Macedonian Bulgarians

For reasons I have already dwelt upon, they have no wish to enforce their claims prematurely, and are quite content to wait till such time as the decease of “ the Sick Man of Europe ” is brought about by natural causes. They resent, however, most bitterly any action which could possibly impair their ultimate title to the reversion of Macedonia. There is undoubtedly an active agitation in Macedonia in favour of annexation to Bulgaria; and equally undoubtedly this agitation has the sympathy, if not the support, of the Bulgarian people. In Macedonia, as elsewhere in Eastern Europe, questions of race and creed are indissolubly connected with each other; and every national movement is associated with religious sympathies and religious prejudices.

From the date when Bulgaria practically recovered her independence, the Macedonian Bulgarians have been endeavoring to stimulate national sentiment by the aid of the Bulgarian schools, which are under the control of the native clergy. This attempt, if I may use the word, to Bulgarize Macedonia had created very great irritation amidst the Greeks, and their influence at Constantinople has of late been hostile to any aggrandizement of Bulgaria. Greek influence, I may add, is very powerful with the Sultan and the Porte, partly on account of their personal relations with the Phanar, and still more from the fact that Russia has always taken the side of the Greeks.

At the instance of the Greeks, the Sultan was induced to issue a decree declaring that henceforth all Bulgarian schools in Macedonia must be registered in the name of some specified individual, directly responsible to the Ottoman Government, and could no longer be allowed to be the property of the communes, which in respect of all theological and educational matters are entirely under the control of the clergy. By this decree, too, the schools were placed under the direct supervision of the local Turkish authorities, who, in Macedonia, so long as Russian influence is predominant at Constantinople, are certain to act as partisans of Greece. It is not easy for an outsider to fully understand the merits or demerits of the decree in question.