News here is practically all of the "made in Germany" type. At Dedeagatch, besides a few Bulgarian papers, the only foreign papers I could get were those of Berlin and Vienna. The successes of the Serbians in the north do not please the Bulgarians; every day there are incidents on both the Bulgarian and Greek frontiers.
The day before I reached Dedeagatch two Bulgarian sentries had been killed in a fight with Serbian sentries. Of course, such incidents, which would lead to unavoidable international complications if they happened on the frontier of a great European country, are here considered as merely incidents, and one cannot base on them hurried judgments and deductions.
Regarding Great Britain, she has the sympathies of the Bulgarian diplomacy, which is naturally inclined towards the nations who, like England, protected the small Balkan States; but, I repeat, one feels that Bulgaria will shake off her neutrality only when she sees the chance of immediate gain in doing so, and in no case before having waited a long time; time enough to see "how the cat jumps."
* * *
I have found him.
I am not sorry for the uncomfortable journey; I am not sorry for the days wasted, nor for having missed, for a few hours only, the weekly boat from Salonika to Athens; for it was in a little town called Drama, where I had to stop an hour or so, that I met the wonderful man.
I bless a thousand times the hours of unspeakable boredom, the many punishments for unlearned lessons, the terrific anxiety for the examinations which worried my school days while learning the Greek language, for it was in Tessalian dialect, which, luckily, is more similar to old Greek than modern Greek itself, that my precious man spoke. His existence has been denied by most. He has no equal in England, I am sure, nor in Germany, nor in France, probably not one in all Europe. He is more difficult to find than the white fly or the black diamond of the old Oriental legends. If I had not been afraid of trouble with the British police when I got back to England, I should dare to write candidly that I am glad of Turkey's declaration of war because, without it, I should never have gone to Drama and never have met him.
"Him" is the man who has never heard of the war.
His look is like the look of any man a little over middle age; his condition is corresponding to the condition of an English gentleman farmer; his education is certainly far superior to the education of an ordinary middle-class man. He knows and still reads daily a few pages of his favourite classic works Homer, Anacreon, Hesiod. He does not read newspapers.