Twenty Years of Balkan Tangle

"And let men beware how they neglect and suffer Matter of Trouble to be prepared; for no Man can forbid the Sparke nor tell whence it come." BACON.

MINE is but a tale of small straws; but of small straws carefully collected. And small straws show whence the wind blows. There are currents and cross currents which may make a whirlwind.

For this reason the tale of the plots and counterplots through which I lived in my many years of Balkan travel, seems worth the telling. Events which were incomprehensible at the time have since been illumined by later developments, and I myself am surprised to find how accurately small facts noted in my diaries, fit in with official revelations.

Every detail, every new point of view, may help the future history in calmer days than these, to a just understanding of the world catastrophe. It is with this hope that I record the main facts of the scenes I witnessed and in which I sometimes played a part.

M. E. DURHAM.

CONTENTS

PREFACE

CHAPTER 1. PICKING UP THE THREADS CHAPTER 2. MONTENEGRO AND HER RULERS CHAPTER 3. FIRST IMPRESSIONS OF LAND AND PEOPLE CHAPTER 4. SERBIA AND THE WAY THERE CHAPTER 5. WHAT WAS BEHIND IT ALL CHAPTER 6. THE GREAT SERBIAN IDEA CHAPTER 7. 1903 AND WHAT HAPPENED CHAPTER 8. MACEDONIA 1903-1904 CHAPTER 9. ALBANIA CHAPTER 10. MURDER WILL OUT CHAPTER 11. 1905 CHAPTER 12. BOSNIA AND THE HERZEGOVINA CHAPTER 13. BOSNIA IN 1906. THE PLOT THICKENS CHAPTER 14. 1907 CHAPTER 15. 1908: A FATEFUL YEAR CHAPTER 16. 1909. CHAPTER 17. 1910 CHAPTER 18. 1911 AND THE INSURRECTION OF THE CATHOLICS CHAPTER 19. 1912. THE FIRST DROPS OF THE THUNDERSTORM CHAPTER 20. 1914. CHAPTER 21. THE YEARS OF THE WAR INDEX.

TWENTY YEARS OF BALKAN TANGLE

CHAPTER ONE

PICKING UP THE THREADS

It was in Cetinje in August, 1900, that I first picked up a thread of the Balkan tangle, little thinking how deeply enmeshed I should later become, and still less how this tangle would ultimately affect the whole world. Chance, or the Fates, took me Near Eastward. Completely exhausted by constant attendance on an invalid relative, the future stretched before me as endless years of grey monotony, and escape seemed hopeless. The doctor who insisted upon my having two months' holiday every year was kinder than he knew. "Take them in quite a new place," he said. "Get right away no matter where, so long as the change is complete."

Along with a friend I boarded an Austrian Lloyd steamer at Trieste, and with high hopes but weakened health, started for the ports of the Eastern Adriatic.

Threading the maze of mauve islets set in that incomparably blue and dazzling sea; touching every day at ancient towns where strange tongues were spoken and yet stranger garments worn, I began to feel that life after all might be worth living and the fascination of the Near East took hold of me.

A British Consul, bound to Asia Minor, leaned over the bulwark and drew a long breath of satisfaction. "We are in the East!" he said. "Can't you smell it? I feel I am going home. You are in the East so soon as you cross Adria." He added tentatively: "People don't understand. When you go back to England they say, 'How glad you must be to get home!' They made me spend most of my leave on a house-boat on the Thames, and of all the infernal things. ...

"I laughed. I did not care if I never saw England again. . . .

"You won't ever go back again now, will you?" he asked whimsically, after learning whence I came. "I must," said I, sadly. "Oh don't," said he; "tell them you can't, and just wander about the East." He transshipped shortly and disappeared, one of many passing travellers with whom one is for a few moments on common ground. Our voyage ended at Cattaro and there every one, Baedeker included, said it was correct to drive up to Cetinje. Then you could drive down next day and be able to say ever afterwards, "I have travelled in Montenegro."

It was in Cetinje that it was borne in on me that I had found the "quite new place" which I sought. Thus Fate led me to the Balkans.