Bulgaria Part 7

The last thing of which that Bulgarian writer dreamt was the actual result of the fresh Balkan war, which did break out and which ended in the humiliation of Bulgaria. He contemplated the necessity of palliating to European minds the enormity of a fratricidal war between allies who had sanctioned their war against Turkey as a struggle of the Cross against the Crescent; but he had no idea that there was the barest possibility that Bulgaria would have to suffer complete defeat instead of explaining victory.

The Conference of London which endeavoured to arrange a peace after the first phase of the Balkan war met first in December 1913. I watched closely its deliberations, had several friends among the delegates, and was in a position to see at close hand the play of jealousies and ambitions which made its work futile. From the first the very desperation of Turkey raised a difficulty to quick peace negotiations.

She had lost so much as to be practically bankrupt, and was in the position of a reckless man with no more possible losses to suffer, anxious by any expedient to postpone the day of payment in the hope that something would turn up in his favour. That anything should turn up seemed in reason impossible, but Oriental fatalism despises reason; and in this case Oriental fatalism was right judged by the final event.

The sessions of the London Conference found a vividly contrasting setting in London. (In Constantinople the meetings would have had an appropriate stage.) It was a contest of Oriental against semi-Oriental diplomacy; and staid British officials, who had duties in connection with the Conference, lived for weeks in an atmosphere of bewilderment, wondering if they were still in the twentieth century or had wandered back to the Bagdad of the Middle Ages.

The first effort of the Turkish delegates was to gain time. On any point that arose they wanted instructions from their government and pressed for an adjournment. When, after a few days, the Conference a.s.sembled again, the instructions had not arrived, and there was need for another adjournment. At the next meeting the instructions had arrived; but they were written so illegibly that they could not be deciphered, and so there was another adjournment. (This illegible despatches excuse had not even the merit of being novel--it was used many years before in an Egyptian negotiation.) To the desperate attempts of the Turks to waste time the diplomats of the Balkan States replied with but little patience or suavity. They did not recognise fully that they were present at a death-bed, and that the patient had some excuse for taking an unconscionable time in dying. Their patience was not increased by the knowledge of the fact that the time secured by these evasive excuses was being used in desperate attempts to sow dissensions among the allies and to beat up support in some European capital for the forlorn Turkish Empire.

It was over the question of the cession of Adrianople to Bulgaria that the chief trouble arose, and the Turkish delegates made a great point of the fact that at Adrianople was the parent mosque of Islam in Europe and the burial-place of the first Sultans. This plea for their holy places aroused some sympathy in Europe. I suggested to Dr. Daneff, the chief Bulgarian delegate to the Conference, that he should allow me to publish that Bulgaria would allow the Turks to retain the holy places in Adrianople as an extra-territorial area under the control of the Moslem Caliph. Dr. Daneff liked the proposal, but at first would only allow it to go out as an unofficial hint that probably Bulgaria would consent to such an arrangement. Then, finding that the concession was popular, he fathered it directly, and it was made one of the terms of peace which the Powers tried to force upon Turkey.

Peace seemed a.s.sured when finally the Turkish Porte agreed, under pressure from the Powers, to a Treaty of Peace, which left to Turkey on the European mainland only the territory lying south and east from a line drawn between Media, on the Black Sea, to Rodosto on the Sea of Marmora. But a revolution in Turkey upset this arrangement, and the Peace Conference was broken up and the war resumed.

In this second phase of the Balkan war against Turkey (1914), the efforts of the Balkan League were practically confined to attacks upon the fortresses still held by the Turks in the conquered territories.

Scutari, Janina, Adrianople fell after fierce battles. The revolution clearly had done nothing to restore the military strength of the Turks.

Now another effort was made to end the war, and the Peace Conference resumed its sessions in London.

Whilst during the 1913 session all the delay had been caused by Turkey, now Turkey shared the willingness of Bulgaria to sign a peace on terms dictated by the Powers, which left to Turkey the territory behind the Midia-Rodosto line, and reserved for a European decision the fate of the Aegean Islands and the boundaries of an independent state of Albania which was to be set up. But both Servia and Greece were reluctant now to a.s.sent to such peace conditions. Both felt a grievance about the creation of an independent Albania which deprived them of a great stretch of territory on the Adriatic which they had hoped to share. Both felt that yet another war was necessary to settle issues as to the division of the spoil with Bulgaria.

To the delays for which Servia and Greece were responsible there was an added complication arising from the att.i.tude of Roumania. That kingdom--which had taken no active part in the late war, but which had secretly nursed a boundary grievance against Bulgaria dating back from the War of Liberation, when Russia robbed Roumania of Bessarabia and proposed to pay her with Bulgarian territory without actually doing so--now announced that she must be a party to any new Balkan settlement, and mobilised her forces to give accent to the demand she had been making for some time for a territorial concession from Bulgaria.

The diplomacy of Bulgaria under these difficult circ.u.mstances was deplorable. Her statesmen seemed bemused with the intoxication of Bulgarian military victories, and unable to forget the glowing calculations of the future Bulgarian Empire which they had made during the course of the war. Those calculations I gathered from gossip with all cla.s.ses in Bulgaria at different times, speaking not only with politicians but with bankers, trading people, and others. They concluded that the Turk was going to be driven out of Europe, at any rate, as far as Constantinople. They considered that Constantinople was too great a prize for the Bulgarian nation or for the Balkan States, and that Constantinople would be left as an international city to be governed by a commission of the Great Powers. Bulgaria was, then, to have of what had been Turkey-in-Europe, the province of Thrace, and a large part of Macedonia as far as the city of Salonica.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A YOUNG GIRL OF IRN]

Salonica was desired very much by the Bulgarians, and also very much by the Greeks; and the decision in regard to Salonica before the war was that it would be best to make it a free Balkan city, governed by all the Balkan States in common, as a free port for all the Balkan States. The frontier of Greece was to extend to the north, and Greece was to be allowed all the Aegean Islands. The Servian frontier was to extend to the eastward and the southward, and what is now the autonomous province of Albania (the creation of which was insisted on by the Powers) was to be divided between Montenegro and Servia.

That division would have left the Bulgarians with the greatest spoil of the war. They would have had entry on to the Sea of Marmora; they would have controlled, perhaps, one side of the Dardanelles (but I believe they thought that the Dardanelles might also be left to a commission of the Powers). Now, with the clash of diplomacy, it was sternly necessary to curtail that ambition considerably, and to decide to seek a friend among the different rivals. Bulgarian diplomats could not be made to see that. They were firm with Turkey: wisely enough, for Turkey had no power left to wound or to help. But at the same time they refused to make any concessions either to Servia, to Greece, or to Roumania, all of whom were determined to have a share of the plunder which Bulgaria had a.s.signed for herself. "A leonine partners.h.i.+p" as the lawyers call it, that is to say, a partners.h.i.+p in which one party takes the lion's share of the spoil, is a very satisfactory arrangement for the lion. But one wants to be sure before attempting to enforce leonine arrangements that one is the lion. Bulgaria blundered on into a position which left her exhausted army to face at once Greece, Servia, Montenegro, and Roumania.

That it was not necessary for her to get into that position I can say with some confidence. A more judicious handling of her relations with Servia would have kept the friends.h.i.+p of that kindred nation, and Montenegro would have followed Servia. The united Slav peoples of the Balkans would then have been strong enough to withstand any attempt to enforce unfair conditions by Roumania or Greece. But Bulgaria made no attempt to conciliate Servia. Between the two peoples there had existed before the war a very close treaty of alliance. This treaty had arranged for the division of the spoil of the war on a basis which had not foreseen that the European Powers would create an independent Albania; and Servia had not imagined that Turkey would be so weak, and that the booty in Thrace would have been so considerable. Bulgaria thus had more than was expected in one quarter, whilst Servia was bitterly disappointed in another direction. Friends, under the circ.u.mstances, would have struck another bargain. Bulgaria insisted upon the strict letter of the old bargain.

Servia was thus forced into the arms of Greece; reluctantly, I think. If she could have made a fair arrangement with Bulgaria she would have preferred that. But it seemed to be destined that Bulgaria should add another to the long list of her frustrated hopes.

The early part of 1914 saw the Balkans in the throes of a war which eclipsed in bitterness and bloodshed the campaign of 1913. Greece and Servia fought against Bulgaria, and Roumania marched down from the north towards the Bulgarian capital, her army unopposed because there was no means of opposing it. Stopping short of entering Sofia, Roumania took up the position of the chief Power in the Balkans and insisted upon dictating terms of peace. Those terms Bulgaria, perforce, accepted after her army had been defeated with terrible slaughter by the Servian and Grecian forces. She was forced to give up territory in all directions: to Roumania on the north; to Servia on the west; to Greece on the south.

To crown her misfortunes, the Turks moved up against the prostrate country, recaptured, without an effort, Adrianople, which had been won with such terrible cost of Bulgarian blood, and also Kirk Kilisse. In the final result Bulgaria was left with but little net gain as the price of her enormous sacrifices of blood and of treasure. To the north she actually lost some of her old territory. From the Turk she secured a fragment of Thrace, and a part of Macedonia which gave her access to the Aegean Sea, but no decent port there, and no possibility of carrying out her grandiose scheme of ca.n.a.lising the River Maritza and making a Bulgarian Adrianople a port for trade. Further, she had the mortification of seeing all three of her rivals in the Balkans aggrandised, and Roumania left with the hegemony of the Peninsula.

Only a few months before, Mr. Noel Buxton had written the "Io triumphe"

of the Bulgarian cause:

The blight that had lain on the Balkan lands was healed, the fog dispelled. Even the prestige of military despotism was gone like a p.r.i.c.ked bubble. The tyranny that rested on delusion and not on power was vanished like an empty nightmare that fades when the sleeper wakes. The establishment of Europe's freedom was fulfilled; the final step taken. A great and notable nation had obtained recognition through the war. Its persistence, its purpose, its deep reserve, now stood revealed, added to the world's stores of national character.

For centuries the Bulgarian refused to compromise with the Turk.

Other nations sought to lighten the weight of the yoke by taking service with the tyrant or bowing the head. The maxim, "The sword never strikes when the head is bowed," undermined the soul of other nations, never of this. Influence and wealth went to others; all seemed lost by the policy of defiance. Bulgarians would not balance advantages. A kind of faith made them ready to pay even death for ultimate gain. The spirit wins at last: and the indomitable spirit of the Bulgars has come by its just reward.

Three months after that the Turk was back in Thrace, and the national life of Bulgaria had touched its lowest point since the war of Liberation, with only her justified hope in the future as a consolation.

CHAPTER X

SOME FACTS FOR THE TOURIST AND THE ECONOMIST

Bulgaria is in the main tableau or plain land sheltered by lofty mountains. On the north it is bounded by the Danube until the town of Silistra is reached, when an artificial frontier cuts down from the river to the Black Sea coast. By the cession of territory to Roumania in 1914 this artificial frontier took a more southerly course, and reaches now to a point just north of Varna. The coast of the Black Sea bounds Bulgaria on the east, and she has there two ports, Varna and Burgas. On the south the frontier is now European Turkey as far west almost as the 24th parallel of lat.i.tude, and then the bordering territory is Greece.

On the west the boundary is Servia. The Balkan Mountains and the Rhodope Mountains run roughly east and west: the former almost in the centre of Bulgaria; the latter near to the Turkish border.

The valleys and plains of Bulgaria are watered by tributaries of the Danube, by tributaries of the Maritza and the Struma flowing into the Aegean Sea, and by some small streams flowing directly into the Black Sea. The soil of the plains and the tableland is generally good, and 70 per cent of it is suitable for cultivation. In the mountains there are a few small lakes and many deep gorges and n.o.ble peaks, offering to the traveller the attraction of scenery wilder than that of the Alps.

For the tourist with an autumn or a spring month to spare, I could imagine no more interesting journey than to cross on horseback or with an ox-wagon the Rhodopes or the Balkans. (In the summer such a tour would be less pleasant because of the heat of the plains and the prevalence of flies.) But in the autumn, of all seasons, the Balkan Peninsula has supreme charms. The climate then is perfect, usually fine, with warm clear days and cold nights. The atmosphere is full of light and colour. Sunset as seen from the lower foothills of the Balkans is a rare pageant of glowing colour. These foothills are covered with oak scrub, which with the first frosts of autumn puts on burning robes of red and gold. As the sun goes down to rest in the western sky, hung with banners of the same red and gold, the twilight steals up first as a pink radiance then as a deep purple glow. Light melts into light--softly, insensibly--the display in the sky and on the hill-sides gradually pa.s.sing from one colour to another, until at last night and darkness come to end the long-drawn-out procession of colour.

These wild mountains abound in game which has been driven from the tamer parts of Europe. There are bears, wolves, jackals, wild boars, deer, chamois; and all kinds of birds, such as eagles, falcons, bustards, wild geese, pheasants, partridges, woodc.o.c.k, snipe, and moorhen. For the sportsman the Balkan Peninsula is almost the only tract left in Europe offering really wild game. King Ferdinand, who recognises the tourist possibilities of his country, has lately encouraged the stocking of the Rhodope streams with trout, to offer another attraction to the visitor.

[Ill.u.s.tration: GUARDING THE FLOCKS AND HERDS]

To King Ferdinand's initiative also is due in a great measure the movement to develop the spas of Bulgaria. The mountains abound in medicinal springs of various kinds. Some of the most important have been used in a primitive fas.h.i.+on since the Roman times, and under the Turkish rule. Recently, the mining section of the Ministry of Commerce and Agriculture has succeeded in developing the mineral springs at Sliven, Banki, Varshetz, and Meritchleri. Modern health-resorts have been built at Banki, Varshetz, Hissar, and Meritchleri. There are, all in all, more than 200 hot and mineral springs in Bulgaria in some eighty different places. In the department of Sofia there are twenty-three, the hottest of which is Dolnia Bania. The town of Sofia itself possesses very good hot springs. The munic.i.p.ality has almost completed the building of public baths which will cost 60,000.

Though it is far from the mind of the Bulgarian people to aim at making their country another playground for the west of Europe, there is no doubt at all but that in the future Bulgaria will attract, yearly, thousands of tourists--in the winter for snow-sports; in the spring and autumn for the scenery, the sport, the medicinal baths. At the present time there is practically no tourist traffic. Travellers wis.h.i.+ng to explore early a new country may be confident of getting in the capital, Sofia, excellent hotel accommodation, and in the chief towns, such as Stara Zagora and Philippopolis, decent and clean accommodation. But to see Bulgaria properly it is necessary to take to horseback or wagon. At the capital it is possible to engage guides who speak English, and to hire horses or oxen for transport at an astonis.h.i.+ngly cheap rate. The horse-carts of the country are springless and not too comfortable. The ox-wagons, also springless, are quite comfortable, as the oxen move along smoothly and without jerking. I have slept quite soundly in a Bulgarian ox-wagon as it crawled over roadless country at night.

Mainly an agricultural country, Bulgaria grows wheat, maize, barley, rye, oats, millet, spelt, rice (around Philippopolis), potatoes, grapes, tobacco, mulberries (there is a silk industry), and roses. This cultivation of roses for the production of attar of roses is an almost exclusively Bulgarian industry. Most of the genuine attar of roses produced in the world comes from Bulgaria. The production is a Government monopoly, and I believe that if care is taken to secure flasks of attar with the Government seal the purchaser may be sure of getting the genuine article. Otherwise, as likely as not, oil of geraniums is subst.i.tuted for the attar of roses, or is used as an adulterant. The rose valleys are grouped around Stara Zagora, and a visit to the farms in the flowering season--late spring--should be an incident of a Balkan tour.

The exports of Bulgaria are chiefly cereals, and the imports manufactured goods of all kinds. But by a system of high Protection and bonuses efforts are being made to establish manufacturing industries in the country. The oldest Bulgarian industry is weaving, which has existed from ancient times as a home industry. The wool of the country was worked up into cloths, carpets, braids, serges, etc., which were in request throughout the Ottoman Empire. The most important weaving centres are Pirdop, Panaguiourichte, Karlovo, Sopot, Koprivcht.i.tza, Klissoura, Kalofer, Gabrovo, Trevna, Sliven, Kotel, and Samokov. Under Turkish rule, these towns supplied cloth to the Imperial army. Bulgarian cloths were then held in esteem, and there was a demand for them in Greece and in Asia Minor. In 1880 some capitalists decided to start modern workshops. The example was given by the towns of Gabrovo and Sliven, where there are now large factories, organised on modern principles. There are as many as twenty-six factories in other towns, among others, at Samokov and Kazanlik. Bulgaria holds the first place for weaving in the Balkan Peninsula. Lately, in addition to the making of woollens, cotton-spinning has been introduced, and there are several mills now working.

So p.r.o.nounced has been the growth of industrialism in Bulgaria that labour legislation has been already found necessary. There are laws making regulations for the employment of apprentices, for the maximum number of hours in the working day, and the age of apprentices. The law of 1905 regulating the work of women and children lays down conditions for the employment of children under fifteen, and for women of all ages, occupied in factories, mines, quarries, workshops, and other industrial undertakings. Children of either s.e.x who have not attained the age of twelve years must not be employed in factories, workshops, at pit-mouths, in quarries, or sewers. However, children under twelve, but in no case under ten, may be employed in certain undertakings. Children under fifteen and women under twenty-one cannot be employed in the subterranean parts of mines or quarries. The working day for children is limited to eight hours; night-work is forbidden to women, and to children under fifteen. On Sundays all industrial establishments must close.

In addition to these laws protecting workers there are laws protecting employers against foreign compet.i.tion and granting them various bonuses.

The general privileges, allowed to all industrial enterprises, are:

The use of water-power, without payment, where this is not on a private property;

Exemption from customs duties for such machines and parts of machines, tools, and accessories, needful for the installation of enterprise, as are not made in the Princ.i.p.ality;

Exemption from customs duties for such building materials as are not found or made in the country;

Exemption from customs duties for raw material, when it is imported in order to be exported again, after having been worked up or finished off;

A free grant of land belonging to the State, the province, or parish, for the installation of the factory;

Machinery, tools, coal, benzine, etc., for the factories are carried by the State railways at a rate 35 per cent below the lowest usual charge for those commodities. The law compels all public inst.i.tutions to buy from native sources, even if native commodities should be as much as 15 per cent dearer than similar articles manufactured abroad.

Some industries have in addition special privileges allowed to them, such as exemptions from land taxation, monopoly privileges in certain districts, cheap coal from the State mines, etc. The Bulgarian national system aims at supplementing the agricultural resources of the country with industrial enterprises in every possible way. But agriculture is not neglected by the Government, and a special department exists to encourage improvement in cultivation and cattle-raising. This department has set up departmental councils, which distribute seeds every year.

They make considerable grants to improve the breed of cattle. They also encourage progress in the farmers by organising compet.i.tions for poultry-rearing, fruit-growing, etc. Scholars.h.i.+ps have been granted to a number of young men who wish to take up farming, so as to allow them to study methods in foreign agricultural schools.

Further, there is an agricultural bank which, curiously enough, dates back from the Turkish days. In 1863, Midhat Pasha, Governor of the Danubian Vilayet (_i.e._ Bulgaria), prepared a scheme for the creation of "urban" banks, which were intended to a.s.sist the rural population.

The scheme having been approved by the Turkish Government, several of these banks were established. The peasants were allowed to repay in kind the loans which were advanced to them, the banks themselves selling the agricultural products. With the object of increasing the capital of the banks, a special tax was introduced obliging the farmers to hand every year to these inst.i.tutions part of their produce in kind. These banks advanced money at 12 per cent interest--instead of up to 100 per cent, as the usurers generally did. The Turkish Government afterwards extended the reform to the whole Empire, and obliged the peasants to create similar banks in all the district centres. During the Russo-Turkish War several of these banks lost their funds, the functionaries of the Turkish Government having carried them away, as well as the securities and other property belonging to the banks' clients. After the war, the debtors refused to pay, and only part of the property of the banks was restored by means of the issue of new bonds. In 1894 the Bulgarian Government pa.s.sed a law setting on a firm foundation these agricultural banks, and they have continued since to do good work for the peasant proprietors.

The Bulgarian is a great road-maker. He is always at work on new rail-roads and carriage roads. I travelled twice in 1913 between Mustapha Pasha and Kirk Kilisse (the country was then in Bulgarian occupation) with an interval of about a month between the journeys.

During that month the Bulgarians had made a wonderful improvement in the road. Before, it had stopped short about a mile out of Mustapha Pasha and dwindled into a mere cart-track. After a month of Bulgarian work it had been so much improved as to make twenty-four hours' difference in the time of the journey. This improvement was carried through in time of war when there was much occupation for the national energy in more important directions. In other places I noted the Bulgarian's pa.s.sion for a good road; and the roads in his own country were excellent. The road-making instinct is a great proof of a stable sense of civilisation.

[Ill.u.s.tration: AN OLD STREET IN PHILIPPOPOLIS]