Balkan Peninsula -- Description and travel; Eastern question (Balkan)
I make no apology for the assassination of King Alexander and his Queen.
That matter is a closed page of Servian history. I only can state what I
saw and heard in Servia, and explain how I drew my own entirely
unbiassed conclusions.
One thing is certain, that Servia is at this moment in a very much more
prosperous condition than ever she was under King Alexander. Having met
every one of the Ministers, and spent many hours with them, I can safely
assert that, headed by M. Pachitch, quiet-mannered, sensible, and
thoughtful, they are, one and all, a very strong and intelligent
Cabinet, each member of which is doing his very utmost for the
commercial development and future welfare of the country he loves so
dearly.
There is no _poseur_ or political adventurer among them. Each man is a
sound, intelligent, and trustful statesman, whose watchword is, as His
Excellency Monsieur Pachitch put it to me, “Servia for the Servians.”
While in Belgrade I had several conversations with members of the
Cabinet, and also with Dr. J. Cvijic, the eminent author of that most
thoughtful work, _Remarks on the Ethnography of the Macedonian Slavs_,
regarding the all-absorbing question of Macedonia. Mention Macedonia to
any Balkan statesman, and he raises his shoulders and shakes his head.
It is a problem that nobody can solve. I endeavoured, however, by dint
of many inquiries, to discover in what way Servia would like the
Macedonian question settled.
Roughly speaking, Macedonia is divided into three _vilayets_—Kossovo,
Monastir, and Salonica. Now Kossovo is essentially Old Servia, and there
is no question that its people are still Serbs. Yet here we run up
against Austria again. She is doing all in her power to cause the
population to emigrate, and in their place attracting Albanians who
assist the Austrian propaganda. As regards the other two _vilayets_ of
Monastir and Salonica, the inhabitants are Serbs, Bulgars, Greeks, and
Mohammedans. Now it is a curious fact, and one which I believe no other
writer has noted, that until two years ago nobody spoke of any other
people in Macedonia but these. Suddenly, however, Europe was made aware
that there was still another people, for the Koutzo-Vlachs were, for the
first time, mentioned, and formed a new element in the already mixed
difficulty.
Now without doubt this new problem was introduced into the controversy
by Germany for two reasons. The first was to create, besides the
Mohammedan and Albanian, a Christian Conservative element for the
preservation of the Turk in Europe. Germany has therefore an economic
propaganda in Turkey, and when the time is ripe it will be followed by a
strong political one. She could not count on either Serbs or Bulgars in
Macedonia, but by this new intrigue she has courted the support of the
Mohammedans.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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