Manawatu Evening Standard. WEDNESDAY, MAY 23, 1934. BULGARIAN POLITICS.

Manawatu Standard, Volume LIV, Issue 147, 23 May 1934, Page 6

Manawatu Evening Standard. WEDNESDAY, MAY 23, 1934. BULGARIAN POLITICS.

By a bold stroke a National Government lias been established in Bulgaria to put an end to factional differences that were retarding its economic rehabilitation, and to forestall a rising planned by Professor Tsankoif, leader of the Extreme Eight, with the aid of Macedonian subjects. The loyalty of officers of the Army and retired officers put King Boris on his guard against the perilous situation that was apparently rapidly developing, and the Bulgarian ruler accepted the formation of a National Government as the best solution of the serious difficulties. Though the coup d’etat was achieved without bloodshed, there is a report of bitter fighting between the Bulgars and the Macedonians, and competent observers do not hesitate to say that if the new Government is to _ ride firmly in office the Macedonian rebels, who occupy the mountainous district of south-west Bulgaria, must be suppressed. King Boris, according to a correspondent, runs a terrible risk from his bold stroke, for its purpose —to end the enmity between Yugoslavia and Bulgaria—sets him against the Macedonians whom he must crush or else himself be crushed. The leader of the Macedonians is a well-known figure in Ivan Mihailoff, who has been a disturbing factor in the State for some time. His power has been noted on several occasions. A few years ago he was acquitted in Sofia on a charge of instigating the murder of an opponent, Vasil Pundeff, and less than a week later two of his agents had assassinated another noted Macedonian dissident. The Macedonian Eevolutionary Organisation, _it was then remarked, constitutes a State within a State, and the revolutionists seem to be stronger than the Government. It exists for the “liberation” of Serbian Macedonia, but while it hardly disturbs the Serbs, who are the avowed opponents of its national ambitions, it terrorises Bulgaria and is ruthless towards its own people, the Macedonians, when they disagree with its methods. The strength of the organisation has prevented leading Bulgarian publicists from writing against it, and a National Representative who criticised its methods was immediately marked down for assassination, being compelled to absent himself from Parliament to avoid the certainty of its blow. It is this travesty of justice that has embittered leading public opinion against the Macedonian revolutionaries who want to free their country from the Serbs; By enlisting the sympathy of Bulgarians _ against Yugoslavia, making their cause a Bulgarian one, Mihailoff and his agents have hindered the progress of good relations between the two countries. Their power is to be apprehended from the comment that the risks of the course the King and his party have followed are bound to arouse anxiety.

King Boris, who is a kinsman of the British Royal Family, paid a private visit with his Queen, the former Princess of the House of Savoy, to England last year. He is described as a democratic ruler who prefers the British model of Constitutional monarchy to experiments in dictatorships, and a personality of high character and abounding intelligence. In London, and in Paris and Geneva, he met leading Government and League officials to exchange views and remove apprehensions that existed in regard to his own little Kingdom, first impoverished by the Treaty of

Neuilly and now by the economic crisis. Wherever he went he was received with graciousness, recognition of his efforts, in the face of great difficulties, as it was said, to remove misunderstandings and to assist the helmsmen of the Bulgarian ship of State to follow a safe course over still dangerous seas. His agreement to a National Government, which means a virtual dictatorship, implies that to save Bulgaria only the boldest, if the most dangei'ous, course had to be steered.