THE TRAIL OF WAR IN MACEDONIA 297 
diplomacy made all the mistakes it had a 
chance to make. For these she was 
duly punished by the brigand Treaty of 
Bucharest, in which Rumania _ forced 
into her own hands the fertile meadows 
of the Dobrudja, while the best of Mace- 
donia was divided between Serbia and 
Greece. 
If the Powers had not been a group 
of wrangling agents sparring for ad- 
vantage, they would have considered 
the interests of Macedonia first. They 
would have made it an autonomous 
province held in trust for the welfare 
of its people and above all, with entire 
tolerance of religion, language and race. 
But no such tolerance yet exists in 
Europe outside of its westernmost na- 
tions. 
The Treaty of Bucharest left Mace- 
donia crossed by artificial boundaries. 
The effect of intolerance, worst in Greece, 
bad enough everywhere, was to drive 
out of each nation all who belonged to 
the wrong language or religion. I do 
not say race, for they are all of the same 
general stock, even the bulk of the 
“Turks” and Greeks. This has filled 
the region with refugees, men and 
women whose fault is that they lived 
on the wrong side of boundaries made 
for them in the Treaty of Bucharest. 
Passing down the long highway which 
leads over two hundred miles from Sofia 
to Samokov and Dubnitza in old Bul- 
garia, then across the border of Mace- 
donia, down the Struma River past 
Dzumaia to Petritch, we found every- 
where the Bulgarian refugees from the 
Saloniki district in Greek Macedonia. 
These have been roughly estimated at 
50,000 in number. Some of these have 
been given farms or houses abandoned 
in Macedonia by Turks who followed 
the Turkish“army away. Others re- 
ceived farms left by Greeks when the 
Greek army went back after the treaty 
el 
of Bucharest. The government grants 
each person some fourpence a day. 
Some find work, but after the war there 
are few employers. The cost of living 
has doubled, the means of living has 
fallen. At Petritch, near the present 
boundary of Greece, there were hundreds 
of these waiting about on the stone side- 
walks day by day. They were waiting 
for the Powers to revise the Treaty of 
Bucharest and give them back their 
homes in the region above Saloniki. 
Some local journal had said that this 
revision was coming soon. It was my 
duty to assure them that it would never 
come. The phrase in Sofia, “Europe 
* is the truth so far as 
Balkan affairs are concerned. 
exists no more,’ 
The reason for that is clearer now. 
Europe was paralyzed by the great 
terror which has since come on it in an 
unthinkable catastrophe. There were 
some in the “Concert of the Powers,” 
who were striving to bring on this 
catastrophe. The “war of steel and 
gold” was about to give place to real 
war, which would end, they hoped, in 
speedy victory and world power. It 
has not ended in that way. It has not 
yet ended at all. But those who most 
looked forward to war were the ones 
who had least conception of its certain 
consequences. 
The condition of the Bulgarian refu- 
gees has been especially hard because 
their flight took place mostly in the fall 
and winter and before the cholera was 
stamped out. Very many died on the 
road, and many more died after reaching 
the inhospitable Bulgarian towns, where 
they received scanty welcome because 
the people were overborne by their own 
troubles. 
The Rumanian invasion caused also 
great hardship in Bulgaria. The annex- 
ation of Silistria and the Dobrudja, with 
its population of about 180,000, was 
