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Hokitika Guardian, 20 October 1927, Page 2

Tim cause ilf the present trouble in tbe Balkans, the yvar cloud over-shadow ing Europe in the East, is a very unpleasant quarrel which has developed recently between Serbia and Bulgaria. Tbe difficulty centres in Macedonia, where Greeks, Bulgars, and Serbs have lived together in a state of suppressed hostility for ages. Tim only feeling they ever had in common was hatred of the Turk, and once the Turkish tyranny was overthrown they turned more fiercely than ever upon cadi other. So far the Bulgars have had all the yvorst of the competition for ascendancy in (Macedonia, and for this they have only themselves to blame, as a northern writer bluntly comments, TliO Greeks beat them in the race for Salonika in the First Balkan yvar, and when the Serbs, shut out from the Adriatic, asked Bulgaria for concessions in Northern Macedonia—which to the Yugoslavs is “Old Serbia” still—Ferdinand treacherously attacked them and yvns deservedly defeated in the Second Balkan AVer, 'flio Bulgars waited their time till the crisis of the Great War, and then attacked Serbia at the moment when she was struggling desperately against the Austrian and German armies. Is it any yvonder that the Serbs halo the Bulgars, and are disinclined to believe that any good can come out of the country that ‘‘the Red Fox of the Balkans” ruled so cunningly? In the present instance the murder of a Serbian general in a Macedonian frontier village may have been tbe yvork of the “Comitadjithose Irresponsible brigands yvlio still inrtko M acedonia dangerous for even the best intentioned .stranger. But a tendency is once more .manifesting itself at Home to assume tiiat in any trouble that arises between the Balkan States, the Bulgarians are more likely to be right than the Serbs This sentimental prejudice in favour of the Bulgars dates hack to the tremendous agitation over the ‘Bulgarian atrocities’’ half a icntury ago, Gladstone’s furious crusade against the Turk, and the early activities of the “Friends of the Balkans” and other kindred organisations. 'The historical record of the Bulgars proves them to lie a singularly unreliable, treacherous, and vindictive people, hud though it is always a. mistake, as Burke tells us, to “indict a nation,” it seems to us that it yvould lie a grave error to assume that because the Serbians are adopting a somewhat pugnacious attitude just noyv, therefore they are to blame for the trouble.