THE NEW MACEDONIA.

Evening Star, Issue 13091, 26 October 1908, Page 6

THE NEW MACEDONIA.

A -MARVELLOUS TRANSFORMATION. The Salonika correspondent of the London ‘Times,’ under d'ato August 4, writes as follows:

It is safe to say that not one of the many pageants which have been shown to a curious jmblic in the old and new worlds has equalled in picturasqueness, actuality, and suggestivencss the pageant which is being unfolded day by day in the streets of Salonika ; for here the actors are themselves the heroes, the villains, or the victims of some decades of Macedonian tragedy; their varied costumes—often ragged enough—are no borrowed finery, but their own every-day garb, and the meaning of the spectacle, the cause that has brought these strange processions down from their mountains to throng the streets of Salonika, is the most imperative and compelling of all causes. Iherc was no need to teach the Bulgarian or the Greek the meaning of the words “ svoboda ” or “ clefthcria,” for their passionate cry for liberty is no new thing in the Balkans; but for the Turk, if the word “serbestlik” existed before the last three weeks, at least it was never printed and never uttered, save in the presence of tried friends and within closed doors. And yet it only needed the example of a handful of Turkish officers and their followers to awake not merely the whole army, but the whole Turkish people, from whom the army is drawn and to whom .it returns, to a sense of tlioir rights and of their 'power. The words “liberty,” “ nation, ” “fraternity” have acted like a charm on the peoples' of Macedonia, and the response has been unanimous, enthusiastic, overwhelming. The ground had been prepared by the patient, silent, skilful organisation of the Young Turk Committee, both abroad and at heme" not a little, too, by the growing activity of the Freemason element here; partly, no doubt, by the blood of many peasant patriots, by the exhaustion of the whole population, and by the growing irritation at the interference of and concessions to foreigners. Tho.ro is no need to recapitulate the intolerable conditions of life which existed until a few days ago for every class of the Sultan's subjects. The whole Hamidian system was rotten, and it needed but a touch from within to crumble into unhallowed dust.

—A Unique Gathering.— Every day since the proclamation of the Constitution special trains have brought down 'hundreds of people to Salonika to celebrate the coming of liberty or to lay 1 down their arms and make their peace with the Government. The railway officials proposed t» shunt the train bringing the Albanians from Ufikub to allow the mail to ■ P as - “Any train that passes us we shall riddle with bullets.” was the response. What a defile it has been! Tall Albanians, lean and gaunt and powerful as the wolves of their own mountains ; the members of the various insurgent bands, Greek antartes from Crete and the mainland, smart and spruce in their dark uniform; Bulgarian komitadijs, stalwart and .deter'. - mined-looking in their worn garb of brown; Vlach bandsmen, Servian bandsmen, all armed to the teeth; peasants of every na- • tionality, among them the released prisoners j —'with the political prisoners all the crimi- ' nals made good their escape as well the usual Salonika crowd of Spanish Jews and Levantines'; and everywhere, mingling with their late antagonists, are the Turkish soldiers, admirably well behaved, interested cheerful even ; the old look of dumb enduranoo has given place to something like hope and animation. . Some of them wear a I blood-red crescent sewn on their white caps ■to mark the pioneers of the movement, who , went to the mountains with Enver Bey, i officers," who before scarcely sjibke in public, seem new men now that | they are freed from that most insidious and

horrible of all evils, the dread of espionage. Here and there conics a specially conspicuous figure/ Sandanski, the chief of an -independent Bulgarian band, -cantor -of Miss.Stonie, and, last year, would-be captor-of Colonel. Elliott—dark and- cruel and unscrupulous as his own reign of terror In the Perim mountains; Panitza, bis lieutenant, who shot the rival Bulgarian, leaders,' Hark- ' foff and Garvanoff, in Sofia; Hassan Chaoush, a brigand pure -and ■ simple, a splendid person of - • gigantic, proportions,, splendidly _ dressed, who has spent twenty years oii bis own account in the mountains; a Vlach jiriest, himself a chief of bands, wearing his high pope’s hat, and over bis, pr|est.y robes a white kilt and all .-his arms; or Enver Bey, tho hero of the hour, an at- . tractive and sympathetic personality, handsome. calm, and intelligent. Hilmi Pasha, for five years the autocrat of Macedonia, appears more rarely, for he does not stand well with the Young Turk Committee; it is impossible to guess what he thinks of this strange and sudden upheaval, for his pale, intellectual face is as inciutable as ever. Apostol, the most popular and the best of the Bulgarian loaders, is the last to arrive. “If Apos--tol comes, then we shall know all is well,” say the Bulgarians. It is the most formidable-looking and yet the most well-disposed and the most - peifectly behaved crowd imaginable. The - walls of Salonika contain at this moment ah the elements of bate and cruelty which have made Macedonia a hell on earth for: all its inhabitants. These people, who come linked arm-in-arm, laughing together, drinking endless coffees together, dancing - together, have schemed and plotted against each other’s lives for years past. They have burned each other’s villages and flocks and granaries; they have killed each other and each other’s women ■ and children with every refinement ofcruelty;' the problem of their reconciliation has' baffled all the Cabinets of Europe. A fortnight ago no one in Macedonia would have dreamt this thing were possible. pan these wild elements, these incompatible racial ambitions, he controlled and satisfied by the single expedient of a freely-elected Parliament? —Difficulties and Achievements.The difficulties ahead of the Young Turk party are immense, but they mean to succeed. The whole Turkish nation is with them, and, moreover, they have—what the Great Powers have never had—the determination to use, if need he, the ample force at their command. “Twenty-four hours and the 2nd and 3rd Army Corps maich on Constantinople,” is the ultimatum which has been telegraphed, not once, but many times, to the Sultan, when he has delayed his assent to the Committee’s demands, and always with the desired result. It is from Salonika that the Committee have hitherto directed the movement, and the point of view has not always been identical here’ and in the capital. Here the cry “ A has le Sultan ” has been uttered freely in response to the harangues of the. hodjas and popes and lawyers who have addressed the crowds; in Constantinople tho Padishah is still the giver of all good things, even of the Constitution. Greeks and Bulgarians realise that a strong Government in [.Turkey involves a death-blow to their ambitions for a greater Greece or Bulgaria; there is ' still the old distrust of the Turk, whose State religion, if not his personal belief, denies the Christian equal rights with the Mussulman; and the wounds of deadly hate between Greek and Bulgarian cannot sear over in a day. The cleansing of the public services is an almost superhuman task. But a miraculous beginning has been made—and at tho cost of only seven lives, the lives of spies. Already that ill-famed host has melted away; there is no one now to receive their reports! Already many of those infamous Pashas, who had grown rich on what they stole from the wretched pay of the army and navy or from contracts for public works or from the Regie; have taken flight or have been arrested; letters and telegrams pass uncensored; the Press became free in a single hour; and, best of all, security reigns everywhere. Round the Yenidjo lake, for instance, which has been for years the haunt of bands of every description, the peasants have already returned to t heir long-suspended labor of reed-cut-ting and fishing. He would be a poor creature, indeed, who could witness this Salonika pageant unmoved. This fortnight’s “ Truce of God ” has been the happiest fortnight Macedonia has seen for many decades, and the hopes of those who care for the welfare of Macedonia may well be far higher now than they have ever been. Sir Edward Grey, in his admirable speech on the new development here, spoke of the attitude of tho British Government as “ expectant and sympathetic.” Before long he may be able to speak with greater confidence and warmth,‘and British .encouragement and support will be specially dear to the peoples of Turkey. In the words, spoken to-day, of a Bulgarian peasant, who himself has suffered to the full i'i the terrible years now past: “ Why should God give so good a thing, only tc take it back again?”