Berlin. But the Young Turks insisted that there must be no appealing to foreign Powers for assistance, that the Armenians henceforth would have to rely upon the support of their Mussulman fellow-subjects alone, that they must now cease from such agitation as might invite further massacres, and await the outbreak of the revolution that was to deliver all the races that were oppressed by the Despotism.

It may have been noticed that from the date of this understanding, in 1903, one heard very little about trouble in Armenia; the violence of the Armenian propaganda was restrained by the leaders so that the Young Turk movement might not be embarrassed, and the attention of Europe was now turned to the state of anarchy in Macedonia. The Young Turks always worked in secret, but when policy demanded it they sometimes came out into the open. Thus it was that Ahmed Riza went to London in 1904, shortly after the union between his party and the Armenian Committees, and, in the speech from which I have quoted, protested at a public meeting against the interference of English humanitarians in the affairs of Armenia. He also seems to have influenced those who governed the policy of the Anglo-Armenian Association and to have won their confidence in his judgment, for it was at about this time that the active propaganda of this organisation suddenly came to a stop.

But Ahmed Riza and his associates, though they were working diligently to prepare the ground for the coming revolution by sending emissaries to inoculate the young army officers in Turkey with their views, and the Moslem clergy with interpretations of the Koran that breathed the spirit of reform and tolerance, kept their doings secret even from their friends. The revolution, so carefully planned, came as a complete surprise even to those Englishmen who had come in touch with the Turkish reformers in Paris and sympathised with the aspirations of those intensely patriotic men who shunned politics, declined interviews with the press, and lived most frugal lives, while they devoted themselves with single-minded zeal to the cause. I may mention that since 1904 the officials of the Eastern Questions Association (which, I believe, has always held the view that a strong and independent Turkey is an essential factor in the polity of nations) have been on friendly terms with Ahmed Riza Bey, visited him in Paris, become strong supporters of the Young Turk party, and have vigorously denounced the crooked policy of Russia and Austria in Macedonia.

The Young Turks thus came to an understanding with the Armenians, and later on it was arranged between them that when the time was ripe, and the Committee gave the word for the Mussulman revolt in Turkey, the Armenians should also rise; for it was realised that the Sultan would yield to nothing but force, and that only by means of an armed rebellion, and that possibly a very bloody one, could the liberators of Turkey effect their end.

And now the Young Turks set themselves to win over to their cause the other non-Mussulman revolutionary Committees. With the Jews, as with the Armenians, they had relatively little difficulty, for the Jews were a people without a land, and therefore could entertain no schemes of national independence; their hope and interests lay in the good government of the Ottoman Empire. But with the Bulgarians, Greeks, and Serbs of Macedonia, whose very last idea it was to become patriotic Ottomans, the Young Turks found the work of persuasion attended with almost insuperable difficulties.

To these revolutionaries other forms of argument had to be applied. It was pointed out to them that, unassisted from outside, they could not hope to conquer their independence with the sword from the armies of the Sultan; that the mutually jealous Great Powers, if they did intervene in Macedonia, were not in the least likely to favour the political aspirations of the Christian populations; that to appeal to foreign intervention was a very dangerous thing; and that the annexation of the greater part of Macedonia to Austria-Hungary—in detestation of which Power all these Balkan races are united—might be the result of the state of anarchy in that region for which the revolutionary bands were responsible; in short, that it would be to the advantage of the Macedonian Christians to abandon their ideas of separation from the Ottoman Empire and to join cause with the Young Turks, whose aim it was to hold the Empire together and to give equal rights to all its peoples.

Wonderful to say, the Macedonian Committees in Paris at last allowed themselves to be persuaded, and threw in their lot with the Young Turks, half-heartedly, perhaps, at first, and with mental reservations. They realised that they could hope for little help from Europe, and were willing to work with the Young Turks in upsetting the Hamidian régime. After a successful revolution something might turn up that would enable them to gain the national independence that they still had at heart; and even if that hope was destroyed, they would be able, having supported the Young Turks, to claim the equal rights which these had promised to them. But the conflict of interests that severed the various groups, and the anarchical principles that some of the revolutionary leaders professed, made the reconciliation of all these discordant elements a matter of great difficulty. The Congress held in Paris, in 1902, had for its chief result the accentuation of schism; it was not till 1907 that the various Committees were able at last to arrange a programme that was acceptable to all; and by that time the Young Turks had established their secret society in Macedonia and had gained the allegiance of a considerable portion of that formidable Turkish army without whose cooperation, as the Christians in Macedonia knew well, no revolution had a chance of success.

So in December, 1907, a Congress of the Turkish revolutionaries met in Paris, at which were represented the Ottoman Committee of Union and Progress, the Armenian, Bulgarian, Jewish, Arab, Albanian, and other Committees; and the delegates all agreed to accept the following principles: The deposition of the Sultan Abdul Hamid. The maintenance of the integrity of the Ottoman Empire. Absolute equality in the eyes of the law of the various races and religions. The establishment of Parliamentary institutions on the lines of Midhat Pasha’s Constitution.

The “Ottoman Committee of Union and Progress,” as representing the dominant race and the fighting forces of the revolution, naturally now took the lead, and its members, of whom but a few were non-Mussulmans, became the organisers of the revolt and mandatories of the other Committees. It may be pointed out here that the resolutions of the Congress had no effect in pacifying Macedonia, where, indeed, the condition of affairs was ever becoming worse; for Greece and Bulgaria, still looking forward to the disruption of Turkey, were pouring into Macedonia their armed bands to “peg out claims” in the Greek and Bulgarian interest; and throughout all that region violence, murder, and rapine prevailed. Of no more effect were the efforts of the Great Powers, which, in 1907, issued a categorical declaration that no Macedonian race would be permitted to draw any territorial advantage from the action of its bands.

CHAPTER VII
DISCONTENT IN THE ARMY

IN 1906 the Ottoman Committee of Union and Progress, considering that the time had come to transfer their organisation to the soil of Turkey itself, and there make the final preparations for their attack on the Despotism, selected Macedonia as the scene of their initial operations.

There were good reasons for choosing this portion of Turkey as their strategic base. In the first place, it was here that the forces were chiefly at work which were threatening the speedy dissolution of the Ottoman Empire, and the Young Turks realised that unless they quickly came to the rescue it would be too late, and Macedonia would be lost. The terrible condition of the country, overrun as it was by murderous bands of political brigands supported by Turkey’s enemies, had already drawn an interference in the internal affairs of Macedonia on the part of the Great Powers that was deeply humiliating to every patriotic Turk. The Powers had compelled the Sultan, by threat of force, to consent to the supervision of the civil administration of Macedonia by an international financial commission, and to the formation of an international gendarmerie trained and commanded by foreign officers—of whom, by the way, the English officers have undoubtedly been the most successful, as they are more in sympathy than the others with the nature of the Turkish soldier. But the patriotic Turks, though they often entertained personal affection for the European officers who were thus thrust upon them, loathed this foreign interference, and nourished a bitter resentment against the Hamidian régime, whose inept rule had brought this indignity upon Turkey and made the world regard the Ottomans as a fallen people no longer capable of managing their own affairs.

There was one feature of this foreign intervention which was especially disagreeable and alarming to the Young Turks. The reforms proposed by England, a disinterested country, had been rejected by the Powers, and a mandate had been given to Russia and Austria—regarded by the Turks as their most treacherous enemies—to introduce their own programme of reform (the Murzteg programme) into Macedonia. The Turks maintained, as, too, did independent observers, that these two Powers of a purpose made this programme a wholly ineffective one, and that their representatives were so working as to foment disorder and strife among the Christian populations in order to forward the schemes for the dismemberment of European Turkey.

The signs of this foreign intervention everywhere around them served as object lessons to the people in Macedonia, whether educated men or peasants, civilians or soldiers, and they realised that, unless the methods of Turkish government improved, the foreign hold on the country would be ever tightened until its independence was destroyed. Thus there spread throughout Macedonia a profound discontent with the existing order of things, that prepared the ground for the great conspiracy.

To win over the Army to their side was of course the first object of the Young Turks, and therefore Macedonia was well chosen as the field of the early operations, inasmuch as the troops there were in a more disaffected condition than those in any other part of the Empire, and were ripe for revolt. For years these troops—ill clad, ill fed, and rarely paid—had been engaged in a desultory guerilla war against the bands of the Christian insurgents—a form of police work that brought no glory and was uncongenial to soldiers, while, by scattering them over the country in small sections, it did away with the cohesion and esprit de corps essential to an army. Their discontent was also aroused by seeing by the side of them their brothers of the smart international gendarmerie, men with military pride and bearing, well disciplined and (for the Powers saw to this) well clothed and fed, and regularly paid. It hurt the self-respect of both officers and men in the regular army to contrast the condition of these men with that of their ragged selves, for which, as they well knew, the corrupt administration of the Palace gang was to blame.

Of the intolerable military spy system and the other causes of disaffection among the officers of the Ottoman forces I have already spoken. The young officers of the Macedonia army, men of education and open-minded, who had passed through the military academies and had received instruction from foreign teachers, had exceptional opportunities in Macedonia for observing how an infamous rule was hurrying their country to its ruin, and therefore their sympathies naturally inclined towards the Young Turkey movement. Moreover, special grievances of their own aggravated their detestation of the Hamidian régime; the spy system was more searching and oppressive then elsewhere in this suspected portion of the Ottoman army, and it had become the habit of the Palace—galling to those who suffered under it—to send from the capital sleek Court favourites, with nothing of the soldier in them, to assume commands over the heads of fine officers who had taken a distinguished part in Turkey’s wars, and had been fighting the insurgent bands for years in the Macedonian mountains, but had never obtained the promotion that was their due.

Moreover, it favoured the plan of the revolutionaries that this vantage ground of Macedonia was at a safe distance from the capital—from the Palace with its myriad eyes and its regiments of well-fed, well-equipped, well-paid troops who could be counted upon to remain loyal to the despotism.

So far as the Mussulman population and the army were concerned, Macedonia was therefore ripe for rebellion, and the Christian peasantry, weary of the slaughter and devastation which the bands for years had been inflicting on the wretched country, were ready to welcome any new order of things that promised to bring peace and security.

To understand the operations of the secret society that organised the insurrection in Macedonia, it is necessary to bear in mind the condition of the country at that time. The Christian peasantry in Macedonia had suffered terribly from the pitiless methods employed by the Turks in suppressing any signs of insurrection, but during the latter years of the Hamidian régime they had to suffer even worse things, in consequence of the cruel internecine war which they waged among themselves. The various races that make up the population of Macedonia had for long been carrying on their several national propaganda. The three independent States on Macedonia’s borders, Greece, Bulgaria, and Servia, were working with the Greeks, Bulgarians, and Serbs under Turkish rule, with a view to territorial expansion in this region, so soon as the dissolution of the Turkish Empire, to which they looked forward with confidence, should come to pass. But in Macedonia there are no extensive districts exclusively inhabited by Greeks, Bulgarians, or Serbs. The different races are intermingled, and it is not unusual to find Mussulman Turks and Christians of each of three races living side by side in the same village. Consequently, as each of the three States above mentioned aspired to the reversion of all territory occupied by people of its own race, there was nearly everywhere an overlapping of claims; and it became the policy of each State to gain influence in a coveted district and there secure the numerical superiority of people of its own race, so as to be able to establish a strong title to possession when the Powers should undertake the dismemberment of Turkey.

This racial rivalry was embittered by religious fanaticism. Formerly the Greek Orthodox Church exercised an exclusive influence over the Bulgarian as well as Greek population of Macedonia, and all recognised the Patriarch as their spiritual head. The Bulgarians resented the tyrannical ecclesiastical ascendency of the Greeks, and a schism arose which was deliberately widened by the Sultan Abd-ul-Aziz, who conceded to the Bulgarians the right to separate from the Greek Church and appoint an Exarch of their own. The Patriarch excommunicated the first Exarch and all who gave their allegiance to him, and since then there has been bitter hatred between the Orthodox and the schismatics. Of the Bulgarians in Macedonia, some have remained faithful to the Orthodox Church, while the majority acknowledge the spiritual headship of the Exarch. Now in Turkey populations are reckoned according to creed and not race, and in the census returns a Bulgarian who was a member of the Orthodox Greek Church would appear as a Greek. Therefore, for political, as well as religious, reasons the Greeks and Bulgarians strove hard to snatch from each other the control of the schools and churches in any district where there was a Bulgarian population, and employed violence and every form of persecution to secure converts.

In Greece, Bulgaria, and Servia, armed bands were equipped and sent into Macedonia to forward the rival interests of these land-lustful States. Bulgarian bands burnt Greek villages and Greek bands those of the Bulgarians. The seizure of each other’s churches and ecclesiastical property, and the murder of priests, became features of the propaganda. In the zeal to bring about the preponderance of this or that race the armed ruffians murdered women and children, and all the barbarities which aroused the indignation of Europe when Turkish irregulars were the guilty, were now committed against each other by the Christian protégés of our humanitarians. With fire and sword the several propaganda were spread through the country. The Greeks boycotted the Bulgarians in the towns, and by various methods of persecution endeavoured to drive Bulgarians from coveted districts on the sea-coast. The Greek bishops and clergy worked with fanatical activity; not only did they forbid their co-religionists to give employment to Bulgarians, but they were largely responsible for the atrocities committed by the Greek bands, and went so far as to draw up proscription lists of Bulgarian schismatics who had to be assassinated; but the Bulgarians often had their revenge, as when, about a year ago, they dragged a Greek clergyman out of his church and burnt him alive.

Out of the many stories which one could tell, here is one which will serve as an example of the methods of the bands. On November 26, 1907, a Greek band of over sixty men surrounded the village of Zelenitchi, while a party broke into the house of the Bulgarian, Stoyan Gateff, where a marriage was being celebrated, killed thirteen men, women, and children, and wounded others.

To add to all this orgie of bloodshed, robbery, and violence, came the formation of bands of Mussulman Turks, endowed with the bravery of their race, who, while protecting the Turkish peasantry against the Christians, pillaged and burnt the villages of the latter, and did their share of the killing; while the bodies of half-famished, unpaid Turkish troops who were sent to search for concealed arms over the countryside naturally lived on the wretched Christian peasants, and helped themselves to all they needed.

Between the Greeks and Bulgarians there was never a truce save in winter, when the snow lay deep upon the Balkans, but sometimes the Serb would join the Greek bands in their attacks on the Bulgarians. Thus organised brigandage terrorised the countryside, and the bands, when they ran short of money or supplies, did not hesitate to rob even the people of their own kin, whose cause they were espousing, levying blackmail upon them, and burning their villages if demands were not satisfied. It is not to be wondered at that a large proportion of the Christian population found the succour of their ferocious brethren somewhat irksome, and were ready to welcome the pacific programme of the Young Turks. It will be remembered that when Bulgaria declared her independence last year the Bulgarian peasants in Macedonia held meetings at which they denounced the Principality and sent a memorial to Prince Ferdinand to warn him that they would hold him responsible for whatever evil might now befall them, as the result of his action.

Of all these Christian propagandists the Bulgarians aroused most sympathy in Europe; for they are a brave and straightforward people. They had good reason to hate the Greeks, who had always persecuted them. When, in 1903, the Bulgarian exarchists in Macedonia, with their hundreds of small armed bands, carried on a gallant but hopeless guerilla war against the Turkish regular troops, the Greek Macedonians remained neutral, but worked against their fellow-Christians after a fashion characteristically Hellenic; they assisted the Turks by betraying and denouncing to them the Bulgarian rebels; for in their zeal to forward their ultimate political designs they were not ill pleased to witness the extermination by the Turks of their fellow-Christians who repudiated the Patriarch and refused to become Hellenised. It was not until 1904 that Greek bands, led by officers of the Greek regular army, crossed the frontier into Macedonia to wage war not only against the propaganda of the Bulgarian exarchists, but also that of the Wallach inhabitants, who desired to throw off the tyrannical supremacy of the Greek Patriarch and have an Exarch of their own, as the Bulgarians had, with their own schools and churches in which their national language could be used. The Sultan, who was ever playing one Christian sect off against another, and made no real effort to stop the fratricidal strife that served his designs, now gave his encouragement to the Wallach propaganda, for this did not threaten the integrity of his Empire as did the propaganda of the Greeks and Serbs, there being no question of annexation of any Wallach districts of Macedonia to the distant kingdom of the Wallachs’ kin, Roumania.

The Bulgarians proved themselves the braver men in this racial struggle; but the Greek bands were the strongest in numbers and were also the best equipped, for they were always kept well supplied with ammunition and food by the rich merchants in Athens. The Greek bands chiefly distinguished themselves by attacking unprotected villages and slaughtering unarmed peasants; half-a-dozen brave Turkish gendarmes have on occasion sufficed to rout the largest of these bands. I need not say that the unfortunate Turkish peasants, being regarded as enemies by all parties, suffered severely at the hands of the propagandists.

The condition of the country ever got worse. In 1907 there were one hundred and thirty-three conflicts between Turkish troops and Greek and Bulgarian bands, and a large but unrecorded number of fights between rival bands: Greek and Wallach; Greek and Bulgarian; Bulgarian and Serb; and Albanian and Serb. The bands used to come down to the plains and carry off the crops outside Salonica itself. The Greek Committee sent a manifesto to the villages round Salonica ordering the villagers, under pain of death, to become converts to Orthodoxy and to accept the Patriarch, and have themselves inscribed as Greeks upon the census papers. Shortly before the Sultan’s proclamation of the Constitution the artillery of the Salonica garrison had to shell the reed-covered swamps in the vicinity of the city to drive out the bands that had found shelter there.

It was in the city of Salonica that the Ottoman Committee of Union and Progress decided to establish the headquarters of the secret society that was to prepare the outbreak of rebellion in Macedonia, a city which, as being the cradle of their liberties, has already come to be regarded as a sort of holy place by patriotic Turks. It is a city worthy to be the scene of the initiation of one of the world’s great movements. The splendid seaport, on the acquisition of which Austria had set her heart, impresses every visitor with a sense of a peculiar nobility with which it is invested by its aspect, situation, and history. Stately and beautiful is the approach to it from the sea as one sails up the fifty-mile broad Gulf of Salonica; on the right the undulating land of Cassandra, with grassy, tree-studded shores, and windmills on the skyline testifying to the productiveness of the fields beyond; on the left the mountain ranges of Thessaly; with peaks whose names are known to every school-boy—Pelion to the south, then Ossa, and, near the head of the Gulf, a noble mountain mass towering over the lesser heights, with snowy summits ten thousand feet above the sea, Mount Olympus itself, the abode of the old gods.

From the busy quay of Salonica one looks across the blue water at the snows of Olympus and a wonderful far panorama of hills and dales of classic Greece; and Salonica itself is a fair city to look upon from the sea, with its gleaming white houses and minarets, and dark groves of cypress sloping up to the ancient castle and fortifications. I need not recall here the great part which Thessalonica played in the old days when Persians, Athenians, Macedonians, Romans, Normans of Sicily, and Saracens in succession conquered and held the famous port, the principal city between Rome and the East; its vicissitudes and many bloody sieges. Old Thessalonica, with its Greek, Roman, and Byzantine ruins, relics of “sad, half-forgotten things and battles long ago,” the thronged city where St. Paul preached and worked with his hands among the Macedonian artisans, as the modern Salonica has once again come to the forefront in the shaping of the world’s history, and its citizens walk proudly because here dawned the liberty of the Ottomans, with its inspiring hopes. There is something about the atmosphere of Salonica which makes it seem a fitting place to be the birthplace of a great movement. One feels freer on its broad quay and in its clean, well-paved streets than in the narrow, ever muddy lanes which imprison one in Constantinople. The climate for the greater part of the year is most exhilarating, and the inhabitants of this white city, “ever delicately walking through most pellucid air,” seem more vivacious and brisk, and are said to be more enlightened, more industrious, and shrewder than those of the capital.

Even under the tyranny and corruption of the old régime things were fairly well ordered in Salonica, and the municipal authorities did some good work, as the appearance of the streets shows, though they did appropriate, in the shape of irregular salaries, one-half of the rates. Salonica, too, enjoyed a measure of liberty, even in those dark days, and men could do here many things which would have ensured their prompt punishment in Constantinople. For example, though meetings of any description were banned by the Palace, and a man could not invite two or three friends to dine with him in his house without permission, and though to be found guilty of being a Freemason was to incur the death penalty, Freemasonry (French, Grand Orient, Spanish, and Italian) flourished in Salonica; there were five Masonic Lodges in the town throughout the long years of despotism, though of course the Lodges had no fixed habitations, and the Masons used to meet in whatever house or perhaps lonely spot in the open country was at any time deemed to be the safest place.

In Salonica, with its teeming population of Turks, Greeks, Jews, Albanians, Bulgarians, and Levantines of many mixed races, speaking divers tongues, it is easy for men to assume disguises and difficult for spies to trace conspiracies. In no city does one come across a greater variety of race and picturesque costume than in these busy bazaars and streets—the Jews (who here number fifty thousand) who look as if they had stepped straight out of the Venice of Shakespeare’s time, the men in gabardines, the women in robes such as were worn by the ancestors of these people when they were driven out of Spain by Ferdinand and Isabella, still speaking among themselves a strange Spanish dialect—swaggering Albanians in their picturesque becoming national costume of which Byron sang—burly Bulgarian peasants—priests of all denominations, including Russian monks of neighbouring Mount Athos, emissaries from that holy promontory on which for one thousand years no woman or even animal of the female sex has been allowed to set foot, where monks in their thousands dwell in ascetic retirement in monasteries perched like the lamaseries of Tibet among the mountains, while in the wildest and most inaccessible spots anchorites have their hermitages and live in complete solitude after the manner of their predecessor, St. Anthony.

The fact that it was possible in this crowded city to escape observation and to organise secret societies made Salonica the natural centre of the Young Turk movement in Macedonia. Secret political organisation already existed there, and the Internal Organisations of the Bulgarian revolutionary party had had its head-quarters there since about 1895.

CHAPTER VIII
THE CENTRAL COMMITTEE

THUS, in the summer of 1906, the Young Turk movement crystallised into a secret society in Salonica, so well organised that it effected its purpose despite the universal espionage, its work, of course, being facilitated by the fact that in every part of the Empire the system of administration had become so hateful to the people that, outside the horde of spies, and those who prospered under the methods of the old régime, few men could be found so base as to betray the leaders to the authorities. It will make a wonderful story, when it is fully told, that of these men working in secret and danger, many losing their lives and still more their fortunes, but spreading their propaganda, becoming ever stronger, until at last, having secured the support of a great army and a powerful Church, they won liberty for Turkey by the almost bloodless revolution that has taken all Europe by surprise.

This secret society was to a large extent modelled on Freemasonry, and a considerable proportion of the early associates (Mussulmans for the most part, with some Jews) were members of the Masonic Lodges in Salonica. The machinery of Freemasonry, however, was not directly employed to further the propaganda, and the Lodges took no official cognizance of this political movement. It would obviously have been too dangerous to discuss such a conspiracy as this one at Masonic gatherings, where the treason of one man could destroy so many. The methods of the Italian secret societies, where a member is introduced to two or three of the affiliated only and so cannot betray more than this number, were therefore adopted by those who framed the regulations of the new organisation. But still Freemasonry was a great help to the cause; for a member of the secret society who happened to be also a Mason, while he was seeking, as was his duty, to gain fresh initiates, could more readily approach a brother Mason than any other man with this purpose, knowing that the very fact of being a Mason indicated a natural inclination to be in sympathy with the aims of the Young Turks, and feeling also that he could rely upon the secrecy and fidelity of one of the fraternity.

The secret society was first known as the “Committee of Liberty,” but shortly after its creation it was amalgamated with the “Ottoman Committee of Union and Progress” in Paris, and became the working centre of that organisation. From that time the “Ottoman Committee of Union and Progress” had its secret headquarters in Salonica, while Ahmed Riza and his associates remained in Paris to form an important branch committee that was able to further the cause in many ways from the secure sanctuary of a foreign capital. Thus it was in Paris, in 1907, more than a year after the establishment of the Committee’s head-quarters in Salonica, that, at the instance of the Paris branch, there was held that Congress of Turkish revolutionaries of which I have already spoken, at which Committees representing the various races of the Empire agreed to co-operate with the Young Turks.

The secret central committee, therefore, held its meetings in Salonica, and kept up a constant communication with branch committees in Scutari of Albania, Monastir, Janina, and other towns, and later it had its small local committee in nearly every village of Macedonia and Albania. Before the outbreak of the revolution it had established its branch committees in all the important towns of Asiatic Turkey. Of those who composed the Salonica Committee I have met many. They were all men from what we should term the upper and middle classes—young officers in the army who had passed through the military schools and had profited by the splendid system of instruction introduced by the genius of Baron von der Goltz—the one good thing for which Turkey has reason to be grateful to Germany; young civil servants of the different State departments; land-owning Macedonian beys; professors; lawyers; doctors and some of the ulemas. Of officers of high rank and of the heads of the Civil Service there were none; for most of these were creatures of the Palace, and such as may have had sympathy with the Young Turk cause were, in consequence of their position, too closely watched by the Yildiz spies to take an active part in the movement. All the men—for the most part men under middle age—who became members of the secret committee were distinguished for their intense and unselfish patriotism, men who commanded the respect and admiration of every foreigner who has come in contact with them. This revolution did not come from below, from debased city mobs or ignorant peasantry, but from above, from all that is best in Turkey. The self-seeking demagogue had no part in this revolution. These men, who devoted their lives to overthrowing the Despotism, represented the honest and patriotic Ottoman gentry, men who placed country above self-interest, the natural leaders of the people, belonging to a dominant race which knows how to command men—a more useful quality than much administrative knowledge.

Some of the principal members of the Committee of Union and Progress in Salonica spoke to me when I was in that city, in November last, without reserve—as they will do to an Englishman who has gained their confidence—concerning their early secret organisation; for now that the danger is almost over they are quite willing that the methods which they were compelled to adopt before the granting of the Constitution should be made known. To understand with sympathy what I am about to describe, and recognise how fully justified were such assassinations as were ordered by the Committee, one must bear in mind the terrible nature of the late régime; how thousands of spies were scattered over the country whose business it was to denounce suspects to the Palace; how many of the best men in the country suddenly disappeared from their wives and families, never to return; how torture and death were the penalties for those who sought to set bounds to the Sultan’s absolutism.

The machinery of this wonderful secret Society, which, throughout the three years preceding the granting of the Constitution, did its dangerous work so well, so unpityingly when the occasion demanded, but always so justly, has been described to me as follows by some of its best known founders:

The propagandist work of a member of the Society was two-fold. First, he had to gain adherents to the cause among all classes of the Turkish population by using arguments, explanations, and exhortations. Secondly, he had to persuade certain carefully selected persons from among his relations and more intimate friends to become affiliated to the Society, and this he had to do with the greatest caution. Thus, a member of the Society, whom we will call A, would approach his friend and, perhaps, brother Mason, B, whom he knew to be a righteous and patriotic man, to whom the methods of the Despotism must necessarily be detestable, and carefully sound him. Having satisfied himself that his friend was inspired by a true zeal, and was prepared to make great sacrifices for his country’s salvation, A would say to B, “I have a secret, a great mystery, which I should like to confide to you. Will you swear never to divulge what I am about to say to any one?” On B’s taking the required oath, A would explain to him that there existed a powerful secret society of which he himself was a member, whose aim was the destruction of the existing system of government, and would then ask whether as a patriot he would like to join the brotherhood, warning him at the same time of the serious step he was about to take and of the great dangers which he would have to face.

On B’s replying in the affirmative, A would leave him, and a few days later two messengers would come to B and call upon him in the name of his friend A to follow them. The messengers would lead B to a lonely place, there blindfold him, and then take him to some retired house or recess in the forest which had been selected as the place of his initiation. Here he would be ordered to stand, the bandage still across his eyes, while he was addressed by two or more eloquent speakers, who would draw a vivid picture of the evils of the tyranny, of the certain destruction of the Ottoman Empire to which ill government was leading, of the great suffering which the Palace espionage had inflicted on so many of their friends and relations, and would show in burning words that it was the duty of every good Ottoman to do his utmost by all possible methods to assist in the liberation of Turkey. Turks often possess great oratorical powers, and I am assured that in nearly every instance the candidate would be moved to tears by these impressive exhortations. The candidate would be sworn to secrecy and fidelity and unquestioning obedience to the orders of the Committee, on the Koran and on the sword, and he would then be solemnly declared to be affiliated to the secret Society. In the rare cases in which the candidate was not a Mussulman the oath would of course be administered in some other way.

The bandage would then be removed from his eyes and lie would find himself in the presence of five masked men wearing long cloaks. One of these would again address the initiate. First, he would explain to him that precautions to secure secrecy and to make treason difficult were indispensable to the very existence of the Society, for the spies of the Palace were ever around it, while it was possible that some were even within its circle; that therefore it was expedient that the initiates should be as little known to each other as possible; and that it was on this account that those who now addressed him were masked, and, moreover, persons whom he had never previously met, so that it might be impossible for him to identify them by their voices. The speaker would then proceed to explain to the initiate his duties and obligations. He would remind him that the Committee condemned to death not only traitors but those who disobeyed its orders, and impress upon him that by the oath he had taken in the name of God and Mohammed his life would have to be devoted to the cause until Turkey was freed, that he belonged body and soul to the Society, and would have to go to whatever part of the world he was sent, and do whatever the Society bade him, even were it to kill his own brother. At the conclusion of this ritual B would again be blindfolded and be led away by the two messengers.

For some weeks or months after this initiation B would undergo a term of probation; orders would come to him by secret channels and he would obey them, but he would see no member of the Society. His introducer, A, was responsible for his fidelity, and should B so act as to be condemned to death by the Society, it would be the hand of his friend A which would have to slay him. At last, B having proved himself worthy, the messengers would again summon him to a meeting of the secret Committee, and after a ceremony somewhat similar to the first, he would be affiliated to one of the companies into which the Society was divided, each company containing about one hundred and fifty members. But B would be made known to four men of his company and no more, for it was in circles of five only that the initiates used to meet. So it was impossible for any false member to betray more than five comrades—the four of his own circle and his introducer. In each circle of five one member served as a link with the other circles of the company; while each company had certain members who were the links between it and the other companies and with the Central Committee.

Of this secret Central Committee I can say little; for though now, the Despotism having been destroyed, the members of the Committee of Union and Progress have come out in the open, and every one knows who they are, they still appoint a secret central organisation, the names of whose members no man will tell you and few men know. But one is assured that this Committee has no president and no leaders, that all are equal in it, and that a new chairman is elected at each meeting; for individual ambition is deprecated, and it was the original aim to make of this a band of brothers working with unselfish devotion, unknown, without desire for any recognition, for their country. The formation of any dominant group or camarilla within the Central Committee is made impossible by the regulations which govern its procedure.

Just before the proclamation of the Constitution the initiates of the Committee of Union and Progress, in Macedonia alone, numbered fifteen thousand. It was the duty of each member to spread the propaganda by conversing with men of all classes, a delicate and very dangerous task, as one may well imagine. Many were arrested at the instance of the spies, to be imprisoned or to lose their lives. Many of the captured were taken to the Palace and offered large bribes in return for information, and, this failing, tortures were applied, but with no effect. There was not one single instance of the betrayal of his brethren by a member of the Society.

The organisation of this wonderful secret Society was very complete. To meet the expenses each member was compelled to contribute a fixed percentage of his income to the Committee chest, while rich members, in addition to this tax, made generous donations when funds were required. Arms and ammunition were secretly purchased. A considerable sum was set apart annually to provide for the families of members who lost life or liberty while working for the cause. Their several duties were apportioned to the members. There were the messengers who, disguised in various ways, went to and fro over the Empire carrying verbal reports and instructions, for naturally communications between branches of the association and orders to individual members could not be confided to the postal and telegraph services. There were the men who had to assassinate those whom the Committee had condemned to death—Government officials who were working against the movement with a dangerous zeal, and Palace spies who were getting on the scent. Other members were sent out to act as spies in the interest of the cause, and the contre espionage became at last so thorough that it baffled the espionage of the Palace. Men whom the Palace paid as its spies were often the loyal agents of the secret Society. The Committee had its agents in every department of the Government, in the Civil Service, in the War Office, in the Custom House, in the post and telegraph offices, even in the foreign post-offices in Constantinople and other big cities; so that official communications were intercepted and read and the most secret designs of the Palace were revealed to the Committee and could therefore be circumvented. The Committee had its spies in the Turkish Embassies in foreign countries, among the retainers of influential Pashas, and in the Yildiz Palace itself. For example, a correspondent, writing to the Times from Salonica, tells the story of Dr. Baha-ud-Din, formerly physician to one of the Imperial princes, who had been exiled to the Russian frontier. He returned secretly to the capital, and for the three months preceding the revolution remained in the Palace undetected, supplying the Committee with a good deal of useful information. Suspicion fell upon him a few days before the revolution broke out, so he had to flee for his life, and became an active member of the Committee in Salonica.

Then there was the host of propagandists who were scattered all over the Empire doing their dangerous work, urging the civil population to embarrass the Government by a refusal to pay taxes and to prepare for a general rising, and persuading the soldiery of the righteousness of the movement, and obtaining their promise not to fight against their own countrymen when ordered to do so. So as to obtain easy access to houses and barracks, Turkish officers disguised themselves as hawkers of cheap jewellery and ribbons, or as the peripatetic sutlers who sell sherbet and little comforts to the Turkish soldier; and in their packs were always concealed the revolutionary tracts that were to spread the propaganda. One well-known officer for long kept a barber’s shop in Baghdad, and inoculated his customers with the doctrines of the conspiracy. Dr. Nazim Bey, who had been exiled, wandered over Asia Minor for eighteen months, sometimes disguised as a peddler, sometimes as a hodja, in order to win over the Anatolian regiments. He made initiates among the officers, and conversed with the men to such good effect that when the Sultan, in the last day of the old régime, despatched several battalions of the Anatolian army, to crush the military insurrection in Macedonia, these troops not only refused to fire on their comrades, but joined forces with them.

One remarkable feature of the propaganda was the great part taken in it by the Turkish women. They were largely employed, for example, in the delivery of messages and the carrying of documents; for it was easy for the wife of a member of the Committee to visit the wives of other members without attracting observation. The respect that is paid to women in Turkey gives them immunity from being searched; the women’s apartments in a Turkish house are held to be inviolable, and a police officer would not venture to infringe these cherished customs without very weighty cause. The following incident exemplifies this: Shortly after the revolution had made the Committee the virtual ruler of Turkey, some young officers were sent to pay a domiciliary visit to the house of a Pasha suspected of being a party to a reactionary plot. They arrested the Pasha, but made a vain search for incriminatory documents. At last they came across a chest that had obviously been concealed, and felt confident that they had at last discovered what they were seeking. At this juncture the Pasha’s wife came forward and stated that the chest contained her jewels and other property; whereupon the officers refrained from opening it, and, saluting the lady, left the house.

TURKISH MARKET-WOMAN IN STREET DRESS

The first and most important task before the Committee was, of course, that of bringing round to the cause the Macedonian garrison—the Third Army Corps. The disaffection of these troops, the reasons for which I have explained, had in places manifested itself in open mutiny, and the incompetence and corruption of some of the officers of superior rank, who were indebted to Palace favouritism for their position, filled both the junior officers and the rank and file with an ever-increasing disgust. By degrees a number of the young officers were affiliated to the Committee, and received instructions to win over the rank and file. The fact that the troops were moving about in small bodies, hunting down the Bulgarian bands, rendered this proceeding the more easy; for while engaging in this work, regimental officers, unrestrained by the supervision of their superiors, could give political instruction to the men, and were able to hold meetings among themselves without attracting the attention of spies; the company commanders used also to deliver lectures to their men in out-of-the-way places, where any stranger would be conspicuous and Palace spies would be immediately recognised. Whenever a spy was discovered he promptly disappeared, soldiers who had taken the oath of fealty to the Committee being given the word to kill him. At last the whole Macedonian army was won over to the cause of the Young Turks, and as a consequence of the work performed by the disguised officers in other parts of the Empire, the Second Army Corps, which garrisons the Vilayet of Adrianople, also contained a large proportion of officers and men in sympathy with the movement—troops hostile to the Despotism thus enclosing the capital on all sides—while on the farther shore of the Bosphorus, Anatolia, whose sturdy peasantry supplies the Ottoman Empire with its finest troops, had been similarly prepared by Dr. Nazim Bey and numerous officers.

To those Englishmen who knew something of the Turkish army it appeared an amazing thing that these soldiers, who worshipped the Sultan with a blind faith not only as their sovereign, but as the head of the one true religion, “the Commander of the Faithful,” “the Shadow of God upon earth,”—however discontented they might be, however ready to mutiny, as they sometimes did mutiny, against their officers—could be persuaded to join in a movement of which the avowed object was the deposition of the Sultan Abdul Hamid. The soldier could only be won over by convincing him that religion itself commanded the overthrow of the tyrant. It will be remembered how, in 1876, the Sheikh-ul-Islam, as chief of the interpreters of the Sacred Law, decreed that the Sultan Abd-ul-Aziz should be deposed because, in ruining the State which God had confided to him, he had broken his sacred trust, and could no longer be head of the believers. The young officers put the case in the same way, and in simple words, to the honest and devout soldiery; they quoted the passages in the Koran which denounce tyranny, and showed that the Sultan was not true to his country, and therefore had forfeited the privileges God had lent to him. The fact that Austria and Germany had been granted concessions to construct railways through Turkish territory (the proposed railway through the Sanjak of Novi-Bazaar, which would afford Austria railway connection with Salonica, and the German-owned Baghdad railway) was a proof to the soldier that the Palace was selling the country bit by bit to the foreigner.

During the early days of the propaganda, hodjas who had joined the Committee, and officers disguised as hodjas, being freely admitted into barracks in their capacity of preachers, advocated these doctrines, and satisfied the religious scruples of the men; and when, later, the Sheikh-ul-Islam declared himself in favour of the Constitution, there remained no doubt in their minds that they were acting as their creed commanded in following the lead of their young officers. As a matter of fact, it was not difficult to show that Abdul Hamid, to quote from Mr. Hamil Halid’s book, “The Diary of a Young Turk,” was “the worst enemy of Islam, as no Moslem ruler has ever brought by his misdeeds so much shame upon the faith as he has. Any one who has observed his career closely knows that his actions are diametrically opposed to the principles of the Mussulman law and creed.” Moreover, the Turkish soldier, like the soldiers in other armies and the majority of healthy young men, can be appealed to through his stomach, and he naturally acquired an affection for and confidence in these majors, captains, and lieutenants of the new school who sympathised with him, pitied his wretched condition, and with their own money, or the Committee funds, supplemented his miserable rations and supplied him with comforts.

Of the methods of the propaganda in Macedonia we learn a good deal from the published letters of Major Niazi Bey, the officer who first raised the standard of revolt. He explains how, gradually, the young officers, hitherto estranged from one another by the mutual suspicions engendered by the system of espionage, were emboldened by the patriotic hopes held up before them, and through the possession of a common secret became as a band of brothers, mutual confidence and affection increasing daily; and how even those who had not been made members of the secret Society, and knew not its mysteries, were convinced by their affiliated comrades that the Committee was powerful and just, and was working in the sacred name of liberty for the integrity of the fatherland; and so sympathised heart and soul with the movement, and were in readiness to co-operate with the revolutionaries.

In the meanwhile the Committee was steadily undermining the entire civil as well as military administration of the Empire. It acted, as a member of the association put it to me, like a well-ordered but secret Government. It kept books in which were inscribed the names of all the higher Government officials, with particulars as to their careers and habits—their dossiers, in short. Some of the enlightened and right-minded of these officials had been gained over to the cause; the others were closely watched, and whether they were Valis, Inspectors General, or Governors of districts, or what not, their moral influence was destroyed, and their authority was made impotent by the fact that their subordinates, on whom they had to rely for the execution of their wishes, had almost without exception become adherents of the Committee.

CHAPTER IX
HOW THE REVOLUTION BEGAN

IT had been calculated by the Young Turks that the time would not be ripe for their great coup until the autumn of 1909, but the menace of further foreign intervention in Macedonia and an active campaign against the Committee, which was opened by the Palace at the beginning of 1908, precipitated the revolt. The propaganda had been spreading rapidly, the movement had been prospering, when suddenly the prospect darkened, and there were happenings that threatened even to break up the Society and shatter the hopes of the reformers.

It became known to the Committee that the British Government had decided to withdraw from that “Concert of Europe,” which had failed so signally in dealing with the question of reforms in Macedonia, and that England and Russia were now going to work together to introduce a most drastic scheme of reform, which would include the suppression of all the bands in Macedonia, of whatever race or creed, by means of flying columns of troops. This intended co-operation of England and Russia greatly alarmed the Committee, such intervention, in the opinion of its leaders, necessarily leading to the disintegration of the Ottoman Empire, and to an immediate foreign domination of Macedonia that would make it impossible for the Committee to carry on its patriotic work in this, the stronghold of the movement and the contemplated base for the revolutionary campaign in the following year.

The Committee of Union and Progress therefore held secret meetings in Salonica in May, 1908, and it was decided, in view of what was happening, that it had now become necessary for the Committee to reveal to the European Powers the fact of its real existence and great influence, and also to explain to those Powers, especially to England, whose aim was honest but which, in the opinion of many Turks, was being duped by Russia, that the Committee alone could bring peace to Macedonia, and that for various good reasons it would be better that Europe should abandon all these futile schemes of reform and leave Macedonia to work out her own salvation.

A manifesto of the Committee was therefore drawn up and a copy of it was despatched to each of the European cabinets. These documents were posted in the foreign post-offices in Salonica by members of the Committee. A friend of mine told me of what a narrow escape he had while taking one of these letters to a certain foreign post-office. On entering the office he handed the letter to a Levantine clerk, who, after reading the superscription, put to him the unusual question, “From whom do you bring this letter?” “From Mr. Snider,” replied my friend, with ready invention, and hastened to leave the place. The clerk, evidently a Palace spy, followed him outside and looked up and down the street, no doubt to find some agent whom he could send to follow up the suspect. My friend fortunately got clear away before the pursuit could be started, and for the future he gave that post-office a wide berth.

The manifesto itself is a long one. My quotations from it are literal translations from the original Turkish version. It speaks in the name of the Committee of Union and Progress, and, of course, as coming from a secret society, bears no signatures. It opens thus:

“We, the children of the fatherland called Turkey, of which Macedonia is a part—actuated by the love which we bear to the land of our birth, our desire to work in harmony to bring about its tranquillity and welfare, and our wish to disabuse your minds of the false impression which we know you entertain to the effect that we (the Committee of Union and Progress) are few in number and mischievous in our aims—now write to you the following, to explain to you from what evils Macedonia is really suffering, to show you what is the true remedy and the right path, and to save Europe from a number of vain efforts and avoidable difficulties.”

The manifesto then proceeds to demonstrate that the efforts of the European Powers to introduce reforms into Macedonia had not only been attended with no success, but had made the condition of the country worse than it had been before their interference, and that all the so-called remedies that had so far been applied had been introduced by foreigners only, “who assumed an attitude of generosity,” and not by “Ottomans, who must know more about their own country than the foreigner does.

“We are told that the object of European reforms is to insure the happiness of Macedonia, in answer to which we assert that Europe, in spite of all her efforts, has been unable to attain this object and never will attain it.... The intervention has been useless for Europeans, injurious to the Ottomans. The Great Powers themselves admit the failure of the measures adopted by them; and yet now, Europe, instead of honourably withdrawing from this business, is, so it appears, about to make Macedonia the arena of yet further experiments.” Then the manifesto, after discussing the new schemes proposed by the British and Russian Governments, and showing how these, if carried out, would destroy the independence of an integral part of the Ottoman Government, declares that “We Mussulmans and Christians, united under the name of the Ottoman Committee of Union and Progress, not influenced by national or religious fanaticism, are working together to deliver our country from foreign intervention, and to obtain our personal and political liberty from the existing Government. We positively assert that these plans of England and Russia would sever Macedonia from the Ottoman Empire. We therefore cannot accept these proposed measures, which would lead to the general ruin of the Empire, and are opposed to justice and civilization. We are determined to employ all means to obtain our natural rights.” The manifesto points out that the purely selfish action of Bulgaria, Greece, and Servia, which for purposes of annexation sent their bands to murder and ravage in Macedonia, was the chief cause of the existing state of anarchy in the country; and it has a slap at our humanitarians, whose sole sympathy was with the Christians. As the first public declaration of the Committee, this is an exceedingly interesting document.

I need scarcely say that the Committee of Union and Progress did not receive a reply to its memorandum from any of the Great Powers. Cabinets cannot well recognise and hold communication with a revolutionary organisation whose aim it is to overthrow the Government of a friendly Power. Probably some of those to whom the manifesto was addressed read it with a contemptuous smile, little dreaming that within two months this band of unknown men would make itself the master of an Empire. One or two newspapers published brief summaries of the manifesto without comment, for the world did not take the Young Turkey party seriously until the revolution was an accomplished fact.

On June 10—that is, a week or so after the Committee had issued this manifesto—King Edward VII met the Tsar at Reval and shortly afterwards the details of the Anglo-Russian scheme for the pacification and better rule of Macedonia were communicated to the Powers. This forced the hands of the Committee; it was realised that the blow for Ottoman liberty must be struck soon, or it would be too late; but that which precipitated the movement, driving the Macedonian officers into an immediate revolt in self-defence, was the energetic action taken by the Palace spies at about this time.

In the beginning of 1908 the Palace became alarmed by the reports that came from the Macedonian garrisons. It is true that up to that time the discontent of the troops had assumed no revolutionary character, and at the meetings which they held in all the military centres the men, while demanding their rights under the military code, their arrears of pay, their proper rations, and so forth, uttered no threats against the Government; but the discipline and organisation of the army had been destroyed, and a number of the reservists in Macedonia went so far as to refuse to obey the call for service in the Hedjaz. The Palace now learnt that a number of young officers were taking advantage of this disaffection of the rank and file to spread treasonable propaganda. The rapid progress of the Young Turkey movement, and the wide dissemination of its doctrines through the towns and villages by trusted emissaries, made it impossible to preserve a complete secrecy, and the creatures of the Palace, though they could not place their hands upon those who directed this movement, felt that they were in the presence of a great danger, all the more terrible on account of the mystery that enveloped it. So they laid their apprehensions before their ever-fearful master, with the result that it was decided to take steps to effectually stamp out the conspiracy.

Espionage has ever been the favourite weapon of Abdul Hamid; so spies were now poured into Macedonia to worm out the secrets of the movement and discover the leaders, and of these spies many never returned to tell their tale. The Sultan also gave orders to the senior officers in Macedonia to find out all they could about the movement, to arrest suspected officers, and send them to Constantinople, and to address the men solemnly concerning their duties, and especially impress it upon them that to withdraw their fidelity and obedience from the Caliph, “the Shadow of God,” “the Commander of the Faithful,” was regarded by the Moslem religion as the most heinous of sins. In March a special Commission, under Mahir Pasha, was sent from Constantinople to Salonica to institute an inquisition, but despite numerous denunciations, perquisitions, arrests, and tortures, it collected little evidence, and entirely failed to get at the heart of the plot, for there were no traitors within that circle of devoted men. But the Commission was able to report to the Palace that there undoubtedly existed in Macedonia a powerful secret society dangerous to the régime, and that the Macedonian troops could not be relied upon to support the Government.

The work of the Commission alarmed the Committee of Union and Progress, several of whose most useful members had been seized; and the young officers in the army who had been affiliated realised their danger, and came to the conclusion that it would be expedient to start the insurrection as soon as possible, before further arrests had seriously weakened their cause. Thus it happened that, quite a year before the time originally contemplated by the Committee, Major Niazi Bey, at Resna, on July 3, took the momentous step. He openly disavowed his allegiance to his sovereign, fled to the mountains with a band of Moslem civilians and some of the soldiers under his command, and issued his rebel manifesto, in which he called upon all patriots to join in destroying the Government. I will tell later the story of the doings of Niazi Bey, Enver Bey, and the other insurgent leaders in the mountains; how officers and men rallied round them; how they persuaded the Bulgarian bands to join forces with them; how at last the entire Macedonian army had become the army of the Committee; and how, within three weeks of that historic event—the raising of the banner of revolt at Resna—the revolution had triumphed and the Despotism was a thing of the past. At this stage I will describe the series of events that precipitated the final struggle between the Palace and the Committee.

In view of the increasing activity of its enemies, the Committee, at its secret meetings, condemned to death and ordered the execution of such instruments of the Palace as were the most dangerous to the cause, including several of the senior officers in the Macedonian army and all those who were found to be spies or informers. Towards the end it must have become difficult for the Palace to find men willing to embark on so dangerous a profession as that of spy, even for the highest pay. Had it not been for these assassinations the conspiracy must have failed; at the cost of these few lives Turkey was saved; and a terrible persecution of her best sons by the vengeful Palace was warded off. These killings of the condemned as often as not were done in broad daylight, in a busy street, by officers in uniform, and no man interfered with the executioners.

Thus, on July 7, General Shemshi Pasha, an able soldier, who, as possessing considerable experience in suppressing Macedonian and Albanian risings, had been sent to crush the mutiny, was shot dead in the streets of Monastir in broad daylight by a young officer. Next, the officer commanding at Seres and certain other officers who upheld the cause of the Palace were killed. On July 10 the imam, or chaplain, of the artillery regiment in Monastir, who had been acting as a spy in barracks, was shot in the streets of Salonica while he was on his way to the railway station to carry his information to the capital. On the same day, and also in Salonica, an attempt was made on the life of Haki Bey, a Palace informant, who had been a member of the Commission of inquiry. On July 12, General Sadik Pasha was shot while on a Messagerie steamer bound from Salonica to Constantinople. The Committee was now fighting, so to speak, with the halter round its neck, and took no risks; it removed those whose action might bring ruin upon the cause of the Young Turks, for the chances of success or failure were still very uncertain.

The Palace realised its danger, and knew—what the outer world did not know—that this was no ordinary mutiny of discontented troops. The Sultan’s most trusted officers, when sent to crush the rising, could not get their men to fire upon their insurgent fellow-Moslems, and were sometimes themselves assassinated by them. For the first time in history the name of the Padishah had failed to inspire the pious Ottoman soldiery with reverence and obedience. The Palace was now thoroughly alarmed, and no measure was omitted that could help to bring about the destruction of the Young Turkey conspiracy. It was decided, among other things, that another effort should be made to get at the very heart of the movement, to strangle the secret Central Committee, which, as the spies suspected, worked in Salonica; for if the ringleaders and the central organisation could be exterminated, the movement would become a lifeless thing and fall to pieces.

So Colonel Nazim Bey, an A.D.C. of the Sultan, one of the most detested and feared of the instruments of the Despotism, was sent to Salonica with a body of spies to unearth the secret Committee. Nazim was a typical creature of the Palace. Extravagant and vicious, ever in debt, like Catiline, prodigal of his own while greedy for the possessions of others, clever, and quite unscrupulous, he was ready to sell his soul for the moneys of which he was ever in need. He was appointed Commandant de Palace in Salonica. Denunciations were well paid for, so he denounced many officers, professional men, and students on the flimsiest evidence, for real evidence was not easily procurable. On one day he despatched thirty-eight young officers to Constantinople, who were imprisoned on their arrival. But in many cases those whose arrest he ordered were immediately set free or escaped with the assistance of officials in the police and other departments, many of whom, as I have explained, were secret adherents of the Committee. Nazim, who knew well what found favour in his master’s eyes, also sent reports to the Palace regarding the conduct of his superiors in Salonica, accusing distinguished general officers of the head-quarters staff and others of carelessness, partiality, and covert sympathy with the Young Turks, with the result that he was given still further emoluments, and was so strongly supported by the Palace that he was enabled to arrogate successfully the chief authority in the city. The Committee of Union and Progress condemned Nazim to death, one of his own subordinates signing the decree. A young lieutenant of infantry offered himself as the executioner. Nazim, however, had taken fright, and on July 11 he fled from Salonica. As he was driving to the station in his carriage he was shot at, but was only slightly wounded; so he was able to reach Constantinople and report to the Sultan the information which he had collected concerning the revolutionary movement.

VIEW OF CONSTANTINOPLE

As the result of Nazim Bey’s alarming report, another Commission of inquiry was sent from Constantinople to Salonica. It was under the presidency of Ismail Mahir Pasha, General of Division and A.D.C. to the Sultan—who, it having been discovered by the Committee that he was the leader of a reactionary plot, was shot dead in the streets of Stamboul by an officer in December last—and it contained, among other notable men, Youssouf Pasha, Rejet Pasha, and Sadik Pasha. The ostensible object of the Commission was to inspect arsenals and military stores; but this the Commissioners never attempted to do. They took up their abode in the principal hotel in Salonica. A friend of mine, now editor of one of Turkey’s principal papers, who was told off by the Committee to live in the hotel and keep the Commissioners under observation, found that they rarely ventured out of doors, but sent for and proceeded to examine closely all manner of men.

The contre espionage conducted against them by the Committee to a large extent baffled their designs; even the people employed by the Commission to gather incriminating information were as often as not initiates of the secret Society. But though the Commission could not get at the heart of the conspiracy it displayed great activity, and the denunciations to the Palace were numerous; for, as with the other spy commissions, proofs of complicity in the plot were not necessary to condemnation, and to be known as an honest and patriotic Ottoman subject was sufficient ground for accusation. The Commission also had its branches in the interior of Macedonia. In Monastir, Persepe, and other garrison towns certain officers became its agents; but most of these were discovered by the Committee and had to flee, and some, including Sami Bey, Commissioner of Police in Monastir, were destroyed by the executioners of the Committee.

So thoroughly had all the machinery of official authority been destroyed in Macedonia that it was difficult for the Commissioners to secure the arrests of those who had been denounced, therefore treacherous methods were now employed to get the ring-leaders within the clutches of the Palace. The Sultan believed that every man had his price, and on previous occasions he had found bribery succeed where terrorism failed. The most flattering letters were sent to Enver Bey and other young staff-officers who had been forwarding the revolutionary cause in the interior of Macedonia with such marked success; they were invited to the Palace and were promised not only forgiveness but large pecuniary rewards and promotion to general rank. Many a good man from the time of Midhat Pasha had been tempted by the Palace to come out from some secure sanctuary to his destruction by such wiles as these. So Enver Bey and his comrades ignored this invitation, but at the same time, realising the danger of non-compliance, they fled to the mountains, organised bands, and as open insurgents precipitated the doom of the Despotism. At the same time other methods of conciliation were attempted by the Palace. A large sum of hastily borrowed money was sent to Salonica to discharge the arrears of pay due to the troops, and the authorities in Constantinople refrained from doing any injury to the thirty-eight young officers of the Macedonian army who had been imprisoned at the Ministry of War. To anticipate a little, these officers were pardoned and released on July 21 as the result of the Committee’s threat to kill all the general officers in Macedonia unless this was done.

Ismail Pasha and his fellow-Commissioners returned to Constantinople, their efforts having had the effect of spreading the growth which they had been sent to root up. The Palace, which throughout this crisis exemplified the truth that whom the gods wish to destroy they first make demented, for it took every precaution too late and displayed a vacillation that ruined what chances it had, now decided to do what, if it had been done some months earlier, might have crushed the Young Turk movement and left Abdul Hamid the undisputed master of the Ottoman Empire. It was decided to despatch a large army from Asia to overpower the mutinous troops in Europe, and orders were given that no less than forty-eight battalions of Anatolian troops should be landed forthwith at Salonica. But before describing the failure of this last move on the part of the Despotism it will be necessary to go back a little to give an account of what had been happening in the interior of Macedonia since Niazi Bey had raised the standard of revolt at Resna on July 3, and of how everything was there being made ready for the general insurrection.

CHAPTER X
THE STANDARD OF REVOLT

THE situation in Macedonia in July, 1908, when Niazi Bey took to the mountains, may be summed up thus: The Bulgarian, Greek, Servian, Wallach, and Albanian bands were murdering, robbing, outraging each other’s kin all over the country; the Committee of Union and Progress, having established its branches in Monastir, Ochrida, Resna, Persepe, and other places, was engaged in steadily spreading its propaganda through all the countryside, a large proportion of the young officers of the Macedonian army being initiates or sympathisers with the cause; and, lastly, the Palace had taken its precautions, and there was not a town or regiment without its secret Government agents ferreting out the secrets of the conspiracy and denouncing the suspects.

Niazi Bey, the young officer who was the first to raise the standard of revolt, was a good example of the men who were forthcoming in numbers at this period of Turkey’s great danger, men who proved to the world the stubborn virtues of the old Ottoman stock, intensely patriotic, brooding over the sorrows of their country, seeking a plan for her deliverance, and, that plan once found, devoting themselves, with the passionate zeal of men obsessed by a fixed idea, to the carrying out of their high aim. They were not self-seeking; if they cherished ambition, it was for the martyr’s death; they were prepared to sacrifice their careers, their wives and families, and their property for the cause, and, as we shall see, when Niazi set out with his little band of followers on that wonderful forlorn hope of his, each took an oath not to return to his wife and family until Turkey was freed; before going they bade last farewells to those they loved; for them it was to be victory or death. With a Mussulman Turk, love of country is a part of his religion, and his single-minded devotion has the strength of fanaticism. When in an oppressed country there is a sufficiency of men of this stamp, the days of the tyranny are numbered.

This spirit breathes through the published letters and diary of Niazi Bey, wherein, telling us a good deal in very frank fashion about his thoughts, aspirations, and emotions, he provides us with a most interesting human document. That he thus writes so freely and often with poetical diction concerning his sentiments will surprise Englishmen, who have always heard that reserve is one of the characteristics of the Turk. The Turk is reserved in his relations with the Western European, who so little understands him. But the Turk, as all his literature proves, is sentimental and emotional with the sentiment and emotion that are the sources of strength and not of weakness. The Turk reveals his heart to his friend with a truthful simplicity that would seem lack of proper reticence to Englishmen, many of whom appear to be ashamed to let it be supposed that they have any affection for their wives or parents; but we ourselves, as the memoirs of the time show, did not take so much care to hide our emotions when Nelson was gaining victories on the seas. So Niazi, having no false shame, makes no secret of his brave deeds, his musings, and his affections, and one likes him the better for it. But Niazi, though devoted to high ideals, was no dreamer or unpractical and rash revolutionary. Like most of his countrymen he was endowed with plenty of cool common sense, and displayed the shrewdness and cunning of the Homeric Odysseus in the carrying through of his audacious adventure.

Niazi Bey is himself an Albanian, his family belonging to the Mussulman land-owning class. He was born in Resna, a little town between Monastir and Ochrida, in a region where fertile valleys studded with orchards and cornfields, grassy downs, forest-clad mountains, craggy Balkan peaks and gorges, and broad lakes combine to make as beautiful a scenery as can be found in Europe. Niazi had known this countryside from his childhood, and he had friends in all the villages, so when it was decided to make this the scene of the first outbreak of the insurrection it was recognised that he was the right man to come forward as leader. Niazi entered the army as a very young man and greatly distinguished himself in the Greek war. Then he was sent to his own country, and for the five years preceding the revolution he was employed with his battalion of chasseurs in pursuing the various brigand bands in the mountains. Again he gained distinction, temporarily crushed the power of the Bulgarian insurrectionary Committee in the Resna district, and became very popular with the Moslem section of the population, whose property and lives he zealously set himself to protect. The Committee of Union and Progress, exercising its powerful underground influence, obtained for him promotion to the rank of Major and his appointment to head-quarters at Resna, the place in which he could serve the cause best. For Niazi had been initiated into the secret Society by his brother officer, the now famous Enver Bey, and throughout his operations against the bands was acting as the instrument of the Committee rather than that of the despotic Government.

The story of Niazi’s work at this time throws an interesting light on the condition of Macedonia. When he was moved to Resna, Bulgarian and Albanian bands, acting in conjunction, were terrorising that district. It was his duty to seize the leaders of the non-Moslem bands and to scatter the bands themselves. He was successful in doing this, though his methods were not cruel or vindictive; for, as he tells us, he was sorry to be hunting down these men who, after all, were fighting against a despotism which was as detestable to himself as it was to them. So he used to call together the Christian notables, who had known him from his childhood and trusted him, and point out to them that their separatist dreams could never be realised, that it was better for them to repudiate those bringers of bloodshed, the agitators in Athens, Sophia, and Belgrade, and join in union and brotherhood with their Moslem fellow-countrymen, whose grievances against the Government were as heavy as their own. His words, recognised as sincere, produced a good effect.

At Niazi’s advice some Moslem inhabitants of the district formed themselves into a band which was under the direction of the Committee of Union and Progress. This band used to go about the country, protecting the villagers without any distinction of race or creed. Thus at one time it would be defending a village of Bulgarians against the attack of a Serb band, and at another time a Serb village against a Bulgarian band. This band was well disciplined, committed no excesses of any kind, and did not even requisition the necessaries of life in the villages; conduct so extraordinarily Quixotic for a Macedonian band that it gained for the Committee the good opinion of the Albanians, who began to come in numbers to Ochrida and Monastir to take the oath of allegiance to the revolutionary leaders.

But so fast as the labours of Niazi and the Committee helped on the pacification of the country, so fast did the evil policy of the Government, alternating between encouragement of lawlessness and cruel repression, undo all the good that had been effected. The corrupt tribunals could be bought. Thus, after the troops under Niazi had brought in some hundreds of people who had been found in the possession of bombs and arms, their trial resulted in the condemnation of twenty poor peasants and the acquittal of all the really dangerous rebels who happened to be rich townsmen, a miscarriage of justice which held Niazi and his brother officers up to ridicule and of course encouraged the Christian bands to redouble their mischievous activity. On the other hand, the Government sent to Persepe, to put down the insurgents, an officer of passionate temper who did not know the customs or languages of the people, and was unable to gain their confidence. He tortured and beat the peasantry and behaved with such inhumanity that the foreign Powers made representations to the Porte on the subject. Thus dictated to, the Government arrested and sent away this officer, again with the result that the Bulgarian bands were encouraged in their brigandage, as was always the case when foreign intervention humiliated Turkey. At this time, too, the Committee found an enemy in the Russian Consul for this district. He exerted his influence to procure the withdrawal of Niazi Bey from the scene of his successful labours. So Niazi was summoned to Salonica and was rebuked by the General in command, but he was not impeached and, fortunately for his country, he was allowed to return to his post at Resna. The Government of Russia was then arranging with that of England its joint intervention in Macedonia, and any improvement in the state of affairs of that region that might render such intervention unnecessary would no doubt have been regarded as a calamity by Russian statesmen.

At about this time Kermanle Metre, once a leader of a rebel band, who had been pardoned and had since done signal service as a Government officer, was tried and condemned to death unjustly, as the result of Russian intrigue. This cowardly betrayal of a valued servant by the Government aroused profound indignation throughout the Macedonian army, and was one of the most important of the factors that combined to effect the moral union between, not only the army, but also the Moslem civil population, with the Committee of Union and Progress; for the incident was a proof to the Mussulmans that the Government was an immoral one, “acting in defiance of the Sacred Law, the Moslem Religion, and Ottoman ideals.” Niazi Bey himself received orders to take Kermanle Metre to Monastir and he determined to save his prisoner’s life at the risk of his own. So, after arresting him, he connived at his flight, and the agents of the Committee restored the man to his home. This escape of their compatriot from the gallows with the assistance of the Committee of Union and Progress produced a great effect upon the Bulgarian peasants in the district, who said to themselves that a power that administered justice had at last risen in the land; and from this time the Bulgarian revolutionaries used to listen with an increasing respect and sympathy to Niazi when he argued that Mussulmans and Christians, being all brothers of one fatherland, should work in union to obtain a Government that would assure justice and equality for all.

While Bulgarians, Greeks, and Serbs in Macedonia by noise and violence had been urging their racial claims in anticipation of the break-up of the Turkish Empire, the Moslem Turks under the direction of the Committee of Union and Progress had been steadily and patiently working for the liberation of their country, employing methods so secret that the outer world knew nothing of the movement and was deceived into thinking that the Mussulman backbone of the population was regarding the progress of events with indifference. The European Powers had ignored the memorandum in which the Committee had protested against the intervention of England and Russia in Macedonia, and patriots recognised that the time had arrived to come out in the open and strike the blow for freedom before that intervention and the increasing activity of the Palace spies had made it too late to act with any chance of success. Towards the end of June it was realised that it needed but a spark to start a general rising, and it was decided that certain young officers, who were members of the Committee, should abandon the Government service, form bands in various places, take to the mountains and organise the insurrection of the united Mussulman and Christian populations.

Niazi Bey apparently was the first to conceive this idea. He had become the zealot whose mind is occupied by but one thought; he tells us that he did not sleep for three nights after learning the result of the Reval meeting. He formed his plan. The population of the Resna district was largely Moslem, and in both town and country the organisation of the Committee of Union and Progress was practically complete. In that mountainous and wooded region a Moslem band, helped by a sympathetic peasantry, could, if necessary, hold the Government troops for months and years. So he broached the matter to his friend Jemal Bey, president of the municipality of Resna; Tahir Effendi, the Police Commissioner; and other of the brethren; and it was arranged to hold a secret meeting of the adherents of the Committee in the house of one Haji Agha, on the evening of June 28.

About fifty men were present at this meeting. The following is a summary of the report of the proceedings as published by the Committee. Niazi Bey, after the usual salutations, thus addressed the brethren: “Fellow-countrymen and comrades. You have sworn by the Unity of God to obey the commands of the Committee, and to save the country, which is being destroyed by traitors, by working together in concord and giving your lives and property freely. Is it not so?” All cried, “Evet! evet!” (Yes! yes!). “The time has come,” continued Niazi, “to redeem that sacred vow. The country now needs our devotion. Our vile Government is regarding with indifference the compact which has been agreed upon at Reval between the Tsar of Russia and the King of England, which aims at the division of our fatherland and the delivery of it into the hands of our enemies. The cruel scheming of Europe can only be frustrated by the blood of the nation. It is the decision of the Committee that we should rise as a nation against the vile Turkish Government which is bowing its head before this humiliating compact. It was at Resna that the Bulgarians first revolted, and brought this calamity upon us. So, therefore, at Resna shall our first standard of revolt be raised—a general revolt, without distinction of creed or race, against the despotic Government. I have prepared everything. I can provide all that is needed to equip a band of two hundred men—money, arms, ammunition, cartridge-belts, sandals. I only need enthusiastic and devoted men; but I want in them a devotion that will sacrifice family, the comforts and sweets of life, all worldly relations, and the love of the world, for the salvation of the country. If the salvation of the fatherland cannot be gained, then those who follow me must look upon death with affection as the greatest boon. I ask your forgiveness for reminding you of what high-minded self-sacrifice is demanded of those who will advance in the van of the forces of liberty; for, knowing you as I do, I do not imagine that there is one among you who will shirk his duty. I will explain to you our purpose. You know that the intervention of Europe in our internal affairs was brought about by the complaints of the Christians, who suffered less than did we Moslems under the Despotism, and that the Government has opened a road for this intervention by its despicableness and cowardice, making Turkey a by-word among the nations for all that is bad. Now, in this revolution we have to make manifest to the world in a practical fashion that we love the Christians, as being our brethren under the same fatherland, that we hold them equal to ourselves, that we recognise the security of their honour as our honour, of their lives as our lives, of their property as our property. This revolt is not against individuals, but against the system of government, which has not only stirred up strife between the different creeds and races, but has also made us Moslems the enemies of each other. This is a revolt in the name of liberty, equality, and brotherhood. To bring justice to the people we will traverse the mountains until we have sacrificed our lives. I am sending to Monastir my wife (Niazi had been married but nine months and was very attached to his wife), and my sister with her fatherless children, for they have none but me to take care of them; and there my relatives wall protect them. I will bid an everlasting farewell to these dear ones, and I will shut up my house. Are there any among you who will follow me heart and soul?”

Then all those present with one voice replied: “We look to dying with you in honour and felicity. We are all ready.” The following Friday was fixed upon as the date of the rising of the people of Resna, and it was agreed that on that day, at the hour of morning prayer, the band of two hundred patriots should assemble near the barracks. Jemal Effendi was sent to Monastir to apprise the central Committee in that town of Niazi’s plan and to obtain permission to carry it out. Then the brethren, having embraced one another, with tears of joy and pride in their eyes, broke up the meeting, departing in twos and threes so as not to attract the notice of the spies.

Within two days Jemal returned from Monastir with the required permission from the central Committee, and Niazi made all preparations for the fateful Friday. As he was thus engaged, an incident occurred which, in his opinion, to no small extent favoured the fortunes of his adventure. There came to appeal to him, with lamentations and tears, the sister of the famous Bulgarian revolutionary leader, Christe. A Servian band, which had recently killed a member of her family, had now carried off into the mountains the child of this poor woman, and demanded impossible ransom. Niazi swore to the woman that he would rescue the child for her, and he decided to take into the mountains with him the Servian schoolmaster of Resna as a hostage. Niazi’s success in recovering the child shortly afterwards went a long way towards gaining the confidence of the Bulgarians and convincing them of the good intentions of those who served the Committee of Union and Progress.

The night that preceded the going forth of the band was spent by Niazi in writing various manifestos and letters, which it was his purpose to send out when he was clear of the town and out of the power of the agents of the Government. In a manifesto which he addressed to the Chief Secretary of the Imperial Palace; to Hilmi Pasha, the Inspector-General at Salonica (the present Grand Vizier); and to the Vali of Monastir, he explained that the Committee of Union and Progress represented the whole nation and was very powerful; that its aim was to obtain a just form of government, like that in civilised countries, and to preserve the integrity of the Empire. He stated that, in view of the number of spies who had been sent by the Government to Salonica to destroy those who were silently working for their country’s good, the Committee had taken measures to protect the patriots; that on that day two hundred fedais (devoted ones), armed with Mauser rifles, under three officers, were marching from Resna; that elsewhere other bands were being formed, representing all the elements of the population, and that these bands would inflict punishment on the traitorous spies who disgraced the army to which they belonged. The Committee demanded that the spying Pashas and their assistants should be at once sent back to Constantinople by special train. It also demanded that the Fundamental Law (the Constitution) should be restored immediately and that the Chamber of Deputies should assemble as soon as it was possible. If the Government refused to grant these requests, then the nation would obtain by force what it required, and the responsibility for the bloodshed would rest with the high dignitaries of the State.

Then he wrote letters to the commander of the regiment of gendarmes at Monastir, to the lieutenant of gendarmerie at Resna, and to certain other officers who had sold themselves to the Palace, and solemnly warned them, in the name of the two hundred fedais of the Committee of Union and Progress, that if they continued to disgrace their military uniform by acting as spies over their comrades, and by showing themselves the sycophants of the Government and the foreign officers, thereby betraying their fatherland which was agonising “like a sorely wounded lion;” and that if they did not at once reform their conduct and cease to be the active enemies of the National Union, death would be the punishment awarded to them by the Committee. Men had already discovered that the Committee never uttered idle threats, and the recipient of one of these letters was so terrified that he became insane.

The momentous day (July 3, 1908) dawned, and Niazi Bey was up betimes to complete his preparations. For his band to march out of Resna while the officers, who were not adherents of the cause, and the considerable garrison remained in it was, of course, out of the question, so he employed a ruse to empty the town of those who might oppose him. By pre-arrangement some members of the Committee came into Resna and reported that a Bulgarian band was moving up the road near Ismilova, that is, in a direction contrary to the one in which he intended to lead his own followers; and some rifles were fired in the hills to support the story. Thanks to this scheme, all the available troops were hurried off to attack this imaginary band, leaving but a few officers and men to guard the barracks, which are situated on a height overlooking the town and about a mile and a half distant from it.

Niazi then walked to the barracks in his uniform, while the members of his band in twos and threes collected in the neighbourhood. He passed through the gates of the barracks just after the Moslem officials and inhabitants of Resna had entered the mosques for the Friday midday prayer; he made the appointed signal with his sword, and his fedais, to the number of one hundred and fifty, poured into the barracks, arousing no suspicion among the soldiers on guard, who were led to understand that Major Niazi Bey was arming a party of Moslem civilians with the object of proceeding to the scene of action to co-operate with the troops.

Following Niazi Bey’s instructions, the fedais broke open the rifle and ammunition cases and armed themselves, many of the men taking two rifles each, so that those who joined the band later on might be provided with weapons. Niazi also opened the military chest and took all the money that was in it, amounting to about £500, making out a receipt for it in which he explained for what purpose he was about to use it. Then the band, in perfect order and full of enthusiasm, marched out of the barracks, and with it went nine private soldiers who, being still under the impression that Niazi was leading a detachment against the Bulgarians, had volunteered their services. After marching for two hours they came to cross-roads on the summit of a grassy down, where Niazi’s band was joined, as had been arranged, by Lieutenant Osman Effendi and his detachment of fedais from Persepe, consisting of a lieutenant, four soldiers, and thirty civilians.

Here a halt was called for rest and food, and before the march was resumed Niazi called the men around him and addressed them, explaining his aims and the strict rules of discipline which the Committee had enjoined him to enforce. He reminded them that they had sworn upon the Unity of God to devote their lives to the salvation of their fatherland. “The nation expects you,” he said, “to set a brilliant example of self-sacrifice and Ottoman chivalry worthy to be imitated. Are you prepared never to see your homes again until the salvation of the country has been secured, and willingly to die for her?” His followers cried out, “Yes, yes; it shall be death or salvation.” Then Niazi proceeded, “There may be some among you who have not the physical strength to live the hard life before us, to support the long marches on foot, thirst, hunger, nakedness, heat, and cold. If there be such I give them full permission to retire; let them go back to their villages and pray for us.” As there was no reply to this, he went on to speak of the very lofty sense of duty and the strict rules of conduct that should govern the fedais, who, having bid farewell to life, were now ready to sacrifice themselves for the fatherland. Their enemies were many, and would certainly slander them; but it behooved them so to act that none could look askance at them with good reason. It was for them to exemplify by the righteousness of their lives what was meant by “the exaltation of the glory of Islam and the Ottomans, through obedience to the Sacred Law of Mohammed which was the basis of the Constitution.” The Constitution was to bring equality and justice to all Ottomans without distinction of race and religion. They, as the apostles of the Constitution, must exemplify this equality and justice. It behooved them, while the band wandered over the country, to regard the honour of the inhabitants as their own honour, to be kindly in their dealings with them, to be guilty of no act of oppression, to thieve nothing, though urged by the pangs of hunger, and above all things to respect all the women of the country and to observe chastity. He explained that he would punish, without exception, any of his followers who in the above respects was a wrong-doer even in the slightest degree, and that the one penalty that he would inflict would be that of death; for the safety of the fatherland necessitated this severity. He told them that he had taken measures to provide for their immediate needs. He would give each man three Turkish pounds for the support of his family and two silver medjidiehs for his tobacco, and he undertook to procure food and clothes for them. “These are the stringent conditions of service,” he concluded. “Do you approve of them? If so, swear by the Unity of God that you accept them from your heart and soul.”

In reply the fedais raised an enthusiastic cry of “Wallahi, billahi” (in the name of God, yes!).

Of the nine private soldiers who had marched from Resna under the belief that they were being led against the Bulgarians, four now asked permission to return. Niazi took their arms and sent them back to the officer commanding the battalion of chasseurs at Resna, with a letter in which he explained that the men were in no wise to blame, as they had been deceived by himself. Of the civilians who had joined the band only one displayed timidity at this last moment, so Niazi allowed him to return to his home and entrusted the man with the letters and manifestos which he, Niazi, had written during the previous night, instructing him to deliver them to the mudir of the district; and to the mudir he sent a separate letter, ordering him, with threats, to forward these documents to the various people to whom they were addressed.

Then the bugle sounded and the little band of zealots marched on again through the beautiful Balkan countryside, in the glorious summer weather, to their unknown destiny—a band of sworn ascetics who harmed no men save the agents of the Despotism who stood in their way, and these they slew without pity; to all others they were as brothers, protecting the weak and oppressed of whatsoever race or creed, preaching the gospel of justice and equality.

The bands of the racial propaganda that had hitherto passed through the Balkans had terrorised the population with murder, robbery, and the violation of women, whereas this band gained the confidence of all and was welcomed in the villages. This was indeed as a company of knights-errant, but these were no visionaries tilting at wind-mills; the aim of the fedais was the overthrow of the reign of tyranny and corruption; Niazi’s bands and the other bands of the Committee of Union and Progress which followed its example actually succeeded, as we shall see, not only in winning over the entire Moslem population of this region to the cause, but in uniting the various races that had been cutting each other’s throats for years, so that the whole strength of the Macedonian peoples was brought together to oppose the Despotism.

CHAPTER XI
THE INSURRECTION IN BULGARIA

WITHIN a few hours of the departure of Niazi Bey and his band from Resna, the officials of the Yildiz had been informed by telegraph of the outbreak of the insurrection. After a consultation of the Sultan’s advisers a telegram was sent to General Shemshi Pasha, then in command at Mitrovitza in the northern Vilayet—who was, as I have explained in a former chapter, a trusted officer, than whom none had greater experience in crushing revolt in Macedonia and Albania—recounting to him what had occurred, and ordering him with the least possible delay to move the necessary troops from Mitrovitza to Monastir, and to raise volunteers from among the people, “so as to surround and seize the ungrateful traitor, Niazi, together with the officers, officials, private soldiers, and civilians who are his companions.” The General was further informed that his Majesty expected him to prove his fidelity and loyalty by making these wicked men a telling example to other seditious persons, and relied upon him to cleanse that portion of the Empire of this mischief and to prevent its spread by measures of the severest nature.

The ill-fated Shemshi displayed his loyalty and zeal by working night and day to compass the destruction of Niazi and his band of fedais. On July 6 he arrived with two battalions at Monastir by special train; another battalion was closely following, and seven other battalions were marching into the disturbed districts. The usual trickery of which the creatures of the Palace were so fond was also employed to support the operations of the troops. Thus, in order to excite Moslem fanaticism and persuade men to serve as volunteers, it was assiduously rumoured that the Christians were rising to massacre the Mussulmans, a falsehood that produced but little effect; while delegates were sent through the villages to tell the people that the Constitution desired by the Committee of Union and Progress, and advocated by the bands under Niazi and others, was opposed to the religion of Islam, “its doctrines being as vile as that which permits women to go about unveiled.” The Palace also arranged with the local officials that attempts should be made to corrupt the members of Niazi’s band, rank and money being offered to any of these who would kill him.

In the telegrams in which he reported progress to the Palace, Shemshi stated that he was unable to obtain any reliable information concerning the rebels from either the military authorities or the Vali, and that no one could tell him where the Committee of Union and Progress was, or the names of its members. All that his spies had been able to discover was that the heads of the people in those parts were full of seditious ideas and that many men of importance were on the Committee; the movement was evidently spreading, and Staff-Major Enver Bey had abandoned his uniform and gone off to join the seditious Committee. Nevertheless he, Shemshi Pasha, assured his Majesty the Caliph that he would exert himself until he breathed his last breath (words the literal truth of which were soon to be proved) to root up this seditious growth. He, moreover, reported that he had sent messages to the Albanian notables, and that thousands of brave Albanians were prepared, in answer to his call, to pour into the disaffected districts and punish these people who were unfaithful to their religion and traitors to their sovereign. He also announced that two battalions would at once march in the direction of Resna, and that he was confident of his speedy success in stifling the conspiracy.

His confidence was misplaced, for of the Albanian chiefs upon whose help he relied the greater number had become adherents of the Committee of Union and Progress, while all the officers and non-commissioned officers of one of the two battalions which he was sending to surround Niazi had sworn the oath of fidelity to the Committee. But Shemshi had his doubts; for he confessed to the notables of Monastir that the Rumelian troops which he had brought with him were not of much account, and that he was anxiously awaiting the arrival of an entire division of Anatolian troops which the Government was sending to him from Asia Minor. Shemshi’s own brother-in-law, an officer of gendarmerie in Monastir, and a member of the Committee, while unable, of course, to take him into his confidence, attempted to prevent a useless shedding of Moslem blood and to save the General’s own life, by warning him that the troops of Resna and its neighbourhood would refuse to obey his orders if they were called upon to fire on Niazi’s band. In the meanwhile the Committee of Union and Progress had full knowledge of all the plans of the Government; for telegraph clerks and other officials who were secret adherents of the cause were able to betray the communications that passed between the Yildiz and the military authorities in Monastir.

The Committee was actively employed in frustrating the plans of the Government. In order to counteract the influence of the false reports that had been circulated by the agents of the Despotism it placarded the walls of Monastir with manifestos on the night before Shemshi’s arrival. These manifestos explained that the aim of the Committee was to free Turkey from her traitorous Government which had been corrupting the nation for thirty years and was now betraying her to foreigners. It called for the immediate removal of the spies who had been sent recently from Constantinople, and protested against the illegal carrying off of the people denounced by the spies, to the Inquisitions of the Yildiz and the Central Police in the capital.

The Committee also organised numerous bands in various parts of the country so as to confuse the Government, divide its forces, and prevent a concentrated attack on Niazi. It kept up constant communication with Niazi, keeping him well informed of the movements of his enemies. The Committee enjoined him to avoid coming into contact with the troops that had been sent against him, but if this became impossible, to force on a decisive action that would do the Government great damage. As the object of the Committee was to unite all the different elements of the Ottoman population, a civil war, at this juncture, especially if it took the form of a conflict between the Moslem soldiery and the Moslem peasantry, would obviously be a deplorable calamity. But there was to be no sparing of the Government spies; and the Committee gave orders that the Palace agents, who were wandering through the villages gaining information and poisoning the minds of the people against the Constitution, should be put to death.

And now to return to Niazi Bey and his wanderings. After his halt on the afternoon of his departure at the cross-roads, where his band, reinforced by Osman Effendi’s contingent of fedais from Persepe, had attained the strength which he considered to be the most suitable for his purpose, the march was continued to the Moslem village of Labcha, to most of whose inhabitants he and his followers were well known. The fedais entered the village shouting Allahu Akber, “God is very great,” and La ilaha illallah, “there is no God but God!” Then Niazi, through the Elective Council of the village, called in all the peasants who were working in the fields and addressed them. Here the ground had been well prepared. There were none among the inhabitants who did not desire the restoration of the Constitution. They fell upon the necks of Niazi and his men and embraced them, rejoicing to see that these saviours of the country were now openly working for the cause.

Here one of the elders of the village, an ex-sergeant of the army, begged to be allowed to join the band. “Do not deprive me of this happiness,” he said; “for even if we fail, true martyrdom can be gained on this expedition.” But Niazi replied, “My heart wants you with me, but you must stay here, for this village needs your presence. I intend to make Labcha my principal base and our place of refuge, so here you can help the cause more than by following me.” The sergeant therefore remained in Labcha, where his zeal, fidelity, and mother wit were of great service. An incident which occurred in this village some time later throws a curious light on the system of self-government which was introduced by the Committee of Union and Progress into the villages that had accepted the Committee as their virtual ruler. The sister of the above-mentioned sergeant had told her husband, a man of Resna, what she knew concerning the oath which the representatives of the Committee had administered to certain leading inhabitants of Labcha; and this foolish fellow had gone about boasting that he was in possession of the secret, mentioning the names of initiates. The sergeant, on hearing this, summoned the villagers to a meeting at which it was decided that, as a punishment for both these babblers, the man should immediately divorce his wife. The husband and wife came before this irregular tribunal, whose orders had to be obeyed more implicitly than those of the law courts of the State, and on begging for forgiveness obtained the revocation of the sentence that would have separated them. This event led to the creation of a female police or vigilance committee in this and some other villages, whose chief duty it apparently was to check indiscreet gossip concerning the Committee.

As in Labcha and the surrounding villages all the men were strong partisans of the Committee, there was no more work to be done here for Niazi’s band, and therefore, after purchasing provisions and refreshing themselves, the fedais set out again to march through the night.

In the following afternoon they came to the neighbourhood of the Albanian town of Ochrida, where there were many Palace spies and a considerable garrison, so that it was not possible for the band to enter it; but there was also here an important branch of the Committee of Union and Progress, and a large proportion of the inhabitants were at heart adherents of the cause. So Niazi, leaving his band encamped in a cherry orchard in the hills, walked into the town under cover of the night. Major Eyoub Effendi and other members of the Committee, who were old friends of his, had a meeting with him at the house of one of the faithful, and welcomed him heartily. They told him that two detachments of troops had left Resna to surround his band. They sent up to his camp leather water bottles and other necessaries of which his men were in want, and gave him great encouragement. Here he took the opportunity of sending a manifesto to the Albanian Committee, as it turned out later, with excellent result, for Niazi, whose birthplace was near the Albanian border, and who was himself of Albanian stock, had many friends among the Albanians, and was much respected by them. He also wrote a letter to his old foe Cherchis, the famous leader of Bulgarian bands. In this letter he explained his aim to Cherchis, and told him that he, Niazi, who had formerly pursued Cherchis’ band with such vigour, now extended to him the hand of friendship, and asked for an interview under any conditions that Cherchis might propose, in order that they might devise a scheme for concerted action against the Government, and he reminded him of the proverb which says, “the sheep who leaves the flock is torn by the wolf.” Niazi’s friends took him back to his camp by back lanes and paths, and the band, leaving this dangerous neighbourhood, made another long night march to the north, its objective being Dibra on the Black Drin, the centre of a district in which Niazi knew that he would find many adherents, and where the forests and rugged mountains afforded safe retreats and easily defensible positions.

And now Niazi’s work of preparing a general insurrection commenced in earnest. The story of his wanderings cannot be fully told here, but I will give some explanation of the methods he employed. It was his intention, in the first place, to carry on his operations in the Moslem villages and afterwards to bring in the other elements of the population. He worked with the greatest energy, often visiting and organising several villages in the same day. It was his custom to send a small advanced party of his followers under an officer to reassure the people, and, this done, he would enter the village with the rest of the band. In all save a very few Moslem villages thus visited the fedais were received with extraordinary enthusiasm, and Niazi’s task of making the inhabitants sworn adherents of the Committee was not difficult. He would call a meeting of the villagers, or, having attended prayers in the mosque with his band, he would there, after the prayers were over, address those present with stirring words, explaining to them the lofty aims of the movement whose soldier he now was. The leading men would be called up one by one to take the oath prescribed by the Committee of Union and Progress, and afterwards the other inhabitants would come up eagerly to be sworn in. Among those who thus became adherents of the Committee were many deserters from the army who had been hiding among their families.

Niazi used to impress it upon these newly made members that, as they were now united as brethren to serve the same high purpose, they must put away all differences among themselves, and forgive each other for wrongs inflicted. The cause demanded that their blood feuds should cease. Throughout this region, and especially in some of the Albanian districts, relentless blood feuds between families and individuals are very frequent, and to be murdered in a vendetta is regarded as the natural ending to a man’s life. But now was beheld the astonishing spectacle of a general reconciliation. Men whose families had been slaughtering each other for generations, embraced publicly, united by devotion to a common cause; and old men who had not dared to go outside their houses for years, because some ancient crime was yet unavenged, once more went forth freely and without fear.

The villagers, in the sincerity of their welcome to Niazi’s fedais, whom they regarded as the saviours of Turkey, often refused to accept payment for the food and other necessaries which they freely and gladly supplied to the band; but Niazi, when he did not pay in cash for these supplies, insisted on giving receipts for their value, and instructed the villagers to show their receipts to the authorities and deduct the amounts from the taxes which they paid to the Government. At the same time he used to send manifestos to the local mudirs and other officials warning them that death would be the penalty for the tax collector who refused to accept these receipts as part payment of taxes.

A village, after its inhabitants had been sworn in, was “organised” according to certain rules laid down by the Committee, and became a well-ordered centre of revolt. In the first place the authority of the Government and its officials was disclaimed, and tyrannical oppression was prevented by the united opposition of a population that had become as a band of brothers. A local form of government on constitutional lines was set up. The sources of the Government revenue were appropriated whenever it was possible to do this, and in some districts the villages refused to pay any taxes to the Government, offering a passive resistance that would have taken an active shape had the tax collectors ventured to push the matter.

For the purpose of mutual protection, relations were established between the various villages of a district; and a certain number of the inhabitants were secretly organised as a sort of militia. Niazi found that from one hundred to two hundred and fifty rifles were concealed in each village of the Dibra and other neighbouring districts, so arms were not wanting. These villages had suffered greatly from the raids of the Bulgarian bands, but from this time the organisation introduced by Niazi enabled them not only to hold their own against the largest bands, but to defy the attempts of the Government to coerce them. This general preparation for defence brought a peace to this region such as it had not known for years, and the Moslems themselves, obeying the orders of the Committee, refrained from any aggressive actions; all the Moslem bands that were in the hills were dissolved, the men who composed them returning to their villages. Niazi made it clear to all adherents of the Committee that it was above all things necessary for the success of the cause that the Moslems should carefully avoid any conflict, whether with Christian bands or Government troops, and that they should act strictly on the defensive until the Committee gave the word for the general insurrection.

Niazi thus succeeded, whithersoever he wandered over the Balkans, in winning over the Mussulman land-owners and peasantry, and many of the Government officials, to the revolutionary cause; and, in the meanwhile, by manifestos and letters he sought to gain the confidence and support of the Bulgarian element in the population. Notwithstanding the never-ceasing warfare between them in Macedonia, the Turks and the brave and manly Bulgarians were more in touch with each other than with any of the other races in the Balkan Peninsula. The Turks had often protected and were soon again to protect the Bulgarian exarchists against the fanatical persecutions of the Greeks. It was, therefore, natural that Niazi should seek the cooperation of the Bulgarians before approaching the other Christian peoples of European Turkey.

There are many Bulgarian villages scattered over the region in which Niazi was at work, and their inhabitants at first regarded with some anxiety the change that had come over the Moslem population, which for several years had appeared listless and devoid of hope, not having the separatist aspirations which buoyed up the spirits of the Christians, but now had suddenly become cheerful and alert, as if looking forward to some great and happy change. Suspicious at first, the Bulgarians at last came to realise that whatever sentiment was stirring the Moslems, it had nothing to do with anti-Christian feeling, and was not antagonistic to themselves.

On July 6 Niazi issued his important manifesto to the Bulgarians. He proclaimed to them that the time had come to strike a blow at the evils that had been destroying the fatherland for years, for the Despotism was ever becoming more intolerable. He put all the blame on the Government; but pointed out that the Christian Ottomans had taken a wrong road, while seeking a better state of things. They had heeded the false advice of the surrounding small states, Bulgaria, Servia, and Greece, which had promised to free Macedonia, but were really working for their own ends, their one aim being to seize the country and enslave its people. “These little Powers have sown hatred and dissension among us, and have deluged the fatherland with blood.” He assured them that “if these little Powers should work on thus for another thirty years they would not attain their purpose. The fatherland is, and ever shall be, ours.” He then went on to explain that the Ottoman Committee of Union and Progress, consisting of army officers, civil officials, townsmen, and peasants, all honourable men, had been formed with the object of establishing a system of government that would give liberty and justice, without distinction of creed or race, to all Ottomans, so that they might live in peace and happiness in their common fatherland. Then he spoke of his band of armed fedais, whose mission it was to propagate these principles in the towns and villages, and to bring about the co-operation of all elements of the population in putting a stop to the internal dissensions and civil warfare that were hastening the Empire to its ruin. He called upon the leaders to dissolve these mischievous bands, to join his own band, and work for Ottoman liberty and justice, instead of for Bulgaria and the other little Powers. Severe punishment would be dealt out to such bands as did not come in, and if any village gave encouragement to the bands after this warning, its head man would be executed. They were all Ottomans, and they must all co-operate to establish the Constitution which gave equality and liberty, and protected each creed and race and language.

This manifesto produced a wonderful effect. The Bulgarian inhabitants knew that Niazi Bey was not speaking idle words, and threatening to do things that he could not carry out. They realised that if it came to civil war the Committee of Union and Progress would have practically the entire Moslem population of Macedonia and Albania on its side. Moreover, they knew enough of Niazi to feel that he was quite sincere in his declarations and promises, and many of them had observed with amazed admiration the just and honourable conduct of his band of fedais. Here was the Turkish officer who, for five years, had been vigorously hunting down the Bulgarian bands, now speaking to them as fellow-countrymen and brethren! Hitherto, they argued, they had paid heavy taxes to a Government that had given no account of how the money was spent, and treated them as dogs; but now a new rule was asserting itself, under which they began to see justice and the prospect of being treated as human beings.

So within a few days of the issue of his manifesto, Niazi received intelligence to the effect that the Bulgarians of Resna, Ochrida, Persepe, and other districts had held meetings at which it had been decided that “it would be an honour to serve with their lives and property this band which had such high aims.” Cherchis himself, too, with his comrades, desired to effect a union with the Committee of Union and Progress.

On July 9 Niazi, thinking that the time was ripe, for the first time brought his band into a purely Bulgarian village. This was the large village of Velijon, containing three hundred and fifty houses. It is situated on a hillside, with a great forest behind it sloping up steeply to the wild and lofty ridges of the Balkan Range, and for its strategic advantages it had been selected as one of the most important supply bases for the Bulgarian bands. As Niazi’s vanguard entered the village the inhabitants took alarm, closed their shops, and shut themselves up within their houses; but after Niazi, coming in with the rest of his band, had summoned the Elective Council, and explained matters, the fears of the villagers disappeared; and friendly relations were soon established by the kindly and courteous officers and Moslem notables who composed the bulk of this remarkable band. The end of it was that the priest, the Elective Council, and all the other inhabitants of the village placed their hands upon the Holy Gospels and took the oath of fidelity to the Committee, undertaking to carry out all its orders and render armed assistance to the cause when called upon to do so. When the band marched out of the village in the cool of the evening the friendly Christians accompanied the fedais for some distance to put them on their way and then bade them God speed. Shortly after this Niazi was enabled to amnesty and arrange for the coming in of the bands that were in the hills round Dibra, which place was made an important centre of the insurrectionary movement.

It was about this time that Niazi received a letter from the Monastir Centre of the Committee which gave him great encouragement. It thanked him and “the heroic self-sacrificing men of Resna” for the splendid work they were doing, and informed Niazi that his friend, Major Enver Bey, the clever staff officer who had performed distinguished service in Macedonia, had thrown up his commission, and at the head of a band of fedais was actively preparing the population in the Tikosh district, while other officers had also organised bands, and taken to the mountains. The fortunes of the cause appeared very bright.

He also learnt from this letter that General Shemshi Pasha had been publicly assassinated in Monastir on July 7. The General, after reporting progress to the Palace, had left the telegraph office and was driving in his carriage to join the two battalions with which it was his intention to surround Niazi’s band, when he was shot dead by an officer in uniform. Fifteen hundred people were surrounding the carriage at the time, but not one attempted to, or had any wish to arrest this executioner of the Committee’s will, who strolled quietly off. The ill-fated Shemshi was an energetic commander, and had he lived there would undoubtedly have been some severe fighting between such troops as would have remained loyal to him and the Committee’s bands. Shemshi would probably have led his troops to disaster, for his boldness and confidence in himself amounted to rashness, and he despised his enemy. Ambushes had been prepared for him on the roads by which he would have had to march; and Niazi, operating in a difficult mountain country, with an armed population skilled in guerilla war to stand by him, was now in a position to hold his own for an indefinite time against any forces that the Government could send against him. There can be little doubt that the death of Shemshi prevented a civil war that would have done much injury to the cause of the Committee, for it would have divided public opinion, the unanimity of which it was of such importance to secure. From the date of Shemshi’s death the impotence of the Government and the disorganisation of the army made it difficult for the Palace to plunge the country into the horrors of internecine conflict.

CHAPTER XII
THE PALACE AND THE GREEKS

THE preparations for the general rising now advanced very rapidly. Enver Bey, declining further treacherous offers, which included the promise of his promotion to General rank if he would return to Constantinople, led his band of fedais through the mountains, and won village after village to the revolutionary cause. The story of this young officer’s escape in disguise from Salonica, his adventures in the wilds, and the brave work he did for Turkey, is told throughout his country. He has become the popular hero, and is held in the highest estimation by his comrades; for the complete absence of any jealousy among the young officers who devoted themselves to the liberation of their fatherland is a pleasing feature of this patriotic movement. Niazi writes of Enver as follows: “He who in the time of sorrow and hopelessness encouraged and fortified us with his ardent words and serious ways, Enver Bey, whose like is seldom to be met.” Salah-ed-Din Bey, Hassan Bey, and other officers were also wandering over Macedonia and Albania with their bands, gaining thousands of adherents among the land-owners and the peasantry; and at the same time others were educating the rank and file of the army, with the result that a large proportion of the troops garrisoning this region were ready to fight, even against their own comrades, if called upon to do so.

Niazi Bey had practically won over the bulk of the Moslem inhabitants of Western Albania, a wonderful achievement indeed. For one who knows these fanatical Albanian tribesmen finds it difficult to understand how they could listen with sympathy and patience to the gospel of universal brotherhood, and the extension of equal rights to Christian and Mussulman. But Niazi, with his rough, strong eloquence, his obvious sincerity and single-mindedness, his magnetic personality, and his commanding presence—for, like many Albanians, he is a man of great stature and sturdy build—is evidently a born leader of men; and he was successful not only in gaining over the Albanians, but in holding back these eager warriors until their armed assistance should be called for, and in making them patch up their sanguinary tribal and family blood feuds, some of which had endured for centuries. Moreover, a large proportion of the young officers of the Third Army Corps were of Albanian stock, and of these several were able to influence their countrymen in the Committee’s favour.

Niazi and his band, during their memorable twenty days’ wandering in the hill-country, avoiding the main roads and threading in single file the difficult mountain tracks, ran many dangers and suffered considerable hardships. At times the pursuing Government troops were close at their heels; sometimes, but not often, the fedais came to a village whose inhabitants were hostile. Thus, on one occasion, when hungry, thirsty, and weary they approached a village in order to obtain the bread and cheese and water which seem to have composed their usual diet, the villagers, whose minds had been poisoned against the Committee by an emissary of the Palace, came out armed to the teeth, and dangerously excited, and threatened to fire upon the band. The position was an awkward one, for Niazi not only had the hostile village in front of him, but had in his rear, and not far off, a large detachment of troops under a Bosnian officer, which had been sent to cut him off. So the band, foodless and worn out with fatigue, had to take to the upper slopes of the mountain for safety. Niazi is an obstinate man. He was determined either to convert that village to the cause or to give it a severe lesson. A few days later he talked the villagers over to repentance of their error; they took the oath of allegiance to the Committee, and supplied the band with two days’ rations of bread and cheese, for which they refused to accept payment. Moreover, the Bosnian officer, on receiving the news of Shemshi Pasha’s execution at Monastir, abandoned his pursuit of Niazi and marched with his band to Ochrida to submit to the Committee.

On July 12 Niazi, having been summoned to Ochrida to confer with the Committee, marched boldly into that town with his band, none daring to interfere with him, so much had the authority of the Government been weakened by this time. Here the members of the Committee gave him information concerning the other bands, and instructed him to keep in touch with them, as the time was near when an important combined movement might be made. They told him that the Government had sent General Osman Pasha to Monastir as Commander Extraordinary of the Vilayet, in the place of the assassinated Shemshi Pasha, and that the Bulgarian Executive Committee had issued instructions to all the Bulgarian villages to the effect that the Moslem revolutionary bands should be treated hospitably and with consideration, but that, until further orders, armed assistance must not be given. Niazi was also informed of the shooting, by order of the Committee, of the imam, Mustapha Effendi, and other dangerous agents of the Palace.

The business completed, Niazi’s band marched out of the town, and followed the sandy shores of the great lake of Ochrida, where they were warmly welcomed in the villages of the Bulgarian fishing-folk. The objective of the band was Istarova, but on the way they carried out their mission in the villages, swearing in the people, overthrowing the authority of the Government, establishing elective administrative bodies, and expelling any tax-gatherers or other servants of the Government who had oppressed the people, or were known to be subservient to Palace influence. Threatened at one point by a pursuing detachment of four hundred men, Niazi divided his band into small parties and took up commanding positions on the rocky hills that bordered the main road. But it turned out that the detachment was under the command of Captain Ziya Bey, a young officer whose sympathies were with the revolutionaries. Ziya Bey and some other officers came up to Niazi’s camp, offered to join the band so soon as their services should be needed, and undertook to withdraw the detachment from the neighbourhood. There was another detachment, too, in pursuit of the band at that time, but it had purposely been sent off in a wrong direction.

It was Niazi’s intention to make Istarova, the centre of an important district, his head-quarters for a short while. His band made a triumphal progress through the district. The villagers were all eager to be sworn as adherents of the Committee. In one village Niazi ordered the execution of a particularly iniquitous tax-gatherer (who succeeded in effecting his escape) and the man’s rams were divided among the members of the band, who were thus enabled to enjoy a luxurious meal for a change. Before entering Istarova, Niazi sent a letter to the principal Government official in the place, the kaimakan (or administrator, of the Caza, or district of Istarova), an honourable young man who had exercised his authority with justice, and of whom the peasants in the district had spoken well to Niazi. It was a characteristic letter, in which Niazi, after explaining that all the inhabitants of the district, Moslem and Christian, had sworn to stand by the Committee, told him that though he entertained a great esteem for him as a just ruler of the people, at the same time he, Niazi, regretted that the kaimakan had shown negligence in one important particular; for in that large district there was not a single school. “The calamities of this nation,” he went on, “are mainly due to the ignorance of the people,” and he urged him to do his best to promote education.

On July 16 the band entered Istarova, where the men enjoyed a welcome and much-needed rest—the villagers supplying cigars and coffee to cheer them—and were able to sleep in unwonted security, surrounded by their friends; for in that district of a hundred villages, with a population of 30,000, all men were with the Committee of Union and Progress, while any troops that might have proved troublesome had been removed to a distance by arrangement with friendly officers. As for Niazi, he saw to the swearing in of the people of Istarova, and the election of the administrative body, and then he preached the gospel of the Constitution in the Mosque, and recommended the newly appointed administrative body to build schools, to educate the people, and to repair their mosques, and for this purpose, on behalf of his band, he subscribed the sum of two pounds. The kaimakan himself sought out Niazi in the night, and praised him to his face as a brave man and a bringer of justice to the people, declared his belief in the righteousness of the Committee’s aim, and placed himself under Niazi’s orders. Thus did Niazi influence all the men with whom he came into contact.

Throughout the following day Niazi remained in Istarova, which presented a very animated appearance, for there poured into the village thousands of peasants from all the surrounding countryside, eager to be sworn, together with a number of soldiers who had deserted to join Niazi, and had come in, bringing their rifles with them, from the neighbouring garrisons and posts. There was good reason for Niazi’s exultation in the success of the movement. Resna, Ochrida, Persepe, Dibra, Malisa, and now Istarova had all been brought within the revolutionary union by the efforts of the bands. He now knew that with a word, when the time came, he would be able to summon a large armed force to execute the Committee’s will.

And now to leave the mountains and the bands of brave fedais for a while, to return to the less wholesome atmosphere of the Yildiz Palace, and follow the last vain efforts of the Despotism to crush the life out of the revolutionary movement. The advisers of the Sultan were fully aware of the significance of the reports that came to them from Macedonia, though the newspapers, officially inspired, still spoke lightly of “unimportant manifestations of disaffection in a few garrisons.” There were high Government officials in the European Vilayets who ventured to inform the Palace of the exact state of affairs. Notable among these was the Vali of Monastir, who in the following despatch to the Grand Vizier (dated, I think, July 17) pointed out, as plainly as he dared, that the revolutionary movement was too strong for the Despotism, that further repressive measures must fail, and could only result in useless bloodshed, and that it would be well to submit to the will of the people and grant a Constitution. The last suggestion was, of course, put in an ambiguous way, for at that time no one had the courage to mention the word Constitution to the Sultan. The following is a translation—some repetitions and unimportant details being omitted—of the despatch in question.

“It has been ordered by an Imperial Iradé that Niazi Bey and his companions should be arrested. The existence of the powerful Committee of Union and Progress has been proved by the severity of the measures which it adopts. It stands not alone; for, as has already been intimated in official despatches, the officers of the army are united in a determination to support the demands of the Committee; and the population, likewise, is in league with the Committee. To leave aside the question of the pursuit of Niazi, I beg to state that none will now venture to undertake the duty of making investigations. The members of the commission which was formed under the presidency of Shukri Pasha to institute inquiries (the spy commission) have been obliged to abandon their work in consequence of the secret threats which were conveyed to them. The ulema who were sent by the Government to travel through the country and give advice to the villagers have been warned by the Committee of Union and Progress that they would be killed if they continued to do this, so they have returned. The lives of all officials, my own included, are in peril. It has been shown that the Committee has the power of executing its threats. Here, in Monastir, when General Osman Hidayet Pasha had gathered his officers around him to read to them the telegram which communicated the high Iradé of his Imperial Majesty the Caliph, he was shot by one of the officers, who fired three times at him in the presence of all these people, and yet this officer was not arrested, and it has been found impossible even to ascertain his name. The police and judiciary officials are meditating resignation from their posts in order to save their lives if pressure is brought upon them to make them carry out their duties. As for me, your servant, my ancestry having been faithful for four hundred years, and myself having served the Government in various capacities for the last forty-four years, I consider that for me to resign my post in this hour of trouble would be an act of ingratitude; and therefore, despite the perils to which I and my family are exposed, I am prepared to discharge my duty, that is, to devise means preventing the active co-operation of the people with the officers of the army, whose views and aims they undoubtedly share.