PREFACE
The reason of the anonymity of this book is obvious. Revealing as it does the actual state of affairs in the Balkan Peninsula in this present year of grace 1907, it contains many plain truths and much outspoken criticism.
By a long journey of close, confidential inquiry through Montenegro, Northern Albania, Dalmatia, Bosnia, Herzegovina, Servia, Bulgaria, Roumania, Turkey, and Macedonia, I have, at risk of betraying certain information imparted to me under seal of secrecy, endeavoured to place the actual and serious truth before English readers, and thus render complicated questions, such as Bulgaria and the Exarchate, more intelligible than heretofore.
Private audiences were granted me by the various kings and princes of the Balkan States, and by His Imperial Majesty the Sultan, as well as by almost each member of the various Cabinets in turn, so that I was enabled to gather information, some of which is, of course, known in the chancelleries of Europe, while other facts will probably come as a revelation, even to Balkan diplomats themselves.
What I was told in one country was often contradicted in the next. Yet, possessing many “friends at Court,” I was afforded unique facilities for studying, in each country,the various questions on the spot. My inspection of the Servian prisons, in company with the Minister of Justice, was, for instance, the first occasion upon which a foreigner has been allowed to study the penal system in that country; while I am, I believe, the only Englishman to visit and be the guest of those wild brigandish tribes of Northern Albania.
The secret aims and aspirations of the various Balkan States herein explained are based upon actual information gathered from confidential and reliable sources. The exposure of the shameful German and Austrian intrigues is no mere idle denunciation, but are actual facts, as revealed to me by certain Cabinet Ministers and other persons equally responsible, and supported by documentary evidence which I have had through my own hands.
As regards that land of terror, fire, and sword, Macedonia, I can only say that I have spared the reader many horrifying details and photographs of what I saw there with my own eyes. The blood of those poor defenceless women and children who are daily slaughtered by Greek bands cries aloud to Europe for vengeance.
Will there be war between Bulgaria and Turkey during the present year?
To arrive at a definite conclusion upon that very serious point was one of the chief objects of my inquiry, and this record of its result—injudicious though I may be in putting it in print—will probably be read with interest by many to whom the Near East, with its mysteries, its constant plots, and its tangled politics, is as a closed book.
All through the Balkan Peninsula the weak are to-day being crushed by the strong. The Austrian Eagle has overshadowed and grasped Bosnia, she has her talons into Servia, and is casting covetous glances upon gallant little Montenegro. On the other hand, as part of the secret policy of ChristianGermany in her advance southward, the poor defenceless Macedonians are being daily outraged, murdered, or burned alive—the true facts being always suppressed and the news scarcely ever being allowed to leak out—while the Kaiser every day lifts his eyes to Heaven, implores the Divine aid, and consigns the destinies of his Empire to the direction of the Almighty!
To Germany, in great measure, is the present terrible state of Macedonia due. Her diplomacy at the Sublime Porte has recently exposed, beyond all doubt, that she secretly aids Greece and abets the Greek bands in their nefarious work of outrage, murder, and extermination.
The Kaiser could, by simply lifting his hand, stem the blood-lust of those armed hordes, and bring peace and security to the Macedonian population. But his secret policy is to create disorder in that terror-stricken country, so that Bulgaria and Turkey must be compelled, ere long, to fly at each other’s throats.
Therefore he closes his Imperial eyes to those scenes of wanton slaughter that daily are a disgrace to our civilisation in this twentieth century, and matters are rapidly going from bad to worse.
Sofia,April 1907.