Macedonia

“ The story of Macedonia today is the story of the Monastir road. Along this highway Alexander and Xerxes and Galerius once tramped with their legions. It has been the link between the Adriatic and the Ægean seas ever since history was written.
For centuries it has carried its ox-carts with their solid wooden wheels, and long trains of donkeys and peasant women bowed under packs. Serb and Bulgarian raiders have descended on Saloniki along it. For thirty centuries fighting men and peasants and thieves and slaves have marched through its bottomless mud. ”

“ Everything which has been provided by the kindness of heaven or by the care and forethought of their king, the Macedonians have in full and overflowing measure. You must have the courage which your ancestors had when after subjugating the whole of Europe they crossed over to Asia and opened up by their arms an unknown world, and never ceased to conquer until they were hemmed in by the purple ocean and there was nothing more to conquer. Ay, but now it is not for the remotest shores of India but for the possession of Macedonia that Fortune has called us to this contest. ”

“ First and foremost, everybody knows that we love our country, Macedonia, and our people; we are constantly thinking about Macedonia and we feel that this is the country to which we belong. Ever since our childhood we have felt that whatever is dear to others is dear to us as well; whatever gives pleasure to other people gives pleasure to us as well they weep, so do we, they laugh, so do we. ”

“ He never lived to revisit Macedonia; but his achievements were on so transcendent a scale, his acquisitions of territory so unmeasured, and his thirst for further aggrandisement still so insatiate, that Macedonia sinks into insignificance in the list of his possessions. Much more do the Grecian cities dwindle into outlying appendages of a newly grown oriental empire. During all these eleven years, the history of Greece is almost a blank, except here and there a few scattered events. It is only at the death of Alexander that the Grecian cities again awaken into active movement. ”

“ If one joke is replaced with yet another, the revival of Macedonia will become impossible, and our nation will be eradicated. This moment is of utmost importance for Macedonia, it is a question of life or death. ”

“ But perhaps it is not out of the way nor alien from my present theme to tell some of the facts that are not familiar to all. They say [9] that Macedonia was colonised by the descendants of Heracles, the sons of Temenus, who had been awarded Argos as their portion, then quarrelled, and to make an end of their strife and jealousy led out a colony. Then they seized Macedonia, and leaving a prosperous family behind them, they succeeded to the throne, king after king, as though the privilege were an inheritance. Now to praise all these would be neither truthful, nor in my opinion easy. ”

“ Through all this time Persia appears and reappears as the ally first of this league and then of that. About the middle of the fourth century B.C., Greece becomes aware of a new influence in its affairs, that of Philip, King of Macedonia. Macedonia does, indeed, arise in the background of this incurably divided Greece as the Medes and Persians arose behind the Chaldean Empire. A time comes when the Greek mind turns round, so to speak, from its disputes, and stares in one united dismay at the Macedonian. ”

“ What was the occasion of the war between Turkey and the Balkan states in 1912? The most general answer that can be given to that question is contained in the one word Macedonia. Geographically Macedonia lies between Greece, Servia, and Bulgaria. Ethnographically it is an extension of their races. And if, as Matthew Arnold declared, the primary impulse both of individuals and of nations is the tendency to expansion, Macedonia both in virtue of its location and of its population was fore-ordained to be a magnet to the emancipated Christian nations of the Balkans. ”

“ It is this universal happiness and sorrow, together with the customs and habits we share, that makes us one nation, one whole. But if we cross the borders of Macedonia to the northeast, to the south or to the north, that is to Bulgaria, to Greece or to Serbia, we will immediately feel that a different wind is blowing; we will feel that we are uninvited guests and if they want to make it seem that we are brothers they will do so in order to mislead us and expose us to exploitation by the Greeks, Bulgarians or Serbs. ”

“ A white patch at the foot of the mountain is Monastir itself, and behind it we can make out other terrible peaks—Hill 1248, the Tzervena Stena, the Peristeri, and all the mighty barrier which separates Macedonia from Albania. To the extreme right is another wild sea of mountains, peaks and rocks extending to the Vardar—the area of the Serbian Army. Thus the whole of the western half of the Macedonian front is spread out before us like a topographical chart. ”

“ Before the Turkish conquest Macedonia had been sometimes under Bulgarian rule, as in the times of Simeon, Samuel, and John Asen II, sometimes under Serbian, especially during the height of Serbian power in the fourteenth century, while intermittently it had been a province of the Greek Empire, which always claimed it as its own. On historical grounds, therefore, each of the three nations can claim possession of Macedonia. ”

“ Macedonia is a tangle of mountains, whose higher levels are often bare and rocky; the intervening valleys are fertile, and in some cases, sufficiently extensive to be described as plains. These plains are the granaries of Macedonia, and contain the larger towns like Skoplje and Monastir, their population consists of peasants and farmers representing all the Balkan races, mingled with these, and living by their toil, are traders of almost every nationality. ”

“ In modern Macedonia are included the vilayet of Salonica (Turk. Selanik) , the eastern and greater portion of the vilayet of Monastir (sanjaks of Monastir, Servia [Turk. Selfije] , and part of that of Kortcha) , and the south-eastern portion of the vilayet of Kossovo (sanjak of Usküb) . The greater part of Macedonia is inhabited by a Slavonic population, mainly Bulgarian in its characteristics; the coast-line and the southern districts west of the Gulf of Salonica by Greeks, while Turkish, Vlach and Albanian settlements exist sporadically, or in groups, in many parts of the country. ”

“ This quick overview of the history of Macedonia, seems to me, not only confirms that we Macedonians have our own history and that we are a nation whose destiny developed related to the destinies of the other enamoring nations, but that there is in our history much that is self-existing and typical, like the self-ruled Ohrid archbishopy with its mission on the national education. ”

“ From Monastir I motored over execrable roads to Lake Presba and Lake Ochrida and thence beyond the city of Ochrida to Struga on the Black Drin, from which I looked out on the mountains of Albania.
Coming from Athens where for many months I had listened to patriotic stories of the thorough permeation of Macedonia by Greek settlements my first surprise was my inability to discover a Greek majority in Central Macedonia. In most of the cities a fraction of the population indeed is Greek and as a rule the colony is prosperous. ”

“ The Macedonians from their side had kept themselves well informed about conditions in Greece.
Now it happened, just when Sparta and Athens had finished their disastrous war for the leadership of Hellas, that Macedonia was ruled by an extraordinarily clever man by the name of Philip. He admired the Greek spirit in letters and art but he despised the Greek lack of self-control in political affairs. It irritated him to see a perfectly good people waste its men and money upon fruitless quarrels. ”

“ Macedonia itself, was far less civilized than the southern parts of Greece: the people were, indeed, men of a different race, being esteemed barbarous, though the kings claimed to have been of Hellenic origin, and even to trace their lineage to Achilles and Hercules. ”

“ Yet Macedonia was, economically, better situated than Greece. It far excelled it in fertility; as still at present the province of Thessalonica is relatively well cultivated and well peopled, so in the description of the empire from the time of Constantius, at all events when Constantinople was already in existence, Macedonia is reckoned among the specially wealthy districts. ”

“ There are few more splendid panoramas in the world; there is none over which history has cast so magic a spell, for this barren, dusty land has been the arena in which the races of eastern Europe have battled since history began. Within its borders are represented all the peoples who are disputing the reversion of the Turkish possessions in Europe. Macedonia might be described, indeed, as the very quintessence of the near eastern question. ”

“ We have also overcome their conspiracies, which threatened the gods themselves, which Macedonia received, as it is a climate peculiarly proper for impious and insolent attempts; and we have overcome that confused rout of men, half mad with spite against us, which they got together at Philippi in Macedonia, when they seized on the places that were proper for their purpose, and, as it were, walled them round with mountains to the very sea, and where the passage was open only through a single gate. ”

“ The Peneus separates Lower Macedonia and the sea-board from Thessaly and Magnesia. The Haliacmon is the boundary of Upper Macedonia; and the Haliacmon, the Erigon, the Axius, and other rivers, form the boundary between Macedonia and the Epirotæ and the Pæonians. E.
13. If a line is drawn from the recess of the Thermaic Gulf, on the sea-coast of Macedonia, and from Thessalonica, southwards, to Sunium, and another eastwards, towards the Thracian Chersonese, an angle will be made in the recess. Macedonia extends in both directions, and we must begin with the line first mentioned. ”

“ Although some of you may recognize the Pope as your leader, others the Sheikh-Islam, a third group the Exarch, a fourth the Patriarch, a fifth the Rabbi, you are nevertheless the children of your only mother of Macedonia who weeps day and night, imploring you to be reconciled and agree among yourselves and become brothers. Will you not be ashamed if you were split up and divided by your neighbors who speak in their respective languages but who are my enemies? ”

“ To such a degree did he humble the Athenians and Thebans, who had ever been ready to fall upon Macedonia, that instead of your paying tribute to the former and being vassals to the latter, both states turned to us for protection. He marched into the Peloponnesus and after setting affairs there in order, he was publicly declared commander-in-chief of the whole of Greece in the expedition against the Persian. And he considered this great distinction not as personal honour to himself, but as a glory for Macedonia. [2]
The new King was only twenty years old. ”

“ Formerly the territory they possessed was more extensive, although even now the barbarians possess a large part of the country, which, without dispute, is Greece. Macedonia is occupied by Thracians, as well as some parts of Thessaly; the country above Acarnania and Ætolia, by Thesproti, Cassopæi, Amphilochi, Molotti, and Athamanes, Epirotic tribes. ”

“ In the south, not only was Greece in general dependent on Macedonia, but a large portion of it—including all Thessaly in its widest sense from Olympus to the Spercheius and the peninsula of Magnesia, the large and important island of Euboea, the provinces of Locris, Phocis, and Doris, and lastly, a number of isolated positions in Attica and in the Peloponnesus, such as the promontory of Sunium, Corinth, Orchomenus, Heraea, the Triphylian territory—was directly subject to Macedonia and received Macedonian garrisons ”

“ Macedonia has been severally called Æmonia, Mygdonia, Pæonia, Edonia, Æmathia, &c. The inhabitants of Macedonia were naturally warlike, and though in the infancy of their empire they were little known beyond the borders of their country, yet they signalized themselves greatly in the reign of Philip, and added the kingdom of Asia to their European dominions by the valour of Alexander. The Macedonian phalanx, or body of soldiers, was always held in the highest repute, and it resisted and subdued the repeated attacks of the bravest and most courageous enemies. Livy, bk. 44.—Justin, bk. ”

“ In all public places where people congregate, and actually - would you believe it! - in private parties, there are men who know who are leading the armies into Macedonia, where their camps ought to be placed, what strategical positions ought to be occupied, when and by what pass Macedonia ought to be entered, where the magazines are to be formed, by what mode of land and sea transport supplies are to be conveyed, when actions are to be fought, and when it is better to remain inactive. ”

“ And Kara-Wallachia is part of the triple league formed to protect the interests of Kara- allachia on the Balkan Peninsula.
The interests of Greece in Macedonia are even greater. Despite the fact that there are not many Greeks in Macedonia, Greece is no less interested for her own sake in our affairs than the other Balkan states. Every state, even if it is unable to make new political, economic and cultural inroads into Macedonia, strives at least to preserve those, which have already been made. ”