BUTCHERY IN MACEDONIA.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume L, Issue 61, 18 October 1907, Page 4

BUTCHERY IN MACEDONIA.

The Vienna correspondent of the Times gives gruesome details of the murder and pillage being carried on in Macedonia. "From personal and direct investigation ol the position in the worst districts, whiqh are now those around Kastoria and Monastir in charge of the -Italian gendarmerie officers, it is impossible,' 1 he haya, "to give a succinct | account of the process of devastation ' and methodical murder now going on there, a process which, unites rapidly checked by determined action on the part of the Powers, will lead to complications with which the Graeco-Turkish war of 1897 would be insignificant* To the bouth-west of Ka3toria a line of hills used to mark the ethnographical boundary between Macedonian Pulgars and Greeks. In this district the Greeks have ten armed bands, or about 400 nK&, equipped, with the clandestine protection <Jf the Greek Government, by a fund made up of contributions from wealthy Greeks in Greece, the Levant, Egypt," and elsewhere. The wealth of the Greeks is their greatest strength. The bands equipped and supplied by them are engaged in carrying out a programme designed to push the Greek ethnographic frontier northwards and eastwards so as to include in the Greek 'national :phere' Monastir. Trilip, and the country contained within a line drawn from Prilip south-eastwards to Seres and to the coast east of Kavalla. At present operations are _ most active around Kastoria, and it is here that the Bulgar population is being gradually but pitilessly exterminated. At first the men were cut up as they went to work in the fields. This went on until it became impossible for the male Bulgar to leave his village without being shot tortured, and slaughtered by the einissiaries of Greek civilisation. At length the men decided to emigrate, aud whole Bulgar villages were soon lei t without a .single able-bodied male. Irom America they sent back their savings to their wives and children, who* taut bijii que mal. wen to market, aud did the work in the fields. Dissatisfied with this result. Greek band? then decided to eliminate the women aud children. \ illage "after village was surrounded and burned, and the children butchered. The Italian gendarmerie ollicers have done their best to Stay the havoc, Ujluri has s ent Turkish troops, some •collisions' between the troopa uud bands have been reported hum time to time, but the bands have always escaped practically seathless. A present of £3O or £4.0 to the unpaid or ill-paid Turkish detachment assures to the bands timely warning. They decamp, and, pending the departure of the troops, pursue elsewhere their pitiless warfare.

"Clause 3 of the Mursteg programme is largely responsible for these (J rock tactics. It runs:—'Aussitat ipi'an apaiseinent du pays sera constate, demander au Gouvernemeut Ottoman une modification dans la delimitation tcrritoriale de unites administratives en vue dm groupement plus rcgulier des dierentea nationalities.' The Greeks, and other Macedonian races have, therelore, every interest to prevent the 'apaisement du pays' until each race shall have extended its territory as far as possible in order that it may eventually profit by.the 'more regular grouping "of the different nationalities.' _ As the Greek bands are the best-equipped ami the wealthiest in Macedonia, they make most progress, especially as their operations are often connived at by the Turkish authorities, who short-sighleilly hold or held the Greek, as a foe of the Bulgar. to be an ally of the Turk. But other races are not bands carrying on the work of 'converting' idle. In the vilayet of Kossovo, Serb Bulgars into . Serbs, while from the north-east Bulgar bands do what they ean to bold their own against the Serbs, and to stem the tide of "Hellenism' advancing from the south-west. The Bulgars make any unjueky Greek who falls into their hands pay dearly for his countrymen's murderous prowess. The three influences —Serb, Bulgar, and Greek—meet and have collisions aronnd Prilip and Morichovo."