THE MACEDONIAN REVOLT.
PERHAPS PS the greatest perplexity in the politics of the Balkans is a certain weakness in the Christian population. Why do not the insurgents beat the Turks ? They are more numerous, they have the strongest motives for fighting that men can have, they have a most defensible country, and most of them in Macedonia are of the same race as their oppressors. Yet we all know, or at least believe, that if the Great Powers do not intervene the oppressors will conquer the insur- gents, perhaps extirpate them, certainly drive them back into their slavery. Why? The West usually answers that question in one of two ways,—by declaring that the Turks are far braver soldiers, or by abusing the Balkan peoples for their hatred of one another ; but neither reply is quite conclusive. The latter, indeed, is a little ridiculous. Those who urge it, as the Times, for example, frequently does, always say that Greeks and Bulgarians hate each other, that there are differences of race and creed in the southern portion of the peninsula which make cohesion impossible, and that a " general " insurrection is really only an insurrection of some division of the people. They cannot be independent for they cannot be united, and therefore cannot frame an effective Government. And then they add that whenever a Turkish Governor-General is a reasonable and capable man order is at once restored, and the jarring tribes and congregations cease to clash and become a people. Will any one explain why, if a Turkish Governor-General can weld his subjects together so perfectly and easily, a European Prince must fail in performing the same feat ? He is distinctly nearer to the people than the Turk, he works through wiser methods, and he has a greater personal interest in succeeding, that is, in building up a strong little kingdom which be can transmit to his descendants. Why is it always assumed that he must fail, when in Roumania, Servia, Bosnia, and Bulgaria he has more or less succeeded ? As for the comparative courage, the Turks are no doubt brave soldiers, but their qualities have always been better developed in the men than in the officers; Poles, who are Slays, often defeated them, and so id the Germans, and the Bulgarians are perfectly ready to face them in the field. They themselves acknow- ledge that the Albanians, who are by race Europeans, are braver than themselves, and they have never been able to conquer the Montenegrins, who are Christians, and, on the whole, till very recently, less well armed. We can see no clear reason for believing that if the Macedonians, in despair of any other redress, rise universally in all their villages and mountains to fight as men in despair usually do fight, they must inevitably be defeated., At all events, this is their best chance, perhaps their only one, for the Great Powers are as much divided by jealousies and ambitions as they were when the last Palaeologus made the tour of Europe begging for assist- ance against the Turk, and was told at Court after Court that the Princes had objects which attracted them more than the defence of the oldest of European civilisations. No one was generous then, and no one will be generous now. Russia could, of course, rescue Macedonia ; but she would want to be paid for doing it, and if she did it Austria would think herself cut off from all prospect of a great Oriental trade, and might defend the Turks instead of the Christians. The German Emperor is always on that side, for he hopes for profitable con- cessions in Asia ; and Russia will not risk the hostility of the Triple Alliance unless the prize to be won is of the highest value. France, though friendly to the Eastern Christians, is in no mood for a great war ; and unless we mistake all the signs around us, Great Britain is divided in opinion and has not made up her mind. A majority of our people would, we think, refuse to fight for the Turks, especially at a moment when we have so much upon our hands, and have just spent £200,000,000 in a Colonial war ; but nevertheless a large section of them would see any advance of Russia to the south with both suspicion and dislike. Many Englishmen have an immovable idea that Constantinople is a sort of key to the world, and cannot be trusted to strong hands. It is, of course, possible that the governing classes in Russia, who are greatly perturbed by the desire both of the peasants and the artisans for far-reaching economic changes, may welcome a war with the Turk, which is traditionally popular ; but their Emperor, who will not welcome a war either with Germany or with Austria, may be able to hold them in. Conquest is not his metier, or, if he desires to conquer, it is in the Far East. l'he insurgents of Macedonia, we fear, will find it most difficult to secure strong allies ; and if they cannot secure them, their only chance of success is to fight on as the Boers did, until Constantinople, pressed by financial difficulties and the gradual exhaustion of its supply of recruits, consents to make of Macedonia an independent but tributary province. Whether the Macedonians and Bulgarians have the nerve and the obstinacy for a policy of this kind we do not know ; but if they have, we see nothing in the con- ditions which should make success absolutely hopeless. The Sultan has, no doubt, in bis favour the fact that he can draw to himself the brave and unscrupulous soldiers of fortune of whom Europe still nourishes so many ; but their value is rather in a. regular struggle than in a guerilla war among petty villages, long defiles, and ridges, which if the Macedonians throw up a good soldier may be turned into fortresses that the Turks cannot carry. Turkey, more- over, though it is a great Empire, contains many races, all held together by a caste which is limited in numbers ; and though its ruler is one of the ablest men in the world, his ability is not that of a great soldier.
It is sad work when one reflects that if all the peoples of the great Eastern peninsula would but hold together and federalise their armies, they might found a nation which even Russia or Germany could hardly crush. They possess perhaps the most fertile division of Europe, they sit upon three seas, and if they could but enforce a conscription on the German model, they would organise an army seven hundred and fifty thousand strong. They could defend themselves far more easily than the Swiss, and they are not more divided by creed, race, and language. They have, too, in Charles of Roumania a possible Emperor who knows how armies are made, and who has already shown his capacity to govern. There is, of course, no apparent chance for a reasonable policy of that kind ; but we do not know that the obstacles are greater than those which Cavour and Garibaldi overcame ; while the motive for overcoming them, the horror of Europeans for an Asiatic rule, is certainly much stronger. There is probably, even in the Far East, no province in which the negation of God has been erected so defiantly into a system as the province a great part of which, but for Lord Beaconsfield's blunder at the Berlin Congress, would already be Christian and free.
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