Evening Republican, Volume 20, Number 217, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 9 September 1916 — WAR'S DARK TRAIL in the BALKANS [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

WAR'S DARK TRAIL in the BALKANS

David Starr Jordan, noted educator and pacifist, tells what frightfulness has been'Vnrought by conflict in the little countries of Eastern Europe :: A grave problem still unsolved (Courtesy American Museum Journal)

WAS my fortune, not long ago, with three good friends and two soldiers, to follow in a king’s automobile along the trail of ao§£p?3 war. This was in Macedonia. figtSgra 6Vr?S The I,ne of an army’s march is n °t P* l°°k upon even though the people along it had not much to lose. The pinch of suffering is very real even if, as in the Balkans, folk have grown used to it. There are two pialn marks by which you may recognize the path of war in a land of farmers. The one is the charred village, with its whitewashed stone walls blackened by fire. The other is the presence here and there in the plowed fields of three poles fastened together at tiie top, and from the crotch a baby suspended just high enough to baffle inquisitive dogs or goats. Somewhere in the field, anywhere in the Balkan valleys in May, you will see one woman driving or leading a bullock or a buffalo, fwhlle another behind her holds the plow. The men are in the army—or else they were there. The memory I shall longest hold of Montenegro .Is a picture taken by my guide, Antonio Relnwein, of this land of stony graves, of the resolute people of the limestone crags who have never done homage to the Turks nor to any other outside power. It will be remembered that all these Balkan folk were for years under the dominion of the Turk, and that none of them have been free for half a century. The Turk was most acceptable when he was asleep. When he was awake, he had his own ideas of “Union and Progress.” Union meant uniformity. A nation should have one ruler, one flag, one religion, one language. Progress was his way of bringing about this condition. This was by masscarce. And as the actual Turks were few in number, ruling over an empire of Slavs, Greeks, Italians, Jews, Armenians, Albanians, Kurds, Egyptians, Moors and Arabs, it demanded eternal vigilance to keep them all in a state of union and progress. These people have had constantly before them ’the choice of revolt, conversion, assimilation, banishment and massacre. And at one time or another, some of each race have chosen each, oneof these, often two or three of them at once. MeanWhile, following the wicked lead of Bismarck and JMaraeli, Europe has kept the Turk alive, because from financiers in each nation, the Ottoman sultan Juts borrowed considerable sums of money. Macedonia lies along the southern slopes of the Balkan peninsula. It is a fertile region crossed by chains of rounded mountains, with green valleys and swift streams, in physical conditions not unlike the south of France. It has 45,000 square miles of territory, is about as large as the state of Maine, with a population nearly two-thirds that of the city of New York, and before the war of Jiberation It had about 2,250,000 people. The majority of these were Bulgarian in blood and they iwere allowed to have their own churches and i schools. As to the campaigns which have desolated Macedonia in the last few years we need say only a word. The history of the two Balkan wars is given with accuracy and justice in the monumental report of the Balkan commission of the Carnegie •endowment, a document of especial value in any istudy of the conditions preceding the “third BalIkan war” which today has set the yrorld in flames. The fifst Balkan war was altruistic as far as any war can be. Its purpose was the relief of a distressed people, suffering for centuries from the laxities of Turkish rule, always Incompetent and everywhere unscrupulous, and on the other hand continuously overrun by the outlaw patriots which Jrept the land in incessant turmoil. The Balkan alliance was a Russian inspiration. It was planned by Hartwig, Russian minister at •Belgrade, “the evil genius of the Balkans.” It ended In the treaty of London, where the blind intermeddling of the powers, baffled by Austrian intrigue. agreed only on the kingdom of Albania, leaving the states to fight it out so far m Macedonia was concerned. This brought on the second Balkan war, In which Bulgarian diplomacy made •11 the mistakes it had a chance to make. v The treaty of Bucharest left Macedonia crossed

by artificial boundaries. The effect of intolerance, worst in Greece, bad enough everywhere, whs to drive out of each nation all who belonged to the wrong language or religion. Ido not say race, for they are all of the same general stock, even the bulk of the “Turks” and Greeks. This ha's filled the region with refugees, men and women whose fault is that they lived on the wrong side of the boundaries made for them in the treaty of Bucharest. Passing down the long highway which leads over 200 miles from Sofia to Samokov and Dubnitza in old Bulgaria, then across the border of Macedonia, down the Struma river past Dzumala to Petritch, we found everywhere the Bulgarian refugees from the Salonlkl district in Greek Macedonia. These have been roughly estimated at 50,000 in number. Some of these have been given farms or houses abandoned in Macedonia by Turks who followed the Turkish army away. Others received farms left by Greeks when the Greek army went back after the treaty of Bucharest. The government grants each person some fourpence a day. Some find work, but after the war there are few employers. The cost of living has doubled, the means of living has fallen. At Petritch, near the present boundary of Greece, there were hundreds of these waiting about on the stone sidewalks day by day. They were waiting for the powers to revise the treaty of Bucharest and give them back their homes in the region above Salonikl. Some local journal had said that this revision was coming soon. It was my duty to assure them that it would never come. Thp phrase in Sofia, “Europe exists no more,” is the truth so far as Balkan affairs are concerned. The reason for that is clearer now. Europe was paralyzed by the great terror which has since come on it in an unthinkable catastrophe. There were some in the “concert of powers,” who were striving to bring on this Catastrophe. The “war of steel and gold” was about to give place to real war, which would end, they hoped, in speedy victory and world power. It has not ended in that way. It has not yet ended at all. But those who most looked forward to war were the ones who had least conception of its certain consequences. In the whole length of the Struma valley In western Macedonia, towns have been burned in whole or part by the Greek army which pursued the Bulgarians as far as the old border of Bulgaria. In Greek Macedonia, at the hands of some one or all of the three successive armies—Turkish, Bulgarian and Greek—-most of the towns between Salonikl and Drama have suffered the same fate. Each of these towns has now its share of Greek refugees from Turkish Thrace. These have been estimated by Greek authorities as numbering 300,000. They have come by railway from Adrianople in box cars belonging to the Greek government.

These cars are left at the various stations, a dozen or more at each. In these the people keep their bedding and their scanty effects. The government of Greece allows them two or three sous a day, with rice which they cook on fires of thistles and other weeds. In a Turkish journal, vigorous complaint was made against the Albanian refugees in Thrace as more “proficient with the Mauser than with the plow’, and skillful only as cattle thieves.” A plea was made for bringing back the Bulgarian farmers as far more desirable neighbors. “The Bulgarians are now our friends.” In the larger towns, as Salonikl and Kilkush, the refugees are ranged in tent cities, ten thousand or more in one encampment. There were perhaps 60,000 Greek refugees a little more than a year ago along the road from Drama to Saloniki. When I was at Salonikl the Turks were leaving in great numbers: 212,000 took steerage passage for Stamboul in one month, Saloniki (Thessalonike), beautifully situated, in full face of Mount Olympus and with a noble harbor, should be one of the great cities of the world. In the aftermath of the second Balkan war it lost half its population. It is no better off today than in the times when St. Paul called out for help in Macedonia. Harsh and often terribly * brutal operations in Serbia and Greece result from the unchecked operations of the military element. The soldier, as such, considers neither economic conditions nor the soul of man. It was claimed that the two wise ministers Pashltch in Belgrade and Venlzelos in Athens were both opposed to the policy of repression. Both would, if they could, have proclaimed religious linguistic tolerance in those parts of Macedonia turned over to them by the treaty of Bucharest But the Tact of victory, and especially victory over their sister state, Bulgaria, intoxicates the military, and fills the mob with the “east wind.” In such times the civil authority cannot , hold its own against the military. Bulgaria recognized better the value of tolerance. A Greek church and school stand undisturbed in Sofia. In the Bulgarian national assembly there are about a dozen Turkish deputies, representing Thrace. These Turks, supporters all of lhe king, hold the balance of power against the “combined democrats and socialists, the group opposed to all war. The spirit of hate is still very strong among the people of Bulgaria. They hate 'Roumanla, as the robber-state who has done them the most hand. They hate Greece. There can never be settled quiet -in the East until the “Balkans belong to the Balkans.” until civil authority everywhere dominates the military and until customs unions and other unions cause these people to realize that one fate befalls them all and that tfi£ welfare of each state is bound up in that of its neighbor.