The Purple of the Balkan Kings
Luitpold Wolkenstein, financier and diplomat on a small, obtrusive,
self-important scale, sat in his favoured cafe in the world-wise
Habsburg capital, confronted with the Neue Freie Presse and the cup
of cream-topped coffee and attendant glass of water that a sleek-
headed piccolo had just brought him. For years longer than a dog's
lifetime sleek-headed piccolos had placed the Neue Freie Presse and
a cup of cream-topped coffee on his table; for years he had sat at
the same spot, under the dust-coated, stuffed eagle, that had once
been a living, soaring bird on the Styrian mountains, and was now
made monstrous and symbolical with a second head grafted on to its
neck and a gilt crown planted on either dusty skull. To-day
Luitpold Wolkenstein read no more than the first article in his
paper, but read it again and again.
"The Turkish fortress of Kirk Kilisseh has fallen . . . The Serbs,
it is officially announced, have taken Kumanovo . . . The fortress
of Kirk Kilisseh lost, Kumanovo taken by the Serbs, these are tiding
for Constantinople resembling something out of Shakspeare's
tragedies of the kings . . . The neighbourhood of Adrianople and
the Eastern region, where the great battle is now in progress, will
not reveal merely the future of Turkey, but also what position and
what influence the Balkan States are to have in the world."
For years longer than a dog's lifetime Luitpold Wolkenstein had
disposed of the pretensions and strivings of the Balkan States over
the cup of cream-topped coffee that sleek-headed piccolos had
brought him. Never travelling further eastward than the horse-fair
at Temesvar, never inviting personal risk in an encounter with
anything more potentially desperate than a hare or partridge, he had
constituted himself the critical appraiser and arbiter of the
military and national prowess of the small countries that fringed
the Dual Monarchy on its Danube border. And his judgment had been
one of unsparing contempt for small-scale efforts, of unquestioning
respect for the big battalions and full purses. Over the whole
scene of the Balkan territories and their troubled histories had
loomed the commanding magic of the words "the Great Powers"--even
more imposing in their Teutonic rendering, "Die Grossmachte."
Worshipping power and force and money-mastery as an elderly nerve-
ridden woman might worship youthful physical energy, the
comfortable, plump-bodied cafe-oracle had jested and gibed at the
ambitions of the Balkan kinglets and their peoples, had unloosed
against them that battery of strange lip-sounds that a Viennese
employs almost as an auxiliary language to express the thoughts when
his thoughts are not complimentary. British travellers had visited
the Balkan lands and reported high things of the Bulgarians and
their future, Russian officers had taken peeps at their army and
confessed "this is a thing to be reckoned with, and it is not we who
have created it, they have done it by themselves." But over his
cups of coffee and his hour-long games of dominoes the oracle had
laughed and wagged his head and distilled the worldly wisdom of his
castle. The Grossmachte had not succeeded in stifling the roll of
the war-drum, that was true; the big battalions of the Ottoman
Empire would have to do some talking, and then the big purses and
big threatenings of the Powers would speak and the last word would
be with them. In imagination Luitpold heard the onward tramp of the
red-fezzed bayonet bearers echoing through the Balkan passes, saw
the little sheepskin-clad mannikins driven back to their villages,
saw the augustly chiding spokesman of the Powers dictating,
adjusting, restoring, settling things once again in their allotted
places, sweeping up the dust of conflict, and now his ears had to
listen to the war-drum rolling in quite another direction, had to
listen to the tramp of battalions that were bigger and bolder and
better skilled in war-craft than he had deemed possible in that
quarter; his eyes had to read in the columns of his accustomed
newspaper a warning to the Grossmachte that they had something new
to learn, something new to reckon with, much that was time-honoured
to relinquish. "The Great Powers will have not little difficulty in
persuading the Balkan States of the inviolability of the principle
that Europe cannot permit any fresh partition of territory in the
East without her approval. Even now, while the campaign is still
undecided, there are rumours of a project of fiscal unity, extending
over the entire Balkan lands, and further of a constitutional union
in imitation of the German Empire. That is perhaps only a political
straw blown by the storm, but it is not possible to dismiss the
reflection that the Balkan States leagued together command a
military strength with which the Great Powers will have to reckon .
. . The people who have poured out their blood on the battlefields
and sacrificed the available armed men of an entire generation in
order to encompass a union with their kinsfolk will not remain any
longer in an attitude of dependence on the Great Powers or on
Russia, but will go their own ways . . . The blood that has been
poured forth to-day gives for the first time a genuine tone to the
purple of the Balkan Kings. The Great Powers cannot overlook the
fact that a people that has tasted victory will not let itself be
driven back again within its former limits. Turkey has lost to-day
not only Kirk Kilisseh and Kumanovo, but Macedonia also."
Luitpold Wolkenstein drank his coffee, but the flavour had somehow
gone out of it. His world, his pompous, imposing, dictating world,
had suddenly rolled up into narrower dimensions. The big purses and
the big threats had been pushed unceremoniously on one side; a force
that he could not fathom, could not comprehend, had made itself
rudely felt. The august Caesars of Mammon and armament had looked
down frowningly on the combat, and those about to die had not
saluted, had no intention of saluting. A lesson was being imposed
on unwilling learners, a lesson of respect for certain fundamental
principles, and it was not the small struggling States who were
being taught the lesson.
Luitpold Wolkenstein did not wait for the quorum of domino players
to arrive. They would all have read the article in the Freie
Presse. And there are moments when an oracle finds its greatest
salvation in withdrawing itself from the area of human questioning.
--
_________
-THE END-
[H.H. Munro] Saki's short story: The Purple of the Balkan Kings
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