LETTERS TO THE EDITOR.
[Letters of the length of one of our leading paragraphs are often more read, and therefore more effective, than these which
fill treble the space,/ --
MACEDONIA.
[To THE EDITOR OE THE " SPECTATOR.'l Sss.—May I be allowed to put before you a few considerations on behalf of a people whose nationality will to a great extent debar them from the sympathies of the British public—the Bulgarians of Macedonia? The frontiers of the Balkan States are being mapped out in Paris at the present time; the advo- cates of Greek and Serbian and Albanian claims will be beard, but will any voice be raised to speak for a peasant population which has always been very inarticulate, but whose destiny is of more than local importance?
A long-standing personal acquaintance with the country and people seems to make it my duty, and to give me a certain claim, to speak. I spent the winter of 19034 in Macedonia doing relief work among the peasants, who had suffered cruelly after their recent rising against the Turks; in the four years following I returned to visit them several tinter, and I also made journeys, lasting many months, chiefly on horseback. through Bulgaria, Bosnia, Herzegovina, Montenegro, and Serbia. At that time I spoke Bulgarian fluently and had a fair knowledge of Serbian. Daring the war I hare worked almost daily for the Serbian Relief Fund, and I do not think my sympathy with the Serbian cause and belief in the Serbian nation can be doubted.
It is my conviction that no settlement of frontiers in the Balkans which does not recognize the fact that the majority of the inhabitants of Macedonia are Bulgarians will bo just or lasting one. If frontiers are to be decided on the principle of nationalities, the people of Macedonia have the same claim to consideration as any other peoples in Europe. The fact that Bulgaria went to war against the Allied Powers, and the fact that Bulgarian officials have cruelly ill-treated their prisoners of war, have no bearing on the Macedonian question. Those who have been guilty of this least forgivable
of crimes should be brought to justice, but the policy and misconduct of Bulgarian officiate ehould not be allowed to prejudice the future of the Macedonian peasants. Historical claims to Macedonia are mutually destructive; in point of fact, the conquerors who held the country longest and left their desolating mark on it most definitely were the Turks. In the Balkans a man belongs to the nationality to which he believes himself to belong; above all, he is what he has suffered for being.
The majority of the peasants of Macedonia believe them. selves to be Bulgarians; they are Bulgarians in typo, onstoms, language, dress, and tradition. That they were Bulgarians was never questioned by the travellers who described and mapped the country before the era of national propaganda began. It was as Bulgarians that they rose against the Turks in 1903, and they paid for their assertion of nationality by severe punishment and prolonged persecution. It was as Bulgarians that they suffered at the hands of the Greek bands in the following years. There is no record of any -Serbian or Greek rising against the Turks in Macedonia. Serbian do not, as a rule, assert that the people of Macedonia are Serbs. They prefer to regard them as Macedonians, a mixed race, without the rights of either nationality. English travellere saw peasants from about Monastir led off in chains to join the Serbian Army in 1915.
There is no simple solution for the problem of Macedonia. It would be impossible to separate the nationalities into water- tight compartments; in many regions, notably along the coast, the population is inextricably mixed. One thing, however, is certain; it can never be wise to place one Balkan people under the domination of another. The long list of atrocities com- mitted by each in turn on the other—often justified to the Balkan conscience as reprisals—apaaks for itself. Among the first steps taken by an incoming Power is the suppression of the rival language in the schools and of the rival chm•d:e:, a moral cruelty, which falls most heavily on the women and children of the district. The partition of Macedonia between Greece and Serbia would mean a hard fate indeed for a million Bulgarian peasants.
Serbia has now her national and rightful expansion towards the went. Greece will have hers elsewhere. Both can afford to be generous to a peasantry which they can only hold by the right of conquest and force. As long as a million Bul- garians are ruled by Serbs and Greeks there will be no chance of goodwill between the three Balkan nations.
Bulgaria joined Germany to regain Macedonia, and to some of us it seems that there can be no guarantee of peace in the Balkans as long as there is a Bulgaria Irredenta beyond her borders. But by her own acts Bulgaria has made it most unlikely that the Allied Powers will consent to an extension of her territory.
If partition between two or more rival nationalities and annexation to Bulgaria be excluded, there remains the experi- ment of autonomy. It should surely be possible to devise some scheme of government for Macedonia under the mandatory system which should assure the rights of each nationality and provide a solution for the ownership of Salonika and %svelte. Bulgarians, Greeks, Tarim, and Vlachs have often proved no had neighbours in the same village or district, if undisturbed by intrigues from without. Local opinion is said to be in favour of autonomy. The wishes of the people could, however, he definitely ascertained if a plebiscite were taken under the guarantee of one of the Great Powers. The peasants are intelli- gent and know their own minds; they have a right to say whether they wish to be included within another State. or to ask that Macedonia be made an autonomous province. They have been the victims, not only of the rivalries of the Balkan States and of Turkish misrule, but also of the policy of the Great Powers themselves, a policy which was often short- sighted and selfish and always ineffectual. Is it too much to hope that old wrongs may he redressed now, and one storm- centre at least be removed from the map of Europe?—I am,
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