PEASANT PASSES ON

Taranaki Daily News, 27 January 1934, Page 20 (Supplement)

PEASANT PASSES ON

BULGARIA’S MAN OF PEACE. A man of peace has died in Bulgaria. He was Andrea. Liaptcheff. Bom a peasant and made a Prime Minister, he was one of the finest men of his time, always on the side of moderation and tolerance in the midst of strife and bitterness. He helped his own people, the peasants and the artisans, by forwarding the Co-operative Movement in Bulgaria and the .Union of the People’s Banks. Had King Ferdinand taken his advice in 1913, and come to some agreement with the Greeks and the Serbs over the spoils of the ■ Balkan War, Bulgaria would not have suffered as she did.

Again in 1914 he made tremendous efforts to save his country being dragged into war at the heels of Germany. His sympathies were‘with the Entente. The* disturbed years after the war ended by his being thrown into prison for eight months by those who wished to set up a dictatorship; but by 1926 he was ..back in slower as Prime Minister of the most temperate and uncorrupt Government that Bulgaria had known for some time. He knew that to persecute a discontented peasant was to turn him into a Communist, and only in 1930, when the Governments of all the world were being turned upside down by the economic . crisis, was his power taken from him. '..

Even 1 , then he was able to save his country from civil war by his courageous acceptance of defeat and his refusal to listen to extremists.