#48: Macedonia (1927)
"The area and boundaries of Macedonia were very nearly the
same as in the days of Philip of Macedon, who first put
his little country "on the map" and of his son, Alexander
the Great, who conquered the world and wept because there
were no more worlds to conquer. Slavs at different times
had over-run considerable parts of the province, but no
Slav power ever ruled in Saloniki, neither Serbian nor
Bulgarian. The term Macedonia was sometimes used by
extension and as a geographical expression for southern
Serbia, but that region was never truly Macedonian.
The Slav plowman and the Greek seaman met at the Free Zone
in Thessaloniki, but many of the refugees from Pontus,
Thrace, and other provinces were naturally tillers of the
soil and wanted land. This urged the Government undertaking
of two great reclamation projects. The Vardar River came
down from the mid-Balkan area and just beyond its source
began the Maritza, flowing northward, reaching the beautiful
"blue" Danube below Belgrade. These waterways formed an
almost straight north and south wrinkle on the face of
Mother Nature from the Danube to the Aegean Sea, which had
been followed by colonists and conquering hosts at intervals
through all the ages. This now had become part of a main
line of railroad travel and traffic from the English Channel
and Paris to the Aegean Sea. But the untamed river breaking
through the mountains had washed down and spread out the
detritus in vast, marshy flats, chiefly productive of
mosquitoes and malaria. The "Vardar Reclamation Project"
was planned to provide about 20,000 twenty-acre farms and
was a national enterprise of noble proportions undertaken
by the "Foundation Company" of New York. Of course, it was
the work of years.
Just over the ridge east of Thessaloniki, the Struma River
followed an almost parallel course from the Balkan mountains
to salt water, and the Monks-Ulen Company undertook a similar
vast reclamation project among the marches and swamps of the
Struma, only a little smaller than the Vardar project.
Thessaloniki was also on the line of the old Egnatian
Highway, running east and west, connecting not only the
banks of these two streams, which were about one hundred
miles apart; indeed, the Via Egnatia was first built to
connect Rome and Constantinople, and it still serves this
purpose. These projects were of exceedingly great commercial
importance for the agricultural development of the region,
for the commercial and industrial possibilities, and for the
supply of food for the people without their needing to buy
too much of foreign countries. Incidentally, a good many of
our Anatolia boys secured employment with one or the other
of these two great American companies. Thessaloniki was
recognized as "the nearest port to the heart of the Balkans".
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