Balkan Reader
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Stephen Bonsal, Leon Dennon, Henry Pozzi: Balkan Reader First-hand reports by Western correspondents and diplomats for over a century Edited by Andrew L. Simon Copyright © 2000 by Andrew L. Simon Library of Congress Card Number: 00-110527 ISBN: 1-931313-00-8 Distributed by Ingram Book Company Printed by Lightning Source, La Vergne, TN Published by Simon Publications, P.O. Box 321, Safety Harbor, FL Contents Introduction 1 The Authors 5 Bulgaria Stephen Bonsal; 1890: 11 Leon Dennen; 1945: 64 Yugoslavia Stephen Bonsal; 1890: 105 Stephen Bonsal; 1920: 147 John F. Montgomery; 1947: 177 Henry Pozzi; 1935: 193 Ultimatum to Serbia: 224 Leon Dennen; 1945: 229 Romania Stephen Bonsal; 1920: 253 Harry Hill Bandholtz; 1919: 261 Leon Dennen; 1945: 268 Macedonia and Albania Stephen Bonsal; 1890: 283 Henry Pozzi; 1935: 315 Appendix Repington; 1923: 333 Introduction About 100 years ago, the Senator from Minnesota, Cushman Davis in- quired from Stephen Bonsal, foreign correspondent of the New York Her- ald: “Why do not the people of Macedonia and of the Balkans generally, leave off killing one another, burning down each others’ houses, and do what is right?” “Unfortunately”, Bonsal replied, “they are convinced that they are doing what is right. The blows they strike they believe are struck in the most righ- teous of causes. If they could only be inoculated with the virus of modern skepticism and leave off doing right so fervently, there might come about an era of peace in the Balkans—and certainly the population would in- crease. As full warrant and justification of their merciless warfare, the Christians point to Jushua the Conqueror of the land of Canaan, the Turks to Mahomet. The war of extermination is in large measure inspired by their spiritual advisers, and the luckless contestants find full warrant for it in Scriptures which they accept as Holy Writ.” As proven by the recent atrocities in the former Yugoslavia, little has changed in the temperament and in the inclination toward vengeful vio- lence in the Balkans during the past century. It is also a regrettable fact, that Westerners in general, and Americans in particular, have no better clues about Balkan matters than their ancestors had one-hundred years ago. This book is an attempt to describe the roots of the ethnic conflicts among the Balkan peoples through the unbiased eyes of experienced and knowl- edgeable Western observers. The authors of these ‘on the spot’ reports are foreign correspondents of American newspapers and British and American diplomats familiar with the region. The single exception is Henry Pozzi — erstwhile secret agent — foreign correspondent of the respected French newspaper, Le Temps. Their experiences range in time from the late 1880s to the end of World War II in 1945. By coincidence, their visits to the Bal- kans coincide with some major cataclysms in the region: Bonsal soon after the Russo-Turkish war and the Treaty of San Stefano, Bandholtz, Pozzi, Montgomery and Repington after WW1 and Dennen at the end of WW2. 1 Their books, published between 1932 and 1947, are similar in one aspect: They are long out of print. Most of these books were written on a much broader scope than what is in- cluded here. Only those chapters were selected from these books that deal directly with the authors’ personal experiences in the Balkans. One excep- tion is Dennen’s description of the Warsaw uprising and the Soviet non-response, which is a necessary and telling prelude to what was to hap- pen in the Balkan countries at the time of the Soviet occupation. The combination of these reports and reminiscences, spread over time and space, fit together well. They provide a series of historical snapshots, and give an overall glimpse of the background of the multitude of problems that changed but little in this period. This is not intended to be a history book. Rather, it is ‘history in the raw’. On the spot recollections, conversations with participants of events that often became fossilized facts — true or false — that later appear in history books. There is no scarcity in history books on the Balkan countries. A number of scholarly books were written on the topics beginning with Emile de Laveleye’s The Balkan Peninsula (1887), Ferdinand Schevill’s The History of the Balkan Peninsula, from the Earliest Times to the Present (1933) to the recent Columbia History of Eastern Europe in the Twentieth Century (1992). They all provide a great background on the region’s history. Some of the writers even visited the region before they set out to write. Roy Trevor’s My Balkan Tour: An Account of Some Journeying and Adventures in the Near East, together with a descriptive and historical account of Bosnia & Herzegovina, Dalmatia, Croatia and the Kingdom of Montene- gro (1911) and William Sloane’s The Balkans: a Laboratory of History (1914) which was written after the Columbia University professor visited the area on three occasions between 1903 and 1910. But some books writ- ten in a time of conflicts may be strongly biased, such as Pierre Renouvin’s The Immediate Origins of the War (1928), and P. B. Stoyan’s Spotlights on the Balkans,(1940). Even Richard Holbrook’s To End a War (1998) may well end up in this category. The habitual unbiased and pedantic style of Western historians is not well equipped to describe the history of the Balkans. How does one explain the endless series of fratricidal political murders and genocidal blood-baths in 2 a homogenized and pasteurized manner to readers who can not conceptual- ize blood-feuds beyond the tales about the McCoys and the Hatfields? In stark contrast, just across the cultural/political divide, in Hungary’s thou- sand-year history no more than a handful of murdered statesmen maybe brought up: Laszlo Hunyadi, George Martinuzzi, Miklos Zrinyi, Stephen Tisza, and, of course the Archduke killed by a Serb. It may not be a politically correct statement, but by their prior experience in history the people of the Balkans — Romanians, Albanians, Macedonians, Montenegins, Bulgars, Serbs, Greeks, Dalmatians and the rest are different from their Western counterparts. They had to learn to live as the Turks’ “Christian dogs” and became accustomed to the doubtful morality that came with it. Treachery, duplicity and perfidy are survival skills. So it is not surprising that, for instance, it was said about a British diplomat posted in Bulgaria in 1921: “He doesn’t think much of the various folks in this part of the world ... They usually lie, and always lie about each other”. The people of the Balkans have plenty of reasons to be different. For 500 years they were subjected to cruel ethnic and religious oppression by the Ottomans. During these centuries they were excluded from the Western ex- perience of Renaissance, Reformation and Enlightenment. They are still mired in their calcified Orthodox Christian religion that sanctifies xeno- phobia in place of brotherly love. Their historical experiences with the Western countries give them no reason to trust. Ever since the Battle of Mohács in 1526, when their immediate neighbor, Hungary, has became a Habsburg dominion, France, for instance, was in frequent alliance with the Turks. Consequently, fortified by the French alliance, the Moslems have done their best to keep their Christian subjects enchained. At the end of the Turko-Russian War, when the Balkan’s people had a chance to gain their freedom in 1878 by the San Stefano Treaty, the British saved the day for Turkey few months later by the patently unjust Peace of Berlin. France’s blind support of the grandiose Serb dreams alter WW 1 caused the subjuga- tion of Croats, Bosnians, Kosovars and others. Their sufferings, that culmi- nated in the 1990s, still go on. At the end of WW2, British and French policy handed the region to the Communists, causing untold misery. The people of the Balkans have plenty of reasons to distrust the West. After reading these stories, one may ask: Will they ever live in peace? Can they? It much depends on the Western nations. Will they give them a 3 chance to prosper? Or will they be forgotten and left to their own devices? What the future brings we do not know. One thing is certain: The nations of the Balkans will not celebrate diversity for many years to come. 4 The Authors The backgrounds of the authors are described below. The precise titles and publication data of their works from which the quotations are made are given where they appear in the following chapters. Stephen Bonsal Jr. (1865 - 1951), the son of Stephen and Frances (Leigh) Bonsal, was born in Baltimore, Maryland, and died in Georgetown D.C.. His Quaker ancestors came from England with William Pitt. He married Henrietta Fairfax Morris, daughter of novelist Gouverneur Morris; they had four children. Bonsal had a colorful career as a foreign correspondent of major New York newspapers, as a writer and as a diplomat. Several of his books contained his interpretation of the events leading up to the writing of the Treaties of Paris after World War I. Other events covered by Bonsal as a reporter in- cluded the Macedonian Uprising of 1890, while he was a foreign corre- spondent of the New York Herald stationed in Vienna. For 21 months, he served as the Herald’s Balkan correspondent after his Vienna assignment. Later, as a foreign correspondent of the New York Times, he covered the Chino-Japanese War of 1895, and the Spanish American War of 1898. With the exception of Persia, he has visited every country of the world. Bonsal’s government assignments included Secretary of Legation and Chargé d’Affaires in Madrid, Tokyo, and Seoul from 1893 to 1897, Com- missioner of Public Utilities in the Philippines in 1914, and American rep- resentative of the Congress of Oppressed Nationalities in Paris, in 1918.