Note 53 — IV

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.