The Maui news. [volume] (Wailuku, Maui, H.I.) 1900-current, 1919-04-11
MaCedOnianS Are
Slowly Returning
Find Homes Gone

SALONIKI, Feb. 23-(Associated
Press)-Macedonia at present strikes
one as a peaceful and well organized
country with little or no population.
Many of the villages and towns which
furnished the backgrounds of the
Allied armies and those of the Cen
trail Powers have been destroyed and
the population scattered, mostly by
the Bulgarians but partly by the
necessities of the Allies.
The Allied army of Macedonia too,
is dwindling and it gives one a feel
ing of strangeness to travel up and
down Macedonia and see familiar
places which once were ~populous with
Allied troops now deserted. Camps
occupied for two years by the Allied
forces and which one had come to
regard as permanent institutions now
are the feeding grounds only of flocks
of crows picking about among the re-
fuse. All the troops have by nc
means left this part of the world and
Saloniki still remains the most i'm
portant military base in Eastern
Europe; but a great change has come
over things and one now sees the
sturdy native on his diminutive Ion
hCy lluillS III BldNCo hlCh " Nll1S
years was barred to everybody not in
khaki.
The writer passed through Dorian
the other day. 1t once was a pretty
little town, picturesquely situated on
the shore of the Lake Dorian and dur
ing the greater part of the war was
only a few hundred yards beyond the
British lines, in enemy territory. Of
III tl1 f1,,,-aVI 90, har,-p1 t1nrn.
is not one left that is more than a
heap of rubbish and that is typical of
the situation in Macedonia today.
The population is slowly filtering
back but the chief things that they
find are the excellent roads made by
the British-the best roads in Mace
donna since the days of the Romans.
These roads will be invaluable for
the future. Macedonia has large
agricultural possibilities and its pop
ulation will begin to settle down again
after the ravages of the war as they
have done so often before.
The old Macedonian question"
still awaits solution. 1t contained the
seeds of trouble and grief for the
whole of humanity. Viewed from
here, the war seems to have done
absolutely nothing to settle the prob
lens of the mixed and warning races
in these regions. Age-long anti
pathies and p%Tejudices remain ap
parently as firmly rooted now as be-
fore the war. But the Austro-Ger-
man menac which heretofore over
hung the whole region like a thunder
cloud now has been dissipated and
the western powers now apparently
realize that there is every reason for
them to take a keen interest in what
is going on in the Balkans.
1t is generally felt here that Tur-
key needs a strong master and the
Balkans a kindly but firm friend who
will ordain their future IN a basis of
right and justice and conditioned
partly, though not wholly, on the
parts played by various nations in
the war, on SeTbia's answering gal
lantry and loyalty, on the great aid
finally given by Greece and the
treachery and cynicism Of Bulgaria.
The Allies may not need to grand
mother" the Balkans but it is likely
that they will have to godfather"
them. Otherwise the Macedonian
question will some day come to the
front again. The dead of the British
and Allied soldiers who lie in Mace
DOMAIN soil seem to demand that
|henceforth peace shall prevail in the
land where they fought and died.