[Footnote 53: Of the three millions, which is estimated to
have been the population of Macedonia at the time of the
Great War, almost two millions were Slav, and it is to these
only that we refer in using the term "Macedonians" in this
chapter. Among the other inhabitants of the variegated
province are Greeks and Turks and Circassians, Albanians
(Tosks and Ghegs), Jews whose ancestors came from Spain,
gipsies and Kutzo-Vlachs. A French observer said some years
ago that Macedonia was a school of brigandage and ethnology.
He said it was the prey of the Albanians and the
professors--that is, of unconscionable savages and of
laborious agents of all kinds of foreign propaganda. Even the
Kutzo-Vlachs, which in Greek signifies "Limping Roumanians,"
made their propaganda, or had it made for them. Gustav
Weigand, a German professor who devoted himself very
thoroughly to this people, used to wish us to believe that
the Aromunes, as the Roumanians of the kingdom call their
Macedonian relatives--another name to which they answer is
Tsintsares--are free from all Greek blood. But this is not
the case; they have become very hellenized, although it is
true that there are some who call themselves Greek and who,
besides having no such mixture in their veins, cannot speak a
word of the Greek language. According to circumstances--and
very much like the Serbo-Bulgarian Macedonians--this people,
who number less than 100,000, have been accustomed to
proclaim themselves now Greek and now Roumanian. They are a
good example of the bad effects of propaganda, and this,
added to the Turkish domination and the perpetual exodus of
those who could manage to escape, has left in Macedonia a
population that is generally more unsympathetic than any
other in the Balkans. One may wonder, by the way, why the
Roumanians should have put themselves to so much trouble with
respect to these more or less hellenized kinsmen of theirs,
not merely giving them direct support, but subsidizing
Weigand's institution at Leipzig. A great reason was that
King Charles, the friend of the German and Austro-Hungarian
Empires, aimed at diverting the eyes of his statesmen from
the unredeemed Roumanians in Transylvania.]
[Footnote 54: But Macedonia is not the only part of
Yugoslavia where a man's nationality varies. One Rejuka, for
example, came to Veršac in the Banat. He was a Czech, but as
at that period (1850-1860) everything German predominated, he
preferred to be a German and sent his son to German schools.
Then the boy learned Magyar at college and, long before he
was appointed mayor, had become a Magyar. Thus we have three
nationalities in two generations.]
[Footnote 55: _Remarks on the Ethnography of the Macedonian
Slavs._ London, 1906.]
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