THE LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LOS ANGELES Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2014 https://archive.org/details/hellenismmacedonOOkaza BLLBNISM AND MACEDONIA BY EOCLES KASASIS RECTOR OF ATHENS UNIVERSITY PRESIDENT OF THE Helleilismos" SOCIETY Atcdiatur et altera pars 35 ^ ^ S LONDON: KEITH THOMAS 2-4, TUDOR STREET, E.G. 1904 Price Sixpence Hellenism and Macedonia WtiLE battle and massacre stain with blood the Balkan Peiinsula, while bands, armed and organised in Bulgaria, raage Northern Thrace and Macedonia, and while the public opaion of Europe is being increasingly deluded by dissemi- naors of lying tales, duty compels me to voice the truth con- cening the real nature of the drama that is being enacted in Estern Europe. Chough belonging to a people that has a greater interest thn any other race in the Macedonian question, I shall not pemit myself to be carried away by patriotic prejudice nor to be prompted solely by national interests. My only aim is to ex)ose the facts as they actually are, " sine ira et studio as thy have appeared to me after lengthy and persevering in- vetigation. I have no desire to attempt any one's conversion bj special pleading, I desire rather to carry conviction by the inxorable logic of figures, and by citing indisputable facts. Iklacedonia has already attracted attention for a long time. Tb majority of writers, whether men of weight or anonymous joTnalists, whether ranged on some definite side or of no ps'ty or prejudice, that have dealt with the problem up to the piisent, have treated it, trusting to books, to doubtful informa- tia, to stray suggestions, and hints, instead of using personal chervation to determine their judgments. 'Consequently, despite the great number of pamphlets of this nsure, the few pages that I am devoting to the Macedonian qustion and to its relations with Hellenism will not perhaps bewholly to no purpose. Till now we have heard too much frm the Bulgarians, the Slavs, and the whole horde of those deny a historic connection with Hellas and an Hellenic character to the land that produced Aristotle and Alexander 3 4 HELLENISM AND MACEDONIA i the Great : Audiatur et altera pars. The Greek sifeuld 1 allowed his innings. I appeal, then, to every impartial mind. * ( * * ' \ Much has been written in England, France, Germany, ai still more in the Slavonic countries, to prove that Macedon was never Greek ; that, being inhabited in former days | barbarian tribes, it was only in the districts bordering on tj MgQ&n Sea that the Hellenic settlements were established j permanence, and that they were always in a state of war wi( the population of the interior. i This theory has been taken up and maintained of late, mq especially by those writers whose prejudices are most keen Slavophil. They allege that the great jbarbarian invasions, aJj particularly that of ' the Bulgarians, have completely blottt out any trace of Greek occupation. The Greeks, according! these veracious historians, form only an insignificant fracti( of the Macedonian population, and do not deserve even mention in connection with it. Any other race except tl Hellenic has a better right to claim the country whereij under the rule of Alexander the Great, began that glorio\ period of the world's history which was justly called %l period of Macedonian Hellenism. i I will not delay to mention the list of those who hay during the last half of the nineteenth century, laboured : confuse the issues of the problem. They have not hesitat^ to assert that there are hardly a few thousands of Greeks, livii' in Macedonia in little groups scattered here and there, amidi population of 2,000,000. The remainder would be entire; composed of Bulgarians, as some allege, or of Serbs, as sh others, or even of Vlachs. As for the Greeks, they are hard! there at all. j To quote only one of the most important writers,* E. i Laveleye reckoned, about twenty years ago, the number | Hellenes in Macedonia at 65,000. The naturalised Bulgaria the rest of the Christian population. The statistics of t| Bulgarian pamphleteer did not pass unnoticed ; indeed, mail who in these later days have written after him consider/ his theory as having authority, and reproduced the figur- he had somewhat arbitrarily decreed. * La P^nmsule des Balkans, HELLENISM AND MACEDONIA 5 Moreover, improving on Laveleye, contemporary writers delight in still further diminishing the importance of the Hellenic element. One of the most recent examples was afforded by the author of an article in the Economiste Europeen;''^ who unhesitatingly affirms that ''the population of Macedonia might be reckoned at 2,200,000 inhabitants; of this number 1,300,000 are Christians of different creeds or races; 800,000 are Mohammedans, and 75,000 Jews; the Slav race (Bulgarian) coming first with 1,150,000, then the Turks with 800,000, the Albanians with 120,000, the Eoumanians with 70,000, the Jews, Tziganes, and the Greeks respectively numbering 75,000, 35,000, and 25,000." Such an assessment, which betrays the fact that its author is a more violent Bulgarophil than even the Bulgarian propa- gandist Kyntcheff,f who at least fixed the Greek population at 25,000, ought not to surprise us. Has not the Encyclopcedia Britannica itself reckoned that Hellenic element in Macedonia at 200,000 ? It is perhaps this statement which led into error that honourable man, Mr. Balfour, when he proclaimed in the House of Commons: "The fate of these unhappy people, many of them Bulgarians, some Servians, some Greeks, some Eoumanians, belonging to a section of the Christian Church, has been a miserable one indeed." In pronouncing these words the Premier doubtless forgot what his illustrious uncle, Lord Salisbury, said at the Berlin Congress: "Macedonia and Thrace are Greek provinces like Crete." \ I ought not now to waste time in trying to find how it is that such assertions as above, wholly divorced as they are from even a suggestion of truth, have come to be so readily accepted. Later on I shall have an opportunity of showing that the Macedonian Question is nothing but a question of Slav ambitions, and that it is the Slavs who have found out the way to change the public opinion of the entire Western world. Soon, for sure, it will come to pass that, thanks to the patient efforts of this same policy, the world on seeing us, we other Greeks, remaining indifferent and silent, will come to persuade itself that not only Macedonia and Thrace, but * August 21, 1903. t Formerly Inspector of the Bulgarian Schools in Macedonia, and lately Minister of Public Instruction of the Principality, assassinated in his own ministerial office by a Bulgarian schoolmaster. + Sitting of May 19, 1878. 6 HELLENISM AND MACEDONIA Thessaly too, Continental Greece, and the very Peloponnese, have become, in the course of time, colonies of the Slavs ! The famous theory of Fallmerayer that has long been forgotten, and forgotten too even before its inventor's death, will perhaps be presently resuscitated to provide a new argument for the enemies of Hellenism. Geographically and ethnologically Macedonia has been Greek from the most remote periods of history. Strabo, speaking of the Peninsula in the second century of our era said, ''Macedonia also makes part of Greece." But even before him, during all the ages, Macedonia was Greek in spirit, attaining the zenith of its glory in the times of Philip and Alexander. Even if Demosthenes, in fighting the Pan-Hellenic policy of Philip, spoke of the Macedonians as barbarians, he treated them so owing to" the influence of one of those prejudices which Athenian fastidiousness was wont to use, with regard not only to the inhabitants of Macedonia, but also with respect to the Epirotes and the Greeks of the continent, who lacked that exquisite refinement and polished manner which charac- terised the citizens of Athens. If the Athenian orator did not hesitate to dub the King of Macedonia and his subjects non-Hellenes, or foreigners, one must not forget that he did it simply for political reasons, just as in quite recent days we find that the Prussians and the Piedmontese, the founders of German unity and of Italian unity, were rejected for similar causes by their own com- patriots. But the ancient national feeling of Hellas never considered Macedonia as a foreign land : Macedonia in which was Olym- pus, the centre of the Greek faith and of the Greek ideals, near to which old tradition placed the cradle of the Pierian Muses, immortal daughters of Mnemosyne. After the magnificent double triumph of Alexander over the world, and of Aristotle over the intellect, Macedonia could not but be considered as a part of the patrimony of Hellas. The Koman conquerors of the Peninsula recognised it as Greek, and thus it was considered when the Apostle Paul came there to preach the gospel. Later the barbarians of the North invaded it, and passed across it, leaving few traces of their Strabo, Geography, bk. viii. c. 229. HELLENISM AND MACEDONIA 7 passage up till the seventh-century epoch, in which the Bul- garians, who had started from Central Asia, appeared there in their turn. In those days the Byzantine chroniclers spoke with horror of this race " hated by the gods," which they represent in colours more black than were ever employed in later days in depicting the Turk. These barbarian Slavs were many times crushed by the Emperors Heraclius and Justinian the Second; and in the time of this latter monarch, indeed, they were so completely extir- pated that for a long period they do not appear again in history. The ninth century witnessed a new offshoot of these savage hordes, which was led by their chief Crummus. The Emperor Nicephorus, who was then reigning at Constantinople, inflicted a new defeat upon them ; but while he was returning in triumph from this campaign he was surprised by the enemy, despite the oaths they had sworn, in the defiles of Hoemus, where he fell heroically with almost the whole of his army. It was then, as the chroniclers of that century relate, that the King of the Bulgarians after cutting off the head of Nice- phorus, had the skull set in silver, to be used in future on State occasions as a drinking-cup. Up to the present day the descendants of the conqueror mention this deed as one of the most glorious in their history. Shortly afterwards the closing years of the ninth century were troubled by a new levy en masse of the Bulgarians, com- manded by the Kniaz Simeon, who took later on the title of Tsar. But under his son and heir, Peter, they were again sub- dued by the Emperor Tzimiskis, who turned Bulgaria into a Byzantine province. In the days of their Prince Samuel there was a fresh rising of the Bulgarians, who invaded Macedonia, Epirus, Thessaly, and Continental Greece, advancing as far as Thermopylae ; but they were soon driven back, first by the General Nicephorus Uranos, whom the Emperor Basil sent against them, and, secondly, by Basil himself, who inflicted a crushing defeat on them. So great was the slaughter and destruction that this Emperor, surnamed BulgarohtonoSy is regarded as the saviour of Byzantine Hellenism in the eleventh century. It is a fact worthy of note that during this long and bloody struggle between the Greeks and the Slavs, and especially the Bul- garians, the invaders ended by embracing Christianity, which was preached to them by the Apostles Cyril and Methodios, 8 HELLENISM AND MACEDONIA who set out from the purely Greek town of Thessalonica, and who invented the alphabet called the Cyrillian; which became so powerful a weapon for spreading the Christian doctrines among these peoples. Such were the relations of the Bulgarians with the different countries of the Byzantine Empire, in particular with Mace- donia and Thrace. On what historical and national rights are their present pretensions then based ? They have never done anything but appear and disappear. A well-known and scholarly investigator, the Eussian Nicolas Dournovo, thus expresses his opinion on this matter : " The domination of the Bulgarians in Macedonia and Thrace has never had any other character than that of an intermittent usurpation ; they never really occupied these lands except for a very short period of time, i.e., between the conquest of 870 to the Macedonian revolt of 930 — that is to say, for sixty years. '*Is it possible to build on so slight a foundation historical claims, of whatever nature they may be ? "It results from the history of the Bulgarians that their kingdom, which was overwhelmed in 1394, never crossed the boundaries of the Danube, of the HcBmus, and of the Pont Euxine." The same writer, quoting the evidence of another Slav author, Gilferding, says again, with respect to these invasions : " In the reign of Constantine Pogonatus (663-685) Asparoukh took his station on the Dneiper and the Danube, making fre- quent incursions into Dobroutza and Mysia. In 679 all the territory between the Danube and the Hoemus was ceded to the Bulgarians, who brought under their yoke seven Slav tribes- who were settled there. " The Bulgarian chroniclers have nothing to record about their nation from 718 to 755. In that year they invaded Thrace, which they abandoned begging peace from Con- stantine, who had conquered them. Forty years later they took their revenge on him, and their victory was followed by terrible risings in their own country. After some new successes which they gained over the Byzantines in 917, they advanced up to the very gates of Constantinople. In 976 the Slavs of Macedonia, freeing themselves from the Bulgarian * Have the Bulgarians Historical Bights in Macedonia, Thrace, and Old Servia ? M. Dournovo ; Moscow, 1896 (in Greek and Eussian) ; l«(icephorus, page 40 ; Theophanes, page 549. HELLENISM AND MACEDONIA 9 yoke, took for their king Samuel, who, during the whole of his reign, made continual raids into the Byzantine territories. The Bulgarian towns Tirnovo and Preslava were not comprised in this empire, which was Slav, and not Bulgarian. On what, then, do the Bulgarians base their historical rights? " * After the brilliant victory of Basil the Macedonian over the Bulgarians, they lost the very memory of their past, and it might be said they had no longer a national existence. For centuries they remained thus buried in profound obscurity. When Eastern Europe fell before the Ottoman power they soon assimilated themselves to their conquerors, with whom they had besides a common origin. If in the days of their slavery they showed any signs of hatred for Islam, it was thanks to the guiding care and influence exercised over them by the Greek Patriarch of Constantinople, the guardian of the Christian faith and the Christian traditions. The Greek tongue came into familiar use with the upper classes among the Bulgarians as it had done with the Serbs and the Eoumanians. Up to these later days, up to 1870, they called themselves, when in a boastful mood, Greeks. Nothing gave any indication of this desire for independence, this separatist spirit, which declared itself later, thanks to promptings from outside, rather than to any racial awakening or any spontaneous desire for emancipation. But while Bulgaria was plunged into a deep stupor, Panslavism kept vigil. From the second half of the eighteenth century, and even before, the famous political testament of Peter the Great began to be put into execution under the enterprising Catherine II. The Greeks, trusting in the promises of Eussia, rebelled against Ottoman rule both in the Peloponnese, in Continental Greece, and in Crete. This first revolution was quenched in blood ; and while the Greeks were abandoned by their pretended protectors, Panslavist desires and projects of conquest in the Balkan peninsula were continually developing. In 1762 a monk of Mount Athos, Paisius, was seized as if by revelation with a boundless admiration for the Bulgarian race, and in a work entitled History of the Tsars and of the Saints of Bulgaria he invited the most " glorious of the Slav peoples " to rouse itself from its torpor, to recall its ancestral 10 HELLENISM AND MACEDONIA fame, traditions, and national manners, and to revive its ancient language." No echo made answer to this appeal ; the Bulgarian world remained immobile, indifferent even to the rising of the Serbs in 1807, and to that of the Greeks in 1821. A little later, towards the end of the Hellenic insurrection, an event occurred which is worthy of claiming attention. In the course of their 1827 campaign against the Turks the Eussians, while occupying the Balkan territories and while advancing to the gates of Adrianople, discovered on their march the Bulgarians. Muscovite policy at once perceived in this new race that it had found on its road a wonderfully efficient tool for the realising of its secular ambition, the conquest of ancient Byzantium. The Bulgarians appeared all the better situated to assist this design since they were established in the territories bordering on Thrace, the country which of all others in the Peninsula draws nearest to Constantinople. No very long time elapsed before the Slav world put its plan into execution, which consisted first of all in attacking Hellenism in its two principal centres, Macedonia and Thrace. Savants and self-constituted authorities vied with each other in constructing theories and devising systems about this new mission with which they were investing the Bulgarian race. While the German Fallmerayer proclaimed the Slavising of the Greek countries, a Slovak poet, Jean Collar, carried away by a burning enthusiasm for the future of the great mother Slavonia, created an enormous imaginary empire which stretched from the North of Europe to the Macedonian mountain Athos and the city of Constantinople. About the same period, and more particularly just after 1840, Western authors, among them Cyprian Eobert and Blanqui, who traversed these countries, became unconscious instruments of the Panslavist plots, since they did not hesitate to assert, in making their ethnological investigations, that Thrace and Macedonia were principally Bulgarian territories. ' But soon after this the Slavs themselves took up their own part, and began to exaggerate beyond all bounds, and by the most various devices, the importance of their share in this country. In 1842 Paul Schafarik published the Ethnographie slave y wherein he collected every title and right of that race to these countries which he had dug out from the night of time. His grandson, Constantine Jiretzeck, professor at the HELLENISM AND MACEDONIA 11 University of Prague and later Minister of Public Instruction at Sofia, imitating the ancestral example, maintained the same cause. However, it is more than probable that all these scientific works would not have had any influence on the Bulgarian character without the help of legend. As is done in the case of every ignorant people when the object is to awaken in them a feeling of nationality, so it was done here : the most powerful weapon of all was employed — namely, legend. Where partisan science had failed, fable succeeded, and kindled fanaticism. A certain Berkovitz, an antiquary of Serres, and Professor Raskofsky distinguished themselves in this task. The last, under the influence of Chauvinist megalomania, pub- lished in 1859 a work wherein, improving on the thesis of the writer cited before, he speaks of the Bulgarians as " the most ancient inhabitants of the Peninsula," as if they had come there as did the Pelasgians of the Indian lands. And further, he maintains that not only the Thracians and Macedonians themselves, but the Celts and Franks as well, were nothing but Bulgarians, who, besides, according to him, were the first to embrace Christianity. As for Berkovitz, he published at Belgrade and Paris a volume of very ancient poems, the Veda Slovena,'^' which ought to have his name attached to this fine ethnological study. The legend of Orpheus will be found quite whole, scarcely travestied at all, in this ingenious collection. Orphen, a great musician, instructed the human race, civilised their manners by his art, reigned over Thrace and Macedonia, had a numerous family of sons and daughters by the beautiful Orphenizza, whom he had won by magical incantations in spite of a thousand obstacles, and after a long and glorious life, mounted to heaven with his wife. On consideration this is much better than a mere Bulgarian adaptation of the Greek myth, it amounts to the creation of a new god. History herself after this cannot hope to be very much respected ; and so many publications have seen the light which prove really quite conclusively that Alexander the Great himself was a genuine authentic Bulgarian. However, the boldness of these innovations astonished even the Slavs themselves, whose science or conscience was out- raged. Ofeicof , for example, confessed to Jiretzeck that in all his voyages in the land of Rhodope he had never discovered * L. L^ger, Etudes Slaves ^ Le Veda slave. I I 12 HELLENISM AND MACEDONIA the slightest trace of the Vedas of Berkovitz. He did not hesitate to voice the opinion that all these songs alleged so ancient had been fabricated throughout by Bulgarian pro- fessors. Another of these more honest men, Slaveikoff, revealed the fact that Charizanoff, a schoolmaster at Melnik and later a magistrate in Bulgaria, had confessed to him his collaboration in the Vedas, as an innocent little literary- deception by means of which he hoped to contribute to the building up of national grandeur. I could multiply endlessly examples of these mythologico- historical inventions, which transmogrify not only the past of Macedonia and Thrace, but push their encroachments even to the Bosphorus and beyond. Kyntcheff, for instance, in his Impressions of Asia Minor, gravely declares to us that every country wherein the Greek tongue is spoken is only peopled by Hellenised Bulgarians. Thus little by little Slav pretensions have extended them- selves to claim the Hellenic territories. Amid all the Slavs the Bulgarian is especially marked out for the work of usurpation which constituted the great programme. His stupidity of intellect, his violent temper, the geographical conditions of his habitat, all design him as the best tool for this policy of spoliation. Nurtured in hatred of the Hellene, brought up to regard him as the hereditary foe, the Bulgarian has, moreover, made besides a tragic application of the instructions that he has received. By his voice Panslavism has decreed the whole Hellenic world beyond the pale of the law. In public offices, in schools, in Churches, in families — everywhere echoes this same cry of hatred, which ends with this bloodthirsty refrain, the national anthem of Neo-Bulgaria : " Ho all of you, slit the throat of the Greek ! Tear him in pieces, slay the oppressor ! " Panslavism, faithful to the end which it has pursued for generations, goes on proclaiming before all the world that the degenerate Greek has for ever disappeared from the land which was his cradle in ancient days ; that the hour has sounded when, in this land which is no longer his, he is about to be replaced by another race — a younger and stronger race which is to realise the prophecy of Jacob Fallmerayer, according to HELLENISM AND MACEDONIA 13 whom the destinies of the world will be controlled in the future by this Slav race that sooner or later will impose its yoke on the Germans themselves. This man, too, who thus Slavised Attica and Morea, in proclaiming this predominance of Slavism, not only over the East but also even over the West, has already predicted to his compatriots that as soon as this supremacy is established the Germans will fall in adoration before the new god, and will sacrifice to it even their own characteristic intellect and will construct in its honour a new system of historical philosophy. This is the glorious role for which Eussia prepared, by se recueillant, to quote a celebrated mot, on the morrow of that treaty of Paris which had so terribly humiliated her. After her failure to obtain dominion over the Bosphorus by force of arms, she began to put in practice a new plan of action, capable of procuring for her, though the delay might be long, certain and palpable results. Up till then she had turned her attention to pit one against the other, so as better to weaken them, Christian and Mohammedans. Eut now the moment seemed to have come for her to sow in the future divisions between the Christian subjects of the Porte ; between the Greeks, Slavs, Eoumanians, in order to dominate them more quickly and to assure through them the success of her conquests. This plan, of which the Sultans themselves had never dreamed after the taking of Constantinople, the executors of Peter the Great both conceived and applied. Up to the Treaty of Paris the Ecumenical Patriarch had been regarded without dispute as the spiritual and national head of all the Christians in the Ottoman Empire, without distinction of race or origin. Mohammed the Conqueror had recognised his title of Ethnarch (Boum-Millet-Bachi) and had conferred upon him numerous privileges by which Greeks and Bulgarians benefited equally. But the adversaries of Hellenism saw only one road to achieve their end ; this was to destroy the prestige and to attack the authority of the Ecumenical Patriarch. The question at issue was to make a silent conquest of the Church, which in the East is a wonderful tool for national expansion. The Bulgarian nation was to form the advance guard for the Muscovite conqueror ; so it was that under promptings from Petersburg it began to show signs of desiring autonomy and emancipation. The revolution was being prepared, whose avowed end was to revive the ancient grandeur of the Bui- 14 HELLENISM AND MACEDONIA garians. As for the Serbs, no one troubled about them, they were too far off from Tsarigrad (Constantinople) ; moreover, they did not seem to unite the necessary qualities of character in the same degree as the Bulgarians. One weighty question was brusquely settled. The Bul- garians of the European provinces of Turkey rebelled against the authority of the Patriarch, demanding ecclesiastical au- tonomy. Already in 1860 they had sent representatives to the Porte, to declare that they would no longer recognise the power of the head of the Eastern Church. Great was the scandal. The Patriarch gave in his resignation, but the Holy Synod elected a successor who was very little disposed to submit to Bulgarian pretensions which threatened the very fundamentals of the Orthodox Church. Nevertheless his atti- tude towards these dissenters continued to be conciliatory ; the Greek clergy vainly endeavoured to make them listen to reason. Encouraged by Eussian diplomacy, the movement of insubordination went on increasing. The unity of the Greek Church was threatened. The Ecumenical Patriarch found himself compelled to excommunicate and to exile the apostate chiefs ; but he none the less granted many privileges to the Bulgarian eparchies. It was at this moment that a great number of Bulgarians entered within the pale of the Eoman Catholic Church ; but they soon quitted it again, for Eussian policy, in its zeal for orthodoxy, had taken umbrage at this desertion. To pacify matters the Sublime Porte, urged on by the Cabinet of Petersburg, and 'moreover considering that its authority over the Christian subjects would be the better as- sured by fostering their divisions and discords, after many circumlocutions and procrastinations, ended by satisfying the demands of the dissenters and gave permission for the creation, in defiance of the canons of the Orthodox Church, of an auto- nomous Bulgarian Church, to which were attached many of the dioceses that were taken away from the Ecumenical Patriarchiate. This Church was placed under the authority of a head who received the title of Exarch. Under these circumstances the Patriarch of Constantinople, Anthimous VI., summoned to a Council the heads of the other autocephalous Greek Churches of the Ottoman Empire, the Patriarchs of Jerusalem, of Alexandria, of Antioch, and the Archbishop of Cyprus, in order to defend the rights of the Eastern Church, and to determine the attitude that should be HELLENISM AND MACEDONIA 15 taken to meet this violation of its immutable traditions. The assembly condemned the Bulgarian Exarchate and declared all its followers schismatics. Panslavist policy had achieved a briUiant success, but had nevertheless failed in its principal end — the delimitation of the domain of the Exarchy in Macedonia. This question was not long in coming up, and it w^as even settled for the moment by the Treaty of San Stef ano ; the idea of this had been for a long time germinating and had rapidly developed after the schism. The emancipation of the Bulgarian clergy attested the zeal of the Slavs and gave fresh life and greater boldness to the great conspiracy against Hellenism. It is hardly possible to imagine all that was done, said, or written at this period against the Greek race and the Greek Church ; injustice, lies, and calumnies united to help the triumph of Panslavism. To this task the indescribable Turkish regime contributed no less usefully ; its vices and abuses daily increased among its Slav subjects an exasperation which an able policy could not fail to exploit. In every country of Turkey in Europe the populations aspired to get the benefit of rights which were denied them by a Power that was incurably blind, tiU they only waited for the signal for revolution. Thus it was that there burst forth in 1875 among the Slavs of Herzegovina an insurrection which soon gained over Bosnia, spread throughout Albania, Servia, and finally Bulgaria ; many Bulgarians, officers in the Eussian army, had already left the country in order to go and prepare it. An impartial witness, and one worthy of confidence, Sir William White, a former ambassador of England at Constan- tinople, tells us in his Memoirs that this insurrection had been prepared by Bulgarian schoolmasters and priests, who in order the better to encourage their compatriots assured them that a Eussian army corps was ready to invade the Balkan provinces in order to second the rising. All these schoolmasters had studied in Eussia ; from Eussia they had brought the astounding plan of action that follows : to destroy the railways, to set on fire Adrianople, Philippopolis and Sofia, to surprise the villages of the Mohammedans, to confiscate their goods and massacre the recalcitrants. As for the Bulgarians that should refuse to rise, they should be constrained by force or see their houses burnt 16 HELLENISM AND MACEDONIA down. This programme was first translated into action in the little town of Eakovitz, which was destroyed, and against the Moslem population of several other hamlets. To the hordes of irregular troups — Bashi-Bazouks, Circas- sians, and Kurds — the Porte entrusted the task of restoring order. The Ottoman authorities had been commanded to stifle the insurrection at its birth by any means that they chose; whole districts were so pitilessly suppressed that the indignation of Europe began to be aroused. In England the great leader of the Liberal Party, Gladstone, excited public opinion by launching his ringing denunciation against the Bulgarian atrocities. The pow-parlers, which the European Foreign Offices had framed in hopes of bringing about a peaceful solution of the Eastern Question, achieved nothing. Neither the Constanti- nople Conference nor the protocol of London could bring about any satisfactory result. The ill-will of the Porte was suffi- ciently plain, and the delays and postponements which it employed before putting into practice the reforms demanded scarcely veiled its double dealing. Of all the Powers Bussia showed herself the most hostile to Turkey; with her the question was not so much the freeing of the oppressed peoples as that of inflicting a fresh blow on the Ottoman Empire — a blow that should be severe and perhaps mortal. It was plain that she was seeking to provoke a rupture that soon became inevitable. The war broke out, and to the troops of the Czar that invaded the Balkans there was soon joined the army of Eoumania. After an heroic defence, in the course of which they inflicted some severe repulses upon the enemy, the Turks succumbed to numbers, and the Eussians, advancing almost up to the walls of Constantinople, imposed upon Turkey the famous Treaty of San Stefano, which stripped her of the chief part of Macedonia and Thrace, to create under the eyes of an astonished Europe the realm of Great Bulgaria. If the Treaty of San Stefano was disastrous for Turkey, since it implied the end of Ottoman rule in European provinces, it was also a calamity for the interests and rights of Hellenism, from which it robbed for the benefit of the Bulgarians a whole patrimony. Moreover, Great Bulgaria, extending to the littoral of the -^gean Sea, for ever barred the road to Constantinople for the Greeks. In a moment they saw the ruin of all their dearest HELLENISM AND MACEDONIA 17 liopes, all their ambitions, all their dreams. General Ignatieff, most Panslavist of Slavs, the master craftsman of the Treaty of San Stefano, voiced the exultation of his nation in his well- known sarcasm : " Now the Greeks have only got to swim to Constantinople to get it." At this critical moment, when the very fate of Hellenism was at stake, English policy appeared as the saviour. The Cabinet of St. James sent to its foreign representatives a formal protest and a circular, wherein it was stated that " the establishment of the new order of things in the newly created principality seemed to drown in the midst of the Slav agglomeration a great number of Greeks, who watched with apprehension the coming €ffacement of their ethnical character by this violent inter- mixture with peoples from which they differed, not only racially, but even more by their political aspirations and religious convictions." To this protest Prince Gortchakoff replied by a counter protest, which he communicated through iihe accredited diplomatic agents of Eussia to the Governments of the Great Powers. In this protest it was pretended that the assertion according to which the Treaty of San Stefano would have extended the limits of Russia beyond Bulgaria, by imposing upon Turkey an ameHoration of the condition of affairs existing in Epirus and Thessaly, was really surprising ; that if Russia had not concerned herself with the fate of these countries she would have been accused of sacrificing the Greeks to the Slavs ; and that if on the other hand she had caused them to be given an autonomous regime similar to that by which Bulgaria benefited, she would have been reproached with having desired to entirely ruin the Ottoman Empire, and to plant there her own influence ; that the Imperial Government did not cease to have the consciousness of her duties, and was well aware of the role that history had assigned to Russia — tutelary protectress of the Christians of the East, without distinction of race or confession ; and that if Russia seemed to have specially favoured Bulgaria, this was solely due to the fact that Bulgaria had been both the first cause and the theatre of the war ; but that if she had limited herself with merely advising Turkey to ameliorate the condition of the large provinces (Epirus and Thessaly), that was because she reserved for the other Powers the right of enlarging these advantages ! . . . These arguments, which are unworthy of any comment, found no echo in European diplomacy, and against such a 18 HELLENISM AND MACEDONIA valuation of the rights of the Greeks thus sacrificed entirely to the interests of a Great Bulgaria all Hellenic Constantinople protested loudly. Constantinople, as the seat of the Ecumenical Patriarchate, has always remained the centre of Hellenism, the true capital of the Greek world. By the voice of the different national assemblies, and especially by those representing Thrace, Macedonia, Epirus, and Thessaly, this protest made itself heard; it had all the more justification because the Greeks constitute the principal elements of these provinces, as much by their numerical importance as by their intellectual culture and their higher degree of civilisation, and, too, because they have more than once taken arms against Ottoman rule. The Bulgarian massacres of Batak in 1876 are nothing beside the hetacombs of Greeks perpetrated in 1821 at Constantinople, Smyrna, Chios, Cyprus, Adrianople, Philippopolis, and in other towns of Thrace and Macedonia. The Greek protest was laid before the Berlin Congress^ which met a little after to reform the work of San Stefano — • nullified, thanks to English intervention — and to regulate on a new basis the Eastern Question. The Cabinet of Athens for its part submitted to the representatives of the Powers as- sembled at Berlin a memorandum formulating its grievances. But the Congress showed itself little diposed to take into consideration the desiderata of the Greeks, and it was only through the strong intervention of the plenipotentiary of France, backed up too by that of Italy, that it finally decided to compensate Greece by ceding her Epirus and Thessaly — a cession which was later on considerably restricted. Bulgaria received the lion's share. True, the Great Bulgaria- of San Stefano was not reconstituted. But from Northern Thrace and Macedonia several districts were cut off to create^ under the name of Eastern Eoumelia, a privileged province endowed with a regime which, if not entirely independent, had yet almost every advantage of independence, and was one day to become so. For the rest, Eussia, who had succeeded in obtaining the charge of provisionally administering Eoumelia, endowed it with an organisation of a nature to facilitate ita reunion with Bulgaria, and in any case to make it the head- quarters of the Panslavists in the Balkan Peninsula. As for the other countries of Turkey in Europe that remained under the direct rule of the Porte, Article 23 of the Berlin Treaty fixed their lot in these terms: ''The Sublime Porte promises to scrupulously publish in the Isle of Crete HELLENISM AND MACEDONIA ID the constitutional enactment of 1868, while adding modifica- tions which may be judged equitable. Similar enactments adapted to local needs, excepting that which concerns the exemption from imposts accorded to Crete, will be equally introduced into the other parts of Turkey in Europe, for which a particular organisation has not been provided by the present treaty. The Sublime Porte will charge special commissions, in which the native element will be largely represented, to elaborate the details of these new regulations in each province. " The projects of organisation resulting from their labours will be submitted to the inspection of the Sublime Porte, which, before promulgating the acts necessary to enforce them, will take the advice of the European Commission instituted for Eastern Eoumelia." Such were the provisions of the treaty as far as concerns Greece and Bulgaria. But the equilibrium that the European Powers had tried to establish between Hellenic claims and Slav demands was based on too slight a foundation to have the permanence desirable. Though the Berlin Congress had given to Greece the two countries that are conterminous with it, Epirus and Thessaly, Greece only received actually, after many difficulties, a portion of Epirus, the Arta district, whilst, on the other hand, Thessaly was cut in two, to leave the Turks the province of Elassona. France herself, who, thanks to her generous intervention at the Berlin Congress, had succeeded in benefiting Greece by these territorial gains, showed soon after- wards in 1881 total indifference to her protege's interests. On the other hand, Bulgaria had received as far as was possible complete satisfaction, constituted herself under the direction of Eussian officers a military power, and pursued the mission that had been put upon her of rapidly furthering Panslavist ambitions. Thus, after having worked in Eastern Eoumelia, after having ably prepared revolution, Bulgaria in a few hours, in one night — that of September 17-18, 1885 — accomplished the premeditated coup d'etat^ seized Eastern Eoumelia, and thus openly violated a treaty wherein the Powers had solemnly expressed their will. European diplomacy scarcely made a protest, while Turkey, for her part, after some hesitation, finally resigned herself to this new amputation, and admitted the fait aGCompli. The union of Eoumelia and Bulgaria broke the balance of power in the Balkans. Moreover, it strengthened the convic- 20 HELLENISM AND MACEDONIA tion that, in the face of official Europe, bold measures are always accepted, though in defiance of formal engagements. Afterwards, aggrandised by incorporating Eoumelia, Bulgaria could not rest on her laurels. This first success, far from satis- fying her, whetted her zeal and her covetousness ; so she soon turned her eyes to Macedonia, Thrace, and Adrianople. Thus they proclaim to-day as Slav Greek territories that they under- take to Bulgarise by fire, sword, and dynamite. Perhaps it would not be out of place as a contrast to the Bulgarian manners, as recently shown in their attempts to excite Macedonia to insurrection, to quote the judgment of a writer — M. Victor B^rard — who cannot be accused of Bulgarophobia, concerning the Greek nation, which, he says, " aggrandises itself not after the ancient manner by the violence of war, and by brute force, or by mechanical chances such as proximity, but, so to speak, according to the latest philosophic formula, by conquest over the intellect, and the free consent of individuals.'** The coup d'etat of Eastern Eoumelia had not only excited Greek indignation ; it had also disquieted Servia, which saw a permanent threat in the aggrandising of Bulgaria without territorial compensation for herself. In fact, not content with encroaching on the domains of Hellenism, Macedonia, and Thrace, the Bulgarians henceforth already coveted Old Servia, which Servia justly regards as a heritage which ought to return to her. So, irritated with their neighbours, the Servians, who had other motives too for complaint, tried to check the progress of Bulgaria, and declared war. It is known how the troops of the Principality, numerically inferior to the Servian army, and moreover disorganised by the Kussian officers, their instructors, being recalled to Petersburg as the result of a temporary coolness in Eusso-Bulgarian relations, began by suffering successive checks, and only carried off the victory of Slibnitza, thanks to Alexander of Battenberg, who personally led into action his best troops. Such doughty service, the great part Alexander had played in the Eoumelian coup d'dtat, his high abilities, his devotion to his adopted country, did not abate the ingratitude of the military party at Sofia : Alexander was deposed and expelled. It was * Victor B^rard, La Turquie et V Hellenisme contemporain^ p. 240. HELLENISM AND MACEDONIA 21 thus that Ferdinand of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha found himself called to the throne in the midst of grave complications. Henceforward he worked to ensure and regulate his power ; " his ministers aided him effectually in strengthening his authority. They had recourse, too often it is true, to measures so violent, that the public opinion of any more civilised state would have been stirred up against them, but they were of a race whose nature remains somewhat barbarian, and whose energy is readily turned to cruelty; they employed against their adversaries the means that their adversaries would have desired to employ against them. The first minister of Prince Alexander, M. Stambouloff, succeeded by oppression and tyranny in achieving unity. He subdued his ill-disciplined compatriots by a harsh administration, he imposed on them a regular Government, which exercised its functions almost in a normal manner, though it often showed small regard for the rights of subjects." * These men were perhaps useful to their country, but they made themselves loathsome to mankind in the eyes of humanity. The crimes of Stambouloff have been the chief foundation of the progress Bulgaria has accomplished not only within, but without, in Macedonia and Thrace. More particularly against Hellenism did Stambouloff labour with grim energy, and when he perished, miserably murdered by his old accomplices, it seemed that he had left his successors the task of spreading in his country that hatred of the Greek which had inspired his labours. The Bulgarian nation is only too well prepared to put in practice the instructions it has received. To that it brings all the energy of its temperament, all the violence of its fanatical character, It is easy to understand the mental condition of the Bulgarian race. The books on which it is brought up, its social and political hfe, so far as it can be followed in the organs of the local press, are enough to inform us exactly what is the worth of this people as a civilising influence — this people to whom Western diplomacy is now entrusting the defence of the rights of humanity in Macedonia, which has suffered so much at their hands. The English diplomatist already quoted, Sir William White, speaking in his Memoirs of the chiefs of Neo-Bulgaria, deplored their ignorance, and blamed the manner in which they conceived and undertook immense schemes without calculating * La Question d'Orient, by Max Choublier, 22 HELLENISM AND MACEDONIA the end. But to what purpose does one quote evidence of this kind, authoritative though it be ? The facts are here to prove the true value of the Bulgarian revolutionary ideal, and to explain the hostile attitude that the whole Hellenic world has adopted with respect to the Bulgarians, who, for the accom- plishment of their task, outrage every human law. Dominated by a racial instinct, rather than by a national ideal, the savage Bulgarian pursues, according to the impulse of his nature, the accomplishment of his brutal ambitions ; it is no noble or elevated conception that prompts his actions ; blind fanaticism makes him, in any deed of darkness, a docile tool of his chiefs. For him human life is valueless, and he seems to have copied the Russians in the implacable principles of that destructive Nihilism which spares nothing. Woe to those who do not think with him ! Turks, Serbs, Greeks, and even Bulgarians ! the doctrine of propagandising by deeds has never found a follower so pitilessly resolute. He treats as enemies all those who will not plot with him, and even those whose deaths may serve to help publish his designs, such as the nameless passengers on the Guadalquiver, which the dynamitard Minief blew up in the harbour of Salonica, such as the inhabitants of this same town, which Marc Stoyan and his friends had mined with the help of plans sent from Sofia. To these high theorists it matters little that thousands of innocent lives are cut short before their natural term ! It matters little ; 'tis but a few years out of Eternity, but a few more corpses to the innumerable number of the dead ! Be he brigand, murderer, or incendiary, does not the Bulgarian's work always advance the greatness of his nation? And since this greatness must be founded on the ruins of Hellenism, ought not the Bulgarian always to see in the Greek the foe who must be pitilessly destroyed ? Erom the moment that Bulgaria was constituted an auto- nomous nation everything Hellenic that existed there was immediately made outlaw. The Greek Church, the Greek language, the Greek schools were proscribed. The example of modern Europe, which more and more tends to equality, was offered in vain to Bulgaria. That great principle was lost upon her. More and more ruthlessly she continues to extirpate every one that is not of her race or who did not wish to become so, whether Greek or Moslem, but especially Greek. Unspeakable indeed was the treatment to which the Hellenes are subjected to compel them to Bulgarise themselves HELLENISM AND MACEDONIA 23 or to emigrate. These attacks on the most elementary rights of peoples or individuals are not only the spontaneous work of a few fanatics ; they are preached and commanded by the high priests of anti-Hellenism, and practised with the assent and assistance of the public functionaries of the whole of official Bulgaria. And this extends even to Prince Ferdinand himself, who, espousing the sentiments of his subjects, has made himself the tool of this barbarian policy. So from top to bottom of the social ladder there is eternal war against anything Hellenic. Conformably to the Bulgarian constitution, to the clauses of the firman creating the Exarchate, to the constitutional charter of Eastern Eoumelia, the churches, convents, and conventual property belonging to the Greeks cannot be taken away from them. Such are the formal and exact provisions. But who can allege that they have been respected in Bulgaria? No week passes without the Greek colony of such and such a Bulgarian town having to record some act of spoliation. Vainly those interested protest ; the Government is not slow to recognise, to sanction, to validify the usurpation, and baptizing it in the name of fait accompli, to nullify any possible reclaiming. Thus the Bulgarians have in the course of the last twenty years seized churches, convents, and fixed property to which -the Greek community had sole and incontestable right, I will only quote here the acts accomplished in Eastern Eoumelia alone : — The Church of Sainte-Fotini at Ferdinandov ; the Greek school of the same town ; the Church of the Taxiarchs at Haskovo ; the school belonging to the same church, its fixed property ; the Church of St. Athanasius at Stenimacho ; that of Zoodochos Pighi of the same town ; the Greek convent of Batchkovo ; the rich property belonging to this convent ; the -Church of Sainte-Kyriaki at Philippopolis ; the Convent of St. George at Stenimacho; that of the Trinity at Kavakoy; the Ohurch of St. Constantine at Varna, &c., &c. Certainly these are not all, and assuredly will not be all. Little by little those Greeks who live, unfortunately for themselves, in the principality will end by being plundered of everything Bulgarian rapacity may covet. To-day Europe protests in the name of Christianity against the persecutions inflicted on the Bulgarians in Macedonia. Even if one admits that this question can be invested with a religious character at all, I think that no one would dare to consider the conduct of these Christians to their Greek 24 HELLENISM AND MACEDONIA co-religionist as inspired by the gospel precepts of brotherly" love. What can Christian Europe think of this war waged against the language, the schools, the Church of the very^ nation that rescued the Slav world from the darkness of idolatry ? What can the civilised world think of this steady and systematic violation of all right, of this blind fanatidism^ ruthlessly bent upon annihilating the moral and intellectual existence of an entire people? I do not. hesitate to say that the means used to combat th& Hellenism it detests by this Bulgarian State, which is the creation of the Powers, are entirely opposed to those principles of humanity and progress which Europe invokes in favour of the very men who are their most cynical violators. This hatred of the Greek is universal with the Bulgarian, it is political, racial, it is even social and domestic, since it actually attempts to Bulgarise the Greek family by intruding a Bulgarian element- into the household. Innumerable examples could be quoted of persecutions inflicted chiefly on such rich Greeks who refuse to give the hand of a daughter to an in- fluential Bulgarian. Not with impunity can a man avoid such an honour. This racial aversion is so little concealed that at Bourgas, a^ town of the principality, largely inhabited by Greeks, there exists a cafe called the Anti-Hellenism, shut, be it understood,. to the Greeks, which every loyal subject of Prince Ferdinand, must frequent. By this example, chosen among a thousand, one can see what tolerance the Government shows to popular hostility, which, moreover, is encouraged and envenomed by its secret agents. On occasion the mob openly shouts patriotic songs — songs, that is, calculated to excite their evil passions, which are taught in the schools, and whose invariable refrain is " Death to the Greeks.'' Every moment the life of the Greek is in danger. At Philip- popolis itself, the capital of a Bulgarian province, a Greek dare not walk in the streets by night, and if by chance he takes the risk he is obliged to have recourse to infinite precautions. The dangers are not imaginary but unfortunately realities ! In the face of such a situation what is left for the Greeks in. Bulgaria ? Submit ? They cannot, they ought not. Emigrate,,, as the Turks have done ? To this those who can, resign them- selves. To endure or to disappear, that is all the alternative^ HELLENISM AND MACEDONIA 25 left them by their persecutors. Moreover, it must be recognised that in this course they have the encouragement of protectors who know well how to preach by example. . . . The success of the Eoumelian coup d'etat, the victory of Slivnitza, the impunity assured to crimes political and social in Bulgaria, the continual encouragement from outside — all this fires the hopes and inspires the dark workings of Panslavism, which in the Balkans has conjured up more and more the Panbulgarian chimera. After Eastern Eoumelia it was the turn of Macedonia ; after Macedonia it will be Thrace ; after Thrace — who knows ? So little by little the work of San Stefano can be rebuilt, and there will at last be founded this great Bulgarian Empire that is destined for such truly noble ends ! Bulgarian zeal, far from slackening, grows only more keen, and — this justice should be rendered to the politicians of Sofia — its ardour imposes silence on the fiercest hatreds that divide the political parties within the principality to combine all their energies as soon as it is a question of Macedonia. Bulgarian claims are beginning to be put forward in the most public manner possible. Books, pamphlets, periodicals, journals, are published in increasing numbers to enlighten the world as to the rights that the descendants of Samuel and Crummus dream of exercising over Macedonia, the goal of so many ambitions. One of the most interesting of these works appeared on the very morrow of the Philippopolis coup de theatre. This pamphlet, the work of a secretary of the Exarchate, bore this pious title : Macedonia at the Millenary of -St. Methodios, and consisted of a sort of programme of the Panbulgarian dreams concerning Macedonia, pointing out the most practical and rapid means of realising them. This is a specimen of the sort of information supplied us by the author of Macedonia at the Millenary of St. Methodios : The cradle of Christianity for the Slav races is Macedonia, the native land of the Saints Cyril and Methodios. But, alas ! to-day this country is profoundly unhappy, it dare not call itself Slav, it dare not speak its native tongue." And further on our future," the author cries, " is Macedonia ; it is the reawakening of the Macedonian Bulgarians, for our great- ness, our future national unity, our very existence as a Balkan State will be of no avail if we do not aim at this ideal. In 26 HELLENISM AND MACEDONIA Macedonia we ought to labour in time to come. Salonica ought to be the chief town of our country. Salonica ought to be the chief window that lights the edifice. Let us work, then, in Macedonia ! " Always, according to this author, the one enemy of Bul- garism is the Greek. In narrating the evils from which his compatriots suffer, he puts them all down to the accounts of the Greeks and to the Ecumenical Patriarchate. From the Treasury of the Patriarchate, he says, flow all the revenues destined for the enlightenment of Macedonia, or rather for the Hellenisation of the Macedonians, and in consequence for the destruction of the Bulgarians. Greece is the most dangerous rival, and it would not be surprising if it one day conquered in Macedonia ! " How, then, should this enemy be fought ? The answer is simple, by the schoolmaster and by the priest. Through them there will be created in Macedonia a national Bulgarian feeling. The writer declares that the country will be for ever lost to his party if they do not consecrate themselves, at the cost of the greatest sacrifices, to revive it, to inspire it with new strength, to endow it with a younger generation so brought up that it will not fear to confess its nationality and will know how to die so that the national cause may triumph. "Macedonia," the author adds, ''will not be Bulgarised except through the schools. But this compels continual sacrifice, untiring activity. After creating a national feeling, the question of a revised census of the inhabitants must be raised." Again : " To act effectively in Macedonia, to be able to fight against Hellenism, to preserve the Bulgarian nationality for the inhabitants, loe ought to remain friendly to the Turks, till the moment is come to act by fire and sword. ... To triumph over the Greek in Macedonia loe ought to seek an alliance with the Turks, loithout which toe cannot succeed." . . . The secre- tary of the Exarchate ends his stirring appeal to the Bulgarian people by summing up the chief object of his solicitude : " For the good of our country, for the success of our enterprise, let us act in accord with the Turks, let us preserve the most amicable relations with them. ..." The political principle inspiring this teaching is made quite plain by the author of these lines. But his first efforts did not bring about the desired results rapidly enough. Neither the schools nor the Bulgarian Church, no more than the political HELLENISM AND MACEDONIA 27 agencies set up in the country by the Government of the princi- pality under the pretext of commercial agencies, sufficed to fissure the triumph of the policy of Sofia. It was necessary to act in a manner that was more practical, more sure, and more efficacious. It was necessary to multiply the instruments and means of action. Such was the word of command from the Exarchate situated at Constantinople, and such, too, from the numerous Panslavist societies in Eussia. Under these conditions there were founded in many impor- tant places in Macedonia Committees, which were charged to further the practical side, the concrete side, so to speak, of the programme of Bulgarisation, by attacking, be it understood, the eternal enemy Hellenism. They began, then, to organise and start in Macedonia systematic persecution and assassination. Would not the Greek population, abandoned to itself with- out any hope of effective succour from Turkey, have finally succumbed, submitted, and renounced their nationality so as to increase the dominion over which the Bulgarians were extending their claim ? Thus, beside the schoolmaster and the priest, there arose in Bulgaria other apostles of Bulgarian national greatness : the murderer, the incendiary, and later on the dynamitard. They succeeded, moreover, with time, by violence and terrorism, in compelling certain Macedonian districts to recognise Bulgarian supremacy. To celebrate this first success they shut the Greek schools and expelled therefrom by threats the representatives of the Hellenic clergy. The history of these Committees, the way in which their activity shows itself, the ruin which they have left in their track, all this affords a gloomy picture of the Bulgarian character. Not only have their crimes been perpetrated openly, with impunity, but they had also instigators and approvers. It is a melancholy fact that they are often protected by diplomatic and consular agents, who do not hestitate to applaud this dread sentence — " Death to every adversary of the Bulgarian ! " "¥ I cannot do better than quote here, as a commentary on what has preceded, some official documents, and some un- impeachable evidence coming from people in a position to know events, and to state their opinions without partiality. 28 HELLENISM AND MACEDONIA In April, 1902, the following despatch was sent to hi& Government by the Consul-General of Great Britain at Salonica^ Sir Alfred Biliotti : " The insecurity which exists now to a certain extent is caused by just those people who complain most of it. In fact, besides the permanent and inherent defects of the Turkish Administration, there is nothing at this moment to justify the anxiety manifested in the Press so far as the Turkish population is concerned, Eayahs on the whole being left un~ molested. But Bulgarian bands, which had for a time inter- rupted their murders, have begun again to assassinate Christians of other races, as well as Moslems. Hitherto neither of these parties has retaliated on a scale worthy of notice, but their position is becoming very precarious, and Greeks, Servians, and Vlachs, as well as Moslems, are complaining in emphatic terms of the proceedings of the Bulgarian bands and of the consequent behaviour of the Bulgarian population. The Christians (Bulgarian excepted) and Moslems close the doors of their houses at sunset. These proceedings of the Mace- donian Committees have brought about a veritable reign of terror among all the inhabitants of this region, which contains a large number of Bulgarians." On October 11th the same Consul-General wrote to his Ambassador : " Those among the Christians who have a certain influence on their co-religionists, at the first sign of resistance to the views of the Committee, are murdered, with the double object of getting rid of them and of striking the whole popula- tion with terror. Eegular lists of proscription have been found by the authorities on some of the Bulgarians killed in encounters. The Macedonian Committee has drawn up registers taxing each Christian according to his means, and any one refusing to pay is executed. Under these circum- stances the Christians, after paying taxes to the Government, have to pay a second taxation to the Committee, besides pro- viding with food all members of bands coming to their villages,, and who are shortly after followed by gendarmes, supposed to pursue them. I am informed that in some cases bribery makes the gendarmes close their eyes." Another despatch of the Consul-General at Salonica, dated December 9, 1902, is thus conceived : " The Macedonian Committees have employed a double method of action; they sought first to re-awaken by propagandist literature the national feeling among the villagers, and to detach them from the Ecumenical Patriarchate, and on the other hand, by means of HELLENISM AND MACEDONIA 29 the bands traversing the country during the summer, they tried to attract them by promises, or force them by threats to join the movement. Proselytism and terrorism were the means by which they sought to utterly destroy all tranquillity and to reduce the inhabitants of the district to such complete misery as would force them to fall in with their revolutionary ideas. Little by little they removed all those, who, faithful to the Patriarchate, refused their allegiance, and in the Sandjak of Serres alone over 100 Greeks, Vlachs, and Orthodox Bul- garians fell victims to their vengeance and cruelty. The Committees, then, have succeeded by means of their agents, the schoolmasters and priests, during the year, and of the bands .and the terror these inspire during the summer, in withdrawing from the Patriarchate mostly all the villages of Djuma, Bala, and Eazlog, and most of the villages of Melnik, Petritch, and Nevrocop." Sir Alfred Biliotti, after having described the first phase of the section of the Committees, passes on to the manner in which the bands coming from. Bulgaria invaded Macedonia ; he described different battles which had occurred, then he adds (pp. 282, 283) : "On the whole, a very small number of peasants actually took part in the fights ; the majority followed their wives and children to the mountains to protect them. Not one single village took part willingly in the movement or emigrated of its own initiative. They were all induced to by 3)romises, threats, and even murder by the promoters of the movement, who gave them to understand that they were acting in concert with Bulgaria, backed by Eussia, with a view to freeing Macedonia. When these promises failed in their intended effect the bands held over the peasants' head the destruction of their homes and the abduction of their wives and children, and in cases of persistent refusal recourse was had to murder, as Douco murdered Doukas, of the village of Bousdovo, in the Caza of Melnik, as another chief murdered the Khodja-Bachis of Startchovo and Igralichta, in the Caza of Petritch. Other individuals, as I have reported frequently, have perished for the same reason." Further on Sir A. BiHotti quotes the following lines from a letter that he received from Bulgaria : " For sure it is a sight indeed worthy of arousing admiration, the sight of these young heroes of Bulgaria crossing the frontier after winter is ended, going to slay an occasional Turk, and returning to their hearths :and homes at once, while thanks to them unarmed peasants 30 HELLENISM AND MACEDONIA abandon their houses and, if they survive to drag themselves; across the Bulgarian frontier, sell their live-stock at 20 or 30 francs a head to speculators that they may get something so as- not to die of hunger." The Blue-Books published by the Foreign Office could be thus summed up : deeds of violence perpetrated against inno- cent and unarmed people, acts of brigandage, murders, cruel tortures inflicted on men and on women too, on priests, doctors, and schoolmasters, burnings of churches, dynamite outrages, against all friends of law and order, extermination of Orthodox Christians and Mohammedans, universal terrorism, bloodshed^ and incitement to massacre. Never has the doctrine of destruction been so wholly, so forcibly, so cynically put in practice. The Committees, whether presided over by a soldier or by a theorist, by an ideologist or by a man of action, have had but one objective, have pursued but one end : to violate the national feeling of Mace- donia and Thrace, to terrorise the population and impose upon them the Bulgarian yoke. Europe will surely end in some moment of aberration or indifference by realising the Bulgarian ambition, by creating a autonomous Macedonia, and thus pre- paring a second edition of the Eoumelian usurpation. It would: be a fine day for the world in which the work of San Stefana should be rebuilt, in which vengeance will be taken for the criminal Treaty of Berlin ! Of all the methods honoured by those affiliated to the Com- mittees and by the acolytes of Sarafoff, that which their heart holds dearest is to persecute, or more, to suppress the Greek professors, who, as the direct representatives of Hellenic intellectuality, seem to them the most dangerous enemies of their cause. Many of these professors and teachers have been compelled by threats directed against them to abandon their posts, making way for Bulgarian confederates. It is hardly necessary to add that the titles of their successors depend not so much on superiority of culture or of intellect as on fidelity to the Bulgarian cause and on the brutal fanaticism with which they discharge their mission. They serve besides as secretaries to the revolutionary bands. If the Greek schoolmasters have been the object of perse- cutions, the schoolmistresses have not been spared any more. Thus, to quote one example among many others, a young girl,. HELLENISM AND MACEDONIA 31 directress of a school in a little town of Gastoria, was outraged by a Bulgarian to compel her to abandon her post. Hence- forward this salaried post belonging to the Greek community of the place has not been filled up, as no woman has dared to take up the work. By such scarcely honourable methods the number of insur- gents is recruited and increased, the most fierce of them being designated to execute important deeds. By this means the chiefs of the movement rid themselves of obstacles on the one hand, and for the other they increase their battalions of assassins, who, after perpetrating a crime, dare not quit their post to go back to their village, and so for the future are all the more attached to the revolutionary cause. The organisation of the Bulgarian Committees is similar to that of the Nihilists or militant Anarchists ; for arms they use only the knife or the bomb. Their members are at once judges and executioners of their own sentences, which they carry out in a summary manner. The interior mechanism is unknown to the majority of those afi&liated, who are kept under a rigorous rule of blind submis- sion. The chiefs of the Hierarchy at Sofia respectively instruct the agents which the Committees employ in Macedonia; on these agents depend the chiefs of the bands, and to these last the individuals who compose the bands owe direct obedi- ence. It is perfectly clear that without encouragement from official Bulgaria, without the complicity of the Exarchy, without the assistance of foreign diplomatic agents, the attempt of the Committees would have completely failed at the outset. If they were not immediately checked that was because, as it is hardly necessary to explain, official Bulgaria, despite its apparently correct attitude, has not only tolerated, but more- over favoured, by underhand means and sometimes openly, the insurrectionary movement, the disturbances which the Committees were trying to create in Macedonia, and the incursions of Bulgarian bands into the country. The Bulgarian Exarch has acted in the same way. His Eminence has confessed that he could not go against the action of the rebels owing to the new privileges granted to the Bulgaro-Macedonian population, under the form of ecclesias- tical berats, and because the agitation would, moreover, strengthen the Exarchy. As for the connivance of foreign consular agents, I confine myself to quoting the case of the former Consul- General of Eussia at Monastir, Eostkofsky, 32 HELLENISM AND MACEDONIA murdered a little time back by an Albanian gens d'arms ; this man was one of the most valued agents of the Bulgarian Committee, and did not attempt to disguise the fact, though his official position ought to have prevented his joining it. But if the movement of insurrection has gained ground in Macedonia, if it has attained abnormal proportions, the entire responsibility must not be put down to the Bulgarians alone ; a large part of it must be laid at the door of the Ottoman Government and its crass negligence. Not only has the Ottoman Government given one more proof of that incurable fatalism which controls all its acts, not only has it begun by letting everything slide, so to speak, in the conviction that it will always be strong enough to triumph in the long run, but it has not even given a thought to checking the principal causes of the evil, to removing the most flagrant abuses, to amending the personnel of its administration. Have not Turkish public officials been known to betray their own country, taking backchich, and selling themselves to the rebels ? Thanks to the corruptibility of the officials thousands of rifles and munitions of war have been introduced and distributed throughout Macedonia, while the civil and military authorities shut their paternal eyes. Thus the Turkish officials have armed the Bulgarians in Macedonia, while forbidding the other peoples to carry arms, and especially forbidding the Greeks who, however, having most to suffer from rebel attacks, have the most need of the means of defence. But, of course, in the eyes of those who represent Ottoman authority, every Christian, every non-Moslem, is always an enemy of order, a malevolent and suspicious being who must be carefully watched. One might say that the Turkish Government, which has shown itself powerless to defend its Christian subjects, is guilty of not having at least allowed the Greeks to protect their lives, their honour, and their property against these foreign liberators whom Bulgaria has so generously sent them. European public opinion, cleverly deluded by organs devoted to Slav interests, has come to confound Macedonia with Bulgaria. At this present moment in the opinion of the great majority of the Western world Macedonia ought to be Bulgarian, cannot be anything but Bulgarian. They have come to believe seriously in a Macedonian insurrection, in a national rising. The few well-informed persons only know how to keep their own counsel ; for myself I have met but few HELLENISM AND MACEDONIA 33 people who are not astonished to learn that what is pompously styled the Macedonian insurrection has no real existence except in the heated imagination of the instigators of the movement, and by the misleading reports put in circulation by the certain inventors of news. No, there is no Macedonian revolution, for the very good reason the Macedonia — i.e., the vilayets of Monastir and Salonica — are not Bulgarian. Not that the inhabitants of these provinces are exactly attached by sentiments of loyalty to the Sultan's rule, not that the Christian subjects have much reason to be contented with their lot ; but between two evils one chooses the less : between the Bulgarian and the Turk one chooses the Turk, and in this choice no one can hesitate. Despite this the Press has been admirably managed in the West, and through the Press public opinion has been worked upon till it has come to give to a movement which is quite artificial, to an agitation which is wholly factitious, the very character which the high priests of Panslavism wish to be given to it — those high priests who, from their lofty and invisible seat, control the destinies of nations. It is not a fanatic Hellene, a servile Greek, an unworthy descendant of the Pallikares who abuses Panslavism ; it is one of those Slavs who are not blinded by the colossal ambitions of the Committees presided over by General Ignatieff, a Eussian writer of liberal opinions, Nicolas Dournovo, who, commenting on the events in Macedonia, goes so far as to denounce the Government of Eussia itself. "Everything which passes in Macedonia," he says, " is the result not of the Treaty of Berlin, but the harvest of the Treaty of San Stefano. How can order and peace reign in a country wherein Eussia has established the heads of Panbulgarianism, the heads of brigand bands, schismatic metropolitans, and politico-commercial agents? " Other evidence of the share of Panslavism in the pretended Macedonian revolution is afforded us by |various Eussian writers and publicists. The correspondent of the Novoie Vremya, of Petersburg, dared to write as follows in his paper : " The beginnings of Bulgarian propaganda in Macedonia are traceable to a remote past, extending upwards of fifty years back. Its action has been immense and energetic ; it has worked in the field of science and of religion, and on national feeling. The propagandist movement has dispensed enormous sums, it has expended great efforts." The journalist was 34 HELLENISM AND MACEDONIA given this information by the Bulgarian agent in Salonica. It is significant, because fifty years ago the Bulgarians hardly existed as a people. Are not the above lines a plain and simple confession of the part played by Eussia in elaborating these Panslavist movements ? The Bulgarian Exarch, Mgr. Joseph who, by his own con- fession, maintained close relations with the Sofia Committees, declared to the same publicist that the object of these Committees is simply to obtain the introduction of reforms into Macedonia — to wit : nomination of a Christian Governor, establishment of a Christian police force and militia — in a word, the creation of a regime similar to that of Eastern Koumelia." It is easy to see that under these conditions the Bulgarians will have only to effect the simple annexation, without striking a blow, without the effusion of blood, of a territory which, from its propinquity, is placed at their mercy. The same Eussian publicist has had the happy inspiration of publishing the chief clauses of the Bulgaro-Macedonian plan of action. "The revolutionary bands," he says, "are armed and organised by the care of the different Committees. Their arms are sent them in particular by the Central Committee ; but independently of this every individual member of a band is charged to procure, by whatever means he can, arms and munitions of war, that he may have them in whatever district he is operating. Moreover, those affiliated are obliged to put to death any one who may be named to them by the heads of the Committee. " Always under the orders of these chiefs, they are charged to foment, and contrive, the outbreak of insurrection. Political crimes are permitted them. Any individual who may try to oppose the success of the revolutionary scheme must be at once suppressed. In every case timely warning must be given to the Committee at Sofia, and they are ordered to ask, as far as can be managed, a special authorisation for each murder. Women and children are to be informed as little as possible of the secret proscriptions, since they make only a weak resistance to the inquiries of the authorities. Members of a band are forbidden to visit their friends and relatives without getting previous permission from the local committees. It is also forbidden to a band to leave the district assigned to it, except in case of absolute necessity, as, for example, being pursued by an armed force. HELLENISM AND MACEDONIA 35 " Writing is forbidden them. All communications must be verbal, even if addressed to the Central Committee. Orders concerning the execution of murders are alone to be given in writing. The bands are composed of five or six members, and of a head and a secretary nominated from Sofia." The propagandists had hoped to Bulgarise Macedonia at a given moment by the means of priests and schoolmasters. But here Panbulgarism could not struggle against the Greek. More tenacious of life than they had imagined, Hellenism had only to oppose to such assaults the might of ideas, the superiority of its culture and civilisation. So the Bulgarians were not slow in changing their tactics. Five years ago M. Eizof , commercial agent of the principality at Uskub, wrote as follows to Prince Ferdinand ; " Bulgarian policy cannot continue to follow this same road [propaganda in the schools]. We gain nothing, neither in the schools nor in the Churches. We have established ourselves, at least all amongst us who could do it, in Ottoman territory, but we have only lost ground before Hellenism. Let our principal aim in the future be the liberation of Macedonia ! " It is clear enough what is meant by the word liberation. Others have been more explicit than the writer of the above lines. " Macedonia," cried Sarafoff in the very capital of Bulgaria, and his words echoed from one end of the country to the other — Macedonia has no more need of Serb or Bulgarian priests or schoolmasters; she wants arms and men." Thus the peaceful Bulgarian propaganda have been turned to a revolutionary organisation, the schools into arsenals and strongholds, while their teachers have gone to swell the ranks of Marcoff and Petroff. But to make a revolution one must have money. How to get that is simple enough. In the first place the generosity of the Panslavist committees of Eussia is inexhaustible. It is said that Muscovite roubles go by the thousand to fill the revolutionary chest. But these revenues were doubtless insufficient, since the Committees have had recourse to much more effective means to swell their resources. It is with the assistance of the Government of the princi- pality that individuals have been laid under contribution, by personal threats. At least so it was affirmed last year by an organ of the Bulgarian Press, the Strouma, that appears at 36 HELLENISM AND MACEDONIA Kustendil. Among other things this journal informs us that "for two or three years the Bulgarians in Macedonia have been subjected to the worst measures of intimidation ; enormous sums are extorted from them always in the name of the national cause, and sacrifices are exacted from them to which they are in no condition to consent. " More than a hundred Bulgarians belonging to the educated class have been assassinated, under the pretext that they were informers or traitors. For two or three years Macedonian Bulgaria has been enslaved by its pretended liberators; it trembles, it groans, it sees no one near from whom it can implore protection. '* The emissaries of our patriots hold it night and day under a regime of terrorism ; a little hamlet, Kotsani, was compelled in a few months to contribute a sum of £T300, which was said to be destined for the purchase of arms. Tiny villages have had to buy themselves off at the present day with a ransom of £T1,000 or £T2,000. Woe to him who refuses; he is immediately stabbed as a traitor. And the Turks watch with amusement the spectacle of brother Giaours killing each other, while Mudirs, Kaimakams, and Pashas are paid to wink at these crimes. It is true that these patriots occasionally send some arms to Macedonia, but only when they get paid a sum of £T5. Last month some of them have twice carried off from the military depot of a frontier town of Bulgaria arms which they smuggled into Macedonia. Such is the famous internal organisation behind which these founders of national greatness hide themselves. But these men are wholly unworthy of confidence ; besides all the other crimes they have committed, they have gone so far as to turn themselves into coiners." Better than anything else the deposition of Marc Stoyan, the dynamitard of Salonica, made the day after his arrest, gives us the true measure of their patriotism. This was reproduced in these words by the Neue Freie Presse : "Brought before the Director of the Police and the Commander of the Gendamerie, Marc Stoyan began by declaring that he would make a complete confession. ' It is not,' he said, ' from fear or cowardice that I have decided to speak. I know quite well that even the sincerity of my confession will not render you any more indulgent towards me, for I have committed a great crime. But these are my reasons for declaring the whole truth. The chiefs of the Macedonian movement are wretches, HELLENISM AND MACEDONIA 37 impostorSo They persuaded us that our attempt to blow up the town would induce Europe to intervene, to send warships to the waters of Salonica and to land an army of occupation in the city. The attempt has been made, the warships have arrived, but they have simply made a pleasure trip. Not only has Europe not intervened, but it has shuffled out of taking any action, has blamed our acts, and has held us up to universal reprobation. This is how our chiefs have betrayed us. ' I could have escaped from the house where by your orders I was arrested. In any case I could have killed myself and so carried my secret to the tomb. I have preferred to let myself be taken prisoner that I might cry out to the whole world that the Bulgarian leaders are wretches and impostors. Yes, impostors, for it is by lying that they have deceived the agricultural population. Now I will fully expose it. They- have extorted money from the peasants, and when the peasants made answer that they had nothing to give, they induced them to mortgage a meadow, a field, or a pasturage. The unfortunates asked what was to come afterwards. Our fine patriots replied that afterwards all loans would be repaid, and that when one day they had conquered Macedonia, the peasants would then be the masters and would have six times as much land as before, and that without untying their purse- strings. " ' Thus the peasants have contracted debts and have raised money which has gone to Sofia. On the promise of reforms the conquest of Macedonia has miscarried. That did not suit the book of the agents of the Committees, who preferred to see the villagers being massacred. Then the scheme of blowing up Salonica was determined on, for they were well aware that they could not easily conquer Macedonia, though they had long prepared the ground. I repeat it, we have been deceived, and others will be deceived again. Our chiefs are rogues and scoundrels, genuine Crawfords (Stoyan meant to say Humberts) who betray every one and exploit the credulity and simplicity of the unfortunate peasants. This is why I have resolved to speak.' " By men of this kind, then, Macedonia is to be freed ! One is filled with a melancholy wonder to find that the Western world, without distinction of party — Liberals and Conservatives, revolutionaries and reactionaries alike — has not only believed in the instigators of the movement, but has actively taken up 412728 38 HELLENISM AND MACEDONIA their cause and announced the Turks as the guilty party, as the sole perpetrators of the atrocities which have stained Macedonia with blood. In England we have seen the son of Gladstone and his friends, and many honourable clergymen of the English Church, defending with touching enthusiasm these vulgar criminals, and France too has given us the astonishing spectacle of a zealous admiration for these really remarkable heroes. But in no case has public opinion in Europe been seriously aroused, not because there was any feeling of indifference, but because people have eventually come to suspect the true character of the Macedonian revo- lution, and because they are beginning to see a little more clearly into this terrible Balkan imbroglio. For one moment — after the outrages at Salonica, for instance — one might have thought that the noble achievements of Sarafoff and his gang would have at last aroused the indig- nation of the civilised world ; one might have -thought that in the liberator of Macedonia, in the hero of the insurrection, his Western admirers would have come to recognise a mere bandit, a common criminal. But no ! The victims were quickly for- gotten, and the European Bulgarophil Press saw in the outrages at Salonica, in the attempt against the French steamship GuadalquiveTj or in that directed against the Austrian train at Adrianople, only one reason more for chanting the praises of the wondrous heroism of these Bulgarian dynamiters. It is true that by a sort of shame that such terrible crimes awaken there are found a few papers which have made a slightly discordant note in the Great Bulgarophil Concert. Thus, to quote only the keenest defender of the Macedonian cause, M. de Pressens6, feeling himself in some difficulty as how to comment on events, went so far as to write in the Temps " that the Ottoman Government ought to be profoundly grateful to the dynamitards of Salonica, for their bombs had laid the ghost of heroic Macedonia which had for a moment disturbed the world. Behind the patriot Europe has seen the anarchist, the savage ; the charm is broken." But the first movement of astonishment over, all betook themselves to lavish encourage- ment on the Macedonian cause, and so M. de Pressens^, again in the Temps, once more besought Europe ''not to permit the overthrow of this interesting people." The outrages committed at Salonica came to be considered acts of imprudence j-ather than deeds of crime. After this it was natural that the Bulgarian Press should HELLENISM AND MACEDONIA 39 imitate the good example set by the chief European organs. Thus the journals of Sofia were able to cry out on the morrow of the Salonica catastrophe : " One explosion of dynamite is worth more than a hundred Consular reports," while others characterised this event as "a legitimate protest of the Bulgarians against the cynical indifference of Europe." As for the role played by part of the Western Press, one cannot do better thon quote another of Sir Alfred Biliotti's despatches to his ambassador: "The system of addressing petitions to the authorities and to the consuls, and of pub- lishing information in special papers, a system adopted by the bands, by their partisans and even by the Bulgarian agencies in Salonica and other towns of Turkey in Europe, is easily understandable, and will not create very grave consequences unless the correspondence of the honest newspapers, blinded by their zeal for what they imagine to be a noble cause and overlooking the atrocities committed by the bands, collect and publish only such news as is put in circulation precisely with the one object of being pubhshed, and do not take any trouble to verify the facts. Acting in this manner they, far from upholding a noble cause, are only encouraging religious perse- cution, and in some degree are making themselves accomplices in the murders whose victims are the Patriarchists * who refused to abjure, and those who refused to join the Com- mittees. The evil thus done is in direct proportion to the reputation for honesty that the journal enjoys; it misleads public opinion, encourages the bands, prevents the authorities from effectually suppressing sedition and crime, and finally tends to awaken Moslem fanaticism, the terrible effects of which the Christians will eventually suffer. " The Bulgarian bands have adopted for some time the habit of bivouacking not in Bulgarian villages, but in villages inhabited by Greeks, who thus appear in the eyes of the Ottoman autho- rities as their accomplices, which brings upon them the full rigour of Turkish rule, and all the more so because the Hellenes, even more than the Bulgarians, dare not refuse shelter and sustenance to the rebels. And it is remarkable, despite all the evils they suffer, not one of the orthodox villages has seen its population pass over en masse to the Exarchate, as has happened with certain Vlach villages. . . . The Christians are threatened with death if they do not yield * Those Orthodox Christians who remain faithful to the Ecumenical Patriarchate. 40 HELLENISM AND MACEDONIA to the Committees, and they have been reduced to such a state of panic that they dare not resist." Such being the situation, what has been the attitude of the Russian Government? The last Bulgarian rising had been long projected as the appropriate celebration for the Silver Jubilee of the creation of the principality. In the famous pass of Shipka, where Skobelef had gathered his laurels, this event was celebrated last year. An immense Russian monastery had been built there, a symbol of Slav brotherhood, dedicated to the memory of those who fell for the glory of the cause. For this political and military celebration Bulgaria had invited all the generals and officers who had distinguished themselves in the Russo-Turkish war, among whom figured conspicuously the Grand Duke Nicolas and General Ignatieff, the author of the treaty of San Stefano. The Russian Church did not fail to be represented, despite the schisms dividing the Bulgarians from the Eastern Church, by a distinguished prelate with a numerous clergy in attendance, who made all the more imposing this Slav demonstration, which was certainly not got up to discourage Bulgarian ambition. It seems, indeed, to have been made as an adver- tisement to all peoples of the East, before whose eyes the great power of the North paraded in a paternal fashion the Bulgarian army, which had grown up under its fostering care and which it then tested thoroughly and put to trial as if exhibiting a force which it was keeping always ready for battle. It is true that the direct representative of the Tsar, the Grand Duke Nicolas, appeared to draw special attention to what he styled the pacific character of the Shipka festivities ; he even made a show of disavowing the Macedonian agitation, reserving judgment because it was dangerous and somewhat premature in the opinion of Russia. That is true. But the real hero of the occasion was not the Grand Duke Nicolas, but General Ignatieff. General Ignatieff was not the official spokesman of the Emperor, but as he is more than any other man the repre- sentative of the Panslavist idea, his diplomatic past and his actual position lent to the words that he pronounced an importance all the more significant because they must have received the authorisation of the high priests of Muscovite HELLENISM AND MACEDONIA 41 diplomacy. "From 1862," Count Ignatieff declared to the JBulgaro-Macedonian delegates, ''I have learnt to love the Bulgarians. I love all the Bulgarians. I make no distinction between those who are free and those who are not. However, I will make a distinction ; I love more especially the enslaved Macedonians." "I had found one way that could ensure peace in the Balkans ; it was through the Bulgaria of San Stefano. But this treaty could not be executed for reasons independent of my will. " I, Count Ignatieff, dead or living, I charge the Bulgarians to hand on from father to son the oath to realise the Bulgaro of San Stefano. I charge the Bulgarian people to work, to fight, but never to allow that from this Great Bulgaria there should be de- tached a district, a village, even one single man." The official organ of the Government of the principality, speaking of the National Jubilee, cried: "People have vainly attempted to embroil Eussians and Bulgarians. Already these festivities are drawing the bonds of brotherhood tighter between them, and in future they will fight side by side for the triumph of the Slav cause." Plainly, encouragements of this kind could not but result in reviving the hopes of the revolutionary committees, and of making them still more bold. Probably, in any case, the words of General Ignatieff have not been without effect on the violent methods with which the Bulgarians, certain of always finding a party to help them from Kussia, have attempted to forward the movement. When I say from Eussia, I do not mean so much from the Eussian Government as from the all-powerful Panslavist Committees. For it is known that after the passing storm which had shadowed the relations between Petersburg and Sofia in 1885, and which happened almost on the morrow of their liberation by the armies of the Tsar, the Bulgarians showed some desire to become independent of their liberators, and to throw themselves into the arms of England and Austria, so that the Eussian Government has not seemed to view with a very favouring eye the growth of Bulgaria. The little principality had shown well enough the measure of its gratitude by breaking compact with Eussia first at the time of the Eoumelian coup d'etat, and again under the reign of the Eussophobe dictator Stambouloff. Similar ingratitude might 42 HELLENISM AND MACEDONIA be shown at any time. Hence, in the interests of Muscovite policy, Bulgaria must not be allowed to grow too great ; in the future the work of San Stefano must not be reconstructed. On this point the Panslavist schemes diverge from the recent official policy of Russia. Both, however, will not let slip any chance of favouring the Slav movement; on condition, how- ever, the Eussian diplomatists say to themselves, that we do not make the Bulgarians strong enough to escape us. For these reasons, then, we have seen the Eussians express- ing disapproval of the Bulgarian attempts in Macedonia. Owing to considerations of this kind emanated the famous article that the Petersburg Messager du Gouvernement published in September, 1902, to the great disgust of the politicians of Sofia. This document ended in the following manner : " Not having found any assistance for their political projects among the non-Bulgarian inhabitants of Macedonia,- the heads of the movement have been compelled to provoke a general rising in the country, committing acts of violence and cruelty and spreading terrorism, in order to prevent the projected reforms being carried out. Despite the precautionary measures adopted by the Government at Sofia, the Macedonian agitation has unhappily spread more widely, even in the principality of Bulgaria, because it has been aided by parties who have been foolish enough to believe that the breaking out of the insurrec- tion would compel Eussia to change front, and to come to the assistance of the visionary schemes and projects of the chiefs of the revolutionary movement. This fatal error, which the Imperial Government has continually combated, has brought on the Christians of the Turkish vilayets terrible sufferings which can only be ended by preventing fresh bands from cross- ing from Bulgaria into Turkey, and in thus putting a stop to the revolutionary acts of the Committees. Only then will it be possible to demand the immediate application of such reforms as answer to the needs of the population, and which can protect the inhabitants against acts of Turkish cruelty. " Energetic efforts have been made to check Moslem fanati- cism ; but it is extremely difficult to succeed in this by reason of the continental extension of the disturbed area. The Imperial Eussian Government and the Austro- Hungarian Government, too, have again made categorical representations to this end, at Sofia as well as Constantinople. Moreover, the Governments of the signatory powers of the Berlin Treaty, HELLENISM AND MACEDONIA 4a acting on the suggestion of Eussia and Austria, and wishing to prevent any hasty and dangerous action, have charged their representatives to again assure the Porte and Bulgaria that they are entirely in agreement with the two Empires in all that concerns the pacification of the Balkan Peninsula, and they have made to the Turkish and to the Bulgarian Govern- ment a declaration in the following terms : — "'The state of affairs actually existing in the Turkish vilayets, and created there by the criminal designs of the Committees and revolutionary bands, has not changed the point of view of the Powers as far as concerns the programme elaborated at the beginning of the year by the two most interested Powers, and in consequence neither Turkey nor Bulgaria can count on the assistance of any Power in the case of open or secret opposition to the execution of this programme. ' "The Imperial Government hopes that this new warning will convince Turkey as well as Bulgaria of the futility of postponing the fulfilment of what is demanded of them, and will induce them to take such measures as are in their power to put an end to these complications in the Balkan Peninsula, which cannot but have the gravest consequences for the Ottoman Empire and for Bulgaria." In vain Count Lamsdorff went to Sofia last year to bring them to reason. In vain he officially disavowed the Bulgaro- Macedonian agitation. In vain he published direct or indirect warnings of this kind: * "It would be a dangerous error on the part of the principality to imagine that the measures taken by Eussia are an encouragement to the revolutionary agitation, whose continual and criminal activity prevents the pacification of the vilayets and consequently the carrying out the projected reforms. It appears from the reports of the Eussian consuls that the peaceful section of the Macedonian population suffers as much from the deeds of the revolutionary bands as from Turkish exactions. These circumstances show how necessary it is for the Bulgarian Government to suppress as energetically as possible the revolutionary movements with a view to ending the disturbances in the Balkan Peninsula." But it is in vain that Eussian diplomacy has thus attempted, a little tardily, to bridle the ambitions she has inspired. The Bulgarians turn a deaf ear, and the Cabinet of Sofia, while * Despatch of Count LamsdorfE to the Diplomatic Agent of Russia, in Bulgaria, dated August 12, 1903. 44 HELLENISM AND MACEDONIA protesting its excellent intentions, none the less continues to ;be the accomplice of the insurrectionary movement. Another side of the question, and not the least important side, is that of the nationality of the inhabitants of Macedonia. All those who in these later days have studied or followed the course of events in Macedonia have so thoroughly confused this question, some from insufficient inquiry into statistics and ethno- logy, others influenced by personal sympathy for some particular race, others caring for nothing but some political interest, all more or less have so obscured this question that the word Macedonia has come to be a mere geographical term devoid of iiny racial connotation. Many writers who have visited the country declare Macedonia Bulgarian, Serb, or Eoumanian. It is not so much love of truth as considerations of a less elevated order that have guided in their researches these enthusiasts after accuracy. However, the verdict of the ages has declared Macedonia to be Greek. It is true that the Bulgarians, as we have seen, have recently naturalised as Bulgarians Orpheus, Alexander and Aristotle. It is true that even Western savants have been found to publish this not as a theory, but as a fact. I need cite no other proof than the following lines which can be read on the first page of a work entitled Bulgaria, and whose author is a German publicist, Canitz : " Bulgaria, the country which gave birth to Alexander the Great, which received from the Emperor Trajan Roman civilisation, and from Byzantium the Christian religion, which was finally conquered by the Turks for the domain of the Crescent, is nowadays the theatre of a terrible drama." Other Western publicists, won over by the originality of these historical innovations, express themselves much in the same way, always representing the Hellenic element of Macedonia as forming an insignificant minority ! I have already quoted the instance of Emile de Laveleye, who in his Peninsule des Balkans condescended to discover some 65,000 Greeks in Macedonia. As for the rest they were nothing but Bulgarians. But against those who Bulgarise the country have arisen apologists for the other Slav races.* Goptzevitz reckons the number of Serbs in Macedonia at Spyridion Goptzevitz, Macedonien und Altserbien. HELLENISM AND MACEDONIA 45 2,000,000, another a German professor, G. Weigand,-'' finds there only Eoumanians, whom he calls Kontzo-Vlachs or Hellene- Vlachs. Strange evidences these of historical sin- cerity ! But we have no need to concern ourselves about this ; in this rapid review of a question that has been made so complex I prefer to give a few figures that have been carefully compiled and scrupulously checked. I shall confine myself, then, to reproducing observations made by publicists who cannot be accused of partisan feeling or suspected of bad faith. They will, I hope, enforce the con- viction that Macedonia is chiefly Greek, both from the point of view of history and from racial and geographical considerations. In fine, a geographical examination of this important region leaves the impression that Macedonia is Greek. It is an integral part of the Hellenic or Balkan Peninsula ; it is almost entirely bounded by Greek territories — by Thrace on the east, by Epirus and Thessaly on the south-west, on the south by the -^gean Sea, which is pre-eminently Greek. Macedonia, indeed, has constituted from all time the outwork of Hellenism, its bulwark against invaders from the North. It is true that its population has suffered more than once from barbarian in- vasions, which have without doubt destroyed its racial purity, but on the other hand have invigorated it by the infusion of fresh blood. Macedonia has another peculiar advantage in the variety of its soil. Like many regions of Greece, Macedonia has fertile soil and a pleasant variety of climate. With its wooded mountains, vast prairies, fine rivers, navigable lakes, fertile meadows, open harbours and long line of coast, it is dowered with every natural advantage to further agricultural, commercial, and in- dustrial prosperity. Thus, alike from its climatic conditions and by the racial character of its inhabitants, Macedonia is a privileged country. Naturally it has excited the ambition and covetousness of all nations. One side of the so-called question, and a side which has occasioned much interested dispute, is the determination of its geographical limits. Where does Macedonia begin, where does it end? This point has been designedly confused and Macedonia divided in the most arbitrary fashion, One party extends, another narrows its frontiers, agreeably to the interests that each defends. Some writers go so far as to include a * Zie Aromunen, ethnodriipliisch, philologisch-historiciie untersuchun- gen liber das folk de sovgenaunten Macedoromanen oder Zinzaren. 46 HELLENISM AND MACEDONIA large part of Thrace, others add on Albania, others^even Old Servia itself. We neither wish nor can consider as Macedonian territories any more than the two administrative divisions, the vilayet of Monastir and that of Salonica. We regard Old Servia, that is to say, the vilayet of Kossovo (capital Uskub), as a territory over which the Serbs have after all genuine racial and historical rights. But we claim as Greek the vilayets of Salonica and Monastir, which make up the real Macedonia. We claim them as territories that have been Hellenic for three thousand years, wherein we alone have upheld the Christian tradition ; wherein we alone have represented the element of progress and civilisa- tion; a territory whose towns are Greek and whose rural districts mostly belong to the Greeks. No one desires to dispute that a Bulgarian empire once existed in Thrace and Macedonia. But it is known that this empire was ephemeral, and that it never robbed these countries of their essentially Greek character. The memorable defeat inflicted on the Bulgarians by Basil the Macedonian had definitely broken their power. In later days, after Constantinople fell into the hands of the Turks, they received their final blow, since the conquerors did not even recognise their national existence but placed them under the jurisdiction of the Ecumenical Patriarchate. Subsequently a revolution occurred which overturned the racial conditions of the country and even affected the language of the inhabitants. The Greeks, being capable of order and progress, came to establish themselves more particularly in the great towns and generally speaking in all the chief centres. The Slav popula- tion, and especially the Bulgarians, settled themselves by preference in the country districts. When later on the Divan decreed a systematic persecution of the Hellenic element, the Greek language was the first thing attacked ; the Hellenes saw themselves compelled to use the Slav idiom for general pur- poses, to escape the oppressions to which they were subjected by the Turks, and also because the Slav invaders could not easily learn the Greek tongue, which threatened to make inter- course impossible. This change happened not only in Mace- donia, but also even to a greater extent in Asia Minor and Syria, where the Greek or Greek-speaking inhabitants were compelled to speak Turkish in order to escape the persecutions of a barbarous Government. It is even said that for some time after the conquest the Turks, thinking to secure their rule { HELLENISM AND MACEDONIA 47 better by making the Greeks lose their language, barbarously cut off the tongues of many of their Hellenic subjects, whose descendants, thus terrorised, eventually came to speak nothing but Turkish. They forgot their language, but they preserved their feeling of nationality. It was the same with the Greek populations of Turkey in Europe as with those of Turkey in Asia. They have never lost their national feeling. If the Greeks in certain parts of Macedonia adopted the Slav language, many of them on the other hand came in time to use Greek roots, which they disguised more or less by adding Slav terminations. As all those who have studied the question have remarked, this Greco- Slav jargon differs with different localities. In the North a barbarous dialect, it not only becomes comparatively polished and refined in the South, but even retains many pure Greek words which are unintelligible to the Bulgarians. And, moreover, the Bulgarian-speaking Greeks preserve intact all the traditions of Hellenism ; they call themselves Thracians, or Macedonians, but never Bul- garians, Bulgarian being with them a term of contempt. The revolutionary committees, by calling themselves " Macedonian " or " Adrianopolitan," show that they well understand the feeling of these peoples by not giving them the name of Bulgarian. The greater part of these fine Macedonians, who are trying to stir up Macedonia to rebellion, follow their individual interests rather than any consideration of humanity or patriotism, as they style themselves indifferently Greeks, Serbs, or Eoumanians or anything that serves their turn. In reality many of them belong to no race ; they are upholding the Bulgarian cause to-day because they see in it the best and most rapid way of satisfying their personal ambitions. This justice must be rendered to the real Bulgarians that with regard to these followers of theirs they cherish in their hearts feelings not entirely removed from contempt or even reprobation. The great majority of the population is Greek. I shall endeavour to show this by invoking not so much titles drawn from past tradition or historical documents as to the actual condition of the country. Some figures and ethnographical statistics will prove it still better. 48 HELLENISM AND MACEDONIA But first of all should be quoted the opinion of Gustav Gnifki, a specialist in these matters, which was given in the course of a sitting of the Berlin Geographical and Ethnographical Society : " How can the inhabitants of Macedonia be classified by nationalities ? On this subject it is impossible for us to get exact statistics, whether directly or indirectly obtained. Irt Turkey little trouble is taken about revising the Census, and as to those Censuses which have been made in previous times, they have not the slightest pretence to exactness by reason of the very natural resistance made by the Christian subjects of the Porte to such irritating investigations. The only computation which is based on scrupulous inquiries with regard to the Mace- donian population, not including that of Old Servia, is that given by the Russian economist Petroff ; he has travelled through the- country, dwelt there for three years, and collected all statistics- that might help to clear up any facts concerning the ethnical character of the country. . Moreover, he has not neglected the old Census list, which he has attempted to verify in detail. According to the savant the total population of Macedonia* proper (without Old Servia) is 1,900,000 souls. The ethnical divisions," M. Gnifki adds, " render the com- putation of the total list of inhabitants very difficult. But the one almost infallible criterion to discover the truth, in seeking out which is the dominant race, is the number of the schools and of the scholars who attend them. " In all the great towns and in almost all the hamlets there are Turkish, Greek and Bulgarian schools. In certain Bul- garian-speaking villages of the North there are Bulgarian schools. In the southern part of Macedonia, where the popu- lation is denser, the Greek villages endowed with schools are comparatively more numerous than the Bulgarian-speaking villages that are equally provided; at the same time in the big towns the number of schools varies according to the nationalities. "It is an established fact that schools exist in villages of only a thousand inhabitants, and according as the villages belong to such or such a race the scholastic establishments referred to such or such a nationality. " Taking the official statistics furnished by the Ottoman authorities and comparing them with other figures supplied concerning the Macedonian schools, one arrives at the following data, which can be considered as closely approximating the truth : In the whole of Macedonia, in which, be it under- HELLENISM AND MACEDONIA 49 •stood, we never reckon Old Servia, there are 1,375 Greek schools for primary and secondary education, 2,100 teachers, 78,000 scholars. " Eeckoning by the diffusion of education in the Balkan States, and striking a mean, we arrive at the following result : 78,000 Greek scholars correspond to 546,000 inhabitants. There exist 985 Bulgarian schools; the number of teachers -amounts to 1,580, and that of scholars to 49,000, corresponding to 343,000 Bulgarians. There are 1,220 Turkish schools with 1,500 teachers and 63,000 scholars; these figures correspond to 441,000 Moham- medan inhabitants. On this computation the 1,900,000 inhabitants of Macedonia are divided as follows : 546,000 Greeks, 441,000 Mohammedans, 343,000 Bulgarians, the re- maining 57,000 are Serbs (Old Servia being reckoned in the computation), Armenians, and individuals belonging to different races. The territorial division does not correspond to the racial division, for in Southern Macedonia, where the Greek element predominates, the population is more numerous than in the North, where the Bulgarians are more numerous." The Bulgarians and their friends do not hesitate to proclaim their own preponderance in Macedonia, going so far as to deny the existence of the other Slav races and disputing still more the influence of the power of Hellenism. However, Slav ethnologists reprove these Panbulgarist ambitions. Among others. Professor Draganoff, formerly Director of the Bulgarian Gymnasium at Salonica, maintains that the Macedonian Slavs liave no connection with the Bulgarian; Nicolas Dournovo quotes Draganoff and adds : The Macedonian dialect is derived from the ancient Cyrillo-Methodian language." One could quote the evidence of numerous savants whose word carries authority, and even of genuine Macedonians of lihe preceding generation, to support this opinion, according to which the Slavo-Macedonian dialect is more or less independent of the Bulgarian and Servian languages. As for the existence •of a distinct Slav nationality in Macedonia, that is absolutely denied by the reports of the Eussian Consular Agents. The Slavo-Macedonian dialect was recognised as a distinct idiom by such savants as Schafarick, Schapcareb, Pawlowski, Draganoff, Gron, Novaco, Vitz, Betsokof, and others. But -even one of the fanatic Bulgarophils, the Eussian publicist, Amphitheatrof, in his studies in Macedonia, is convinced that "**;the country folk of these provinces are neither Bulgarians 50 HELLENISM AND MACEDONIA nor Serbs, but a mixed race that could as easily be turned into Serbs as into Bulgarians." All this evidence, drawn, moreover, from Slav sources, con- clusively proves that the Bulgarian element is in the minority in Macedonia, and consequently the Bulgarians find themselves obliged to annex and claim as their own Serb and Slavo- Macedonian people. The moral predominance of Hellenism shows itself in all the regions of Macedonia. In most of the great centres the Greek element is in the majority. Serr^s, Drama, Kavalla, Kastoria, all Chalcidice, attest the Hellenic character of the inhabitants of modern Macedonia. The Europeans who pass through these regions can hardly take full account of this, partly because their stay is generally somewhat brief, and again because they know none of the idioms spoken there. Moreover, they go there with preconceived ideas, or charged with some kind of definite mission for which they must seek justification. Owing to these considerations they enter into relations with men who will never defend the truth but only their party interests. Is. it likely, for instance, that the Eoman Catholic consul of such or such a Power will write with impartiality about the Orthodox Church, and willingly confess its numerical pre-eminence, its strength and supremacy ? Where is the Slav or the Slavophil who will confess the importance of the Greek element in these- regions ? It is not through the spectacles of passion and hatred that one can see the truth ; from all time self-interest has been the worse guide and counsellor. Hence the travellers who visit Macedonia with the intention of telling us its history have come to falsify it, since they sacrifice sincerity and justice to a too evident party spirit. Thus they have succeeded in dis- torting the true facts to such an extent that it can be affirmed that the general public of Europe is at this moment better informed about the most distant countries of Asia and Africa^ that have only been born yesterday to civilisatioti, than it is informed about Macedonia, which has been from all time the bridge between East and West, and which remains one of th& most central provinces of Southern Europe. Following the most careful investigations the population of Macedonia (with the exception of Old Servia) amounts ta HELLENISM AND MACEDONIA 51 1,700,000 inhabitants ; 700,000 of them are Hellenes, including 60,000 to 70,000 Koutzo-Vlachs, whose traditions, manners, and ideas are Greek. This race, scattered throughout many districts in the Peninsula, represents one of the essential elements of Hellenism, to whose ascendancy it has entirely submitted. Kyntzchef himself confesses that Hellenic character of the Koutzo-Vlachs of Monastir, whom the Eoumanians claim for themselves, without, however, succeeding in attracting their allegiance, despite the efforts they havo made, and the sacrifices to which they have consented. After the Greeks the element of most considerable numerical importance is that of the Mohammedan ; then come the Slavs^ , Serbs, Bulgarians, Slav-speaking Macedonians, Jews, and Albanians. It is true that we have not got exactly correct statistics for the population of Macedonia. The official data furnished by the Ottoman Government are suspect ; the statistics arrived at by individuals still more so. Nevertheless we may approxi- mately reckon the Greek element in the two vilayets, Salonica and Monastir, at the following figures : 250,000 Greeks in the first ; 200,000 in the second. The remainder of the population is composed of Mohammedans, Slavs, and the 80,000 Jews of Salonica. In the Servian district the Greek element is less dense. We find there 250,000 Greeks and 10,000 Moham- medans settled only in the two towns of Servia and Grevena. But not only on account of numerical importance do the Greeks maintain their indisputable supremacy over the other races ; it is rather through the influence of their intellectual culture, their commercial and economic activity, and, in a word, by the triple claim of their ancient traditions, superior intelligence, greater wealth. One has only got to pass through the towns and villages of Macedonia to be convinced that one is in a Greek country. At Salonica, Monastir, and Serres, at Florida, Kruschevo, Niaoussa, at Karaferia, Kastoria, every- where one recognises Greek civilisation, everywhere one finds the Greek tongue, Greek ideas the influence of Greek culture. The liberal professions are in the hands of the Greeks. Eecent Census lists made in certain districts of Macedonia show that out of 86 doctors practising in these localities 82 are Greek and 4 Bulgarian ; of 33 lawyers, 30 are Greek and 3 Bulgarian. Even so these computations do not include the lawyers and doctors established in Southern Macedonia, which is entirely Greek. 52 HELLENISM AND MACEDONIA The big landowners, merchants, bankers, manufacturers, and artisans are almost all of Greek nationality. Not counting the great towns, which the Hellenes fill to the exclusion of every other Christian race, they form associations in the rural districts that are much more influential than that of the Slavs, over whom they have the advantage of being, like the Turks, owners of the soil they cultivate. To better understand the importance of the Greek element in Macedonia, we have said there is no better test than the schools. The network of Greek schools with which the country is endowed extends far and wide. At the expense of the Greek communities of Macedonia, and hj the generosity of rich Macedonians settled abroad, the majority of these schools, many of them real palaces,^ have been built. I ought to mention in particular the magnificent gymnasium of Salonica, founded at his own expense by a Greek native of the town, and where a section of arts and crafts has been recently established. The rival propagandists who have expended enormous sums to fight Hellenism are still far from reaping the harvest of their exertions. Greek education resists them. It is not characterised by fanaticism and violence in resistance, as the Bulgarians and other propagandists in attack, but its influence is not less powerful. The worst enemies of the Greek — Kyntcheff, Eizof , Sarafoff — have come to recognise this, since they have pro- claimed that proselytism in the schools is not sufficient, and prefer to spread their propaganda by deeds, seizing with violent hands the domain of Greece. Another and not less valuable evidence of the superiority of Hellenic culture has been afforded us by a former minister of public instruction in Eoumania, M. Haret. Speaking in the Chamber about the educational movement in Monastir, he said as follows : "I possess statistics for the province of Monastir, and I find there are in this vilayet 24 Roumanian schools, 369 Greek, 45 Serbs, and 245 Bulgarian. "The number of scholars and teachers is as follows: For each of the Greek foundations the latter are in proportion of 11 to 4, and 13 to 4 for the Servian schools. Each Bulgarian ^school is provided on an average with three instructors. The HELLENISM AND MACEDONIA 53;^ average of pupils is 37 for the Greek school, 35 for a Serb,. 38 for a Bulgarian, for a Eoumanian hardly 17. " In the Eoumanian lyceum of Monastir there are 20 pro- fessors, in the Greek lyceum 10, in the Serb gymnasium 7, in the Bulgarian lyceum 8." It cannot be asserted that the number of scholars corresponds at all exactly to that of the population ; love of letters differs in different races. Moreover, in Macedonia propagandism in the schools was considered up till quite lately as the best means of national activity ; hence schools have been often founded in such or such a place without taking any account of the importance of the dominant element there, and founded for the reason of representing some element or other as numerically superior. M. Haret, the Eoumanian minister cited before, recognised this when he said, ** In the schools of Verria and Kruschevo many professors have been nominated who have never set foot in the establishments to which they have been respectively assigned as instructors. Some of them were self-styled Doctors of Law and Doctors of Philosophy, but in fact they have hardly scrambled through their B.A. You can imagine what sort of schools these were. The Macedonians themselves attach no importance to them. To prove it I have only need to take the following facts : ' Two years after the founding of these scholastic establishments there were reckoned no more than four scholars. In fact there were more teachers than scholars." It is still worse in the case of the Bulgarians and Serbs. The majority of their schools, instead of representing the racial group to which they belong, recruit their scholars, partly by force, partly by the bait of material advantages, from families of different blood, especially from Greek families. Often poor parents, obeying persuasive arguments, bribed or terrorised, agree to send their children to the schools of the Bulgarian or Servian propagandists. But despite these abuses Greek education holds its own victoriously. In the vilayet of Salonica alone there exist two gymnasia with 23 professors and 285 scholars, 526 primary and secondary schools, seminaries, boarding-schools, girls' schools, &c., with 728 instructors, and 32,177 pupils. The Bulgarians count on their roll, in the same vilayet of Salonica, 319 schools, 433 instructors, 9,545 pupils. In the vilayet of Monastir the Greeks possess 4 gymnasia,, 20 instructors, 314 pupils. 54 HELLENISM AND MACEDONIA The total of the other Greek schools amounts to 384, with 517 instructors, 23,456 pupils. There are 273 Bulgarian schools, with 424 professors and 9,804 scholars. We can in consequence compile, for the two vilayets of Salonica and Monastir, the following comparative table : — Greek Schools, 937 Instructors, 1,345 Scholars, 55,633 Bulgarian ... „ 592 „ 917 „ 19,343 It is, moreover, worth noting that a great number of the scholars who attend the Bulgarian schools belong to other Slav races not connected with the Bulgarians. Further, these schools are kept up not so much by the Bulgarian communities themselves as by the Exarchy, and by the Committees at Sofia, who, it is true, impose great personal sacrifices on them- selves to that end. During the last 30 years many Bulgarian schools have been created in Macedonia, in which many Bulgarians and Mace- donians have studied, going afterwards to finish their education :in the West, their expenses being paid by the Committees. As the Bulgarian population of Macedonia is limited, a social August 26, 1903. 99. Catkos de Kroussoral, killed by the Kyrtzze band, December 10, 1902. 100. Georges Vanne, killed at Golitzko (Fiorina), February 14,. 1903. 101. Christos, assassinated at Gada (caza Djouma), February 26, 1903. 103. Guples of Tyrsia, and his wife, killed at Armensko, by Petrou, a member of the Bulgarian Committee, Feb- ruary 27, 1903. 104. Athanase Constantinou, master of the Greek School at Sisteovo, killed by Petrof band in 1900. 105. Papa Constantis, Xissi, priest at Nerat, killed by the Marcof band, September, 1900. 106. Basile de Kato-Kottsri, killed in 1900. 107. Tzamanis, notable of the village of Cozenetzio, killed May, 1901. 108. Pierre Sopis, killed in 1901. 109. Traikos Mailios, notable of the village Cozenetzio, killed in his shop. May, 1901. 110. Th. Eimblis, of Koritza, killed August, 1903, near Stenia, by the Kots band. 111. Basile Tzamanis, of Dymbenis, killed September, 1901. 112. Lazos Kole de Cononblasi, killed in his house by Petrof, February 17, 1901. 113. Mitzos de Sourovitzovo, killed near Neweska. HELLENISM AND MACEDONIA 7^ 114. Cosmos, clerk, assassinated at Zagoritzani; by the Petrof band in the midst of the village, November 6, 1901. 115. Papa-Dimitrious Economou, priest at Strembreno, killed by Petrof, November 7, 1901. 116. Stoian Kessin, of Boulio, killed in the village, 1901. 120. Three women of ' Conomblati killed, November, 1901. 121. Traikos, a servant of the mouktar Aga, of Eoulia, killed by a blow from a revolver in the midst of the village Castoria, January 3, 1902. 122. Papa-Ketias, priest and master of the School at Posdenitza, killed May 19, 1902. 123. Aristate Douveniotis, Castoria, attempted murder. May, 1902. 124. Christos Tsiamos of Pissoderi, killed by the Tsakalarof band, March 5, 1902. 125. Georges Piamos de Posomitza, killed by the Tsakalarof band, March 5, 1902. 126. Kagara Katzos of Smardessi, killed by the Tsakalarof band, July 27, 1902. 129. Bastile, Primate of the village Zelenitzi, his nephew and niece killed by the band Tsakalarof in 1902. 130. Christos Mouktar Artoziou, killed in 1902. 131. Mitros of Lagoni, killed December, 1902. 132. Koles Narsis, killed at Strembreno, February 20, 1903, by a Bulgarian. 133. Koles, assassinated at Zagoritzani, March 9, 1903. 134. The sister of the Priest Papa Germanos, killed at Lum- banitzi (casa Castoria), Tsakalarof band. 135. Kyriacos, Nedou, notable of the village of Bitossa, assas- sinated by the Stoyan band in 1900. 136. St. Elias, shepherd of the village of Bouffi, assassinated in 1900. 137. Vantso, of the village of Belitza, killed near Negotsani, November 25, 1901. 138. Thomas Croussovitis, innkeeper, assassinated at Perlepe^ December 9, 1901. 139. Takts Tsonas, killed January 15, 1902. 140. Two peasants and the primate of the village Bella- Tserkva (Perlepe), killed April, 1902. 141. Two Mouktars of the village of Tseri, Beressova (Perlepe), massacred September 21, 1802. 142. A woman of Tiftsa with her son massacred September 24, 1902. 74 HELLENISM AND MACEDONIA 143. Jean Coulac and his brother with their wives, and even with their Hve stock, killed October 2, 1902. 144. T. Angellou, greengrocer, at Monastir. 145. Marcos Craias, doctor, received twelve blows of the knout at Eesna, November 18, 1902. 146. Zissis Catsanis, killed at Tsapari, 1902. 147. Evangellos Doutsis, of Monastir, killed August 12, 1902. 148. St. Dimou, killed at Kadi-Kioi, by a Bulgarian scholar at Monastir, January 15, 1903. 149. Basile Cosmos, assassinated at Vardino, January 15, 1902. 150. The priest Papnicolas of Varbiani, killed February 9, 1903. 151. Christos Doumas, attempted murder February 20, 1901. 152. Constantin Jeannou, hairdresser at Monastir, killed March 3, 1903. 153. Nestos Christou, primate of the village Sirpsi, assassinated by the band Sougareff, March 28, 1903. 154. Papa-Constantin Economous, priest of Neretti, assas- sinated in the month of January, 1901. 155. Jean Capasis, at Lebanitza, May, 1901. 156. Basile Tsamanis, of Dibeni, killed in September, 1901, 157. Gramenopoulos, notable of the village Zelenitsi, October 5, 1901. 158. The two sons of the priest Constantin Economous of Neretti, assassinated after an attempted murder in October, 1901. 159. Cocmos, primate of the village of Longoissina, November, 1901. 160. Papa-Demetrius, priest of the village Banista, assassinated November 10, 1901. 161. Stefos of the village Varbiani, assassinated October 1, 1901. 162. Nicolas Canberis, late teacher and notable of the village Armentco, October 1, 1901. 163. C. Michel, assassinated at the village Croussis, November 17, 1901. 164. Nicolas Secoulis, November 18, 1901. 165. Momiris Athanasious Stephanou and Christos, December 16, 1901. 166. The wife and the two daughters of the priest Papa-Milos. 167. Despina Kyprou, March, 1902. 168. A wife and a daughter killed by the Bulgarian priest Pa-Gersimos. 169. The priest Papa-Charalambos, of the village Charaloupi, with his son and tutor, killed October 10, 1902. r HELLENISM AND MACEDONIA 75 170. An old woman of the village of Loubnovo. 171. The head of the convent of Slimnitsa with his wife, December 20, 1902. 172. Nicholas Michel, muleteer. 173. Constantin Morichovalis assassinated at the village of Armenochorion, 1902. 174. George Papa-Evangellou, 1902. 175. Pgotios Guioussou, hotel proprietor at Fiorina. 176. Constantin Petrou, primate of Fiorina, 1900. 177. Cgristos Mylonas, 1900. 178. Elie Jean dArmenchori, 1900. 179. Elie Papataionou, of Pessossitsa, 1900. 180. Pavlous Athanassiou, 1900. 181. Demetrious, P., grocer at Banitsa. 182. Jean Nicolas, of Banista. 183. Minas Jeannou, of Gornitsovo, 1900. 184. Nicolas Dimitrius, of Socovitsi, 1900. 185. Jean Christo, of Tsegani, 1900. 186. Basile Georgiou, of Vostarani, 1900. 187. EHas Christo of Cabanitsa, 1900. 188. Stavros of Clestino, 1900. 189. Basile Nicolaiou, of Crapestino, 1900. 190. Donranoglou, of the village Ormanli. 191. Constantin Basiliou, of Vodesti. 192. Basile Traicou, of Colessino. 193. Athanase Gorzi, of Yeni-Kioi. 194. Marcos Constantinou, of Yeni-Kioi. 195. Sotiris Violakis, of Zirvono, January, 1902. 196. A peasant of the village Croussovo (of Melenikou), May 1902. 197. Two peasants of the village Eami (of Melenikou), May, 1902 198. A child of the village Plyna (Drama), June, 1902. 199. Theodorou, of Cato-Sekerdji, July, 1902. 200. One other of BarekH-Djoumaja, July, 1902. 201. Demetrius of Zagori, killed near Nevrokopi, August, 1903. 202. Some ten peasants in the outskirts of Melenikou, who were going to the fair at Terlitsi, October, 1902. 203. About fifteen peasants near Tsiropoli, 1902. 204. Valannis of Drama, December, 1902. 205. A woodcutter, Georgiou, assassinated near Melenikou, May, 1901. 76 HELLENISM AND MACEDONIA 206. Tassoss Kantarzisl, killed near the village Anto-Frestana, May, 1901. 207. Tassoss Caravnasis, massacred at Croussovo, August, 1902. 208. Basile Arvanitis, of Djoumaya, August, 1902. 209. Thonaas Papa-Georgiou, teacher, 1902. 210. B. Psaltis and Nicolas Scroumpas, February 14, 1901. 211. D. Demirdjis, near Salonica, January 19, 1903. 212. St. Ftryphon, near Vodena, notable of the village Messi- \ men, July 13, 1900. 213. Mdlle. Marie Hadji-Antomou, teacher at Vladovoa, bandit shot her in the school, February 24, 1900. 214. Papa-Stojeannis, priest of the village Messimeri^ January 17, 1902. 215. Jean Bakirojis, notable of the village of Vladovo, August 8, 1902. 216. Doctor Sakellariou, a Greek subject at Goumenitsa, was seriously v^ounded in November, 1900. 217. Petros Gossas, notable of Seraneka, and Demetrius of Sernareka, killed June 6, 1902. 218. Jean Gatsos, assassinated in the village Barovitsa, March 20, 1902. 219. Petros Tsolakis, notable of Barovitsa, 1903. 220. Costas Saramantas, Michel Saramantas, and their wives, all four massacred in the village Babiani of Yenidje the night of Good Friday, April 4, 1903. 221. Demetre Papapetrou, son of the priest of Barovitsa, April 20, 1902. 222. P. Papa-Demetriou, a young villager of Barovitsa, April 20, 1903. 223. Thanos Gotsosscholar, of Barovitsa, April 20, 1903. 224. Evanguelos c. Gatsos, of Barovitsa, April 20, 1903. 225. Christos Doitsinis, notable of Natsicovo, assassinated October 6, 1900. 226. Jean Joftsou, notable of Ossiani, assassinated July 25, 1902. 227. Dionysios, Dios, notable of Ossiani, assassinated July 25, 1902. 228. Petros Stoicou, shepherd, assassinated at Chouma, January, 1903. 229. Athanas Nelios, shepherd, assassinated at Chouma, January 31, 1903. 230. Christos Milcou, shepherd, assassinated at Chouma January, 1903. HELLENISM AND MACEDONIA 77 231. Mme. G. Ribaris, disembowelled at Matsicovo, October 30, 1902. 232. Nicholas Ribaris, assassinated and disembowelled at Matsicovo, October 30, 1902. 233. Pierre G. Ribaris, 22 years of age, massacred and dis- embowelled at Matsicovo, October 30, 1902. 234. Fido G. Ribaris, 18 years of age, assassinated and disem- bowelled at Matsicovo, October 30, 1902. 235. Eudoxie G. Ribaris, 16 years old, assassinated and disem- bowelled at Matsicovo, October 30, 1902. Province of Doirani. 236. George Patriotis, notable of the town of Doirani, killed March 15, 1902. 237. Anguelakis, notable of Kelkis, attempted murder, 1903. 238. George Tsilas, notable of Ano-Vrontou, April 25, 1902 239. Basile Kechayas, notable of Poroya, September 10, 1900. 240. Costas Rizopoulos, notable of Poroya, September 10, 1900. 241. T. Panajotou, notable of Poroya, September 23, 1900. 242. St. Michel, January 5, 1901. 243. Pyrgos Papa-Constantinou, notable of the village Verni- con, September 7, 1901. 244. Anguelos Bosikis, notable of Saviakou, September 18, 1901. 245. St. Mazanis, notable of Saviakou, September 18, 1901. 246. Papa-Athanase, priest of Saviakou, attempted murder, October, 1901. 247. Hadji-Dimitriu, Mayor of Ano-Vrontou, October 27, 1901. 248. N. Piteas, of Ano-Vrontou, May 3, 1902. 249. Evanguelos Philippos, of Petritsi, April 5, 1902. 250. Georges Leontas, of Saviakou, April 17, 1902. 251. Athanaes Valavanis, notable of Plena, July 15, 1902. 252. Georges Chrysochoos, notable of Nevrocopi, July 27, 1902. 253. Thomas Papa-Georgiou, teacher, attempted murder, August 20, 1902. 254. Demetre Nasiou, of Therma, October 2, 1902. 255. Demetre Martsiacas, of Gornisa, March 5, 1903. 256. Angelos Leontas, of Saviakou, March 19, 1903. / 78 HELLENISM AND MACEDONIA Province of Drama. 257. The servant of Athanase, of Valavanis, killed at Plena^ April 25, 1902. 258. Two villagers at Volaka, June 27, 1902. 259. Georges Trouskas, at Prototsani, September, 1902. 260. A labourer at Volaka, March, 1903. 261. Nicolas Anastasiou, of Paleochori, November 17, 1902. i 262. Jean Butcher, of Levenisti, May, 1901. 263. Nakis Jofcou, of Tsereovo, his head was struck from his body with a hatchet, November 21, 1901. 264. Petrou and Badarkis, February, 1902. 265. Athananios Guiaouridis, of Batti, killed March, 1902. 266. Gatsou, of Chrysorroa, December, 1902. 267. EHas, shepherd of Batsi, May 1, 1901. 268. Petros Mitsi, of Patelli, June 16, 1902. 269. Markos Yotivo and his father, August, 1902. 270. Athanasios Seordis, of Basti, with his companion, near Banitsa. 271. Jean Pialis, of Patelli. 272. Cosmas Couzos, January, 1902. 273. Jean Alvas, 1902. 274. D. Traicos, of Lsvisti, April 22, 1902. 275. Petros Arsino, teacher of Patelli, June, 1902. 276. Bvangellos Boria, schoolmaster at Palechori, April, 1902. 277. Lazaros Stavrou, of Smardessi, July 22, 1902. 278. Stefanes, notable of Clestina, August 20, 1902. 279. Michel Trisis, of the Convent of Cambanista, August 25 1902. 280. Basile Lipiskas, August 19, 1902. 281. Traicos of Dromboveni, August, 1902. 282. Papa-Basile, priest of Zeleni, and his nephew, ^ tember 24, 1902. 283. Papa-Nicolas, priest of the village of Palec^ 1903. 284. Four women massacred by the h?^ ' January 16, 1903. 285. Athanasie Constantiniou ber 5, 1899. Papa-Zissis, prif* Tsmanis, o^ ^ Petros ^ Them. 286. 287. 288. 289. xi^Ol. 1902. HELLENISM AND MACEDONIA 7^ 290. Lazoros Nicolau, assassinated by the Petroff band before his wife, September 17, 1901. 291. Mitsos of Sorovitsi, near Neveska. 292. A villager of Pozdivisti. 293. Cosma, chorister of Zagoritsani, November 6, 1901. 294. Papa-Dimitrios, priest of Strebono, November 7, 1901. 295. Basile of Cato-Coterie, 1901. 296. Traicos MaHou, May, 1901. 297. St. Kessinis, of Voulia, November 7, 1901. 298. Three women of Conoblati, one of whom was enceinte,. November, 1901. 299. Basile of Labanista, November 30, 1901. 300. Treicou of Castoria. 301. Mitros of Laieno, December, 1901. 302. Trianou of Eoulia, January 3, 1902. 303. Christos Tsamis, of Pissoderi, March 5, 1903. 304. Papa-Elias, priest of Pozdivisti, 1902. 305. George Ghianou, May 5, 1902. 306. Papa-Nicola, priest of Eoulia, May 18, 1902. 307. Basile, notable of Zelenisti, with his nephew and his niece, September 2, 1902. 308. Christos Moutcharis, of Actos, 1902. 309. George Vanis, February 14, 1903. 310. C. Nicolas, notable of Zagoritsani, 1903. 312. P. Stavros, with his wife, 1903. 313. Six peasants massacred outside Fiorina, January, 1903. , 314. Papa-Constantin, of Perlepe, February 15, 1903. 315. A peasant of the village of Actos, February 14, 1903. 316. Costos Lachtsalis, February 17, 1903. \ 317. V. Natsis, of Strebino, February 18, 1903. J 318. H. Christou, near Cadari, February 26, 1903. I 319. Evangellous of Tyrsi and his wife killed by a member of J the committee of Sofia, Simeon Petroff, February 27, I 1903. 320. Aristotle Dyobouniotis, attempted. May, 1902. 321. The sister of the priest Papa-Germanos, of Labanisti, by the band of Tsakaralof. 322. Votsis and Athanase Andreou, March, 1903. 323. Two peasants of the village of Doagosti, March 3, 1903, 324. Two peasants of the village Cossino, March, 1903. ^25. Dimos Naoumi, March 12, 1903. '326. C. Jovanis, March 12, 1903. ' 327. Dimos Kechava, March, 1903, 80 HELLENISM AND MACEDONIA 328. C. Papageorgiou, teacher of Gorentsi. 329. Papa-Argyris, priest of Neretti. 330. Athanase Capatanakis, of Labanista, February, 1903. 331. Stephanos Zenios and his mother assassinated at Exi-sous, July, 1902. 333. Papa-Satirios, of the convent of Samt-Naoum near Trapezitsa, April, 1903. BROXHEBB, lilMlTED, THE GBESHAM PBESB, WOKING AND LONDON. UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY Los Angeles This book is DUE on the last date stamped below. 1 '"Id ■ J. A NON-tEMO MAR > AUG ^3 1^ .iS^, Form L9-25m-9,'47(A5618)444 UNIVERSITY OF G/i i^i^'uRNiA AT LOS ANGELES LIBRA.KY REMARQUES Cette carte comprend outre la Macd- doine proprementdite, teintde en bleu, les regions slaves et albanaises qui lui sont voisines et qui, de nos jours, sont commun^ment englohiies dans la Ma- c^doine, bien que n'en faisant point partie, ni gdographiquement, ni ethno- graphiqueraent. On n'a pu jusqu'ici ^tablir avec pre- cision une statistique ethnographique de ta Mac^doine, en raison du melange des races qui la peuplent et du d^sordre qui rigne dans I'administration otto- II est k remarquer que le langage le plus repandu en Mac^doine, notam- ment dans le Sud, c'est le grec. Dans la Macidoine du centre et du nord, exception faite des musulmans qui parlent le Turc, on se sert d*un idiome melange. Toutefois le grec et le slave sont dgalement employes. Les populations slaves qui habitent la Mac^doine proprement dite parlent les unes ie bulgare, les autres, le serbe ; nombre de Mac^doniens se servent encore d'un dlalecte qui se rapproche du serbe plutAt que du bulgare et qui comprend quantity de mots k racines grecques et k desi- nence slave. Le memo pbenomfene se produit dans d'autres contrees de la P^ninsule, comme par exemple dans la region du Rhodope. ' Suivant le dernier recensement, la population de la Macedoine (vilayets de Salonique et de Monistir) se d^par- tage comme suit : Grecs 657.832 Bulgares 379-897 Musulmans 770.280 Serbes 19003 Valaques 13-455 Unites 2.286 Divers 65.720 Le tableau comparatif des dcoles grecques et des ecoles bulgares de Macedoine, de meme que celui des eiives qui y friquentent respective- ment, et des diocises ecclisiastiques, est le suivant -. fecoles grecques 989 > bulgares 545 Nombre des ilives grecs . . 59 . 043 , > > bulgares 28.050 Diocises grecs episcopaux. a6 . bulgares > 6 Ne ligurent point ici les statistiques et tableaux comparatits intiressant la Vieille-Serbie vilayet Je Kossovo) et une partie de rAlbaiiie, regions qui ne rentrent pas dans I.1 Macedoine . II est iremarquer que dans ces contries peu- plees principalement de .Serbes et d'Albanais sont etablies un certain nom- bre de communautes grecques, iparses entre diverses localites. 58 ^ University of California, Los Angeles L 005 414 046 2