Balkan Peninsula -- Description and travel; Eastern question (Balkan)
Just now the revolutionary organisation in Bulgaria is undergoing
another crisis. It is divided into two principal flanks: the moderate
and the extreme. The first-mentioned inclines towards a suspension of
active revolutionary operations on account of the exhaustion of the
Macedonian population and the unfavourable political situation in
Europe, while the extreme party are urging a continuance of
revolutionary action to exasperation. At the annual congress in January
last the moderates had a chance to oust the extreme party, but the death
of Damian Groueff, the chief of the moderates, who was killed in the
village of Roussinovo (_vilayet_ of Uskub) upset all their plans. On
account of Groueff’s death they did not take part in the congress, and
the result is that the extreme party are now all paramount, and further
reprisals may be expected.
Therefore from all sides—from Turks, Greeks, Servians, and even
Bulgarians, as well as from an interested diplomacy—the Macedonians are
pressed, and their aspirations for the autonomy compromised. And what is
the result of all this? Only that the Macedonians are set by the
interested Powers before the eyes of the Christian world as a cruel and
barbarous population, unworthy of sympathy—worthy only of the tyrannical
Turkish rule!
What is the remedy?
There is but one, the one advocated by the kings and princes of the
Balkans and the Cabinet Ministers with whom I chatted, namely, to change
the present farcical so-called reforms into an administration, under
effectual European control by appointing a European Governor-General,
responsible to the Powers. Then this terrible situation will change into
the peaceful development of a country which is endowed by nature with
bounty, but reduced by men’s covetousness to a perfect hell.
That Macedonia to-day is a hell I have seen with my own eyes. And
moreover I have been under fire from a Greek band myself. I
travelled—contrary to the advice of my friends, who feared the perils of
the way—right through the heart of Macedonia from south to north,
visiting the Seres and Melnik districts, which only a few days prior to
my arrival had been ravaged by Greek bands. In one poor village I passed
through, twenty-three women, children, and old men had been butchered in
cold blood on the previous day, and I saw with my own eyes some of their
mutilated bodies. Upon the women nameless atrocities had been committed.
In Caraja-Kioi, a village not far from Seres, I was told that a
fortnight before, nineteen persons, mostly old men and women, had been
massacred, and I was informed by eye-witnesses that the Greek band was
assisted by the Turks, and that present at the massacre was a Greek
metropolitan and a Greek consular employé!
I saw and spoke to two women who had been maltreated by the Greeks, and
who still bore wounds. The head of one was bound by a bloodstained rag,
and the arm of the other was in a sling.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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