Memorandum on Serbian “Minorities” in Greek Macedonia.

Introductory.

This question only appears to have become acute at the time of the abortive Greaco-Bulgar Minorities Protocol, of 1924. Before that time, although we had heard a great deal of the Slavs in Greek Macedonia, we seem to have heard little or nothing of any Serb minority there. In fact, in 1921 the Serb-Croat-Slovene Government took so little interest in the fate of the Slavs in Greek Macedonia that they were reproached for their negligence by M. Jovan Cirkovic, a well-known Serbian writer on Macedonian ethnic questions and a member of the Skupshtina. He claimed that there were some 300,000 Serbs in Greek Macedonia, that they were not allowed to use the Serbian language even for business purposes; that there were no schools in which the Serbian language was taught; and that the Serbian tongue was not permitted in Divine Service. He alleged also that numbers of these Serbs were being interned by the Greeks, and their lives generally made unbearable. It should be noted that this writer is the champion of the thesis that all Macedonian Slavs are Southern Serbs, but at this time, while Greece was the ally of Serbia, he merely recommended friendly representations to Greece on the subject. Possibly as a result of his efforts, but more probably because it was felt at Belgrade that the influx of numerous Greek refugees from Asia Minor and Thrace in 1922 was constituting a menace to any contemplated Serbian advance on Salonica, the Serbian Government drew the attention of M. Politis in 1922 to the fact that the settlement of Greek refugees in Greek Macedonia was prejudicial to the interests of Serbian inhabitants in that province. The Greek Government, however, made it plain that they resented the inference that Greek Macedonia was a sort of “Serbia irredenta,” and apparently the question was allowed to drop. The foregoing leads to two conclusions:

• (a.) That before relations between Greece and Jugoslavia became embittered in 1924, the Serbs were not inclined to take a serious view of the treatment meted out to the Slavs in Greek Macedonia.