nce
in which an act of cruelty was chargeable to the men of the regular
forces. The hordes of Bashi-Bazouks, of Smyrniotes and Tripolites were
of course a set of most unspeakable ruffians, and there are probably no
more deplorable specimens of human nature in the world than are to be
found among the Paris-bred spawn of the harem.

Almost immediately on my return to London I lunched with Canon Liddon
of St Paul's. Our talk naturally turned upon the campaign, and in the
course of it I gave him an account of the affair at Guemlik, as being
typical of whatever disturbances had taken place between the citizen
Turk and the Bulgarians. When General Gourko first broke into the great
plain south of the Balkans with his Cossack advance guard, the Christian
population rose rejoicingly to receive them and persuaded themselves
without difficulty that the rule of their Mahommedan masters was dead
and done with then and there. They were supplied with arms and were
urged to revolt. There is no doubt whatever that they had a great deal
to complain of. They had been under the heel of official oppression for
centuries, although in that respect they were not much worse off than
their Mahommedan neighbours, but they were a despised and abject
race who ate forbidden food and who lived in an almost inconceivable
condition of personal uncleanness. To the Turkish peasant dirt is
anathema maranatha; in his own station of life he is the cleanest man
in the world, and if there is any dirtier person to be found than a
Bulgarian peasant, as I knew him in the war year, I can only say that
I have not yet discovered him. The Christian population (God save the
mark!) were forbidden by law to bear arms, and they were cowards by
tradition. Villagers of the two races lived peacefully enough
together, though there was an open disdain on the one side always and a
smouldering hatred on the other.

It befell that in a neighbouring village the Bulgarians broke into
revolution, and all the able-bodied Turks in Guemlik sallied out to the
assistance of their countrymen, leaving only a few infirm old men and
the women and children. The Guemlik Christians, being persuaded that the
fighting force would never return, rose _en masse_ and put every Turkish
soul to death. The massacre was characterised by a terrible ferocity;
the bodies of the dead were hideously mutilated and were all hurled
pell-mell into the well at the Turkish end of the village, and all the
houses