minor Serbian official over
against whom I took my meals for about a month; one of his ways was to
produce a pocket-knife and cut his bread with it. Certain other parts of
his ritual did not appeal to me, but who knows whether I did not disgust
him by breaking my bread with my fingers? And who knows what sentiments
were awakened some years ago at the Orthodox monastery of Gromirija, in
Croatia, when a foreign guest proposed to wash himself in water, though
by the joyous custom of that house there was no other liquid on the
premises but wine? If there is in both countries, in Serbia and
Bulgaria, a movement against the cynicism which does not clothe its
corruption with a decent Western drapery, that is something; if there is
a further movement in the direction of probity, that is something more.
And, whatever some Serbs may tell you, it is undeniable that honesty has
made important strides in the public life of that kingdom, even without
having added to the Statute Book those rigorous proposals of the
newly-formed Peasants' party, one of which would punish a peculating
official with death. It is, however, apparent that this party has not
arrived at a sense of discretion, for it wants to terminate the practice
of allowing pensions to officials, so that each man is obliged to make
his own provision for old age. Bulgaria, the younger country, has made a
proportionate progress; there is trustworthy German evidence to the
effect that the corrupt Radoslavoff Government was despised by the
people, not in the hour of disaster but in 1916, when the Bulgarian
soldiers changed the words of an anti-Serb song and instead of "Our old
allies are brigands" proclaimed that "the Liberals are brigands." This
German, Dr. Helmut von den Steinen, the correspondent of the
_Nordeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung_ (in which he was bound to speak
favourably of Radoslavoff) used to deliver propaganda lectures in the
Bulgarian language at Sofia during the War. He was very well acquainted
with Bulgarian affairs and being summoned to Berlin at the end of 1917
he made a speech[120] _in camera_ to a committee of German savants and
artists. In the course of this he lamented that his country had attached
herself to Radoslavoff, who, said he, was hated and would at the next
elections be swept away.

As one must repeat _ad nauseam_, the gulf between Serb and Bulgar has
not been caused by an extreme divergence of their private or their
public morals, academically