FOXY FERDINAND.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LIII, Issue 16372, 28 October 1916, Page 2 (Supplement)

FOXY FERDINAND.

A LIFE OF TREACHERY. retribution; Taking the text, "Whoso diggcth a pit shall fall therein,"- the Daily Telegraph devotes an article to King Ferdinand of Bulgaria. His plight at this moment, it says, is no occasion for idle insult. But certain things must be said of him—and it seems to us that this is the time at which they should be said. 'Die man has at last felt the touch of the net upon him which he has so persistently and mercilessly set for others; and there is, perhaps, no living man who will feel in his heart even a trace of remorse as the seine is relentlessly dragged ashore. The record of Ferdinand of Bulgaria will probably always possess an interest for the psychologist and the student of moral debility; but, unlike many other careers of unscrupulous ambition,' at no moment has it been touched by even a passing gleam of nobility never, from the beginning to the fast-nearing end, has his miserable career been redeemed by constancy to any principle but his own personal advancement. The wheel has come full circle. Five Years Ago. Five years ago he was ordering from Paris the robes for his Coronation as Emperor of Byzantium; to-day he is a restkss fugitive between the postern doors of palaces in Sofia and Vicuna, hated by the Bulgarian people, whom he has betrayed, and branded as ft suspect by the very men whose cities are grudgingly opened to him, incognito and deserted. The world has not forgotten what happened in October, 1915, when he plunged his unwilling country into war with her patron and liberator, Russia. Those were terrible days in Sofia. Again and again the elder and greater men of Bulgaria—Guesclioff, Savoff, Stambuleski. and Malinoff—argued, protested, and pleaded for their country, but in vain. The Bulgarians were indeed resentful and hostile, but the chiefs of the army had been won over, and Badoslavoff was a mere tool in Ferdinand's hand. The Punishment of God. The words in which Russia entered her protest against Ferdinand will live longer than the man against whom it was directed : " Bulgaria, one in faith with us, and but a short while back liberated from the Turkish yoke by the brotherly love of the Russian people, has openly taken sides with the enemies of the Christian faith, of Slavism, and of Russia, who leaves the fate- of the betrayer of the Slav cause to the just punishment of God." We do not believe that there is in this man a spark of regret for the disaster he has brought upon his people. The collapse of his personal ambitions no doubt affects him bitterly, but the deepest feeling is probably resentment against those who have shouldered him aside, and are now attempting to save some remnants of the national fortunes from deserved retribution at the hands of Russia and her allies.