CHRISTIANS IN MACEDONIA

Evening Star, Issue 12093, 14 January 1904, Page 7

CHRISTIANS IN MACEDONIA

Mr Balfour’s contention in a speech which hft made in the House of Commons shortly before the prorogation—that the Christiana themselves were not free from responsibility in connection with the outrages in trouble-racked Macedonia—finds corroboration in a recently published pamphlet. The writer gives details of no fewer than 202 murdera and twenty-seven attempted murders of members of the Greek community in the vilayets of Monastir and Salonika, which he says have been during the past five years directly and unquestionably traced to the Bulgarian bands. Women and children are amongst the victims, whose social position range from the laborer to the squire and the priest. Included in the list arc twelve landowners, eight clergymen, and two medical men. Since the record was compiled many more Greeks have; been put to death, but the details have not yet been fully verified, owing to the unsettled condition of the country. The only reasons, he says, that have been put forward for the crimes have been that the ■victims were either supposed to have given information against the brigands or refused to subscribe money to the fund for carrying on the campaign. Several popular misconceptions are sought to be removed. Many in this country who have shown open sympathy with the bands have assumed that the insurrection has not only the upp.oval but the support of the Macedonian people, and that me great majority of the population are Bulgarians; biit the writer of the pamphlet quotes official statistics to show that in the vilayets of Salonika and Monastir the Greeks'outnumber the Bulgarians by 142,164 and 155,782 respectively, and he declares that the Macedonian people have no sympathy whatever with the insurrectionists, “whose actions all along have been ' opposed to. the true cause cf Macedonia —the cause of reform and better government.” Even amongst their own countrymen in Macedonia tile’’ Bulgarian bands' secure support only by the exercise of the worst forms of coercion. He adds; “ The Macedonian people are deserving of all the sympathy and all the support which England can give them, but let us discriminate between the 1 fraudulent and the real, our. protest resolutions and onr pity may be doing mote harm than good.” X