considered, but by the various incidents
which in the eyes of each of them testified to the other's depravity.
And at the bottom of it all was Macedonia--Macedonia which now, being
wisely administered, will be the foundation-stone of Yugoslavia.

At the end of his book, _Balkan Problems and European Peace_, Mr. Noel
Buxton agrees that such a Yugoslav Federation has become a practical
possibility. But his two alternative proposals with respect to what
should meanwhile be the fate of Macedonia would indefinitely postpone
that Federation. We have already dealt with the proposal of autonomy,
put forward also by Mr. Leland Buxton. As for what Mr. Noel Buxton calls
the ideal solution--"a plebiscite conducted by an impartial
international commission over the whole of the historical province of
Macedonia"--this is aiming no higher than at a perpetuation of the two
distinct countries, Serbia and Bulgaria. We should probably have had
more plebiscites in Europe if more Allied armies had been available, but
the campaign of intimidation and every sort of ruthlessness which
occurred in Upper Silesia and Schleswig make us look rather askance upon
this method of registering the popular will. Mr. Buxton airily asks for
a plebiscite over the whole of the historical province of Macedonia,
ignoring altogether the special difficulty that "Macedonia" means
something quite different to the Serb, the Bulgar and the Greek. He
dismisses likewise the universal difficulty of plebiscites, which is to
be just in laying down the limits of the various regions. But there is
really no need for Mr. Buxton to take us on to those quagmires, since he
knows, and is good enough to tell us, what the result of the plebiscite
will be. "The Bulgarian sympathies," says he, "of the mass of the
Macedonian population are apparent to every inquiring traveller." If Mr.
Buxton were to encounter one of those pretty lawless Karaka[vc]an
nomads, who from the Monastir district wander all over the Balkans, his
recognition of the man's Roman and Thraco-Illyrian descent would be
facilitated by the permanent cheesy odour which pervades his person.
There is nothing so permanent about the Macedonian Slav. His
sympathies, as is natural, have gone out to that Balkan country which
cultivated him and since, as Dr. Milovanovi['c], the Serbian statesman,
says, "the Serbs did not begin to think about Macedonia till 1885," it
would indeed have been extraordinary if the Macedonian Slavs--w