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Show BALKAN CRISIS PROVOKED BY POWERS GREED peninsula. He visited Sofia and Belgrade, and advised the Servians as well as the Bulgarians to cultivate the more peaceful and above all more lawablding methods in their Macedonian propaganda. Count Lamsdorff then proceeded to Vienna, where he had many conferences with Count Goluchowski, the n minister of foreign affairs.- - Together they, drew up another program of reforms, which was, of course, immediately accepted by the porte in February, 1903. The details of the proposed reforms are unimportant here and now. They never passed beyond the paper stage. The integrity of the sultan's dominions and his unimpaired 'sovereignty were safeguarded by them, and in their proposals the powers remained well within the limits of policy defined by that important article 23 of the treaty of Berlin. A Bloody Insurrection. The result of the application of these paper reforms did not remain in doubt for more than a week. Instead of the pacification and a peace approaching that of paradise, which the bureaucratic Russian count prophed sied would descend upon the land, came the most bloody and formidable Insurrection that the rebellion-ridde- n country had ever seen. It required 300,000 of the best troops of the Ottoman forces to uphold Turkish authority, and even with this tremendous display of force, the Turks made but little headway against the Insurrection until the fall, when many of the Bulgarian bands, 'yielding rather before the onset of winter than of the Turks, withdrew across the frontier. To bolster up their shattered prestige in the Balkans, in consequence of the summers bloody work, the czar of Russia and the emperor of Austria met at Muerzsteg in October. As a result of this imperial conference the intervention of Europe in Macedonian affairs became for the first time direct, but the results of the new course fell far short of expectations, in the first place because of the wonderful ability of Hilmi Pasha to checkmate every move made by the agents of the powers, and in the second because of the well-niginsuperable difficulty that was experienced in bringing the agents of the powers to act with unanimity or even in good faith. Buffers on Paper. However, at least, the Muerzsteg program created two organs of control, or buffers between the Turkish authorities and the Christian peasants of Macedonia. Two civil agents, one Mons. Demerik, a Russian, and the other Herr von Muller, an Austrian, Austro-Hungaria- NATIONS NOT IN ACCORD Alliance to Press Reforms Upon the Porte Crippled by Inability of Christian Governments to Agree Quarrel Among Themselves Over Loot and st Peace of the World Imperiled. Self-Intere- Marquis of Argenson, Louis XV.s The first great minister, wrote: great change that will take place In Europe will probably be the conquest of Turkey. This empire grows weaker because of its bad government, and because it is impossible that this government should become better, and quite sure that it will grow worse. and If she had the Intention, she has not the money. This road would cost millions, and goes through a difficult and what railway men call a very lean country. It would never pay; that is, not within the ken of the present generation, and could only serve a political purpose which Russia will be unable to pursue for many years to come. On the other hand, Austria has the right to build her railway, or rather the gaps in the present system. It is a right that was granted by an article of the Berlin treaty, and it has not lapsed simply because the Austrian government has allowed the matter to lie in abeyance for so many years. The other rumored Austrian project of a building a road from her to the system Adriatic, and then down the coast to Montenegro, and ultimately to Greece, is a sound idea, and one that would pay for itself handsomely, at least so far as Cattaro, and probably there is no idea of pushing the road much further in the immediate future. Bosnian-Herzegovin- -- Ready for Roads. Under the fostering care of Herr Tm-- C2A3aFjSPSSM von Kallay, the provinces of Bosnia, of Herzogovina, and in a measure,' too, Dalmatia have flourished under Austrian rule and development. They are , blood-drenche- h be easily converted into cash. Others were given brilliant decorations and honeyed speeches. It was quite noticeable that many of the foreign officers soon began to exhibit very little interest in the people whom they were sent to protect. A vermin-strickemangy lot, is the way one of the officers was reported to have described the Christian peasants at a concert in Yildlz Kiosk, and shortly afterward his wife appeared with a diamond tiara, which Pera gossips averred she had never been seen to wear before. IN HAWAII n. Making No So much time was Progress. taken In The Funny Things One Sees in Smiling Round the World By negotia- P. WILDER MARSHALL tion and discussions, and, above all. In entertainments, that few of the foreign officers reached their respective posts until the fall of 1905. The French were sent to Seres, the English to Drama, the Austrians to Uskub, the Italians to Monastir and the Russians to Salonica. The Germans held back even at this early date In the reform era. They only sent one officer, and he was instructed to refuse to enter the disturbed districts. He contented himself with teaching Turkish recruits the goose-stein the barracks yards of Salonica. As it has well been said, every one of the powers wishes to modify the present situation, but, unhappily, it would appear that each one wished to modify it for its personal advantage, and, alas, profit In a word the news from Macedonia Is that the champions of Christendom have come to blows, not with the assassins of the sultan, who are seeking to destroy the remnants of the congregation that St Paul loved, but among themselves over a sordid question of political loot. Worlds Peace Imperiled. VCopynght, by B. liowlca.) Jus-.-p- The city of Honolulu, looking from the harbor, does not seem large, though there is a population of 50,000. The houses are so embowered in luxuriant foliage it Is only occasionally that a roof may be seen peeping out. was out As soon as the gang-plana friend welcomed us with the beautiful but rather embarrassing Hawaiian custom of throwing long wreaths about our necks. These are made of carnations, camellas or jasmine, with glossy, green leaves. Women, who make them, sit along the streets in Honolulu with baskets of flowers and completed wreaths beside them; their fingers busily engaged In weaving So universal is this custom others. of wearing these flowery adornments that every native one meets has neck and hat decorated with a fresh, dewy wreath. Time was, no doubt, when these were all of their adorning, but civilization has decreed a few additions to'such an airy, though, no doubt, picturesque costume. p However, the statements made In the' British parliament recently by government officials In regard to the Macedonian question go to show that there was something in the reports telegraphed some days ago about the possible disruption of the concert of the.European powers and subsequent trofile in the near east. The secretary7 for foreign affairs said emphatically that if Macedonia continued to be neglected a catastrophe would follow. It Is, Indeed, time that effective re form measures should be put in force In Macedonia for the good of the Christian inhabitants of the provinca A foreign general officer has been in Macedonian charge of the gendarmerie with other foreign officers under him, but supreme control has remained in the hands of Turkish officials. As long as that is the casd real reform is out of the question; The British government, recogni Our doubts as to the best method of seeing the sights were settled for us by our friend, who had an automo- bile waiting for us on the dock. The verdure, overlooks a fertile valley where Is spread, like a carpet, every varying shade of green that finally melts in the distance to the exquisite turquoise and beryl tints of the sa, making an enchanting panorama of transcendant loveliness. I was next taken to the aquarium, where the collection of native fish is something beyond the wildest imagination to picture, and quite baffles description. Little fishes striped in like sticks of bright peppermint candy, jostle those that are of a silvery and blue brocade, others of a dark color, with spots of vivid red, and bridles of golden yellow going about their heads are In tho next cage to transparent fish of a delicate pink or blue or a family of devil fish. There are fish of a beautiful somber purple, and fish of white with black horizontal stripes, looking like a company of convicts from Sing Sing. There are many many others, those with trailing fringes, or floating wings; those with t'jes on little pivots that turn easily in all direct Ions like small, conning towers; all odd or unusual, seeming like dream-fishes- , or the phantoms of a disordered brain, rather than products of nature. Kalahui is a breezy little port, with a kourt house and a klub good fellows, too! and a mercantile marine, and a railway, and a wreck in the harbor, and all of em belonging to Kalahui. If you speak of the thriving plantations that back the harbor, theyll be sure to ask you if you've noticed the Kalo patches? Kalo may be French for kabbages or karnatlons you dont give a kontinental, either way but you smile, and say, Great! wouldnt mind having a korner in Kalo some day! If you want to go up a mountain, of course it must be llalenkala; its only got one Iv in it, by the way, but Its got the biggest krater at the top of it you ever saw or heard of 20 miles In circumference, and 2,000 feet deep. Its stone dead entirely gone out of business; but in my opinion that's an on any live advantage of crater. If you want to go up another mountain, try Kilanea it's only another K, and tho avenue that leads out to it is a magnificent boulevard set out on either side with bread-frui- t trees, mangoes and alligator pears. Kilanea is the biggest thing in the live crater business in the world a lake of fire 1,200 feet long and 500 wide, with a surface measure of 12 acres. You hold your breath and say your prayers; and, when a gust of wind carries away the blinding steam and smoke, you look down, down 500 feet into a veritable hell-firlake, whose waves of flame rise and fail in convulsive throes that shake the very heart out of your body in other words, the thing has fits to beat the band, and you wish you hadn't come! But you get all over it by thenext day, and If you want to calm" your mind and restore your nerves, you take a nice, quiet stroll down Kukul place and kommune with nature. Finally, It youve done anything you oughtnt to, and get arrested and taken to the lockup, you run up against the biggest bunch of ks In the whole business. The name of the jug" Is Kahleamakakaparakaplll. That got me! I was kompletely down and out. As far as studying the Hawaiian language goes, I'm a kwitter! two-to-on- e e - Heap Devill They are rising in the Ottoman empire. Every day a feather falls from the wings of the Turkish eagle." So it seemed to this man Beveral centuries ago, but there is only one fact of the Balkan situation upon which all sane westerners agree, and that is the growing strength of the Turkish military resources, writes Stephen Bonsai in the Philadelphia Ledger. That is a formidable body of trained and fanatical men, some 300,000 strong, that tramples the Christian peasants of Macedonia under foot, and, after looking the situation over, the intervening powers of Christianity have not fallen on this rugged host, but have fallen out among themselves on a question of railway concessions. Thirst for Advantage. The czar of holy Russia and Emperor Joseph, who was called to rule the holy Roman empire, are exchanging letters, which, while the diplomatic lorms are still observed, recall the wordy wars of railway kings. The alliance or entente between the powers which was to press reforms upon the porte that would make it possible for the Christian subjects of the porte to live in peace and yet live Christian lives, has been disrupted by the greed of gain and the thirst for political advantage experienced by the powers, which have in the last decade plumed themselves upon exercising a mandate in Macedonia which they had received from outraged humanity. It is a pitiful end of the reform decade, and the best that can be said is that of the situation the Christian peasants are not much worse oft than they were before, and that those who have survived their hard experiences are probably much wiser than they were when they began their political schooling under such august Taking the optimistic patronage. view, the Turkish soldier is not always a brute and the Turkish effendl not always a thief. Looking backward now, the more than decimated peasantry of the Macedonian highlands doubtless recall the pleasant days of before the uprising, the days when or a they had not heard of a Pan-Slapropaganda, when they didnt know whether they were Servior ans, Roumanians, Bulgarians Greeks, and didn't much care. far-sight- to-da- y to-da- y v Pan-Hellen- The Railway Row. The railway row is clearly a pretext for and not the cause of the split in the joint Macedonian policy of Russia and Austria. Russia has not even the remotest intention of building a railway from th Danube to the Adriatic, ready for railways, and many more of them. Ten years ago the complaint of little Servia and the veto of Russia would, of course, have brought these projects to an untimely end, but today the balance of power in the near east has changed as greatly as it has in the far east, and the protests are more likely to fall to the ground than are the projected railways. The story of the reforms in Macedonia Is a sad and a sordid one. Officially, at least, all Christendom with a long pull and a pull altogether, has been unequal to the task of making the sick man of Europe sit up, or of bringing the unspeakable Turk to book. In England alone of ail the great powers interested, and, indeed, morally responsible for the horrors of daily and hourly occurrence in the luckless vilayets, is there any appreciation of the dreadful situation. Almost weekly the Macedonian committee, of which Lord Newton and Mr. Gurney are the most active members, publish statistics setting forth as plainly as cold figures can make them, that the present laissez faire policy of the powers has only served to reproduce a tableau of what in the iron age the world must have been. England Hampered. The English humanitarians are hampered in their work by the undeniable fact that through the action 'of the earl of Beaconsfield and Lord Salisbury at the Berlin congress, when they thwarted Jgnatieffs' plan of a greater Bulgaria, including a free Macedonia, England is primarily responsible for the present status of affairs. They are further hampered by the presence in Constantinople, of an incompetent ambassador, who has given undeniable proofs of his want of capacity in such Important posts as he has occupied in Sofia, in Pekin and in St. Petersburg. The first whisper of reform in what we call Macedonia came in virtue of the accord of 1879 between Austria and Russia, and their recognition by other European states as the powers most directly concerned. The advice of the powers was accepted gracefully it always is by the sultan, and with the purpose of forestalling any possible drastic afction the sultan himself drew up a program of reforms, and appointed that adroit diplomatist and profound student of human nature, Hussein Hllml Pasha, Inspector general of the disturbed provinces. Drawing Up Programs. The moment Hilmi Pasha arrived at Salonica to assume his herculean task the late Count Lamsdorff, the Russian minister for foreign affairs, set out for a visit to the capitals of the Balkan driver told us of his first trip in the machine through tho outlying country. He came upon a Chinese coolie who had never seen anything of the kind before, and stood rooted with horror to tho road until the driver tooted the horn. Then the Chinaman fled frantically to the fence, over which he plunged, shrieking, Heap devil! heap devil!" When the driver had finished telling us of bis first experience I told him of mine not in Honolulu, but In the good old Empire state, U. S. A. As I remember it was a fine ride! The fine was a hundred and fifty. I said to my chauffeur (chauffeur Is French for plumber) Let her go! and he let her go. We went so fast, the milestones looked like a cemetery! We simply flew through the air. When the car stopped short I was still flying. I flew 80 feet through the air, shot through a church window, and lit right in the middle of the congregation, just as the minister was saying: And the angel of the Lord descended! Well, after working four days, with eight-hou- r night shifts, we got the car going; and all went well till I tried to steer. I turned out for a cow, and turned into a dago with a fruit stand. There was a free delivery of fruit. It was hard to tell which was the fruit, and which was the dago. We stopped long enough to remove a banana from my eye (you have to keep your eye peeled) and went on. Nothing happened until we got in the midst of a crowded thoroughfare, when the blamed thing had the blind staggers; tried to climb an electric light pole, and bit a policeman in the middle of his beat! That cost the city a copper, and me a pretty penny. World-Wid- e Distribution of the Mostem Faith, At the present moment there Is a great revival of feeling, which Is the cause of many new and difficult problems wherever east and west come into war with the contact. Moslems throughout the world followed the greatest Interest, and they are keenly alive to the problem of Turkey. A writer In the Times has pointed out that It is a mistake to believe that the awakening Its causes He deeper, and Is due to a movement on the part of the Ylldt Kiosk. Mohammedans are anxious to shake off the reproach that their religion Is only for degenerate or conquered races. The distribution of Islamlsm is shown In black. Pan-Islam- Russo-Japane- were authorized to and expected to control the action of the Turkish authorities. They were expected to shadow the inspector general, to indicate to him the reforms which they thought would prove helpful, and to listen attentively to the complaints of the Christian inhabitants. They were ordered and authorized to investigate all complaints that were brought to their attention, but unfortunately the investigation had always to be held in the presence of a Turkish functionary in other words under where no Christian circumstances peasant, after 600 years of Turkish supremacy, would dare to tell the truth. Something more than moral support was required to make the slave of centuries stand up and defend himself. In addition to the restraint of the civil agents, there were appointed a large number of foreign officers to serve with the Turkish constabulary. An Italian general was placed in command of the constabulary reorganization scheme, and to him were attached The many of the foreign officers. scheme proved ineffectual from the beginning. Instead of commanding the gendarmerie in the field, the sultan held, and imposed his view upon the powers, that the foreign officers were merely to act as instructors in schools Six months, for aspirant constables. a delay of tragic importance to the hunted Christian peasantry of the Macedonian highlands, was spent in discussing the question whether the European officers should wear Christian caps or the Turkish fez. In the meanwhile the wily sultan was more than friendly? Those of the foreign officers who could be reached in that way were loaded with rich presents. Some of these presents were undeniably of a kind that could lng that, raises the question whether the time has not come for the appoints meat of a Christian governor for Macedonia. The sultan may be expected to resist such an appointment, for he would see In it the prelude in the loss of the province. Turkish history has taught him that. The secretary for foreign affairs says the concert of powers must either justify or stultify itself. That is, it must either demand further concessions of Turkey or split up. If it shall do the latter, then Turkey will be obdurate and the peace of Europe may be imperiled once more. Whether any power is prepared to side with Turkey and block reform In Macedonia remains to be seen. There have been rumors that one or another power would do this, but as yet nothing is certain. Heap Devill An interesting phase of life in Honolulu is the political speaker, who takes the stump sometimes several stumps, in succession at the noon hour. All Hawaiians take a keen interest in politics. The speech I heard was In the Hawaiian tongue, the only words I understood beef being this the speaker said very trust; plainly In English, there probably beAs ing no equivalent in Hawaiian. he proceeded from stump to stump, his audience waned perceptibly perhaps from a native indolence of temperament which could not cling very long to ona thing. At any rate, when he reached the last stump his audience reminded me of what Peter Dailey said of an audience in a New York theater where business was poor. When asked how large the audience was, Pete answered, I could lick all three of them! , . From politics to Pali a marvelous transition. This high cliff, garlanded with the softest and most luxuriant Oh, lovely island world! Where else In the universe Is there a spot mado up wholly of beauty and peace? To Stand Upon the Edge of This Cliff Must Give a Thrill! Where man and even woman can cease worrying about stocks, franchises, new bonnets, real estate, society, insurance, politics, and all the rest that go to make up the pandemonium of existence, and settle down in the shade of a palm tree, royal, cocoa, wine, cabbage, screw, fan or native he has a choice of seven unand smoke the button his shirt-colla- r pipe of forgetfulness. Oh, happy Hawaii! that hath no poisonous reptiles, no noxious plants, no pestiferous insects! TIs not I that can do you justice! Let my friend Charley Stoddard, with his prose poem paragraphs and his mellifluous periods do the job for me. When he Bits down with his pen dipped in honey, and his mouth full of guava jelly, to reel off a few reams of ecstatic English In praise of his beloved islands, he makes the rest of us feel like 30 cents. And when he declares that he has traveled the wide world over, but never, never has he seen a spot to equal this why, what can we do but say, Same here, eld man! |
