Bulgaria

“ If Bulgaria is proud and strong she can measure herself with us as soon as the war with Austria is over. A strong Bulgaria must measure herself with the strong and not with the weak.
"Why do people in Bulgaria today insist on concessions? Do you know how many difficulties there are today in the granting of such territorial concessions? You felt the pain of similar action. Silistria was taken from you while your army was victoriously marching on Constantinople. Do not insist on implanting deep in the Servian heart a mortal hatred against yourselves. ”

“ Time has worked on behalf of Bulgaria, and has helped to strengthen this Benjamin of the European family. Among the events which have made the chief States of to-day, none are more remarkable than those which endowed a population of downtrodden peasants with a passionate desire for national existence. Thanks to the liberating armies of Russia, to the prowess of Bulgarians themselves, to the inspiring personality of Prince Alexander and the stubborn tenacity of Stambuloff, the young State gained a firm grip on life. ”

“ Yet the climate of the modern Bulgaria, in its widest sense, does not differ in any considerable degree from that of the Croats, except that parts of the Bulgarian area are hotter. Both are lands of vines and fig trees. Yet the language is almost the same. The modern Bulgar can talk with the Croat without an interpreter. Whence, then, this startling divergence of attire? The reason is to be sought far away in the dim twilight of history. Originally the Bulgars were not a Sclavonic people. Their kinship lies with mysterious Huns and Tartars. ”

“ In the year 1913 Bulgaria liberated, at great sacrifices also, 3,000,000 of her population in Macedonia and Thrace, which Russia took and distributed among her new protégés, Rumania, Serbia and Greece. And to-day Bulgaria and Russia are quits. We have paid all our debt to Russia. To-day we can say: We have secured our own liberty by our own arms. ”

“ So entirely unconscious are the people of the Balkan's being the boundary, that when I spoke of Bulgaria, I was repeatedly corrected by the remark, 'You are now in Bulgaria.' The soil along our route is of the finest quality, and large villages were occasionally seen on our right and left, with magnificent views of cultivated lands and vast pastures, the snowy Balkan summits bounding the north, and lower ranges of hills the south. ”

“ THE FUTURE OF BULGARIA Bulgaria’s future greatness—Her firm policy in Macedonia—An audience of Dr. Stancioff, Minister of Foreign Affairs—A chat with the Prime Minister—Turkey the enemy of Bulgaria—Balkan “news” in the London papers—How it is manufactured—Turkish dominion doomed.
The future of Bulgaria is assured.
Bulgaria, with Servia, is destined to become the power in the Balkans. Vigorous, strong, and fearless, under a Prince who has the courage of his own convictions, the country is one of progress, of great military strength and continual expansion. ”

“ The diplomacy of Bulgaria under these difficult circumstances was deplorable. Her statesmen seemed bemused with the intoxication of Bulgarian military victories, and unable to forget the glowing calculations of the future Bulgarian Empire which they had made during the course of the war. Those calculations I gathered from gossip with all classes in Bulgaria at different times, speaking not only with politicians but with bankers, trading people, and others. ”

“ One meets many partisans of Bulgaria. English people naturally like the Bulgars at first sight. The Bulgar is a good fighting man, and that makes a strong appeal to the man of the world. He is simple, not bumptious, gives himself no airs of traditional culture or modern education, and therefore recommends himself. The cynical and false opinion of 1914-15 regarding Bulgaria—that she would come in to the war on the side that bid most money—is forgotten. And the disloyalties of Bulgaria, disloyalty to the Russia who set her free and to her erstwhile ally Serbia, are overlooked. ”

“ It has always been the ambition of each of these three nationalities to dominate the whole, an ambition which has caused endless waste of blood and money and untold misery. If the question were to be settled purely on ethnical considerations, Bulgaria would acquire the greater part of the interior of Macedonia, the most numerous of the dozen nationalities of which is Bulgarian in sentiment if not in origin, and would thus undoubtedly attain the hegemony of the peninsula, while the centre of gravity of the Serbian nation would, as is ethnically just, move north-westwards. ”

“ It was in this period that Bulgaria reached the peak of its territorial expansion, penetrating deep into the Byzantine Empire. Macedonia and Albania became Bulgaria's new frontiers; in 924 Serbia fell under Bulgarian rule. With these victories Simeon claimed the title tsar of all the Bulgarians and the Greeks.
With the territorial expansion came a domestic flourishing in the arts and an increase in trade. The arts and architecture of the period were significant for their beauty and vitality. Preslav, then the capital city, became the center of culture. ”

“ The Bulgarian mobilisation—effected after lengthy preparation with perfect success and complete secrecy—was a triumph of military achievement. It emphasises a point often urged, that when a whole nation is wrapt up in the colours, when every citizen is a soldier and taught the code of patriotic honour of the soldier—then at a time of crisis, spies, grumblers, critics are impossible. Bulgaria, as I have said, is very democratic. Unlike Roumania, where a landed aristocracy survived Turkish rule, the whole nation is of peasants or the sons and grandsons of peasants. ”

“ By the line of peaceful development which she has traced for herself, and which she has never ceased to pursue, by the honourable manner in which she fulfils all her international engagements, and by the clear comprehension which she has of her position in the Balkans, Bulgaria is gaining more and more the sympathy and esteem of the Great Powers. ”

“ The eastern boundary of Bulgaria is the Black Sea; on the west is the Kingdom of Servia, and on the south the Rhodope chain of mountains divides it from the Turkish province of Eastern Rumelia, or Macedonia, as that portion situated south of Bulgaria is commonly called. The Balkan Mountains, like the Alleghanies in Pennsylvania, bisect the country and divide it into two provinces. In some parts we find beautiful undulating landscapes and at intervals long expanses of elevated plateaus varying from twelve hundred to two thousand feet above the sea, which lie between the mountain ranges. ”

“ It is the fashion to compare the wonderful advance made by Bulgaria during the thirty-five years of its new existence with the very much slower progress made by Serbia during a much longer period. This is insisted on especially by publicists in Austria-Hungary and Germany, but it is forgotten that even before the last Balkan war the geographical position of Bulgaria with its seaboard was much more favourable to its economic development than that of Serbia, which the Treaty of Berlin had hemmed in by Turkish and Austro-Hungarian territory ”

“ Radoslavoff—But now we may not, neither in Chataldja nor in Cavalla nor in Dobrudja. The Bulgarian Government is pursuing the absolute preservation of peace and is watching developments. The friends that we have, notwithstanding all evil machinations, have not deserted us. Bulgaria still has friends, but friends and enemies tell us, Keep quiet, Bulgarians! ”

“ Generalising, the "leading men" in Bulgaria are of a poor type (there are exceptions) , the leading priests of a still poorer type; the people themselves are a sound people, and when the ambitious among them contrive to [180] preserve their peasant virtues through the ordeal of education they will become a great people.
The Bulgarian did not seem to me naturally cruel. All the time that I was with the main army I saw no trace of outrage or cruelty. ”

“ Bulgaria was also once a part of the Turkish possessions, and under the Treaty of Berlin, in 1878, became a suzerainty. It is a famous pastoral country, inhabited by a people for years held under the Ottoman heel. They are racially Turanians, and kin of the Tartar and Huns, who came into their present fertile country from the vast plains of eastern Russia. They made their way thither more than a thousand years ago, and battling at the very gates of Constantinople, by their fierce crusades, secured the grants from the Byzantine Empire of the territory, which constitutes the Bulgaria of today. ”

“ The aristocracy had been wiped out before Bulgaria got her autonomy in 1878, and, unlike Rumania, where the greater portion of the land is in the hand of large proprietors, Bulgaria is a country of small farmers, of shepherds, peasants, each with his little piece of land. The men who now direct its fortunes are the sons and grandsons of very simple people. Possibly it is because we Americans are also a new people, with still some of the prejudices of pioneers, that we are likely to feel something in common with the people of this "peasant state." ”

“ What so often happens in the relationships of individuals happened in those between Russia and Bulgaria. Russia naturally enough expected Bulgaria to be grateful for the really large amount of blood and treasure which its liberation had cost Russia, and, moreover, expected its gratitude to take the form of docility and a general acquiescence in all the suggestions and wishes expressed by its liberator. ”

“ On October 5, 1908, Prince Ferdinand sprang on an astonished continent the news that he renounced the Turkish suzerainty (ever since 1878 the Bulgarian principality had been a tributary and vassal state of the Ottoman Empire, and therefore, with all its astonishingly rapid progress and material prosperity, a subject for commiseration in the kingdoms of Serbia and Greece) and proclaimed the independence of Bulgaria, with himself, as Tsar of the Bulgars, at its head. Europe had not recovered from this shock, still less Belgrade and Athens, when, two days later. ”

“ They formed a community of considerable strength and importance, known as Great or White Bulgaria. These Bulgars fused with later Tartar immigrants from Asia and eventually were consolidated into the powerful kingdom of Kazan, which was only crushed by the Tsar Ivan IV in 1552. According to Bulgarian historians, the basins of the rivers Volga and Don and the steppes of eastern Russia proved too confined a space for the legitimate development of Bulgarian energy, and expansion to the west was decided on. ”

“ On the 5th of October Prince Ferdinand publicly proclaimed Bulgaria, united since the 6th of September 1885 (i.e. including Eastern Rumelia) , an independent kingdom. This declaration was read aloud by the king in the church of the Forty Martyrs at Trnovo, the ancient capital of the Bulgarian tsars. The Porte immediately protested to the powers, but agreed to accept an indemnity. In February 1909 the Russian government proposed to advance to Bulgaria the difference between the £4,800,000 claimed by Turkey and the £1,520,000 which Bulgaria undertook to pay. ”

“ From 1331 to 1365 Bulgaria was under one John Alexander, a noble of Tartar origin, whose sister became the wife of Serbia’s greatest ruler, Stephen Dušan; John Alexander, moreover, recognized Stephen as his suzerain, and from thenceforward Bulgaria was a vassal-state of Serbia. Meanwhile the Turkish storm was gathering fast; Suleiman crossed the Hellespont in 1356, and Murad I made Adrianople his capital in 1366. After the death of John Alexander in 1365 the Hungarians invaded northern Bulgaria, and his successor invoked the help of the Turks against them and also against the Greeks. ”

“ Black Bulgaria on the Danube became Christian and Slavonic. ♦Use of the Bulgarian name.♦ The modern Bulgarians bear the Bulgarian name only in the way in which the Romanized Celts of Gaul bear the name of their Frankish masters from Germany, in which the Slaves of Kief and Moscow bear the name of their Russian masters from Scandinavia. In all three cases, the power formed by the union of conquerors and conquered has taken the name of the conquerors and has kept the speech of the conquered. ”

“ Bulgaria, further east, is, on the whole, less mountainous, in spite of the Balkan range which stretches the whole length of it; for this reason, and also on account of its geographical position, any invaders coming from the north or north-east, especially if aiming at Constantinople or Salonika, were bound to sweep over it. The great immemorial highway from the north-west to the Balkan peninsula crosses the Danube at Belgrade and follows the valley of the Morava to Nish ”

“ Such a country only serves as a toy for others.
“With regard to her culture, agriculture, and her politics, Bulgaria is to-day in a different condition than heretofore. Though we do not acknowledge any progress, other countries see that Bulgaria has made in twenty years a very great progress and that she still is developing in large strides. We possess in the Balkan Peninsula a very important point, where many interests join. The most important, however, is to hope and to rely on our own strength.” ”

“ Bulgaria is in most friendly relations with Rumania, Greece, and Servia, which is at war. Bulgaria keeps the most sincere relations with Turkey. Bulgaria remains neutral and loyal in her position. I make the declaration so that the entire nation may be informed that the present Government has assured the territorial integrity of Bulgaria.
Our policy meets with the approval of all the great powers without exception. ”