y to espouse the cause of the
Central Empires, his admiration was reinforced by fear and the
pro-German leanings, which were at first merely platonic, bade fair to
harden into active co-operation. It was not until then that the
Entente Powers, discerning the fateful character of their errors and
the trend of events, resolved after much hesitation and discussion to
put forth an effort to retrieve the situation. Of his philo-German
tendencies King Constantine gave several public proofs long before the
war, and on the psychological soil from which they sprang, German
diplomacy raised its typical structure of intrigue and adulation. As
the irresistible captain who had shattered the armies of Turkey and
Bulgaria, winning undying fame for himself and his country, the King
was encouraged to believe that on him devolved the mission of uniting
all Hellenes under his sceptre, building up a larger Greece,
consolidating the monarchy within, and ruling as well as reigning. And
so well laid was this plan that when the European armies took the
field and the Entente Powers counted Greece, then apparently governed
by Venizelos, among its cordial friends, the Teutons, sure of their
ground, but still working assiduously for their object, put their
trust in the Kaiser's royal henchman and their own permanent display
of force, and were not disappointed.

Long before the war-cloud burst, the history makers of Berlin
recognized the fact that the key to the Dardanelles lay in Sofia, and
not only to the Dardanelles, but also the key to the Near East. The
statesmen of Austria and Germany discerned that the Bulgars under
their guidance could be got to do for Turkey what Japan hoped, and
still hopes, to effect for China. It is a work of complete
transformation, a sort of political transubstantiation whereby the
Bulgars would infuse ichor into the limp veins of the Ottoman organism
and recreate a strong political entity which would be an instrument in
the hands of the Central Empires. The Bulgar knows the Turk, to whom
he is more akin by race habits and temperament than to any of the Slav
peoples, understands his psychic state, his mode of feeling and
thinking, and is therefore qualified to serve as link between the
Oriental and the Western. It was in view of this eventuality that the
slow, plodding work of grafting Kultur on the Bulgar people was
undertaken. Two German schools, one in Sofia and the other in
Philippopolis, were the centres whence