Anglo-Russian one, and that
Japan was merely our tool.

When riding on relief work among the burnt villages it was easy to
learn the great part Russia had taken in building up the Bulgar
rising in Macedonia. The same tale was told in almost each. Once
upon a time, not so very long ago, a rich, noble and generous
gentleman had visited the village. He was richer than you could
imagine; had paid even a white medjid for a cup of coffee; had
called the headmen and the priest together and had asked them if
they would like a church of their own in the village. And in due
time the church had been built. Followed, a list of silver
candlesticks, vestments, etc., presented by this same nobleman--the
Russian Consul. The Turks had looted the treasures. Could I cause
them to be restored? Sometimes the Consul had had an old church
restored. Sometimes he had given money to establish a school. Always
he stood for the people as something almost omnipotent.

In August M. Rostovsky, the Russian Consul at Monastir, had been
murdered. There was nothing political in the affair. The Russian had
imagined the land was already his, and that he was dealing with
humble mouzhiks. He carried a heavy riding-whip and used it when he
chose. I was told by an eye-witness that on one occasion he so
savagely flogged a little boy who had ventured to hang on behind the
consular carriage that a Turkish gendarme intervened. One day he
lashed an Albanian soldier. The man waited his opportunity and shot
Rostovsky dead on the main road near the Consulate. Russia treated
the murder as a political one, and demanded and obtained apology and
reparation of the Turkish Government. The Consul's remains were
transported to the coast with full honours. All this for a Russian
Consul in Turkey. Truly one man may steal a horse and another not
look over a fence. Russia mobilized when Austria insisted on enquiry
into the murder of an Archduke. So well was Rostovsky's funeral
engineered that the native Slav peasants looked on him as a martyr
to the sacred Slav cause, not as a man who had brought his
punishment on himself.

Russia was not, however, the only Power in Monastir. It seethed with
consuls. And the most prominent was Krai, the Austrian Consul-General,
a very energetic and scheming man who "ran" Austria for all she was
worth, and was a thorn in the side of the British Consul, whom he
endeavoured to thwart at every turn. He persuaded the American
missionaries, who we