THE LIBERATION OF THE EUROPEAN CHRISTIANS IN THE BALKANS.
[To THE EDITOR 07 THE "SPECTATOR."] SIR,—To those who have personally witnessed the ugly incidents of the war, the news of the armistice brings a sense of relief that cannot easily be described. Until the peace is concluded these incidents have a real significance, which we ask your permission to suggest. If we may assume that the war will not be renewed, there remains a serious anxiety with regard to the boundary to be arranged between European and Asiatic government. It appears to be assumed in some quarters that the Bulgarian troops will draw back and civilized administration disappear from some districts which it now controls, and that certain 2Egean Islands are also to remain Turkish. We suggest that in the confusion of ideas which the
events of the war have produced there is one authoritative maxim to follow ; it is that laid down by Lord Salisbury —that no territory once liberated from Turkey shall be allowed to be restored to her. Lord Salisbury had doubt- less many considerations in mind when he uttered that momentous dictum. Some of them readily occur to those who in the present war have visited the hospitals, the battlefields, the occupied districts, or the besieging camps. May we draw attention to one—the imminent danger to the inhabitants of any town or village which should be restored to Turkey ? Summary vengeance or persecution would be a matter of course.
Take the case of such a town as Lule Burgas, or Chorlu, or Rodosto. Here those who went to the front were quartered in the houses of Christians, who form the wealthy section of society. Among them are men and women highly educated, graduates of Greek and Armenian schools at Constantinople and elsewhere; they have, both from inclination and from force of circumstances given assistance to the invading army. Its arrival had meant for the men freedom from all that was implied in that badge of subjection—the Turkish fez. The women and girls, whose recreation had previously been limited to looking from the lattice-window down the muddy street, now enjoy liberty. The last they had seen of the Turkish army was when the rabble of men, and officers too, throwing aside every weapon and garment that impeded their flight, begged from door to door for a loaf of bread. No one who can realize the situation in these towns could tolerate the proposal to restore them to anarchy.
But the case of the villages is yet more serious. In this case an object-lesson exists already. Within an hour's ride of Lule Burgas lies the village of Aivali; here the Turkish troops had withdrawn at the approach of the Bulgarian cavalry reconnaissance, and the villagers, entirely Greek, expressed their feelings by ringing the church bells. The cavalry had occasion to leave the village, and the Turks returned. It is said that they charged the villagers with pointing out to the Bulgarians the positions of some Turkish troops in the vineyards and mulberry groves which cover the neighbouring hill. About November 3rd the papers pub- lished hideous accounts of the massacres which followed. One of us visited Aivali and had occasion to testify that, unhappily, the reports were only too correct. Not only had killing on a large scale taken place, but numbers of women and children were left wounded. For instance, two had terrible gashes in the throat, another, a handsome girl of seventeen or eighteen, had apparently been fired at on both sides of the face with blank cartridge at the muzzle of the rifle. Deliberate dis- figurement was the only conceivable object of the outrage. It was surpassed in horror by other doings, too terrible to record. These were not the work of irregulars, A melancholy proof of this appeared, for instance, in two bullet wounds through the leg of a child, certainly made at close quarters by the extremely small-bore Mauser of the Turkish regular soldier.
Such events are probably an illustration of what was in Lord Salisbury's mind. While the punishment that would follow the reoccupation of Christian villages by the Turks would, we admit, take other forms than immediate massacre, there are punishments even more demoralizing and cruel for which Turkish administration has never awaited the excuse of war or disorder. When we have it debated whether the frontier of the liberated country shall be withdrawn to a line running from Silivria or passing through Chorlu and Rodosto, or even retiring to Midia and Enos, it is surely time to remember that when the war began it was admitted that, though the Great Powers intended to impose upon the Allies the duty and the sacrifices which properly belonged to the Concert, any adequate victory gained over Turkey should mean the cessation of direct Turkish government over all European Christians.—We are, Sir, &c.,
EDWARD BOYLE, Bart., NOEL BUXTON, M.P., H. W. NEVINSON, J. H. WHITEHOUSE, M.P.
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