I WANT you to know that I am very happy to be present at this Congress. I would be happy indeed to address any congress of the Macedonian organizations in North America, any Macedonian congress for that matter, but I am especially happy to have been invited to this one. Perhaps it was deliberate, perhaps it was a mere accident, but the Central Committee could not have chosen a more fitting occasion to invite me. The Fort Wayne Macedonian organization bears the name of that place in Macedonia where I was born. And if Kostursko is my birthplace, Indiana is my adopted state. I was educated in this state.

Still I did not come here to talk about myself, or about the state of Indiana, much as I love them both. I came here to talk about another state, the state of Macedonia, or more specifically about the state of affairs in Macedonia. Curiously enough I have just come from a place called Macedonia. I don’t mean our Macedonia, that Macedonia that gave us birth and nourished us through our childhood, but a Macedonia right here in the United States. Last week-end I was visiting with some friends in the state of Connecticut. Driving through the countryside, in the foothills of the Berkshire mountains, we were passing through a small village when my eyes fell on a sign reading: Macedonia Brook. I nearly fell out of the car in my eagerness to rush down the bankside and splash myself with the baptismal waters of this Macedonia Brook. Later I found out that nearby there is a small community of artists called Macedonia Heights. One of these days I am going there and shake the hand of every one of them.

But let us now go to our own Macedonia. If that Macedonia were only as free as this little one in the state of Connecticut! We Macedonians have never been known to run away from the truth, on the contrary we have been noted for facing the truth with our proverbial Macedonian courage. We all know then that the movement for Macedonian independence, for Macedonian freedom, is now passing through one of its most trying periods. Recently I returned from Macedonia, I am speaking now of our own Macedonia, where I had gone to gather some fresh material for a book I am writing about it. I was there, I was in Mount Pirin, when the band of corrupt, misguided, quasi-Bulgarian statesmen from the Zveno Club of Sofia in cahoots with some army captains that were ready to deprave themselves as soldiers so long as they could be promoted to majors without passing the severe military examinations, staged one of those beautiful, fictional, Balkan melodramas and saddled the Bulgarian nation with a monstrous dictatorship. Before the nation could realize what was happening, these pseudo-nationalists caught it by the throat and deprived it of its long-cherished liberty which it had won from the Turks through priceless bloodshed. In the name of a united Bulgarian people with a single nationalist purpose, these Zvenars and mercenary army captains, are now ruling the country as though it were not a free Bulgaria, but a province under military occupation.

But while the whole state of Bulgaria now groans under the abominable dictatorship, it is the Macedonian district, the Petrich district, that has experienced and is experiencing the venom of the new regime. I spent a whole month in that district following the establishment of the dictatorship and I was there when the army blockaded it and by its hostile and ruthless treatment of the inhabitants made the whole region take on the appearance of a funeral procession. I have never had much love for any army uniform, but I must confess here—and those of you who have been to Bulgaria will probably share my feeling— I must confess to you that when I visited Bulgaria for the first time in my life (and that was seven years ago) and 1 saw for the first time Bulgarian uniforms, army officers’ uniforms, police uniforms, even the uniforms worn by state railway employees, I experienced a deep and stirring emotion. I was thrilled because in these uniforms I saw the symbol of Bulgarian independence. It was a rare experience indeed to hear a policeman talk to you in your own native tongue instead of in Turkish or in Greek; it seemed incredible to go into a railway dining car and pick up a bill-fare printed in Bulgarian. You know what Bulgaria has meant to us unfreed Bulgarians from Macedonia. We have always loved and cherished it as a haven. We could be oppressed, banished, maltreated, but there was always Bulgaria where we could go and be received with brotherly affection and sympathy. But how things have changed now! Bulgaria itself has not changed; the Bulgarian people are the same, they still are the brothers of the Macedonian people. And they are as much the victims now of a band of opportunists as are the Macedonians. Still I have never hated a uniform in my life as I did the uniforms of Bulgarian officers and police now. And if I hurried away from Bulgaria to return to the United States it was because I refused to live under a monstrous regime, I refused to honor with my presence (and 1 say this with due sense of modesty) the present regime in Sofia. That of course is something entirely personal with me, but I think it represents fairly generally the feeling of the Macedonians in Bulgaria. I heard in Sofia Macedonians who spent the greater part of their lives in Bulgaria say that they regarded themselves as Bulgarian until the 19th of May, while others went further and added with appropriate irony that they were considering declaring themselves subjects of King Alexander of Yugoslavia.

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Now the dictatorship has undertaken this energetic campaign for the suppression of the Macedonian movement as much for the purpose of paving a way for friendship with Yugoslavia as for the sake of its own nationalist doctrine calling for a closely-knit, authoritarian Bulgarian state. The Macedonian Bulgarians represent a considerable division of the Bulgarian people. Now this division of the Bulgarian people has detached itself from the main body of the nation and is working out its own destiny. In other words the movement for an autonomous Macedonia is just as hateful to the present rulers of Bulgaria as it is to the Greeks and to the Serbs, for it tends to wean away from the main national body a group representing one-fifth of the total Bulgarian population and set it up as a separate nation. To crush this movement then is the policy of the dictatorship, for in crushing it, the dictatorship believes it will save the union of the Bulgarian people. And that is consistent with the nationalist doctrine and program and would seem logical to any Bulgarian devoted to the idea of a single Bulgarian state incorporating within its boundaries as many Bulgarians as possible.

The Macedonian Bulgarians, however, are not going to sacrifice their own chance of liberty and independence for the sake of a united Bulgaria. History has taught them well that their chances of ever becoming part of Bulgaria are null; therefore forty years ago they started out on their own hook. They have already built up a separate entity and it is now too late for any power to destroy the idea of a separate, independent Macedonia. If there are any who are under the illusion that the Bulgarian dictatorship is liquidating with the Macedonian autonomous movement let me disabuse them quickly of that illusion. I do not mean to minimize the impact of the blow which these quasi-Bulgarians have dealt the movemnet. This was especially painful. Crucified Macedonia had so far been held to the cross by two nails, now it has been stabbed and nailed at a third place, and by Bulgarians which makes the new stab the "unkindest cut of all.” Yet while Macedonia suffers another wound, the Macedonian question itself becomes more clearly defined than ever before. Because of the blood-ties between the Bulgarians and the Macedonians, and because the Macedonians have always found a haven on Bulgarian soil, there have been those who have never taken seriously the principle of independence of the Macedonian struggle. They have always tied it up with Bulgarian national aspirations. How many times have you seen in the press the Macedonian comitadjis called Bulgarian comitadjis, or Bulgarian revolutionaries? How many times have you read or heard statements that Ivan Michailoff is a Bulgarian fascist taking orders from Sofia? Well if Ivan Michailoff were taking orders from Sofia he would not be hiding under-ground for his life now, and if the hundreds of Macedonians now jailed and interned were not true to their ideal and were not ready to guard from violation the independence of the Macedonian cause they would not be in jail and in banishment. Even the most stubborn skeptics should now be convinced that the Macedonians are in dead earnest about their principle of independence. The Bulgarian pseudo-nationalists too have become convinced of the uncompromising stand taken by the Macedonians on this point, hence their drastic measures to bring into the national fold this considerable portion of the Bulgarian people. It is a great paradox this. The Serbians are torturing the Macedonians because they refuse to give up their Bulgarian nationality^ the Greeks are torturing them for the same reason, and now the Bulgarians are dealing them this severe blow because the interests of the Macedonian Bulgarians do not coincide with the interests of the Bulgarian state.

So they have tried to destroy the movement. Well they would sooner destroy themselves. Just before he was shot, Todor Alexandroff said that whatever dog tried to bite the Macedonian Revolutionary Organization that dog became mad. The Macedonian cause is greater than any indidividual, greater than any group of individuals, and you can no more suppress this great elemental desire of a whole people to free itself from bondage than you can suppress the Atlantic Ocean. The Macedonians represent the most eloquent expression of a people’s will for freedom that modern history can record. And that great desire for self-government, for liberty and a place in the sun for the Macedonians springs deep from their hearts and souls. Hie British lion and the French tiger.did not succeed in destroying the cause. In 1919 when the victors assembled in Paris to inflict upon the vanquished that much publicised peace tuifhout victory, they thought they had buried the Macedonian troll.

But they figured without Todor Alexandroff and without the Macedonians themselves. They thought they could use these people as chattel to reward the imperialist ambitions of their petty Balkan allies, as now Kymon Gheorghieff wishes to use them as barter for his friendship with Yugoslavia. Well, the Macedonians are made of "sterner stuff” and are not going to be used as chattel by any power, great or small. They were the first people to use force, however small, against the conditions imposed upon them by the peace treaties, which they have never regarded as peace treaties but always as treaties for peace, that is to say, treaties for a peace that was never to be so long as these shameful Paris documents remained in force.

So at a time when the world was shattered from four years of continuous butchery and everybody everywhere was sick of war or the mention of it, Todor Alexandroff had the courage to sound a new call to arms. For if the peace treaties brought temporary peace elsewhere in the world, they brought hell in Macedonia, and so far as the Macedonians were concerned at the time the peace treaties were a new declaration of war. Alexandroff and the hundreds who flocked to him in response to his call were true to the traditions of Macedonia and were determined to go ahead with the old slogan of Liberty or Death! Neither part of that slogan had yet been realized—Macedonia was not free and still their were Macedonians who were ready to give their lives for the freedom of Macedonia. Therefore there was no sense in quitting then, and it is no time to quit now, and there will be no quitting until there is a single Macedonian left to continue the struggle.

Many times we have been told that the Macedonian movement has reached its end. Only people ignorant of the facts or else inspired by this or that source, can make such statements.

The Macedonian movement is not a fashion or a fad that it can exist today and pass out of existence tomorrow. The hearts and souls of a whole people are in it. The cause now represents 50 years of cumulative history and drama.

The struggle of the Macedonians for their autonomy has already rounded itself out into an epic of tremendous proportions. And even if Macedonia never became free and the modern Macedonians disappeared from the face of the earth, still this great struggle would not have been in vain, for the epic drama which the Macedonians created in the last 50 years will always demand a chapter in the history of the world.

Regardless of the future development of the Macedonian question, the historians of the future, whether they want to or not, will have to distinguish between two kinds of Macedonians, the Macedonians of Alexander the Great and the Macedonians of Todor Alexandroff, of Deltcheff and Grueff.

And the modern Macedonians may pass out of existence but they will leave behind them their great epic, their mythology, to embellish the history of the world. It is more noble sometimes to have struggled for freedom than to have enjoyed freedom. And consider it from whatever angle you wish, debate it as you will, the fact remains that there has been a Macedonia for 50 years just as there has been a Serbia, a Greece, and a Bulgaria.

Modern Macedonia exists just as concretely in a historical sense as any other country that has enjoyed self government. In the last 50 years the people of Macedonia have created their Macedonia the Macedonia which is their own creation which they want for themselves. And even if they never get it from the present imperialist possessors of it, history will not deny it to them, history will give it to them in its pages, and it is needless to add that in the final analysis, all is history.

Throughout its existence the Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization has had to fight for the realization of the paramount objective—Independence for Macedonia, and at the same time it has had to fight for its own independence too. Imro has to be alert to guard itself from ever becoming the tool of a foreign power. In 1924 it was shaken to its foundations because the Macedonian cause faced the danger of being sold to other, non-Macedonian interests. And now, as I said a while ago, the hundreds of Macedonians who are in Bulgarian jails or in banishment would be free tomorrow if only Imro would consent to take orders from Sofia, if it were a Macedonian independent organization in name only, to fool the world, but in actuality an unofficial army corps, like a horde of bashibozouks, taking orders from the Sofia war office without binding it officially for its revolutionary activity. But the Macedonian revolutionaries are not bashibozouks, or mercenaries, that they can hire themselves to this or that power and point their rifles in the direction in which this or that war ministry tells them to.

They are Macedonian revolutionaries who have dedicated their lives to the cause of Macedonian liberty, they are sworn over an open Bible upon which are crossed a pistol and a dagger and they point their rifles in the direction in which the interests of Macedonia dictate. Macedonia is the only authority they recognize. And the Macedonian revolutionary organization is strong because it derives its strength from the Macedonian people and from the justice of the Macedonian cause, while the strength and justice of the Macedonian cause spring from the principle of independence, the independence of Macedonia. You sell out to a foreign power and the Macedonian cause becomse hollowed out of its justice and cannot rely upon the sympathy of any person that believes in justice and liberty.

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Some of you may be wondering why it is that Imro has not taken any active measures to counteract the anti-Macedonian campaign of the Bulgarian dictatorship. I myself spent days with the comitadjis in the mountains before and after the establishment of the dictatorship. I was with them in the hills while down in the valleys and in the villages the Bulgarian army officers flayed and tortured the population. I know how anxiously some of these men were to swoop down to the villages, or creep down stealthily if need be, and give these officers that paraded their heroism before the poor innocent folk a chance to show their military prowess, but they did not go down, for they act under orders, and there was the restraining hand of their leader. They could not follow their impulse, they lay hidden in the forests, biding their time, and knowing full well that the destiny of Imro was in firm hands. Imro does not pitch itself in open battle with a hostile national army simply because it has been provoked. Regardless of provocations or temperamental urgings of the moment, it never plunges into anything without prolonged and cold deliberation. For Imro does not exist for the moment alone, it has to exist so long as Macedonia is in bondage, it will have to be alive when the dictatorship passes out into oblivion. It would be sheer foolishness to throw its entire strength against the national army of Bulgaria and thus decimate its ranks. There is no more reason why it should come out in the open and engage in warfare with Bulgaria than there is for coming out openly in Yugoslavia or in Greece. Imro will strike in its own way when the time comes, and those that now send reports that Imro is dissolved, disbanded, will have to eat the paper upon which their statements are printed. Most people think that because some ammunition has been confiscated the Organization has been killed. The strength of Imro is not in its ammunition, nor in its large numbers, but in its invulnerability, in its invisibility. Imro is indestructible. It is an invisible organism, and this organism exists like air everywhere and no one knows when and whence the next expression of Imro’s viability will come. Sometime Imro can manifest its might more effectively with a single act, carried out by a single man, than by a series of skirmishes or battles in the open with any of the armies of the three hostile nations against which it operates. And even if Imro did pass out of existence, its ghost would keep frightening the enemies of Macedonia for at least a generation. As for the Bulgarian dictatorship, it is a mere flea-bite in the epic Macedonian movement which has passed through so many vicissitudes and still survived. The Macedonian comitadjis will shake these pests off as they, in their prowlings through Macedonia, often stop and take their shirts off to shake off the vermin in a crackling fire.