CHAPTER X.

ATROCITY PERIOD (WAR IN THE AIR).

§ 1. Public Opinion awakes.

WE now enter upon a period which presents a strong contrast to that which had just closed with regard to the distinctive characteristics of Public Opinion. Whereas, during the "Incubation Period," opinion had been scanty in quantity, docile, trustful of Government, undigested, vacillating, it now became voluminous, self-confident, suspicious of Government, and, at least to a certain extent, systematic and constant.

We must date from the rejection of the Berlin Memorandum the first unsettlement, and secret misgivings felt as to the ministerial policy. The first endeavour of Public Opinion was to understand and to bring itself up into line with the Cabinet, rather than to alter the Government policy. It was not till it became apparent that the Government, after all, had not discarded the traditional pro-Turkish policy as obsolete, that the effort began to bring the Government up into line with Public Opinion.

There is one point which must never be forgotten, namely, that throughout the whole of the Incubation Period, the volume of political opinion was comparatively small and its voice scarcely heard. During the month of June it had been growing with a steady crescendo. At the beginning of July the public interest in politics suddenly becomes keen, and, moreover, Public Opinion is now no longer content to remain passive and dumb, or to follow the lead of the Government blindly. It struggles hard, at first, to find voice, and subsequently to get itself organised, in order that it might influence, and (when matters went so far) in order that it might turn, the course of the Executive. It is this circumstance, as is indicated by the name which has been given it, which is

especially characteristic of the period. It seemed hardly to occur to people through the whole of the Atrocity Period, and indeed for some time after, to question its own right to guide, or to doubt that it would be obeyed if it could find voice.

The transfiguration of Public Opinion was so sharp and well defined, in one word such an event, that the first two or three days of July may be assigned as the "moment of awakening." A leader in the Times of July 4th may be taken as marking it :

This

The country has been quiet; it might seem, to a careless observer, almost apathetic. Until lately it was as if the weariness and indifference which affected the popular view of every domestic question had extended to the feelings with which people regarded the skirmishing and diplomacy of the East. apathy, however, has been only in appearance The public has been quiet because it has believed that no Government would commit itself to a policy of armed interference in Eastern affairs without giving Parliament and the public a full opportunity of consideration. Until the last few days there was nothing to change this disposition, for the business had not passed beyond the phase of negotiation, however great might be the divergencies between the parties. But suddenly the position of the question changes materially. By the action of Servia and Montenegro a state of war has been called into existence which may at any time require a prompt decision. It cannot be doubted that the Servian crusade tends to increase the jealousy between this country and one of the great Powers, which is suspected of not being a stranger to the design. In these circumstances it clearly becomes advisable that Parliament should be informed of what has passed, and of the general views of the Government. The outbreak of a war which, if not suppressed by the Turkish arms, must inflame the whole Christian population of the Turkish Empire and endanger the peace of Europe, may be looked upon as a fitting stage of the business for explanations and consultation. A new act of the drama has come to a conclusion. All that relates to the Andrassy Note, the Berlin Conference, the Memorandum which it produced, the deposition of the Sultan, and the new departure consequent upon it, belongs to the past, and may now be permitted to serve the useful purpose of throwing a light on the present. The papers are voluminous, but the interest of the country has suddenly become intense on the subject, and there will be no want of readers for all that the Queen's printer may produce.-T. July 4th.

The awakening was the result of two great and nearly simultaneous shocks. The impression suddenly got abroad that the Government was about to commit the country to a war with Russia, and at the same time Turkey presented the world with a

capital instance of the character of her rule, in the Bulgarian atrocities. The attitude of the country when it thus awoke was that of a traveller who has fallen asleep, and who wakes to find his charioteer unconsciously, as the traveller thinks, pursuing a course which leads straight to a precipice. The traveller's first effort is to convey to the coachman's mind his own appreciation of the situation.

So for the first fortnight of the Atrocity Period we find Public Opinion alarmed at the prospect of our being involved in a contest with Russia, and pressing on the Government that they should do nothing to commit us to the armed support of Turkey. This sub-period we call "War in the Air." It is important to notice the salient points of two great influences to which Public Opinion was exposed during the Atrocity Period. The greatest of these was the narrative of the atrocities1 as it was unfolded point by point. The other (second in importance) was the course of the Servian war. During the time of "War in the Air" the original story of the atrocities was uncorroborated from fresh sources of information, and great doubt was thrown upon it in official quarters. But from the first it took a great hold on the popular mind, which resisted the official attempts to explain away or minimise. The end of the sub-period is marked by various efforts to open up new sources of information as to the facts. The same point of time nearly coincides with the collapse of the Servian offensive movement.

To this succeeded the sub-period when Public Opinion was looking to Parliament as its organ and "waiting for guidance;" and meanwhile, with such guidance as it got (chiefly extraparliamentary) was slowly coming to the conclusion that the mere negation of the "red" policy was not enough, and that an active "violet" policy was necessary. The sub-period was mainly one of suspense. As to the atrocities little was added to the evidence before the public; people were waiting for confirmation through the various commissions of inquiry, but the tendency was to an increasing belief in the substantial truth of the original narrative. Meanwhile as regards Servia, the question now was whether she

1 It was the particular acts which were committed in Bulgaria, or rather in a district chiefly inhabited by Bulgarians, south of the Balkans, and now included in Eastern Roumelia, which came to be known specifically as 'The Atrocities." But "Atrocities" seems to have become a kind of technical word for any similar cruelties (see Mr. E. A. Freeman, letter D. N. July 20th, 1876), and at a later date when it became fashionable in some quarters to sneer at those who dwelt upon the "Atrocities," the English language was enriched with the word "Atrocitarian."

would be able to hold her own, and as time went on the balance inclined more and more against her.

The commencement of the last phase corresponds with the harvesting of the new crop of information about the events in Bulgaria and with the prorogation of Parliament. Parliament had barely time to take a glimpse and speak a word about the new information before it separated. Strong confirmatory evidence of the substantial truth of the first accounts of the atrocities now arrived in detail, and the public mind was roused to an extraordinary pitch of feeling by the glowing descriptions which were contained in the letters of Mr. MacGahan, who had been specially commissioned by the Daily News to proceed to the district and investigate. During the same phase we have Servia brought to her knees, and a misgiving arises that unless Turkey is checked in some way the atrocities of Bulgaria will be repeated on Servian soil. This last phase then constitutes the kernel of the period, the sub-period of the "First Agitation," when Public Opinion having crystallised demanded a "violet" policy with extraordinary energy and vehemence.

§ 2. Narrative of the Atrocities.

The earliest hint in any English newspaper about the specific crimes which subsequently came to be spoken of as the "Bulgarian Atrocities," appears to be a letter in the Pall Mall Gazette, June 16th, from a correspondent at Constantinople, "R. R." He speaks of "the late rising in Bulgaria which has been stamped out with ruthless severity by the Turks." But the first communication of importance, as measured by the attention it attracted, is a letter dated June 16th, from the Constantinople correspondent of the Daily News (Mr. Pears), which appeared in that paper on June 23rd. On July 8th-his chiefs having meanwhile inquired of him by telegraph with respect to his first communication-a second letter from Mr. Pears appeared in the Daily News, confirming the story and giving further particulars, and on the same day the Times had a letter from its special correspondent dealing with the same subject. These letters spoke of accounts which had been coming to Constantinople (at first as dark rumours whispered about, but gradually assuming definiteness and consistency) of horrible atrocities committed in Bulgaria. The cruelties had not altogether (though they had in the main) been confined to the side

of the Turks; but that which threw the balance altogether against them was that the Turkish Government had been unable or unwilling to prevent their own employés-Bashi-Bazouks, unworthy of the name of soldiers-from committing them. A feeble revolt broke out in Bulgaria in May. It had been suppressed by letting loose bands of Bashi-Bazouks, chiefly Circassians,1 to put it down in their own way, in other words, to massacre, ravish, plunder, and destroy through the villages of the district. The result was what might have been expected. A fertile province was laid waste, at least sixty, or as some said, more than one hundred Bulgarian villages (the names of many of them were given) had been utterly destroyed. Crowds of unarmed and inoffensive men, women, and children had been massacred in cold blood. Even the Turkish

1 There was a good deal of controversy as to the precise description of the men who were guilty of the atrocities, and the responsibility of the Porte for them. In this view, the facts brought out by the later investigations as to the omission of the Porte to punish the chief criminals, and with regard to the employment of regular troops, were important.

A correspondent of the Pall Mall Gazette supplied the following:

:-

Into these provinces in the years 1860 to 1864 something like 150,000 Circassians entered, by permission of the Turkish Government, when the ever-advancing arms of the Russians compelled them to leave their own country on the southern slopes of the Caucasus. Half-barbarous savages, these Circassians had no mind to till the ground for their living, and so, brigands by nature, they became also brigands by art, and entered into an engagement with the Turkish Government as irregular troops of the Sultan, or in other words they became Bashi-Bazouks-i.e. wearers of the red cap or fez. To these were joined plenty of the ne'er-do-weels and scum of other provinces, of course all alike Mussulmans. These men are the curse of the country. Under discipline in the field they are excellent soldiers, being, so to say, born to fight-they had been fighting the Cossacks for quite a century before they left Circassia; out of the field they are lawless brutes, preying upon their peaceful neighbours, and living by the strength of their thieving arms. Of course a very slight hint that they might fall upon any Christian, especially if he is weak in himself and strong in cattle and crops, is obeyed with good-will and savage exaggeration of the order. . . . Such are the men in whose hands was placed the punishment of the few Bulgarians who had been incited by well-known means to rebel against the Turkish Government. The situation in Constantinople became more and more critical as the moment for deposing the Sultan drew on. This was in May, and, not unnaturally, the insurrectionary sparks which were being constantly fanned in every way began to stir a little. Then," writes one from Philippopolis, " 'telegram after telegram arrived from Constantinople at Philippopolis (the present capital city of the Bulgarians), pressing on the authorities to keep strict order in their districts;" which commands they obeyed by turning the Bashi-Bazouks upon the culprits, innocent and guilty alike, with results that are known to all the world; results which, with every allowance made for exaggeration, are yet horrible to contemplate. The feeling of the "old party" among the Turks-a party with a rather loud voice at Constantinople-is that by annihilating the Bulgarian element, or by at least weakening and diminishing it both materially and morally, they will thus ward off the intervention of European Powers in the affairs of Turkey. In the Bulgarian people many thinking minds, and those who know this people best, see the good stuff which will make the future support and stability of the Turkish Empire; this good material they are fast proving themselves to be by the extraordinary progress they have made in the last ten or twelve years. The Bulgarian, however, is no soldier, and he thus offers to this party in Constantinople the weak spot on which to begin hammering. And they do hammer.-Letter signed B., P. M. G. July 18th, 1876.

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