For two thousand years the south central part of the Balkans has been called Mace donia, because a kingdom of that name was there in very ancient days. Later it became part of the territory ruled by the Turks. The southern part, inhabited chiefly by Greeks, was given to Greece in 1919, after the World War.
On the level prairies of Canada or the United States, it is easy for people to move about and thus to get acquainted and to understand each other. For this reason we can have in America one government ruling a territory larger than four or five of the jealous Balkan countries.
525. The is, however, one open valley extending the entire width of the region. (Fig. 385.) It is the valley of the Morava, a river that flows north to the Danube near Belgrade, and near its source almost joins the valley of the Vardar River, which flows southward to the Aegean Sea near the port of Saloniki. The waters of these two streams are so near together that the Germans planned to join them by a canal when they were in possession of the country during the World War. The Serbians hope to complete the canal.
This Morava-Vardar valley is one of the world's oldest thoroughfares. No one knows when bands of migrating people first began to go through it. Four thousand years ago the Greeks passed this way from the region of Odessa to their new home on the shores of the /Egean Sea. In Roman times one of the great Roman roads went up this valley to the provinces on the Danube, and Uskub (or Skoplje), then as now, was a trading center on a much-used route. During the World War the German and Allied Armies fought up and down the valley for possession of the Balkans. Express trains from Paris and Berlin to Constantinople run through the Morava Valley and turn east to Sofia.
526. Governments. — Jugoslavia is the country of the South Slays. "Jug" (pro nounced "yug") means south. The South Slays are really three peoples very much alike and called the Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes. The different states of Jugoslavia unite to elect a king and parliament, very much as the various states of the United States unite to elect a president and congress.
Bulgaria and Greece have each a king and a parliament.
The people of Albania still live in tribes having chiefs. The Albanians are such very independent people that they do not know how to cooperate. Many of them will
not even pay taxes, so their country cannot have roads or schools or hospitals or other things found in more progressive countries.
An American relief worker, writing about his Albanian headquarters in 1920, said, "The first fortification is a barbed-wire fence. Inside of this is a half-wild dog. Then comes a brick wall two feet thick peppered with gun holes. There is another dog inside this wall. Then comes the house. The door is massive oak held by a lock, an inside bar, and a hidden catch. The bottom floor has no windows and is used only for stock. The second floor has only very small windows, but the third floor has fairly good-sized windows. Every window has a thick, fairly bullet-proof shutter. The walls of the house are about a yard thick." What does that house tell you of Albania's past? 527. Agriculture and manufacturing.—The unfortunate peoples of the Balkans have escaped from the rule of the Turk so recently that many of the people are still poor and uneducated, although their lands are rich in undeveloped resources. Before the World War more than one million people from Jugo slavia alone had gone to the United States, seeking a better chance to make a living and to be free.
Owing to bad government and the lack of chance to trade, eighty to ninety per cent of the people of the Balkans are obliged not only to till the soil, but to do most of their own manufacturing as well. In Serbia and in parts of the other countries each farmer has a small tract of his own of about ten to thirty acres. Serbia is so rough and steep that most of it remains in pasture. Sheep, goats, and cattle make up the chief wealth of the country. Before the World War, Serbia and Bulgaria alone had nearly one-fourth as many sheep as the United States.
The methods and tools used in farming are poor. The plowing is often done with a wooden plow drawn by oxen. Oxen are used because they are cheaper than horses. A working horse needs grain as well as hay In 1920, during the high prices as a result of the World War, it cost $400 to feed a horse for a year in the southern Balkans, but an ox could be fed for $70 a year, because an ox could live on grass in summer and straw in winter, and could finally be sold for food.