L I B RARY 
 
 OF THE 
 
 UNIVLRSITY 
 
 or ILLINOIS
 
 With the Author's Compliments
 
 /o 
 GREEKS & BULaARIAlNfS 
 
 IN THE NINETEENTH AND 
 TWENTIETH CENTURIES 
 
 AN OPEN LETTER TO THE RIGHT HON. 
 SIR CHARLES W. DILKE 
 
 BY 
 
 NEOCLES KASASIS 
 
 PROFESSOR OF ATHENS UNIVERSITY 
 PRESIDENT OF THE "HELLENISM08 SOCIETY" 
 
 LONDON 
 
 PRINTED BY BALLANTYNE & CO. LIMITED 
 
 TAVISTOCK STREET, COVENT GARDEN 
 
 1907
 
 PEEFACE 
 
 This book was written many months ago, soon after 
 the tragic catastrophes which took place last year with 
 unheard-of barbarity in some towns of the Bulgarian 
 PrincipaHty and Eastern Rumelia. I now give it 
 publicity on the anniversary of these occurrences ; 
 perhaps rather late, but in time, I hope, to enlighten 
 public opinion in England, which, although it ought not 
 to be, is in ignorance of what is going bn in the Near 
 East, and is misled by inaccurate publications. Perhaps 
 there is still time for a friend of truth to go to 
 the spot, investigate matters, and report publicly the 
 results of his investigations in order thoroughly to 
 enlighten the British public. 
 
 Similar things happened about thirty years ago, when 
 public opinion in England was startled by the Bulgarian 
 atrocities. Unhappily, the contemporary Bulgarian 
 atrocities have been more awful. As the reader will 
 see, the leader of them was the Bulgarian Government 
 itself. 
 
 May I hope that as a result of this publication a 
 Commission for the investigation of Macedonian matters 
 will be appointed ? I hardly dare to entertain such hope.
 
 IV Preface 
 
 But History is written both for contemporaries and 
 descendants, for enlightening, for teaching, not for 
 amusement. 
 
 With this object, although I am a contemporary, I 
 have roughly drawn this historical picture, which I offer 
 to the English public. No doubt Britishers will under- 
 stand how many and what criminal phenomena are 
 covered by the political artifice of the Treaty of Berlin, 
 which was drawn up in good faith on the part of the 
 authors, but which of late has become a total denial of 
 all the moral and political rules which govern the life 
 of mankind. 
 
 I await the impartial judgment and verdict of the 
 British public. 
 
 NEOCLES KASASIS 
 
 London, August 1907 
 
 1 III 1/^
 
 TO THE RIGHT HON. 
 SIR CHARLES DILKE, BART. 
 
 Sm, — It was during my absence from Athens that, with 
 the connivance of the Bulgarian authorities, the mob in 
 certain districts of Bulgaria and Eastern Bumelia, and 
 especially at Varna, Philippopolis, and Anchialos, perpe- 
 trated the most terrible outrages on the Greek population 
 of these towns, who were forced to abandon their ruined 
 homes and seek an asylum elsewhere, the majority taking 
 refuge at Athens. 
 
 These unprovoked crimes filled with horror and indig- 
 nation a great portion of the civilised world. 
 
 But, on the other hand, both in Europe and America, 
 amongst those who were either ignorant of the true facts 
 of the case, or were influenced by Bulgarian propaganda, 
 these same outrages were either defended by some who 
 justified them on the ground that the activity of Greek 
 bands in Macedonia demanded some kind of retaliation, 
 or made light of by others who declared that they were 
 purely imaginary and had never taken place at all ; 
 while in England especially public opinion, misled by 
 the information of Bulgarian agents, sympathised rather 
 with the perpetrators of these outrages than with their 
 unfortunate victims. 
 
 Practically the whole of the English Press, with The 
 Times at its head, published articles attributing to the 
 Greeks themselves the responsibility for the outrages 
 committed. Other organs of public opinion, both in 
 England and on the Continent, were silent. 
 
 Has the standard of public morality indeed fallen so 
 low ? It is not for me to say, but rather simply to 
 state the facts, and describe a condition of affairs which
 
 2 Greeks and Bulgarians 
 
 can but bring pain to every friend of civilisation and 
 humanity. 
 
 The Society over vs^hich I have the honour to preside 
 considered it a duty, at this latest outbreak of Bulgarian 
 violence, to appeal to the friends of the Greek nation in 
 England, France, and Italy, with whom during the last 
 period of national activity it had had such pleasant rela- 
 tions. Among the first, it appealed to you, for many 
 years an eminent and proved friend of our nation — to 
 you, Sir, who have so often expressed your affection and 
 solicitude for Hellenism. Our Society could by no 
 means ignore the kindness which you have shown 
 towards the writer during his visit to London, and your 
 intense interest in the cause which he has so much at 
 heart. In you our Society justly recognised the most 
 illustrious of all the English Philhellenes and one of 
 the ablest and most cultured minds of the Anglo-Saxon 
 race. 
 
 On my return to Athens, a few days after these 
 lamentable events, I found your reply to our appeal, 
 which I now have the honour to reproduce : 
 
 "DocKETT Eddy, Shepperton, Middlesex, 
 ''August 19, 1906. 
 
 ^' Dear Sir, — I have your telegram. I had of course 
 already seen with horror the telegrams relating the 
 dreadful deeds you name. I shall at all times associate 
 myself with those of every country who may join in the 
 expression of the wish for the success of Greece and the 
 extension of Hellenic civilisation. It would, I fear, be 
 diifficult to induce them to deal in detail with the various 
 outrages which mark the struggle between the races 
 and the Churches who are thrown together in South-East 
 Europe. 
 
 " Sincerely, 
 " (Signed) Charles W. Dilke." 
 
 At the same time as our Society appealed to you, the 
 Metropolitan of Athens, who is also president of the 
 committee for the aid of the refugees, wrote in the
 
 Greeks and Bulgarians 3 
 
 following moving terms to the Archbishop of Canter- 
 bury : 
 
 " To His Grace the Archbishop of Canterbury. 
 
 ^' The Church of Greece entreats your Grace's 
 sympathetic aid with regard to the unparalleled and 
 entirely unprovoked outrages committed against the 
 law-abiding Greeks of Bulgaria, and against the churches, 
 monasteries, and church dignitaries, notwithstanding the 
 protection to which all are entitled from the Great 
 Powers, in virtue of the Berlin Treaty. 
 
 " The Church of Greece entreats, through your Grace, 
 the fraternal intervention of the English Church with 
 the British Government, so that an end may be put to 
 further murders and rapine, which leave a stain on the 
 age in which we live. 
 
 " (Signed) The Metropolitan of Athens, 
 
 " Theoclitus." 
 
 To this entreaty the Archbishop of Canterbury replied 
 as follows through the medium of the Bishop of 
 Gibraltar : 
 
 " You are requested to inform the Metropolitan of 
 Athens that the Archbishop of Canterbury has instructed 
 me to make the following communication : 
 
 '' That the telegram of his Holiness the Metropolitan 
 of Athens arrived in England during his absence on the 
 Continent, and was handed to him a few days ago, on 
 his return. 
 
 " That the Archbishop, as well as the English Church 
 in general, never interferes in questions of a political 
 nature, and that it is impossible for the Archbishop to 
 take any action which might be interpreted as a justifi- 
 cation of the entry of bands from Greece into Turkish 
 territory. 
 
 " The Archbishop therefore considered that it was 
 not possible for him to send a telegraphic or an official 
 reply, but he instructs me to assure his Holiness that 
 the English Church learns with great sorrow of the
 
 4 Greeks and Bulgarians 
 
 strife between the Christians of the East ; and he sends 
 his brotherly greetings to his HoHness. 
 
 " The Bishop of Gibraltar also desires to offer his 
 brotherly greetings and respect to the Head of the 
 Greek Church." 
 
 I do not desire, Sir, to express my own opinion of 
 these two letters ; let the reader judge. 1 will only 
 comment briefly on that part of the letter of the Arch- 
 bishop of Canterbury in which he says that "the 
 English Church learns with great sorrow of the strife 
 between the Christians of the East," and that " it is 
 impossible for the Archbishop to take any action which 
 might be interpreted as a justification of the entry of 
 bands from Greece into Turkish territory." 
 
 You, Sir, also, taking into consideration the erroneous 
 opinion obtaining in England as to the character and 
 motives of the conflicts between the different races in 
 Macedonia, confessed with regret, in the letter which you 
 addressed to the Board of our Society, that " It would be 
 difficult to induce them to deal in detail with the various 
 outrages which mark the struggle between the races 
 and the Churches who are thrown together in South- 
 East Europe." 
 
 You will allow me, Sir, to differ from you, as well as 
 from his Grace the Archbishop of Canterbury and from 
 all those who hold such ideas as to the activity in Mace- 
 donia and the conflicts between the different peoples 
 inhabiting that country. I assert that these conflicts are 
 not in the least due to religious or sectarian influences. 
 The reasons for the anarchy which has become a scourge 
 to that country must be sought elsewhere. 
 
 Those who have thoroughly investigated the Mace- 
 donian question, and have based their study on mere 
 facts ; those who have visited this part of the Balkan 
 Peninsula, and have examined the conditions without any 
 racial, political, or sectarian prejudice, must confess that 
 the present conflict in Macedonia is not due to religious 
 antipathy or to diflerences of dogma ; nor is it a struggle 
 of races — of Greeks and Bulgarians, or even of Slavs and
 
 Greeks and Bulgarians 5 
 
 Greeks. The Greeks, it is true, are fighting in self- 
 defence in one place against Bulgarians, in another 
 against Turks ; but in other parts Servians are opposing 
 Bulgarians, and Bumanophiles contend against Greeks — 
 indeed, the condition of Macedonia may be truly defined 
 as Belhim onfinium contra omnes. 
 
 What, then, are the real causes of these bloody conflicts 
 carried on in full view of the nations of Europe, whose 
 Governments have even on occasion fomented the quarrel 
 for their own ends ? 
 
 The phenomenon calls for an historical explanation. 
 
 I must first repeat that the present conflict in Mace- 
 donia, as in other parts of the Balkan Peninsula, is not 
 one between Patriarchists and Exarchists, as Mr. Balfour 
 implied in a letter to the Archbishop of Canterbury four 
 years ago, in the words, " The Exarchist populations (the 
 Bulgarians) persecute the Patriarchists (the Greeks) 
 with yet more cruelty." 
 
 The Servians owe no allegiance to the (Ecumenical 
 Patriarch; they have their own independent Church, and 
 have also reasons for not being on good terms with the 
 Greek Church of Constantinople. Nevertheless, in the 
 vilayet of Uskub, which is called by the Servians " Old 
 Servia," the struggle between Servians and Bulgarians 
 is as sanguinary as that between Bulgarians and Greeks 
 in the vilayets of Monastir and Salonica. 
 
 It is doubtless true that both the Patriarchist and 
 Exarchist clergy are taking part in the events occurring 
 day by day in Macedonia. But it can hardly be other- 
 wise, for, as you are no doubt aware, in the Turkish 
 Empire, as in many European States, the clergy are by 
 no means indifferent to any political or national move- 
 ment among the people, nor do they regard with apathy 
 their interests and ideals. 
 
 In France, in Italy and Spain, in Germany, and 
 even in England, the clergy do not hold aloof from 
 national questions, but, on the contrary, they are grow- 
 ing more enthusiastic in that respect than the people 
 themselves. 
 
 In the Turkish Empire the same holds good. On the
 
 6 Greeks and Bulgarians 
 
 day following the conquest of Constantinople by the 
 Turks, the Patriarch of that city was not only recog- 
 nised as the spiritual leader of all Orthodox Christians, 
 but was also granted certain privileges in connection 
 with national affairs by means of " Berats." And that 
 these privileges were employed by the Patriarch as a 
 means of ameliorating the condition of the Christian 
 population, in spite of the difficult position of the clergy 
 during the oppressive rule of the Turks, is a matter of 
 history. In fact, I make bold to assert that, if the whole 
 of Christian Eastern Europe escaped conversion to Islam- 
 ism, this was not due to the Christian West, which 
 remained absolutely indifferent to the fate of the 
 Christian population of the provinces conquered by the 
 Turks, except in so far as the sufferings of the " Orthodox " 
 actually gratified the Western spirit of religious intoler- 
 ance. With good reason, therefore, did the Patriarch 
 of Constantinople bear the title of " Bum-Milet-Bashi," 
 or Head of the Greek Nation. 
 
 During the latter part of the last century, when, owing 
 to intrigues proceeding from certain well-known quarters, 
 the Bulgarian Question was first mooted, and the rising 
 of the Bulgarian race against the Turk was organised, 
 that portion of the Bulgarian people inhabiting the 
 district near the Balkans and the Danube was incited 
 to rise against the (Ecumenical Patriarch, and to de- 
 mand, contrary to the regulations of the Churchy ecclesi- 
 astical emancipation — in other words, independence of 
 the Patriarchate. But the real object of this revolt was 
 that ecclesiastical should be followed by political inde- 
 pendence. 
 
 So far as regards the latter — i.e., national and political 
 independence — no Greek, still less the Patriarchate, 
 would raise any opposition ; but the former is plainly 
 forbidden by the canons and ancient organisation of the 
 Church. The Greek nation opposed the movement, be- 
 cause they realised that the rising of the Bulgarians was 
 only superficially ecclesiastical, while in reality it was 
 fostered in Panslavistic quarters with the object of bring- 
 ing Hellenic districts under the domination of the Slav.
 
 Greeks and Bulgarians 7 
 
 The Patriarch and the Hellenic nation therefore 
 resisted these claims to the utmost ; and thus, with the 
 aid of Russian policy at Constantinople, was brought 
 about, in 1872, the schism which resulted in the estab- 
 lishment of an independent Bulgarian ecclesiastical 
 government, with its seat at Constantinople. 
 
 It is thus clear that it was not the Greeks, but the 
 Panslavists and the Bulgarians, who commenced the 
 quarrel between the Hellenic and Bulgarian elements of 
 those districts of the Turkish Empire which are inhabited 
 by a mixed population. 
 
 In continuation and in consequence of the ecclesiastical 
 schism came the Busso-Turkish war of 1877, and the 
 success of the Russian arms was followed by the signa- 
 ture, before the gates of Constantinope, of the Treaty of 
 San Stefano. 
 
 In a word, the programme of " Greater Bulgaria " was 
 being put into effect, and the boundaries thereof were 
 already determined {vide Art. 6). 
 
 After the signature of the Treaty of San Stefano, 
 by which the Hellenic populations of European Turkey 
 were divided off from each other and delivered up to the 
 insatiable appetite of the Slavs, the leading spirit of the 
 Treaty, GenenJ Ignatieff, exclaimed with satisfaction, 
 " Now the Greeks will have to swim in order to reach 
 Constantinople." 
 
 In fact, nearly all Macedonia, with the exception of a 
 few outlying portions {e.g., the district near Salonica, the 
 Chalcidike peninsula, and the district round Olympus 
 and Pindus), was incorporated in " Greater Bulgaria," 
 which was thus rendered geographically sovereign in the 
 centre of the Balkan Peninsula.* 
 
 * Paix de San -Stefano. 
 
 Article 6. — . . . L'uteiidue de la principaute de Bulgarie est fixee en traits 
 generaux sur la carte ci-jointe, qui devra servir de base a la delimitation 
 definitive. 
 
 En quittant la nouvelle frontiere de la principaute serbe, le trace suivra 
 la limite occidentale du caza de Vrani'a jusqu'a la chaine du Karadagh. 
 
 Tournant vers I'ouest, la ligne suivra les limites occidentales des cazas de 
 Koumanovo, Kotchani, Kalkandelen jusqu'au mont Korab ; de la par la 
 riviere Velestchitza jusqu'a sa jonction avec le Drine Noir. Se dirigeant 
 vers le sud par le Drine et apres par la limite occidentale du caza d'Ochride
 
 8 Greeks and Bulgarians 
 
 Great Britain, however, protested against this treaty, 
 her chief argument being that the national rights of 
 Hellenism were being shamelessly ignored. Owing to 
 English influence, the Treaty of San Stefano was torn to 
 shreds. A European Conference was held at Berlin, and 
 a new era was inaugurated in the Balkan Peninsula, 
 a Bulgarian Principality being created by detaching 
 certain provinces from Turkish rule. 
 
 With regard to Greece and the rights of Hellenism, 
 the Conference merely recommended the cession of the 
 Turkish provinces of Epirus and Thessaly to the kingdom 
 of Greece, and the application of a wide system of reform 
 in the island of Crete, then in a state of rebellion against 
 the Porte. It was also resolved that the necessary reforms 
 should be carried out in Macedonia, Thrace, Albania, and 
 Armenia, under the supervision and control of the Great 
 Powers. It is to be noticed that in referring to tiie 
 provinces of Thrace and Macedonia, Lord Salisbury in- 
 sisted that " Thrace and Macedonia, as well as Crete, are 
 Greek." 
 
 Almost all the decisions of the Great Powers represented 
 at the Berlin Conference were promptly carried into 
 effect, especially as regarded the claims of the Slavs. 
 They had as their champion and protector the Hussian 
 
 vers le mont Linas, la frontiere suivra les limites occidentales des cazas de 
 Gortcha et Starovo jusqu'au mont Grammes. Ensiiite, par le lac de Kastoria, 
 la ligne frontiere rejoindra la riviere Moglenit/.a et apres avoir suivi son 
 coura et pass6 au sud de Yanitza (Wardar-Yenidje) se dirigera par I'em- 
 bouehure du Wardar et par le Galliko vers les villages de Parga et de Sarai- 
 keui ; de la par le milieu du lac Bechik-guel a I'embouchure des rivieres 
 Strouma et Karassou et par la cote maritime jusqu'au Buru-guel ; plus loin, 
 partaiit dans la direction nord-ouestvers le mont Tchaltepe par la chaine du 
 Khodope jusqu'au mont Krouscovo, par les Balkans Noirs (Kara-Balkan) 
 par les monts Eschek Koulatchi, Tchepel'Dn, Karakolas et Tchiklar, jusqu'a 
 la riviere Arda. 
 
 De la, la ligne frontiere sera ttacee dans la direction de la ville de Tcli rmen, 
 et, laissant la ville d'Andrinople au midi par les villages de Sugutlion, Kara- 
 Hamja, Arnaoutkeui, Akardji et Enidje jusqu'a la riviere Tekederessi. En 
 suivant le cours du Tekederessi et du Tchorlouderessi jusqu'a Loule-Bourgas, 
 et de la, par la riviere Soudjakdere jusqu'au village de Serguen, la ligne 
 frontiere ira par les hauteurs directement vers Hakim Tablassi ou elle 
 aboutira a la Mer Noire. 
 
 Elle quittera la cute maritime pres de Mangalia, en longeant les limites 
 mer.dionales du sandjak de Toultcha et aboutira au Danube an dessus de 
 Rassova.
 
 Greeks and Bulgarians 9 
 
 Government, as was pointed out at the Conference by the 
 noble Marquis who was at that time so skilfully direct- 
 ing the foreign policy of England. The text of his reply 
 to Prince Gortchakoff, who opposed the contention of 
 the British delegates that the independent kingdom of 
 Greece should be represented at the Conference, is given 
 below.* 
 
 The truth of Lord Salisbury's statement is, unfortu- 
 nately, still being confirmed ; but it is yet more regret- 
 
 * Protocole No. 2— Stance du 17 Juin 1878. 
 
 Le Marquis de Salisbury: . . . Le Congres n'ignore pas que pendant ces 
 dernieres annees les liens d'amitie qui unissaient autrefo.s les sujets grecs 
 et slaves de la Porte ont ete rompus. D'allies ils sont devenus rivaux. Les 
 slaves, qui reconnaissaient autrefois I'autorite du Patriarche grec, se sont 
 rallies a une nouvelle organisation eccles astique qui a reclame leur soumis- 
 sion. Dans une grande partie du territoire habite par la race grecque le 
 droit de posseder les eglises et les ecoles a donne lieu a des constatations, 
 souvent meme a des luttes, entre les populations des deux races. 
 
 Le conflit s'est profondement a grave a la suite des evenemcnts qui se 
 sont passes pendant ces derniers mois, et les passions eiigendre-S par ces 
 conflits ont de plus en plus eloigne ces deux races I'une de .'autre. II 
 s'agissait de quelquechose de plus que d'une divergence d'op nion sur la 
 question du regime ecclesiastique. Les grecs redoutent, et avec raison, la 
 subjugai ion de leur Eglise, la suppression de leur langue et I'absorption et 
 la disparition progressive de leur race, si leurs rivaux se trouva ent dans 
 une position preponderante. 
 
 Get point sont pour eux d'un interet capilal et leur sort depend de la 
 forme que donnera le Congres aux dispositions qui seront arretees dans le 
 but de proteger les Chretiens et d'assurer I'ordreet la securite aux provinces 
 de la Turquie Europeenne. 
 
 Mais les deux races ne sont pas devant le Congres sur un pied egal. 
 
 Les slaves ont pour defenseur dans cette salle un puissant peuple mili- 
 taire, leur frere p .r le sang et par la foi, fort du prestige des victoires 
 recentes. 
 
 Les grecs, au contraire, n'ont ici comme represen'ant aucune nation de 
 meme race. 
 
 Le Gouvernement de sa M i jeste est d'avis que des decisions prises dans 
 ces conditions ne contenteraient pas la race grecque, et par consequent 
 n'ameneraient ni la tranquillite de I'Empire Ottoman ni la paix de 
 I'Europe. 
 
 11 est a craindre que de nouvelles agitations ne surgissent parmi ce peuple 
 profondement devoue a sa foi et a sa nationality, qui aura J a conviction 
 que I'Europe I'a abandonn^ et I'a livj e a la domination d'une race de 
 laquelle ses sympa hies sont tout-a-fait eloignees. 
 
 L'Angleterre propose done que le royaume Hellenique soit adm's a 
 remplir ce rule en f aveur des grecs, et a prendre part aux deliberations du 
 C ngres : du moins a assister a toutes les seances dans lesquelles des questions 
 se rattachent aux interets de la race grecque seront discutees. 
 
 Le Prince Gortchacov) : . . . Le Prince Gorfchacow declare done d'avance 
 qu'il associera meme pour les grecs de I'Empire Ottoman une autonomic 
 pareille a cette qui ts. reclame pour les slaves. Le but de son Gouverne-
 
 10 Greeks and Bulgarians 
 
 table that after thirty years the Bulgarian population of 
 the Balkan Peninsula should to-day find among their 
 warmest advocates and defenders not only the members 
 of the Secret Council of St. Petersburg, but also that 
 very Government which so zealously defended Hellenic 
 rights both on the Bosphorus and at Berlin ; for both 
 Thrace and Macedonia are to-day practically treated as 
 Bulgarian provinces in official documents of the Foreign 
 Office in England. 
 
 A year has not yet passed since the statesman who 
 was directing the foreign policy of the British Cabinet 
 categorically expressed his belief in the Bulgarian 
 character of Thrace and Macedonia. 
 
 The following extract from a Yellow Book of the 
 French Government, dated January 9, 1905, is a com- 
 munication made by the French Ambassador in London, 
 M. Cambon, to M. Delcasse, then Minister for Foreign 
 Affiiirs of the Bepublic : 
 
 " The Secretary of State, the Marquis of Lansdowne, 
 replied that he would give me a written statement of his 
 views as to the probable solutions, but that he was even 
 now of opinion that the intervention of the Powers should 
 be extended to the vilayets of Adrianople and Jannina, 
 the former comprising the Bulgarian and the latter the 
 Greek population." 
 
 I will advance nothing a 'priori with regard to the 
 present crisis in the Balkan Peninsula, which has resulted 
 to a great extent from the selfish policy of some of the 
 European Powers, who merely seek their own political 
 interests. I could adduce many facts, which are confirmed 
 by official Europe itself, clearly showing that the state of 
 anarchy now prevailing in Macedonia is due, partly to the 
 insincere policy of official Europe, and partly to the greedy 
 and criminal activity of the Bulgarian committees, en- 
 
 ment est de rapprocher ces deux races. Quant a la question religieuse a la 
 quelle Lord Salisbury a fait allusion, son altesse doit faire remarquer qu'il 
 n'y a point de dissidence religieuse au fond entre le Patriarchat grec et 
 I'Exaichat Bulgare : c'est uniquement une question de liturgie qui a amene 
 la separation des deux Eglises.
 
 Greeks and Bulgarians 11 
 
 couraged by several European Powers who have an 
 interest in the continuance of this anarchy in the 
 Balkan Peninsula. 
 
 It is hardly necessary to repeat that the causes of the 
 conflict between the Christian peoples of Macedonia are 
 neither religious, doctrinal, nor ecclesiastical. 
 
 I have already shown, and shall soon again prove, that 
 the Greeks of Macedonia have for some time past been 
 defending their homes against the Bulgarian bands, which 
 are encouraged by the Government of the principality 
 and even commended by a considerable portion of the 
 public opinion of Europe. The Bulgarian Government 
 has taken advantage of this strife between Greeks and 
 Bulgarians to perpetrate by means of the mob the 
 recent abominable outrages on the unfortunate Greeks 
 residing in that country. Of these crimes I have authentic 
 accounts, not only from Greek and other sources, but 
 even from Bulgarian eye-witnesses, whose better feelings 
 revolted at the sight of such atrocities. 
 
 I have been hindered by indiHerent health from under- 
 taking sooner the cheerless task of attempting to enlighten 
 public opinion in England as to the facts which I have 
 just mentioned. But I now entreat your aid. Sir, in the 
 hope of overcoming the indifference which has been 
 shown in both official and unofficial circles in England to 
 the sufferings of the Greek population under Bulgarian 
 rule. 
 
 If the official reports are examined, it will soon appear 
 that it is the duty of Europe to apply pressure in 
 certain quarters with regard to the excesses now being 
 committed in Macedonia. But will it be the agitators 
 in Sofia, or those who are defending their own lives 
 in Macedonia, who will in the end suffer for these 
 atrocities ? It is the duty of Europe to consider whether 
 the commission of such crimes is creditable to or per- 
 missible by the civilisation which is the white man's 
 burden and pride ; crimes which, if committed by yellow, 
 black, or red races, would have called forth the prompt 
 intervention of an international crusade. 
 
 The prime object of the Berlin Conference was, first,
 
 12 Greeks and Bulgarians 
 
 to emancipate the Christian peoples suffering under the 
 Turkish yoke, and, secondly, to guarantee the personal 
 freedom of all those populations. Above all, liberty of 
 conscience in religion and education as well as in political 
 and social relations was to be assured to all. In order 
 to attain this end, the necessary measures were taken at 
 the Conference ; and the representatives of the European 
 Powers there assembled showed every desire to respect 
 and protect all the rights of the populations whose 
 conditions were to be ameliorated under the new order. 
 Thus new Bulgaria was created with the obligation to 
 respect the religious and social rights of the different 
 nationalities included in the principality. 
 
 The Conference was fully conscious that the old racial 
 and religious differences of the Greeks and Bulgarians 
 would not be terminated by the new order of things. 
 They could not hope that a national hatred whose origin 
 was considerably older than its latest manifestation 
 would be easily forgotten under the pressure of a policy 
 of forcible assimilation — per fas el nefas. 
 
 As I have already pointed out, the late Lord Salisbury, 
 when attacking the Treaty of San Stefano, based his chief 
 argument on the fate awaiting the Greek inhabitants of 
 the Balkan Peninsula if they were left to the mercy of the 
 insatiable Slavs ; and at Berlin he consistently declared 
 the danger to which the Greek race would be exposed In 
 the newly established principality if its religious and 
 other liberties were not assured. 
 
 The words of the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs 
 were in every respect prophetic. Notwithstanding the 
 measures adopted by the Conference for their protection, 
 these unfortunate subjects of the Bulgarian Government, 
 who were relieved from the oppression of one tryanny in 
 order to be placed under another, have suffered and are 
 still suffering greater hardships than those which they 
 endured under the domination of the Turks. 
 
 This I will proceed to prove, setting down the actual 
 facts in defence of justice and truth.
 
 THE BULGARIAN CHARACTER 
 
 Before, however, entering upon my narrative, I wish 
 to show you the Bulgarian in his true colours as he 
 is depicted by a number of independent authorities, 
 including some of his own compatriots. I shall cite 
 as witnesses both ancient and modern writers, for the 
 Bulgarian has not in the least changed since the sixth 
 century, when he followed the hordes of the Hunnish 
 chief Attila. 
 
 The recently deceased Bulgarian poet Wasoff, in a 
 work entitled "An Obscure Hero," thus addresses his 
 compatriots : " Oh, my people, I shudder when I behold 
 your inhuman countenances brutalised by passions. 
 Bondwomen were the mothers who gave ye birth. The 
 voice of pity is foreign to ye, for cruelty is the element 
 of your life ! " 
 
 I annex to this poetical outburst the following sketch 
 of the Bulgarian people, taken from the works of the 
 French historian Thierry : 
 
 **The Bulgarians, or more correctly Vulgarians, formed 
 the rearguard of the group of Finnish Huns that during 
 the last civil wars had arrived from the depths of Siberia 
 to pitch their tents on the banks of the great river which 
 was then called and is still known in the Tartar dialects 
 as the Athel or Athil, and which took the name of Volga 
 (river of the Vulgars) when the Vulgarians had become 
 established in Europe. It is necessary to return to the 
 fourteenth century, the date of the first Hunnish invasion, 
 in order to find in history an impression of terror and 
 disgust comparable to that excited by these new arrivals
 
 14 Greeks and Bulgarians 
 
 from the northern solitudes, brutish as the wild beasts 
 of the forest in which they had hitherto dwelt. Corn- 
 pared with them, the European Huns, who had been for 
 more than a century in contact with the Romans and 
 Germans, might almost have been called civilised. Their 
 ugliness, squalor, and ferocious instincts seemed to surpass 
 anything hitherto beheld. They destroyed from love of de- 
 struction, killed from love of slaughter, and set themselves 
 to blot out every work of man, as if they wished to produce 
 everywhere the similitude of their native wilderness. 
 They are not known to have had either religion or 
 worship, except perhaps the grossly superstitious prac- 
 tice of ' chamanism.' There was something devilish in 
 this hideous people, whose sorcerers, distinguished by 
 their still greater hideousness, pretended with frightful 
 contortions to call up the spirits of the dead. It was said 
 that when posted in a corner of the army during the 
 battle they possessed the art of fascinating, disconcerting, 
 and deluding the enemy by means of fantastic apparitions. 
 
 '' The Bulgarian, without restraint in his appetites, was 
 endowed with the lubricity of the beast. He was 
 addicted to every vice, and there is one to which he has 
 the infamous glory of having given his own name in 
 nearly every European language. His institutions 
 seemed to have been framed with a view to encourage 
 murder rather than war. None might attain command 
 if he had not first killed an enemy with his own hand. 
 Everything about his mode of warfare, his enormous 
 bow and long arrows, his sword of red copper, and the 
 net in which he enveloped his enemy while running, 
 inspired an involuntary fear and horror. Of all the 
 barbarians who ravaged the Boman Empire, the Bulgarian 
 has been the invader most consistently hated by his 
 contemporaries and most indelibly stigmatised by 
 posterity. And * accursed of God,' the epithet wrenched 
 by suffering from the Boman peoples of the sixth century, 
 soon became the synonym of the Bulgarian name, and 
 has been consecrated by the use of all subsequent history." 
 
 The opinion of the French geographer Beclus about 
 this people does not differ from that advanced by the
 
 Greeks and Bulgarians 15 
 
 author of the *' History of Attila." "A number of 
 Bulgarian skulls," he says, "studied by Kopernicki, 
 Virchow, and Beddoe are distinguished by certain 
 characteristics observable among the Australian savages." 
 
 A well-known British diplomatist. Sir William White, 
 who ten years later was Ambassador at Constantinople, 
 was in 1875 deputed by the British Government to 
 make a special study of the Bulgarians. The picture he 
 draws of the Bulgarian schoolmaster is especially worthy 
 of remark. 
 
 " The teachers," he wrote, " are people educated for 
 the most part in Bussia. On their return to their 
 native land they brought with them, besides a superficial 
 learning, some very curious ideas about Panslavism. 
 Their plan was as follows : to destroy as many railway 
 lines as possible, to set fire to the towns of Adrianople 
 and Philippopolis in many places, to burn Sofia and the 
 surrounding villages, to attack the Turkish. peasants, to 
 slaughter all the Mussulmans daring to resist, and to 
 pillage their property." 
 
 In the period from 1876 to 1906 the political status 
 but not the nature of the ordinary Bulgarian has 
 changed. Education in Bulgaria at the present day is 
 based upon no moral foundation and ruled by the 
 vulgarest materialism. Teachers and pupils alike are 
 swayed by anarchical tendencies. Their books, both on 
 elementary and higher education, have but one object, 
 namely, to inspire the people with savage desires and to 
 accentuate their natural instincts. The training of the 
 Bulgarian pupil is similar to that of the teacher. Mr. 
 Michailovski, one of the coryphei of the Bulgarian move- 
 ment, a professor and a deputy, was obliged to confess in 
 a published work the depravity and degeneracy of the 
 Bulgarian youth owing to such examples. But, in order 
 to give a fuller idea of the Bulgarian soul as it has been 
 shaped and perfected since the establishment of the 
 principality, I append some extracts from the minutes 
 of a meeting of Bulgarian schoolmasters, taken from the 
 Bulgarian journal Evening Mail, which appears at Sofia, 
 and is the recognised organ of Bulgarian Liberalism.
 
 IG Greeks and Bulgarians 
 
 " A Bulgarian teacher from Macedonia, graduate of 
 the High School, among other remarks spoke as follows 
 against religious education, advocating Its abolition in 
 the schools, and asserting that the demoralisation observ- 
 able In the schools was largely the result of such 
 teaching : 
 
 " * Ileliglon, instead of forming free citizens, makes 
 hypocritical priests, slaves w^ho Influence the heads of 
 Government and the public officials. The hypocritical 
 priest makes the red workman, in order to maintain and 
 feed the priesthood. The study of history shows the evil 
 arising from religion. Beligion prepares men for heaven, 
 but not for this world or for a free political life. On this 
 account this cowardly and benighting religion should not 
 be tolerated in our schools to the encourao^ement of 
 slavery, horror, and moral murder/ 
 
 '* Another teacher and schoolmaster asked the meeting, 
 ' Which religion is the right one ? There are many re- 
 ligions in Bulgaria — the Mohammedan, Jewish, Catholic, 
 Protestant, Gypsy, and Orthodox. How can the teacher 
 give instruction in the face of such a variety of religions ? 
 It is still an open question as to which religion is the 
 best and most correct, and on this account no religious 
 education, but only moral instruction, should be given in 
 our schools. He who desires religion may teach it to his 
 children at home, but not in the school. The fearful 
 word " religion " must never be heard in our schools.' 
 
 " These remarks were applauded by the meeting. 
 
 " The crusade against religion goes further. Another 
 teacher proclaimed that * it is depraved and immoral to 
 tell children that a god formed the first woman from 
 a rib of the first man Adam.' A colleague added that 
 " it Is a shame that Bulgaria in the twentieth century 
 believes the lies of the priesthood. This evil must be 
 expelled from Bulgarian schools. It is a shame and an 
 infamy for us to continue to suffer such uncleanliness, 
 such a soulless essence, such a reeking God. This 
 bloodthirsty Jewish God must be turned out of the 
 Bulgarian schools. If religion is left in our schools, 
 everywhere will be seen the priest, the ecclesiastic,
 
 Greeks and Bulgarians 17 
 
 censor, foul ministers of a foul God, and nothing 
 
 more." 
 
 Another Bulgarian teacher, applauding these infamies, 
 asked, among other questions, " What liberty or brother- 
 hood can exist among the citizens with so heavy a chain 
 as religion ? If man cannot exist without religion, it is 
 better for him to adopt the Mohammedan religion, for this 
 affords greater Hberty than the Christian." 
 
 Those differing from the speaker did not dare to 
 protest, as the majority, or two-thirds of those present, 
 would not permit the slightest objection. Thus two- 
 thirds of the schoolmasters and teachers of one depart- 
 ment of Bulgaria proclaimed themselves against all 
 religious instruction and on behalf of atheism. 
 
 From such moral and spiritual materials has been formed 
 the present principality — that State which, according to 
 enthusiastic admirers of the Bulgarian idea, was to prove 
 a model for the degenerate races of Eastern Europe, 
 the Greeks, Albanians, Servians, and Turks, and was 
 compared to Piedmont, and Prussia, and more recently 
 to Japan ! 
 
 I do not care to give the names of their admirers. With 
 some of them I am personally acquainted, and I am not 
 so ungrateful as to forget the interest in the welfare 
 of the Greek nation which they showed until quite 
 recently. I would only ask them to examine contem- 
 poraneous Bulgarian history, social, political, and national, 
 and to observe impartially the recent events in Bulgaria 
 and Eastern Bumelia, of which I shall further on give a 
 faithful account, based upon evidence from both Bulgarian 
 and foreign sources, on the personal testimony of 
 Europeans entirely unconnected with the Greek nation. 
 I invite them to say in what way the Bulgarians of 
 Asparvuch, of Crumm, and of the Tsar Simeon differ from 
 the twentieth century Bulgarians of Stambouloff and 
 Prince Ferdinand. 
 
 Three years ago, at the time of the unprovoked out- 
 rages perpetrated by the Bulgarians in many parts of 
 Thrace and Macedonia, a French journalist, who during 
 his stay in Macedonia had studied and analysed the
 
 18 Greeks and Bulgarians 
 
 Bulgarian character, wrote that " not Canaris or Gari- 
 baldi, but Bavachol, is the true hero in the eyes of the 
 Bulgarian." 
 
 M. Pressense also, who has so often pleaded the cause 
 of Bulgaria in the columns of the Paris 2'emps and in 
 the French Chamber, as well as at meetings in Paris and 
 London, and who has disputed every Greek claim to 
 Macedonia, was compelled after the commission of these 
 atrocities to give the following advice in the Parisian 
 organ just mentioned : 
 
 "The Turkish Government should bind the necks 
 of these dynamitards, not with ropes, but with the 
 ribbon of the Osmanieh, for they have rendered it 
 invaluable service. The bombs of the revolutionaries 
 of Salonica have laid the ghost of heroic Macedonia, 
 which for a few moments moved the world. 
 
 " Behind the patriot Europe has descried the anarchist 
 and the savage. The spell is broken." 
 
 Such, then, is the moral physiognomy of the Bulgarian 
 of to-day, considered as a man and as a citizen. 
 
 Have you. Sir, ever investigated the causes and circum- 
 stances of the assassinations of Major Panitza of the 
 Bulgarian army, of Dimitroff, of Yeltzeff, and of Stam- 
 bouloff ? An inquiry of this kind would well repay the 
 honest and impartial investigator, and might make the 
 European nations regret their pet creation in Eastern 
 Rumelia of the so-called Bulgarian State, which has 
 notlnng better to show, after thirty years of political 
 life, than crimes and coups d'etat, unless, indeed, in the 
 eyes of civilised Europe the most desirable characteristic 
 in the evolution of a people is not a regard for the most 
 precious interests of humanity, but mere military power 
 and unscrupulous force.
 
 II 
 
 THE PERSECUTION OF HELLENISM IN BULGARIA 
 AND EASTERN RUMELIA 
 
 The government of new Bulgaria was at first entrusted 
 to Russian organisers, until the German Prince Alexander 
 of Battenberg was appointed Governor. 
 
 The young Prince possessed great political and military 
 qualifications, as well as a proportionate ambition, and 
 was able in a very short time to reawaken the military 
 ardour of his subjects, to form their military character, 
 and within seven years to create a military force strong 
 enough to attract the sympathy and inspire the confidence 
 of Europe. Those very same Powers which, seven years 
 previously, had opposed the idea of the Greater Bulgaria 
 as sketched by the Treaty of San Stefano now incited 
 the ambitious Prince to occupy Philippopolis, and to join 
 under his rule the two Bulgarias, i.e., that properly so 
 called and Eastern Bumelia, the population of which 
 consisted of Greeks, Bulgarians, and Turks. 
 
 This coup d'etat was opportune, directed as it was 
 against that Europe which had at Berlin arranged all 
 the affairs of this land in a different manner. The Greek 
 element, in some degree free, vigorously resisted Bul- 
 garianism in all the chief towns of the semi-independent 
 principality — at Philippopolis, Stenimachos, Pyrgos, 
 Anchialos, and elsewhere — and there was some hope 
 that, owing to its superior intellectual power, it would 
 regain its former ascendancy, part of the Mohammedan 
 section having emigrated, while the rest were tranquilly 
 toiling in the rural districts of the country. Once the 
 Bulgarians awoke to what was happening, they hastened
 
 20 Greeks and Bulgarians 
 
 to occupy Eastern Bumelia and to annex it to the 
 Bulgarian principality. 
 
 The England of 1885 had forgotten the England of 
 1878, and thrown over her generous defence of the rights 
 of the Greek population in the Balkans. The coup d'etat 
 of Philippopolis brought about the very state of things 
 which the Marquis of Salisbury had so vigorously de- 
 nounced. And in recognising the fait accompli, England 
 agreed to sacrifice the Greeks of that country to the 
 ambition of the Bulgarians and the rapacity of Pan- 
 slavism. The Prince of Bulgaria, at the instance of the 
 representatives of the Great Powers at Constantinople, 
 and especially of the English Ambassador, was recog- 
 nised by the Sultan s Government as Yali of Eastern 
 Bumelia. 
 
 In his Memoirs, published a few years ago, Elias 
 Tsaneff, a Bulgarian diplomat, at that time representing 
 the princiiDality at Constantinople, writes as follows 
 regarding the support afforded him at Constantinople by 
 the representative of Great Britain : 
 
 " The representatives of England and Italy more than 
 once congratulated me on the second and third terms 
 of the agreement.* The former described them as ' splen- 
 did,' and the latter as ' an unhoped-for success.' 
 
 " Sir W. White, the British Ambassador, took great 
 pains to arrange that the appointment of the Governor 
 
 * The second and third terms of the agreement were as follows : Article 2. 
 — So long as his Highness shall observe a policy of order and loyalty toward 
 the Suzerain, and shall devote his efforts to the maintenance of order and 
 safety in the province, as well as to the welfare of the population of Eastern 
 Rumelia, his appointment as General Governor will be directly ratified by 
 H.M. the Sultan, in virtue of a firman, to be renewed after the expiration 
 of five years, as provided in the seventeenth Article of the same Treaty. 
 Article 3. — So long as the Government of Eastern Rumelia and that of the 
 principality of Bulgaria shall be in the hands of one and the same person, 
 the Ottoman Government shall divide off from Eastern Rumelia and govern 
 directly the Mussulman villages of the province of Kartzali, and also the 
 Mussulman villages known to exist on the mountains of Rhodope which 
 have hitherto been left without this province, and this in exchange for the 
 right of the Imperiu 1 Government, as given in paragraph 1 of the fifteenth 
 Article of the Berlin Treaty. The definition of the boundaries of this pro- 
 vince and of the afore&aid villages shall be effected by a committee appointed 
 by the Sublime Porte and Prince Alexander, the strategic points being 
 reserved for the benefit of the Imperial Government.
 
 Greeks and Bulgarians 21 
 
 should be for life, but in this he was unsuccessful. So 
 much the better, for by such an appointment the personal 
 union is very clearly defined. He intended to make 
 another attempt, but, after a careful examination of the 
 question, he informed me that his Government would also 
 agree to the modification on which the other Powers had 
 decided." 
 
 These facts clearly illustrate the inconsistency of Euro- 
 pean diplomacy. 
 
 The Russian Government, although it feigned dis- 
 content, was inwardly pleased. But when after an 
 interval the Prince of Bulgaria, the hero of Slivnitza, 
 began to manifest anti-Russian sentiments, and declined 
 to be made the tool of Russian policy in the Balkans, he 
 was expelled by a conspiracy which was supported by 
 Russian agents, and was compelled to abdicate. 
 
 On the recognition of the new status, the Bulgarians, 
 understanding that the policy of Europe was on their 
 side, commenced an unrelenting persecution of everything 
 Greek in the country. The Greeks were practically 
 placed outside the law ; schools and churches were 
 closed, and even the use of the Greek language itself 
 was expressly proscribed. 
 
 This oppression of the national conscience is still being 
 carried on openly and under the very eyes of the Euro- 
 pean representatives. There was a pre-arranged plan to 
 crush the force of Hellenism in Eastern Rumelia, and 
 the plan has been successfully inaugurated. 
 
 The Bulgarians do not hesitate to interfere, if not 
 officially at least socially, and with the aid of what poli- 
 tical devices come to their hand, even in marriages 
 between Greeks, and they attempt to break up Greek 
 families by practically forcing at least one Bulgarian 
 into each household. 
 
 Innumerable examples could be cited, but I shall 
 confine myself to an instance which occurred a short 
 time ago at Philippopolis, and which illustrates the 
 Bulgarian's cynical repudiation of every ordinance, human 
 or divine.
 
 22 Greeks and Bulgarians 
 
 k notable Greek resident of Philippopolis, one of 
 the wealthiest inhabitants of the capital of Eastern 
 liumelia, directed in his will that none of his daughters 
 should marry a Bulgarian under pain of being dis- 
 inherited. 
 
 In spite of this, every one of his daughters was com- 
 pelled, whether so disposed or not, to espouse a Bulgarian 
 husband. 
 
 The relatives dared not protest against these mar- 
 riages, as the Bulgarian bridegrooms, having the support 
 of the authorities, would in any case have succeeded in 
 preventing the terms of the will being put into execution 
 by the Bulgarian courts. In this manner one of the 
 best Greek ftimilies of Philippopolis, or indeed of Eastern 
 Eumelia, was extinguished. 
 
 This incident does not stand alone. Woe to the 
 Greek father who refuses his consent to the marriage of 
 his daughter with an influential Bulgarian. His family 
 would be extirpated, j^our encoiirager les autres. The 
 Bulgarian hatred of Greeks sometimes touches the 
 absurd. In the town of Pyrgos, almost entirely inhabited 
 by Greeks, there is a coffee-house called the "Anti- 
 Hellenism," which every true Bulgarian is found to fre- 
 quent. 
 
 Within hearing of the police the Bulgarian mob sing 
 their most insulting and provocative songs, the favourite 
 being one which refers to the slaughter of the Greeks 
 and the subversion of their independence. 
 
 At every moment the Greek is in danger of his life. 
 In Philippopolis Greeks are unable to leave their houses 
 at night, and if by chance they should have to remain 
 out later than usual, they must take their lives in their 
 hands. 
 
 During a few days spent at PhiHppopolis in the 
 summer of 1902 the following episode, which is character- 
 istic of the condition of the common rights enjoyed by 
 the Greek residents of Bulgaria, was related to me. 
 
 The boys at the Greek school of this town had been 
 giving an exhibition of gymnastics, which was held 
 officially before the Greek notables and the members of
 
 Greeks and Bulgarians 23 
 
 the community, the Bulgarian authorities being also 
 invited to attend. 
 
 The exhibition proved a success ; the pupils attracted 
 the attention of all the spectators, by their manly bear- 
 ing and gymnastic efficiency, and on the following day 
 one of the local newspapers published an article referring 
 to the success of the exhibition, and speaking in high 
 terms of the results. This was apparently sufficient to 
 concentrate the jealousy and animosity of the Bulgarians 
 upon the unfortunate writer of the article, one of the 
 professors at the Greek school, who the same night was 
 murderously attacked in a coffee-house in the centre of 
 the town. 
 
 To a protest on the part of the leaders of the Greek 
 community the Governor of the town repUed in the most 
 casual manner : '' Were you not afraid openly to hold 
 such a pretentious entertainment ? Do you think you 
 would be allowed to do that if you were in Turkey ? " 
 Whereupon a member of the deputation appropriately 
 reminded the representative of the law that he was 
 mistaken if he regarded them as rayalis, since by the 
 statutory law of Eastern Bumelia all its inhabitants, 
 irrespective of their nationality, had the same rights, of 
 which no one could legally deprive the Greek popu- 
 lation. 
 
 The Governor appeared to yield, but none of the 
 offenders were punished ; and the result of this regret- 
 table incident was that the victim of the attack was 
 compelled hastily to leave Bulgarian territory, in order 
 to avoid experiencing on his person any further manifesta- 
 tions of Bulgarian fanaticism. 
 
 There is at present one law for the Bulgarian and 
 another for the Greek ; and unless the proper measures 
 are taken in time by the European Powers respon- 
 sible for the establishment of the political status in 
 Bulgaria, the Greek population of Bulgaria will soon be 
 annihilated. 
 
 I extract the following edifying paragraph from a 
 Bulgarian journal issued at Sofia, the Zajpadna Bol- 
 garia :
 
 24 Greeks and Bulgarians 
 
 *' The winter evening receptions have commenced at 
 the Military Club of Philippopolis. Amongst the guests 
 the chief places are usually occupied by Greeks and Jews, 
 and the language spoken at the club is Greek. We are 
 not aware that preference is given in any other club to 
 these two loathsome elements. It is, however, a consola- 
 tion that, if our information is correct, all the officers with 
 one accord signed in the books of the club a protest 
 against the invitation of Jews and Greeks ; and only 
 Messrs. Doloff and Botseff, who issue the objection- 
 able invitations, refuse to agree with the entire body of 
 the officers of the Guard, and persist in their affection 
 for Palestine and Athens respectively. Happy Greeks ! 
 to number Bulgarian colonels among the agents of 
 Hellenism ! " 
 
 Last winter a distinguished Greek who was valiantly 
 vnidicating the national rights of his compatriots in Bul- 
 garia had his name removed from the books of the 
 club, on the ground that he had, in the newspaper the 
 Philippopolis, of which he was the editor, pubhshed 
 articles condemning the exploits of Bulgarian brigands 
 in Macedonia. 
 
 But perhaps the following words of another Greek 
 journalist, the editor of the Balkan Neics, will convey a 
 better idea of the ingenious oppression of the Government 
 of Eastern Buraelia : 
 
 " Our churches, our schools, our property, and our pro- 
 fessions are in the hands of the lowest type of Bulgarian 
 fanaticism. You build a school, and if you do not allow 
 the Bulgarian contractor to build it as he likes, and at 
 the price he demands, you run the risk of losing it alto- 
 gether, for he will move heaven and earth to have it confis- 
 cated on the pretence that it is built on Bulgarian ground. 
 You let to the meanest Bulgarian a house belonging to 
 the community, and if you venture to request him to leave, 
 in order that you may have it repaired, or if you hand 
 it over to some poor but orthodox priest or layman, the
 
 Greeks and Bulgarians 25 
 
 man at once allies himself with the Bulgarian priests and 
 parish in order to seize the property. You try to exer- 
 cise your profession or trade in order in extend your 
 business, and at once the committee for the assessment 
 of taxes will ruin you by a most exorbitant and uncon- 
 scionable tax, because you happen to be a Greek ; in the 
 law courts, witnesses and even lawyers endeavour to 
 influence the judges, and openly maintain that in a case 
 between a Greek and a Bulgarian, the preference ceteris 
 paribus must be given to the latter. We Greeks pay 
 school rates to the amount of 100,000 levies, yet the 
 Government gives not one centime to our schools, but 
 expends this tax, which we pay by the sweat of our 
 brows, in subsidising Bulgarian, Turkish, Jewish, and 
 Armenian schools. At Stenimachos no Greek can be 
 elected mayor, notwithstanding the Greek majority in 
 that town. Dr. Tatartzief, a member of the so-called 
 " Internal Organisation " to which the Greeks attribute 
 the crimes committed in Macedonia, is no sooner arrested 
 at Athens than a crusade is here commenced against us 
 who are completely innocent in the affair. Greek physi- 
 cians are expelled from the medical societies, many 
 Greeks are dismissed from the army, and others are 
 persecuted in other ways. And why ? Because Dr. 
 Tatartzief has been illegally arrested at Athens ; because 
 Dr. Tatartzief is, as he himself declared at Athens, a 
 member of no revolutionary party in Macedonia, in spite 
 of the fact that Dr. Tatartzief represented himself before 
 Count Lamsdorf, the Bussian Minister, as one of the 
 leading members of the notorious " Internal Organisa- 
 tion." We ask for justice, we ask for those rights which 
 not even the Turks or other more barbarous people deny 
 to their subjects, we ask from the Bulgarian what 
 the Bulgarian himself asks when abroad : we ask for our 
 Church and school, and for the equal dispensation of 
 justice to all; we ask not to be considered as pariahs, 
 and not to be at the mercy of any adventurer, brigand, or 
 assassin. . . . The Bulgarians do not seize the monas- 
 teries of Pyrgos, Varna, Stenimachos, and Cavacli, or the
 
 26 Greeks and Bulgarians 
 
 churches and properties belonging to these monasteries at 
 Mesemvria, Philippopolis,Stenimachos, Ferdinandovo,and 
 Chaskovo, because they are monasteries and churches, or 
 because they are valuable property which they require, 
 but because they are Greek. These seizures are no 
 ordinary acts of robbery ; they are part of a plan which 
 aims at the gradual but complete extirpation of the 
 Greek element in Bulgaria." 
 
 The programme for the annihilation of the Greek 
 element in the Balkan Peninsula is complete, and the 
 worst crimes perpetrated in its execution were justified 
 and countenanced by the Russian Minister just men- 
 tioned when he condescended to receive Dr, Tatartzief, 
 the notorious representative in Macedonia of the "Internal 
 Organisation" (i.e., knovai as the "Assassination Com- 
 mittee of Sofia"), which has filled Macedonia with 
 devastation and horror. 
 
 And what can the Greeks do ? Shall they yield after 
 so many centuries ? Must they emigrate ? No ! It is 
 their duty to struggle and to protest, in the hope* that 
 they may overcome and get back their own in the day 
 when European policy is guided and controlled by force 
 of truth and in the interests of justice. 
 
 If the Greeks in the principality continue to struggle 
 against Bulgarian tyranny, hoping for a more favourable 
 future, the Mohammedans have found it better to abandon 
 Bulgarian territory in despair. The emigration of the 
 Mohammedan population is very heavy, in spite of 
 the fact that the Prince of Bulgaria, Governor-General 
 of Eastern Bumelia, is under the suzerainty of the 
 Sultan. 
 
 "At Philippopolis, on Christmas Eve, the door of the 
 Turkish mosque was broken open ; the lamps, candle- 
 sticks, and candles were broken to pieces and thrown on 
 the ground. The authors of this outrage were proved 
 to be soldiers, who were arrested. The Bulgarian judges, 
 however, chose to treat them as children under
 
 Greeks and Bulgarians 27 
 
 age, and Bulgarian justice refrained from punishing 
 them." * 
 
 " A muezzin chanting from the minaret was jeered at, 
 and a worthy Bulgarian, Drensky by name, handed over 
 the delinquent to a gendarme, who, after holding him by 
 the hand and accompanying him a few steps, saluted him 
 and departed." 
 
 " The glass windows of the mosques were broken with 
 stones. The offenders were denounced to the court, but 
 no steps were taken against them by the latter." 
 
 No wonder the Turk emigrates. 
 
 A whole book could be written about the moral worth 
 and character of Bulgarian rule in this part of the Balkan 
 Peninsula. The persecution of every Christian person 
 not belonging to the ruling race has become quite cus- 
 tomary. Bulgarian audacity increases from day to day, 
 and at no very distant date a general exodus will be 
 ordered or enforced of all the non-Balga^ian populations 
 of the principality, Greek or Mussulman. 
 
 History will record this crime of forcible expatriation 
 among the liabilities of the Berlin Treaty and of the 
 coup dJetat of Philippopolis, which received the benign 
 sanction of civilised Europe. 
 
 Before concluding the history of the persecution of 
 Hellenism in Eastern Rumelia, I may be permitted to 
 repeat the account of an incident which is very charac- 
 teristic of the state of affairs in that country, and which 
 I have received from very safe sources. 
 
 In the town of Mesemvria, situated on the Black Sea, 
 in Eastern Bumelia, inhabited almost entirely by Greeks, 
 Greek schools have existed for centuries. There are no 
 Bulgarians in Mesemvria, bat nevertheless a boys' school 
 is kept in full swing, together with an infants' school. 
 
 The inhabitants of Mesemvria being poor, are not able 
 to support an infants' school, and can scarcely provide for 
 the boys' school. 
 
 It will be readily understood that the Greeks in this 
 way submitted to a course of compulsory Bulgarisation. 
 
 * This and the succeeding extracts are taken from a local newspaper.
 
 28 Greeks and Bulgarians 
 
 The Bulgarians have not made a road for years, in order 
 to keep the Greek population isolated and poor, whilst 
 they are of course forced to pay road taxes regularly, on 
 pain of flogging. 
 
 This information is derived from a respectable Greek 
 merchant of this town ; but the picture would not be 
 complete without the relation of the following episode, 
 which clearly shows the manner in which, under the aegis 
 of the Bulgarian Government, Bulgarian ideas are pro- 
 pagated among the Greek population of that country. 
 
 In 1898, on May 11, the fete of the Slav apostles, 
 Cyril and Methodios, a commemoration was held at the 
 Bulgarian school of Mesemvria. 
 
 The religious ceremony was followed by a speech 
 delivered by the head-master, who dwelt upon the 
 significance of the day for Bulgarians. 
 
 After this the little Greek children of the school sang 
 songs and recited poems, all of course in Bulgarian, ex- 
 tolling the heroism of the Bulgarians against their 
 hereditary and only enemies, the Greeks. 
 
 According to these accounts, when the hordes of 
 Crumm and of Simeon the Great, the " Terror of Byzan- 
 tium," marched up to the walls of Constantinople, the 
 Greek Emperor came out, and, falling on his knees before 
 the Bulgarian leader, bagged liim to take his gold, but to 
 spare his throne, &c. &c. 
 
 After this, one of the schoolmistresses, the powerful 
 2')rotegee of a young Bulgarian officer, rose and gave the 
 finishing touch to the insults heaped upon the Greeks 
 by an abusive speech ("swindlers" and "unprincipled " 
 being among the terms she applied to them) ; and her 
 pupils, are all Greek children, with the exception of those 
 of two or three Government officials, and even these are 
 born of Greek mothers. 
 
 As I have already pointed out, the Berlin Conference, 
 in assuring religious and intellectual freedom to the 
 populations freed from Turkish rule, paid especial atten- 
 tion to the safeguarding of these rights by means of the 
 following regulations of the Berlin Treaty and of the 
 Organic Statute of Eastern Rumelia. 
 
 f\
 
 Greeks and Bulgarians 29 
 
 These provisions assure : 
 
 " In localities where the Bulgarians are intermingled 
 with Turkish, Roumanian, Greek, or other populations, 
 the rights and interests of these populations shall be 
 taken into account as regards elections and the working 
 of the Constitution." — Berlin Treaty, Art. 4, § 2. 
 
 And Article 5, § 2 and § 3, of the same Treaty 
 adds : 
 
 " Difference of religious creed or confession shall not 
 be brought against any one as a reason either for 
 exclusion from the enjoyment of civil and political rights, 
 or for ineligibility for admission to the public services, 
 functions, or honours, or to the exercise of the various 
 professions and industries in any locality whatever." 
 
 • 
 
 The liberty and public practice of every religion are 
 assured to all subjects of Bulgaria, as well as to foreigners, 
 and no let or hindrance shall be laid on the ecclesiastical 
 organisation of the different communions or on their 
 relations with their spiritual heads. 
 
 "We, Commissioners of the Powers, the signatories 
 oi the Treaty drawn up at Berlin on the 13th of July, 
 1878, proclaim and certify that the Organic Statute 
 containing the aforesaid conditions was drawn up and 
 voted by us, agreeably to the eighteenth article of the 
 aforesaid Treaty. 
 
 " In witness whereof we have signed the present 
 Organic Statute and have thereto affixed our seals. 
 " At Constantinople : 14/26 April, 1879. 
 
 4th of Djemagi-ul-ebel, 1286. 
 '' (Signed) AssiM, Avreau, Y on Braunschweig, 
 Kallay, Ringkoutouly, Henry 
 Drummond Wolff, Bernoni, 
 tsereteleff. 
 *' For an exact copy : 
 
 *'RozET, Selim, Couriel."
 
 30 Greeks and Bulgarians 
 
 As it is only by the perusal of the respective provisions 
 of this Organic Statute that the magnitude of the wrongs 
 committed against the subject Greek population by the 
 Bulgarians can be understood, as well as the supreme 
 contempt shown by them for the enactments and de- 
 cisions of Europe, whose aid they yet continue to invoke, 
 I think it not inadvisable to append those provisions 
 which relate to the rights of the oxthodox Greek popula- 
 tion in Eastern ilumelia : 
 
 Organic Statute of Eastern Eumelia. 
 
 Concerning the Rights of Citizens, 
 
 " Art. 24. Citizens of Eastern Rumelia, without dis- 
 tinction of race or religion, enjoy the same rights. 
 
 *' They are also eligible for all public employments and 
 honours in proportion to their capacity and worth. 
 
 " Art. 25. Public employment shall be distributed with 
 justice, the opinion of the majority of the inhabitants of 
 the different districts being taken into consideration in 
 the election of civil officers. 
 
 '^ Art. 30. Every citizen shall enjoy personal freedom. 
 No one shall be prosecuted, arrested, imprisoned, or sub- 
 jected to any restriction of his freedom, unless it be in 
 the cases provided by law and according to the prescribed 
 formalities. 
 
 ''Art. 31. Every one shall have access to his lawful 
 judge. The formation of special committees to judge 
 penal cases is forbidden. 
 
 " Art. 32. The home of every citizen of Eastern 
 Eumelia shall be inviolable. The authorities are not 
 allowed to enter it of their own accord, unless it be 
 according to the prescribed formalities and in cases pro- 
 vided for by law." 
 
 Concerning Language. 
 
 " Art. 22. The chief languages of the country — Turkish, 
 Bulgarian, and Greek — shall be used in the Government, 
 both by the authorities and by private persons in their 
 relations with the latter, according to the following rules :
 
 Greeks and Bulgarians 31 
 
 " The administrative and judicial authorities of depart- 
 ments, provinces, and districts, in official acts, in verdicts 
 of the courts of justice, in correspondence and publica- 
 tions, shall make use of the language of that population 
 which is in the majority in the respective district, unless 
 the minority of the inhabitants be at least equal to the 
 half of this majority. 
 
 ' * In the latter case the language of the minority in 
 question is entitled to be as much used as that of the 
 aforesaid majority. 
 
 " The administrative and judicial authorities, both 
 central and provincial, in their correspondence with the 
 lower authorities dependent on them shall use the lan- 
 guage spoken by the majority of the inhabitants in the 
 districts of the lower authorities in question. 
 
 " Turkish shall be the official language of Eastern 
 Rumelia in its relations with the Sublime Porte and the 
 other parts of that Empire. 
 
 " The laws which shall hereafter be published in the 
 capital, the ordinances, circulars, and publications of 
 the General Governor, as well as those of the General 
 Secretary and the General Directors, which affect the 
 whole toparchy shall be drawn up in the Turkish, Bul- 
 garian, and Greek languages. 
 
 " In the courts of justice the citizens shall have the 
 right to make use of any one of the three chief lan- 
 guages, as they please. 
 
 " Any verdict of any court whatsoever shall be trans- 
 lated officially into whichever of the three languages 
 shall be chosen by the party interested, at whose request 
 the translation shall be made. 
 
 ''Art. 75, § 4. Fifteen years after the promulgation of 
 the Organic Statute, every one who, being of age, shall 
 claim the exercise of political rights, must, in addition 
 to the aforesaid conditions, be able to read and write in 
 one of the above three languages. 
 
 ''Art 97. Every member of the Government Assembly 
 may use in his speeches, notes, proposals, and documents 
 relating to the discharge of his duties, one of the three 
 aforesaid languages."
 
 32 Greeks and Bulgarians 
 
 Concerning Education and Schools, 
 
 ^'ArL 38. Education shall be free. The liberty of 
 education shall be exercised according to the regulations 
 concerning ability and morals as prescribed by law and 
 under the supervision of the authorities as regards 
 morality, public order, and respect for the laws of the 
 State. 
 
 '^Ar^t. 39. Everyone shall have the right to express his 
 opinions verbally, in writing, or in print, provided he 
 comply with the laws. 
 
 '^Art. 344. The different communities shall be obliged 
 to provide the expenses which are at present charged to 
 them with reorard to the maintenance of their educa- 
 
 o 
 
 tional and benevolent institutions. 
 
 ''Art. 347. The expenses for the establishment and 
 maintenance of the lower and higher schools are at the 
 charge of the religious communities. 
 
 " The internal and special management of schools, with 
 the appointment of teachers, shall belong to the religious 
 community which provides the expenses. 
 
 ''Art. 348. Should any of the communities not dispose 
 of the necessary funds for the establishment and main- 
 tenance of primary as well as of secondary schools, where 
 the latter are considered necessary, a special subsidy may 
 be given to the said community with the assent of the 
 central authorities of the Government. 
 
 "Art. 349. In addition, in every yearly Budget a 
 certain sum shall be set aside for aid to schools. 
 
 " The distribution of the said sum shall be made by a 
 regulation of the public service, and it shall be made in 
 such a way that the subsidies offered to the religious 
 communities, according to the previous and the present 
 Aiticles, should as nearly as possible correspond to the 
 proportions in which these communities participate in the 
 charges of the Central Government. 
 
 "Art. 356. The chief supervision of the establishments 
 of public instruction and private schools shall belong to 
 the Director of Public Instruction, who shall exercise it 
 in conformity with the laws and regulations through
 
 Greeks and Bulgarians 33 
 
 a sujBScient number of inspectors appointed in each 
 province. 
 
 ' * These inspectors shall be chosen from the notables 
 of the religious community whose schools they are to 
 inspect. 
 
 " A7't. 359. No religious community shall be forced 
 to introduce into its schools other than its own language. 
 
 " Art. 360. Every community may introduce into its 
 schools the teaching of those languages which it may 
 deem useful, and it may in addition allow the use of 
 these languages for the teaching of the lessons in the 
 school." 
 
 Concerning Religious Liberty, Clergy, 
 [ and Religious Communities, 
 
 ''Art. 28. Every person shall freely profess his own 
 religion, and shall enjoy the same protection on the part 
 of the authorities in the exercise of his worship. . . . 
 
 ** Art. 29. Nobody shall be forced to take part in any 
 way in the practices and ceremonies of any religion, or to 
 keep its holidays. 
 
 ''Art. 335. The religious communities which already 
 legally exist in Eastern Eumelia shall preserve the rights, 
 exemptions from taxes, privileges, and liberties which 
 they enjoyed before the war. 
 
 " Art 337. The clergy of the different creeds shall on 
 no account be deprived in Eastern Eumelia of the 
 honours and precedence which were granted them by the 
 Sultans. 
 
 " Art. 338. The ecclesiastics, pilgrims, and monks of 
 all nationalities who shall travel or temporarily reside in 
 Eastern Eumelia shall enjoy the same advantages as those 
 possessed by the native members of that body to which 
 they belong. 
 
 "Art. 339. The regulations of Art. 62 of the BerHn 
 Treaty, concerning the protection of the persons men- 
 tioned in the foregoing Article, and their religious and 
 benevolent institutions, shall equally be applicable to 
 Eastern Rumelia. 
 
 "Art. 69. The mufti, the spiritual heads of the five 
 
 c
 
 34 Greeks and Bulgarians 
 
 Christian denominations, and the chief rabbi residing in 
 the capital shall be, by virtue of their position, members 
 of the Government Assembly. 
 
 ''Art. 106. The heads of the religious communities, 
 who are members of the Government Assembly, and 
 who are not members of the permanent committee of 
 ten, have the right to take part, by a consultative vote, 
 in those discussions of the committee which concern the 
 interests of their particular community. 
 
 " The president of the permanent committee shall 
 give notice of such discussions at least three days before- 
 hand to the heads of the religious communities concerned, 
 under penalty of the annulment of the resolutions which 
 may have been arrived at during their absence. 
 
 ''Art. 125. Each department shall have a general 
 council, which shall elect from its members a depart- 
 mental committee. This council shall consist of the 
 members who by right take part in it, namely, of the 
 heads of the three most numerous religious communities 
 of the department. In the department of Philippopolis 
 the heads of the four most numerous communities shall 
 take part in the council. . . . 
 
 "Art. 183. In each rural district of which all the 
 inhabitants belong to the same religious community 
 there shall be a mayor and a municipal coadjutor. 
 
 " A7't. 184. In the rural districts the inhabitants of 
 which are divided among two or more communities so 
 many sections shall be established as there are com- 
 munities. Each section shall have one mayor, and in 
 case of need one municipal coadjutor, both of which it 
 shall elect independently. 
 
 " A^'t. 187. For each section of any rural district a 
 council of elders shall be formed, the members of which 
 shall be not less than four and not more than twelve, 
 according to the importance of the district. 
 
 " The imauns and the religious chiefs of the non- 
 Mussulman communities shall by virtue of their position 
 be members of the council of elders of their respective 
 communities."
 
 Greeks and Bulgarians 35 
 
 Concerning the Property of Religious Communities. 
 
 ^' Art. 341. Those relio-ious communities which are 
 legally existent in Eastern Eumelia shall retain their 
 movable and landed property. 
 
 " This landed property shall only be confiscated for 
 reasons of public advantage properly verified, in the 
 instance and manner provided by law, after a previous 
 equitable indemnity. 
 
 " The communities in question shall not be deprived of 
 their movable property, except as a means of satisfying 
 some higher requirement of public health. 
 
 ''Art. 342. The religious communities shall continue 
 to collect, with the aid and protection of the public 
 authorities, the contributions in their favour sanctioned 
 by custom. . . . The proceeds of such contributions 
 shall not be taxed. 
 
 ''Art. 343. The buildings devoted to education, to 
 philanthropic ends, and the residences of the members of 
 the different clergy, either in the town or in the country, 
 shall also enjoy freedom from taxation, as well as the 
 enclosures in which the said buildings and houses are 
 situated. 
 
 " The same privilege shall be accorded in respect of the 
 furniture of the buildings devoted to worship, public 
 education, or any philanthropic purpose, as well as to 
 those intended for the use of the clergy or any other 
 persons, and which belong to the service of any reli- 
 gious, educational, or philanthropic establishment, in 
 virtue of any title whatsoever. 
 
 "Art. 486, § 1. Property affording a revenue which 
 is managed directly or let for any period determined by 
 the religious communities, either Mussulman or non- 
 Mussulman, or by religious, educational, or benevolent 
 institutions, whether Mussulman or non-Mussulman, shall 
 remain the property of the communities or of these 
 institutions. ... 
 
 " § 2. The aforesaid landed property, and that designed 
 for the residence of the priests and ministers of the dif-
 
 oG Greeks and Bulgarians 
 
 ferent recognised religions, shall not be liable either to 
 confiscation or mortgage. 
 
 *' § 3. Landed property affording a revenue which is 
 neither managed directly nor let for any period deter- 
 mined by the religious communities, Mussuhiian or non- 
 Mussulman, or by the reHgious, educational, or benevolent 
 institutions, Mussulman or non-Mussulman, on which 
 they depend, shall become the free property of the 
 present legal proprietors or of their assignees, who shall 
 be obliged to indemnify the said religious communities, 
 Mussulman or other, or the said religious, scholastic, or 
 benevolent institutions, Mussulman or other. 
 
 " § 4. This compensation will be paid under the super- 
 intendence of the Central Government, according to the 
 following forms and conditions : 
 
 " § 5. The amount of compensation payable to the 
 religious communities, Mussulman or other, or to the 
 religious, scholastic, or benevolent institutions, Mussul- 
 man or other, shall be determined for each landed pro- 
 perty by the capitalisation of the yearly revenue paid by 
 the property, whatever the nature and description of this 
 revenue may be, with the addition of the estimated value 
 of the right of re-acquisition oF the estate, calculated in 
 proportion to the estimated right of transfer, in favour 
 of the religious community, or the religious, educational, 
 or philanthropic institution, Mussulman or other, in case 
 of confiscation of this property by legacy, sale, &c. 
 
 *' § 6. The indemnity mentioned in the foregoing para- 
 graph shall be a round sum which, expressed in gold 
 piastres, shall be divisible by a hundred. 
 
 " § 7. The religious community, Mussulman or other, 
 or the religious, scholastic, or philanthropic institution, 
 Mussulman or other, which is to be indemnified shall 
 receive until the indemnity thus fixed be paid off (in 
 instalments of 100, 500, 1000, and 10,000 gold piastres) 
 bonds to bearer, which will carry fixed interest and be 
 accepted in all the Stock Exchanges of the Empire. 
 
 " As regards the consecrated landed property, or 
 legacies to mosques, which have a special executor, these 
 bonds will be delivered to the said executor.
 
 Greeks and Bulgarians 37 
 
 '' As regards those which are administered either by 
 the Minister of Mosque Property at Constantinople, or 
 by the Patriarchate, or by the Bulgarian Exarchy, or 
 any other ecclesiastical authority, these bonds shall be 
 delivered to the said Minister or other aforesaid authority, 
 the principal and interest of each bond being guaranteed 
 to the bearer, first by the Treasury of the Central 
 Government, and secondly by the whole of the released 
 landed property, and thirdly and more especially by the 
 landed estate for the liberation of which the said bond 
 will be given. 
 
 " § 20. In every department a committee will be formed, 
 under the presidency of a special official, and commissioned 
 (1st) To register all consecrated landed property or legacies 
 to mosques, as well as the amount of the debts owed by 
 each ; (2nd) to G.x the amount of indemnity to be given in 
 the form of bonds to the religious communities, Mussulman 
 and other, as well as to the rehgious, scholastic, or phil- 
 anthropic institutions, Mussulman or other ; (3rd) to 
 determine the amount of the contributions payable by 
 the owners of the liberated landed estates in conformity 
 with par. 9. 
 
 "§ 40. Against these resolutions an appeal can be made 
 before the Chancery Court." 
 
 Concerning Property in General. 
 
 ''Art. 36. All property is inviolable. No person can 
 be deprived of his property except for reasons of public 
 advantage, duly verified in the cases and with the for- 
 malities prescribed by law, and after previous equitable 
 indemnity. 
 
 " Art. 37. Public sequestration of property is forbidden 
 in Eastern Bumelia. 
 
 " The property of persons convicted by law of contu- 
 macy, whether before or after condemnation, cannot be 
 put under sequestration."
 
 88 Greeks and Bulgarians 
 
 Final Regulation. 
 
 ''Art. 495. The present Organic Statute cannot be 
 modified unless it be in consequence of an understanding 
 between the Sublime Porte and the other Powers, signa- 
 tories of the Berlin Treaty, concluded on July 13, 1878, 
 with the exception of the Articles included in chapters 
 12 and 13 (concerning gendarmerie and the municipal 
 guard), in the case of which this same Constitution pro- 
 vides that they can be changed by law of the Central 
 Government." 
 
 Unfortunately, all these regulations, which bear the 
 sanction and guarantee of official Europe, and are worthy 
 of the liberal spirit of our times, have been, from the 
 recognition of the most elementary rights upwards, 
 violated by the Bulgarian authorities. 
 
 They had been practically abrogated by them for some 
 time, but at the time of the recent outrages in Eastern 
 Bumelia the Bulgarian Government openly joined hands 
 wdth the mob. 
 
 Persecution of the Greek Church. 
 
 The persecution of the Greek language, the seizure of 
 Greek schools, and the dismissal of Greek officials did not 
 suffice the Bulgarians, and they have since directed their 
 attacks against the Greek Church. 
 
 In direct contravention of Art. 5 § 3 of the Berlin 
 Treaty, and Art. 24, 28, 34 and, 35 of the Organic Statute, 
 they have systematically carried out seizures of churches 
 and monasteries. 
 
 The following is an abridged list of such seizures, 
 divided into districts. 
 
 I. — Ecclesiastical District of Varna. 
 
 1. Church of the Holy Trinity. 
 
 2. Church of St. Athanasios (village of Castritsi). 
 
 3. The church of the village Kara Hussein.
 
 Greeks and Bulgarians 39 
 
 4. Extensive lands and a small wood near the village 
 of Soutsoukli, the property of the church of SS. Peter 
 and Paul. 
 
 5. The monastery of St. Constantino, near Varna, to- 
 gether with the church and accessory buildings and 120 
 hectares of land from which the Greek community of 
 Varna derived a yearly revenue of 5000 francs. 
 
 6. The monastery of St. Demetrios, near Varna, with 
 the lands and vineyards appertaining thereto, from which 
 also the Greek community derived an income of 5000 
 francs. 
 
 II. — Ecclesiastical District oj Philippopolis. 
 
 7. Church of the Virgin at Philippopolis, which has 
 been converted by the Bulgarians into their cathedral. 
 
 8. Church of the Archangelos at Chaskioi, together 
 with the property of this community situated in Philip- 
 popolis and the whole of the property of this church. 
 
 9. Church of St. Fotini at Dermendere. 
 
 10. Church of St. Athanasios at Stenimachos. 
 
 11. Church of Zoodochos Pighi, in the same town, 
 together with all the property of this church. 
 
 12. The large Patriarchal monastery of Batskovo 
 which directly depended upon the (Ecumenical Patri- 
 archate, and which was reserved for the Patriarchate and 
 the orthodox Greeks by Art. 1 of the Imperial Firman, 
 dated February 27, 1870, regulating the differences 
 between the Patriarchate and the Bulgarian Exarchate. 
 
 13. The rich and extensive lands of this monastery. 
 
 14. Church of St. Kyriaki at Philippopolis. 
 
 15. Monastery of the Holy Trinity at Kavakli. 
 
 16. The appurtenances of the church of St. George at 
 Stenimachos. 
 
 III. — Ecclesiastical District of Anchialos and 
 Mesemvria. 
 
 17. The monastery of St. Anastasia Pharmacolytria, 
 dependent on the (Ecumenical Patriarchate, together 
 with all the property of the monastery.
 
 40 Greeks and Bulgarians 
 
 18. The Byzantine churches of St. George and 
 St. Anargyroi, which were restored to their rightful 
 owners only after the spirited protest of the (Ecumenical 
 Patriarch and the Greek Government. 
 
 In PhilippopoUs, Stenimachos, and the Environs of 
 these Tivo Towns. — I. Churches. 
 
 At Philippopolis : {a) St. Marina, the cathedral, which 
 has been re-dedicated to Saint Tsar Boris, confiscated, 
 too-ether with the archbishop's palace ; (h) St. Chara- 
 lambos, re-dedicated to the Prophet Elias, and confiscated ; 
 
 (c) St. Demetrios and {d) St. Constantino, both con- 
 fiscated and re-dedicated to St. Alexander^ Nevsky and 
 St. Euthymios respectively ; (e) St. Dionysios, a private 
 chapel, which has since been restored to the community. 
 
 At Stenimachos : {a) Holy Trinity, confiscated ; (6) St. 
 George (since restored) ; (c) Holy Virgin, confiscated ; 
 
 [d) St. Nicholas, confiscated. 
 
 At Tatar-Bazartzik : (a) Metamorphosis, confiscated 
 and re-dedicated to SS. Cyril and Methodios. 
 
 At Peristera : {a) Holy Virgin, confiscated. 
 
 At Kuklena : {a) St. Athanasios, confiscated ; (6) St. 
 Theodore, confiscated. 
 
 II. Monasteries, 
 
 At Velestino : St. George, situated at an hour's dis- 
 tance from Philippopolis, confiscated. 
 
 At Kuklena : SS. Anargyroi, also at an hour's distance 
 from Philippopolis, confiscated. 
 
 At Vodena : St. Keryx, two hours from Philippopolis, 
 corifiscated. 
 
 Persecution of the Greek Language and Literature, 
 
 In accordance with Art. 347 of the Organic Statute, 
 the expenses of the establishment and maintenance of 
 primary and secondary schools are at the charge of the 
 religious communities. 
 
 According to Art. 348, if any community lacks the
 
 Greeks and Bulgarians 41 
 
 necessary means for the establishment and maintenance 
 of its schools, the State is to grant a subsidy for the 
 purpose. But although the Bulgarian Government 
 imposes heavy taxes, especially set apart for the expenses 
 of public instruction, to which the Greeks regularly 
 contribute, and although Art. 25 requires a proportionate 
 distribution of these taxes, no Greek school has ever 
 received a subsidy. 
 
 On the other hand, the Bulgarian Government grants 
 large and regular subsidies to Turkish and Bulgarian 
 schools. 
 
 The Bulgarians, however, are not content with under- 
 mining Greek education indirectly by the refusal of 
 subsidies, but they go further, and, in spite of the clause 
 of Art. 38 which assures liberty of education, the 
 Chamber, with Stambouloff as Premier, voted in 1891 a 
 law by which Greek boys and girls were compelled to 
 attend the Bulgarian schools from the ag^ of six to that 
 of twelve years. Art. 8 of this law states that " all 
 children, from the age of six until twelve years inclusive 
 must follow the lessons of public instruction either in the 
 national or private schools, or at home." Art. 10 says, 
 '' Children of Bulgarian subjects of all Christian creeds 
 must receive the primary education in the Bulgarian 
 language." 
 
 The Greek children could only attend their own 
 schools after this enforced attendance at the Bulgarian 
 schools, and this amounted to a direct suppression of 
 Greek education. 
 
 It must be confessed that this law, although it has 
 been passed, has not yet been put into force (in spite of 
 the threats of successive Governments), but remains 
 suspended, a Damoclean sword, over the heads of the 
 Greeks. 
 
 The Government of the principality, afraid openly to 
 violate so express an article of the Constitution, has 
 attempted to distort it, and oifers subsidies to the 
 Greeks on condition of their accepting the new educa- 
 tional law, which they have hitherto refused ; on the 
 other hand, in October 1904 it sent a circular, through
 
 42 Greeks and Bulgarians 
 
 the inspector of the Bulgarian schools of Pyrgos, im- 
 posing on the Greek schools the teaching of the Bulgarian 
 language for thirty-four hours per week, thus rendering 
 instruction in Greek impossible. In addition to this, the 
 Government proceeded to inflict heavy fines on the Greek 
 peasants of many villages round Pyrgos who refused to 
 comply with this measure. 
 
 As if this were not sufficient, notwithstanding the 
 inviolability of property as assured in Articles 34, 35, 
 and 36 of the Constitution, the Bulgarians have forcibly 
 seized the Greek schools of Chaskovo and Dermendere, 
 after assaulting and expelling the teachers. 
 
 We have quoted above Art. 22 of the Constitution, 
 which assures the equality of the Greek, Bulgarian, and 
 Turkish languages. This has been violated: (1) by the 
 imposition of heavy taxes on Greek signs placed on 
 shops, and (2) by the prohibition of Greek newspapers. 
 
 Again, after the custom of conquerors, the Government 
 has systematically changed the Greek names of many 
 towns ; e.g., Philippopolis and Stenimachos have been 
 given the names of Plovdif and Asenofgrad. 
 
 Such is the manner in which the Bulgarians have 
 respected the equality of languages so carefully safe- 
 guarded by the Constitution. 
 
 The following is a list of schools, educational institu- 
 tions, and other properties of the Greek communities 
 which have been forcibly seized, robbed, or confiscated by 
 the Bulgarians from July 15 till to-day. 
 
 I. Schools. 
 
 At Philippopolis, " Marasli " School, which was looted 
 and transformed into a Bulgarian school. The girls' 
 school, after having been looted, was given up to the 
 Greeks. The same fate befell the municipal girls' school, 
 the school of St. Marina, that of St. Constantine, the 
 boarding-schools both for boys and girls. 
 
 At Stenimachos, the High School of the Archangels 
 confiscated, as well as the girls' school. The municipal 
 school of Tsiprochori was entirely destroyed, and can-
 
 Greeks and Bulgarians 43 
 
 not now be rebuilt, owing to the new plan of the 
 town. 
 
 At Tatar-Bazartzik, the boys school and the girls' 
 school, both confiscated. 
 
 At Peristera, the municipal school. 
 
 At Kuklena, the municipal school. 
 
 II. Toivn and Country Proj>erty of the Communities. 
 
 At Philippopolis. The following shops : a shoemaker's, 
 giving an annual revenue of 144 fr. ; a joiner's, giving 
 214 fr. ; a milkshop, giving 192 fr. ; a cabinet-maker's, 
 giving 300 fr. ; a pastry-cook's, giving 600 fr. ; another 
 milkshop, giving 480 fr. ; a coffee-house, 500 fr. ; a bar- 
 ber's, 18 fr. ; another shoemaker's, giving 240 fr. All 
 these buildings were the property of the church of St. 
 Demetrios. 
 
 A fruiterer's shop, giving 240 fr. per year, the pro- 
 perty of the church of St. Constantino ; a jeweller's shop, 
 giving 240 fr., the property of St. Marina's ; a draper's 
 shop, 300 fr., the property of Mr. Ghioumusjordani ; a 
 grocer's shop, 75 fr., property of St. Marina's ; a shoe- 
 maker's, 42fr.,and another shop 144 fr., belonging to 
 the church of St. Constantino ; three rooms belonging to 
 Mr. Ghioumusjordani, 150 fr. ; a house belonging to St. 
 Constantino's Church, 240 fr., and five other houses of 
 the same church, 144 fr. each ; also thirteen shops of the 
 same church, 1113 fr. ; a baker's shop belonging to the 
 church of St. Paraskevi, 500 fr. ; a stable of the same 
 church, 100 fr., and five rooms, 156 fr. ; two houses, the 
 property of the same church ; a hotel, bringing 1000 fr. 
 annually, the property of Mr. Ghioumusjordani, and a 
 house of St. Constantino's Church, 120 fr. 
 
 At Stenimachos, a vineyard one hectare in extent, pro- 
 perty of the church of the Holy Trinity ; a small chapel 
 with lands, belonging to the church of St. Nicholas.
 
 Ill 
 
 BULGARIAN OUTRAGES ON GREEKS 
 
 With the advance of time the instincts of the Bulgarian 
 mob became more dangerous, and to this result public 
 education has conduced more than anything else. As 
 we have repeatedly complained, the Bulgarian boy is 
 daily taught in his school to hate the Greek. His na- 
 tional song ends with the words, " Slaughter the 
 Greeks." ^o occasion is lost on days of national festivity 
 for manifesting this hatred against every Greek in the 
 country. 
 
 Things continued in this state until last May, when 
 the Bulgarians, instructed by their teachers, were eagerly 
 awaiting the opportune moment to carry out their ne- 
 farious programme — to wit, the extermination of the 
 Greek population. 
 
 The opportunity came at last. The Greek Macedonian 
 bands had for two years been engaged in a defensive 
 struggle for their country. The Bulgarian bands which 
 had been devastating Macedonia Avere retiring upon 
 the principality, and Bulgarian prestige w^as daily 
 dwindlinof. 
 
 Some interest was aroused in Europe with regard to 
 Greek energy and Greek rights in Macedonia. 
 
 Meetings were convoked in Bulgaria, at which the 
 more fanatical called for the massacre and extermination 
 of the Greeks. 
 
 At Philippopolis, on July 16, the following resolution 
 was passed at a meeting : 
 
 "1. That the Bulgarian Government be called upon 
 to apply the law of 1892, according to which the primary
 
 Greeks and Bulgarians 45 
 
 education of the pupils of all nationalities must take place 
 in the Bulgarian language. 
 
 " 2. That a strict supervision of the work of the Greek 
 schools be exercised. 
 
 *' 3. That all Greek doctors, judges, engineers, military 
 and other officials be dismissed from the public service. 
 
 *' 4. That the indignation of the meeting be expressed 
 against the Greek nation for its action in Macedonia. 
 
 "5. That an expression of gratitude be addressed to 
 the Bulgarian citizens of Varna for their patriotic action 
 with regard to the Greeks ; and 
 
 " 6. That the occupation of the Greek church of St. 
 Charalambos be confirmed, and the church be re-dedicated 
 to St. Elias." 
 
 And at lampolis, at the demonstration of July 27 
 (O.S.), the following resolution was adopted by the 
 assembled crowd : 
 
 " To-day, the 27th of July,twenty thousand inhabitants 
 of lampolis assembled in the square in order to deliberate 
 concerning the ferocious and inhuman campaign of the 
 Greeks, which aims at destroying everything Bulgarian, 
 and which they carry on in a shameless manner within 
 the boundaries of our sacred Bulgarian country. 
 
 " At the same time, we have assembled in order to 
 point out to those in whose hands the interests of the 
 Bulgarian nation are entrusted the means which they 
 ought to employ in order to prevent this mischief and 
 root out the evil ; and after hearing our fellow-citizens 
 Jordan Miteif, Vassil Ylachoif, Athanas Tsirbantzieff, and 
 Giorgi ArabatzieiF, we unanimously resolve : 
 
 " (1) That the Bulgarian Government should break off 
 diplomatic relations with the Greek Government until 
 the latter cease sending out malefactors in order to 
 exterminate tlie Bulgarian race in Turkey. 
 
 *' (2) That the Bulgarian Government should imme- 
 diately dismiss all civil officers, as well as those employed 
 by the communities, and military officers who marry 
 Greek women or send their children to Greek schools.
 
 46 Greeks and Bulgarians 
 
 " (3) That a campaign be commenced against every- 
 thing Greek ; that all Greek clergy and teachers be 
 expelled from Bulgarian territory, as sowing discord and 
 slander against everything Bulgarian. 
 
 *' (4) That all Greeks who are suspected of supporting 
 the brigand-like action of the Greek bands in Turkey be 
 expelled from Bulgaria. 
 
 " (5) That all Hellenic subjects and Greek subjects of 
 foreign Powers be forbidden by law from carrying on 
 business outside the towns. 
 
 *' (6) That doctors, lawyers, and other professional men, 
 graduates of Greek schools, be forbidden by law to 
 exercise their profession in Bulgaria. 
 
 " (7) That all Greek schools be closed, and that the 
 children of Greeks living in Bulgaria be instructed in 
 Bulgarian schools, under pain of expulsion from Bulgarian 
 territory. 
 
 " (8) That no Greeks be jDermitted to become naturalised 
 Bulgarian subjects. 
 
 " (9) That all the institutions and schools belonging to 
 Greek communities in Bulgaria be confiscated, and their 
 revenues be devoted to national objects. 
 
 "(10) That all goods imported from Greece be liable 
 to the maximum duty, and that heavy taxes be imposed 
 on Greeks carrying on business in Bulgaria, and that 
 Greek ships entering Bulgarian ports be subjected to 
 heavy dues. 
 
 "(11) We address our warm sympathy to the cham- 
 pions at Varna, Pyrgos, Philippopolis, Stenimachos, 
 Peristera, and elsewhere for their splendid self-sacrifice 
 in the patriotic struggle against Greek machinations. 
 
 " (12) We earnestly beg the Bulgarian Government to 
 take into consideration the will of the people as expressed 
 at these demonstrations, and to use all its efforts in 
 support of the national interests, trusting in the national 
 power of self-sacrifice, and 
 
 "(13) To close the Bulgarian frontiers to all Greeks 
 expelled from Rumania." 
 
 At Philippopolis a demonstration took place on the
 
 Greeks and Bulgarians 47 
 
 6/19 August, at which the folio wing resolution was 
 adopted : 
 
 "To-day, August 19, 1906, the representatives of the 
 Bulgarian people assembled at Phili23popolis at a grand 
 national demonstration resolve : 
 
 "(l) That the policy followed by Greece, the (Ecu- 
 menical Patriarch, and by Turkey tends to the destruc- 
 tion of the Bulgarian race in Turkey. 
 
 " (2) That the patience and peacefulness hitherto shown 
 by the Bulgarian people and their Government, however 
 necessary they may be for the regular development of 
 any nation, and especially for the peoples of the Balkan 
 Peninsula, become positively criminal in face of the above- 
 mentioned policy, since that peace which is so desirable 
 in the Balkan Peninsula is not attainable by these means. 
 
 '' (3) That European diplomacy has not only failed in 
 checking this barbarous policy, but by •means of the 
 Mlirsztegian reforms and otherwise has rendered the 
 position of the Bulgarians in European Turkey worse, by 
 raising false hopes which have induced them to lay down 
 their arms and desist from defending themselves. 
 
 " (4) That the policy of Greece, who sends bands of 
 assassins into Macedonia, is not only tolerated by Turkey, 
 but actively supported. 
 
 *^(5) That in consequence of all this the Bulgarian 
 people and Government must necessarily abandon the 
 policy of peace which compels them to look on with 
 folded arms while civilised Europe in its cold-hearted 
 diplomacy tolerates the annihilation of an unarmed race, 
 a race guilty only of wishing to be Bulgarian and of not 
 wishing to become a bridge leading to the Mediterranean. 
 
 " Under these circumstances we here assembled do 
 unanimously call upon the Government : 
 
 '' (a) To enter into the contest actively and energeti- 
 cally, and by every means to obtain the application of the 
 23rd Article of the Berlin Treaty. 
 
 "(b) To break off diplomatic relations with Greece, in 
 order that it may be able to use every measure of
 
 48 Greeks and Bulgarians 
 
 retaliation against Greek subjects which is permitted 
 by international law — i.e., expulsion, boycotting of Greek 
 merchandise, &c. 
 
 "We certify that : 
 
 " (ct) The reforms of Miirszteg — even if applied in 
 their entirety and conscientiously — have no other effect 
 but that of facilitating the annihilation of the Bulgarian 
 people. 
 
 " (h) That the Bulgarian people has exhibited the 
 utmost toleration towards all nationalities in Bulgaria ; 
 and we regret that the Greeks, by their inhuman policy 
 and their continual provocation, have compelled certain 
 individuals among our people to depart from their spirit 
 of toleration. 
 
 " We call upon the people of Bulgaria actively and 
 courageously to support their oppressed brethren who 
 are struggling for their lives and liberties, and not to 
 cease their activity until the 23rd Article of the Berlin 
 Treaty shall have been put into force." 
 
 At a similar meeting at Sofia, on July 23, 1906 (O.S.), 
 the Bulgarian Government was called upon : 
 
 "I. To break off ofl&cial relations with Greece and to 
 recall the Bulgarian Agent at Athens, because the 
 Government of Athens sends armed bands into Mace- 
 donia. 
 
 *' II. To confiscate all Greek churches in Bulgaria, 
 because they were built with money made in Bulgaria. 
 
 " III. To take coercive measures against the Greeks of 
 tlie principality similar to those adopted by the Rou- 
 manians, so as to compel them to leave the country." 
 
 The national club, ''The Bulgarian Patriots," issued 
 the following manifesto to the Bulgarians of the prin- 
 cipality : 
 
 " Brethren, — The anti-Greek movement, as a reaction 
 against the national inertness, has turned the whole 
 country upside down, and has put an end to our unjusti-
 
 Greeks and Bulgarians 49 
 
 fiable and criminal patience in the face of the outrages of 
 our eternal enemies the Greeks. 
 
 " Those who love their country have at this critical 
 moment a sacred duty, to hold out a friendly hand with 
 a view to brotherly action in the struggle which is still 
 in its commencement, and which needs continuous and 
 inexhaustible activity and universal support, that it 
 may be crowned with success and victory over the 
 accursed enemy. 
 
 " After the blow administered by the seizure of Greek 
 schools and churches (our rightful property, inherited 
 from our grandparents and forefathers), in order that the 
 loathed Greek might feel that he is living in Bulgaria, 
 and must obey the laws and respect the people who 
 afford him hospitality, the committee of the national club, 
 the ' Bulgarian Patriot,' now hereby proclaims, and in- 
 vites you also to proclaim, a boycott against everything 
 Greek. 
 
 "1. Do not call a Greek physician to the bedside of 
 your sick, and do not use medicines from a Greek 
 chemist. 
 
 " 2. Do not apply to a Greek lawyer to plead your 
 cause. 
 
 " 3. Avoid Greek commission agents, representatives 
 of firms and companies, &c. 
 
 " 4. Do not buy anything from Greek merchants or 
 artisans. 
 
 "5. Do not deal with Greek wholesale merchants. 
 
 " 6. Do not buy stale fish, rotten olives, mildewed 
 lemons, or anything else sold by Greeks. 
 
 " 7. Do not buy silkworms' eggs from a Greek, and do 
 not sell him your golden cocoons. 
 
 " 8. Do not buy the island wine, the adulterated wine 
 of vinegar and rake, which is prepared by Greeks. 
 
 '* 9. Do not sell attar of roses to a Greek, so that he 
 may not adulterate it and compromise you in the Euro- 
 pean market. 
 
 ''10. Do not sell your provisions to Greek merchants 
 who cheat you both in the weight and in the bill. 
 
 "11. Do not admit Greek workmen or servants to 
 
 D
 
 50 Greeks and Bulgarians 
 
 your factories, shops, or houses. The only profit you can 
 gain from them is corruption and treachery. 
 
 " Bulgarian Patriots ! — From this very day abandon 
 all the hotels, wine-shops, and coffee-houses whose pro- 
 prietors are Greeks. 
 
 " Bulgarians ! — We must carry on this war declared 
 against the Greeks to the end, in a manner worthy of our 
 forefathers and to the honour of our mother Bulgaria. 
 This struggle will be the sole vengeance for your long- 
 suffering brethren, who are mercilessly murdered by the 
 Greek bands, supported and sustained by gold earned in 
 Bulgaria. 
 
 " Bulgarians ! — When you meet a Greek remember 
 that you are a descendant of Krumm and Ashen, of 
 Simeon and Samuel ! Never forget that you see before 
 you a bastard descendant of Basil the slayer of the 
 Bulgarians. 
 
 *' Brethren ! — Support by all means in your power this 
 boycott of everything Greek, and vigorously continue the 
 struggle against the effeminate and degenerate Phanariots. 
 In this way only can we show that we too are pos- 
 sessed of national pride and honour." 
 
 (Issued by the Presidency of the National Club of 
 PhiUppopolis, the " Bulgarian Patriot.") 
 
 The following appeals were placarded in all parts of the 
 town of Philippopolis : 
 
 " It is strictly forbidden to speak the Phanariot (Greek) 
 language in the gardens, in restaurants, in coffee-houses, 
 or in the street. 
 
 "By Order of the People." 
 
 " Turks, Armenians, Jews, and the rest ! — Support the 
 boycott of the Greeks, and see that it is carried out. 
 Conform to the order of the people. Those who do not 
 obey will be mercilessly punished and persecuted." 
 
 "Order of the People, No. 4. — Decision of the 
 Bodolinbets Committee : Proclamation to the Bulgarian 
 brethren.
 
 Greeks and Bulgarians 51 
 
 " After punishing them by seizing their churches and 
 schools, it is our duty to boycott everything Greek." 
 
 ^ This is followed by eleven articles, in which all rela- 
 tions with Greeks are forbidden. The appeal concludes 
 with the words : 
 
 " Patriots of Bulgaria ! — Remember that you, the 
 descendants of the Czar Krumm, have before you the 
 descendants of Basil the slayer of Bulgarians." 
 
 The programme of the " Bulgarian Patriot," as pub- 
 lished in the Bulgarian newspaper Devnik, the leader of 
 anti-Greek movement in Bulsraria, is as follows : 
 
 
 1. The complete Bulgarisation of the whole seaboard. 
 The two centres of Hellenism, Anchialos and Mesemvria, 
 to be re-named ' Simeonofgrad ' and ' Caloyannofgrad.' 
 Emigrants from the interior to be settled iti these towns. 
 In order to force the Greeks to emigrate, the fisheries of 
 Sozopolis and the salt-works of Anchialos to be * confis- 
 cated and handed over to Bulgarians.' Measures to be 
 taken for the Bulgarisation of the Gagaouses [Greeks 
 using the Turkish language and inhabiting the sea coast 
 to the north of Varna]. 
 
 "2. Similar measures to be enforced against the Greeks 
 of the interior. Cavakli to be re-named ' Samuelofgrad.' 
 
 " The Greeks to be everywhere forced by Draconian 
 laws to become naturalised Bulgarian subjects. 
 
 "3. The Greek minority to study the Bulgarian lan- 
 guage, so that they may not differ from the Bulgarians. 
 
 "4. The Greek bishops to be prohibited ' from return- 
 ing to Bulgaria.' " 
 
 Similar ideas were expressed by M. Dragouleff at the 
 meeting on September 6 (O.S.), and were included in the 
 resolution adopted. 
 
 The Bulgarian Government at first attempted to curb 
 the fanaticism of the orators at these meetings. M. 
 Petkoff, the Minister of the Interior, himself condemned 
 in the Sobranje the inhuman conduct of the Rumanian
 
 52 Greeks and Bulgarians 
 
 Government towards the Greek population of tliat king- 
 dom, and expressed himself as follows : 
 
 " We can assure you that our relations with Greece are 
 good, and the gentleman whom we have appointed as our 
 diplomatic agent at Athens, M. BalabanofF, is a graduate 
 of Athens University, and serves to show our desire to 
 remain on good terms with Greece. 
 
 " We do not desire to be, neither do we think of being, 
 on bad terms with Greece on account of anything which 
 may be happening in Macedonia, which for the present is 
 a Turkish province. . . . 
 
 *' At Philippopolis and Stenimachos there have been 
 disturbances, due to Chauvinism and party reasons, and 
 in some degree to Macedonian patriotism ; there has been 
 a wish to loot a certain coffee-house ; but I have given 
 orders to the military governor to restore order, and to 
 guard the churches against any emergency. . . . How can 
 the Government permit the local Greeks to be persecuted 
 because other Greeks in Macedonia are molesting our 
 fellow-countrymen ? Such action would be scandalous. 
 
 " Our agent went one day, in conjunction with the 
 other foreign envoys, and made representations to the 
 Greek Minister to the effect that Greece was permitting 
 insurgent bands to cross over into Macedonia, and that 
 many of these Greek insurgents had returned from Mace- 
 donia, and were to be seen walking the streets of Athens, 
 &c. The Greek Minister replied that there were really 
 insurgents at Athens, but that there were some also at 
 Sofia. ' Your Government,' said the Greek Minister, 
 * why does it not imprison Sarafoff ? ' The reply was just. 
 Therefore, as our position with regard to Macedonia is deli- 
 cate, so is theirs at Athens. That the Greeks cross over 
 the frontier in order to fight the Bulgarians is un- 
 doubtedly true, but it cannot be denied that our side do 
 the same. 
 
 " It must not be inferred, however, from this that our 
 relations with Greece have reached a disagreeable stage. 
 Officially, as states, we are on very good terms, and there 
 is nothing to cloud our good relations. . . .
 
 Greeks and Bulgarians 53 
 
 " I cannot comprehend why, because Greeks in Mace- 
 donia are acting in an iniquitous manner, we should 
 persecute law-abiding Greek citizens in Bulgaria, and 
 entangle ourselves in war. I have already said that, 
 as the Greek Premier was able to answer our representa- 
 tive when he spoke to him with regard to the formation 
 of Greek bands in Macedonia, our Premier can make a 
 similar reply when the Greek representative visits him 
 here in order to protest against similar acts. ..." 
 
 But in spite of such reasonable counsels the ferocious 
 instincts of the Bulgarian mob finally prevailed. The 
 first outbreak took place at Varna. 
 
 After the death of the late Greek Bishop another was 
 elected, and sent, according to the treaties, by the 
 (Ecumenical Patriarch to that see. The Bulgarian mob 
 was infuriated ; the arrival of the Bishop at the port of 
 Varna is described in the followins^ document : 
 
 "Varna, J% 4, 190G. 
 
 '* Yesterday we were expecting our new Bishop Neo- 
 phytes. We had arranged for his reception, and had 
 seen to it that it should take place without any fuss or 
 display, for reasons which can well be understood. 
 
 '*At 6 A.M. the Austrian steamer was entering the 
 harbour, when we received the news that the police 
 had orders to prevent the landing of the Bishop. Two 
 of the leading residents immediately hastened to the 
 Prefect, whom they found at seven o'clock in his office. 
 He received them courteously, but referred them to the 
 Ministries of Foreign Affairs and of Beligion. They 
 telegraphed immediately, but at 4 p.m., ten hours later, 
 during which time the steamer remained in the harbour, 
 no answer had arrived from Sofia. 
 
 ''It is obvious, therefore, that the landing of the 
 Bishop was prevented by order of the Bulgarian Govern- 
 ment. In the meantime, the Turkish Consul, a sincerely 
 polite man, named Ishan Bey, and the Greek Consul, M. 
 Seleniades, were informed of the difficulty. But mean- 
 while a public crier was summoning the people with a 
 drum to descend to the quay in front of the Austrian
 
 .4 Greeks and Bulgarians 
 
 steamer to protest against the arrival of the Greek 
 Bishop, whose hands, they shouted, were stained with 
 Bulgarian blood ! And various agitators, drawn from all 
 classes of Bulgarian society, were inciting the mob to 
 tear him to pieces if the Government should permit him 
 to land. 
 
 " In addition to this, the fire brigade was ordered to 
 execute evolutions round the ships and buildings near 
 the harbour. 
 
 " The people, seeing the fire-engines and firemen 
 hurrying down to the quay, followed after to see what 
 was the matter, such of them at least as had not already 
 learnt about the demonstration. A large crowd was 
 thus collected on the quay, consisting of milkmen, green- 
 grocers, coal-heavers, porters, merchants, artisans, and 
 even lawyers and doctors (many of w^hom were Bulgarians 
 from Macedonia), and soon began to defy the few Greeks 
 who w^ere present. One Bulgarian attacked the seventy- 
 five year old priest Eustathios, and twice pushed him 
 violently. The police prevented the Greeks from board- 
 ing the steamer, whence the Bishop gazed in grief and 
 astonishment at the furious mob, who were shouting out 
 the vilest abuse of the Greeks in general and their 
 Bishop in particular. The Greeks among the crowd 
 being few in number, gradually give way in order to 
 avoid a conflict. Then the Turkish Consul, pushing 
 aside the police, went on board the steamer and attempted 
 to comfort the Bishop with hopes of his being allowed to 
 land. He subsequently called on the Prefect, but in 
 vain, as the latter avowed that he had not yet received 
 orders from Sofia to permit the landing of the Bishop. 
 
 " The steamer left at 4 p.m. for Soulina, taking with 
 it our unfortunate Bishop, who returned to Constanti- 
 nople." 
 
 The Bulgarian agent there expressed his regret to the 
 (Ecumenical Patriarch, and promised that he would do 
 his best to persuade his Government to permit the 
 Bishop's return. The Patriarchate unfortunately put 
 faith in the assurances of the Bulgarian agent, and the
 
 Greeks and Bulgarians 55 
 
 Metropolitan returned. But his second reception was 
 worse than the first. An eye-witness narrates what took 
 place in these words : 
 
 " Varna, JuUj 8, 1906. 
 
 *' Yesterday about 4 p.m. it was announced by drum- 
 beating in the streets of the town that, according to a 
 telegram from Burgas (Pyrgos), the Greek Bishop was 
 arriving by the steamer Mykale that evening. 
 
 *'A11 the faithful thereupon ran towards the quay, 
 armed with sticks, bars of iron, stones, and whips, in 
 order to discharge their national duty. Within an hour 
 about 500 had assembled to await the arrival of the 
 steamer. The special police measures of June 24 were 
 not taken this time, because both parties were equally 
 aware that the Greek Bishop was not arriving this time. 
 The crowd came together with a different object. About 
 six o'clock in the evening the Prefect of Varna, M. Charal- 
 ambieff, arrived in his carriage and requested the people 
 to go home, as it was known that the steamer Mykale 
 would not arrive that evening, but the next. 
 
 "At about 6.30 they appeared to be convinced, and 
 started off en masse. They took the Tsarigratska Boad, 
 and were directing themselves towards Preslavska Street 
 when the Prefect in his carriage instructed them, through 
 the attendant gendarme, to follow the next street. At the 
 same time other small bands of Bulgarians, coming from 
 the Mousala Square, followed the Tsar Boris Street, which 
 led to their goal. Simultaneously another crowd, coming 
 from the opposite direction, also made for the same point, 
 and when they reached the second police station were 
 met by four mounted gendarmes, who accompanied them 
 to keep order ! This last contingent was the first to 
 reach the Greek Church of St. Nicholas, which the priests 
 were just leaving after evensong. The crowd thereupon 
 burst into the churchyard with shouts and pistol shots, 
 and attacked the three priests, the chanter, and the 
 sexton. At that moment the crowd from the quay 
 arrived, with that from the Mousala Square, and they 
 also rushed with savage cries into the churchyard. Then
 
 56 Greeks and Bulgarians 
 
 with sticks and cudgels, iron bars and leathern thongs, 
 with fists and feet, they fell upon all in the church and 
 beat and wounded them most unmercifully. 
 
 " The clerk was carried out of the church more dead 
 than alive. The sexton ran up the tower to sound the 
 alarm bell, but he was seized and thrown from the belfry 
 on to the roof of the church, where he remained uncon- 
 scious until others cHmbed on the roof, dragged him 
 down, beat him and kicked him, and finally threw him 
 into the road fainting and covered with blood. Those 
 who remained in the belfry began to ring the church 
 bells. Others rang the bells of the neighbouring 
 Bulgarian church. Many people, thinking that a fire 
 had broken out, came running up to the church but could 
 not approach owing to the crowd. The police at once 
 hastened to reinforce the gendarmes near the church and 
 to see where the fire was. The fire brigade arrived, and 
 the police officials with the chief of police. On learning, 
 however, that there was no fire, the fire brigade went off, 
 while the police remained apathetic spectators of the 
 horrible scene. 
 
 " Then a priest appeared, covered with blood, running 
 from the church and stumbllno- as if blind. He was 
 hardly recognisable. This was the priest, John Kara- 
 vatakis, who had suffered a real martyrdom in a Christian 
 church and at the hands of Christians. He had been 
 seized by the beard, kicked and struck with sticks, whips, 
 stones, and iron bars ; others caught him by the hair and 
 threw him to the ground. His head and body were a 
 mass of wounds ; his hair was torn out by the roots ; his 
 clothes ripped to rags, and he would have been killed 
 had not an officer who was looking on received a blow 
 intended for the priest, which caused him to draw his 
 sword and temporarily break up that group of assailants. 
 The priest seized the opportunity to escape, streaming 
 with blood, a shocking sight to see. 
 
 " The crowd destroyed all the sacred books of the 
 church, tore down the name of St. Nicholas from the 
 building, and set up in its stead a wooden placard with 
 the dedication to Saints Cyril and Methodios."
 
 Greeks and Bulgarians 57 
 
 These outrages at Varna were the prelude to the 
 bloody campaign of extermination which was afterwards 
 prosecuted throughout the principality. I publish here 
 a detailed account of these crimes ; it is merely a histori- 
 cal document, and not a sensational manifesto intended 
 to excite sympathy on behalf of the Greek populations of 
 Bulgaria, forced as they are to wander east and west 
 in order to find an asylum, while civilised Europe excuses 
 and even congratulates the perpetrators. 
 
 The following list is compiled from trustworthy official 
 sources : 
 
 1. At Philippopolis. 
 July 15— August 14, 1906. 
 
 July 15. — Proclamations placarded in the town call 
 the people to a meeting to-morrow in order to " express 
 their deep antipathy to the Greeks and their approval 
 and congratulations to the people of Varna for their work 
 of the highest patriotism." 
 
 July 16. — A Bulgarian mob this morning seized the 
 Church of St. Charalambos ; the sacred books were burnt ; 
 a Bulgarian priest established in the church and a service 
 at once held. At 10 a.m. a demonstration of 2000 or 
 3000 people took place, many of the people coming in 
 from the country. After the demonstration the mob 
 stormed the residence of the Archbishop, the interior of 
 which was pillaged and completely destroyed, as well as 
 the Church of St. Marina, which was looted. The churches 
 of St. Constantine, St. Demetrios, St. Paraskevi, and St. 
 Dionysios were also occupied and looted by the mob. 
 The Marasli school for boys, the girls' school, and the 
 primary school for girls (on the premises of which are the 
 soup-kitchen for poor scholars and the musical club, the 
 " Orpheus "), the infants' schools of St. Marina and of St. 
 Constantine, and the girls' and boys' boarding-schools were 
 entirely looted. Even the furniture and clothes of the 
 school servants were stolen or destroyed. The Greek club, 
 the offices of the society of Greek subjects, the " Concord," 
 and forty-eight Greek shops were also demolished.
 
 58 Greeks and Bulgarians 
 
 A mob of ruffians under the command of the chief 
 comitadji, Arnaoutoif, and a certain municipal official, 
 rushed into the residence of the Archbishop, burst into 
 his study, killed the messenger, Nicholas Mavroudi, and 
 brutally assaulted the locum teyiens of the Archbishop, 
 whom they robbed and beat and chloroformed : they 
 finally tried to throw him out of the window, but his 
 friends with great difficulty managed to convey him to 
 the hospital Sceurs d'Agrara, where he remains. The 
 mob broke down the doors of the house of the aged 
 lawyer Maliadis, and rushed into it. Maliadis shot the 
 first man who entered, and was then slaughtered before 
 the eyes of four policemen. 
 
 Of the above churches, the Committee offered to 
 return those of St. Demetrios and St. Constantino to 
 the Greeks, who refused to accept them. That of St. 
 Dion3^sios, which belongs to Greek subjects, was given 
 back to them. 
 
 July 17. — Measures were taken to extort from the 
 Greeks large sums of money, and to coerce them into 
 signing a declaration of '' adhesion to the Exarchate." 
 
 In the confiscated Greek churches of Philippopolis 
 managing boards were established, which took possession 
 of the landed property of the Greek community or 
 churches, consisting of shops, houses, stores, &c., leased 
 to fifty -two tenants for a yearly rental of 8220 fr. in all. 
 These Bulgarian administrators compelled the tenants to 
 make new lease contracts with them. 
 
 July 20. — A demonstration at Tatar Bazartzik. The 
 Church of the Transfiguration was confiscated by the 
 Bulgarians, who gave it the name of SS. Cyril and Metho- 
 dios. The boys' and girls' schools were also confiscated. 
 These schools are furnished with a marble plaque, on 
 which is inscribed, " This school was founded at the ex- 
 pense of the Philhellene Lord J. Long and the Greek 
 community of Tatar Bazartzik in 1877." 
 
 A demonstration was held at Peristera. The Church of 
 the Virgin and the primary school were confiscated : the 
 latter was also looted. 
 
 The monasteries of St. Anargyroi, near Kuklaena, and
 
 Greeks and Bulgarians 59 
 
 of St. George, near Yelastitsa, were confiscated. These 
 two monasteries, together with that at Bodena, own 
 several acres of fields and vineyards, also woods and 
 cattle. 
 
 At Philippopolis (our informant was the Prefect him- 
 self) the representative of the Bulgarian Metropolitan 
 demanded from the Public Prosecutor the very valuable 
 Gospel of the Greek Cathedral,^ which had been confis- 
 cated, together with the objects saved from the loot of 
 the Greek Archbishop's residence, which included his 
 library. The Public Prosecutor and the commander of 
 the garrison. General Ivanoff — the latter after receiving 
 instructions from the Ministry of War — gave orders that 
 these objects should be handed over to the representative 
 of the Bulgarian Metropolitan. The Archbishop s resi- 
 dence, which was guarded by an armed force, was also 
 delivered up to the Bulgarian ecclesiastical authorities. 
 
 July 22. — The Prefect of Philippopolis went to Steni- 
 machos and summoned the Greek doctor Doxiades to 
 visit him in the night. He then advised him to use his 
 influence in order that the Church of the Holy Trinity 
 might be voluntarily handed over to the Committee, so as 
 to avoid possible disturbances. The Prefect also suc- 
 ceeded in obtaining from the deacoD the keys of the 
 church, and set over it a guard of ten soldiers. 
 
 July, 1906.— At the Church of St. George at Philip- 
 popolis the Bulgarian flag was hoisted, and the sacred 
 books and vessels destroyed. It is authentically recorded 
 that the doors of this church, as well as those of the high 
 school, were broken open by Bulgarian officers and sol- 
 diers. It is, moreover, incontestable that the police, the 
 guard of artillery, and the Bulgarian cavalry sent to put 
 down the riots all took part on some occasions in the 
 destruction of churches and property. And indeed, 
 wherever the authorities did not actively take part, they 
 silently encouraged the mob by the very fact of their 
 unprotesting presence. 
 
 =!' During the attack on the churches the mob scratched out the eyes of 
 all the holy eikons in the Cathedral, overturned the holy table, and broke 
 to pieces the sacred vessels.
 
 60 GiiEEKS A]ND Bulgarians 
 
 On the day following the demonstration, the Bulgarian 
 officer Toteif, who had been told off to guard the central 
 girls' school and the school of the Archangels, handed 
 over both schools to the committee which had organised 
 the anti-Greek movement. 
 
 The civil authorities do not attempt to conceal the 
 conduct of the army, hoping perhaps that they will thus 
 be able to justify their own incapacity. One of the 
 higher officials on his return from Stenimachos stated 
 that the officers with General Ivanoff, commanding the 
 troops at that town, were supporters of the Opposition 
 and hoped to injure the Government. Thus, although 
 they were authorised by the Government to fire on the 
 crowd, they contented themselves with ordering the 
 troops to fire once in the air. 
 
 It now appears certain that the whole of the damage 
 at that place was done by three small bands of fifty 
 men ; and the higher official already quoted, when it 
 was suggested that twenty policemen would be sufficient 
 to keep order, merely replied that the demonstrators 
 indeed were only 150, but there were also at least 200 
 soldiers who took part in the disturbances. 
 
 The troops aided the Bulgarians, who destroyed from 
 its foundations the primary school of Tsiprochori, occu- 
 pied the Church of the Holy Trinity, together with the 
 nifants' school attached thereto, and subsequently en- 
 tered the Greek girls' school and vented their spite on 
 the windows, papers, books, and furniture. The cavalry, 
 not wishing to forego their share of cowardly amusement, 
 charged the unarmed Greeks with their sabres, and 
 scattered them up and down the streets. They after- 
 wards, together with the infantry, formed a square with 
 the comitadjis in the centre and proceeded to loot and 
 destroy the shops and coffee-houses. 
 
 The troops again intervened to enable the mob to 
 occupy the Church of St. George, which the Greeks were 
 attempting to defend. The school and library were 
 next looted and set on fire, as were all the other schools 
 ni turn, seven in number, and the remaining churches, in 
 number eight.
 
 Greeks and Bulgarians 61 
 
 After this the mob proceeded to the destruction of 
 shops and houses, causing damage to the extent of over 
 1,000,000 fr. 
 
 I repeat here that these disturbances were prearranged 
 by the official and revolutionary circles of Sofia. It was 
 the programme of Sarafoff, which was proclaimed 
 throughout all Europe, but left Europe unmoved and 
 unprotesting. It was the programme of the destruction 
 by fire and sword of the whole Greek population living in 
 the vicinity of Bulgarians, and was thus formulated by 
 the Evening Post, the official revolutionary organ of the 
 Bulgarian capital, in December 1904 : 
 
 " One race alone must dominate in the Balkans — the 
 Bulgarian. To that end Hellenism must be extirpated 
 in both Macedonia and Eastern Bumelia. . . . The de- 
 struction of Hellenism must become an article of faith 
 for the Bulgarians. . . . The struggle agajnsb Hellenism 
 must commence in its very cradle. . . . Bulgarians, do 
 not forget your duty ! " 
 
 All the revolutionary committees were animated with 
 these ideas, and proclaimed a holy war against the Greeks 
 of the principality and of Macedonia, and in fact against 
 everything that is Greek. To the foreigners resident in 
 Bulgaria who follow the trend of affairs these things are 
 not unknown. As I have already said, an investigation 
 carried out by impartial men who sympathise with 
 neither nationality would suffice to justify all Hellenic 
 contentious. In spite of Prince Ferdinand's public 
 defence of the Bulgarian crimes, honourable and sincere 
 Bulgarians have not been wanting to denounce them both 
 in the Sobranje and in the Press. I here insert a speech 
 delivered in the Sobranje by M. Passareff, one of the 
 deputies, as well as some articles from the Bulgarian Press. 
 
 " Has the Government," demanded M. Passareff, " done 
 anything to prevent the invasion of Macedonia by Greek 
 bands and to defend our fellow nationalists there ? What 
 has it done ? I see nothing. Some are for reprisals 
 against Greece. It may be that such reprisals are con-
 
 f)2 Greeks and Bulgarians 
 
 sidered untimely, as injuring other Bulgarian interests. 
 But in this case were the reprisals against Bulgarian 
 subjects of Greek nationality more excusable? I can 
 understand the Government not preventing the demon- 
 strations, but to allow the vandalism which has taken 
 place I consider a crime on the part of the Minister, who 
 is guilty of abetting the scandal. Let me give you a few 
 examples from Varna. When the landing of the Greek 
 Bishop Neophytos was prevented, certain individuals took 
 a donkey, dressed it in sacerdotal garments, and drove it 
 through the streets. And who do you think were in this 
 procession ? Among the crowd were a number of gen- 
 darmes with one of their officers, and the whole proces- 
 sion was led by the Chief of Police ! The Prefect asked 
 three days in succession for instructions from the Ministry, 
 but received no answer. 
 
 " We are also aware that the Prefects of Philippopolis 
 and Pyrgos (Bourgas) left these town for the country, so 
 that they might be absent at the time of the disturbances. 
 Such arbitrary action on the part of the mob would be 
 impossible in any other country, as it would be impossible 
 in Bulgaria without the support of the police, and because 
 of this action the prestige which Bulgaria has gained 
 during thirty years was lost in as many days. 
 
 "How is it that the riots and the plunder of Greek 
 property has not recurred since the return of the Minister 
 Pettkoff from his journey, and since he began to take 
 severe measures against them ? Answer me that ques- 
 tion ! Is it not because during the first days of the riots 
 the authorities protected and encouraged the rioters, 
 whereas it has subsequently been compelled to pronounce 
 against them ? " 
 
 Voices (from the supporters of the Government) : 
 " The Opposition led the mob — it was they who committed 
 the vandalism." 
 
 Passareff : " That does not justify you. The authori- 
 ties ought not to have allowed attacks on foreign property, 
 and it is untrue that the Opposition fomented the dis-
 
 Greeks and Bulgarians 63 
 
 turban ces. What had it to gain from such outrages ? 
 What advantage has accrued from them ? That we have 
 got a few churches ? I repeat that these occurrences have 
 discredited Bulgaria and disgraced Government, for the 
 Government at any rate failed to prevent what it may 
 not have actually instigated." 
 
 The words of the Bulgarian deputy, who spoke with 
 so much courage and sincerity, need no comment from us. 
 We can only recommend them to the public opinion of 
 Europe. 
 
 The New Century, one of the leading journals of 
 Bulgaria, writes as follows : 
 
 " The attention of public opinion has been drawn to 
 the details, now arriving, of the regrettable events at 
 Anchialos. Very nearly the whole town has been de- 
 stroyed by fire, as the result of a patriotic manifesta- 
 tion. It is mournful to think that the whole of this evil 
 has been committed in the name of an aoritation which is 
 intended to promote the liberty of man, the immunity of 
 the person, and the assurance of a civilised life. 
 
 '' The anti-Greek movement in this country, which has 
 been manifested with such vehemence and force, is not 
 due to a fanatical Chauvinism which only aims at devas- 
 tation. The highest ideals are comprehended in the 
 movement, which give to it strength and increase its 
 activity. But if this is the case it must not be stained 
 with such crimes as these. This movement must remain 
 to the end such as it was in its commencement — ideal in 
 its object and unassailable in its purity. But certain 
 passionate elements in the country have stained its repu- 
 tation, and at Anchialos have totally obscured its signifi- 
 cance. The world recognised at first the high character 
 of the sentiments which were manifested at Varna, and 
 people outside Bulgaria would have been ready to ap- 
 prove the movement, notwithstanding even all the viola- 
 tions of the law at Philippopolis, had not the destruction 
 of Anchialos followed. 
 
 *' Investigation has not yet discovered those who 
 are responsible for this fearful crime, but whatever be
 
 (J 4 Greeks and Bulgarians 
 
 the result, the latter will remain an essential feature of 
 the event. The outer world will derive its impression 
 from first appearances, and these will only hinder our 
 cause and discredit the whole nation, as well as the men 
 who must have foreseen the affair but had not the 
 prudence to prevent it." 
 
 The outrageous conduct of the Bulgarians is amply- 
 proved by the fact that even this journal, which goes on 
 to attack the Greeks in no measured terms, can yet 
 express nothing but disgust for the action of their 
 opponents. The article concludes that it is difficult to 
 refute the argument of a Viennese newspaper which 
 declares that Bulgarians are now the perpetrators and 
 not the victims of Bulgarian atrocities. 
 
 The Bulgaria, another paper, writes : 
 
 '' The Government with a light conscience has permitted 
 the complete destruction of an entire Bulgarian town. 
 We are ashamed, and blush to be Bulgarians. Whatever 
 the circumstances may be, this event will stain the name 
 and history of Bulgaria. The present Government is 
 alone responsible for the sad fate of Anchialos, for by a 
 fatal resolution of this Government this little town was 
 chosen as one of the spots where the pre-arranged tragedy 
 of desolation was to be played. 
 
 " The plan was put into effect in a way surpassing the 
 expectations of the heroic instigators of the drama, who 
 were not at Anchialos, but the majority of them at Sofia, 
 or rather beyond the frontiers, and who to-day are all 
 here, for they are no others than our governors — Varna, 
 Phihppopolis, Pyrgos, Stenimachos, Sofia, Butschuk, 
 Anchialos, Sozopolis, &c. : these are the points doomed 
 to outrage and desolation. The heroes of the present 
 Government, who arrived on the stage with the conflagra- 
 tion of Macedonia (the movement of 1903), will make their 
 exit in the midst of flames, anarchy, and destruction." 
 
 The same journal adds that " the ' full liberty to 
 assemble ' which General Petkoff recommends in his last 
 circular to the authorities aggravates the responsibility
 
 Greeks and Bulgarians 65 
 
 of the Government. This will encourage the mob to 
 further violence in future." 
 
 The inspiration of these articles is very evident : The 
 Bulgaria is the organ of the ex-Premier Daneff, who has 
 repeatedly protested against the useless violence and 
 dangerous excesses of his compatriots. 
 
 The Bourga^ki Glas (or Voice of Pyrgos) published 
 the following article, which also throws the responsibility 
 for the destruction of Greek property on to the Bulgarian 
 Government : 
 
 *' Why do the Greeks emigrate ? And who are the 
 guilty parties in the matter of the second conflagration 
 at Anchialos ? 
 
 '' Nobody approved the outrages against the Greeks 
 permitted by the authorities at the time of the anti- 
 Greek demonstrations. 
 
 " It is not surprising that bitter words have been cast 
 at Bulgaria for these outrages, even by our friends. We 
 do not speak of the enemies of Bulgaria ; they have found 
 matter in the outrages for unjustified iudictments of all 
 Bulgarians. 
 
 "Even the Government did not formally approve of 
 the outrages, although everybody knew that it per- 
 mitted them. The telegrams of the Minister Petkoif in 
 relation to this question are well known. But no one 
 believes our Government. For the sake of appearances 
 it was obliged to take measures against the rioters, and 
 on this account it dismissed a few officials, prosecuted the 
 leaders of the mob, removed to a distance the riotous 
 element, and dismissed the responsible officials, as it 
 could not appear as their coadjutors. 
 
 "In our opinion, the words and deeds of the Govern- 
 ment are contradictory. Where, for instance, is the 
 logic in superseding the Prefect of Bourgas [Pyrgos] by 
 Zelkoff — the same Zelkoff who, when director of the Pre- 
 fecture of Philippopolis, with a whole division of troops 
 and 150 policemen at his disposal, permitted the unjusti- 
 fiable attacks on the private property of the Greek 
 residents ? According to the logic of the Nov VeJc, the
 
 66 Greeks and Bulgarians 
 
 Government not only connives at the action of ZelkofF, 
 but rewards him for the outrages which he permitted by- 
 promoting him to the Prefecture of Bourgas, the chief 
 Greek centre, where the greatest outrages have hap- 
 pened, and still continue to be committed ; and we shall 
 see that events will prove the existence of the collusion 
 which we allege. 
 
 " We hoped in vain that, after the destruction of 
 Anchialos, an end would be made of these acts of 
 violence ; only the system has been changed, and instead 
 of attacks in bands, individual persecution and assault 
 has commenced. A gang of criminals under the clear 
 protection of the police and the Government is traversing 
 the Greek villages, robbing the inhabitants, and threaten- 
 ing them with lire and sword. 
 
 " This system is more dangerous than the first, for it 
 keeps the Greeks in continual fear, and obliges them to 
 emiofrate in crowds. This is the true reason of the 
 emigration of the Greeks, and not the application of the 
 10th Article of the law concerning education. This 
 Article had been enforced before in some villages {e.g., 
 Bania, Bavdos, Yenikieui, Akrania, and others), but the 
 villagers never even thought of emigrating. 
 
 " Nor is emigration caused by the oppression of vexa- 
 tious laws and the imposition of continual fines, as the 
 Greeks say, ' for sake of appearances ' : the true cause is 
 to be found in the terrorisation and outrage to which 
 the Greeks have been exposed for three months. 
 
 "It is superfluous, we think, to prove to our readers 
 that the Greeks do not dare to complain. And, in truth, 
 to whom can they complain ? To the police ? But the 
 police openly protect their assailants. Against whom 
 shall they complain ? Against the police ? God forbid ! 
 It is clear that the Greeks do not wish to suifer worse 
 things by complaining, and thus they listen to the propa- 
 ganda of the Greek agents, and emigrate. 
 
 " In order that we may not be accused of vain speak- 
 ing, or of exaggeration, we will describe what is now 
 taking place at Anchialos. 
 
 " That town has been delivered over into the hands of
 
 Greeks and Bulgarians 67 
 
 the tools of the police — Ivan Christeff, Lascaroglou, and 
 Matzaroff ! As if the other misfortunes of the inhabitants 
 of Anchialos did not suflSce, brigands, gaol-birds, and 
 drunkards have been appointed as municipal officials ! 
 About ten of their companions lurk in the neighbourhood 
 of the monastery of St. George. Criminals continually 
 threaten the inhabitants with a fresh conflagration, saying 
 that everything ought to be burnt. On the evening of 
 the 13th instant a fire broke out in the stables of the 
 Black Sea Hotel, in Anchialos. Eye-witnesses assure 
 us that the fire was caused by these malefactors, who 
 threw petroleum on to the roof of the stable. It is a 
 fact that on that evening the Governor and his locum 
 tenens, the Mayor, and the municipal officials, as well as 
 the firemen, w^ere all absent from Anchialos ! The 
 military force also, as on the eve of July 30th, was with- 
 drawn to Bourgas. Thanks to the calm weather and to the 
 activity of the Policemen B. Popoff and G. Kioutsoukoff, 
 and of the civilians S. Ivan off and G. Lemblebidgi (and 
 to the hose which chanced to be in the hotel), the fire 
 was extinguished alter having destroyed two stables 
 and two houses, causing damage to the extent of 
 some 6000 fr. ; but the danger would have been great 
 if there had been any wind, and that part of the 
 town which had hitherto escaped would have been 
 destroyed. 
 
 " After the fire had been extinguished, the only one 
 who appeared was Lascaroglou ; the other officials and the 
 firemen were not to be found. It is not necessary to 
 remark that the fire produced a great panic, and nearly all 
 the houses and shops were evacuated. 
 
 " ' They are burning us again ! ' the Greeks cried in 
 terror, and they did not dare to help extinguish the fire, 
 because they did not know what to expect. Fortunately 
 the Bulgarians realised that they had to ' protect them- 
 selves against Bulgarians and not against Greeks,' and 
 saved what they could. 
 
 " After this clear case of incendiarism, even Bulgarians 
 commenced to emigrate from Anchialos, and the officials 
 began to send their families elsewhere, from fear of fresh
 
 68 Greeks and Bulgarians 
 
 fires and pillage. Only the mayoralty and its villains 
 and the police were satisfied ! If* this happens at Anchi- 
 alos, under the eyes of the police (who conveniently shut 
 them), every one can understand what goes on in the 
 villages. 
 
 ** After such things is it surprising that the Greeks 
 emigrate ? 
 
 " The existence of these disorders is due to the con- 
 nivance of the authorities, and in our Prefecture at any 
 rate anarchy is supreme. 
 
 " The police attempt to justify this anarchy by invok- 
 ing patriotism ; and for thus speaking openly and boldly 
 we know that we shall call down upon ourselves the 
 hatred of the mis-named Nationalists and the persecution 
 of the police and other malefactors. 
 
 " But . . . what is to be done ? Until now we have 
 held our peace ; but silence is criminal under the cir- 
 cumstances : an end must be put to this anarchy before 
 the Bulgarians themselves fall victims to it." 
 
 The Bussophile Sofia journal, the Glas, severely con- 
 demns the Bulgarian Government for arranging the 
 outrages against the Greeks in conjunction with the 
 mob. 
 
 " It would be impossible otherwise," adds this paper, 
 " for the mob to have held Philippopolis and the other 
 places the whole day long. 
 
 " For the Government these outrages came as a 
 welcome distraction from their unfortunate Macedonian 
 policy." 
 
 The Evening Post, which is considered as independent, 
 considers that the events must be looked upon as a 
 desperate explosion of disappointed hopes. " The Mace- 
 donians," it says, " see with grief that the Greek policy 
 of outrap;e in Macedonia is eroin^ to be rewarded in 
 Crete." ^ ^ 
 
 This phrase of the Bulgarian journal should be noted 
 with regard to the statement of the Powers that the 
 union of Crete with Greece would cause disturbances in
 
 Greeks and Bulgarians 69 
 
 the East. The disturbances take place without the 
 union : then the massacre of Greeks in Macedonia is made 
 the excuse for disappointing Greek hopes in Crete : and 
 finally the Greeks who ask for liberty in Crete are 
 accused of causing the massacre of their countrymen in 
 Bulgaria ! This is European logic. 
 
 " Let the ' pogrom ' of Philippopolis serve as a symptom 
 which will give Europe cause for reflection," says the 
 same journal. 
 
 Bulgaria, too, has its yellow press. Here, for example, 
 is an article from the Daily of Sofia, a paper which, 
 though rejoicing at the devastation of the Greek town, 
 yet cannot conceal between its lines the truth as to 
 the vitality of Hellenism in Anchialos. The article 
 is preceded by the following remarkable declaration : 
 *' We consider it our duty to state that this article 
 is also an echo of the thoughts of a most important 
 political personage in this country. We therefore 
 recommend the attention of readers and of the Govern- 
 ment. 
 
 "Anchialos has been burnt down," continues the journal. 
 " That nest of Greeks on the shore of the Black Sea has 
 been reduced to ruins which are still smoking. For four- 
 teen whole centuries that city, situated on Bulgarian 
 territory, has served as an unapproachable fortress of Hel- 
 lenism, an impregnable and inviolate acropolis of the 
 Greek idea. It constituted a state within a state, as is 
 also Stenimachos, and even Mesemvria and Sozopolis. 
 Greek laws, Greek interests, and a Greek spirit ruled. 
 Owing to our inertness or political negligence, or for other 
 reasons, Anchialos remained an inviolate island of Hel- 
 lenism in the midst of a Bulgarian sea in the times of 
 Krumm and of Simeon and of Assen, and up to yesterday. 
 Our sea-board on the Black Sea both was and remains 
 to-day a Greek possession. 
 
 ** In virtue of we know not what privileges, the Greeks 
 have acquired the right to consider themselves in Anchialos 
 as if in Greece itself The crowned head which they 
 recognise, and before which they kneel, and whose name 
 they pronounce with respect in church and in school, is
 
 70 Greeks and Bulgarians 
 
 not that of the Bulgarian Prince Ferdinand, but that of 
 the Athenian King George. 
 
 " The name of Bulgaria has been driven from the 
 schools, and is only pronounced with aversion. 
 
 " Nov^ that in the recent fearful events that lair of the 
 Greek idea has been at last destroyed, it is time for us to 
 awake from our long blindness, and be masters in our own 
 house. It is the duty of the Government to win for 
 Bulgaria this corner of Bulgaria, and not to allow it to 
 recoup itself and regain strength, this pernicious centre 
 where the spirit of hatred and envy of everything Bul- 
 garian was developed with impunity. To prohibit the 
 installation of the Greek Archbishop at Anchialos is by 
 no means sufficient. It is the Greek spirit that must not 
 re-establish itself there. 
 
 " At Athens not a coifee-house could exist with a Bul- 
 garian sign ; let us in Bulgaria so act that there shall be 
 one Greek fortress the less : we are masters in our own 
 house. 
 
 " What should be done ? The Government can, and 
 from a legal point of view is entitled to, appropriate the 
 soil under the burnt houses of Anchialos, to plan an 
 entirely new city, and to sell the plots by preference to 
 Bulgarians. Let good Bulgarians live there ; let Anchialos 
 be regenerated, let it live again, but now as a Bulgarian 
 city, where a Bulgarian spirit, Bulgarian interests, and 
 Bulgarian life may prevail in future. 
 
 " If this means be found impracticable, let another be 
 chosen. A little goodwill, a little more patriotism, 
 neither of which are wanting in the present Government, 
 will be enough to blot out, by peaceful means, of course, 
 this Greek ' city-state ' from our midst. And still more 
 must be blotted out the shameful remembrance of our 
 long blindness and inertia, by changing the name of the 
 city to another. Let it be called the city of Krumm. 
 
 " We repeat, Bulgaria must remain Bulgarian. We 
 feel ourselves to be masters even on that seaboard, and 
 in the future let there reign there, not King George, but 
 the Prince of Bulgaria. Shall we not think about this 
 whilst there is time ?
 
 Greeks and Bulgarians 71 
 
 The semi-official New Century also published the 
 following article : 
 
 " The Ecclesiastic Truth, a paper published in Con- 
 stantinople by the Patriarchate, is full of insults and 
 abominable insinuations against H.R.H. the Prince, his 
 Government, and the Bulgarian people, in consequence 
 of the anti-Greek demonstrations in the country. 
 
 " The Prince of Bulgaria refused to accept the calum- 
 nies aimed at his Government and people. He refused 
 to believe the ridiculous inventions of the Athenian 
 papers, which have been republished by their European 
 contemporaries devoted to the Greek idea. In fine, he 
 gave a fitting reply to the unseemly telegram of the 
 Patriarch, and this is the reason why he is now insulted 
 in the grossest manner by the organ of the Patriarchate. 
 
 " The insinuations of the Ecclesiastic Truth are 
 evidently the result of an unhealthy weakness, which 
 can reach at nobody, and they are not worth contradic- 
 tion. These fits of malignant hysterics cannot harm the 
 political significance and the wide toleration which have 
 always marked the action of H.B.H. the Prince towards 
 his subjects without distinction of race or religion, a 
 toleration of which the Greek newspapers always speak 
 in the highest terms as a special favour to their com- 
 patriots. To attribute to-day to the Prince feelings 
 which he has never shown towards the Greeks is obvi- 
 ously a sign of bad faith. 
 
 *' The Greeks can formulate no accusation against the 
 condition of affairs which had been created for them in 
 Bulgaria hitherto. Without being worthy of it, they 
 were the object of kind attentions on the part of the 
 Prince, of the Government, and of the people. Their 
 calumnies on this heading can touch nobody, and cannot 
 conduce to the result which the organ of the Patriarchate 
 has in view. This organ renders a bad service to the 
 cause which it claims to support, and constitutes a by no 
 means flattering testimony to the state of mind of those 
 who inspire this campaign. 
 
 " If Greek interests wish to allay the excitement of the
 
 72 Greeks and Bulgarians 
 
 country against the Greeks, it is strange to set about it 
 by pouring oil on the flames. The Greeks in their ex- 
 cessive Chauvinism have accustomed themselves to behave 
 in a haughty manner, and to consider all other nations 
 as a negligible quantity. 
 
 " It can be thus understood how they must have been 
 moved by the events which occurred in the principality, 
 and how the arrogant ambition of the Patriarchate was 
 touched thereby. 
 
 "But these events are due to the excitement caused 
 by the Greeks themselves in Bulgaria and by the crimes 
 of Greek bands in Macedonia. 
 
 " The Governnnent of the principality used every effort 
 to restrain the feelings of animosity against the Greeks. 
 It is perfectly conscious of having performed its duty as 
 regards the maintenance of order and tranquillity in the 
 country, but no one can ignore the difficulties underlying 
 the discharge of this duty in the present circumstances. 
 The Greek Patriarchate should be the first to comprehend 
 the seriousness of these circumstances and to refrain from 
 commencing a campaign of insinuations and calumnies, 
 whose only result is to create artificial reasons for indigna- 
 tion against the Greeks, in addition to our original 
 grievances. 
 
 "It is not by means of insults against the Prince, the 
 Government, and the people of Bulgaria that the Patriar- 
 chate can hope to reinstate the Greeks of the principality 
 in the favour which they once enjoyed, or to contribute 
 to the restoration of the old order of things. 
 
 "These insults and calumnies, added to the exaspera- 
 tion caused by the events which are daily occurring in 
 Macedonia, create fresh excitement and afford an oppor- 
 tunity for the disturbing elements to further their guilty 
 plans, in spite of the efforts of the Government to pre- 
 vent them. 
 
 " Injustice is not a productive capital, and instead of 
 yielding any profit, it merely calls forth animosities. The 
 Holy Greek Church, which ought to be an institution of 
 the highest impartiality, should have understood this, in- 
 stead of allowing hateful passions and mean instincts to
 
 Greeks and Bulgarians 73 
 
 obscure the character of its holiness. Its vulgar artifices 
 and dark machinations neither hurt nor frighten the princi- 
 pality. They can only injure the tranquillity of the spiritual 
 Hock which is under the protection of the Patriarch. 
 
 "It is not, however, our province to give prudent 
 advice to the Patriarchate. Turkey, whose support is 
 constantly invoked by the Patriarch in the thankless 
 task of abusing Bulgaria, ought to have required him to 
 abandon this policy before he formulated any request. 
 Turkey, however, did not take this very seriously ; on the 
 contrary, that Government always tolerates the attacks 
 on H.R.H. Prince Ferdinand published in the organ of 
 the Patriarchate in the very centre of Constantinople. 
 Such insulting attacks would not be tolerated in free 
 countries where the censor does not exist. 
 
 " Turkish censorship, however, is particular enough in 
 the case of perfectly harmless newspapers. This attitude 
 encourages us to think that if the Porte does not entirely 
 share the sentiments of the Patriarchate, it is not quite 
 foreign to them. It affords grounds for believing in a 
 state of mind which is indirectly manifested. Bulgaria 
 will give it her consideration." 
 
 The Paris Temps in a leading article says : "The 
 anti-Greek disturbances of Anchialos, Varna, Philip- 
 popolis, Pyrgos, Tatar- Bazartzik, and elsewhere, the 
 demonstrations held in the most important towns of Bul- 
 garia, and the characteristic resolutions passed at these 
 meetings, have shown the measure of hatred with which 
 the Greek inhabitants are being exterminated and perse- 
 cuted throughout the principality. 
 
 " The Bulgarian Government, by restraining to the 
 best of its power these demonstrations, showed that it 
 disapproved of the kindling of racial hatred as well as of 
 the incitement to civil war. But whatever improvement 
 has been effected during the last few days, its efforts have 
 necessarily been confined to what doctors call the ' cure 
 of the result.' The cure of the cause escapes Bulgarian 
 policy ; it is bound up with those international difficul- 
 ties which have for so long delayed the treatment of that
 
 74 Greeks and Bulgarians 
 
 illness from which all the Christian peoples of the Levant 
 are suffering. 
 
 "The chief theatre of Greco-Bulgarian hatred is in 
 Macedonia. Eastern Rumelia and Danubian Bult/aria 
 above Bhodope and Haemus know but a weak echo of 
 this distant strife. The reprisals which they make use 
 of are only likely to provoke fresh acts of vengeance on 
 the part of the Greeks on Turkish soil, and to perpetuate 
 the wretched state of affairs in Macedonia. 
 
 " The Greeks enjoy the privilege of holding, from time 
 immemorial, important positions in the ecclesiastical held. 
 Considering the Bulgarian Exarch as a usurper, and the 
 Bulgarian autonomous Church as schismatic, they see in 
 the person of the Patriarch of Constantinople the only 
 canonical authority on whom all the orthodox subjects of 
 the Ottoman State should depend. 
 
 " The confusion of religious and civil privileges in 
 Turkish administration has served this principle, and the 
 Greek clergy occupied all the provinces of Macedonia. 
 
 " National sentiment, with more or less consciousness, 
 and the identity of language, have since succeeded in 
 persuading the Exarchist villages to join the Bulgarian 
 Church. But these influences were not everywhere strong 
 enough to triumph over a propaganda pushed actively by 
 an enterprising clergy. 
 
 " Many Macedonian villages are called, and consider 
 themselves, Greek, whilst they exclusively employ Bul- 
 garian as their language and are dependent on the 
 Exarch. The instructions of the Exarch prohibit the 
 Bulgarian clergy from any association in the work of poli- 
 tical propaganda, and all resistance to the movement 
 conducted by the Greek clergy. The latter take advan- 
 tage of the aid afforded them by the Greek committee, 
 and inwardly approve the proclamations which this com- 
 mittee circulates, and which are drawn up in the form of 
 an ultimatum. 
 
 " * Brethren,' says one of these last circulars, distributed 
 in the Exarchist villages of southern Macedonia, ' recog- 
 nise the truth ! The Bulgarian committee has been 
 abolished. Our committee is the only one existing now.
 
 Greeks and Bulgarians 75 
 
 Think ! We give you ten days in which to return to 
 your ancient faith, and to confess that you are Greeks, 
 as all the books of the world prove. If you do not 
 submit, great calamities will befall your village. Amen.' 
 
 " The result of such manifestoes, whose conditions are 
 announced without circumlocution, and of the persecu- 
 tions which follow such threats, is shown in the yearly 
 increasing numbers of emigrants from Macedonia. Sta- 
 tistics drawn up at Salonica show that 3000 Bulgarians 
 left Macedonia in 1904 for America, 7000 in 1905 and 
 15,000 in 1906. It is thus clear that the result will be 
 the depopulation of Macedonia. 
 
 " But who can apply to-day the remedy for the disease ? 
 The Greek Government has often been accused of foment- 
 ing an anti-Bulgarian movement, so one cannot expect 
 contrary measures from the Government of Athens. 
 Besides, if the Greek frontier was closed to the bands the 
 influence of the Greco-Macedonian committee has such 
 foundations as to render it impossible for any organ on that 
 side to restrain the mania of Greco-Bulgarian hostilities. 
 
 '* Turkey sees with great pleasure two Christian nations 
 tearing at each other's throats. Greece in the present 
 instance is doing the work of the Sultan very well. 
 In Constantinople they are very certain that they can 
 put a stop to Greek claims in Macedonia whenever they 
 wish, so that the Porte need not intervene in the quarrel. 
 
 " There are thus the European Powers left. But apart 
 from the well-known reasons which have for so long ren- 
 dered impossible any adjustment of their interests in the 
 East, there is another difficulty for them, viz. : the 
 incompatibility of two nationalities, both Christian, both 
 orthodox, and the extent of their hostilities, which is the 
 Gordian knot of the Macedonian problem." 
 
 Under the heading *' Deeds, many deeds — on paper," 
 the Bulgarian paper Voice of Pyrgos publishes the 
 following article against the Bulgarian Government : 
 
 " I do not think of denying that the atrocities of the 
 Greek bands in Macedonia have provoked reprisals against 
 Greeks in Bulgaria. The last movement, however, with
 
 76 Greeks and Bulgarians 
 
 its terrible consequences, was not provoked by those 
 bands — the bands have been for a long time wasting 
 Macedonia — but by the reports of the union of Crete 
 with Greece. 
 
 " Our readers will remember how the Government 
 newspapers expressed their astonishment at Bulgarian 
 patience on the first rumours of the union of Crete with 
 Greece. And surprise on the part of the Government 
 always conveys a threat. When the threat upon paper 
 did not help, the Government permitted the anti-Greek 
 movement. We think it superfluous to repeat that the 
 opportunity for an anti-Greek movement was prepared a 
 long time beforehand, thanks especially to the double- 
 faced policy of the Government. 
 
 " The Government made use of the anti-Greek 
 movement, in the hope that this would postpone 
 the union of Crete with Greece and the dispatch of 
 Greek bands into Macedonia. But this calculation 
 proved mistaken. 
 
 " Crete, if not formally, is at any rate substantially de 
 facto united with Greece, and King George now appoints 
 its Governor-General directly. While the Greek bands 
 in Macedonia have not only not decreased, but on the 
 contrary have increased since the anti-Greek movement, 
 and have allied themselves with Servian bands for the 
 annihilation of Bulgarism, official Greece itself, by the 
 facilities which she aifords to the Greeks who are emi- 
 grating from Bulgaria, declares that she has no intention 
 of altering her policy in Macedonia. As soon as our 
 Government, therefore, saw that it gained nothing of 
 what it expected from the anti-Greek movement, it 
 forthwith put a stop to it. 
 
 " Instead then of the results expected by the Govern- 
 ment, we have absolutely negative results. Crete 
 has been united to Greece, the Greek bands have 
 increased in Macedonia, and Bulgaria has been disgraced 
 by permitting the outrages. 
 
 " We have to-day an inquiry into the destruction of 
 Anchialos, in which Bulgarians are implicated ; another 
 into the circumstances of a robbery in which — why
 
 Greeks and Bulgarians 77 
 
 should we conceal it ? — the police are implicated ; and a 
 third . . . but there is no end of them." 
 
 " At Pyrgos we have law-suits about the seizure of 
 churches and schools which are in the occupation of 
 the municipal authorities. We have an indictment 
 for the theft (?) of arms without any private prosecutor 
 and without any prisoner. What else is there ? There 
 is everything which can be done by rulers who have 
 lost their heads. The most serious part of this con- 
 fusion is that the actions thus brought cancel one 
 another, and only result in chaos that has been formed 
 from the stench of which many noses will suffer. This, 
 of course, does not stop dozens of people being im- 
 prisoned, guilty and innocent. We say guilty and 
 innocent, indeed, because there would be no question 
 of Greeks or Bulgarians being guilty if the Government 
 had not permitted the movement to attain such dimen- 
 sions. Of breaking the public peace ik) one is more 
 guilty than the Government itself It is immoral on 
 the part of the Government, after ruining the Greeks 
 and compromising the credulous Bulgarians, to throw 
 them both into prison. 
 
 " For this reason it is indispensable that an amnesty 
 should be proclaimed for all the crimes committed in 
 the anti-Greek movement. But the amnesty would 
 have no significance unless an end were finally put to 
 the abuses perpetrated by the authorities." 
 
 The same Bulgarian paper, in reply to a declaration 
 made by the Minister Petkoff, makes the following 
 accusation : 
 
 " The Minister Petkoff has informed the Chamber, in 
 reply to M. S. Botsoff, that it is not true that the 
 Greeks are terrorised in the vicinity of Pyrgos [BourgasJ. 
 The truth, however, is that in the neighbourhood of Pyrgos, 
 and especially in the Greek centres, anarchy is prevalent. 
 It pains us to make this statement, but we consider 
 that silence in such circumstances is a crime, and we 
 should like to know the policy of the powers that be — if, 
 indeed, the prevalent anarchy admits of a policy at all.
 
 78 Greeks and Bulgariajns 
 
 " These are the more recent facts : 
 
 ''*(!) Michael Alikoglou, of Anchialos, was beaten 
 ahiiost to death at the place named Soka, and his 
 flock was stolen from him. He is now at Mesemvria, 
 and we hear that he has since died. The culprits were 
 two comitadjis. 
 
 "(2) At the small inn on the Anchialos-Pyrgos road 
 armed comitadjis held up the merchants Kodeff and 
 Tineif, from whom they demanded money. The same 
 comitadjis fired into the inn. 
 
 " (3) On the way from Anchialos to Thermae, Manuel 
 Tabacoglou, from Anchialos, was robbed by comitadjis, 
 who took from him 260 fr. 
 
 " (4) Three comitadjis at Anchialos attacked by night 
 and flogged George Leblebedji. 
 
 " These events have all happened within one week, 
 and are all attested by witnesses. If this is how the 
 situation created by the authorities is strengthened and 
 protected — for this is how M. Petkoff's answer must be 
 interpreted — it is not strange that the Greeks are 
 emigrating, and that even Bulgarians are following their 
 example." 
 
 The Bulgaria, commenting on the speech of the Prince 
 in the Sobranje, with reference especially to the para- 
 graph reading, " Europe has commenced to look up to 
 the Bulgarian principality as an important factor of 
 civilisation," remarks that " all the evil which has been 
 done, and which is still being done daily in this country, 
 such as brigandage, arson, robbery with violence, theft, 
 and in general all the attempts on the lives, property, and 
 honour of our fellow-citizens, of whatever nationality, 
 tend to certify that our country has become an important 
 factor of disorder. 
 
 " Besides, the attitude of the Great Powers and of the 
 European Press shows clearly enough how Bulgaria is 
 being judged abroad." 
 
 The Bulgarian paper Den also, on October 20, accuses 
 the followers of Gennadieff of *' provoking the anti-
 
 Greeks and Bulgarians 79 
 
 Greek disturbances which have so much injured Bulgaria, 
 solely and only for financial reasons." 
 
 The following is a letter received from a correspondent 
 at Pyrgos, dated August 16, 1906 : 
 
 " The Greek population of our town, like that of all 
 the Bulgarian towns, is in despair and terror. The 
 Greeks only venture out of their houses in order to buy 
 their victuals, and are obliged to shut up their houses 
 early under threat of death from the comitadjis. 
 
 " Three days ago the Bulgarian patriots made a fresh 
 attack on Greek houses and shops. They destroyed and 
 looted the shop of Em. Karagiozi. 
 
 " Commerce is at a standstill and all credit has been 
 stopped. The poor Greeks, here and elsewhere, do not 
 know what to do, and flee where fate leads them, aban- 
 doning their property, small or large, in order to escape 
 with their lives. . 
 
 *' You will perhaps be surprised to learn that although 
 the Minister of the Interior (M. Petkoff) dismissed the 
 Prefect of Pyrgos, this dismissal has had no influence on 
 the condition of affairs. Do you seriously beHeve that 
 the Government disapproved of these outrages ? If they 
 had wished to do so, could they not have prevented them ? 
 And what are they doing now, when so many crimes are 
 being committed against the Greeks, in order to show 
 their good faith ? 
 
 " I will relate only one incident to give you an idea of 
 the difference between what the Bulgarians say and what 
 they do. 
 
 " M. Petkoff, who visited our town after the commis- 
 sion of the outrages, promised the inhabitants of Pyrgos 
 and Anchialos that all the churches which had been 
 seized, as well as the schools, would be returned to them, 
 and that the burnt houses would be rebuilt at the 
 Goverment's expense. Three days afterwards, however, 
 Sismanoff, the Minister of Education, appointed teachers 
 in the school here which was, only twenty-five days before, 
 Greek, and changed it into a Bulgarian commercial 
 school ! This incident is characteristic of the words
 
 80 Greeks and Bulgarians 
 
 and deeds of the two Ministers of the StamboulofF 
 
 party. 
 
 *'0n the 12th instant the Greek steamer Antigone 
 sailed from here with two hundred and fifty famiUes of 
 refugees from Anchialos. Oh, if you could have witnessed 
 that scene ! If you could have seen men and women, 
 without boots, in tattered clothes, hungry, miserable, 
 and mourning the loss of dear relations, abandoning 
 their ruined houses, the land in which they lived. ..." 
 
 The Bulgarian diplomatic agent at Constantinople, 
 M. Natsevitch, on tendering his resignation said : " The 
 three years which I passed at my post at Constantinople 
 were for me years of martyrdom, which I could no longer 
 bear on hearing of the destruction of Anchialos. I 
 suffered through this event both as diplomatic agent 
 and as a Bulgarian, and on this account I did not 
 hesitate to hand in my resignation." And the present 
 Prime Minister Petkoff seemed to be speaking the truth 
 when, on visiting Anchialos after the destruction, he 
 exclaimed to his attendants, "These crimes will cost 
 Bulgaria dear," But as a matter of fact Europe has not 
 been moved to indignation by the Bulgarian outrages. 
 Bulgaria is applauded everywhere. She is the state of 
 the future ! 
 
 But it would be an injustice to the whole European 
 Press if one were to impute to it complete silence and 
 indifference to these crimes. A great many papers did 
 protest, and stigmatised in a proper manner the authors 
 of the outrages. 
 
 One of the most important Austrian papers, the 
 AUgemeine Zeitung of Vienna, published a long article 
 under the heading " Hellenism in Bulgaria," of which the 
 following are extracts : 
 
 " The anti-Greek movement in the Bulgarian princi- 
 pality still continues. But this time the Bulgarian 
 authorities have taken severe measures against the 
 instigators. At Sofia they have at last come to realise 
 that a state of affairs in which the scum of the streets
 
 Greeks and Bulgarians 81 
 
 rules public life should not be allowed to become 
 chronic. 
 
 *' The annihilation and Bulgarisation of the Greek 
 element in Bulgaria would bring with it heavy com- 
 mercial losses and disadvantages to the principality. 
 The extreme value of the Greek element as regards 
 Bulgarian commerce is the outcome of historical develop- 
 ment, and its violent destruction would necessarily cause 
 to the Bulgarian State a most deep injury. 
 
 " The realisation of this truth and shame for the 
 horrible work of August and September have induced 
 the Bulgarian Government to take strong measures 
 against the lawless mob. 
 
 " But the Bulgarian Government must not stop at 
 half measures, nor will it be able to do so. It will be 
 compelled, on the contrary, to clearly declare and give 
 assurances that it does not desire to derive any benefit 
 from the crimes of the mob. The dest^^uction of the 
 whole Greek organisation is a work of the lowest nature 
 of the Bulgarian mob, of the ' Bulgarian brute.' 
 
 " It is hence obvious that the first and indispensable 
 condition of the maintenance of the civil authority above 
 the will of the mob must necessarily be the restoration 
 of the status existing before the lawless raids of the 
 Bulgarian malcontents. 
 
 *' It is the State's simple obligation and duty, imposed 
 by elementary justice, to restore the sixteen churches 
 seized, as well as the three monasteries and the eighteen 
 schools, together with their belongings, to the represen- 
 tatives of the (Ecumenical Patriarchate and the Greek 
 ecclesiastical communities in Bulgaria. But the restitu- 
 tion of the church property seized must include those 
 buildings which the Bulgarian communities claim as 
 their own property, as they were taken by force from 
 their actual possessors. 
 
 *' The Bulgarisation of the Greek schools aimed at by 
 the Nationalist agitators through the renewal of the 
 Stambouloff law relating to schools seems both useless 
 and unjust." 
 
 I here insert some articles published by the chief 
 
 F
 
 82 Greeks and Bulgarians 
 
 Continental newspapers in connection with the outrages 
 in Bulgaria and Eastern Rumelia. The Fremderihlatt 
 writes as follows : 
 
 " The racial struggle in the Balkan Peninsula has 
 already been productive of fearful events. After the 
 recent cases in which Greek churches and Greek schools 
 were taken by assault in Eastern liumelia, yesterday 
 the infuriated mob consigned a whole town to the flames. 
 Anchialos has for the most part been transformed into a 
 heap of ruins ; many of the inhabitants have perished, 
 and those who succeeded in saving their lives have fled 
 to the hills in order to escape falling into the hands of 
 their merciless enemies after the destruction of their 
 homes. 
 
 " The outbreak of hatred against the Greeks of 
 Macedonia is indeed the result of the activity of Greek 
 bands in Macedonia, which have step by step pushed 
 back the Bulgarians. But these bands are a Bulgarian 
 invention ; and in the very interior of the country, where 
 the Bulgarian element is mingled with populations 
 speaking a diflerent tongue or constitutes a minority of 
 the population, the Bulgarian bands had boldly ventured 
 and carried on propaganda for their national cause by 
 outrages of every kind, by raids and assaults, by arson, 
 assassination, and violation." 
 
 Further on, speaking of the activity of the Greek 
 bands in Macedonia by which the Bulgarian brigands 
 were completely exterminated, the article continues : 
 
 *' In this manner Hellenism was enabled to progress 
 in Macedonia, whilst in Bulgaria, where Macedonia is 
 already looked upon as national property, it produced 
 fear and rage, and, as we have seen, gave rise to a purely 
 fanatical movement. The successes of the Greek bands 
 caused such an outbreak of hatred against the Greeks 
 that the Greek minorities in Eastern Bumelia are 
 threatened with extermination, and any attempt on their 
 part to resist only aggravates the evil. The Bulgarians 
 use the Greeks of Eastern Rumelia as hostages, and for
 
 Gbeeks and Bulgarians 83 
 
 every square mile of territory lost in the south a bloody 
 account is presented in the north. . . . 
 
 "The Bulgarian Government, which promised after 
 the j&rst outbreaks to do all in its power to protect the 
 Greeks, and which indeed restrains the mob in the larger 
 towns by troops, had no desire to prevent the disaster 
 of Anchialos." 
 
 The Viennese Allgemeine Zeitung very impartially 
 describes the state of affairs. The article appears under 
 the heading '' The Lesson of Anchialos" : 
 
 " The atrocities of Kishineff and of Gomel have been 
 left far behind by those of Anchialos, which on Sunday 
 last was the theatre of most fearful scenes. But it is 
 to-day known for certain and indisputably that the 
 Bulgarian Government and the Bulgarian nation itself 
 stand before Europe terribly compromised. 
 
 " How could it possibly happen, in view of the recent 
 occurrences at Philippopolis, Stenimachos, Pyrgos, Cer- 
 nabad, and Mesemvria, that the authorities of the 
 principality took no preventive measures to preclude the 
 attack on Anchialos, which was openly}: planned and 
 carefully prepared with the help of the peasantry from 
 the neighbouring villages ? And how 'did it possibly 
 occur that a whole town in the middle of Bulgaria could 
 be burnt to the ground without the authorities of the 
 principality showing any opposition, without the troops 
 called from Pyrgos, only two and a half hours distant, 
 doing anything to prevent it, even by firing if necessary 
 on the mob, without any one raising a finger, on behalf 
 of the grievously offended civil authority and on behalf 
 of the national honour, against the incendiaries and 
 assassins, who raged like maniacs for a whole day and 
 ran through the whole list of the most abominable 
 crimes ? . . . However many outrages may have been 
 committed of late years by the bands of Albanian, Bulga- 
 rian, Eumanian, and Servian brigands in Macedonia, the 
 horror of Anchialos puts all else in the shade. It shows 
 in bloody letters, lit up by the flames of the conflagration, 
 what would be the fate of Macedonia if the Powers were
 
 84 Greeks and Bulgarians 
 
 to detach it from the body of the Turkish Empire as an 
 autonomous province, and were to entrust it to Bulgarian 
 authorities. 
 
 " The urgent necessity is shown for some common 
 action to be taken by the Powers, and for the Govern- 
 ment of Sofia to be categorically informed not only that 
 the hideous acts of barbarism from Philippopolis to 
 Anchialos exclude the Bulgarian principality from the 
 ranks of civilised states, but also that the Powers will 
 by no means and on no condition tolerate the repetition 
 of such outrages. 
 
 " Now only is it that one recognises the wise and pru- 
 dent foresight of the Powers assembled at Berlin which 
 pushed back Bulgaria from the ^gean Sea and preserved 
 Cavalla for Turkey. For while in the Greek towns of 
 Pyrgos [Bourgas], Anchialos, and Varna, which were 
 entrusted to Bulgaria in 1878, the Greeks, who form the 
 most enterprising and progressive part of the population, 
 are continually molested, persecuted, tyrannised, and 
 robbed, the Greek Cavalla, which was at the same time 
 snatched from the hands of the Bulgarians, has under 
 Turkish rule from a small village of only 8000 inhabi- 
 tants become a rich, flourishing, and prosperous town with 
 a population of 40,000. 
 
 "It is thus clearly and indisputably shown that the 
 rule of the Sultan in Macedonia is at any rate prefer- 
 able to the bloody ' civilising methods ' of New 
 Bulgaria. ..." 
 
 The Neues Wiener Taghlatt also criticises the events 
 very severely : 
 
 " The eyes of the world are turned to-day horror- 
 stricken towards Bulgaria, where the unrestrained rage 
 against everything that is Greek has occasioned in each 
 locality a true disaster. How the Bulgarians raged and 
 raved against the Greek inhabitants of Philippopolis, 
 Stenimachos, and other towns our readers have already 
 learnt from long descriptions, and they also know that 
 the Bulgarian Government hastened to declare to Europe 
 that it disapproved of what had occurred in the country.
 
 Greeks and Bulgarians 85 
 
 and would take care to prevent any future repetition of 
 the events. 
 
 " How did the Bulgarian Government devote its 
 activity to the prevention of new outbreaks of the rage 
 of the mob against the Greeks ? This was very soon 
 shown. In every corner, in every street and square, new 
 aiiti-Greek meeting were held, quite undisturbed by the 
 police or the troops ; at each meeting resolutions were 
 acclaimed, proposing a merciless persecution and exter- 
 mination of the Greeks ; and, after a methodical 
 organisation of the mob, there occurred yesterday a 
 fearful catastrophe, unique even in the history of Oriental 
 savagery. 
 
 ** The official Bulgarian reports state that the Greeks 
 attempted to frustrate the meeting. But how ? ' By 
 barricading themselves in their churches and houses,' is 
 the reply given from Sofia ! " 
 
 The Vienna journal proceeds to pull to pieces the con- 
 tentions coming from Sofia as to the causes provoking 
 the catastrophe, and to emphasise the guilt of the 
 Bulgarian Government. 
 
 The German Vossische Zeitung wrote with regard to 
 the events of Anchialos : 
 
 *' What does Europe say to this ? What does that 
 Europe say which designed to watch over the tranquillity 
 of the Balkan Peninsula, and which, in virtue of the 
 stipulations of the Treaty of Berlin, is entitled to inter- 
 vene in some way on account of the latest occurrences in 
 Bulgaria ? 
 
 " So far as is known to-day, Europe says absolutely 
 nothing, but keeps silence, as she evidently has no wish 
 to put her hand into a fresh hornets' nest. It is certain 
 that if some Christian Church in Turkey was simply 
 desecrated by an unrestrained crowd having no connection 
 with the Government, the usual cry of indignation would 
 resound through the world (especially in England) ; and 
 in the various Parliaments the Governments would not 
 be able to find threats sufficiently severe to condemn, as 
 we said, a simple 'profanation, and not a forcible seizure
 
 86 Greeks and Bulgarians 
 
 of a church from its owners. But when it is a question 
 of the siege and seizure of Greek churches, and of other 
 abominable outrages perpetrated by the Bulgarian people 
 — Europe is silent." 
 
 Even the philo- Bulgarian Novoe Fremya, with all its 
 sophisms and attempts to justify the Bulgarians, calls 
 the riots " regrettable incidents," while the Dvatesatey 
 Viek, in an article under the heading " Slavism in 
 danger," amongst other remarks concerning Macedonia, 
 which it fears will become Austrian, Albanian, or Greek, 
 and not Slav, concludes with the remark that "they 
 should not attack unarmed citizens." 
 
 The important daily paper of St. Petersburg, Pieter- 
 hursJci Vyedomost, writes as follows : 
 
 " During the last few weeks reports have been received 
 from Philippopolis, Burgas, Varna, and other towns and 
 villages of Southern Bulgaria, of acts of robber}^ and 
 violence committed on the Greeks, all of which were of 
 the same description. The Bulgarian mob falls on the 
 Greek churches, destroying the Greek ecclesiastical books, 
 and seizes and destroys the Greek shops — in a word, 
 perpetrates the same kind of pre-arranged riot as the 
 Russian pogroms. The Greek churches are seized on the 
 pretext that they were, forsooth, built w^ith Bulgarian 
 money. At Varna they prevented by a hostile demon- 
 stration the landing of the Greek Archbishop, on the 
 pretext that the Patriarch had not considered it neces- 
 sary to communicate his appointment to the Bulgarian 
 Government. 
 
 "It seems that the Bulgarian Government, by secretly 
 supporting the mob in its persecution of the Greek 
 Church in Bulgaria, aims at nothing other than the 
 subjection of the latter to the civil authority of the 
 principality ; and the Bulgarian people is so inimically 
 disposed towards the Greeks that there is no need of 
 particular reasons for attacking them. 
 
 " The Greeks are hated in Bulgaria, not only for politi- 
 cal but also for social reasons. They have supplanted the
 
 Greeks and Bulgarians 87 
 
 Bulgarians not only in the commercial towns on the coast, 
 where they have concentrated in their hands all the 
 maritime trade and shipping business, but in the towns 
 of the interior of Eastern Eumelia, where all the whole- 
 sale as well as part of the retail trade is in their hands. 
 In the arts, in their Avay of dealing with customers, (fee, 
 they are dangerous competitors. As hotel-keepers, clerks, 
 hairdressers, and in every other employment which re- 
 quires a certain amount of civility, they are more suc- 
 cessful than Bulgarians. Even in the service of the 
 Government there is a large number of Greeks. Formerly 
 educated Bulgarians were rare. The Greeks, with that 
 intelligence which distinguishes them, availed themselves 
 of their opportunity, and occupied many important posts. 
 Under these circumstances it is not at all strange that 
 the Bulgarians dislike the Greeks. It is only necessary 
 to add to this the defiant attitude of the Greek clergy, 
 who openly look down upon the Exarcliists, and the 
 outrages against the Greeks are easily accounted for. 
 
 *' The Bulgarian Government has a whole army corps 
 at Philippopolis, but notwithstanding this they took no 
 measures to put down the disturbances. It is here sup- 
 posed that the Bulgarian Government played the part of 
 a mere spectator, because they hoped for the support of 
 Austria." 
 
 The Cologne Gazette, which always examines the aifairs 
 of the East with calmness and impartiality, is the only 
 paper in Germany which speaks from a complete know- 
 ledge of the question without being either a victim or an 
 instrument of individuals or parties. If it has any pohbics, 
 they are purely German, for its articles often bear a 
 semi-official character. 
 
 On July 19 the Cologne Gazette published in its 
 second morning edition the following leading article on 
 the recent outrages : 
 
 *' The general feeling in Bulgaria against the activity 
 of the Greek bands in Macedonia is alleged to be the 
 cause of the recent outrages. On the other hand, it is 
 certain that they were organised by agitators. At any
 
 88 Greeks and Bulgarians 
 
 rate, the Bulgarian police, which does not in any case 
 enjoy a reputation for excessive foresight, did not inter- 
 vene, and it ought to be ascertained whether this was 
 owing to its inefficiency or to connivance. 
 
 '*The year 1872 gave to the Bulgarians an Exarch of 
 their own, who has now become an adversary of the 
 (Ecumenical Patriarch, and has gained strong support 
 by the establishment of Bulgaria as a principality and 
 by the union with Eastern Bumelia. The population of 
 these two countries has for the most part joined the 
 Exarchate, and only at Philippopolis, Stenimachos, the 
 seaports of the Black Sea, and a few other places are 
 there still Greek communities, which are being gradually 
 crushed out of existence. 
 
 *'The (Ecumenical Patriarchate can justly complain 
 of numerous illegal oppressions and interferences. The 
 dissension between the orthodox and the Exarchists 
 became intensified when the struggle in Macedonia 
 developed into a bloody war between the bands of the 
 two nationalities. 
 
 " But the commencement of this phase of the struggle 
 is due to the Bulgarians. With the fall of StambouloiF 
 the policy of the ' peaceful penetration ' of Macedonia by 
 means of schools and churches came to an end, and the 
 propagandists commenced a work which had terrible 
 results. 
 
 *' That work provoked the armed defence of the Greek 
 and Servian followers of the Patriarchate. 
 
 " Under these conditions the state of the orthodox 
 in Bulgaria naturally goes from bad to worse. The 
 Macedonian committees in the principality create an 
 agitation against the Greeks by every means in their 
 power, and have repeatedly urged the necessity of re- 
 moving all the orthodox from the public service. They 
 see in the latter a dangerous element ; and indeed, two 
 years ago, when a conflict with Turkey seemed imminent, 
 both Mussulman and Greek recruits were rejected. 
 
 " Anyhow, the Bulgarian Government has so far 
 refrained from taking exceptional measures against the 
 orthodox, so long as the latter have not committed
 
 Greeks and Bulgarians 89 
 
 breaches of the law, but it has seized every opportunity 
 which has presented itself in order to weaken the 
 influence of the Patriarchate." 
 
 The Neiie Freie Presse, in another article, claims that 
 these demonstrations, instead of putting an end to the 
 latest irritation between the Governments of Sofia and 
 Athens, will contribute to its aggravation, and will have 
 deplorable consequences in Macedonia, where Greece 
 seems to be prevailing. 
 
 The Pester Lloyd, commenting in a leading article on 
 the outrages at Sofia, after particularly emphasising the 
 cheers and applause of the Bulgarian mob before the 
 residence of the British agent, asks, *' What is the 
 reason of this especial manifestation of the Bulgarian 
 demonstrators in favour of the British agent and the 
 British Government, while no such unrestrained enthu- 
 siasm was displayed before the other diplomatic 
 agencies ? " 
 
 The semi-official Fremdenhlatt, criticising the causes 
 of the disturbances, observes that the abnormal condition 
 of Macedonia was created by the principality itself, by 
 the assembly and dispatch of bands long before the 
 other Macedonian bands commenced their campaign, 
 which only imitated methods originally Bulgarian. 
 
 " How can Bulgaria dare to protest and to hold Turkey 
 responsible for what is happening in Macedonia, when 
 she herself is alone responsible for the internecine 
 struggle into which she has driven the Greeks ? " 
 
 The Independance Beige comments as follows : 
 
 *' The serious occurrences which have taken place at 
 Cavarna in Bulgaria, where the mob took possession of 
 the Greek Church, and the Greek school, and at the 
 same time committed various outrages on the shops of 
 Greeks, again draw attention to the burning question of 
 the struggle between nationalities which has created 
 such a dangerous condition throughout the Levant. It 
 is clear that the Bulgarian Government cannot be held
 
 90 Greeks and Bulgarians 
 
 responsible for these outrages, especially as the Prefect 
 of this town had promised to protect the Greek com- 
 munity, and the mob took advantage of his absence to 
 commit the excesses which have been announced." 
 
 " We wrote yesterday," continues the Independance 
 Beige in its next issue, " that the Government of Sofia 
 would certainly hasten to clear itself of all responsibility 
 for the lamentable anti- Greek demonstrations committed 
 on Bulgarian soil. The Greek representative has pro- 
 tested against the demonstrations at Philippopolis, and 
 has demanded an indemnity for the excesses committed, 
 and the Government of Sofia has immediately given 
 orders for the arrest and punishment of the guilty 
 parties." 
 
 In view of these crimes, which the Bulgarians them- 
 selves have acknowledged either in the Press or in their 
 Parliament to have been perpetrated, and which have 
 aroused the protests and indignation of the Press through- 
 out Europe, what has been done by official Europe and 
 unofficial England ? My duty is to declare publicly that 
 almost the entire responsibility for the crimes lies, not 
 with the Greco- Macedonian bands which for the last 
 three years have acted in self defence, but with the 
 Bulgarian committees. More than once England, 
 through its Foreign Office, has protested against the 
 defence by Greeks of Macedonians, and has asked for 
 the punishment of the so-called responsible Greek Metro- 
 politans. Public opinion, misled by certain members 
 of the Balkan Committee and by the Sofia correspon- 
 dent of the Times — who, as is w^ell known, supports the 
 worn-out theory of a Greater Bulgaria reaching as far as 
 Salonica and Mount Olympus, and destined to create a 
 strong anti-Bussian bulwark, to the advantage (save the 
 mark !) of the straitened kingdom of Greece (as if the 
 Hellenic idea were confined to the free state, and as if 
 Hellenism were not full of a strong vitality in Macedonia, 
 in Thrace, in Epirus, in the ^Egean, and in Asia Minor) — 
 public opinion has, through various organs, with the 
 Times at their head, declared war upon the Greek bands
 
 Greeks and Bulgarians 91 
 
 in Macedonia, and has absolved the malefactors of Sofia, 
 who are struggling against the Turks in order to found a 
 great Christian state, including, together with the present 
 territory of Bulgaria, Macedonia and Thrace and the rest 
 of the Balkan Peninsula, with the adjacent Greek islands ! 
 
 There exist declarations of not a few responsible English 
 politicians, belonging for the most part to the Liberal 
 Party, to the effect that the solution of the Eastern ques- 
 tion depends upon the creation of a large and strong 
 Bulgarian state, capable of taking the place of the daily 
 declining and decomposing power of Turkey. Hence 
 the interest exerted by official England, especially during 
 the last three years, on behalf of Bulgaria. 
 
 Omitting previous declarations and expressions of 
 sympathy, I quote a few such expressions uttered after 
 the recent catastrophes in Eastern Bumelia. 
 
 In the first place, the Tribune, commenting upon the 
 declarations of the new Premier of Bulgaria in the 
 Sobranje, said : 
 
 " A confidential follower of Stambouloff, he has in- 
 herited from the latterhismethod of settling the difficulties 
 of Bulgaria with Turkey by means of negotiations, and 
 basing himself upon a correct attitude of compelliDg the 
 Powers to take upon themselves the work of reform in 
 Macedonia. . . . The chief point in his declarations is the 
 announcement that he intends to ask the Chamber to 
 vote fresh military expenditure. The Bulgarian army is 
 now in a splendid condition as regards its value, and all 
 the guns which are necessary have been ordered. To 
 speak, therefore, about fresh preparations is as though he 
 wished to declare that the danger is real and imminent." 
 
 When, in November last, Mr. Dillon in the House of 
 Commons asked the Secretary for Foreign Affairs if the 
 Bulgarian Government had brought to the notice of the 
 Powers the recent murders of Bulgarians at Karatjamoi, 
 Sir Edward Grey replied that the crimes in question had 
 come to the knowledge of the British Government, but 
 not through a Bulgarian note. He added that, according
 
 92 Greeks and Bulgarians 
 
 to existing information, the perpetrators of the murders 
 were Greeks. 
 
 While the majority of the English Press congratulated 
 the Bulgarians on the warlike declarations and threats 
 of their politicians, the speech of the Greek Premier, M. 
 Theotokis, in the Chamber, was commented upon very- 
 unfa vour ably. 
 
 The Iwies characterised M. Theotokis's pronouncements 
 as astonishing, and it expressed the opinion that humanity 
 has nothing to gain from them. It added that the 
 Greek Government, in calling to-day for the expedition 
 of the work of reform in Macedonia, does this in order 
 that it may not be behind the rest of the Balkan States.
 
 IV 
 
 THE POLITICAL BULGARIAN IN MACEDONIA 
 
 The directors of the Bulgarian revolutionary movement 
 in Macedonia since the annexation of Eastern Rumelia 
 at first attempted to convert the Macedonian populations 
 to Bulgarism, through a rapprochement with the Turkish 
 Government and by means of the school and clergy. 
 
 This was the programme of the Bulgarian Exarchate 
 in the year 1885, and it was adopted and put into force 
 by every violent and fraudulent meatis during the 
 political ascendency of Stambouloff. 
 
 In that historical year for the principality when Eastern 
 Bumelia was annexed by a coup d'etat to the newly 
 established principality, and the decisions of the Berlin Con- 
 gress wereset at nought, with the p^pplause of the principal 
 participants in the Congress, a book was published in the 
 Bulgarian language, and subsequently in French, entitled 
 "Macedonia on the Thousandth Anniversary of St. Metho- 
 dios." A thousand years had just passed since the 
 conversion of the Bulgarians to Christianity, and the 
 Bulgarian Exarchate was celebrating this great event in 
 the Slavonic world by publications and commemorations. 
 
 The author of the work was the secretary of the Bul- 
 garian Exarchate, Athanasios Shopoff, who wrote under 
 the pseudonym of " Opheikoff " ; and it was published 
 as a kind of programme of the policy to be followed in 
 Macedonia to bring about in the quickest and easiest way 
 the realisation of the " Bulgarian idea " in that country. 
 
 " The cradle of Christianity for the Slav races is Mace- 
 donia, 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
 
 94 Greeks and Bulgarians 
 
 tongue." And further on : *' Our future," the author cries, 
 " is Macedonia ; it is the reawakening of the Macedonian 
 Bulgarians, for our greatness, 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 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 
 Bulgarism 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 enlighten- 
 ment 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 Bul- 
 garian 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, we ought to remain 
 fiiendly to the Turks till the moment is come to act by 
 fire and sword. ... To triumph over the Greek in
 
 Greeks and Bulgarians 95 
 
 Macedonia we ought to seek an alliance with the Turks, 
 without ivhich we cannot succeed. . . /' The secretary 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. . . ." 
 
 This policy, which has been enforced for twenty years 
 and more, has not proved successful. The harvest has 
 not been worthy of the seed. Hellenism, in spite of the 
 attacks of many and various opponents, has proved 
 strong both in Macedonia and in Thrace, and there is no 
 hope of its giving way or of its being assimilated in the 
 crucible of Bulgarian policy.' 
 
 On this account a change of policy became necessary 
 in both the above divisions of the Balkan Peninsula. 
 
 The chief founder of the new programme of action in 
 Macedonia is the former Bulgarian commercial agent at 
 Skopia, M. Bizoff. In a memorandum of his — an open 
 letter — to Prince Ferdinand in the year 1898 he con- 
 demned the then prevailing method of the Exarchate, 
 according to which the plan of campaign in Macedonia 
 ought to be confined to the cultivation and development 
 of the population annexed by the church and school. 
 
 M. Bizoff opines that "this kind of work should be 
 left to the exclusive care of the Exarchate, but Bulgaria 
 should collect all her strength and direct it towards the 
 deliverance of Macedonia, because the longer the present 
 state of affairs continues in Macedonia, our opponents 
 gain, while we fall into a worse state. All that we can 
 obtain in a friendly manner from the Turks for our 
 Macedonian brethren we have already gained. 
 
 " Every concession made to us by Turkey, even 
 supposing that such are still possible, would injure 
 rather than be of advantage to us, because it would cost 
 more than it is worth, and would divert us from our chief 
 mission. 
 
 "Turkey would no longer be in a position, even if she 
 wished, to introduce reforms into Macedonia. But she 
 has not the slightest desire to do so, as is evident from
 
 96 Greeks and Bulgarians 
 
 the furnishing of the Turkish and Albanian population 
 with arms and ammunition. 
 
 "The only reforms possible in Turkey are those 
 provided in the 23rd Article of the Berlin Treaty, 
 and the only possible method of realising the reforms is 
 the granting of autonomy under the control and protection 
 of Europe, and afterwards annexation (like that of 
 Eastern Bumelia, as the Cologne Gazette observes). 
 
 '' Nothing can be more easy and more simple than the 
 achivement of these reforms if only Bussia, France, and 
 England would each send a regiment to Salonica, Vitolia, 
 and Skopeia, and at the same time send their united fleets 
 to the Gulf of Salonica. 
 
 ** Every one who knows the psychology of the Turk 
 and the state of feeling of the Macedonian popula- 
 tion could wager his head that not a single Turkish or 
 Albanian gun would be fired directly a European army 
 occupied the above-mentioned chief towns of the three 
 vilayets . . . and Bulgaria should therefore bend all her 
 forces in order to place the Macedonian question as soon 
 as possible upon the order of the day of European diplo- 
 macy. But what Bulgaria ought in no case to do is the 
 following : In the first place, she ought not to come to any 
 arrangement with any of the Balkan States with regard 
 to a possible division of Macedonia or a definition of 
 spheres of influence in that country. With the Balkan 
 States one arrangement only is possible, that is their 
 adhesion to the eflbrts of Bulgaria for the autonomy of 
 Macedonia." 
 
 These ideas of the Bulgarian diplomatist, accompanied 
 by a most active propaganda in Macedonia, have not been 
 without fruit. Both official and private circles in Bul- 
 garia understand that the peaceable propaganda of church 
 and school, or the wresting of ecclesiastical privileges 
 (berats, bishoprics) from Turkey by political manoeuvres, 
 would not promote the Bulgarian idea in that country. 
 A new system was therefore commenced for the Burgari- 
 sation of Macedonia. This was laid down in the most 
 violent and shameless manner at Belgrade by Boris
 
 Greeks and Bulgarians 97 
 
 Sarafoff four years ago. ' ' Since the school and the 
 church have not succeeded in the Bulgarisation of 
 Macedonia, it is necessary for us to adopt more 
 practical and more efficient measures, viz., dynamite and 
 incendiarism." 
 
 These are the new dogmas of the revolutionary school 
 of New Bulgaria ! 
 
 Hence the campaign of the Bulgarian committees in 
 order to upheave Macedonia and the vilayet of Adrianople, 
 a campaign which commenced in the year 1902, but which 
 attained its acme in 1903. This policy was especially 
 manifested after the Shipka celebrations, when General 
 Ignatieif, the creator of Bulgaria and leader of Panslavism, 
 visited that country, and when later on the Russian 
 Minister for Foreign Affairs, Lamsdorff, visited the two 
 neighbouring courts of Belgrade and Sofia. 
 
 General Ignatietf, addressing a deputation of Bulgarian 
 patriots, said among other things : "I have loved the 
 Bulgarians since 1862. I love all the Bulgarians. I 
 make no exception whatever between free and enslaved. 
 One only exception do I make : I love exceedingly 
 enslaved Macedonia ! 
 
 " For the establishment of peace in the Balkan Penin- 
 sula I have discovered a recipe — the Bulgaria of San 
 Stefano ; but for reasons outside of my will this recipe, 
 this treaty, cannot be put into effect. 
 
 *' I, Count Tgnatieff, alive or dead, advise the Bul- 
 garians, and bequeath to them the advice, to hand down 
 from father to son, that Bulgaria of San Stefano must be 
 realised. 
 
 " I bequeath to the Bulgarian nation the advice to 
 work, to strive, to contend, and to fight to prevent any 
 part, even a village — a single man — to be detached from 
 the Bulgaria of San Stefano." 
 
 This is the advice given by the apostle of Panslavism 
 in *the capital of Bulgaria in 1902 during the Shipka 
 festivities. The revolutionary committees, after hearing 
 these provocative words, were yet more encouraged in 
 the pursuit of their Macedonian policy. 
 
 Boris Sarafoff and the select adherents of the Great
 
 98 Greeks and Bulgarians 
 
 Bulgaria idea commenced in 1902, and continued with 
 greater zest in 1903, the method of dynamite and 
 incendiarism. 
 
 In this manner the invasion of Macedonia by the 
 gangs of the committees commenced, and this movement 
 was called by the philo- Bulgarian circle in Europe a 
 " Macedonian revolution." Crime followed crime in the 
 name of the freedom of Macedonia. 
 
 I give descriptions and criticisms of these unspeakable 
 outrages against everything sacred and divine from the 
 official depositions, documents, and reports from European 
 sources, as well as from Bulgarian circles. 
 
 In the first place, I insert extracts from the reports of 
 Sir Alfred Biliotti, British Consul-General at Salonica 
 at the time : 
 
 In April 1902 the following despatch was sent to his 
 Government by 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 adminis- 
 tration, there is nothing at this moment to justify the 
 anxiety manifested in the Press so far as the Turkish 
 population is concerned, Bayahs on the whole being left 
 unmolested. But Bulgarian bands, which had for a time 
 interrupted their murders, have begun again to assassi- 
 nate 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 Ylachs, as well as 
 Moslems, are complaining in emphatic terms of the pro- 
 ceedings 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 Macedonian 
 committees have brought about a veritable reign of terror 
 among all the mhabitants of this region, which contains 
 a large number of Bulgarians." 
 
 On October 11 the same Consul-General wrote to his 
 Ambassador : " Those among the Christians who have a
 
 Greeks and Bulgarians 99 
 
 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 population with terror. Begular lists 
 of proscription have been found by the authorities on 
 some of the Bulgarians killed in encounters. The Mace- 
 donian committee has drawn up registers taxing each 
 Christian according to his means, and any one refusing 
 to pay is executed. Under these circumstances the 
 Christians, after paying taxes to the Government, have 
 to pay a second taxation to the committee, besides 
 providing 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 Mace- 
 donian committees have employed a double method of 
 action ; they sought first to reawaken 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 the bands traversing the 
 country during the summer, they tried to attract them 
 by promises or force them by threats to join the move- 
 ment. 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 revolu- 
 tionary 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 Bulgarians 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 Bazlog, and most of the villages of Melnik, 
 Petri tch, and Nevrocop."
 
 100 Greeks and Bulgarians 
 
 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 in- 
 vaded Macedonia. He described different battles which 
 had occurred, and added (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 promises, threats, and even murder by the pro- 
 moters of the movement, who gave them to understand 
 that they were acting in concert with Bulgaria, backed 
 by Russia, with a view to freeing Macedonia. When 
 these promises failed in their intended effect the bands 
 held over the peasants' heads 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. Biliotti quotes the following lines 
 from a letter which 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 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 some- 
 thing 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 innocent 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
 
 Greeks and Bulgarians 101 
 
 and order, extermination of Orthodox Christians and 
 Mohammedans, universal terrorism, bloodshed, and in- 
 citement to massacre." 
 
 The correspondent of the Novoe Vremya had the happy 
 inspiration of publishing the chief clauses of the Bulgaro- 
 Macedonian plan of campaign. He says : 
 
 "The revolutionary bands are armed and organised by 
 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 pro- 
 cure, by whatever means he can, arms and ammunition, so 
 that he may have them in v^hichever district he is operat- 
 ing. 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 outbreaks of insurrec- 
 tion. Political crimes are permitted them. Any indi- 
 vidual who may try to prevent the success of the 
 revolutionary scheme must be at once suppressed. In 
 every case timely warning must be given to the com- 
 mittee 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 pos- 
 sible of the secret proscriptions, as they only offer 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." 
 
 The Struma, a Bulgarian newspaper, writes as follows 
 on the question : 
 
 " 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 pre- 
 tended liberators ; it trembles and groans, and can see no 
 one near from whom it can beg for protection. 
 
 " The emissaries of our patriots hold it night and day
 
 102 Greeks and Bulgarians 
 
 under a rule of terror. A little hamlet, Kotsani, was 
 compelled to contribute within a few months 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 £TlOOO or £T2000. 
 Woe to any one refusing ; he is immediately killed as a 
 traitor. The Turks watch the spectacle of brother infidels 
 slaying one another, and are pleased, whilst mudirs, kai- 
 makans, and pashas are paid to wink at these crimes. . . . 
 It is true that these patriots occasionally send some arms 
 to Macedonia, but only after payment of £T5. Last 
 month some of them on two occasions carried off from 
 the military depot of one of the frontier towns of Bul- 
 garia a supply of arms, which they smuggled into 
 Macedonia." 
 
 Sir Alfred Biliotti again, in another despatch to his 
 Ambassador, says : 
 
 " Acting in this manner, they, far from upholding a 
 noble cause, are only encouraging religious persecution, 
 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 
 committees. . . . 
 
 "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 authorities 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 that, 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." 
 
 In September 1902 the Messager du Gouvernement 
 of St. Petersburg published an article which terminated 
 in the following manner : *' Not having found any 
 assistance for their political projects among the non-
 
 Greeks and Bulgarians 103 
 
 Balgarian 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 pre- 
 cautionary 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 insurrection 
 would compel Bussia to change front, and come to the 
 assistance of the visionary schemes and projects of tha 
 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 prevent- 
 ing fresh bands from crossing from Bulgaria into Turkey, 
 and in thus putting a stop to the revoltitionary 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." 
 
 In the year 1903 Count Lamsdorffwent to Sofia in 
 order to persuade the patriotic Bulgarians to listen to 
 reason, but in vain. In vain did he officially disavow the 
 Bulgaro-Macedonian agitation. In vain he published 
 direct or indirect warnings of the following kind : "It 
 would be a dangerous error on the part of the principality 
 to imagine that the measures taken by Bussia are an 
 encouragement to revolutionary agitation, whose con- 
 tinual and criminal activity prevents the pacification of 
 the vilayets and consequently the carrying out of the 
 projected reforms." 
 
 " It appears from the reports of the Bussian 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
 
 104 Gkeeks and Bulgarians 
 
 movements, with a view to ending the disturbances in 
 the Balkan Peninsula." 
 
 The Minister for Foreign Affairs of the French 
 Government described these acts in November 1903 
 as follows : 
 
 "The insurgents want absolute independence — they 
 want everything, and that at once ; and in order to force 
 Europe to give it to them, they allow themselves to 
 commit indescribable deeds. One might say that their 
 blows fall by preference on the heads of the subjects of 
 the Powers with whom the misfortune of their com- 
 patriots has found the most sympathy. 
 
 " The Ottoman Bank is blown up, the Guadalquivir 
 follows suit ; later it is a train which is thrown off the 
 rails, burying under its wreckage a large number of 
 strangers perfectly innocent of the wrongs of Mace- 
 donia. 
 
 " And, in order to redouble the bitterness of the fate 
 of the inhabitants of this province, to the exactions of 
 the Turkish agents are now added those of the insur- 
 gents. Woe betide him who refuses to open his purse or 
 safe ! Woe to him who refuses to join the insurgent 
 bands ! The code of the internal organisation provides 
 one penalty only for all infractions of its laws, and that 
 is — death. 
 
 " You can judge, gentlemen, what is the misery of the 
 inhabitants. Those who are not attached by an uncon- 
 querable love to their native soil crowd the offices of the 
 emigration agents. 
 
 " ' They fly,' one of our consuls writes to me, ' they fly 
 from both Turks and the committees.' " 
 
 The Reform, the organ of the Bulgarian Supreme 
 Macedonian Committee, thus describes the national 
 quality of the Bulgarians : 
 
 "... One of the chief reasons for which Bulgaria, 
 with such an energetic, hard-working, and frugal popula- 
 tion, has fallen wnthin twenty years into such a miserable 
 state is this : that it has no educated class, and no
 
 Greeks and Bulgarians 105 
 
 society equal to the task of expelling criminals from its 
 midst. 
 
 " Looking at things from a general point of view, 
 Bulgaria gained her freedom, such as it is, without sacri- 
 fices. The war of liberation was soon brought to an end, 
 and the country remained almost untouched thereby. 
 Besides this, the Russians threw large amounts of money 
 into it, so that when freedom dawned on Bulgaria the 
 country was flooded with gold. But after less than 
 twenty years, the rich Bulgaria lost her material pros- 
 perity, and to-day the country groans in a financial 
 crisis. 
 
 " The national riches have been seized and looted. The 
 robbers and spoilers, instead of being despised, enjoy the 
 highest honours in society. And on this account to-day 
 in Bulgaria every one tries to rob and to enrich himself 
 at the expense of the nation. And this is why our 
 beautiful, good, frugal, and hard-working Bulgaria 
 blossomed and withered at once." 
 
 The Bulgarian Minister for Foreign Afiairs, M. Daneff, 
 made the following statement in April 1901 to the 
 representative of the Bucharest journal the Adewerul : 
 
 " The tendencies of the Macedonian committee are to 
 a great extent useless. Macedonia is not inhabited 
 exclusively by Bulgarians, but by Greeks, Roumanians, 
 Servians, and Turks as well. Why then do not all these 
 nationalities complain as much as the Bulgarians with 
 regard to their ridiculous care for Macedonia ? The reply 
 is easy : Because the Greeks, the Servians, and the Ylachs 
 in Macedonia confine their activity to the founding of 
 schools and to the preservation of the religious interests 
 of their compatriots, and not to the introduction of 
 arras and other munitions of war, and do not found 
 revolutionary committees and insurgent bands." 
 
 The tendencies of the Bulgarians and their action is 
 most characteristically described by the Montenegrin, 
 Stephen L. Joanuovitcli in the Petershnrg News as well 
 as by the Russian journalist, M. A. AmphitheatrofF, well
 
 106 Greeks and Bulgarians 
 
 known for his philo-Bulgarian and anti-Greek proclivities, 
 who has visited Macedonia and other countries of the 
 Balkan Peninsula, and describes in the blackest colours 
 the dreadful condition brought about in Macedonia by 
 the Bulgarian crimes and infamies. 
 
 The Bulgarian school at Sofia, according to M. Amphi- 
 theatroff, is employed as a burning focus of revolutionary 
 propaganda, and its leaders wander freely in Salonica, 
 Monastir, and Skopeia. 
 
 The Eussian publicist, M. N. Dournovo, treating of the 
 Russian policy in the Orthodox East, writes as follows 
 concerning the Bulgarians and their Macedonian cam- 
 paign : 
 
 " The Greeks retained the Bulgarians in Orthodoxy, 
 but the latter murder both them and their priests, tying 
 them to trees and covering them with petroleum and then 
 burning them. They inflict a similar death upon the 
 peasants. . . . 
 
 "What Servian, Greek, or Roumanian does not know 
 that the Bulgarian bishops in Macedonia are members of 
 the Anarchist Macedonian Committee of Sofia, and that 
 they proscribe the Greek, Servian, and Ylach priests, 
 teachers, and others possessed of any authority ? How 
 many accusations have not been made against the schis- 
 matic archbishops at Skopeia, Divra, and Yitolia ? 
 
 The Bulgarian deputy Kirkoff a few years ago had 
 the sincerity to characterise in the Sobranje the secret 
 desires of the Bulgarians in their true colours. "It is 
 not true," he said, " that we Bulgarians desire reforms in 
 Macedonia, nor do we wish for autonomy. These phrases 
 are merely formal and are excuses. We Bulgarians wish 
 to annex Macedonia. The argument and action of the 
 committee have given an artificial Macedonian colour to 
 the purely Bulgarian objects and the rapacious 
 appetites. ..." 
 
 A member of the Bulgarian Committee spoke with 
 the utmost boldness to the Sofia correspondent of the 
 Cologne Gazette, ''Our programme," he said, "is to
 
 Greeks and Bulgarians 107 
 
 blow up the towns of Macedonia with dynamite : we shall 
 poison the reservoirs ; we shall set the villages on fire ; 
 we shall destroy the harvests, and render useless the 
 telegraph and railway lines, and shall turn Macedonia 
 into a desert. We have large quantities of dynamite at 
 our disposal, and other explosives, arms, food stores, 
 cartridges, and twenty bottles of plague bacteria ! " 
 
 Under the title " Throw off the Mask," the Sofia jour- 
 nal Reformi, the organ of the Macedonian Committee, 
 publishes in a special edition, bearing a black edge in sign 
 of mourning, a long article on the atrocities and outrages 
 committed by the Bulgarians in Macedonia and Thrace. 
 
 This article, which created a great impression in 
 Bulgarian political circles, may be summarised as follows : 
 
 " We are, with great grief, constrained to proclaim the 
 unheard-of atrocities which the well-known Mafia has 
 committed against the unprotected Macedonians, in full 
 knowledge of the responsibility which we bear in de- 
 nouncing the atrocities perpetrated." 
 
 A correspondent of the Manchester Guardian fur- 
 nishes the following information : 
 
 " Macedonia is surely going from bad to worse. The 
 long list of crimes committed by the Christian popula- 
 tions increases daily, and to complete the picture there 
 must be added the murders and acts of violence per- 
 petrated by the Moslem people and the Turkish troops. 
 
 " The Greek propaganda has had a great many 
 brilliant successes. In tact, in some provinces its success 
 has been perfect, for the whole of the vilayet of Monastir 
 has been cleared of the Bulgarian bands, and the villages 
 which were ^ converted ' under compulsion from the 
 savage Bulgarian hordes have returned to the bosom 
 of the Patriarchate. 
 
 " Thus the Bulgarians have lost a large number of 
 villages where the Exarchate had exercised authority."
 
 REFORiM IN MACEDONIA 
 
 In face of this state of organised anarchy in .Macedonia, 
 owing to which all social and political activity has 
 ceased, and on all sides crime has triumphed, with the 
 applause and stimulation of philo-Bulgarian circles of 
 Western Europe who await the solution of the Eastern 
 question and the establishment of a stable political status 
 at the hands of Bulgaria, two of the Powers who are 
 more interested in Macedonia — Austria and Russia — 
 with the mandate of the remainder of the Great Powers, 
 decided to co-operate with a view to the re-establishment 
 of order — each Power, however, naturally looking after 
 its own interests. 
 
 Thus the two Emperors met at Mlirszteg, and the 
 result of their meeting was the application of tlie needful 
 reforms in Macedonia w^ith a view to putting an end to 
 the existing anarchy. 
 
 These reforms were formulated upon the following 
 basis : 
 
 " In order to ensure the success of the duty entrusted 
 to the Inspector-General, the latter will be retained in 
 his post for a term of several years which will be deter- 
 mined beforehand, and be will not be dismissed from his 
 post before the expiration of that period without the 
 Powers being previously consulted. In this connection 
 he will be authorised to make use (if the maintenance of 
 public order so require) of Ottoman troops, without 
 recourse to the Central Government on each occasion. 
 
 "The Yalis will be obliged to conform strictly with 
 his instructions.
 
 Greeks and Bulgarians 109 
 
 *' For the reorganisation of the police and gendarmerie 
 the Ottoman Government will employ the co-operation 
 of foreign experts. 
 
 " The gendarmerie will be composed of Christians and 
 Mussulmans in proportion to the population of the re- 
 spective localities. 
 
 *' The rural guards will be Christian in places where 
 the majority is Christian, in view of the annoyances and 
 excesses which the Christian population has only too 
 often had to suffer at the hands of certain Arnaut male- 
 factors, and seeing that the crimes and offences committed 
 by the latter remain, in the majority of cases, un- 
 punished. 
 
 " The Ottoman Government will, without further 
 delay, decide as to the means necessary to put an end 
 to this state of affairs. 
 
 " The numerous arrests made in consequence of the 
 recent disturbances in the three vilayets having excited 
 the spirit of the local population, the Ottoman Govern- 
 ment, in order to accelerate the return of the normal 
 condition of affairs, will grant an amnesty to all persons 
 accused or condemned for political actions, as well as to 
 those who have emigrated. 
 
 **In order to ensure the regular working of the local 
 institutions, the budget of revenue and expenses will be 
 made up in each vilayet, and the provincial receipts 
 controlled by the Ottoman Bank will be in the first 
 place marked off for the needs of the local administra- 
 tion. 
 
 " The payment of civil and military services, including 
 the manner of collecting the taxes, will be modified, and 
 wholesale farming out will be abolished." 
 
 Unfortunately, however, owing to the collision of the 
 sentiments of the local populations in Macedonia, as well 
 as on account of the conflicting aspirations and selfish aims 
 of certain Great Powers, not to mention the tactlessness 
 and bad faith of many of the civil and military organs of 
 the Turkish Government, the reforms were not destmed 
 to bring about any beneficial result.
 
 110 Greeks and Bulgarians 
 
 This is shown in the official reports of the different 
 European Governments, and by private information 
 beyond suspicion. 
 
 Sir Alfred Biliotti, then British Consul-General at 
 Salonica, wrote under date of March 11, 1903, to the 
 Ambassador at Constantinople as follows (vide Blue-book, 
 Turkey, No. 1, 1904) : 
 
 " I am convinced, on the contrary, that the bands will 
 do their best to oppose the reforms and maintain the 
 present state of disorder, which they themselves called 
 into existence, and which constitutes their raison d'etre 
 in the eyes of Europe. 
 
 " The committees have doubtless a political object, be 
 it autonomy or annexation, and their leaders may be men 
 of the highest motives, but among those affiliated to 
 their bands there are a great number of mere brigands, 
 whose only object in perpetrating murders, &c., is their 
 own personal gain. But whatever be their motives, each 
 party has one and the same object in view, to keep the 
 country in disorder and oppose by all means the intro- 
 duction of any measure which could calm it." 
 
 But Sir Alfred is not the most vehement denouncer ot 
 the disturbances of Macedonia. A despatch from the 
 Bussian Consul at Uskub to his Government, dated 
 March 14, 1903, reads as follows : 
 
 "... This fact affiDrds a proof that the movement is an 
 artificial one and is not supported by the mass of the 
 population. 
 
 " In order to bring the situation to a more acute stage, 
 the committees have recourse to violence and cruelty at 
 the expense of the Turks. Thus recently a band at 
 Perlepe, under one Georges, who had just been granted 
 an amnesty, killed a notable of that town, one Sefeddin 
 Bakhtiar, wrenching out his nails, putting out his eyes, 
 and finally decapitating him. The same day one Detcho 
 Traiko cruelly maltreated a rich man of the place, while 
 Vessel Abdi outraged and then hung his mother, a very 
 old woman. The committees are trying in every way to
 
 Greeks and Bulgarians 111 
 
 provoke general irritation among the Mussulman popu- 
 lation and to incite it to a massacre of the Christians." 
 
 Sir Alfred also forwarded to his Ambassador at Con- 
 stantinople a private memorandum, from which the follow- 
 ing is an extract : 
 
 "It is no sin to betray the intentions and actions of 
 the Bulgarian assassins in order to save the lives of many 
 innocent people. 
 
 "The Macedonian officers in the Bulgarian army who 
 have lately served their time are 286. Of those, 180 
 penetrated, as soon as the amnesty was proclaimed, 
 to Mount Athos, in guise of pilgrims ; most of these 
 officers wear spectacles. 
 
 " Every Macedonian or Thracian of the first class is 
 obliged to accept bonds for a sum of from £20 to £50 ; 
 of the second class of from £10 to £30 ; and of the third 
 class of £1 to £8. Death is the penalty yf refusal. 
 
 "It is the many Bulgarian employees of the railway, 
 especially in Monastir and Salonica vilayets, who put 
 dynamite under the bridges to blow them up when the 
 signal for insurrection is given. 
 
 " The general management and the chiefs of the com- 
 mittee are in Salonica. The twelve are stationed here. 
 The sub-committees sit in the cities and towns of Mace- 
 donia and Thrace, and give general orders for the accom- 
 plishment of their murderous designs." 
 
 On April 7 the Consul- General wrote as follows to his 
 Ambassador : 
 
 " A Greek and his son were murdered in a mill near 
 Keupreulu, and his wife, who was pregnant, was outraged 
 and disembowelled, the child being afterwards cut in half" 
 
 Other similar crimes are mentioned in the Blue-book 
 as being committed against Greeks by the committee. 
 
 The following is an extract from a report by Vice- 
 Consul Macgregor on April 19, 1903 : 
 
 " It is unlikely that Chakalaroff, whose ruthlessness 
 and tyranny are complained of even by his own partisans,
 
 112 Greeks and Bulgarians 
 
 will neglect an opportunity of retrieving liis failure. He 
 appears to enjoy the special confidence of Sarafoif, who 
 on the 11th inst. caused the murder of a certain Ghele, 
 a leading komitadji of Armensko (near Fiorina), and 
 his wife, his offence being that he had ventured to criti- 
 cise the harshness displayed by Chakalaroff in extorting 
 contributions towards the revolutionary^ fund." 
 
 About this Chakalaroff we read in a memorandum in 
 the same Blue-book : 
 
 " Chakalaroff constantly preached at Smyrdesh and all 
 the other villages, saying that the Greeks are the worst 
 enemies of the Bulgarians, worse even than the Turks, 
 and no one can call himself a true Bulgarian until he has 
 dipped his hands in the blood of at least one Greek. 
 
 " Chakalaroff went not long ago, after Smyrdesh, to 
 the village of Gabris, the inhabitants of which asked him 
 to leave. He answered that since his own village Smyrdesh 
 was destroyed, the rest mattered little, and that the lives 
 of 500 villagers could not balance the life of a single 
 komitadji." 
 
 It is known that the Greeks of Monastir, roused by the 
 crimes perpetrated by the Bulgarians against them, 
 threatened at last to take reprisals. 
 
 In this connection Sir Alfred Biliotti writes on April 3, 
 1908, to Sir N. O'Connor : 
 
 " I have been told that the Greeks at Monastir, roused 
 at last to action, have warned the Bulgarians resident in 
 the same town that for every Patriarchist murdered by 
 the bands in the country they will murder two Bul- 
 garians in the town. Whether this news is true or not, 
 the fact is that reports of murders from that vilayet have 
 been less frequent of late, and that the bands appear to 
 be limiting themselves to the more profitable employment 
 of exacting money." 
 
 A detailed account of the destruction of Kroushevo is 
 contained in the Blue-book, which justly stigmatises this
 
 Greeks and Bulgarians 113 
 
 work of the Bulgarians. After saying that on August 2 
 some 250 to 300 Bulgarian komitadjis under Pitou 
 Ghoule, Ghiourtsin, Todor, Har^, and IvanofF, a Bulgarian 
 soldier, entered the Greek village of Kroushevo at night, 
 looted the shops, and burnt nearly all the houses. The 
 inhabitants, almost naked, ran from house to house to 
 save themselves from the fire and flames. It continues : 
 
 " On Friday morning the inhabitants of Kroushevo, 
 half naked, famished, beaten, sleepless, were crouching 
 at last on the hills outside the town, and gazing with 
 tears at the flames devouring their property ; military 
 cordons surrounded them ! 
 
 " Most of the army continued the work of pillage and 
 fire in the now deserted town, and only stopped before 
 the Bulgarian quarter . . . which has remained intact. 
 This miracle is due, they say, to some whispered nego- 
 tiations which took place with Bulgarians, and to a golden 
 powder which rose round the Turks and prevented them 
 from seeing that quarter. This is veiy characteristic, and 
 proves not only the corruption on the one side, but the 
 immoral suppleness, the guile, and the practical spirit on 
 the other, in inventing means at the critical moment. 
 
 "About forty or fifty komitadjis were killed and 
 wounded during the time the firing continued on the forti- 
 fications and hills on the day of the Turkish occupation. 
 Ivanofl* and Pitou Ghoule were among the dead ; the 
 others bravely took to flight or surrendered, leaving 
 everything to the mercy of the Turks, after they had 
 prepared the catastrophe. In the army also some twenty 
 men were killed, or in most cases wounded. 
 
 " In the forty-eight hours during which the soldiers 
 and Bashi-Bozouks were in the town there were : 
 
 " 366 houses burnt and 600 pillaged. 
 
 '' 203 warehouses and shops burnt and pillaged. 
 
 "44 men and women killed in the streets and houses, 
 41 of whom were Patriarchists and only three Bulgarians." 
 
 The crimes mentioned in the Blue book are innumer- 
 able. On almost every one of its 300 odd pages two or 
 three crimes or murders are enumerated. 
 
 H
 
 114 Greeks and Bulgarians 
 
 With regard to the insurrectionary movement, and 
 the failure of the Bulgarian propaganda, the British 
 Vice- Consul at Serres, wrote under date of May 26, 
 1903: 
 
 " I have the honour to report to you upon the general 
 outlook of the political situation in the sandjak of Serres 
 since the recent occurrences. 
 
 " The latest attempt of the Bulgarian committees, who 
 have tried to attract public attention by anarchical out- 
 rages at Salonica and elsewhere, and to force the European 
 Powers to intervene, has been definitely frustrated, and the 
 fictitious movement planned in Macedonia, and fomented 
 solely by terrorism, has come to nothing, and the victims 
 are cursing the authors of these tragic and sanguinary 
 proceedings." 
 
 Another interesting document published in the Blue- 
 book gives the orders of the chiefs of the bands to their 
 followers. This document, written in Bulgarian, was found 
 upon the body of one of the leaders, Boris Sfetkolf, who 
 was killed in June 1905. 
 
 The following are extracts therefrom : 
 
 "Any Christian, in whatever village, who is found to 
 be harmful, or who refuses his assistance, must be killed 
 of deliberate purpose, in such manner that the blame 
 may, if possible, be thrown upon the forest guard, 
 * bailli,' imam, or dere-bey , and with this object two 
 witnesses must be forthcoming who will try to persuade 
 the court that the murder has been committed by tyrants 
 of this kind. In such cases evidence must be given with 
 full conviction and assurance. The band must acquire in 
 each village devoted members who will personally wreak 
 vengeance on the oppressors. A member must sacrifice 
 himself for the disappearance of a dere-bey or of a 
 denouncer of the village or of a neighbouring village. 
 Thus the responsibility will be divided, and it will not be 
 possible to drag the whole population en masse before 
 the courts."
 
 Greeks and Bulgarians 115 
 
 The Blue-book mentions the destruction of an entire 
 Greek family, that of Saramandis, composed of four 
 members, two of whom were women. This took place 
 at the hands of a Bulgarian band under Youvan at the 
 village of Vavian^. 
 
 The official reports of the other Great Powers also 
 contain accounts of innumerable Bulgarian outrages 
 against the Greeks. 
 
 The massacre of the Greek inhabitants of six villages 
 near the town of Basilikon on the Black Sea, and the 
 destruction of seventeen villages near Saranta Ekklesias 
 in Thrace, are quite recent events. 
 
 The Bulgarian savages descended from the hills one 
 night, and with fire and sword destroyed all they found, 
 whilst off those very shores the Russian fleet was engaged 
 in making a naval demonstration against Turkey on 
 account of the murder of the Russian Consul at Monastir 
 by the Albanians. The unfortunate inhabitants with 
 their wives and children took refuge in their bo^its, and 
 many were thus saved ; 500 women and children reached 
 the Bosphorus, where the Ambassadors of the Great 
 Powers had the opportunity of seeing them, naked and 
 starving 
 
 Affairs being in this condition, and the Bulgarian 
 crimes in Macedonia increasing from day to day, the 
 necessity for armed defence of the Greek inhabitants of 
 Macedonia against the Bulgarian invaders was at last 
 seen by them to be unavoidable, in view of the fact that 
 the Bulgarians were being supported by the military 
 representatives of certain Great Powers who are inter- 
 ested in the maintenance of anarchy, and that the 
 Turkish Government, as I have already stated, was 
 either unwilling or unable to restore order, and that, 
 even in case it should take severe and drastic measures 
 for the purpose, it would probably call forth the opposi- 
 tion and intervention of the interested Powers.
 
 VI 
 
 DEFENSIVE MEASURES BY GREEKS IN MACEDONIA 
 
 *' Greece is compelled to make a desperate effort in 
 order to secure a portion of Macedonia large enough so 
 as not to be cut off from Constantinople, the possession 
 of which is the common hope of the Hellenic race. 
 
 " But Russia has for a long time laboured in order to 
 include the whole of Macedonia, and especially Mount 
 Athos, in the boundaries of Slavism." 
 
 Thus wrote Sir H. Layard in June 1877 to Lord 
 Derby. 
 
 The English statesman was right ; he had, moreover, 
 never shown any special sympathy or love for Greece. 
 Macedonia must be the basis of a strong Greek state 
 which shall contain all the divisions of the Greek race. 
 The Greek nation, wronged and insulted as unwarlike 
 in permitting the handing over of its ancestral inheri- 
 tance to the Bulgarians, considered that it had a duty 
 to perform in taking action in Macedonia. 
 
 The Greco-Macedonian bands were thus formed two 
 years ago, with the prime object of repelling the 
 Bulgarian invaders of Macedonia. 
 
 It is true that these bands, which are formed for the 
 most part from natives of Macedonia, have been joined by 
 men from other parts of free and enslaved Greece with- 
 out, let it be said, the consent or approval of the Greek 
 Government. But who can dispute the right of these bands 
 to co-operate in the national defence with people of the 
 same race who have suffered in the same way, always striv- 
 ing on behalf of the national rights, and who comprehend 
 in their care for the national rehabilitation that without 
 Macedonia the Hellenic fatherland is endangered ?
 
 Greeks and Bulgarians 
 
 117 
 
 This is the reason for their co-operation. 
 
 Certain European Governments have declared against 
 these Greco-Macedonian bands and their action, which 
 has sometimes met with misfortunes ; but, generally 
 speaking, the blame in respect of systematic criminal 
 intentions which attaches to the action of the Bulgarian 
 committees cannot be applied to them. 
 
 May I be permitted to express my grief, the grief of 
 every just and sincere man, that while no notice is taken 
 of, and no indignation caused by, the crimes of the Bul- 
 garian bands, certain Governments are demanding the 
 dispersion of the Greco-Macedonian bands ? By what 
 right can one say to a people who understand the danger 
 which threatens their national existence, " Give up your 
 rights, commit suicide " f This is indeed characteristic 
 of the moral condition of our days. 
 
 The Porte has just received an official report on the 
 Christian bands — Bulgarian, Greek, and Servian — which 
 are operating in Macedonia and in the vilayet of Kossovo. 
 The report does nob mention the bands which are acting 
 on behalf of the Boumanians, probably because they are 
 almost entirely composed of Mussulmans.. 
 
 These bands are distributed as follows under each 
 
 vilayet : 
 
 VILAYET OF SALONICA. 
 
 Cazas. 
 
 Bulgarian Bands. 
 
 Greek Bands. 
 
 1. Vodena . 
 
 2. Yennitsa . 
 
 3. Stroumnitsa 
 
 4. Tikfes . 
 
 5. Avret-Hissar 
 
 6. Ghevgheli 
 
 7. Karaferria 
 
 8. Langada . 
 
 9. Katerina . 
 
 10. Kassandra 
 
 11. Melenik . 
 
 12. Ano Pjoumayo 
 
 13. Demir Hissar 
 
 14. Petritsi . 
 
 15. Razlog . 
 
 16. Sihna 
 
 
 
 
 2 
 
 4 
 1 
 1 
 1 
 6 
 1 
 
 
 
 7 
 5 
 2 
 1 
 1 
 6 
 
 2 
 
 4 
 
 
 
 
 1 
 3 
 1 
 1 
 
 
 
 
 6 
 
 
 
 
 
 38 
 
 12
 
 118 
 
 Greeks and Bulgarians 
 
 On examining- this list it will be observed that it refers 
 only to the sandjaks of Salonica and Serres ; the third 
 sandjak, that of Drama, is passed over in silence. There 
 are, however, five Bulgarian bands operating in this 
 sandjak, but the small number of men composing these 
 bands has caused them to be neglected in the official 
 Turkish report. 
 
 VILAYET OF MONASTIR. 
 
 Cazas. 
 
 Bulgarian 
 Bands. 
 
 Greek Bauds. 
 
 Servian Bands. 
 
 Perlepe .... 
 Caradjova .... 
 Castoria .... 
 Monastir .... 
 Fiorina .... 
 Ochrida .... 
 
 5 
 3 
 6 
 3 
 3 
 3 
 
 1 
 
 5 
 3 
 1 
 
 
 4 
 2 
 
 
 
 
 
 23 
 
 10 
 
 G 
 
 VILAYET OF KOSSOVO. 
 
 Cazas. 
 
 Bulgarian Bands. 
 
 Servian Bands. 
 
 Uskub . 
 
 Istip . 
 
 Coumanovo 
 
 Radovista 
 
 Karatovo 
 
 Osmanie 
 
 Velessa 
 
 Pinga 
 
 Kotsana 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 1 
 1 
 4 
 1 
 1 
 3 
 1 
 2 
 1 
 
 
 
 2 
 
 
 
 
 1 
 
 3 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 15 
 
 6 
 
 The representatives of certain European Powers have 
 addressed remonstrances to both Athens and Constanti- 
 nople. But they remain indifferent when it is a question 
 of Bulgaria, Boumania, or Servia, since it is no secret — 
 above all, in diplomatic circles — that armed operation in 
 Macedonia is not confined to Hellenic sources, but is 
 carried on chiefly by the Bulgarians, and also by Servians
 
 Greeks and Bulgarians 119 
 
 (whose action, especially of late, has increased and taken 
 an anti-Bulgarian character), not to mention the Eou- 
 manian, Albanian, and Mussulman bands. 
 
 Wherefore this indignation against the Greek bands 
 only, and not equally against the Bulgarian, Servian, and 
 Roumanian bands ?
 
 YII 
 
 AN HISTORICAL PARALLEL 
 
 May I be permitted to make an historical incursion into 
 the past and recall some events of thirty years ago ? 
 
 No one is ignorant of the massacres of Batak and 
 Cavarna in Bulgaria, then a Turkish province. The 
 Bashi-Bozouks committed every species of atrocity on the 
 Bulgarian inhabitants of certain districts who had risen 
 against the Turkish rule during the insurrection of 
 Herzegovina. 
 
 Official Europe remained apathetic. " Ein Bischen 
 Erzegovine " exclaimed the Mephistopheles of the German 
 Empire, at a political soiree given at his palace, and he 
 turned his attention to the domestic affairs of Germany, 
 declaring that the Eastern question was not worth the 
 bones of a single Pomeranian grenadier. 
 
 What did the British Government do at this moment ? 
 
 England remained indifferent, as did the whole of 
 Europe, with Germany at its head, to the events taking 
 place in the Balkan Peninsula. 
 
 In fact, I may add that the policy of the United 
 Kingdom showed the greatest sympathy for the Turkish 
 Government, and evinced no desire to accept as true the 
 accusations brought against the organs of that Govern- 
 ment of criminal conduct against the revolted peasantry 
 of Bulgaria. 
 
 The British Government concealed these events from 
 the British public, either out of indifference or from 
 incorrigibility, as Gladstone said at the time. 
 
 Fortunately, the manager of a Liberal journal, the 
 Daily News, assigned to one of its correspondents the 
 duty of verifying the events of that fearful affair.
 
 Greeks and Bulgarians 121 
 
 Indignation seized the public opinion of England on 
 account of the occurrences. At the same time (June 26, 
 1876) the Duke of Argyll in the House of Lords and 
 Mr. Forster in the House of Commons addressed 
 impatient questions with regard to the report of the 
 correspondent of the Daily News. After the commotion 
 caused in England and on the Continent, detailed reports 
 were published with regard to the Balkan and Danubian 
 provinces, and the truth of the ravages of the Kurds and 
 Bashi-Bozouks therein was laid bare. 
 
 At that critical moment Gladstone shot his political 
 bolt in connection with the occurrences. This was the 
 publication of his pamphlet, Bulgarian Atrocities. 
 
 I may here be allowed to observe. Sir, that the crimes 
 committed in Bulgaria and Eastern Rumelia, during the 
 last few months, from July until the present time 
 (December 1906), against the Greek population, do not 
 differ in the least degree from those which took place 
 exactly thirty years ago and in that very country. 
 
 The only difference is that then the chief actors were 
 Mussulman, whereas the}^ now are Christian Bashi-Bozouks 
 — Bulgarians. 
 
 But, as then the Turkish, so now the Bulgarian 
 Government is no stranger to the events. 
 
 I must nevertheless observe, in addressing an English 
 gentleman, that the British Government has lately 
 taken a one-sided view of the events of the Balkan 
 Peninsula ; nor is it out of place for me to repeat to-day 
 the words of Mr. W. H. Smith in the House of Commons 
 in 1878, that it " followed the merciless policy of excessive 
 egotism." 
 
 British diplomacy has especially caused harm to poor 
 Greece. I am seized with grief on reading in both 
 unofficial and official English publications inaccuracies 
 concerning the crimes perpetrated in Bulgaria and Mace- 
 donia on the innocent Christian population, crimes which 
 have been more than once acknowledged, not only by 
 foreigners, but by the very Bulgarians themselves. 
 
 A few days since, the Bulgaria, organ of the 
 Bulgarian Premier, M, Daneff, wrote as follows : 
 
 I
 
 122 Greeks and Bulgarians 
 
 *' The acts of violence of every description committed 
 and continuing to be committed in our country ; the acts 
 of brigandage, the incendiarisms, the daily encounters, 
 the thefts, and to sum up, the crimes against the person, 
 property, and honour of the citizens of every race, tend to 
 a great extent to show that the country has become an 
 important factor of anarchy. In addition, the attitude of 
 the Great Powers and of the European Press clearly shows 
 that as such is Bulgaria looked upon abroad." 
 
 And yet there are people, more especially in England, 
 who cast the responsibility for these crimes upon the 
 Greeks of Macedonia and of Bulgaria ! According to 
 publications which we have seen, the work of credible 
 witnesses, and official documents, certified not only by 
 Europe but by Bulgaria herself, the authorities of that 
 country themselves took part in the destruction of 
 Anchialos, the outrages at Philippopolis, and in other 
 Bulgarian towns. 
 
 Nobody any more disputes the truth of these facts. 
 
 A portion only of the English Press passes them over 
 in silence, or denies them, or, worse, justifies them. 
 
 Is not an examination on the spot imposed on Europe, 
 and especially on English public opinion, in the name of 
 philanthropy and of civilisation, in order that it may be 
 persuaded tha. it has a duty to perform in deliberating 
 more seriously with regard to the fate of populations 
 which it has handed over with a light conscience to a 
 political status little differing from the most savage and 
 tyrannical which history has to show ? 
 
 I consider that I have sufficiently described in the 
 foregoing pages the national and political character of the 
 people, to whom from time to time congratulations are 
 addressed on its action, and wishes expressed for the 
 continuance of this action, in the Balkan Peninsula. 
 
 I invoke the verdict of the civilised world.
 
 VIII 
 
 CONCLUSION 
 
 In the first page of a book published some twenty 
 years ago, full of life and truth, which you. Sir, above all 
 others, have felt and considered, I read the following : 
 
 *' Never since the fall of Napoleon has brutal force 
 held so considerable a place in Europe as to-day. 
 It is not certainly from to-day only that nations are 
 tempted to seize by violence the property of others, but 
 at least in other days they tried to save appearances." * 
 
 I call for the aid of him who wrote these words to 
 protest against the brutal force which, as a political 
 discoverer, he stigmatised in a special publication, but 
 which he may also stigmatise as a practical statesman. 
 With regard to the real Bulgarian Atrocities committed 
 a few months ago in the Bulgarian principality, in which 
 the organs of that Government took part with impunity, 
 he can do, with the same right, what thirty years ago 
 was done by his magnanimous countryman, WiUiam 
 Gladstone, in a similar case, when he launched at the 
 British public and the civilised world that famous book 
 in which he stigmatised so unmercifully but justly the 
 outrages of the Bashi-Bozouks of the Ottoman Power on 
 the Christians of the Balkan countries. 
 
 Believe me that the authors of both these atrocities, 
 those of 1876 and those of 1906, do not differ in the 
 least degree. 
 
 * " Jamais, depuis la chute de Napoleon, la force brutale n'a teuu ea 
 Europe une place aussi considerable qu7i I'dpoque actuelle . . . Ce n'est 
 pas d'aujourd'hui, sans doute, que les nations sont tent^es de saisir par 
 violence le bien d'autrui ; mais, du moins, s'efforfait-on autrefois de sauver 
 les apparences."— Charles Dilke, "L'Europe en 1887." Paris.
 
 124 Greeks and Bulgarians 
 
 Both peoples came from the same land, both have 
 made a name for their criminal conception of life, with 
 the sole difference that the Turks represent Islam, and 
 the Bulgarians, assimilated to the Slav peoples, adopted 
 Christianity without, however, their original character 
 being in the least changed. Facts S2)eak for themselves. 
 Concerning both, may one repeat Gladstone's phrase : 
 "They were, upon the whole, from the black day when 
 they first entered Europe, the one great anti-human 
 specimen of humanity." 
 
 I address myself in the name of the Hellenic race, that 
 race which is so much undervalued and persecuted by 
 political speculation, to him who has so often protested 
 against the brutal force which prevails in Europe, and 
 before which justice and truth are compelled to give 
 
 He is one of the strongest and most intellectual spirits 
 of Great Britain — strong in the face of falsehood and 
 hypocrisy, unbending and invincible in the support of 
 truth. 
 
 The Greek nation calls with confidence upon him to 
 support their rights, and that nation has no doubt that 
 it will find in that man a most powerful and just advocate 
 of their trampled and neglected rights.
 
 II 
 
 I