STORMY PETRELS.

Auckland Star, Volume LXXIV, Issue 229, 26 September 1940, Page 11

STORMY PETRELS.

THE MACEDONIANS.

BALKAN TROUBLE-MAKERS.

(By WALTER DURANTY.)

BUCHAREST, August 21,

The Balkans are like a stew, which often seems to boil over. It seemed thus when the apparently tranquil course of Rumano-Bulgarian discussions was checked by something or other; and there are few signs of tranquillity in the discussions between Rumania and Hungary. Moreover, there was talk here—not substantiated—of a bomb outra<*e in a railroad station in the Southern Dobruja, the territory Bulgaria now claims. This waa perpetrated, we hear, by Macedonians, who are the stormiest petrels, in all the troubled Balkans. American Macedonians at that. In other words returned emigrants, who for some reason' were unable to get back to their native land and remained in Rumania instead. Of all the problems that afflict southeastern Europe the status of the future of Macedonia is the most unsolvable. Perhaps you have heard of the Irnroj which appears to be an association of gunmen, or assassins. They murdered King Alexander of Yugoslavia and the French Premier Barthou at Marseilles in 1934, an event which really had as much to, do with starting the present war as the killing of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand at had in starting the last World War.

The Imro Leader. The Imro leader, a man named Mikhailof, is supposed to be in Albania and is reported to be pro-Italian. In the last month Italians have moved 15,000 of their better troops into Albania lather quietly. They say they were forced to do this as a precautionary measure because of local revolts in the region of Deva, not far from the Greek and Serbian border. These revolts, they add, were instigated by the Greeks. This the Greeks most emphatically deny. The Greeks think the Italians have designs against their country, and they are worried. The Macedoniiwis have no particular finger in the Greeks' pie, but they are born trouble-makers. They don't agree with each other or any of their neighbours, or with anyone else. It seems that Mikliailof or some of his men have been starting the trouble around Deva, giving the Italians an excuse to act against Greece. And in the Dobruja, too, and perhaps to-morrow in Yugoslavia or Bulgarian Macedonia.

The Cauldron Simmers. The Macedonians have thought up a new trick, which they call "the People's Party of Progressive Macedonia." They are firmly anti-Italian, anti-German, anti-Bulgarian, anti-Yugoslav, antiGreek, anti-Rumanian, but, as one inight guess, pro-Russian.

According to information which reaches me from fairly trustworthy sources, they have sent to Moscow the same appeal as once was sent to Gaul, "Come over to Macedonia and help us." But the help they want k support for their "Federated Socialist Republic of the Southern Slavs." That will be a pretty dish to set before Chancellor Hitler, if the Russians choose to lend a kindly ear. This, at present, they very likely won't do, although the Bulgarian Minister to-Moscow, has just ; r ;i«timied in haste to Sofia. So the Balkan cauldron simmers, but the fires 'beneath grow hotter, and it soon may begin 'to boil over.—(N.A.N.A.)