Chicago Greek Community in Turmoil Over an Article Published in the Daily News

Eminent Americans of Chicago Assist the Greeks in Journalistic Reputation of the Bulgarian Article

p. 1- Seventy-five prominent Greeks, representing every element of the Greek community of Chicago, met last week and discussed measures to be adopted to contradict fabrications from Sofia, Bulgaria, published in the Daily News under the heading "Greeks and Bulgarians."

That the Greek community is in turmoil over the publication of this article and the recent brutalities and outrages committed by the Bulgarians against the Greek populations in Bulgaria was clearly revealed in the faces and the speeches of these seventy-five fathers of the community. Wrath, fury and fiery eagerness to fight the Bulgars were plainly depicted in every feature and in every word spoken by the seventy-five patriots.

2

A resolution was adopted authorizing Mr. Constantine N. Karalopoulos, a distinguished patriot and linquist in the Greek community, to contradict through the medium of the press the statements fabricated in Sofia.

Mr. Karalopoulos's articles, which were published in the Chicago Daily News and the Chicago Record-Herald through the kindly offices of Mr. Roy West, Mr. W. S. Cowen, Congressman Francis W. Parker, Congressman J. D. Putman, Mr. W. J. Pringle and Dr. C. C. Young, were carefully scrutinized and unanimously approved of by the seventy-five representative Greeks before their publication.

That the Bulgarians owe whatever is good in them to the Greeks is emphasized in Mr. Karalopoulos's article, which item by item disproves the allegations of the Sofia article published in the Daily News.

The Greeks as the torch- bearers of Christianity and civilization introduced the Bulgarians to enlightenment and to Christianity. The Bulgarians owe to the Greeks not only their religion and the preservation of their language but also their admission into the family of civilized nations.

3

Kyrilos and Methodios of the Orthodox Greek Church led the Bulgarians into the ranks of Christianity and translated the Gospel in the Bulgarian language.

The Greeks are far from being tools of the Turkish Government as was stated in the Sofia article. They have one object in view and they will keep it in view until it is attained; that is to redeem Greek populations and Greek territories from Turkish subjugations.

However it is true, as Konstantinos S. Stefanove says, that Greeks in Turkey occupy high positions in the Turkish Government. The fact that Greeks have risen so high and have been assigned to responsible positions among the Turks reveals very clearly the truthfulness and the greatness of the Greek soul. True and faithful and fearless in performing his duty, is the Greek. The word duty is sacred to the Greek the world over. Devotion to duty distinguished Alexandros Maurokordafos the elder in negotiating a treaty with Germany as plenipotentiary extraordinary of the Ottoman Empire in 1698.

4

Devotion to duty and idealism elevated the Greeks in Turkey to the honor of being appointed governors of what is now Roumelia. They as princes of that territory civilized the natives, developed the natural wealth, and promoted science, industry and commerce.

As to the allegation that the Greeks, as tools of the Sultan, provoked the massacre of Armenians in Constantinople, it is absolutely unfounded. Official records of the foreign power in Constantinople will tell the world that the Greeks saved a great number of those nations at the risk of their positions and even their lives.

The Greeks and the Ecumencial Patriarchate, that solid rock of Christianity on all occasions have used their influence and have done their utmost to safeguard the welfare of all Christians including themselves. The hundred and eighty million Christians of the Greek Orthodox Church are religious subjects of the Patriarchate. Whether Armenians, Greeks, Syrians, Arabians, Bulgarians, Roumanians, Russians, Ethiopians, Serbians, or what not, they are Christians under one Father, the Ecumencial Patriarch of Constantinople.

5

The writer Stefanove says that the agitation of the Bulgarian people against the Greek populations in Bulgaria is the natural result of Greece's attempts to seize Macedonia, which by right is Bulgarian land, and in which the Bulgarian element predominates.

Nothing is more mendacious than such statements. Why, all those versed in history know that from time immemorial, before Bulgarians began to live under the sun, Macedonia was Greek territory and that it fell into the hands of the Turks at the fall of Constantinople along with the other lands which constituted the Byzantine Empire. According to the last official statistics the population of Macedonia is 1,700,000, out of which 849,000 are Greeks, 460,000 are Mohammedans and 391,000 are Bulgarians, others Slaves, Jews, or Albanians. Macedonia has 1250 Greek schools with 69,045 pupils and Bulgarian schools number 545 with 26,050 pupils. Not only does the Greek population predominate in Macedonia; science, the professions, and commerce are in the hands of Greeks and the principal language of the land is Greek.

The so-called Bulgarian patriots, who are patriots by trade and not in principle and the Bulgarian Government behind them never have cared and never will care for the welfare and the prosperity of Macedonia, for they do not represent the majority of the people, and their object is simple to accomplish their selfish purpose, that is, territorial expansion.

6

For years armed bodies of common brigands and murderers organized by the Bulgarian Comintern of Sofia, have resorted to every kind of violence and outrage to compel prominent Greeks to renounce their nationality and become Bulgarian. Well-to-do Greeks and Greek priests who have protested against the terrorist methods and outrages of these common murderers have been assassinated, and their property has been seized.

Undoubtedly the American people remember the kidnaping of Miss Helen Stone, a missionary in Macedonia for whose liberation $140,000 was paid to these brigands. who sent it to the treasury of the Comintern to perpetuate their sanguinary program.

Macedonian Greeks in order to protect their compatriots from Bulgarian bandits have formed a body of vigilantes. These vigilantes, whenever they get a glimpse of the brigands, who cowards as they are, avoid open battle, simply reduce the numbers of the Bulgarians, and the cowards who are captured betray the designs of their lawless organization. Indeed the Greeks have acted in self-defense in organizing as vigilantes. And the Greek population says, "The Turk kills the body but the Slaves will kill our racial soul if we do not prevent it."

7

Roumania's policy in Macedonia has been of the same nature as the policy of Bulgaria. Roumania has deemed it advisable to create a national Roumanian question in Macedonia in defiance of historical facts. But both Roumania and Bulgaria, when they saw their schemes defeated by the effective measures of the Macedonian Greeks, ran amuck against the innocent Greek populations established in their respective territories, and the world was appalled by a sanguinary spectacle unequalled in the chronicles of civilized nations.

Roumania violating the fundamental principles of international law, has banished Greek commercial interests. Prominent and respected Greeks have been deported on various protests. But lately this persecution of Greeks in Roumania has been moderated because it has become evident to the dull minds of the Roumanians that the Greeks are the principal factors in promoting business and commerce in Roumania.

In imitation of destructive Roumanian tactics, Bulgaria has inaugurated the policy of exterminating the Greeks. The Bulgarian rabble, incited by professional so-called patriots and encouraged and protected by the Government has systematically attacked the Greeks in every part of the country.

8

Greek churches have been desecrated, pillaged and burned. Greek priests have been beheaded and Bishops have been set on fire after being saturated with kerosene. Fathers and sons have been butchered after seeing their wives, mothers and daughters bestially attacked by half human Mongalians. Towns and cities have been invaded by the rabble, and the living and the dead have been robbed and outraged. And at the culmination of their savage fury the Bulgarians burned to ashes the entire Greek City of Anchialos, where a hundred people lost their lives, chiefly women and children. All Turkish atrocities are as nothing compared with these of the Bulgars.

In the Turco-Greek war of 1897 not a single Greek living in Turkey was harmed or molested by the Turks.

During the centuries of ignorance and slavery which followed the fall of Constantinople the Greeks maintained not only their language, their religion, and their racial traditions - a singular paradox in the history of the world, revealing the extraordinary vitality of the Greek race - but they also became the most important factor in the near East.

9

The Greeks of Chicago where hundreds of Macedonian Greeks are settled and all Greeks in America watch with great interest and anxiety the movements and the preparations of Mother- Greece and pray to hear her sweet voice cry, "To arms, my sons!" Then on the field of battle,not in defenseless towns and cities, the Greek sword will assuredly convince the enemy of Hellinism of its sharpness, its dexterity, and its strength.