Policy of The Peasant State

National Policy

It is very difficult to understand the national policy of any country except your own. Nor is it always easy to understand that. It is, therefore, with some hesitation I venture to explain what, in my view, is the national policy of Bulgaria, in as far as she has at present any definite policy, other than that of waiting the course of events. Putting together the many different opinions I have heard from natives and foreign residents in the country, and after making due allowance for the bias of my informants, I have arrived at one or two conclusions which, if not quite the truth, are, I fancy, very near the truth. I am convinced that for the time being the national ambition of the country is confined within very reasonable limits.

There may be Bulgarian enthusiasts who, inspired by the traditions of the doubtful glories of a somewhat hypothetical past, look forward to the day when a Bulgarian empire might be re-established with Constantinople as its capital. But I do not believe that any such aspirations are entertained by the great mass of the people. Amongst the Bulgarians there is no dominant sentiment analogous to the grande idea of the Greeks.

Every Bulgarian entertains the belief that within the life-time of the generation now growing into manhood the Ottoman Empire in Europe will have become a thing of the past There is. a very general desire that the ultimate solution of the Eastern Question should prove such as to secure the independence of Bulgaria, but there is no desire that Bulgaria should succeed to the inheritance of the Ottoman Empire.

Unreasonable in the case of the Bulgarians

I quite admit that such an aspiration would be even more unreasonable in the case of the Bulgarians than it is in that of the Greeks. The Hellenic nation has a great past, a grand literature, and has also large colonies of fellow-Greeks settled over the whole face of the Levant Bulgaria can put forward no pretensions of any equal value. Her people have not—and, I think know that they have not—the qualities of a ruling race.