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It is impossible to shut one's eyes to the fact that something survives of the traditions of cruelty and reprisal existing in the Balkans of the Middle Ages. In this Balkan peninsula there is always a smell of blood in the nostrils, a mist of blood in the eyes. The Bulgarians have taken their part in many incidents which seem to deny the existence of Christian civilisation.
The Bulgarians in the cafe rose en masse, and, headed by the village schoolmaster, went to the church, where they found the Bible that the priests were in the habit of reading, or rather intoning, and turned up the 115th Psalm. It was found to correspond exactly with that of the colporteur! The result was at first received in dead silence, and with looks of surprise by the majority.
A press photographer at Mustapha Pasha was very much annoyed because photographs he had taken of guns passing through the towns were not allowed to be sent through to his paper. He sent a humorous message to his editor, that he could not send photographs of guns, "it being a military secret that the Bulgarians had any guns."
A little state must think of these things. She hasn't the men nor the staggering supply of ammunition lightly to go into a world war like this. And then the Bulgarians had had their fingers burned once they were not looking for adventures. You will remember the Balkan War of 1912-3, and how the Bulgars fought their way down almost to Constantinople and were everybody's heroes for a time.
I leave military men, or any men of sense, to consider this step. We restored Russia to her place, as the protector of these lands, which she had by the Treaty of San Stephano given up. We have left the wishes of Bulgarians unsatisfied, and the countries unquiet. We have forced them to look to Russia more than to us and France, and we have lost their sympathies. And for what?
It is difficult to do justice to such an exploit within the scope of a single article. The privations suffered by the troops, their uncomplaining endurance, the fight with cholera, the appalling atrocities perpetrated by the Bulgarians upon those who fell within their power, furnish matter for a monumental volume.
Since the fall of the Roman power, Dacia and Pannonia no longer exhibited the rich prospect of populous cities, well-cultivated fields, and convenient highways: the reign of barbarism and desolation was restored, and the tribes of Bulgarians, Gepidæ, and Sarmatians, who had occupied the vacant province, were prompted by their native fierceness, or the solicitations of Odoacer, to resist the progress of his enemy.
The Serbians despised the Bulgarians. The Albanians had no love for either nation, while the Greeks looked down on all the others. Montenegro and Serbia were friends, naturally, since they were inhabited by the same kind of people and had once been parts of the original kingdom of Serbia.
British travellers had visited the Balkan lands and reported high things of the Bulgarians and their future, Russian officers had taken peeps at their army and confessed "this is a thing to be reckoned with, and it is not we who have created it, they have done it by themselves."
But presently the Serbians were reenforced by two regiments of the Morava Division and two of the Drina Division, whereupon Bojovitch suddenly turned and once more possessed himself of the pass. Again and again the Bulgarians attacked, determined to take the pass, but as often as they hurled themselves up the defile, just so often the Serbians drove them back with fire and bayonet.
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