SOUTH-EASTERN EUROPE. December 6, 1929

CONFIDENTIAL. Section 1.

[Amended Section]

[C 9351/197/7] No. 1.

The Macedonian Question and Komitaji Activity.

Geographical.

FOR all practical purposes the term Macedonia may be taken to mean the territory comprised within a rough ellipse of about 25,000 square miles, the major axis of which is some 180 miles long, runs in a north-west– south-east direction and passes through Salonica and Skoplje, which two points may be regarded as its foci. Its minor axis is about 160 miles long and the present meeting-point of the Yugoslav, Bulgarian and Greek frontiers is some 50 miles to the north-east of its centre.

In so far as the term Macedonia, both in ancient times and during the Turkish occupation, had a meaning, it may thus be regarded as a geographical entity.

Historical.

A reference to Philip of Macedon and his son Alexander the Great will suffice to show that in pre-Christian times Macedonia had a history of its own, but it should be noticed that it was the civilisation of Greece, and not Macedon, that Alexander took with him to Asia.

In Roman times Macedon was completely Hellenised, and it is on this fact and that of the political and religious authority enjoyed by the Greeks during the Byzantine Empire (of which Macedonia was an integral part) that the Greek historical claim to Macedonia is based. The authority of the Greek Patriarch at Constantinople remained unimpaired throughout the Slav and Turkish conquests.

Whether Macedonia was peopled by a homogeneous race in pre-Christian times is doubtful, but certainly since the coming of the Slavs in the 6th century it has been the meeting-place and battle-ground of all the contiguous homogeneous races in the Balkans, and for the past thousand years Macedonia has been an ethnological museum. The Agean coast and Salonica have, however, always been predominantly Greek.

The Bulgarians – a race of Finnish-Tartar origin who adopted a Slav tongue – were the first Slavophone race to found an empire, including Macedonia, in the Balkans. This was in the 10th century under Tsar Simeon.