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1913] BULGARIAN CRUELTY 157
removal they were so inhumanly treated that more
than half of them died of cholera and of other diseases.
Yes, the Bulgarian is coldly cruel! All the same,
one must not see in this cruelty an inborn trait of the
Bulgarian character. It is the product of the whole
history of this unhappy people. One must not forget
that throughout the five centuries of Turkish domination,
the Bulgarian nation formed a human agglomeration
deprived of all representation of the people, and of all
governing classes.
The Serbians subjected to Turkey had their own
national clergy and their convents. On the other side
of the frontier they had brothers who were not subject
to the Turks, and centres of Serbian culture, such
as the towns on the coast of Dalmatia, and later
on Karlovtzy, Novy-Sad, and the monasteries of
the " Fruschka-Gora," in the land of the Serbian
" Granitchars " of Austria.
The Greeks possessed a powerful spiritual hierarchy
extending over the whole Ottoman Empire, with the
Universal Patriarch at its head, who continued to reside
in Constantinople. The numerous and cultivated class
of the families of the archons shared with the clergy the
influence, not only over their kinsmen, but also over
the Turkish authorities.
In the provinces in normal times, Turks and
Albanians of distinction were often on a friendly footing
with Greek notabilities. The knezes (heads of villages)
and kmets (mayors of Serbian small towns) kept
company and drank their "tzrno vino" with the local
Mussulmans, Serbians like them by birth and language,
but converts to Islamism. Up to to-day, the Serbian
Mussulmans remaining in Bosnia and Herzegovina are
proud of their extraction and still speak the purest
Serbian. "So you also are a leaf out of our forest," I
heard an old Bosnian Mussulman say to a young
Serbian to whom I was introducing him.
The Bulgarian people have existed for five centuries
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