The Manawatu Herald. Tuesday, January 18, 1916. THE PRUSSIANS OF THE BALKANS

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXVIII, Issue 1498, 18 January 1916, Page 2

The Manawatu Herald. Tuesday, January 18, 1916. THE PRUSSIANS OF THE BALKANS

“Why did ‘the honest Bulgar people ’ allow themselves to be hoodwinked so openly, if, indeed, they be so honest?” asks an English writer. “ The Italian people were experimented upon in a similar way, only much more elaborately, and with vastly greater odds against them. But they refused to be led against their kindred, or even to hold aloof while people of the Latin race were being decimated by the Germans, and rising up they swept away the dictator and his following. The truth is that the Bulgars are the Prussians of the Balkans. They have the social sense highly developed, the vaulting ambition, the self-containment, and the capacity for organisation which have won lor Prussia the place she now occupies in the world. Only a very powerful Servia, in possession of an assimilated Macedonia, could keep Bulgaria permanently quiet and pacific. We have wasted too much sympathy on the Bulgars, who, after the Prussians, are the most dangerous enemies to the peace of Europe. Ferdinand on the throne at Sofia is their right leader. King and people suit each other. That was Dr. Dillon’s conviction long before the present war ; and since then events have strengthened it. As for Ferdinand, he behaved congruously with his character and his lights, which were wrongly gauged by the simpie-minded generous diplomatists of the Alliance.”