te and her
hard-won independence!

A little state must think of these things. She hasn't the men nor the
staggering supply of ammunition lightly to go into a world war like
this. And then the Bulgarians had had their fingers burned once--they
were not looking for adventures.

You will remember the Balkan War of 1912-3, and how the Bulgars fought
their way down almost to Constantinople and were everybody's heroes for
a time. Then came the quarrel between the Balkan allies, and presently
Bulgaria was fighting for her life--Serbia on the west, Greece on the
south, Turkey on the east--and then, when she was quite helpless, the
Rumanians coming down from the north to perform the coup de grace.

It was not a particularly sporting performance on the part of the
Rumanians, nor could the turning over to them of the Bulgarian part of
the province of Dobrudja greatly increase Bulgaria's trust in the powers
which permitted it in the treaty of Bucarest.

"It's our own fault," an Englishman said to me, speaking somewhat
sardonically of the failure of the Rumanians to go in with Italy in
spite of having accepted a timely loan from England. "We put our money
on the wrong horse! No, they'll keep on talking--they're the chaps who
want to get something for nothing. Think of the treaty of Bucarest and
the way we patted Rumania on the back--she was the gendarme of Europe
then. 'Gendarme of Europe!' ... I tell you that any army that would do
what the Rumanians did to Bulgaria has something wrong with its guts!"

An army goes where it is ordered, of course, but it is true,
nevertheless, that the Bulgarians are likely to think of their neighbors
on the north as people who want to get something for nothing, and that
they who had borne the brunt of the war with Turkey lost everything they
had gained. The Turks, "driven from Europe," calmly moved back to
Adrianople; Rumania took the whole of Dobrudja; Bulgarian Macedonia went
to Serbia and Greece. However much Bulgaria may have been to blame for
the break-up of the Balkan League--and she was stubborn and headstrong
to say the least--there is no denying that the treaty of Bucarest did
not give her a square deal. It was one of those treaties of peace (and
you might think that the men who sit around the green table and make
such treaties would learn it after a time) that are really treaties of
war.

No, Bulgaria was not looking for adventures, nor accepting promises
unless she had secu