The Macedonian can be called neither Bulgarian nor Serb, but simply Macedonian

I said that I would rather call your Bulgarophones Macedonians. You call those people
Bulgarophones, owing to their language which is similar to Bulgarian. But, is it Bulgarian,
is it the same language spoken in Sofia? No. Macedonian is just as similar to Serbian as it
is to Bulgarian. I am not a linguist and I would not allow myself a personal judgment, but
disinterested Balkanologists have asserted to me that Macedonian is more similar to
Serbian than Bulgarian. It is possible that there are linguists who assert the opposite. But it
is a fact that the Macedonian language is spoken neither in Sofia nor in Belgrade. It is an
individual Slav language, just as we have the Romansch in Switzerland, spoken in Grisons,
apart from Italian. To my mind, the Macedonian can be called neither Bulgarian nor Serb,
but simply Macedonian.

taken from this book, R. A. Reiss, Sur la situation des Macedoniens et des musulmans dans les nouvelles
provinces grecques. Paris, 1918, pp. 6-7.