Dear Howard Smith,

I have read with interest Bateman's Memo: on Serbian Minorities (C 3041/102/19) and on the whole am inclined to agree with his contentions, though it is dangerous to adopt a definite attitude in any Macedonian Minority questions.

I enclose some notes by Gallop on the Memo: and would only make the following observations. It is extremely difficult to pontify as to Bulgar or Serb claims in Macedonia, where you have generally a Bulgarized Serb, a Serbized Bulgar, a Grecicized Vlach and so forth, and as we have really no unprejudiced first hand information on the question one must withhold any extreme pronouncement on the subject until it has been thoroughly examined by some qualified and unbiassed authority. It is a pity that this cannot be done.

While it may be agreed that the Serbian attitude as regards Serb Minorities in Greek Macedonia is only part of their designs on Salonica, it might equally well be stated that Greece, owing to her fear of a Serbian occupation of that port, has always favoured Bulgar pretensions and done all she can to obstruct Serbian interests.

These remarks do not imply that I favour the Serbian thesis, but only that one must walk very warily before adopting one side or the other.

I may incidentally mention that I never saw Col. Corfе (see para: IV of Memo.) and think that it was Forbes, whom I cannot ask as he is on leave.

Yours ever,

Howard Kennard

The Minister.

I quite agree with Mr Bateman's conclusions. The Macedo-Serbs on either side of the frontier are universally recognised to be an ethnographic whole. Indeed the Serbian claim is founded not on the contention that among the Slavs of Greek Macedonia there are some who can be picked out as Serbs, but on the contention that the population is of exactly the same stock on both sides of the border. The Serbs see that to admit that the Macedonians in Greece are Bulgars weakens their case that the Macedonians in South Serbia are Serbs.