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Show J ; m,m mpgj wmi mth$i man , - , ' - - 3y ; . . -I " ' ; : -t 5 - . r . : .:" : - - 'f . .: - - .- , ), j g - ..-.: y ; t-.- : ;;: i f - . i L:.n:,., j& . -z' - -. .j) ' David Starr Jordan, noted ed-f ed-f ucator and pacifist, tells what f" fright fulness has be enlfrr ought ' by conflict in the little coun-, coun-, tries of Eastern Europe :: A 1 grave problem still unsolved ( Courtesy American Museum Journal) 4 ra5i7?77rjsraT WAS my fortune, not long !igo, li.ll-fSa&al with three good friends and two soldiers, to follow in a king's V$Sv automohi,e along the trail of tW!?1 VP' war. This was in Macedonia. E4fj;jfa The Hne of an army's march is f lirji'i not pleasant to look upon even ISWjiMi though the people along it had not much to lose. The pinch of Knffering is very real even if, as in the Balkans, folk have grown used to it. There are two piain i marks hy which you may recognize the path of war in a land of farmers. The one is the charred Tillage, with its whitewashed stone walls blackened black-ened by tire. The other is the presence here and there in the plowed fields of three poles fastened logethex at the top, and from the crotch a baby -suspended just high enough to baffle inquisitive ctogs or goats. Somewhere in the field, anywhere in the Balkan valleys in May, you will see one -oman driving or leading a bullock or a buffalo, ;n-hile another behind her holds the plow. The men are in the army or else they were there. The memory 1 shall longest hold of Montenegro Is a picture taken by my guide, Antonio Eeinwein, of this land of stony graves, of the resolute people L of the limestone crags who have never done homage hom-age 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 "Onion and Progress." Union meant uniformity. uni-formity. A nution should have one ruler, one flag, one religion, one language. Progress was his way of bringing about this condition. This was by mas-ecarce. mas-ecarce. And as the actual Turks were few in number, num-ber, ruling over an empire of Slavs, Greeks, Italians, Ital-ians, Jews, Armenians, Albanians, Kurds, Egyptians, Egyp-tians, Moors and Arabs, it demanded eternal vigilance vig-ilance to keep them all in a state of union and progress. These people have had constantly before them the choice cf revolt, conversion, assimilation, banishment ban-ishment and massacre. And at one time or another, an-other, some of each race have chosen each one of these, often two or three of them at once. Meanwhile, Mean-while, following the wicked lead of Bismarck and Disraeli, Europe has kept the Turk alive, because from financiers in each nation, the Ottoman sultan lias 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 un-like 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 liberation it had about 2,250.000 people. The majority ma-jority of these were Bulgarian in blood and ihey ( were allowed to have their own churches and 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 study of the conditions preceding the "third Balkan Bal-kan war" which today has set the world in flames. The first Balkan war was altruistic as fur as any war can he. 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 kept the land in incessant turmoil. The Balkan alliance was a Russian inspiration. It was planned by Ilartwig. Kussian minis'er at Belgrade, "the evil genius of the Balkans." It ended in the treaty of London, where the blind intermeddling in-termeddling of the powers, hallh-d by Austrian intrigue, in-trigue, agreed only on the kingdom of Albania, leaving the states to light it out so far as Macedonia Mace-donia was concerned. This brought on the second Balkan war, in winch Bulgarian diplomacy made all the mistakes it had a chance to make. The treaty of Bucharest left Macedonia crossed 1 & 4 i w y$ ,r - 7 v "'X v V r k U kr ;Ht rv , I r i j '- ! ! t i tl U jf . 1 iShVT&w dn&&? staff 1 1 QXj by artificial boundaries. The effect of intolerance, worst in Greece, bad enough everywhere, was to drive out of each nation all who belonged to the wrong language or religion. I do not say race, for they are all of the same general stock, 'even the bulk of the "Turks" and Greeks. This has 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 So2a to Samokov and Dubnitza In old Bulgaria, then across the border of Macedonia, down the Struma river past Dzuinaiu to Petritch, we found everywhere the Bulgarian refugees from the Saloniki district in Greek Macedonia. These have been roughly estimated at 50.000 in number. Some of these have been given farms or houses abandoned iu Macedonia by Turks who followed the Turkish army away. Others received farrus left by Greeks when the Greek army went bnck after the treaty of Bucharest. The government grants each person some fourpeuee a day. Some find work, but after the war there are few employers. employ-ers. The cost of living has doubled, the means of living has fallen. At Petritch, near the present boundary of Greece, there were hundreds of Ihese 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 Saloniki. Some local journal had said that tins revision was coming soon. It was my duty to assure them that it would never come. The 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 Jin 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 vic-tory and world power. Ii lias not ended in tliar way. It has not yet ended at all. But those who most looked forward to war were the ones who bad 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 (ireek army which pursued the Bulgarians as far as the old border of Bulgaria. Bul-garia. In Greek Macedonia, at the hands of ome one or all of the throe successive armies Turkish, Bulgarian and Greek most of the towns between Saloniki and Drama have suffered the same fate. Each of theso towns has now its share of Greek refugees from Turkish Thrace. Theso have been estimated by Greek authorities as numbering oiM.I,-000. oiM.I,-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 fifes 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 farm-ers as far more desirable neighbors. "The Bulgarians Bul-garians are now our friends." In the larger towns, as Saloniki 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 Saloniki the Turks were leaving in great numbers: 212,000 took steerage passage for Stamboul in one month. Saloniki (Thessa-lonike), (Thessa-lonike), 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. popula-tion. 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 Pashitch in Belgrade and Venizelos in Athens were both opposed to the policy of repression. repres-sion. Both would, if Ihey could, have proclaimed religious linguistic tolerance in those parts of .Macedonia .Mac-edonia turned over to them by the treaty of Bucharest. But the fact of victory, and especially victory over their sister state, Bulgaria, intoxicates the military, and fills the mob with the "east wind." Iu such times the civil authority cannot hold its own against the military. Bulgaria recognized hetier the value of tolerance. toler-ance. A Greek church and school stand undisturbed undis-turbed in Sofia. In the Bulgarian national assembly assem-bly there are about a dozen Turkish deputies, rep-resonling rep-resonling Thrace. These Turks, supporters all of the king, hold the bah, nee of power against the combined democrats and socialists, the group opposed op-posed to all war. The spirit of hate is still very strong among the people of Bulgaria. They hate Ilouuiania. as the robber-stale who has done litem the most harm. They bate Greece. There can never be settled quiet in the East until tile "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 the welfare of ench state is bound up in that of its neighbor. |