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.
II.
The evidence of the facts as they now stand appears to be bringing the Greeks to recognize, that if the Allies have committed faults in the Balkans—through excess of candour, misconception of the mental factors, and with the best intentions in the world—the government of Athens has been equally deceived as to the surest means of safeguarding Hellenic interests.