It is therefore absolutely necessary to correct these misconceptions, if the Allies would avoid falling into fresh mistakes in the Balkans, for which they would again have to pay a heavy price. [Illustration: SERBIAN MACEDONIA.] In short, to look the difficulties clearly in the face, we must answer the question, Is the south of Serbia Bulgarian? (see the map, above). The territory in the south of Serbia on which divergent opinions have been expressed is represented with tolerable exactness: 1º. By a triangle of which the apex lies a little to the north of Veles, and of which the other angles are formed by Guevgheli on the east and Lake Ochrida on the west. 2º. By a strip of territory which lies to the east of this triangle, and which, between the left bank of the Vardar and Bulgaria, contains the regions of Kotchana, Stip, and Stroutmitza-gare. The Bulgarians contend that all the territory formed by this triangle and this lateral strip is incontestably Bulgarian; last year some Allied writers supported this contention. In the first place, it was said, the treaty of San Stefano (1878) assigned to Bulgaria what is now the south of Serbia. They forgot that in 1878 the ethnographic study of the Ottoman empire had not yet begun, and that at that time the Russians and the English were both inclined, for different reasons, to consider almost all the inhabitants of European Turkey as Bulgarians, without inquiry or distinction. The Russians, who then aimed at establishing themselves ultimately in the Balkans, were impelled by this aim to regard the Bulgarians as extremely numerous. As for the English, burning with indignation at the “Bulgarian atrocities” of Gladstone, they very generously thought of nothing but liberating from the Turkish yoke as many Christians as possible, and these in Macedonia were labelled indiscriminately Bulgarians. Be that as it may, it was only after the treaty of San Stefano that the ethnographical study of Macedonia was taken up in earnest. Moreover, it is proper to add that most of the writers who have discussed the subject have drawn their information, not from inquiries on the spot, but from Belgrade, Athens and Sofia. In these three centres they were supplied with minute statistics, very well printed, and to all appearance perfectly convincing, but which laboured under the serious disadvantage that they flatly contradicted each other. For my own part, I acknowledged that I was not able to arrive at a comparatively clear idea of the complicated ethnography of this part of Macedonia till I had carried out my inquiries of 1914, not as before in the Balkan capitals, but on the spot, at Uskub, at Prizrend, at Prichtina, at Monastir, at Ochrida, and at Strouga. This inquiry, conducted six months before the war, led me to the following conclusions. Serbian Macedonia contains two quite distinct groups of population.