Arizona republican., 1914-06-04
BALKANS STILL
 BOILING WITH
 RACIAL STRIFE
Troubles in Mexico and Ulster Have OvershadoW- ed Interest ill Near East But Uprisings Still Con- tinue There

LONDON, June 3-The troubles of Mexico and Ulster have wholly over shadoWed public interest in the Near East during recent months. But the formal ending of the Balkan war has brought no rest to that long suf- fering region. Thrace, Macedonia and Albania are boiling with racial and of persecution and of massacres come to the London papers from many correspondents, and are printed in small type with little comment. Europe has come to accept these con- ditions as a matter of course.
 The changes of boundaries and of sovereignty which resulted from the peace treaties. and the launching of Albania as an autonomous state, are responsible for the new era of strug- gle and butchery. Every power con- cerned in the new allotments is tri- ying to impress not only it's laws but it's own state religion upon those who have become it's subjects, if the current historiansareto be believed.
 Forcible conversions" by wholesale seem the order of the day. Between the Christian and the Musselman dis penSauonS, between Greeks, Turks, Bulgarians, Roumanians, SerVians and Aloanians. there is little choice of standards of civilization. Much of the information comes from Athens which presents events only from the standpoint of Greek interests; much is disseminated by the newspaper of Vienna which is d fountain of can ards.
 The Turkish government is deter mined to drive the whole Greek pOpu- lation from Thrace, according to ac- counts from Greek sources. It has organized a campaign of oppression which is making life impossible for people of Greek affiliations in the country about Kirk Kilisse, Lulu Bur gas andall the land which Bulgaria conquered in the first war and lost through the final treaty. By Greeks is meant the adherents of the Greek church, since nationality is recog- nized as following religion rather than blood in those regions.
 The Greeks are pictured as having as desperate time in Thrace under the rod of the Young Turk, as the Bulgarans had in Macedonia under Abdul Hamid. The methods of ter rorism are the same.
 Irregular troops, who get their l!v ing by loot, and bands of so-called brigands, all supposed to be acting under inspiration from COnstantinople, are overrunning the country. Burn ing villages light the sky, as during the days of war; cattle and sheep are driven away; pillage and ravish- ing go on Life is made so intoler able that Greek inhabitnts are glad to escape to the coast with what bundles they can carry on their bcks, Athens reports tht 25000 refugees have ar rived at Salonika by ships, and that 15,000 more are waiting on the coast to get away.
 The head of the Greek church at Constantinople persuaded the British ambassador to remOnstrate with the Sublime Porte, and orders were tele- grapneato the local governors to re- patriate all refugees. Truth" says that these orders were meant only for the ambassadors benefit, and that the governors were given the word secretly to disregard them That was a familiar strategem ot the old Turkish diplomacy, when pressure from the Powers became toe acute to be ignored.
 The Greek government, on it's part does not lack enterprise at oppression