aying a long
time without paying, and the management is retaliating. There is a bed
which has sheets which may have been laid fresh for a German officer in
1915, and you wisely follow the custom of the country and sleep with
your clothes on.

Next day, when you step out on to the streets of the Bulgarian capital,
your eyes almost refuse to take in the change. You have such a strong
expectation of the moving picture of the Constantinople street that you
feel, as it were, robbed and astonished, as by a spell cast over your
world. You have been transported by enchantment to an entirely
different scene. Here is a strange quiet. A peasant population has
come to town in heavy clothes and heavy faces. Despite the war and all
the trouble it has meant, there is a feeling that all able-bodied men
and women are provided for. Here is none of the elegance and indolence
of Athens, or of the ingenuity and cleverness of Constantinople, but a
steadiness and drabness of a peasant clumsiness mark the new Sofia. It
is neither so pleasant nor so promising a place as it was in 1915. The
soil of the black years is upon it.

Sofia was a peasant city without much fashion or style then, and this
aspect has intensified itself. The peasant is the born enemy of the
town, and whilst he may be perfect in the country he is a boorish and
non-comprehending fellow when he comes to the capital to rule. The
peasant in power has very little use for the brighter side of
civilization. The more the latter is cut down the better for him. He
has, unfortunately, grasped the truism that "without the peasant
nothing can exist," and he is much disposed therefore to take more of
the profit of living for himself and cut down the expenses of
civilization.

In Bulgaria we have the curious anomaly of peasant communists in
political power and a king. Monarchy and a sort of Bolshevism.

"So you are all Bolsheviks here?"

"No, only peasant-communists."

"Is that not similar?"

"No. We have no international programme. International politics do
not interest us. We do not want any more wars. Governments make the
wars and the people have to fight them. Ask anyone, Did we want the
last war? Do we ever get anything out of wars? No. And now we have
an administration who will keep us out of trouble."

The speaker was an ordinary Sofian proletariat, earning his living in a
bakery. He seemed much pleased with Bulgaria as she is now; did not
want a po