My Lord, Sofia. 10th February 1921.

I have the honour to report that I have received from the Executive Committee of Macedonian Societies a long list of allegations against the Serbian Authorities in Macedonia at the time of the recent elections for the Serbian Assembly, when, it will be remembered, a large proportion of communist deputies were returned from Macedonia. It is stated that, before the elections, the Serbian troops resorted to the worst excesses in order to terrorize the inhabitants into voting for the governmental lists, and that they redoubled their persecutions when the results of the elections showed that large numbers of the electorate had, in spite of this, supported parties of the Left.

Some forty or fifty cases of imprisonment torture, rape etc. are cited, largely the first, the names of the victims being given in each case. Two or three cases are said to have had fatal results. The Serbian Judge Radoitchitch of Veles is stated to have authorised the worst atrocities.

The familiar assertion is made that the large communist vote in Macedonia is due less to sympathy with subversive principles than to the suppressed nationalism of the inhabitants of Macedonia who are of Bulgarian race, and consequently that the arrests of prominent communists were inspired by race hatred alone.

As it was pointed out in Mr. Rodd's memorandum on Communism in this country (transmitted in my despatch No. 458 of the 18th of October last) there exist in fact some grounds for such an assertion, so far a[s] Bulgaria is concerned, and it is not impossible that voters of Bulgarian race in Macedonia, might, bу supporting the parties of the Extreme Left, have desired chiefly to register their disapproval of the Serbian regime. It is probable, however, that among the electors who voted for these parties a considerable number of genuine revolutionaries must be included, and it was no doubt in order to deal with the latter element that the Serbian authorities decided to sanction the imposition of fairly severe measures, although I have little doubt that the report I have received exaggerates this severity for the purposes of nationalist propaganda.