by Dimitris Lithoxou in his book “The Greek Anti-Macedonian Struggle” Part 1,

by Dimitris Lithoxou in his book “The Greek Anti-Macedonian Struggle” Part 1, in chapter 9.

It was not difficult to figure out that Karavangelis was responsible for the atrocity committed in Zagorichani. When word came out that he had done it, Karavangelis fled the country and went to Austria. He never came back. But he did write his autobiography where he bragged about how he had murdered people. Greece published his accomplishment and when it realized the implications of what was said in the book, the Greeks tried to pull it out. Unfortunately for them, copies survived and their shame cannot so easily be covered up.

Another notorious name I should mention, who fought in the Anti-Macedonia struggle, was Pavlos Melas. Melas was a well-known notorious Greek armed bandit. He was killed in the village Statitsa, Lerin Region, on October 14th, 1904. The village was later name after him.

This is what Greeks do to us, rub salt in our wounds. His family was from France but they were Albanian servants in Greece. His father was the mayor of Athens. The wealth and status of this Albanian family depended on their Greek masters and it’s no surprise that they were “Hellenic” fanatics.

Did you know that Pavlos Melas wrote letters to his wife and he told her that he was learning some “Makedonika” (Macedonian) because the women in Macedonia generally did not speak Greek? It is important to note here that he said “Macedonian” and not Bulgarian, Serbian, or Slavic.

“In what the author calls a ‘reverse journey from myth towards history’, Dimitris Lithoxou draws on primary Greek sources- -consular reports, private letters and diaries- -to turn the dominant heroic narrative of Greece’s Macedonian fighters on its head. The tragic picture of nationalist icon Pavlos Melas that emerges- -a young man from a privileged background, tormented by the isolation and physical hardships of a campaign of terror in an alien, non-Greek land, and ultimately killed by one of his own men- -is a potent and timely reminder of the danger that romantic ideals of

expansive chauvinism pose for human reason and decency- -among perpetrators and victims alike. This book is vivid testimony to the enduring importance of open-minded archival research in preserving the fragile and vital habit of critical thinking.” (Professor Keith Brown, Watson Institute, Brown University).

Anyway, his own men killed him for money. That is what the people in Statitsa who witnessed the murder had said. Melas was a thug just like the thugs he led and in the end they put a bullet in his back. He did not die in glory fighting the Ottomans like we are led to believe, he died attempting to steal gold from a certain house where they believed gold had been hidden.

When Melas came out of the house without any gold, his cohorts did not believe him, they figured he hid it to reclaim it for himself later. And so they killed him for it. Anyway, this is one of the stories that is being told. It is most unfortunate however that we Macedonians did not write things down and depended on oral history and as you know oral history dies if there is an intergenerational interruption, and wars tend to do exactly that. This, unfortunately, is never good because when you lose your history you lose your roots. Your roots are cut off and after that anyone can replant you with fake roots.

This is what happened to the modern Greeks and to a large extent, this is happening to us Macedonians too. It is regrettable to see Macedonians not only calling themselves Greeks but feeling that they are Greeks, especially when their own ancestors fought and died to avoid being assimilated. It is so sad.

INTERVIEWER – Yes and that’s what happened.

RISTO – It was a big problem for us because we had several wars one after another and we lost our continuity as well as our traditions. Our traditions were a roadmap to life. They guided us from day to day, from season to season and from year to ear and allowed us to pass our knowledge from generation to generation. It was not easy if you were a self-sufficient villager who depended on your father or grandfather to teach you what to do, when to plant, when to water and when to harvest. Where would you get the knowledge you

needed to do that if you didn’t have parents, relatives or people of your own kind… never mind knowing the history of your people?

Even when I lived in the village we were self-sufficient. The only thing we needed to purchase was salt. We also purchased olives, olive oil, kerosene, sugar and items like that which we did not grow in the village, but only because we had money. We knew how to process and preserve practically everything we needed in order to survive and this knowledge was passed on from generation to generation.

INTERVIEWER – This is all in your book isn’t it?

RISTO – Yes, I have written all the things we did in an annual cycle in the village. Most of what I remembered I documented in my book “Oshchima”, a monograph about my village where I was born.

INTERVIEWER – Tell me about the tradition of the gold coins because I remember when I went to Greece, I had 3 gold coins given to me by my grandparents when I was little and they were still alive.

RISTO – That tradition goes back to the ancient Macedonians by the way, but I don’t know much about it.

INTERVIEWER – These coins are French…1913, 19…

RISTO – Well at that time gold coins were in use. They were called “Napoleons” because they were probably napoleonic coins. I am sorry, I don’t know much about them except that our old people called them “napoleoni”.

Anyway, if it was not edible it was useless, even gold. The old people were very practical and wise and depended on their own two hands for their survival and not on coins. They had seen coins come and go, gain value and lose value. They did not trust them. Gold however had universal value and you could trade it for some things. You could buy materials to build a house for example, or pay the construction crews to build it. My grandfather Risto went to Canada and worked for years to accumulate enough wealth to build a house. He brought his wealth home in gold and then went and converted it

to Greek currency and when the Greek government capitulated during the First World War he lost it all. Now you can understand why people did not trust money or the government that issued it.

INTERVIEWER – So it wasn’t like an investment?

RISTO – No. People didn’t know what investments were and those who knew did not trust the banks or the institutions. Their investment was their children. The more children they had the more they could achieve. Their children looked after them in their old age. The old people were the keepers of our traditions and our knowledge and passed it on to the children when the children were young. The old people were both sitters and teachers and had the time and patience to teach the children “our ways”. No schools, no books, just grandparents.

Each person in the family had a role to play - men and women each had their responsibilities around the home and farm. The woman was responsible for everything inside the house. Cooking, knitting, processing, preserving… basically after the crops were harvested the women were responsible for securing them. Then came making and mending all the clothing for the entire family. Nothing was purchased. The women manufactured everything, coats, pants, dresses, shirts, hats… from home grown wool to end product… Men worked the fields and tended the animals. You can see why having boys was preferable to having girls. If a family had a boy when he got married he brought home a wife, another pair of hands to help his mother with the home chores. If a family had a girl, all that effort spent rearing her would be wasted when she got married and left the home, leaving her mother with one less pair of hands around the hose. So you can see the value of a son…The woman preferred to have sons because they brought home wives who would unburden her… Men preferred sons too, to help them do the farm and field work.

INTERVIEWER – And if you had a daughter then you thought what a waste (laughs).

RISTO – Yes that is true a daughter was a waste but I never heard of any parent not loving their daughter just as much as their son. It is

natural to love all your children the same and place no material value on them, it has been this way since Neolithic times, even in times when there were shortages of men. It can happen due to wars or to some natural phenomenon. In times like these a son-in-law becomes more valuable than a son. A son-in-law may even be elevated to become head of the family if he moves into the woman’s home to become what we call a “doma zet”.

Then we have competition in men willing to leave their homes and marry into wealthier families. It’s amazing how flexible, logical and practical these people could become in times of need.

INTERVIEWER – It’s all about survival I suppose.

RISTO – Tradition was the engine that powered this society. Unfortunately, because information was passed on orally from generation to generation, their methods of maintaining continuity were very vulnerable.

INTERVIEWER – That was your world. A simple world… did the people know about other parts of the world by more sophisticated methods like newspapers and so on…

RISTO – Yes we had people who traveled. There was a whole tradition of going outside of the village and working in other places within the Ottoman Empire, outside of the Ottoman Empire, even overseas as far as “America”. We called it “pechalba”, which roughly translated to “making profit” but in time it was synonymous with “seeking work abroad”. The people were called “pechalbari”.

As families in the villages increased in size and there was not enough land to sustain them, some male family members were sent out to seek employment outside of their own properties. This was temporary and they always returned home and invested their earning to buy more land, food, build a new house, etc. It was not like today where most of us work for someone else. There was no pride in working for someone else in those days. And as prospects for work opened up, people took advantage of them and traveled as far as the United States to get them. When these people returned back to the village they spoke of oceans, ships, trains and all sorts of other

innovations. I even heard stories from the Greek Civil War refugees who saw ships for the first time while fleeing the war. They remembered the stories their grandfathers had told them from when they were in “America”. So yes, people may not have been able to read and write but they certainly knew about some things that existed outside of their own little world.

Life was difficult in the village but families were self-sufficient, relying on themselves for their own survival. Initially, many centuries ago, individuals, usually newlyweds who wanted a property of their own, went out into the wilderness and cleared land for themselves. The homesteads in those days looked something like the farms in Canada today, one or two houses surrounded by farmland somewhere near a river, brook, or spring. Unfortunately, in time, these stand alone farm homes were prone to attacks from marauders. To avoid being attacked and robbed, people began to live together in village communities for protection.

And as the villages grew large people moved on and started new villages. The size of the village was determined by its ability to support the people living in it. When a person had to walk or ride his donkey for long periods of time to get to the fields it was time to move on and start a new village.

When there was not enough water in the brook to irrigate all the fields, it was time to move on. This went on for many years until mechanization was introduced.

Unfortunately this was slow to happen in Macedonia because the Ottomans were not interested in bringing innovation to their empire and so the Macedonian people rotted for 400 years sitting stagnant while the rest of the world moved on.

By the 19th century the Ottoman Empire had fallen so far behind that there was no catching up without exhaustive economic and military reforms, something the Ottoman government could not afford. This meant that products manufactured by hand in Macedonia had to compete with those manufactured by automation in other countries.

While the European farmer used a tractor to plow his fields and a truck to deliver his crops to market, the Macedonian homesteader used a pair of oxen to plow and if he grew anything more than what he needed to survive and pay his taxes, he had to deliver it to the market by donkey because Macedonia had no tractors, no trucks and no roads for them to travel on. That’s how bad it was.

Eventually the Ottoman government decided it was time to take itself out of the feudal age and make some progress, so it borrowed money from Western Banks. But in order to get the money to pay back these loans with interest the Ottoman had to further tax the Christian villagers.

Villagers who owned land were taxed so excessively that they had to work on Sunday at road and bridge building to catch up on back taxes. To get such a job they had to resort to bribery. As if that was not enough, in 1889, re-imposing a personal tax of seven shillings per year for each newborn son further increased the tax burden. This was only reduced when the boy was able to work, at age fifteen.

Some of these taxes were raised to assist small-scale manufacturing, which was largely owned by foreign investors. Villagers were forced to sell their most valued possessions, hand-made crafts, old coins and heirlooms, for next to nothing, to pay these taxes.

To further aggravate the situation, lawless acts by the Ottoman authorities, without any avenue for appeal, contributed to the oppressive climate in the villages. In addition to pillaging, Turkish soldiers now plundered the farms and villages for their daily sustenance. The Turkish administration was in such disarray that suppliers of the military were not paid for long periods of time and in turn they were refusing to feed the army. To counter the plundering, peasant militias began to form but were soon outlawed by the Ottoman authorities.

By late 1890, those Macedonians who had land couldn’t afford to work it because of high taxes and frequent raids. Those who worked for the Begs (Ottoman estate owners) were at the mercy of their landlord without rights or legal recourse. The courts were clearly working against the Macedonians and beyond “external

intervention” there was no way to challenge their tyrannical authority.

Though the land was fertile there was no incentive to work. Agrarian life became a burden, filling village life with hopelessness and crushing the spirit of the Macedonian villager. Many Macedonian men left their families and turned to pechalba (migrant work), traveling to various foreign countries in search of work but often returning home poorer due to high travel and lodging expenses.

It was during these times that large emigrant Macedonian communities began to form in cities like Sofia, Paris, London, etc. Besides migrant workers, young Macedonian men also traveled abroad to pursue a higher education. They too became involved in the growing Macedonian worker communities. By the late 1890’s over 100,000 Macedonian men were working or studying outside of Macedonia.

With time Macedonian men from the villages went out to work further and further away from their homes. Even my Uncle Vasil and grandfather Risto had to find work outside of our village. They became specialist builders. My grandfather specialized in building houses. I am told by people who knew him that he was an excellent chimney builder. He also painted or, I should say, white washed houses and painted patterns of flowers and flying birds inside the rooms, especially in rooms reserved for entertaining guests.

INTERVIEWER – Like a mural?

RISTO – Yes, he even painted murals. Most of his best work was done in Prespa. Everyone in Prespa, I am told, knew him.

They traveled as far as “America” seeking work. The United States and Canada were in need of workers who were willing to do dangerous and dirty work that no American would touch, so these jobs were given to our people. Australia too was opening up its mill and wool industry and was in need of “dagos” as they called our people, to do these jobs.

INTERVIEWER – “Waps” or “wogs” that’s what I think they called them.

RISTO – Here they built the streets of Toronto. In those days they had no asphalt, they used rock. The roads were covered with cobblestones.

INTERVIEWER – Yes, cobblestones.

RISTO – Laying cobblestones was a labour intensive job and it was done by the poor labour force from the Ottoman Empire. Those people were so poor that they were willing to do anything for practically nothing in pay. They worked in industries that were destructive to a person’s health, jobs that no Canadian would touch. So our Macedonian villagers came here with aims at getting enough money and going back to improve their own lives in the village. Some died here and never returned. Some became very ill. My grandfather Risto worked in the tanneries and lost his ability to smell and taste. He also worked with crews laying cobblestones.

INTERVIEWER – How did they find the jobs… did they go through consuls or….

RISTO – They found jobs by word of mouth. Everything was done by word of mouth. Almost all of them were illiterate and depended on those who knew how to read and write to help them fill out their applications and travel papers.

And who in the village knew how to read and write?

The village priest or teacher of course! Now remember what I said earlier that the teachers and priests worked for the foreign churches in Macedonia. And here is another slap in our face. If the priest or teacher worked for the Greek church they tended to register the person with a Greek name and under “race” they wrote “Greek”, and so on. They used the word “race” in those days to identify people’s nationality. And so we were further humiliated by adding insult to our injuries.

From what my father told me, in the early days our church in my village belonged to the Bulgarian church and if you want proof of what I am telling you, all you have to do is look up the names of the people who left for “America” in those days. They all have last names ending with “off”.

The priest made sure to give them Bulgarian sounding names. As I mentioned earlier, most of these people were illiterate and had no idea what was written on their travel papers. So these people went to “America”, made their money and soon afterwards returned. But no sooner had they came back than they needed to go again.

Later, our church in Oshchima was administered by the Greek church and this time the same people, who a few years before had Bulgarian names, now were given Greek names. This practice, unfortunately, was not restricted to people going to “America”. It started with people going to work in “Anadol”, more commonly known as Anatolia in Asia Minor.

INTERVIEWER – Yes I had a great grandfather who went…to Anatolia and in fact my grandfather was born there.

RISTO – Yes, so here’s the situation…a little later we started having bigger problems in Macedonia. We lost the 1903 Uprising which was a big problem for every Macedonian. You know that when you lose in a struggle, no matter if your cause is just or not, you pay for the damages or you die. We had many people working abroad during the short uprising and the uprising did not improve the situation at home. In fact it got worse; many of the people who were abroad saw no prospect in returning. Most of them were young men age 20 when they left and by the time things settled at home they were 25. It was too late for them to return home and start a family. A lot made the heartbreaking decision to remain in “America” and make it their permanent home.

A lot changed their names and picked up English sounding names in order to fit in and not be treated like “dagos”. Many kept their names the way the priest had written it down back home. This is why we have so many Macedonians in the States with Bulgarian sounding names. The big problem with that is that Bulgaria, to this

day, insists that they are Bulgarians. Some of them, from the latest generations, even believe that. Bulgarian propaganda never ceased to this day.

The situation in Macedonia continued to deteriorate as the Ottoman Empire continued to crumble from the inside. By 1875 the Ottomans entered a crisis situation owing 200 million pounds sterling to foreign investors, with an annual interest payment of 12 million pounds a year. The interest payments alone amounted to approximately half the state’s annual revenues.

In 1874, due to some agricultural failures, military expenses and worldwide economic depression, the Ottoman government could not even pay the interest due on the loans. On the brink of bankruptcy, to preserve Ottoman stability and to make sure the Ottomans paid up western European debts, the Great Powers in 1875 took over the management of Ottoman revenues.

This was done through an international agency called the Ottoman Public Debt Administration. To continue to receive credit the Sultan had to grant this agency control over state income. Therefore, control of the state budget and internal policies fell into foreign hands. The agents in control were representatives of the rich capitalists and were only interested in profit, and very little else. This was definitely not to the advantage of the Macedonian people who had to foot the entire tax bill as the Ottoman Empire began to shrink, with Bulgaria and other territories gaining independence.

In their zeal to dominate the Balkans for profit, the Great Powers found themselves content with “doing nothing” and “turned their backs” on the Macedonian people. The Ottomans, for the West, were the goose that kept on laying golden eggs. That was one thing…

The other thing was the English and the French, after 1878, unleashing Hellenism on the Macedonian population. They wanted Macedonia assimilated and given to Greece.

No Macedonian, or any human being for that matter, should ever forgive the Western Powers for putting profit ahead of human life

and intentionally turning their backs on the Macedonian people. I know this is a naïve statement but I had to say it.

Let me also add that while Macedonia was being choked by the Ottoman noose of oppression, tormented by Hellenism and frustrated by Bulgarian deception, the Greek army, in 1881, annexed Thessaly and in 1885 the Bulgarian army (with Russia’s support) annexed eastern Rumelia.

While the Ottoman Empire was crumbling at the edges it was tightening its grip ever harder on Macedonia, looting and burning homes. Murders were on the rise. More and more Macedonians were made homeless. The Ottomans and their Albanian allies didn’t care who they killed. If one Ottoman or one Albanian died in battle, the army took revenge on the next village they encountered. Thousands of innocent women and children were murdered in revenge killings, not to mention the assaults on countless young girls. Homes were burned down and the people were shot as target practice as they ran out to save themselves from the fire. Those too old or sick to move died a horrible, fiery death.

Before we continue with the invasion, occupation and partition of Macedonia let me summarize and make a few points very clear.

Many village civilians died in the aftermath of the 1903 uprising and they were ALL Macedonian. Brailsford, as I mentioned earlier, in his book “Macedonia Its Races and their Future” and Dakin in his book “The Greek Struggle in Macedonia 1897-1913”, which I have used extensively as a source for my books, as well as many other authors, provide statistics that show Greek and Bulgarian civilian casualties in Macedonia.

Let me assure you that beyond some high ranking so-called Greek and Bulgarian clergy (bishops) and consuls, most of who lived in the larger cities, there were no Greek or Bulgarian civilians living in the Macedonian villages at that time. Everyone who died in the villages was Macedonian. The people who were forcibly Hellenized and pledged allegiance to the Greek Orthodox Church were Macedonian. The people who were lured by Bulgarian propaganda and fooled into joining the Bulgarian Orthodox Church were Macedonian. The

informants who were killed by the Macedonian armed revolutionary bands were Macedonian. The Greek informants who informed on the Exarchists were Macedonian. The Bulgarian informants who informed on the Patriarchists were Macedonian. The Patriarchate priests who preached in Greek in the Churches were mostly Macedonian. The teachers who taught Greek in the Patriarch sponsored schools were mostly Macedonian. The Exarchate priests who preached Old Church Slavonic in the Churches were Macedonian. The teachers who taught Bulgarian in the Exarchate sponsored schools were Macedonian. Even some of the Patriarchate and Exarchate sponsored hoodlums and brigands were mostly Macedonian.

What makes this sad affair bizarre is that while Macedonians were dying, at the hands of the Ottoman, Albanian, Greek and Bulgarian armed bands, the Greeks were falsifying statistics, claiming the victims to be Greek and Bulgarian.

Since there were no Greek or Bulgarian civilians living in the Macedonian villages then there could be no Greek or Bulgarian victims.

Brailsford, Dakin and others obtained their information and published their books through “politically correct” official channels. Unfortunately, the politically correct official channels, sanctioned by the Western Great Powers, were quoting biased and unchallenged Greek propaganda sources, which supported Greek interests and the Greek political point of view. There were no official channels to represent Macedonian interests or the Macedonian point of view.

The Macedonian people were exploited by the Ottomans and by the Europeans and were despised for complaining. They were forcibly Hellenized then profaned for not being model Hellenes. They were punished by the Bulgarians for accepting Hellenism and then were forcibly Bulgarized. Those Bulgarized were then violated and murdered by the Greeks for switching allegiance. Such was the fate of the Macedonian people greeted by the 20th century. But this was only the beginning…

In 1912, during the first Balkan War, the Greek, Serbian and Bulgarian armies invading Macedonia were welcomed by the Macedonian people because they were led to believe that their Christian brothers were finally here to liberate them. This is what the Macedonian people were told:

“Brothers: - your sufferings and your pains have touched the heart of your kindred. Moved by the sacred duty of fraternal compassion, they come to your aid to free you from the Ottoman yoke. In return for their sacrifice they desire nothing but to reestablish peace and order in the land of our birth. Come to meet these brave knights of freedom therefore with triumphal crowns. Cover the way before their feet with flowers and glory. And be magnanimous to those who yesterday were your masters. As true Christians, give them not evil for evil. Long live liberty! Long live the brave army of liberation!”

Many Macedonians joined the foreign armies and fought to drive the Ottomans out. When the battles were over many of the Macedonians were detained by the same armies they fought with and they couldn’t understand why… They understood but only after it was too late…

After the foreign armies drove the Ottomans out they refused to leave Macedonia. Now the people understood what their leaders had been telling them all along.

Then in 1913 as the foreign armies turned against each other in an attempt to gain more Macedonian territory they also turned on the Macedonian people. Macedonians were killed for helping the enemy. If for example a certain position was held by the Bulgarians and then taken by the Greeks, the Greek army would punish the Macedonian population for helping the Bulgarians or for not fighting against the Bulgarians. The Bulgarians and Serbians did the same.

In simple words, the foreign armies were committing genocide against the Macedonian population… which eventually got the attention of the outside world.

The soldiers were committing genocide because they were misled by their own propaganda. Before they were sent to Macedonia to “liberate” it, the soldiers were told that they would find “Greeks” in Macedonia because, after all, these soldiers were sent to liberate the “Greeks” from the dreadful Ottomans and the big bad, terrible Bulgarians.

They were told that the Greeks are your friends and everyone else is your enemy.

And, as the story goes, the Greek army did arrive in Macedonia and found no Greeks, only a few Greeks speakers. This frustrated the soldiers and caused them to go into a wild fit of blood lust. People were murdered on the streets, including women and children, as they fled to save their lives.

Finally the Carnegie Commission was put together and dispatched to Macedonia to investigate what was going on.

INTERVIEWER – What year was this?

RISTO – 1913. The report came out in 1914.

INTERVIEWER – Do you have the report?

RISTO – Yes I have a copy of the report.

INTERVIEWER – Can you buy it on the net?

RISTO – Yes you can buy it now. The original report disappeared and when the new Balkan conflicts during Yugoslavia’s breakup started someone decided to re-print it.

INTERVIEWER – Okay I’ll look it up.

RISTO – When war broke out in the Balkans in 1912 and 1913, the Carnegie Endowment dispatched a commission on a fact finding mission. The mission consisted of seven prominent members from the United States, Britain, France, Germany, Austria-Hungary and Russia. Among them was the distinguished journalist Henry N.

Brailsford, author of the book “Macedonia its Races and their Future”.

The commission was dispatched from Paris on August 2nd, 1913, shortly before the end of the second Balkan War and returned to Paris nearly eight weeks later, on September 28th. In spite of opposition from the Greek government, the commission arrived in time to witness much of the war’s aftermath and record most accounts while they were still fresh in people’s minds. The commission’s findings were compiled and released in 1914.

In a statement dated February 22, 1914, Carnegie Endowment Acting Director Nicholas Murray Butler said:

“The circumstances which attended the Balkan wars of 1912 and 1913 were of such character as to fix upon them the attention of the civilized world. The conflicting reports as to what actually occurred before and during these wars, together with the persistent rumors often supported by specific and detailed statements as to violations of the laws of war by the several combatants, made it important that an impartial and exhaustive examination should be made of this entire episode in contemporary history. The purpose of such an impartial examination by an independent authority was to inform public opinion and to make plain just what is or may be involved in an international war carried on under modern conditions. If the minds of men can be turned even for a short time away from passion, from race antagonism and from national aggrandizement to a contemplation of the individual and national losses due to war and to the shocking horrors which modern warfare entails, a step and by no means a short one, will have been taken toward the substitution of justice for force in the settlement of international differences. It was with this motive and for this purpose that the Division of Intercourse and Education of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace Constituted in July, 1913, an International Commission of Inquiry to study the recent Balkan wars and to visit the actual scenes where fighting had taken place and the territory which had been devastated. The presidency of this International Commission of Inquiry was entrusted to Baron d’Estournelles de Constant, Senator of France, who had represented his country at the First and Second Hague Conferences of 1899 and of 1907, and who as President Fondateur of the Conciliation Internationale, has labored so long and so effectively to bring the various nations of the world into closer and more sympathetic relations. With Baron d’Estournelles de Constant there were associated men of the highest standing, representing different nationalities, who were able to bring to this important task large experience and broad sympathy.” (George F. Kennan. “The Other Balkan Wars” A 1913 Carnegie Endowment Inquiry in Retrospect with a New Introduction and Reflections on the Present Conflict. Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment For International Peace, 1993).

And like I said earlier, according to the Carnegie report, the Macedonians were not the only ones duped. The soldiers of the invading armies were lied to also. “The Servian soldier, like the Greek, was firmly persuaded that in Macedonia he would find compatriots, men who could speak his language and address him with jivio or zito. He found men speaking a language different from his, who cried hourrah! He misunderstood or did not understand at all. The theory he had learned from youth of the existence of a Servian Macedonia and a Greek Macedonia naturally suffered; but his patriotic conviction that Macedonia must become Greek or Servian, if not so already, remained unaffected. Doubtless Macedonia had been what he wanted it to become in those times of Douchan the Strong or the Byzantine Emperors. It was only agitators and propagandist Bulgarians who instilled into the population the idea of being Bulgarian. The agitators must be driven out of the country, and it would again become what it had always been, Servian or Greek.”

It’s worthwhile picking up the report and reading it, especially the eyewitness testimonies, the statistics of people murdered and the letters the Greek soldiers wrote home confessing to the atrocities they had committed. The book is authored by George F. Kennan and called “The Other Balkan Wars” A 1913 Carnegie Endowment Inquiry in Retrospect with a New Introduction and Reflections on the Present Conflict. Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment For International Peace, 1993.

The second Balkan War was about grabbing territory and exacting revenge. As the armies clashed there were winners and losers. The

losers took revenge on the civilian population by looting, burning, killing and raping the Macedonian population.

Among many other things, following is the kind of information you will find in the book:

“Deny that your enemies are men, and presently you will treat them as vermin”. (P 95)

“When you have to deal with barbarians, you must behave like a barbarian yourself.” (P 95, a quote from a Greek officer.)

According to the Carnegie report, Greece was the first to instigate aggression by attacking Kukush on July 4, 1913. In retaliation Bulgaria attacked Demir-Hissar on July 7, Serres on July 11 and Doxato on July 13.

On July 12, according to the Carnegie report, King Constantine dispatched the following telegram to the representatives of Greece in the European capitals;