but the extension of politics.
For brilliant as was the Franco-Serbian escalade of mid-September,
storming successive mountain walls as though they were mere trench lines
and shearing through war-hardened Bulgarian divisions like a knife
through rotten cheese, there was more than fighting involved. For the
last year and even longer a combination of circumstances had been
weaning Bulgaria from her former solidarity with the Central powers, and
this disruptive process, proceeding with special rapidity during the
last few months, had been steadily sapping the morale of the Bulgarian
people and the war-spirit of the Bulgarian soldiery. From the broader
point of view, therefore, the Allies' Macedonian offensive must be
deemed not merely a skilful military operation, but even more a
well-timed garnering of fruits ripe for the plucking. In such masterly
combinations of strategy and politics lies the secret of decisive
victory.

[Sidenote: Bulgaria's political evolution.]

The accurate gaging by Allied statesmanship of Bulgaria's political
evolution is specially noteworthy because that evolution was both
complicated and obscure. In fact, its roots reach down to the
fundamental aspirations of the Bulgarian people. Bulgaria's present
volte-face is no chance product of panic, but a logical step in her
national policy. Its consequences thus promise to be not ephemeral, but
lasting. An understanding of the factors that brought about the existing
situation is therefore worth careful study.

[Sidenote: The Prussians of the Balkans.]

[Sidenote: Desire to attain race unity.]

The Bulgarians have often been called the Prussians of the Balkans, and
in this characterization there is a large measure of truth. A
hard-working, tenacious folk, capable of great patience, docile to iron
discipline, and appreciative of governmental efficiency, the material
progress made by the Bulgarians during their forty years of independence
is as striking in its way as the similar progress of the German people.
Unfortunately, the Bulgarians resemble the Prussians not only in their
virtues, but in their most unlovely qualities as well. There are the
same tactlessness, brutality, overweening ambition, and cynical
indifference to the means by which those ambitions are to be attained.
This has shown itself clearly throughout Bulgarian history. When
Bulgaria gained her independence of Turkey in 1878 she started with a
perfectly legitimate ambition, the att