Balkan Peninsula -- Description and travel; Eastern question (Balkan)
In ecclesiastical matters the Principality is, according to Article 39
of the Bulgarian Constitution, placed under the control of the highest
spiritual authority of the Bulgarian Church, wherever that authority may
be found. This authority is the Bulgarian Exarchate. It must be
remembered, too, that this Constitution was ratified at the time, by the
Powers signatory of the Treaty of Berlin. The right of the Principality
to take an interest in the normal and regular working of the authority
in question now became even more indisputable. Besides, political
considerations of the very highest importance to the peace of Europe
place upon the Bulgarian Government the duty of reminding the Great
Powers, Turkey included, of the liabilities which they assumed towards
the Christian population of the vilayets by virtue of Articles 25 and 62
of the Treaty of Berlin.
Only natural is it, and in the cause of humanity, that Bulgaria should
seek to protect the Bulgarians in Macedonia. Never has the country been
in a worse state than at the present time, and never has European
interference been more needed than at this moment.
Europe should listen attentively to this Bulgarian complaint against
Turkey, for it is surely a just one, crying loudly for remedy. The blood
of the poor massacred thousands in Macedonia calls to-day to the Powers
for mercy and justice, and yet to-morrow, and still to-morrow, a hundred
more defenceless men and women and innocent children are put to the
sword, mutilated and murdered, and we in England hear nothing about it.
Macedonia is, alas! a country where God is high and Justice far away.
This question of the Bulgarian Exarchate and the Porte is, I know, an
abstruse one, neglected by most writers on the subject. However, it is
one of the highest importance—one which is inseparable from the future
policy of Bulgaria.
Things cannot remain long in Macedonia as I myself saw them. Europe
holds up her hands in virtuous horror at the so-called Congo scandals
and seeks out every detail of maladministration, yet she turns a deaf
ear to the piteous cry of the Macedonians, whose homes are daily burned
and pillaged, and whose villages are often completely wiped out—both
dwellings and inhabitants—in the course of a few hours by fiends filled
with the lust of blood.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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