The Days of a Man 1:1914 



Bulgarian drastic rcforms in Albania and Macedonia, or else 

 blunders f^^^^g ^^le entire withdrawal of the Turks, Some of 

 my informant's countrymen regard this as an excuse 

 on the part of the prime minister for a matter which 

 in the long run turned out badly. And one man 

 admitted to me regretfully that since 1912 they 

 "had committed every possible blunder." Yet in 

 1916 they made (Ferdinand and Radoslovoff made 

 for them) a still greater mistake in linking their 

 fortunes with those of the Kaiser. For this they 

 were grievously and incongruously punished in the 

 ill-considered Treaty of Neuilly, by which certain 

 districts wholly Bulgarian were assigned to Serbia, and 

 the whole iEgean shore to Greece. Even worse, Bulga- 

 ria acquired a war debt reputed to equal the total 

 assets of the country. According to an old Bulgarian 

 proverb, "God is not sinless; He created borrowers." 

 yi degree I should here say that Bulgaria's adhesion to the 

 (In"""' Central Powers did not lack extenuating circum- 

 stances. With the onset of war, German propa- 

 ganda, always busy, was much intensified, scarcely 

 any news reaching Sofia except through Vienna. Des- 

 patches magnified all German successes and referred 

 to "the effete British navy and the ridiculous little 

 army." Under these conditions, friends of the En- 

 tente were helpless, and while England and France 

 offered Bulgaria only vague hopes of justice, and made 

 no effort to amend the Treaty of Bucharest, Germany 

 cheerfully promised the restoration of the Dobruja, 

 Kavala, and Monastir, being always ready to pledge 

 by secret treaty what she did not possess. At my 

 suggestion, in 1916 Charles R. Crane sent a sum of 

 Mark- money to enable Markham to establish at Samokov 

 ham's plan ^ paper which should give truthful summaries of 



n 578 3 



