as Serbia was concerned--and I reached Salonika that night.

The tale of the relief work I have told elsewhere. I will now touch
only on the racial questions.

In Monastir I tried to buy some Serb books, for I was hard at work
studying the language, and had a dictionary and grammar with me.
Serbian propaganda in Monastir was, however, then only in its
infancy, and nothing but very elementary school books were to be
got. The Bulgars had a big school and church. If any one had
suggested that Monastir was Serb or ever likely to be Serb, folk
would have thought him mad--or drunk. The pull was between Greek and
Bulgar, there was no question of the Serbs. There was a large
"Greek" population, both in town and country, but of these a very
large proportion were Vlachs, many were South Albanians, others were
Slavs. Few probably were genuine Greeks. But they belonged to the
Greek branch of the Orthodox Church, and were reckoned Greek in the
census. Those Slavs who called themselves Serbs, and the Serb
schoolmasters who had come for propaganda purposes, all went to the
Greek churches.

As for the hatred between the Greek and Bulgar Churches--it was so
intense that no one from West Europe who has not lived in the land
with it, can possibly realize it. The Greeks under Turkish rule had
been head of the Orthodox Christians. True to Balkan type, they had
dreamed only of the reconstruction of the Big Byzantine Empire, and
had succeeded, by hooks and crooks innumerable, in suppressing and
replacing the independent Serb and Bulgar Churches.

But Russia, when she began to scheme for Pan-Slavism, had no
sympathy with Big Byzantium, and was aware that when you have an
ignorant peasantry to deal with, a National Church is one of the
best means for producing acute Nationalism. Under pressure from
Russia, who was supported by other Powers--some of whom really
believed they were aiding the cause of Christianity--the Sultan in
1870 created by firman the Bulgarian Exarchate. Far from "promoting
Christianity" the result of this was that the Greek Patriarch
excommunicated the Exarch and all his followers, and war was
declared between the two Churches. They had no difference of any
kind or sort as regards doctrine, dogma, or ceremonial. The
difference was, and is, political and racial.

Never have people been more deluded than have been the pious of
England about the Balkan Christians. In Montenegro I had heard all
the stock tales of the Chr