"War is a cruelly destructive thing," said the Wanderer,dropping his newspaper to the floor and staring reflectively intospace. "Ah, yes, indeed," said the Merchant, responding readily to whatseemed like a safe platitude; "when one thinks of the loss of lifeand limb, the desolated homesteads, the ruined --" "I wasn't thinking of anything of the sort," said the Wanderer;"I was thinking of the tendency that modern war has to destroy andbanish the very elements of picturesqueness and excitement that areits chief excuse and charm. It is like a fire that flares upbrilliantly for a while and then leaves everything blacker andbleaker than before. After every important war in South-East Europein recent times there has been a shrinking of the area ofchronically disturbed territory, a stiffening of the area ofchronically disturbed territory, a stiffening of frontier lines, anintrusion of civilised monotony. And imagine what may happen at theconclusion of this war if the Turk should really be driven out ofEurope." "Well, it would be a gain to the cause of good government, Isuppose," said the Merchant. "But have you counted the loss?" said the other. "The Balkanshave long been the last surviving shred of happy hunting-ground forthe adventurous, a playground for passions that are fast becomingatrophied for want of exercise. In old bygone days we had the warsin the Low Countries always at our doors, as it were; there was noneed to go far afield into malaria-stricken wilds if one wanted alife of boot and saddle and licence to kill and be killed. Thosewho wished to see life had a decent opportunity for seeing death atthe same time." "It is scarcely right to talk of killing and bloodshed in thatway," said the Merchant reprovingly; "one must remember that allmen are brothers." "One must also remember that a large percentage of them areyounger brothers; instead of going into bankruptcy, which is theusual tendency of the younger brother nowadays, they gave theirfamilies a fair chance of going into mourning. Every bullet finds abillet, according to a rather optimistic proverb, and you mustadmit that nowadays it is becoming increasingly difficult to findbillets for a lot of young gentlemen who would have adorned, andprobably thoroughly enjoyed, one of the old-time happy-go-luckywars. But that is not exactly the burden of my complaint. TheBalkan lands are especially interesting to us in theserapidly-moving days because they afford us the last remainingglimpse of a vanishing period of European history. When I was achild one of the earliest events of the outside world that forceditself coherently under my notice was a war in the Balkans; Iremember a sunburnt, soldierly man putting little pin- flags in awarmap, red flags for the Turkish forces and yellow flags for theRussians. It seemed a magical region, with its mountain passes andfrozen rivers and grim battlefields, its drifting snows, andprowling wolves; there was a great stretch of water that bore thesinister but engaging name of the Black Sea -- nothing that I everlearned before or after in a geography lesson made the sameimpression on me as that strangenamed inland sea, and I don't thinkits magic has ever faded out of my imagination. And there was abattle called Plevna that went on and on with varying fortunes forwhat seemed like a great part of a lifetime; I remember the day ofwrath and mourning when the little red flag had to be taken awayfrom Plevna -- like other maturer judges, I was backing the wronghorse, at any rate the losing horse. And now to-day we are puttinglittle
pin-flags again into maps of the Balkan region, and thepassions are being turned loose once more in their playground." "The war will be localised," said the Merchant vaguely; "atleast every one hopes so." "It couldn't wish for a better locality," said the Wanderer;"there is a charm about those countries that you find nowhere elsein Europe, the charm of uncertainty and landslide, and the littledramatic happenings that make all the difference between theordinary and the desirable." "Life is held very cheap in those parts," said the Merchant. "To a certain extent, yes," said the Wanderer. "I remember a manat Sofia who used to teach me Bulgarian in a rather inefficientmanner, interspersed with a lot of quite wearisome gossip. I neverknew what his personal history was, but that was only because Ididn't listen; he told it to me many times. After I left Bulgariahe used to send me Sofia newspapers from time to time. I felt thathe would be rather tiresome if I ever went there again. And then Iheard afterwards that some men came in one day from Heaven knowswhere, just as things do happen in the Balkans, and murdered him inthe open street, and went away as quietly as they had come. Youwill not understand it, but to me there was something ratherpiquant in the idea of such a thing happening to such a man; afterhis dullness and his long-winded small-talk it seemed a sort ofbrilliant esprit d'esalier on his part to meet with an end of suchruthlessly planned and executed violence." The Merchant shook his head; the piquancy of the incident wasnot within striking distance of his comprehension. "I should have been shocked at hearing such a thing about anyone I had known," he said. "The present war," continued his companion, without stopping todiscuss two hopelessly divergent points of view, "may be thebeginning of the end of much that has hitherto survived theresistless creeping-in of civilisation. If the Balkan lands are tobe finally parcelled out between the competing Christian Kingdomsand the haphazard rule of the Turk banished to beyond the Sea ofMarmora, the old order, or disorder if you like, will have receivedits death- blow. Something of its spirit will linger perhaps for awhile in the old charmed regions where it bore sway; the Greekvillagers will doubtless be restless and turbulent and unhappywhere the Bulgars rule, and the Bulgars will certainly be restlessand turbulent and unhappy under Greek administration, and the rivalflocks of the Exarchate and Patriarchate will make themselvesintensely disagreeable to one another wherever the opportunityoffers; the habits of a lifetime, of several lifetimes, are notlaid aside all at once. And the Albanians, of course, we shall havewith us still, a troubled Moslem pool left by the receding wave ofIslam in Europe. But the old atmosphere will have changed, theglamour will have gone; the dust of formality and bureaucraticneatness will slowly settle down over the time-honoured landmarks;the Sanjak of Novi Bazar, the Muersteg Agreement, the Komitadjebands, the Vilayet of Adrianople, all those familiar outlandishnames and things and places, that we have known so long as part andparcel of the Balkan Question, will have passed away into thecupboard of yesterdays, as completely as the Hansa League and thewars of the Guises.
"They were the heritage that history handed down to us, spoiledand diminished no doubt, in comparison with yet earlier days thatwe never knew, but still something to thrill and enliven one littlecorner of our Continent, something to help us to conjure up in ourimagination the days when the Turk was thundering at the gates ofVienna. And what shall we have to hand down to our children? Thinkof what their news from the Balkans will be in the course ofanother ten or fifteen years. Socialist Congress at Uskub, electionriot at Monastir, great dock strike at Salonika, visit of theY.M.C.A. to Varna. Varna -- on the coast of that enchanted sea!They will drive out to some suburb to tea, and write home about itas the Bexhill of the East. "War is a wickedly destructive thing." "Still, you must admit --" began the Merchant. But the Wandererwas not in the mood to admit anything. He rose impatiently andwalked to where the tape-machine was busy with the news fromAdrianople.