BALKAN EMIGRANTS.

Evening Star, Issue 18809, 6 December 1924, Page 6

BALKAN EMIGRANTS.

“Not wanted” is the sign erected in America against Jugo-Slavs, Greeks, and other Southern Europeans who were wont to find there an open door. From the most hospitable country in the world to strangers the United States has made itself the most inhospitable. Especially has its heart been hardened against the races of Southern Europe. Whereas during a long period of years those had furnished the largest proportion of its immigrants, the new Exclusion Law was ingeniously fashioned to give preference to the coolerblooded sons of the north. It is a most suspicious, far from cordial welcome that is given to discomfited newcomers of even the Nordic breed; but that is by the way. The rejection of “Dagoes” and JugoSlavs, for whom the immigration law spreads its finest mesh, is a disaster for them, for thousands of them have no chance of livmg more than the poorest of lives in their own countries. Headed off from America's shores, they are turning their attention to Australia, and Australia does not want them more than the United States. Cabinet action is being taken, it was reported recently, to prevent their entrance into New South Wales, The Commonwealth Government, to avoid an invasion, is adopting America’s system .of the quota. It will receive Greeks and also Jugo-Slavs to the number of ono hundred of each nationality a month. It will be a long time before that measure of hospitality .gives much relief to the unfortunates of Southern Europe. Jugo-Slavs and Greeks are both Balkan races. The treaties that were made after the war changed the map of the Balkans without ending their troubles or the causes that have made them a chief cockpit of Europe. They left the large region of Macedonia, including a long strip of Greece, portion of Jugoslavia, and a smaller portion of Bulgaria, still existing as nothing more than a geographical expression. And because it has no Government of its own and wants one, and the people of three races dwell at enmity there, Macedonia, or those parts of it where the three peoples press'most closely on each other, must be a bad place to live in. Bulgaria and Greece have both had revolutions since the war. Macedonia •has a revolutionary organisation which made enough bloodshed when "it worked as one body for independence, and has made more since it became divide! against itself. Half of its members have encouraged and half resented attempts of the Moscow Government to thrust its long spoon into this particular cauldron. The leader most opposed to the 80l-

shevists was murdered two months ago by their supporters. Eight lives were taken in payment for that outrage, and tho feud presumably still goes on. It must bo dangerous to bo either a Bolshevist or an anti-Bolshevist in Macedonia. Greece has a burden ox its own in the presence of more than a million Greek refugees from Asia Minor, whom it can only with the greatest difficulty absorb. The Northern Territory of Australia, which needs settlers to protect it and develop it, and fails wholly to attract those of British stock, should be tho finest country in the world for them, but for the fact that for the most part they are craftsmen, and not agriculturists or paetoralists. Jugo-Slavs in Now Zealand, however, have been good settlers, and there are other Southern Europeans whom Australia should be ready to welcome to its waste spaces at a greater rate than a hundred newcomers a month. As to Macedonia, according to those who know :t, present conditions suggest that it is shaping to ho the starting point of the next world war.