tic societies" in Eastern Roumelia, and the youth of
that province enrolled themselves with such ardour that by the year 1885
more than 40,000 were trained to the use of arms. As for the protests of
the Sultan and those of his delegates at Philippopolis, they were
stilled by hints from St. Petersburg, or by demands for the prompt
payment of Turkey's war debt to Russia. All the world knew that, thanks
to Russian patronage, Eastern Roumelia had slipped entirely from the
control of Abdul Hamid.

By the summer of 1885, the unionist movement had acquired great
strength. But now, at the critical time, when Russia should have led
that movement, she let it drift, or even, we may say, cast off the
tow-rope. Probably the Czar and his Ministers looked on the Bulgarians
as too weak or too stupid to act for themselves. It was a complete
miscalculation; for now Stambuloff and Karaveloff had made that aim
their own, and brought to its accomplishment all the skill and zeal
which they had learned in a long career of resistance to Turkish and
Russian masters. There is reason to think that they and their
coadjutors at Philippopolis pressed on events in the month of September
1885, because the Czar was then known to disapprove any
immediate action.

In order to understand the reason for this strange reversal of Russia's
policy, we must scrutinise events more closely. The secret workings of
that policy have been laid bare in a series of State documents, the
genuineness of which is not altogether established. They are said to
have been betrayed to the Bulgarian patriots by a Russian agent, and
they certainly bear signs of authenticity. If we accept them (and up to
the present they have been accepted by well-informed men) the truth is
as follows:--

Russia would have worked hard for the union of Eastern Roumelia to
Bulgaria, provided that the Prince abdicated and his people submitted
completely to Russian control. Quite early in his reign Alexander III.
discovered in them an independence which his masterful nature ill
brooked. He therefore postponed that scheme until the Prince should
abdicate or be driven out. As one of the Muscovite agents phrased it in
the spring of 1881, the union must not be brought about until a Russian
protectorate should be founded in the Principality; for if they made
Bulgaria too strong, it would become "a second Roumania," that is, as
"ungrateful" to Russia as Roumania had shown herself after the seizure
of her