ily have
been made into Serbs, sufficiently plausibly to convince the most knowing
expert. The well-known recipe for making a Macedonian Slav village Bulgar
is to add _-ov_ or _-ev_ (pronounced _-off, -yeff_) on to the names of all
the male inhabitants, and to make it Serb it is only necessary to add
further the syllable _-ich, -ov_ and _-ovich_ being respectively the
equivalent in Bulgarian and Serbian of our termination _-son,_ e. g.
_Ivanov_ in Bulgarian, and _Jovanovit_ in Serbian = _Johnson_.

In addition to these three nations Rumania also entered the lists,
suddenly horrified at discovering the sad plight of the Vlakh shepherds,
who had probably wandered with unconcern about Macedonia with their herds
since Roman times. As their vague pastures could not possibly ever be
annexed to Rumania, their case was merely used in order to justify Rumania
in claiming eventual territorial compensation elsewhere at the final day
of reckoning. Meanwhile, their existence as a separate and authentic
nationality in Turkey was officially recognized by the Porte in 1906.

The stages of the Macedonian question up to 1908 must at this point be
quite briefly enumerated. Russia and Austria-Hungary, the two 'most
interested powers', who as far back as the eighteenth century had divided
the Balkans into their respective spheres of interest, east and west, came
to an agreement in 1897 regarding the final settlement of affairs in
Turkey; but it never reached a conclusive stage and consequently was never
applied. The Macedonian chaos meanwhile grew steadily worse, and the
serious insurrections of 1902-3, followed by the customary reprisals,
thoroughly alarmed the powers. Hilmi Pasha had been appointed
Inspector-General of Macedonia in December 1902, but was not successful in
restoring order. In October 1903 the Emperor Nicholas II and the Emperor
of Austria, with their foreign ministers, met at Muerzsteg, in Styria, and
elaborated a more definite plan of reform known as the Muerzsteg programme,
the drastic terms of which had been largely inspired by Lord Lansdowne,
then British Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs; the principal feature
was the institution of an international gendarmerie, the whole of
Macedonia being divided up into five districts to be apportioned among the
several great powers. Owing to the procrastination of the Porte and to the
extreme complexity of the financial measures which had to be elaborated in
connexion with th