BULGAR DREAMS SHATTERED

Evening Star, Issue 16351, 17 February 1917, Page 6

BULGAR DREAMS SHATTERED

RY FALL OF AIONASTIR

J he fall of Monastic, the first, masterly stroke of General Barrad's army, was also the first severe blow dealt to Bulgarian ambition in .Macedonia. It was ostensibly to annex .Southern Macedonia, oecnpsoct by the .Serbians, that the Bulgarians cm-vivd into tile war, and the conquest of Mouastir was the ultima Thule of their ambition. When they had entered the, capital of the iormer Turkish Vila, vet ou December 2, 1915. the event was nowhere oeJeorated. not even in Berlin, veith greater enthusiasm than at Soda, where every house was decorated and covered wnn flags. Mover had there been such wwicspread optimism in Bulgaria. When the horizon suddenly brightened up after 12 months of win-, a state of national fever, teat ran only be described as national megalomania, developed eve.rvwhero. The apparent inaction of General &u rail's annv in Macedonia, the achievements of Mac-kensen in the Dobrndia, and the. re]ioits of decisive victories over the Jlumanians in Transylvania, revived (he old pan-Bulgarian ambitions, and nolitical circles in .Sofia conceived astomidinW plans ter milgarian supremacy in the Balkans. —Tear Ferdinand's lion,*.—

The pci&m most infatuated wnii this peculiar megalomania was rim little parvenu Tsar Ferdinand himself, who dreamt dreams of emulating the Ttehen/.oilcrn dynasty amd making Bulgaria the I’russia ot , u \° Balkan*. The political satellites wno imd access te .hi* Unlo .-nurt in the gaudy new Royal Palace at S-uia. built, of glazed yellow bricks made in Germanv, discussed every morning the p-rmanmit annexation of fterbian .Macedonia and a .aigc part, of Greek terrilorv. imlndinc' Knyala. and Salonika, They' included {„ their mania for annexation nho the entire Dobrncija and the compulsory constitnt.on under Germano-Ansi-rian, Hungarian, and Turkish auspice's of a now Balkan Conled eration, in which the sup-mno hegemony was to be conferred upon the Tsaniom of Bulgaria. [(, was. in fnri, tbe Balkan imitation ot the famous Forth German Gomeorration, which concluded with the pro, laniation of tlip Herni*in Knipiro. T»v means- of this compid-mv confederation', over which the Tsar of Bulgaria was to exercise sunreme dictatorship, Sofia, was If be capita! of a, great new Balkan l-tate, with wide expansionist views tov.ards ihc Black, y C a, the Aegean Sea. and I, d r al,c - ' l ' l ' o !' ,ans for this future J an-Bulgamn Mmpire, it is said, were drawn up by Ferdinand bimself in hi* pa.ace of German bricks. It comprised the iccon.stitution of Serbia and. Montenegro, subject to the compulsory recognition' 0 f -pe J.m.ganan right to {supremacy, and the entrance of a largo part of Greece into the same sphere bv the annexation ot large tracts of Greek Macedonia, nf Epirus, and Albania.