ouncil of
Ministers, and individual with respect to the acts of the ministers as
heads of the various State Departments.

What I have described represents in effect a complete system of
representative and responsible government. But observation of Bulgarian
politics during and since the war has suggested to me that the King and
his ministers really can exercise a practical oligarchy: and it is
probably necessary that they should.

In the Bulgarian National Assembly there is a very strong Socialist
party, and the Parliamentary life of the Kingdom is stormy.

CHAPTER XII

THE FUTURE OF BULGARIA

It is impossible, in my opinion, to doubt the future of Bulgaria. The
disasters of 1914 would seem to suggest that the Bulgarian nation was
without the moral balance to withstand the intoxication of victory. But
whilst the events of that unhappy year showed the lack of that balance,
the fault was with the leaders of the people rather than with the people
themselves.

The misfortune of Bulgaria in this generation of the nation's life--a
misfortune which is being rapidly repaired--is that she has no middle
class: and no class with any "tradition" of leadership behind it. There
are the peasants--admirable material for nation-making--heroic, thrifty,
moral, industrious, practical. Above the peasants there is no class from
which to draw a good supply of competent administrators, law-makers,
officers, professional men. The peasant has his own limited capacities
for leadership; but they are limited. I have encountered him frequently
as Mayor of some little commune, as captain of an infantry regiment, and
admired his administrative abilities, within a narrow and familiar
scope, exceedingly. But the peasant does not go higher than that. It is
the son of the peasant with some extra gift of cleverness who is "given
an education," who becomes legislator, official, cleric, diplomat. In
many cases he does not take his polish well. Advanced education for the
ambitious Balkan lad has in the past generally meant education abroad;
and in Paris or Vienna or Petrograd the young Bulgarian, plunged into an
altogether new life of luxury and of frivolity, often suffered a loss of
natural strength of fibre for which no book-learning could compensate.

That evil will pass away. It is now possible to get a fairly advanced
liberal education without going beyond Bulgaria. Also the people are
becoming more immune to the effects of Western civil