The State of Thessaly.

Hastings Standard, Issue 435, 25 September 1897, Page 4

The State of Thessaly.

WHAT THE TURKISH OCCUPATION HAS DONE. A WASTED HARVEST. . A special correspondent of the Daily News, writing from Volo on August 3 with reference to the state of Thessaly, says:— Volo itself, where we landed from the small steamers which pliss daily between that place and Oreous and Euboea, was perfectly quiet ; but it was the peace of death, rather than of life. About two-fifths of the shops are open, but hardly more than one-fifth of the population have returned from their flight of May 7, and one can wander through street after street without seeing a dozen houses with open shutters. The Turks have made desperate efforts to coax the inhabitants of Thessaly to return to their homes. Every facility is offered to those returning, no passports are required upon landing, and no personal effect are taxed. These advances having failed to bring back the fugitives, recourse is now being had to threats. Enver Pasha, Governor of Volo, recently issued an edict, threatening all inhabitants of Thessaly with confiscation of their property if they did not return to their domiciles within a fortnight. This edict was immediately repealed, I am told, at the demand of the Ambassadors ; yet no official notice of the repeal has yet been published in any Thessalian town. On the contrary, another proclamation has just been issued at Volo through the town crier to the effect that all shops which shall remain closed after the lapse of eight days shall be opened forcibly by the police. And the instances of confiscation of property at Larissa and Trikkala are net few. The most flagrant is the case of a rich Wallachian farmer of the village of Kastri, near Lake Karla, called Gargalas, whose entire movable property, consisting of 147 horses and mules, 4000 sheep and goats, 68 cows, 2000 sacks of wool, and large quantities of butter and grain, was seized and carried off by emissaries of the Pasha of Larissa, on the ground that the owner (who has been a refugee at Xerochorion in Euboea since the retreat from Larissa) was an " irregular " in the Greek army; in reality, however, at the instigation of a certain local Mussulman, Ibrahim Aga, who has long been at feud with the unfortunate Gargalas. Enver Pasha is personally a man of culture and liberal views, doubtless owing to the fact that he is not a Turk, except by creed (being the son of a Polish renegade), and has lived in several European capitals as Turkish military attache. His rule at Volo is as humane and just as his Sultanic master will allow, and if we are now hearing that he is to be removed as " unequal to the situation," it means that his superiors are eager to inaugurate at Volo something of the terrorism exercised in the towns of the interior. The presence of foreign consuls and foreign warships will of course continue to act as a very salutary check upon such tendencies. Unfortunately not all the consuls at Volo are as active in supervising and controlling Turkish n'-ijime as M. de Roujoux, the French representative; it is to him that the few Christians left iu Volo, and in the interior, turn for aid in obtaining some measure of justice from the invader, and the prestige which the French flag has thereby gained among the Thessalians has done much to efface the resentment felt at the French policy in the Cretan question. Our journey from Volo to Larissa by rail, was performed in the company of the French Vice-Consul, two French naval officers, a Russian colonel, and a fellow correspondent of a Berlin paper. After passing through the environs of Velestino, at which we gazed with much interest, recalling the various positions so gallantly defended in five successive engagements by Smolenski's nine thousand men, our train shot out into the treeless plain of Larissa, now one enormous wheatfield, thirty miles long by fifteen miles broad. The yellow expanse of ripe ears stretched away as far as the eye could reach, and yet not a single harvester was in sight. Only at Tscharalar and Topouslar, quite near Larissa, did we see a dozen peasants working in the fields, and these, as we ascertained, were Turks or hirelings of Turkish land-owners. Now and then we passed a few fields that had been reaped evidently by troops, Greek or Turkish, owing to the visible waste and haste ; and all about Velestino and Gherli the fields are being reaped by Turkish troops ; but the bulk of the Thessalian harvest both in the Trikkala and Larissa districts, is still untouched. One can easily account for this, for the annual wheat crop of Thessaly amounts to an average of 150,000,000 okas (1 oka equals 2Jib), and at least 20,000 harvesters come in from Macedonia and Epirus yearly at this season to seek work. This year, when the crop is one of unusual abundance, there are hardly a thousand laborers, even of the natives available, and the rich landowners, both Christian and Mussulman, are in utter despair ; the wages of harvesters have reached the unprecedented figure of 10 drachmae (4s 6d) per diem, and yet no one cares to risk his head for wages of any sort. The few Christian farmers who had ventured back, have begun to flee once more, as the Turks are becoming daily more irritable, and in most cases confiscate the grain as fast as it is reaped. No wonder that one of the richest Mussulman beys, in talking to my Berlin colleague and myself of the situation, Heartily cursed the day when his co-religionists reentered Thessaly, and prayed for their speedy removal. Yet he was an exception. The majority of the Thessalian Turks, notwithstanding the complete liberty and equality which they have enjoyed, along with their Christian neighbors,

for seventeen years, under Greek rule —in spite of the fact that, although everywhere vastly in tho minority, they have always been allovred one or more deputies in the Greek Chamber, and their priesthood subsidised by the Greek public treasury--notwithstand-ing the complete suppression of brigandage under Greek rule, the remarkable improvement of the towns, the construction of the railway and the great advancement of the wheat and tobacco trades—are now agitating in favor of the retention of Thessaly by Turkey, and have availed themselves of the opportunity to plunder the public archives of all documents, deeds, &c, which affect their own personal affairs, thereby venting their resentment upon many a personal enemy, or cancelling many a sale or other material obligation. It cannot be denied that they have some legitimate grievances chiefly the pecuniary loss, in many cases considerable, which the beys, who are landed proprietors, have suffered, through the intrigues of the lawyers, who enriched themselves by inciting the farmer-tenants to lay unblushing claim to their tenancies, and by protracting the legal struggle between tenants and owners for years. Yet this shameless proceeding is by no means confined to Thessaly or to the Mussulmans thereof ; the administration of justice in Greece is so ponderous and complicated as to be a travesty upon the name, offering every facility for, and no check upon, the manipulations of unscrupulous lawyers. " But at the hands of the Greek Government the Mussulmans of Thessaly have experienced nothing but justice and kindness, or, at least, have been treated exactly as all other Greek citizens. Yet, both at Larissa and Trikhala, they played a most unnecessariiy treacherous rCAc before and during the recent war ; and it is probable that this ingratitude will be visited most heavily upon the guilty ones when the Greeks reoccupy Thessaly. This will doubtless affect only the ringleaders in the towns. Fortunately, a number of the most influential beys have maintained a loyal attitude to their Christian fellow-citizens, and this will counteract the popular wrath to a large extent.