MR. BARING'S REPORT ON THE BULGARIAN MASSACRES.
MR. BARING'S Report was published on Tuesday,—at least a month after it might well have been in the hands of the public, for anything that appears either of elaboration or of late-dated pieces justificatives to account for the long delay after the preliminary Report. The delay is important only as a last illustration of the whole policy of the Embassy in the matter, which has been one of deliberate delay, and reluct- ance to admit their own gross incredulity as to the hideous barbarity of their docile pupil,—the pupil of whose ardent desire to be guided by the advice of the British Minister Mr. Disraeli assured the House of Commons on the 17th July. Certainly Mr. Baring's Report, now that it has appeared, will not hasten that cooling-down of the public emotion which, as we are daily assured by the Mahommedan journals, is rapidly taking place, while the news-columns of those very journals are crammed with evidence of growing heat and even fiercer ebullition. Mr. Baring tells us, and assuredly with perfect truthfulness, though hardly with perfect self-knowledge, " I can honestly state that I started with no preconceived ideas, though in the eyes of certain persons this was reprehensible in the last degree, and that it has been throughout my earnest wish neither to palliate nor exaggerate the acts of Turks or Bulgarians." However unconscious of preconceived ideas as to the character of the atrocities Mr. Baring may have been, it is clear that he was not entirely without preconceived ideas as to the origin of the Bulgarian insurrection. The very first sentence declares that it was fomented by " schemers in Moscow ;" and nearly his last sentence qualifies his indignation over " the deeds of blood he has spoken of " by a " but," which returns to the same theme,—" but the infamous conduct of those agitators, who to serve the selfish ends of States whose only object is territorial aggrandisement, have not shrunk from exciting poor, ignorant peasants to revolt, thus desolating thousands of homes, and leaving to a fine rich province a legacy of tears, should not be allowed to escape without its share of public execration." This is an approximation,—only an approximation, it is true, for who can emulate the courage of Lord Beaconsfield ?—to the great denunciation in the Prime Minister's speech of Wednesday, of those who use the English enthusiasm on this subject for their own sinister ends as being even worse than the perpetrators of the Bulgarian atrocities. Mr. paring is not quite so furious in his way of putting things, but while he is only "justly indignant" at "the deeds of blood,"he finds a much stronger word, " execration," for the apostles of Bul- garian insurrection. Nor is he even fair to those who have been engaged, like himself, in investigating the extent of the Turk- ish crimes. He goes out of his way, in speaking of the revolt
at Otloukeni, to attack them :—" The newly-appointed Mudir was to occupy his post at the time, and was murdered outside
the village While at Otloukeui I conversed with many of the villagers, and none of them denied that the Mudir was murdered outside ; but some persons who wish to be more Bulgarian than the Bulgarians, and whose only object it is to make the Turks appear as odious as possi- ble in the eyes of the world, so as to lead to the speedy dis-. memberment of their Empire, do not hesitate, by a most unworthy piece of special pleading, to acquit the people of Otloukeui of this murder. They say the village had no Mudir, so how could he be killed in the village ? It was true he was killed, not inside, but outside,—which, as far as he was concerned, makes no material difference." If the allusion is, as we suppose, to the Daily News' Special Commissioner, Mr. MacGahan, Mr. Baring has allowed his prepossessions to lead him into a serious blunder. The only fact which Mr. MacGahan stated .was quite consistent with Mr. Baring's statement, though Mr. MacGahan may have given a bad reason for his impression. " It was said," says Mr. MacGahan, " that the wife of the Mudir here at Otluk-kui had likewise been killed. As I have already stated, there was no Mudir in this village at the time of the outbreak, and his wife could not therefore have been killed." Mr. Baring states that the new Mudir was killed, but does not state that his wife was killed. Mr. MacGahan states that the wife was not killed, but does not deny that the Mudir was killed,—unless by a very doubtful sort of implication. There is, therefore, no reason at all for the odious charge which Mr. Baring has so hastily levelled—we suppose at Mr. MacGahan.
Perhaps we have already said too much on the unconscious bias of this report. But it is desirable that the unconscious bias should be recognised, in order to assure ourselves that Mr. Baring, however little he may know it himself, was very well disposed to throw as much guilt on the insurrection, and as little on the ruffians who sup- pressed it, as a man of rectitude and honour could. Making allowance for this evident though involuntary and unconscious bias, Mr. Baring's Report will be found to make the case against the Turkish Government considerably worse than before. It is true, he limits the number of the slaughtered in the sandjak of Philippopolis to about 12,000, while Mr. Schuyler had estimated them at 15,000. Again, Mr. Baring estimates the number of Mussulmans slaughtered at not more than 200,while Mr. Schuyler accepts an account which puts the number at 155, of whom only twelve were women and children. Mr. Baring says that the insurgents burnt four small Turkish villages, and a village of mixed Mussulmans and Bulgarians, as well as at least one mosque. Mr. Schuyler reported that no purely Turkish village was attacked or burned, and no mosque desecrated or de- stroyed. But these are differences so trivial that, on the whole, Mr. Baring's Report is a very powerful confirmation of all the worst atrocities established by Mr. Schuyler and the Daily News' correspondent,—and a confirmation given in the teeth of a very strong bias in favour of the Turks, of which Mr. Baring is uncon- scious, but which he gives us the amplest means of establishing. On one side of the case, and that the worst for the Turkish Govern. ment, Mr. Baring very much strengthens the indictment against it. " The Porte," he says," has, moreover, given a powerful handle to its enemies and detractors, by the way it has treated those who took an active part in the suppression of the insurrection. Those who have committed atrocities have been rewarded, while those who have endeavoured to protect the Christians from the fury of the Bashi-Bazouks and others have been passed over with contempt,—e.g., Shefket Pasha" [who burnt villages and mas- sacred the inhabitants when there " was not a semblance of revolt "] "holds high office in the Palace. Hafiz Pasha" [the commander under whom the Turkish troops burnt, and pillaged, and ravished at Otluk-kui] " has a command in Servia. Achmet Aga" [the wretch who was guilty of superintending the most awful of the iniquities committed,—those at Batak,—and whom Mr. Baring compares to Nana Sahib] " has been decorated ; so have Tussoun Bey" [who burnt and pillaged Klissura], "and Nedjib Effendi, Kaimaikan of Plevna" [who pillaged and burned at Yeni-keui when " all resistance was at an end "]. " On the other hand, has any reward been given to Hafiz Effendi, who saved Yamboli ; to the Mutevelli of Karlovo, to Husni Effendi, commander of the troops at Yamboli, who saved those places ; to Rustem Effendi, Yuzbashi at Tournova, who, having fought against insurgents really in arms, saved the prisoners from .the fury of the mob ; or to Haydar Effendi, Mutessarif of Slimmer This is the most damaging attack on the responsibility of the Turkish Government for these outrages which has yet been made, and is not much less so because Mr. Baring expresses his doubt how far the Government at Constantinople were aware of the guilt of those whom they decorated. It was their business to know what sort of men they were decorating, just as it was their business to know what sort of men they were leaving undecorated. It is obvious that a bloody and violent reputation was the one which did those who obtained it the greatest service at Constantinople, and that one of self-restraint and mercy was a repute of no value.
But the most important part of Mr. Baring's Report is, perhaps, his general account of the anarchy in Bulgaria, and the frightful difficulty which would beset the Turkish Govern- ment, even if it could really be in earnest in desiring to restore the reign of order and of confidence in its justice. After robbing the people till in many places they are paupers, the Government of Constantinople should, if they wish to restore order, first restore effective protection, and then remit the taxation which they have made the people quite unable to pay. But that is just what a Turkish Government never did yet, and never will do. In the Herzegovina, as any one may see who, instead of wading through the Blue-books, will read Mr. Rutson's very able paper in the Fortnightly Review on Turkey in Europe, the cause of revolt has been just this,— first, the farmers have been impoverished by the Turkish offi- cials, and then they have been surtaxed to make up for the dimin- ished yield of the taxes. Even when you get a good superior officer who objects to this sort of pillage, the inferior officers extort bribes of which their superiors know nothing. If this has been so in the Herzegovina, the prospect in Bulgaria is infinitely worse. " What is wanted," says Mr. Baring, "to restore tranquillity is a strong hand and a master-mind. There is now blood between the Christian and Moslem, and each one regards the other with bitter animosity. To allay this, and to cause things again to flow in their natural channel, requires a man of no ordinary capabilities, who, with powers enlarged beyond that of an ordinary Governor, and action unhampered by too many orders and counter-orders from the central Government, would deal out justice unflinchingly and impartially to Mussulmans and Rayahs." That is just what was recommended for the Herze- govina,—a province which had not suffered the tenth part of what Bulgaria has now suffered ; and Wassa Effendi, " ah Albanian by birth and a Roman Catholic by religion," was appointed to superintend the reforms. What happened He was hampered and overruled, first by the Governor-General, and then by the Commander-in-Chief, and was starved of the financial resources through which alone he could have done any good, so that his appointment was an utter failure. If that were so in the Herzegovina, where- the blood-feud was mild to what it is now in Bulgaria, it will be tenfold so in Bulgaria, where for some years to come every con- dition of confidence and prosperity must be wanting. The truth is, it is pure lunacy to look to the Government of Constantinople to regenerate a country which the frightful imbecility and vices of that -Government, and nothing else in the world, have devastated. You might as well expect the wind to restore the homesteads and the shipping destroyed by the whirlwind. Any one who after reading Mr. Baring's Report believes that the Turkish Government will or can ever accept Mr. Baring's excellent advice, and undo its destructive work, will believe that a friendly invitation to thorns to try for the future to bear grapes, or to thistles to produce figs, would be followed by a plentiful supply of those agreeable fruits from those rather prickly and unpromising stocks.
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