Thetr Southland Times. PUBLISHED EVERY MORNING. Luceo Non Uro, MONDAY, JUNE 18, 1923. DANGEROUS BALKANS.

Southland Times, Issue 18970, 18 June 1923, Page 4

Thetr Southland Times. PUBLISHED EVERY MORNING. Luceo Non Uro, MONDAY, JUNE 18, 1923. DANGEROUS BALKANS.

Stambouliski’s death will cut the heart out of the peasant forces and will save Bulgaria from civil war. It is possible, too, that the neighbouring Serbs will now be deprived of an excuse to cross the frontier and renew their pleasantries with the Bulgars,' with whom they have been mingling in little frays on various occasions over hundreds of years. The Jugo-Slav Government may be interested in preventing the return of Ferdinand, but the Stambouliski regime was rather too socialistic in its aims to be altogether pleasing to Belgrade, and the peasant-dictator’s overthrow will be regretted in Serbia only because he was pro-Ally. His inclination in the direction of the Allies was dictated by his personal interests, they could not rely on him, and so long as the new Government does not make an effort to disturb the Allied plans in the Near East the Serbs will not go on. The report that Stambouliski had been plotting to seize the throne may have been invented by the revolutionaries, but it is not altogether unreasonable if the actions of the peasantdictator while he was in power are taken into account. It is, however, extremely unlikely that the new rulers will attempt to call Ferdinand back. He was not a popular ruler, and his errors since the Balkans Wars, when the Bulgars suffered severely through the Government slavishly playing Austria’s game, have been too great for any people to swallow. Then, too, the Bulgars are wise enough to know that the Allies could not tolerate the return of the fox of the Balkans. They refused to agree to the return of any enemy ruler except Constantine, and the effects of that exception to the rule are too recent and too terrible to pass unnoticed by the new Government at Sofia. A continuation of civil war might lead to a Serbian intervention which would make the Balkans exceedingly dangerous for Europe, and the death of Stambouliski, therefore, is not without benefit to the interests of his own and otEer nations.