BULGARIA AGAINST RUSSIA

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 5, Issue 40, 15 April 1942, Page 2

BULGARIA AGAINST RUSSIA

Struggle behind scenes about her share in the Russian campaign. The Bulgarian Government is still hesitating, less from reluctance to please the Germans than because it does not feel sufficiently secure with its

own people. The German Minister, i Acloif lieinz ' Becke-rle, demanded since the beginning of July that , three Bu'garian divisions should be ; sent to the Russian front, but Bulgaria refused. Since then the Germans have been trying vainly by promises and threats to entice Bulgaria into the war against the allies. Even the speech of M. Zhanev. President of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the Sobranye, in which he said that Bulgaria is satisfied with her present frontiers and with the areas that were formerly Jugoslavia and Greece, contains an exception obviously inspired by the Germans: "But Turkey still remains an unknown quantity." Herr Beckerle (who is a typical German 'diplomat' —he used to be a superintendent of police in Frankfurt-am-Main) —openly forced Bulgaria into a fresh offensive at the end of the summer, holding out the hope of a Greater Bulgaria as a bait. He said: "Germany wants only one thing lor Bulgaria, that she should be reflected in the last speech of M. great." This 'German incitement is Zhaney and in certain Bulgarian dreams of the Enos-Midia line as frontiers with Turkey. The Bulgarians have so far shed no blood in the German cause; on the contrary, they arc the principal Avar profiteers, having won a great deal of territory without striking a blow. Germany is trying to win the country over to war against the Soviet, and the fact that she has not suci ceeded is no fault of the present I Bulgarian Government, which is pro-German as can be. It is trying to influence public opinion by constant attacks on the Soviet and Communism. But all these attacks do not alter the fact that Communism is winning adherents in the country districts of Bulgaria. This is due to the division cf the land into innumerable tiny farms where the Bulgarian peasantry, the bulk of whom are small holders, scrape along under the burden of increasingly heavy taxes and hardly able to make a bare living. The general discontent of the Bulgarian people with the present state of affairs is showing itself in acts of sabotage. There are repeated railway accidents; the sheaves have been burned in the cornfields day by day as they were cut.

Thus her territorial gains have not brought Bulgaria either wealth or happiness. They have not brought wealth or happiness to Rumania. Hungary so far is bleeding for Hitler only. There is general shortage, in all these countries, or food and articles of daily use, everywhere the is widening between the people and the governments.