THE TREACHEROUS BULGARS.

Free Lance, Volume XV, Issue 798, 15 October 1915, Page 6

THE TREACHEROUS BULGARS.

The Height of Ingratitude.

If N declaring Avar against Servia, and i therefore against Servia's allies, Russia and Great Britain, to say nothing of France and Italy, King Ferdinand. has committed the country over which he rules to a course of action, than which nothing more completely despicable is recorded in European history. It is enough to make the late Mr. Gladstone turn in '.his grave and send a spirit message, after the Stead fashion, worded, "Ingratitude, thy name, is Bulgaria!" For to : Gladstone's eloquent denunciation of the atrocities committed by the Turkish Bashi. Bazouks in 1876 and' 1877, Bulgaria owed it in no small degree that Russia went to the rescue of the hideously ill-treated . Bulgarian people in 1878, when, as the traditional champion and. protector of_ the Slav races, she went to war with Turkey. The Servians may not always 'have behaved with strict consideration for national honour a,nd international obligations, but to Russia the, Bulgarians owe their independence, their liberties, owe indeed their very existence •as a free people. **. * * And yet it is against Russia, whom she believes to be so crippled by Germany that she is no longer a factor n the Balkans, that Bulgaria now appears in the new and dishonourable role of a foe. If there be such a thing as international justice, then surely will Bulgaria. some day; sooner or later,_ repent in sackcloth and ashes hex beguilement by the Huns and their Austrian allies. For a time, maybe, the Germans, and Atistrians will succeed to some extent in pushing the Servians back, but other factors will soon be, indeed are even now, at work in the Balkans, and. cunning and unscrupulously crafty as is King Ferdinand, it w'J'l not be long ere he finds he has embarked upon the most perilous of ' adventures —specially perilous to 'his dynasty.