New Britain herald., 1919-08-04
THRACE WITNESSED
 EARLY RACE WARS
Greeks ColoniZed Shores While
 Natives Expanded QutWardIy

NaSnlnSloh, U. C., Aug. 4.-"An- cient Thrace, one of the morning lands of the worlds history, for parts of which Greece has presented claims to the peace conference, affords a parallel to the difficulties of self de- termination already experienced along the eastern shores of the Adriatic," says a bulletin from the Washington headquarters of the National Geo. gra phic society.
 Tt will be recalled that the spirit ed dispute between Jugo-Slavia and Italy arose from the fact that Italians were predominant in coastal cities while the hinterland was undeniably Slavic. The Latin peoples of taly had gone across the Adriatic in past centuries, settled along the east Adri- atic shores, but were pushed well out 10 islands and peninsulas by the in fiux of Slavic tribes.
 Tn much the same way this phe- nomenon was duplicated, in an earlier age, on the eastern side of the Bal kan peninsula, where lay the extreme ly mobile Thrace. The Greeks colon ized the coast cities of Thrace, on what now are the Marmora, Black and Aegean seas, not for settlement so much as for trading stations. They did not seek to impinge upon the Thracians of the interior.
 Thus Constantinople vas founded, and thus Greece early came into pos session of the penir sula now called Gallipoli, building st Wall across the five mile neck of the isthmus to keep the Thracians within bounds.
 'Shrinl1ing and expanding, and changing it's conformation time and time again, as Darius invaded it, XerXes abandoned it, Philip II. united part of it with Macedonia and garri- soned the rest, the Romans organized it as a province, ThraCe dropped at last into the capacious maW of the Turks with the fall of Constantinople in 1453, that historic date from which some historians mark the beginnings of modern history.
 ''Later the western part, that Philip joined to Macedonia, fell within the limits of pre-war Serbia, and the northern part became Eastern Rume- lia, which was given to Bulgaria at the London settlement of 1913. The rest remain cd witE European Turkey until the World war exploded that domain anC left the pieces to be the stepchildren of the Allied nations.
 
 T11race. and later the Versailles of the Turkish sultans, is a picturesque, if somewhat unkempt, reminder of the ancient days. But more familiar, perhaps, is the name of Philippi, in the center of the rich gold mine dis trict of Thrace, and near the hill of DionysiuS which owes it's fame to neither of those facts so much as to the visits of Paul, who wrote letters to his converts that were incorporated in the Bible as the Book of Philip plans.
 "Dionysius, or Bacchus, as the Ro mans call the god, typified the loose morality of the wild and barbarous inhabitants of Thrace originally, for the Thracians of historic times al- ready were a composite people.
 "Every girl passed through q period when she was the common property of the male community before she married one of them. Even in Grecian days the worship of Dionysius con- sisted of wild nocturnal orgies. There is the story that three women who de- clined to join in the revelries were translated into doves, and a king of Thrace was reputed to have resisted ;t visit of Dionysius to his domain. The god escaped by a plunge into the sea- but the king was stricken with a blindness and a frenzy, so the myth relates, that caused him to hew down his son, believing him to be a tree
 At one period ThraCe had an alli- ance with Greece; but the relation of the two nations at other periods is a moot question. Certain it is that the cultured Greeks regarded the Thra- clans as a rugged and mibarbarous people. just as they regarded the eli mate of Thrace as severe and believed it to be the home of Boret,s, the north Wind."