This violent irritation against the Serbs, Greeks and Roumanians was not the only cause which threw the Bulgarians into the arms of the Central Empires, and of their former mortal enemies, the Turks. Their main aspiration--almost their only one since the creation of the Bulgarian State--has been Macedonia. The Dobrugia and Thrace are of comparatively small interest to them, whereas Macedonia, on the contrary, is the bourne of all their desires. In Thrace and in the Dobrugia the population is very mixed, and the Bulgarians, in spite of the statistics drawn up by the Sofia Government, are a minority, and the non-Bulgarian elements of the population--Turks, Greeks, Roumanians--are racially entirely different. In Macedonia, on the other hand, at least in Central and Northern Macedonia, the great majority is Slav, and the Bulgarians consider it Bulgarian. In reality the population is racially and linguistically something between Serbian and Bulgarian, and the predominance of Serbian or Bulgarian sentiments varies according to the proximity of the frontier of one or other of these States, the activity of their respective propagandists, and the greater or less prestige and strength of the two Governments. I will not quote statistics which, being drawn up by Balkan writers, have a doubtful value and no scientific basis, but it is certain that the Bulgarian peoples are convinced that if Macedonia were annexed to Bulgaria, in a few years the population would become wholly Bulgarian, so that the State would find itself with a considerable increase of inhabitants--not aliens who cannot be assimilated, such as Greeks, Roumanians or Turks, whose territories can only be Bulgarized by massacre or deportation _en masse_, but of a race which is already very closely akin to the Bulgarian race. Further, in Macedonia there are several cities closely connected with the most ancient and sacred historical traditions of the Bulgarian peoples, such as Monastir and Ochrida. The latter was indeed for a time the capital of the Bulgarian Empire and for many centuries the see of the Bulgarian patriarchate. Bulgarian propaganda had always been much more active and more able than that of the Serbians under the Turkish régime, a propaganda based on excellent schools and assassinations, and, as until the wars of 1912–13, the Bulgarians appeared to be the most solid, and from a military point of view the strongest of the Balkan States, Bulgaria exercised a powerful force of attraction over the Macedonians. In consequence of this propaganda and of Turkish persecutions, a large number of active and intelligent Macedonians migrated into Bulgaria, where they occupied many important positions in the country. A large part of the political men, diplomats, consuls, high officials, professors, school-masters, officers and merchants in Bulgaria are Macedonians, and they have long dominated the internal and foreign policy of the country, directing it naturally towards Macedonia. On the