Symonds, Arthur G.

Arthur G. Symonds was the Secretary of the National Reform Union in London, England during the time these letters were received. After the revival of Greek, Serbian, and Bulgarian statehood in the 19th century, the Ottoman lands in Europe that became identified as Macedonia, were contested by all three governments, leading to the creation in the 1890s and 1900s of rival armed groups who divided their efforts between fighting the Turks and one another. In 1912, the allied Balkan states of Bulgaria, Greece, Serbia and Montenegro declared war against Turkey.

A portion of this brief sketch was excerpted from wikipedia, accessed on July 9, 2008, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macedonia_%28region%29.