World's News (Sydney, NSW : 1901 - 1955), Saturday 24 October 1903, page 10

MACEDONIA.
I

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rs GLORIOUS MILITARY HISTORY.

In every war (or freedom which has marked

the progress of emancipation in south-eastern

Europe the Macedonians have taken part. Mace

donians fought side by side with the Greek3
during the long and bitter struggle for Grecian
Independence. When the Servians revolted,
Macedonians swarmed through the mountain
passes to render assistance; when the Bulgarian
rebellion broke out, Macedonians hurried to
stand side by side to fight, and, if necessary to
die with men of an alien race having nothing in
common with themselves but hatred of the
Turkish yoke. With every revolt in European
Turkey for the last three centuries the Mace
(
donians have sympathised; they have sent men
to aid every insur
recuuu iiwu tu

of "<
least promise sue-

cess. Greeks, Ser

vians, Bulgarians, '

and even Armenians

are their debtors, but
the Macedonians
themselves (s%ys an
American writer),
though aiding others
to freedom, are still
under the rule of the
savage power which
for nearly 1000 years
has blighted the fair

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World's News (Sydney, NSW : 1901 - 1955), Saturday 24 October 1903, page 10 (2)

est portions of two

continents.
It is not strange
that the Macedonians
should revolt. It
would be stranger if

they did not. A free,

brave, liberty-loving
people, they have for
ages been subjected
to the most odious,
the most detestable,
the most exasperat
form of tyranny

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World's News (Sydney, NSW : 1901 - 1955), Saturday 24 October 1903, page 10 (3)

ing form of tyranny

known to the world
outside the limits of
the Turkish Empire.
A political despotism
Is bad enough, a re
ligious despotism is
well -
intoler
nigh
able, yet the Turkish
rule combines both.
A great English
writer once said, in
substance, that men
could makeshift: to
live under the rule of
a tyrant or de
bauchee, but .human
nature could not en
dure a busybody.
The Turkish Govern
ment is that of a
debauchee -

tyrant,
exercised by busy
bodies, so persistent,
so meddlesome, so

troublesome in the
*
1
daily affairs of life
as to make existence
Itself an unendurable burden The Mace
donians were not always the slaves of sur
rounding and more powerful nations. The
Servians look proudly back to the dayswhen
there was a Servian
Empire; the Bulgarians to
the ages when Bulgaria ruled most of the ter
ritory once comprised In European Turkey;
the Greeks to the golden age when the little
peninsula gave to the world its art, its letters,
its science, and philosophy. Macedonia, too,
has a glorious past, for from the plains and val
leys. from the mountain slopes and crags of the

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World's News (Sydney, NSW : 1901 - 1955), Saturday 24 October 1903, page 10 (4)

country now in the vilayets of Salo

comprised
nica and Monastir came the men who marched
to certain victory under Alexander the Great.
The tremendous growth of Macedonian power
during the short reign of Alexander was one of
the marvels of all history. From a comparatively
insignificant State, disadvantageous^ situated,
having no natural boundaries and therefore
open to attack or incursion, having neither art,
science, nor letters, Macedonia became tho
Power of the world in a time
short and under
so
circumstances so extraordinary that the story
reads like a chapter from an Oriental fairy tale.
The empire of Alexander fell to piece* im
mediately after his death, and from tho same
causes that brought about the downfall of
Persia. There was no coherence among the

different element* it, and

k composing as soon

i
as the influence of one predominating mind wus
removed the whole State collapsed. But the
[

'
Macedonians have never forgotten the one glori
*
ous period in their history, and Macedonian
orators to-<?ay incite their hearers to revolt
I

1
against the Turk by stories of the Granicus aud
l8sus, by songs of Arbela and the death of the
>

Persian King.

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