There are signs and portents of a secret campaign now beginning, which has for its object the purpose of repudiating not only the interest, but the principal, of the United States war loans. It may be that somehing of this nature must be agreed to by the United States to save the world, but whatever action is taken must not be to restore England's lost financial leadership, but equally to sustain the credit and economic security of all nations alike. Only a rigid inquiry by the Congress into these questions, and especially as to the process by which the exchange value of the pound sterling is being maintained at what many believe to be an artificial ratio, at the expense of the United States, will enable the people to deal fairly with debtor-nations, and in the real spirit of world peace determine the problems and responsibilities of the position of the United States as a creditor for the world.

66
MAY CLOSE FAR EASTERN OPEN DOOR,"

Aside from the humiliating betrayal of China, our best friend and most powerful potential partner among the nations, in its sacrifice to the commercial ambition of England's ally and secret partner, Japan, the people of the United States are vitally concerned in the control of the "Key to the Orient" by Japan and England. Hong Kong, the other important entrance to China, is also in control of Great Britain, whose joint control with Japan of Kiaochow will mean the abandonment of the policy of the "open door" established as a result of American diplomacy. It will give monopoly to the two principal competitors of the United States to a market of a half billion people. While the principal opposition to the Shantung pact is based on our betrayal of a friend, he commercial consequences to America of approving any league which shuts it out of the open door" to the Orient merits serious consideration.

44

Other items might be added to this protest. The tremendous expansion during the war of the United States merchant marine, on an oil burning basis, frees this country from the dependence on English coaling bases throughout the world, which have been the principal sources of her sea strength. The change of motor power from coal to oil would have given opportunity, under real "freedom of the seas," for the United States to compete on a basis of equality. British control of the oil fuel fields in Russia, China and Mexico should be denied and these localities made free for themselves and the world.

These considerations are presented in the belief that they are American issues vitally connected with the discussion regarding the league of nations, which, as proposed, settles every one of them adversely to the United States.

If America is true to herself in this crisis, the decision of the United States Senate will transform and purify the politics, policies, and business practices of the whole world.

THE CASE FOR GREECE.

The CHAIRMAN. We will hear the case of the Greeks at this time, whom we appointed to hear this morning. The hearing was unavoidably postponed and we will give them one hour, which is as much time as we can devote to their hearing, inasmuch as we have to finish this other hearing subsequently.

STATEMENT OF MR. WILLIAM S. FELTON.

The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Felton, you reside in Salem, Mass.?
Mr. FELTON. Yes.

Senator KNOX. Were you at the Paris conference?

Mr. FELTON. I appear as president of the National Congress of the Friends of Greece. Mr. Chairman and gentlemen of the committee, a convention was held last week in Washington comprising 350 delegates from all over the country, representing 75 cities and towns. They gathered in Washington to express their views, and to bring those views upon the question of the disposition of Thrace to the President and to the Senate of the United States. There are approximately 500,000 Americans of Greek origin and descent in this country, of whom 60 per cent are American citizens.

Interested in this convention and represented by what might be called non-Grecian delegates are a very large number of libertyloving Americans, who sent delegates from their number to join with the Grecian-American delegates. This convention left behind, authorized to represent it upon this occasion, a committee of four gentlemen, of which the chairman is Prof. George M. Bolling, professor Greek language and literature at the State University of Ohio, at Columbus. Prof. Bolling has also been professor of comparative philology and Sanscrit, and has contributed upon these subjects a number of well-known technical articles and works. Mr. N. J. Cassavetes, director of the Pan Epirotic Union, organized by Americans of northern Epirotic origin, its purpose being to bring to the attention of the American people the desire of the Christian northern Epirotic populations for union with Greece. Mr. Cassavetes is the chairman of the advisory committee of the Massachusetts organization on Americanization. The third member of the committee is Mr. Constantine C. Moustakis, of Salem, Mass., chairman of the educational committee for Greek immigration in Massachusetts. The fourth member of the committee is Paul Demos, a lawyer of Chicago, a member of the faculty and board of administration of the Chicago Law School, president of the American Association of the Greek Community of Chicago, and now chairman of the Greek branch of the Americanization committee in Chicago, formerly secretary of the Chicago Liberty loan committee, foreign language division.

Before presenting Prof. Bolling, Mr. Chairman, I desire to read a brief letter, which I think will make its own appeal. It is from a Greek girl in the city of New York and reads as follows:

Hon. WILLIAM S. FELTON,

AUGUST 24, 1919.

Chairman Delegation of the Committee of the Friends of Greece, Washington, D. C.

HONORABLE SIR: I am a poor little Greek girl, 16 years old. I have given to United States all I had.

My dear brother, Dannis Malfredas, before he volunteered in the Army, he was with me in New York. He went to France and he died there for liberty. He died in France; he never came back to me. He left me in New York all alone. He died for liberty, justice, and democracy.

Please tell the Americans, tell the American women, tell the American girls that lost their brothers like myself to help you, to speak to our President to give Greece her rights. Please tell them to help the Greek girls and women get their freedom from the Bulgarians and Turks.

I wish I was a man to come and speak to the President myself. The Greeks and the Greek women of Thrace they prefer to die but not to go under the Bulgarians.

From a little girl that lost her brother in the war for liberty.

EUGINIA MALFREDA,
New York, N. Y.

Mr. Chairman, I now have the pleasure of presenting Prof. Bolling, who will conduct the hearing from this point.

STATEMENT OF PROF. GEORGE M. BOLLING.

Prof. BOLLING. Mr. Chairman and gentlemen of the committee, Mr. Felton has just read to you a very touching appeal, and he has spoken of the congress that has sent us, and of what it represents directly. I should like to emphasize, first of all, that it represents also, among others, Americans. Their number it is impossible to compute, but I have in mind all those who recognize the indebtedness of the modern world to ancient Greece, who admire and love the heroic spirit of self-sacrifice with which the Greeks have thrown themselves into our great struggle for liberty and who believe that Greece, under the leadership of Eleutherios Venizelos, is pursuing a policy characterized by wisdom and moderation and conducive to the peace and happiness of the world.

But, Mr. Chairman, we are here above all as Americans. Our friendship for Greece has given us knowledge of certain facts, has enabled us to gain certain points of view which are not accessible to all of our fellow citizens. We desire now to serve America by presenting to you this knowledge and these points of view, believing that you will find them of value in the consideration you are about to give to our treaties with the Allies of the Central Powers, Bulgaria and Turkey.

The question on which all hinges is the disposition to be made of Thrace, and, with your permission, we shall confine ourselves to that question.

To define sharply the conclusion at which we have arrived, I shall quote the pertinent paragraph in the resolution introduced by Senator King on August 13 and referred to your committee:

Resolved, That it is the sense of the Senate that in the treaties of peace with Bulgaria and with Turkey western or Bulgarian Thrace, including Adrianople,

to the line from Enos, on the gean Sea, to Midia, on the Black Sea, should be awarded to Greese, proper facilities for Bulgarian commerce to be reserved at Salonki, Ravalla, and Deleagatsh.

The solution there proposed is in substantial agreement with the request of Greece as presented by Mr. Venizelos. In the peace conference it is indorsed by the delegates of Great Britain, of France, of Italy, and of Japan. It had the support, we are told, of the first experts attached to our delegation in Paris. But the latest report is that our new experts have reached other conclusions, so that our delegates to the conference are now urging, in opposition to all of our Allies, a very different settlement of the question; and one, too, which is open to the gravest objections.

We ask, Mr. Chairman, that you, your committee, and the Senate use all the powers intrusted to you by the Constitution to secure such treaties with Bulgaria and Turkey as shall conform to the spirit and substance of Senator King's resolution.

The CHAIRMAN. Do I understand you to say-and I know that you are informed on the subject-that our delegates array themselves as against giving Thrace to Greece?

Prof. BOLLING. That, we understand, is the only hitch to the solution of the question.

Senator KNOX. I think that is correct. That is the way I understood it.

The CHAIRMAN. I want to have it appear clearly in the record. Senator BRANDEGEE. It was in the newspapers the other day that Assistant Secretary Polk had arrived at a compromise of the question. Do you know whether that is true or not?

Prof. BOLLING. Are you referring to the article published a week ago in the New York Times?

Senator BRANDEGEE. I think it was about that time; yes; in which compromise one-third of Thrace was to be given to Greece.

Prof. BOLLING. We have no direct information on the subject. We have no official connection with anybody. We have only the sources of information that are open to American citizens, but we do not believe that such a plan as outlined by Mr. Polk would over gain the firm support of Venizelos.

The first question involved is a question of fact-the character of the population of Thrace. While we are not, of course, basing our request upon historical considerations, we nevertheless believe that an understanding of the way in which the present distribution of this population was brought about will help to carry conviction.

A little more than 1,000 years B. C., the inhabitants of the Balkans could have been classified on the basis of language into three welldefined groups. The trunk of the peninsula was divided between the Illyrians on the west and the Thracians on the east, while its southern extension was in the hands of the Greeks. All three were members of the Aryan family of languages and all were, relatively speaking, newcomers in this part of the world. Two of these languages have passed away without leaving any but the most insignificant traces; for of Illyrian and Thracian, practically nothing is left save a few names of persons and localities. The future was in the possession of the third group of the Greeks. They were distinguished, among many other things, by a genius for colonizationfor an ability to go among other peoples and not only govern, but

assimilate them--that is, make Greeks of them in language, ideals, and feelings. They flowed across the islands of the Egean, first to the shores of Asia Minor.

Then the tide turned toward the northern coast of the Egean through the Dardanelles, the Sea of Marmora into the Black Sea, reaching as far as Trebizond and the Crimea. The movement began in the eighth century B. C., lasted through the seventh, and on into the sixth century. The result, as far as it concerns us, is a fringe of Greek cities running around the coast from Salonica to Constantinople and beyond. These cities were then the outposts of civilization, but by the middle of the fifth century they were equal to any part of Greece in art, science, or general cultivation. How rapidly their influence worked upon the natives of the hinterland is unknown in detail; but prominent Athenian families like those of Miltiades and Thucydides were soon intermarrying with the Thracians and proud of the connection. There is some reason for believing that the frontier of Greek influence reached at this time a line drawn west from Midia. A century later Philip of Macedon founded Philippollis and other cities in the interior of the country and fought his way to the Black Sea at Varna, spreading Greek civilization as he went. A few years later Alexander completed his father's work, by carrying the frontier to the Danube. It is very significant that his fighting seems to have begun when he reached the Balkan_rangethe old boundary between Bulgaria proper and Eastern Rumelia. Apparently that was then the limit of the Grecian influence.

Under the Romans, the land remained Greek in language and civilization. Thrace being the last province (46) in this part of the world to be incorporated in their empire. The Latin language never gained south of the Danube a foothold comparable with that which it won beyond that river. That points to the presence in all Thrace of a more highly civilized people, of a Greek speaking population.

Coming to the retrogression of Hellenism in this territory, I need not trouble you with the raids of the Celts, of the Goths, of the Huns, and of the Avars. These marauding peoples came and went without permanent results. But there was another great migration, which I must mention-the coming of the Slav. Its effect is seen even to-day in the presence of the Slovenes, the Serbo-Croates, and the Bulgarians in the Balkan peninsula. The movement began from the north bank of the Danube, early in the sixth century of our era and lasted to the middle of the seventh century. It affected most of the Balkan peninsula profoundly-but the remarkable thing is the extent to which Thrace (in the modern sense of the word) escaped. The situation may be seen at a glance on the ethnological map published by L. Niederle (Slovanske Starozitnosti ii, 2, 1910, p. 296), showing the status in the seventh and eighth centuries.

The red circles on this map represent the Bulgars proper. Like the Huns and the Turks, they were a Tartar people from Asia. The modern Bulgarian is a cross between them and the Slav-a hybrid people with Tartar name, Slavic language, and mixed blood. Into the combination the Bulgar put what the Slav had lacked-initiative and organization. They established a kingdom in the region between the Danube and the Balkan mountains-the territory that is Bulgarian in the strictest sense of the word and was known as such from