The news from Macedonia contained in Reuter's telegrams during the
past week is extremely grave. It shows that the search for concealed arms ordered by the Turkish authorities is being made the excuse for every form of atrocity. The proceedings at Eleshnitza, a Bulgarian village of three hun- dred houses in the Razlog district, are stated by Reuter's correspondent to be typical of what has been going on. "During what the survivors speak of as 'the terrible week' from the 10th to the 17th November (0.S.), robbery and outrage, under cover of the search for arms, were prosecuted with ferocious vigour. The kodjabashi of the village, after being for two days compelled to aid the Turks in their work, succeeded in making his escape. The village was then handed over to the notorious Pomak brigand, Mustapha Pehlevan Noury, who had a long-standing feud with the Christian inhabitants. Under his rule robbery, extortion, torture, and murder had full sway. With grim humour Mustapha extorted from the villagers a considerable sum of money to purchase arms for them to surrender, but this money be has kept to himself." It is conceivable that these horrors are to some extent exaggerated by the politicians who are anxious to raise the Macedonian question, but it is unhappily hardly possible to doubt that great atrocities have been com- mitted. We can only ask, as we asked before,—Why cannot the Powers agree to do with Macedonia what they did nearly forty years ago with the Lebanon, and more recently with Crete ?
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