The correspondent of the Times in Macedonia denies that the
distress in that province has been in any way alleviated by the Turkish Government. None of the eight thousand houses which they claim to have rebuilt have been so much as begun, the dispossessed villagers living in sheds of wicker- work or mud, towards the construction of which they have received doles of from 10s. to 22. The misery in the remoter districts is extreme, cases of death from starvation being re- ported; while the officials refuse permission to go abroad, as the peasantry have hitherto done, in search of work. Naturally the Bulgarian sympathisers are forming armed bands "to put down brigandage," and general insurrection cannot be put off for ever. At the same time, the outrages in Armenia have become so persistent and serious that the British Ambassador has called on the Grand Vizier to remonstrate, receiving, of course, in return smooth r_ssuranc,es that the Kurds have been directed to keep quiet, and that the Armenians began the disturbances with assistance from their brethren beyond the Russian border. The Turks, in fact, evidently believe that with Russia fully occupied in the Far East they have a free hand, and may read any lessons they please to unarmed but non-submissive populations. That they may bring the Austrians down upon them before they have done must be the prayer of every friend of the Christians of the Near East, and perhaps the intervention of Vienna is not so hopeless as is imagined. The " benevolence " of Great Britain in such an enterprise would remove much of its difficulty in the eyes of Count Goluchowski.
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