The Cupboard of the Yesterdays
"War is a cruelly destructive thing," said the Wanderer, dropping
his newspaper to the floor and staring reflectively into space.
"Ah, yes, indeed," said the Merchant, responding readily to what
seemed like a safe platitude; "when one thinks of the loss of life
and limb, the desolated homesteads, the ruined--"
"I wasn't thinking of anything of the sort," said the Wanderer; "I
was thinking of the tendency that modern war has to destroy and
banish the very elements of picturesqueness and excitement that are
its chief excuse and charm. It is like a fire that flares up
brilliantly for a while and then leaves everything blacker and
bleaker than before. After every important war in South-East Europe
in recent times there has been a shrinking of the area of
chronically disturbed territory, a stiffening of the area of
chronically disturbed territory, a stiffening of frontier lines, an
intrusion of civilised monotony. And imagine what may happen at the
conclusion of this war if the Turk should really be driven out of
Europe."
"Well, it would be a gain to the cause of good government, I
suppose," said the Merchant.
"But have you counted the loss?" said the other. "The Balkans have
long been the last surviving shred of happy hunting-ground for the
adventurous, a playground for passions that are fast becoming
atrophied for want of exercise. In old bygone days we had the wars
in the Low Countries always at our doors, as it were; there was no
need to go far afield into malaria-stricken wilds if one wanted a
life of boot and saddle and licence to kill and be killed. Those
who wished to see life had a decent opportunity for seeing death at
the same time."
"It is scarcely right to talk of killing and bloodshed in that way,"
said the Merchant reprovingly; "one must remember that all men are
brothers."
"One must also remember that a large percentage of them are younger
brothers; instead of going into bankruptcy, which is the usual
tendency of the younger brother nowadays, they gave their families a
fair chance of going into mourning. Every bullet finds a billet,
according to a rather optimistic proverb, and you must admit that
nowadays it is becoming increasingly difficult to find billets for a
lot of young gentlemen who would have adorned, and probably
thoroughly enjoyed, one of the old-time happy-go-lucky wars. But
that is not exactly the burden of my complaint. The Balkan lands
are especially interesting to us in these rapidly-moving days
because they afford us the last remaining glimpse of a vanishing
period of European history. When I was a child one of the earliest
events of the outside world that forced itself coherently under my
notice was a war in the Balkans; I remember a sunburnt, soldierly
man putting little pin-flags in a war-map, red flags for the Turkish
forces and yellow flags for the Russians. It seemed a magical
region, with its mountain passes and frozen rivers and grim
battlefields, its drifting snows, and prowling wolves; there was a
great stretch of water that bore the sinister but engaging name of
the Black Sea--nothing that I ever learned before or after in a
geography lesson made the same impression on me as that strange-
named inland sea, and I don't think its magic has ever faded out of
my imagination. And there was a battle called Plevna that went on
and on with varying fortunes for what seemed like a great part of a
lifetime; I remember the day of wrath and mourning when the little
red flag had to be taken away from Plevna--like other maturer
judges, I was backing the wrong horse, at any rate the losing horse.
And now to-day we are putting little pin-flags again into maps of
the Balkan region, and the passions are being turned loose once more
in their playground."
"The war will be localised," said the Merchant vaguely; "at least
every one hopes so."
"It couldn't wish for a better locality," said the Wanderer; "there
is a charm about those countries that you find nowhere else in
Europe, the charm of uncertainty and landslide, and the little
dramatic happenings that make all the difference between the
ordinary and the desirable."
"Life is held very cheap in those parts," said the Merchant.
"To a certain extent, yes," said the Wanderer. "I remember a man at
Sofia who used to teach me Bulgarian in a rather inefficient manner,
interspersed with a lot of quite wearisome gossip. I never knew
what his personal history was, but that was only because I didn't
listen; he told it to me many times. After I left Bulgaria he used
to send me Sofia newspapers from time to time. I felt that he would
be rather tiresome if I ever went there again. And then I heard
afterwards that some men came in one day from Heaven knows where,
just as things do happen in the Balkans, and murdered him in the
open street, and went away as quietly as they had come. You will
not understand it, but to me there was something rather piquant in
the idea of such a thing happening to such a man; after his dullness
and his long-winded small-talk it seemed a sort of brilliant esprit
d'esalier on his part to meet with an end of such ruthlessly planned
and executed violence."
The Merchant shook his head; the piquancy of the incident was not
within striking distance of his comprehension.
"I should have been shocked at hearing such a thing about any one I
had known," he said.
"The present war," continued his companion, without stopping to
discuss two hopelessly divergent points of view, "may be the
beginning of the end of much that has hitherto survived the
resistless creeping-in of civilisation. If the Balkan lands are to
be finally parcelled out between the competing Christian Kingdoms
and the haphazard rule of the Turk banished to beyond the Sea of
Marmora, the old order, or disorder if you like, will have received
its death-blow. Something of its spirit will linger perhaps for a
while in the old charmed regions where it bore sway; the Greek
villagers will doubtless be restless and turbulent and unhappy where
the Bulgars rule, and the Bulgars will certainly be restless and
turbulent and unhappy under Greek administration, and the rival
flocks of the Exarchate and Patriarchate will make themselves
intensely disagreeable to one another wherever the opportunity
offers; the habits of a lifetime, of several lifetimes, are not laid
aside all at once. And the Albanians, of course, we shall have with
us still, a troubled Moslem pool left by the receding wave of Islam
in Europe. But the old atmosphere will have changed, the glamour
will have gone; the dust of formality and bureaucratic neatness will
slowly settle down over the time-honoured landmarks; the Sanjak of
Novi Bazar, the Muersteg Agreement, the Komitadje bands, the Vilayet
of Adrianople, all those familiar outlandish names and things and
places, that we have known so long as part and parcel of the Balkan
Question, will have passed away into the cupboard of yesterdays, as
completely as the Hansa League and the wars of the Guises.
"They were the heritage that history handed down to us, spoiled and
diminished no doubt, in comparison with yet earlier days that we
never knew, but still something to thrill and enliven one little
corner of our Continent, something to help us to conjure up in our
imagination the days when the Turk was thundering at the gates of
Vienna. And what shall we have to hand down to our children? Think
of what their news from the Balkans will be in the course of another
ten or fifteen years. Socialist Congress at Uskub, election riot at
Monastir, great dock strike at Salonika, visit of the Y.M.C.A. to
Varna. Varna--on the coast of that enchanted sea! They will drive
out to some suburb to tea, and write home about it as the Bexhill of
the East.
"War is a wickedly destructive thing."
"Still, you must admit--" began the Merchant. But the Wanderer was
not in the mood to admit anything. He rose impatiently and walked
to where the tape-machine was busy with the news from Adrianople.
[H.H. Munro] Saki's short story: The Cupboard of the Yesterdays
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