THE EXECUTION OF MAJOR PANITZA.
IT is sometimes a little difficult on moral grounds to, defend the execution of a conscript for mutiny. He is too nearly in the position of a slave. He may be a lad from a conquered province, a Pole, for instance, or a- Lorrainer, with no natural link to his new State, or with a, sort of natural right to rebel against it; and yet, if he mutinies, he is shot. The only defence, in truth, for that shooting is not the moral but the social one, the right of every community to self-defence, and therefore its right to. kill not only external enemies who invade its borders, but internal enemies who menace the very continuance of the State life. In regard, however, to an officer, there is no such difficulty. He enters the service of his own free will ; he can retire at his own discretion ; he takes the military oath, knowing what it means ; and if he mutinies, if is as right that he should die as that a parricide should. There need be no hesitation about the moral right of Bulgaria to execute Major Panitza ; and as for its expediency, those who deny it do not understand the conditions under which alone the emanci- pated provinces of Turkey can be made into free States with lives of their own, and full liberty, and assured order, and the power by-and-by of federating themselves for aa. Swiss system of national defence. Civilisation in a new State in Eastern Europe depends absolutely on its possessing a small, efficient, and highly disciplined Army, as obedient to the State as a machine, which can render invasion costly of life to the invaders, can crush conspiracy at once, and can prevent local disorder, such as brigandage, from becoming chronic. These States are not Hollands or Switzerlands. They are semi-Asiatic provinces full of parties which look on insurrection as a political expedient, with cities in which order is only maintained by rigid pressure, and populations led by men some of whom are excellent, but others are as unprincipled as life-convicts, open to any bribe, ravening for pleasure, and with an active delight in blood-shedding, which seems to them at once a spirited and a dramatic mode of action. The smaller States of Asia know such men well, and so do the States of Spanish America, and they can be kept down for the necessary time—usually one genera- tion—only by the steady but remorseless pressure of force, obedient to the civil, and, if possible, the repre- sentative authority. Such obedience granted, as it may be granted in Roumania, Chili, and at present perhaps Greece, everything can grow, commerce can spring up, roads can be made safe, wealth can deposit itself, and it is worth while to create the cities without which civilisa- tion lacks strong centres. Failing this obedience, there is nothing to expect but anarchy ; and this must fail unless the little armies are disciplined into bars of steel, unless, that is, in plainer words, every officer knows that to dis- obey a service order of importance, or to mutiny against a superior, is an offence certain to be visited with death. These officers will grow loyal with time, and perhaps not only grow loyal, but learn, as in England, to fear social ruin more than death ; but at present they are only half-trained in the military virtues, they hardly see why they may not intrigue like civilians, and they are not rid of the Slav curse, that liability to explosions of impulsiveness which every now and then converts men of that race into beings bereft of reason. The most obedient Slav is the Russian ; but on one occasion during the life of the Emperor Nicholas, a Russian regiment is said to have suddenly exploded in mutiny, and baked its officers in the regimental ovens. There will be no future for the Balkans unless in each Army discipline is as rigid as in Prussia; and in Bulgaria especially the State has to undo the demoralising effect of the lenity displayed to the kidnappers of Prince Alexander. Every soldier implicated in that astounding crime, even by non-interference, ought to have died on the day after the Prince's return, and because he did not, no future emeutier can escape a capital sentence. M. Stambouloff knows the conditions round him quite well, and in refusing to commute the sentence on Major Panitza, in spite of the heroism displayed by that officer in the war with Servia, he has done more for the security of all Bulgarians, in other words, for their chance of reaching the ideal tranquillity which Englishmen desire for them, than if he had won a campaign. We are no admirers of the Bulgarian Premier, who is too un- scrupulous even for Eastern Europe ; but he is a man of iron, and he means Bulgaria to be free; and it is only by such a man that her true freedom, by which we mean freedom plus the dominance of a relentless legality, can be secured.
But Russia will avenge Panitza ? Russia will do nothing of the kind. It is the business of Russian statesmen, as they understand their business, to acquire, if possible, sovereignty, or, if that is not possible, at least ascendency, in Bulgaria, which lies, as they think, right athwart the path of Russian destiny ; and for that end, they will do anything that statecraft, or guile, or force can accomplish. They will organise plots, or pay sedition, or even buy up regiments,—will, in fact, do everything and more than everything that Pitt sanctioned in his war against Revolutionary France. But the heads of a military monarchy do not love mutiny, and will no more hate Bulgaria the harder for carrying out her own mili- tary law, than they will hate her for resisting Turkey, or fortifying the Balkan passes. They will crush M. Stambouloff if they can, as an enemy who, being a Slav, ought, they think, to be a friend ; but they will not crush him the more because he is dangerous to mutineers, or because he has punished one particular officer whom they had won over to their side. If it were expedient to occupy Bourgas because M. Stambouloff is, as they put it, "obviously ruling by mere violence," they would occupy that port gladly ; but as it is not expedient, they will not be so carried away by anger as to forget all pru- dence. People write as if astute Governments would. set the world on fire and ruin their own plans in order to protect secret agents, the very condition of whose employ- ment is that they are to run all risks and take all con- sequences, and be heavily rewarded only if they succeed. They attribute to the Russian Government at once impulsive folly and unscrupulous statecraft, and will have it that its Ministers are preternaturally foolish and wise both at the same time. That is nothing but nonsense. We may rely upon it that the Principality is in just as much danger from Russia as it always has been, and will be until Russia has either been beaten, or has changed her policy, or has suspended European action for a time, while it gains in- definitely in the increased security of its Government against military plots. Imprisonment means nothing to conspirators for a Russian cause, because they are sure that imprisonment will be short; but death means to them precisely what it means to all other people. M. Stambou- loff can now take his next step in the enfranchisement of his country, secure that, unless the Army revolts in a body —a most improbable event—he will no longer be hampered by domestic treason.
Whether that next step will be to declare Bulgaria in- dependent, it would be foolish to predict. There is always advantage in independence, because it gets rid of an annoying but legal interference, and because it increases the European reluctance to see the State absorbed. The fact of independence, too, deprives traitors of an excuse, and develops a prouder, ad therefore stronger, form of local patriotism. Bulgaria, moreover, it must be remembered, is not, like Bavaria, a constituent State in a solid federation governed by persons of her own race and language, but an autonomous Principality, tributary to a Mahommedan Asiatic whose direct rule is remembered with acute horror. On the other hand, she gains something by her subordina- tion, for if attacked by Russia, Turkey must defend her, especially with her fleet, and a declaration of indepenience might complicate her claim to one-half of Macedonia. It is one thing to assist insurgents living within the same Empire, and quite another to conquer and annex territory admitted by the very announcement of independence to be entirely foreign. The independent States of the Balkan have not been very successful in enlarging their borders, and the Bulgarians care excessively about stretching their boundary to the west up to the topmost ridges of the Rhodope chain,—that is, up to the point beyond which they would encounter a Greek army. Moreover, a small independent State can, as we see in Servia, be much more oppressed in a war of tariffs than a State which still belongs to an extensive Empire ; and Bulgaria has no seaboard, as was originally intended, on the Agean Sea. We should think it wiser to wait until the Balkan was a little nearer to the Confederation which it must ultimately adopt ; but M. Stambouloff is not of the waiting order. He may act as he always has acted, as if knots were only made to be cut, and in that case he will strike this summer, while he is master of the internal situation, and before Russia has completed all her preparations for the long-anticipated war.
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