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 this scheme of reforms, the last of the negotiations was not completed, nor the whole series ratified, until April 1907, though the gendarmerie officers had arrived in Macedonia in February 1904.

At this point again it is necessary to recall the position in regard to this question of the various nations concerned.  Great Britain and France had no territorial stake in Turkey proper, and did their utmost to secure reform not only in the vilayets of Macedonia, but also in the realm of Ottoman finance.  Italy’s interest centred in Albania, whose eventual fate, for geographical and strategic reasons, could not leave it indifferent.  Austria-Hungary’s only care was by any means to prevent the aggrandizement of the Serb nationality and of Serbia and Montenegro, so as to secure the control, if not the possession, of the routes to Salonika, if necessary over the prostrate bodies of those two countries which defiantly barred Germanic progress towards the East.  Russia was already fatally absorbed in the Far Eastern adventure,