I.
It is otherwise with Bulgaria. Indeed, the key of the whole Balkan situation lies in the plan of a Bulgarian supremacy, which, as we shall see, is closely bound up, at least in principle, with the Pangerman plan.
It was said long ago that the Bulgarians are the Prussians of the East. Now it is just their fixed idea of achieving at any cost their dream of dominating the Balkans which has led the Bulgarians to throw in their lot with Berlin, without perceiving that, though they might benefit by the first phase of this combination, they would finally fall victims to Pangermanism.
GREAT BULGARIA.
The pretensions of Bulgaria to supremacy, though even less has been known about them than about the Pangerman plan, are nevertheless relatively old, as is conclusively proved by the following facts:
The map printed above is a document of the highest importance, for it enables us to detect the real policy, first of Bulgaria, and next of the other Balkan States. This map is an exact translation and reproduction of the map which is to be found on p. 56 of the historical part of a book published in Bulgarian at Sofia and called: The Soldier’s Companion, Manual for the Soldiers of all arms. This is an official work of propaganda in the army, and therefore in the whole Bulgarian people, since all Bulgarians go through the ranks; and it was published in obedience to order No. 76 of March 14th, 1907, issued by the Bulgarian Ministry of War, approved and authorized by the Chief of the Headquarters Staff of the Bulgarian army. This manual has been recommended by the Bulgarian Ministry of War, in circular No. 28 of March 21st, 1907. Hence we are confronted with an official Bulgarian book dating from 1907, which proves very clearly beyond the possibility of dispute the ideas which have been systematically instilled into the whole Bulgarian people for at least nine years.
In this map, entitled Great Bulgaria, which is coloured in the eighth edition of the Bulgarian original, the part said to be “already set free by the Bulgarians” is coloured pink (represented by large hatchings on our map), and the parts said to be “not set free by the Bulgarians” are coloured red (represented by closer hatchings on our map). This official Bulgarian document helps us to understand, both what happened in the Balkan wars, and the conduct of the government of Sofia during the European war.
In fact, when in 1912 the Bulgarians entered into an alliance with the Greeks and Serbians against Turkey, they were not even then true to their Allies. At that time they had a very low opinion of the Greeks and Serbians as soldiers. But they thought it very expedient to employ the forces of these nations against the principal enemy, Turkey, intending afterwards to settle accounts with their temporary allies by means of the increase of power which they expected to gain at the expense of Turkey. As these intentions were suspected at Belgrade and Athens, it may easily be conceived that from the very beginning of their joint action the Greek and Serbian governments did not repose full confidence in that of Sofia. The distrust of the Greeks and Serbians was, moreover, thoroughly aroused when King Ferdinand, before he allowed his troops to hurl themselves against the lines of Chataldja, disclosed his claim to enter Constantinople, with the evident intention of staying there if he could.
Given the Bulgarian claims in the west, which are set forth in our map, we can further explain why in 1913 the Bulgarians, whose character is hard and unyielding, refused all compromise when the Serbians, excluded by Europe from the Adriatic, demanded from the Bulgarians an equitable compensation to the south of Uskub.
Moreover, always instigated by their desire of supremacy, and stirred up by Vienna and Berlin, the Bulgarians thought that the moment had come to annihilate the Serbians and Greeks. So they made the sudden attack of June 17-30, 1913, on their former allies. But the wary Serbians and Greeks were ready for the encounter. Roumania, as little inclined to tolerate Bulgarian supremacy as Greece or Serbia, marched her troops to within ten kilometres of Sofia. The Bulgarians were crushed by the Serbians at Bregalnitza, and were compelled to sign, on August 10th, 1913, the treaty of Bukarest. But from that moment, animated by a boundless hatred of their conquerors, they had but one desire, and that was to take vengeance on the victors, one after the other, and above all to destroy the treaty of Bukarest at the first favourable opportunity.
Hence
1º. The treaties made by Sofia with Berlin and Constantinople, before April, 1914, as M. Radoslavoff has disclosed (see Havas, quoted by Le Petit Parisien, 26th March, 1916, and Le Temps, 10th April, 1916).
2º. Bulgaria’s participation in the European war on the side of Germany, whose plans for the future, like the Bulgarian ambitions, were threatened by the consequence of the treaty of Bukarest (see Chapter II, § 1).
An examination of the Bulgarian map, which serves us as a document, proves that the Bulgarian pretentions to supremacy, like those of Pangermanism, aim at absorbing, regardless of language or race, the regions whose possession is deemed useful to Bulgaria. Thus the rapacious doctrine of the Bulgarians is absolutely identical with that of the Prussians. This identity has facilitated the understanding between the two peoples. In fact, the Great Bulgaria of our official document of 1907 (see the map on p. 133) includes the following: the Roumanian Dobrudja as far as Galatz and Sulina, on which clearly the Bulgarians can lay no justifiable claim; the shores of the Ægean Sea; the territory from Serres to Gumuldjina, where the Greek element is dominant; the region of Nisch, which is Serbian; the region of Prizrend, which had been recognized as Serbian by the Bulgarians themselves in their treaty of alliance with the Serbians in 1912. As to the region of Uskub as far as Lake Ochrida, near Albania, the Bulgarians in their treaty with the Serbians admitted it to be disputable. Its allotment was to be referred to the arbitration of the Emperor of Russia, which the Bulgarians never seriously desired, and to which they opposed a solid obstacle by their attack on the Serbians in June, 1913. Lastly, the region south of Uskub, that is, the portion of Macedonia which forms the south of the present Serbia, requires a detailed exposition by itself. This is essential, for concerning Serbian Macedonia many misconceptions have been propagated by the Allied Press and have been the source of the mistakes committed by the Allies in the Balkans in 1915. It is therefore absolutely necessary to correct these misconceptions, if the Allies would avoid falling into fresh mistakes in the Balkans, for which they would again have to pay a heavy price.
SERBIAN MACEDONIA.
In short, to look the difficulties clearly in the face, we must answer the question, Is the south of Serbia Bulgarian? (see the map, above).
The territory in the south of Serbia on which divergent opinions have been expressed is represented with tolerable exactness:
1º. By a triangle of which the apex lies a little to the north of Veles, and of which the other angles are formed by Guevgheli on the east and Lake Ochrida on the west.
2º. By a strip of territory which lies to the east of this triangle, and which, between the left bank of the Vardar and Bulgaria, contains the regions of Kotchana, Stip, and Stroutmitza-gare. The Bulgarians contend that all the territory formed by this triangle and this lateral strip is incontestably Bulgarian; last year some Allied writers supported this contention. In the first place, it was said, the treaty of San Stefano (1878) assigned to Bulgaria what is now the south of Serbia. They forgot that in 1878 the ethnographic study of the Ottoman empire had not yet begun, and that at that time the Russians and the English were both inclined, for different reasons, to consider almost all the inhabitants of European Turkey as Bulgarians, without inquiry or distinction. The Russians, who then aimed at establishing themselves ultimately in the Balkans, were impelled by this aim to regard the Bulgarians as extremely numerous. As for the English, burning with indignation at the “Bulgarian atrocities” of Gladstone, they very generously thought of nothing but liberating from the Turkish yoke as many Christians as possible, and these in Macedonia were labelled indiscriminately Bulgarians.
Be that as it may, it was only after the treaty of San Stefano that the ethnographical study of Macedonia was taken up in earnest. Moreover, it is proper to add that most of the writers who have discussed the subject have drawn their information, not from inquiries on the spot, but from Belgrade, Athens and Sofia. In these three centres they were supplied with minute statistics, very well printed, and to all appearance perfectly convincing, but which laboured under the serious disadvantage that they flatly contradicted each other. For my own part, I acknowledged that I was not able to arrive at a comparatively clear idea of the complicated ethnography of this part of Macedonia till I had carried out my inquiries of 1914, not as before in the Balkan capitals, but on the spot, at Uskub, at Prizrend, at Prichtina, at Monastir, at Ochrida, and at Strouga.
This inquiry, conducted six months before the war, led me to the following conclusions. Serbian Macedonia contains two quite distinct groups of population.
1º. The one is formed of Turks, Albanians, Kutzo-Wallachians or Roumanians, Greeks, Jews, and Gipsies, who are scattered all over the country.
2º. The second group is composed of the Macedonian Slavs.
In the absence of trustworthy statistics it is impossible to say which of these two groups is numerically the stronger. Thus, at Uskub, the Turks and the Jews alone were reckoned as numerous as the exarchists, that is to say, as those who, attending the churches and schools of the Bulgarian exarchate, were considered to be Bulgarians.
But what is quite certain is that the Serbs and the Bulgarians are found in the second group of the population, that of the Macedonian Slavs. Now this group itself comprises four sections, namely, native Serbs, native Bulgarians, “floating” Serbs, and “floating” Bulgarians. The two “floating” sections seem to be more numerous than the two native sections. This singular expression, “floating,” is justified by the following explanation. In 1870 the Bulgarians of Macedonia, then Ottoman subjects, obtained from the Sultan leave to be considered, from the religious point of view, not as before members of the Greek Orthodox Church, but as members of a separate and autonomous church, the Bulgarian Exarchate, of which the seat was fixed at Constantinople. The Bulgarians of Bulgaria, who also joined the new church, took advantage of the condition of things which resulted from this creation to organize in Macedonia a propaganda nominally religious but really political, being designed to gain over to the Bulgarian nation as many Macedonian Slavs as possible; and this propaganda was directed and actively assisted by the Bulgarian Exarch, Mgr. Joseph, who resided in Constantinople and was an Ottoman subject. In those days the Macedonian Slavs were very poor peasants, who had been oppressed by the Turks for centuries, and the greater number of them did not care a straw whether they belonged to one nationality or to another. The propaganda of the Bulgarian Exarchate in Macedonia came into conflict with the Greek propaganda, and a little later with the Serbian propaganda, which two propagandas, the one directed from Athens and the other from Belgrade, had one and the same object. All three propagandas together employed in Macedonia the most diverse means—money, schools, and terrorism—to win over the Macedonian Slavs, who were still hesitating, to the national Bulgarian cause, to the national Greek cause, and to the national Serbian cause.
These various propagandas very often led to extraordinary results, which proved, the artificial character of the movements. For example, before the European war you might find in many Macedonian villages families of three blood brothers, of whom one would say he was a Greek, the second would solemnly affirm that he was a Serb, and the third would swear he was a Bulgarian. Frequently, under the influence of the forcible arguments applied to them, their national convictions would undergo a sudden and radical change, so that the man who yesterday was a Serb, to-day would give himself out as a Bulgarian, or contrariwise. It is to persons whose nationality is of this unstable and erratic character that the adjective “floating” is appropriately applied. At the same time there is no question that the Serbian propaganda, having started business in Macedonia about fifteen years later than its Bulgarian rival, had gathered into the fold fewer of those “floating” sheep, who were still sitting on the nationalist fence, not yet having made up their minds whether to come down on the Serbian or the Macedonian side. The two elements which compose the Bulgarian group in Macedonia, namely, the genuine Bulgarians and the “floating” Bulgarians, have, besides, a geographical distribution which is comparatively definite. Though mixed up with Turkish elements, the inhabitants of the region of Kotchana and Istip (Stip in Serbian), on the right bank of the Vardar and on the Bulgarian boundary (see the map on p. 137) are for the most part indisputably genuine Bulgarians. If at the time of the treaty of Bukarest the Serbians claimed these mountainous regions, they did so for strategical reasons, in order to ensure the defence of the railway, which, passing through the valley of the Vardar, connects Belgrade, Nisch, and Uskub with Salonika, and is therefore of vital importance for Serbia. The present war has proved that this point of view was not without justification.
On the other hand, on the right bank of the Vardar, and therefore in the greater part of Serbian Macedonia, the Bulgarian elements, whether genuine or “floating,” are more or less scattered among all the other racial elements. Undoubtedly there are to the west of the Vardar some Bulgarians whose descent is very ancient and beyond dispute. A certain number, who have emigrated from these regions, exercise a predominant political influence even in Bulgaria. Thus General Boyadjeff was born at Ochrida, and M. Genadieff was born at Monastir. But these Bulgarians by descent are certainly a minority in the whole population of Macedonia. For example, at Monastir, in 1914, out of 60,000 inhabitants about a third were Bulgarians. It is true that round about Monastir and Uskub you might find villages inhabited almost entirely by Bulgarians, but beside these villages were others formed of different Macedonian nationalities (Serbs, Roumanians, etc.).
As for the “floating” Bulgarians, after a Serbian occupation which had lasted only five months since the treaty of Bukarest, many of them already proclaimed themselves Serbs. For example, the Serbian mayor of the little town of Strouga had been in Turkish times the pillar of the Bulgarian propaganda in the district of Strouga. Similar cases were very numerous. The Bulgarians of Sofia, unable to deny this wholesale transformation into Serbians of quondam Bulgarians who had been raked into the fold by the propaganda of the Exarchate, gave out that this sudden conversion was the effect of that reign of terror which, according to them, the Serbians resorted to for the purpose of establishing their dominion in Macedonia. The allegation seems to me untenable. I traversed most of the roads of Serbian Macedonia in the winter (January, 1914), accompanied only by one or two persons. I very often met Serbian soldiers, who came from the garrisons on the Albanian frontier and were going on furlough to Northern Serbia. Now these soldiers were travelling singly or in groups of two or three. With nothing but a walking-stick in their hand they were making their way over the 60 or 70 kilometres which separated them from the nearest railway. If the country had really been inhabited by convinced Bulgarians who detested the Serbians, is it not evident that there would have been attacks on these isolated and defenceless Serbian soldiers? But there were no such attacks, and from personal observation I can affirm that the most complete tranquillity prevailed in Serbian Macedonia, which in the days of the Turks had been the scene of incessant murders; and these murders were generally brought about by the terrorist means employed by the Bulgarian propaganda.
What is certain is, that at the beginning of 1914 the “floating” Bulgarians, who were in fact the more numerous, acquiesced without resistance in the Serbian rule and called themselves Serbians. The Bulgarian Exarch, Mgr. Joseph, who had organized and directed the Bulgarian propaganda since 1870, was not at all surprised at this result. He acknowledged to me at Sofia, in February, 1914, that the Bulgarian game was up in the south of Macedonia, and that in a short time most of the adherents whom he had enlisted in former days would prove themselves very good Serbians. Indeed, he had made up his mind to it, for he had been opposed to the attack of June, 1913, on the Serbians and the Greeks, and he thought that Bulgaria should accept a situation for which she herself was responsible, and of which she must bear the consequences.
For these manifold reasons it is impossible to say that the south of Macedonia is Bulgarian. But the Bulgarian people of Bulgaria has been completely intoxicated by the intense propaganda which has been organized, especially during the last thirty years, in Bulgaria itself by Bulgarians who are natives of Ottoman Macedonia. These men, most of them very energetic, have in reality engrossed all the important posts, military, political, and administrative, in Bulgaria. So well have they done the business of propaganda that the lowest Bulgarian peasant of Bulgaria believes in his heart and soul that all Serbian Macedonia is Bulgarian. It is easy to understand how German policy at Sofia has been able to turn this state of mind to account for the purpose of hurrying the Bulgarian people into the war on the side of Pangermanism.
To recapitulate, the south of Macedonia is really Macedonia, that is to say, it is a territory inhabited by motley peoples, who are almost everywhere jumbled up together. The Bulgarians who live there cannot therefore rightfully claim that the treaty of Bukarest violated the principle of nationalities to their detriment by assigning South-Western Macedonia to Serbia. In fact, just because it is Macedonia, that is, an extraordinary jumble of heterogeneous peoples, the principle of nationalities cannot possibly be applied to Macedonia. In strict justice, the destiny of this peculiar country should be settled simply and solely with reference to the general strategical and economic needs of the surrounding States. Now if there are Bulgarians in Macedonia there are also Serbians, and neither strategically nor economically is the south of Macedonia necessary to Bulgaria. On the other hand, Serbia has a really vital interest, both economic and defensive, in maintaining a direct geographical contact with Greece, in order to have by means of Salonika that access to the Ægean Sea which is for her indispensable.
What proves, moreover, in ample measure that the exorbitant Bulgarian pretensions are not founded on a racial basis is that at present the ambitions of the government of Sofia considerably exceed even the extreme limits of the map which serves us as a document (see p. 133). Indeed, not only does Bulgaria desire to keep the region of Nisch, but she aims at expanding as far as Hungary, which in her turn also wishes to encroach on Serbia. In February, 1916, Mr. Take Jonescu declared at Bukarest that he had it from a sure source that Germany had just promised to Bulgaria the possession of Salonika and the Roumanian Dobrudja as far as Sulina (see Le Matin, 25th February, 1916), that is, exactly that part of the Roumanian Dobrudja which, according to our documentary map the Bulgarians have coveted ever since 1907 at least. As to King Ferdinand, he wishes to obtain for his son the whole of central Albania, which would allow Bulgaria under colour of an eventual arrangement, more or less forced on a few Albanian tribes, to spread from the Black Sea to the Adriatic—an old plan familiar to all who are versed in the ambitions of the Coburg prince at Sofia. It is, moreover, probable, so far as Albania and the Roumanian Dobrudja are concerned, that the Berlin government will curb the Bulgarian ambitions in order not to hurt the feelings of Vienna, and to prolong the neutrality of Roumania by nursing the illusions of the Bratiano cabinet. There will be plenty of time afterwards to punish Roumania for hesitating to submit to the German yoke, when the hour for freeing herself from it shall have passed for ever.
The secret treaty, the negotiations for which between the Kaiser and the Tsar Ferdinand were revealed by Le Temps of 29th February, 1916, would ensure to Ferdinand the means of ultimately putting the last touches to his plan of Bulgarian supremacy. But this treaty, linking the fate of Bulgaria to that of Germany in a military, economic, and political aspect, would involve the inclusion of Bulgaria in the Germanic Confederation. Therefore, finally, always in pursuance of the plan of 1911, Bulgaria would serve as a broad bridge between the Germanic Confederation of Central Europe and Prussianized Turkey.
This recent revelation completes the demonstration of the mode and form in which the plan of Bulgarian supremacy is closely bound up with the Pangerman plan of world-wide domination.