.
Without funds the bands in the field were cut off from further
supplies of arms and ammunition, which had been supplied in large
part by illicit Greek and Turkish traders.

Only two leaders, and less than a hundred armed men, were left in
northern Macedonia to resist the further advance of the Bulgarian
propagandists.

In 1901 a Macedonian leader, whose headquarters were in Thrace and
in the country east of the Struma, of the name of Yani Sandanski,
who later became prominent in connection with the Young Turk
movement, kidnapped the American missionary, Miss Ellen Stone, and
held her for a ransom of $60,000. His desperate venture succeeded.
The ransom was paid, arms and ammunition were bought in large
quantities, and his committee was able to meet the Bulgarian
propagandists with stronger forces than ever in the country east of
the Struma. The committee had men in plenty.

The Miss Stone episode, however, had given the Macedonian situation
a great deal of publicity in the Bulgarian press, and the Bulgarian
public began protesting. Thousands of students in Bulgaria were
Macedonians; others were government officials. Thousands also were
prospering merchants. Popular demonstrations against Ferdinand's
policy were reported all over the country, and finally he was
compelled to withdraw his armed forces from Macedonia. Thus was his
first intrigue in that direction defeated.

It should be obvious by this time that the Macedonian Committee was
the key to the whole Balkan problem, in so far as it was an internal
problem at least. All the little states surrounding Macedonia wanted
to grab her, and Macedonia did not want to be grabbed by any of
them. In their selfish greed the governing cliques of all the little
states absolutely disregarded the will of the people of Macedonia.
In their efforts they were only reviving the old hatreds and
creating new ones. Little wonder that the Turks sat back and
refrained from interfering too actively. Meanwhile the people of
Europe, seeing that the Balkan Christians fought more among
themselves than they fought the Turks, believed they were only
barbarians, little dreaming that the fight was not so much between
Turk and Christian, as between Democracy and Imperialism; the
democracy of the Macedonians against the imperialistic ambitions of
the selfish little states around them. This point should be realized
and emphasized, for this fight culminated in the next big act of the
Balkan dram