Forest City press. (Forest City, Potter County, D.T. [S.D.]) 1883-19??, 1917-08-03

MACEDONIAN PEAS
:. ANTS PICTURE OF WOE
Victims Of Balkan Wars, lenor-
anee. and lncapaeity- Turks,
Buigarians, Serbs and Greeks
covet The Territory, But DO
Nothing for the Inhabitants,


condition Of the Macedonian peasant have
been drawn than that presented by Her
bert Corey. the wor correspondent in a
communication to the National Geographic
society, a part of which follows:
Along the Monastir road there is a con-
many at a time. Sometimes half a dozen
Will trudge by in the course of a day.
Something's an entire village has been
so who have held on to the bitter end,
tramp stolialy and unwillingly to safety.
These poor folk never leave their homes
cutter world is a strange and hostile place
to them. Perhaps not one in a hundred
has ever been 20 miles away from his
hamlet.
They pile their poor effects on a donkey,
put the babies on top. and load the women
with What there is left. If there is a spare
rides. it there are two spare donkeys. the
eldest sons ride. The women always walk.
Only ancc did ! see a mar walking while
his WIZ, .es rode II the donkey. The road bnzzed
They have suffered greatly, these poor
folk: Yet .candor compels me to say that
Macedonian peasant evicted and a Mace
DOMAIN peasant at home is so slight that
it fails to arouse much sympathy. These
the edge Of Starvation. The al prineip aa
item of their diet is maize. so poorly
ground by crude water turned wheels
from the resultant Indigestion.
A man with a yoke of oxen and 20 sheep
is rich.
stone. topped with blackened thatch.
without windows and sometimes without
other door than a blanket or a hit Of
the middle Of the dirt fioor and d the smoke
seeps out through the c~revices of the
walls and the holes in the roof. Baths
place lac " OF their eNn ssran'" are a common
Yet they cling blindly to these novels.
When they hide themselves from, an I'm
tie taSef hi1 fney fr a1%a Which eh0G ahey soma may no %ktd II
their roofs. They cache foodstuffs in
secret places, from which they take q
handful of corn or a cheese of eve milk
at night.
When they are driven out the men go
silently; Sometimes they are sullen. Some
4, : they mile lie at the soldiers in a sort
attempt at Precipitation. The women follow
at their heels patiently. After the first
o ontery o agai1nst ds the ord order Tof Of eviction y they
the women who most ,flagrantly disobey.
They return at night to the abandoned
9 tbsm. 40 do tak so th their mu shi'd evaae w tss
guards and tramp across a G~esolate
country in the darkness. in continual dan
ger e OF proving dogs or from the rifles Of
the sentries. Somehow they manage to
do it. Humanity requires that these little
villages In the war zone be emptiei to the
last human, for in the rear is food and
shelter. while at the front<is only starva-
ton and danger.
Yet little by little the inhabitants trickle
back. At first they are unobtrusive. AL
though so may be living in a hamlet. one
sees no more than four or five at a time.
Eventually they resume their former mode
OF life. SO far as that is possible. Some
times they live on the hidden stores of
food Something's it is quite impossible to
discover how they live at all.