manship of Stambuloff. A good
understanding was come to with Turkey, still Bulgaria's suzerain power,
and in 1890 Turkey made the important concession to Bulgaria of
appointing Bulgarian bishops in Macedonia. In 1893 Prince Ferdinand
married Princess Marie Louise of Parma, and the next year an heir was
born to them, Prince Boris. A reconciliation with Russia followed.

[Illustration: A BULGARIAN MARKET TOWN]

Bulgaria now made steady and peaceful progress, the only cloud on her
sky the sorrows of her co-religionists in Macedonia. In 1908 advantage
was taken of the "Young Turk" revolution in Turkey for the Bulgarian
Prince to denounce all allegiance to Turkey, and Bulgaria was declared
fully independent and Ferdinand was crowned at Tirnovo as Czar of the
Bulgarians. Turkey was not able to protest, and her confessed weakness
nourished to powerful strength the general desire of the Christian
peoples in the Balkans to free their co-religionists in Thrace and
Macedonia from the rule of the Moslem. "The Balkan League" was formed,
and Bulgaria, Greece, Montenegro, and Servia prepared to force from
Turkey by war what the Great Powers had so far failed to secure by
diplomacy--the relief of Macedonia from oppression and misrule. It was
during the war of 1912-1913 that I had an opportunity of studying the
Bulgarian people at close hand, as I accompanied the Bulgarian forces as
war correspondent.

CHAPTER VI

THE WAR OF 1912-1913

I can still recollect the glad surprise which a first sight of Sofia
gave to me. With the then conventional view of the Balkan states, I had
expected, on leaving Buda-Pesth, to cut away altogether from
civilisation. Paved streets; solid and good, if not exactly handsome,
buildings; first-class hotels and cafes; electric trams and comfortable,
cheap cabs; luxurious public baths; well-stocked stores; a telephone
system, water-supply, drainage--each one of these was a surprise. I had
expected a semi-barbaric Eastern town. I found a modern capital, small
but orderly, clean, and well managed.

That enthusiastic friend of the Balkan nationalities, Mr. Noel Buxton,
M.P., writing of Sofia and other Balkan capitals, becomes quite lyrical
in his praise:

"Their capitals," he writes, "have at all times an aspect of
reality, industry, and simplicity. There is little needless
wealth to show, and nothing which, in the West, would be called
luxury. Every one is a worker, and every one a