THE KING OF BULGARIA.

Rangitikei Advocate and Manawatu Argus, Volume XL, Issue 11438, 1 December 1915, Page 2

THE KING OF BULGARIA.

fßy La Marquise De Fontenoy, iu the New York Sun.] King’ Ferdinand’s commitmeriF of Bulgaria to the cause of the two Kaisers and of the Sultan, in defiance of the wishes of his people, is proving so costly to Great Britain and to her allies from a monetary point of view that it is astonishing that the Bowers of the Quadruple Entente did not see their way to offer him an adequate pecuniary compensation in the event of his money and his estates in Germany and Austria being confiscated by the Governments of those two countries. It has now become known that this singularly unlovable and unloved monarch, so renowned for his insatiable greed for sordid gain, would have modified his whole attitude months ago if ho had only been assured by Great Britain, Russia and France that he would not suffer iu pocket by throwing in his lot with their cause,in accordance with the will of the bulk of the Bulgarian nation. All his estates are situated in Austria and Hungary, while the remainder of his private fortune,, which is Jarge, is invested in Germany, and he had been given thoroughly to understand, both from Berlin and from Vienna that everything that he possessed in the German and Austro-Hungarian empires would be seized if he failed to support their cause against the Bowers of the Quadruple Entente. It is true that Ferdinand has a considerable amount land in Bulgaria. But his retention thereof depends so much upon his possession of the Bulgarian throne that it cannot be regarded a very safe or secure investment. Indeed, he is known to rely entirely upon his German and Austrian property. THE BENALTY.

It would have been easy for Emperor Nicholas and for the Petrograd Government to have presented him with large estates in Russia, far larger in extent than those which he now owns in the Dual Empire, and it would have been much cheaper for England to have guaranteed to him an amount of money equivalent and even superior to that which he had invested in Germany, in the event of its confiscation by the Kaiser’s Government. Put this has not been done and now Great Britain,Russia, Italy and France will have to spend millions and millions of money and no end of bleed in order to repair the neglect to adopt this manifestly more politic course. Perhaps there may be still time to make some move in that direction at Bucharest. For there, too, the other King Ferdinand, a Hohenzollern, is holding back his army and his people from co-operating with Russia and from assisting the latter's allies in the Balkans, because all bis fortune and his estates are in Germany, and have been menaced witli confiscation by the Kaiser in the event of Rumania taking up arms against Germany, Austria and Turkey. Even if the predictions of the French envoy at Sofia, who has just returned from Bulgaria after receiving his passports from King Ferdinand’s Government, are realised, and a revolution breaks out in Bulgaria agaist the King and in favour of that Russia to whom the Bulgarians owe .their liberation from Turkish tyranny, it will come too late to avert the expenditure of all the blood and treasure which might have been spared to the Powers of the Quadruple. Entente by the adoption of the policy mentioned above.